Deadline

“I’m not having this conversation again.”

“Just saying, you didn’t have to worry about this shit when you lived the happy bachelor life. Look, I need to go—the Doc’s just checked out clean, so it’s probably time to find out what she’s doing here.”

“Call me when you know what’s going on.”

“Got it,” I said, and clicked off.

Kelly lowered her test unit, apparently satisfied that everyone had seen it, and said, “I’m clean. Do you have a biohazard receptacle I can dispose of this in?”

“It’s next to the medical supplies.” I walked toward the kitchen. “I need a Coke. Anybody else need anything before story time commences?”

No one did.

The kitchen gave me just enough privacy to feel comfortable saying quietly, “Can we try to keep the interjections down for a little bit? I don’t want Kelly thinking I’m crazy.” I paused. “Not yet, anyway.”

You have a plan? asked George.

“More making it up as I go along,” I replied, and grabbed my soda before turning to walk back into the living room.

When I got there, Kelly was on the couch, Alaric was sitting on the beanbag he’d tripped over before, and Dave was back at his terminal, watching the scrolling data feed with one eye while remaining half-turned toward the room. Only Becks was still standing, eyeing Kelly like she expected the other woman to spontaneously amplify at any second.

“Aren’t we a cheery bunch?” I grabbed a folding chair from against the wall and set it up in front of the entrance hall. Nobody was getting in or out without going through me, and that wasn’t exactly an easy proposition. Potentially entertaining; not easy.

“I’m cheerier when there isn’t a corpse sitting on the couch,” said Becks, before moving to her computer chair and slowly sitting down.

“Most people are.” I turned to Kelly. “That brings us back to story time. Well, Doc? What’s going on?”

Kelly sighed. It was a soft, exhausted sound, conveying a vast amount of information in a very small amount of time. This was a woman who’d been run to the limits of her endurance before being forced to find reserves she didn’t think she had. Now even those reserves looked about to run out. Maybe the word “corpse” was more accurate than it sounded. I tensed, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Dr. Wynne sends his regards.”

There it was: the other shoe.

Dr. Joseph Wynne was Kelly’s supervisor at the Memphis CDC. He was also the man who answered when George called the CDC for help on the night Buffy died. We knew we’d been set up—it was hard to miss that part, what with people shooting at our tires and everything—but we didn’t realize how thoroughly screwed we were until we talked to the CDC. Somebody else called them before George did. That first caller reported that we’d all gone into amplification, not just Buffy. Since we were outside in a confirmed outbreak by that point, Dr. Wynne would have been legally justified in ordering our immediate executions. He didn’t do it. That meant, in a strange sort of sidelong way, that I owed him.

“Does he?” I asked, as neutrally as I could.

“He sent a data card for you to review.” She picked up her briefcase from the floor next to the couch and popped it open, rummaging for a second before producing a plain white plastic rectangle. I raised an eyebrow. A smile ghosted across Kelly’s face as she offered the card to me. “What, did you think I managed to grow a full-body clone and stage my own death without help?”

“Guess not,” I said. “Alaric, run the card.” He jumped to his feet, snatching the card from her hand and running for his terminal so fast that I almost expected him to leave skid marks on the floor. I snorted with amusement before turning back to Kelly. “Now it’s really story time, Doc.”

“Yes, it is,” she agreed. She took a stack of manila envelopes from the briefcase and stood, walking a loose circuit around the room. Each of us got an envelope before she returned to the couch and sat, looking almost serene. I know that look. That’s the look I get from people who’ve done their civic duty by reporting the zombie outbreak to the local news media and are now planning to sit down and let it be our problem instead of theirs. It’s the expression of someone who knows, deep down inside, that the buck is about to be passed.

Buck-passing rarely comes with handouts. I peered into the envelope, natural paranoia demanding that I confirm it wasn’t filled with mousetraps or funny white powder before I removed the contents. Paper. Some paperclipped reports, a few loose memos, and a few sheets of statistical data. I didn’t understand most of what I saw, which really wasn’t surprising. I never was much of one for the numbers.

I looked up. Kelly was watching me intently. Everyone else was flipping through the contents of their respective envelopes. It looked like it was up to me to keep her talking. I waved a sheet of statistics and asked, “What’s all this?”

“It’s the story.” She sagged back in the couch, closing her eyes. The “passing the buck” expression faded, replaced by one of deep and abiding weariness. She kept her eyes closed as she began to talk. It may have been because she was concentrating on getting her facts straight, but I don’t think so.

I think she just didn’t want to risk seeing the look on my face.

“The first cases of confirmed Kellis-Amberlee occurred in 2014. That’s when the viruses were introduced to the biosphere, met, and managed to successfully combine. The viral substrains are either descendants of different initial cases of Marburg Amberlee or the result of very minor natural mutation, occurring within isolated geographic areas. Everywhere in the world, Kellis flu met Marburg Amberlee, and Kellis-Amberlee was the result. It’s not natural virus behavior. Neither of the pathogens involved was a natural virus. Kellis-Amberlee has been stable, and effectively identical, since it was ‘born.’ ”