Deadline

“You kids,” said Dr. Wynne, with a forced chuckle. “Y’all be careful out there, all right?”

“As careful as you can be when you’re looking for the living dead,” I said. “Take care of yourself, Dr. Wynne.”

“You, too, Shaun,” he said, and disconnected the call.

I took a second to just stand there with my phone in my hand, closing my eyes and listening to George swearing in the back of my head. “Here we go again,” I said, voice barely above a whisper.

“What?” asked Dave.

“Nothing.” I opened my eyes, slamming the phone into my pocket before stalking back into the kitchen for a fresh Coke. I popped the tab and downed half the can in one large, carbonated gulp. The frozen sweetness made my molars ache and snapped the world back into a semblance of focus. “I need you to tear down your workstations, and then get started on everybody else’s,” I said, returning to the living room. “Dave, where are you with that list?”

“It’s encoded. I need—”

“Forget what you need. Upload it to the main server and the mirrors; pack the physical drive.”

“Boss?” asked Alaric, uncertainly.

“Gear up like you’re never going to see this place again. Alaric, as soon as Becks confirms that there’s nothing standard on the Doc, I need you to take over. Do a second scan of everything she brought with her. You find anything that looks like it might be related to something that might be a bug, kill it.” I raised a hand before he could protest. “Don’t study it, don’t dissect it, don’t try to subvert it, kill it. We don’t have time to risk the sort of heat that might be coming after her.”

“But—”

I turned away from him to open the closet door. The shelf on the right was crammed with ammo boxes. I started grabbing them three at a time. “He said it was like George, Alaric. Not like Buffy, who was actually unexpected; not like Rebecca Ryman, or any of the other people he and I wound up having in common.”

“So what?”

Go easy on him, said George. He wasn’t there. He doesn’t really understand.

“I know,” I muttered darkly. More loudly, I said, “So there were people at the CDC who were involved with what happened to her, and we never caught them. George had a reservoir condition. I thought you were the Newsie here. Do I have to draw you a picture?”

My favorite hunting rifle was leaning against the closet wall. I grabbed it, relaxing slightly as its satisfying weight fell into my hand. Letting it rest against my shoulder, I went back to grabbing ammo.

“Fuck,” muttered Dave.

“My thoughts exactly,” I said. “Go tell Becks she needs to hurry it up; we’re getting out of here. Any bugs she can’t find without a subdermal sweeper, she’s not going to find with an extra ten minutes.”

“On it,” said Dave, and trotted out of the room.

We got to work, Alaric dismantling the equipment that wasn’t needed for final uploads, while I emptied and packed down the contents of the closet. Dave came back and started helping Alaric break things down. I was filling a backpack with protein bars and spare laptop batteries when the bedroom door opened and Becks emerged, followed by a rumpled-looking Kelly.

“She’s clean,” Becks announced, tossing Kelly’s briefcase to Alaric. He caught it and turned back to what remained of his workstation, reaching for a scanner.

“Good. We roll in twenty. Grab whatever you think you’re going to need, and pack like we’re not coming back.”

“Where are we going?” asked Becks.

“Maggie’s,” I replied. She nodded, looking relieved. Even Dave and Alaric relaxed a little. If we were heading for Maggie’s, they knew that we were at least going to wind up someplace safe.

Maggie lives in the middle of nowhere and has the best security money can buy. Literally. Some of the systems on her house are military grade or better, and her parents make sure she gets the latest upgrades. Hell, sometimes I think the latest upgrades are designed specifically for her and then just shared with everybody else. She started out as one of Buffy’s friends—and Buffy had interesting friends.

The apartment buzzed with renewed activity as Dave and Alaric redoubled their work. Becks started picking up stray ammo boxes. Only Kelly stayed where she was, looking utterly confused. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“We’re leaving,” I informed her. “Which sort of brings up the next question on the table: Do you have a cover story that lets us take you with us, or are we going to be smuggling you out and then shipping you off to one of the Amish compounds to live a camera-free existence?”

“They always need trained medical personnel who don’t have a major addiction to electricity and running water,” said Becks sunnily. Kelly shot her an alarmed look before turning to me. She seemed to view me as the stable one in the room. I might have found that comic under better circumstances.

“I have a cover story,” she said. “A whole ID, even. Dr. Wynne paid to have it built for me. The files are on that card I gave you.”

“Who did he pay?” asked Dave, sounding suddenly wary. Alaric didn’t say anything; he just stiffened as both of them turned toward Kelly. They looked like they were waiting for something to explode.

Their reaction wasn’t surprising or as over the top as it might look. Dave and Alaric wound up taking over the bulk of the computer maintenance after Buffy died, at least until we could hire some permanent IT staff. They never approached Buffy’s level of competence—she was some kind of crazy computer virtuoso, and those don’t come around very often—but they’d learned a lot, and they hadn’t exactly started out as idiots. If anyone knew how easy it was to crack a cheap cover story, it was them.