Deadline

There aren’t many real problems along I-5. The combination of tight security, large stretches with little to no human habitation, and most motorists being unwilling to drive more than a few miles has done a lot to make distance travel safer for those of us crazy enough to attempt it.

Buffy died during a long-distance road trip, when a sniper shot out the wheels of the truck she was riding in. But beyond little things like that, it’s perfectly safe.

Safe. Now there’s a laugh.

Nearly six hours and fifteen security checkpoints later, we were approaching Eugene. I-5 is the fastest route to damn near any major city on the West Coast, but it has its downsides, like the constant barricades. We had to stop every time we drove into or out of a city, or even too close to one, by whatever the local definition of “too close” happened to be. It was always the same song and dance: Where are you going? Why? Can we see your licenses? Can we see your credentials? Would you like to submit to a retinal scan? Do you really think you have a choice?

The CDC had no reason to be tracking our movement—not yet, anyway. Our papers were in order, and every checkpoint wound up waving us through, but the stops still made me nervous. I was being paranoid. After the past twenty-four hours, I figured it was justified.

The orange light in the corner of my visor started blinking, signaling an incoming call. “Answer,” I said.

“Hey, boss.” There was a note of tension underscoring Alaric’s normally laid-back tone. “We’re an hour and a half out of Portland, according to the GPS. You going to give us the actual address soon, or are we going to play guessing games with the surface streets?”

“We’re not going to Portland,” I said. Becks started swearing in the background. I almost laughed. “Tell Becks to keep her panties on. We’re going to a town near Portland. It’s called Forest Grove. We’re heading for an old business park that got shut down during the Rising and never officially reopened. The address is in the GPS. I uploaded it under the header ‘Shaun’s secret  p**n  store.’ ”

Charming, commented George.

“Ew,” said Alaric. “Okay, accessing coordinates now. Ihere anything else we need to know?”

“You know what I do, and you can pump the Doc for information if you need to.” I swerved to avoid a pothole, feeling Maggie’s arms tighten around my waist. She was staying amazingly calm for a woman who almost never left her house. I was starting to wonder exactly what was in that “herbal tea” she drank right before we left. “We’re heading for an illegal biotech lab to talk to somebody the CDC is too afraid of to f**k with. What could possibly go wrong?”

There was a long silence before Alaric said, “I’m hanging up on you now.”

“That’s probably for the best.”

“You’re f**ked in the head.”

“That’s probably true. See you in Forest Grove.” The amber light flicked off. I allowed myself a grim chuckle and hit the gas. Our little road trip of the damned was well under way.

Do you have a plan? asked George.

“You know better,” I replied. I wasn’t worried about Maggie hearing me talk to myself; the roar of the wind would keep my voice from reaching her. Weird as it might seem, George and I actually had a measure of privacy, despite having another human being with her arms wrapped around my waist. If Maggie had been driving, I might have actually been able to fool myself into thinking everything was the way it was supposed to be, even if the illusion would only last until the bike stopped.

George laughed. I smiled, relaxing, and kept on driving. Next stop: Forest Grove.

The Caspell Business Park was located at the edge of town, in what was probably considered an area ripe for expansion before the dead decided to get up and walk around. It was built on a model popular before the Rising, all open spaces and broad pathways between the buildings. I’d be willing to bet that more than half those buildings had automatic doors at one point, totally unsecured against the shambling infected. It was no wonder the local authorities hadn’t bothered trying to reclaim the place; if there was anything remarkable about it, it was that it hadn’t been burned to the ground.

According to the Doc’s instructions, the place we were looking for was in the old IT complex, where the buildings had been constructed according to much more sensible schematics: airtight, watertight, no windows, no real danger of contamination if you remembered to lock the damn doors. Georgia and I went to preschool in a pre-Rising IT complex, and we were just as secure as we could possibly be. Locating the lab in that sort of structure made a lot of sense, especially with the rest of the business park providing excellent, if hazardous, cover. Not even the bravest Irwin was going to stumble on the place by mistake, and the ones who were dumb enough to think it was a good idea would all be eaten before they arrived.

The parking garage had developed a worrying leftward tilt. I eyed it, shook my head, and kept driving. The last thing we needed was to get a parking garage dropped on our heads, or worse, dropped on our vehicles while we were inside the building. On the other hand, we’d be dead if the garage fell on us, and we wouldn’t have to worry about this shit anymore.

You’re in a fabulous state of mind today, said George.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” I said, and continued to blaze a trail through the deserted business park. Maggie clung a little tighter every time we hit a bump, but she didn’t jerk around enough to make me lose my balance. That was a good thing. The broken pavement was littered with rusted metal, broken glass, and other debris; if we went sprawling, we’d be lucky to get away with just a tetanus shot.