Deadline

Thirteen

The CDC conference room lived up to the design aesthetic I was coming to expect from them: white on white on white. It was like they’d looked at the uniforms American nurses wore during World War II and said “Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about.” Maybe they bleached the place on such a regular basis that they didn’t want to deal with paying to have all the furnishings re-dyed. Whatever the motivation, the combination of white walls and white carpet with a glass-topped conference table and white faux-leather chairs was enough to make me feel grubby and unwashed. CDC employees probably took a lot of showers, just to keep themselves from feeling like they were too dirty to be allowed to touch the furniture.

Director Swenson walked the full length of the conference table to sit at the head. Alpha male posturing if I’d ever seen it. The gesture was designed to say “This is mine and I am in charge here”—I was sort of surprised he didn’t lift his leg and piss on something. Urine’s a natural bleaching agent, right? It would explain how they kept everything so damn white.

Becks and I trailed along behind him like good little peons, finally sitting down next to each other on the left-hand side of the table. Becks took the seat closer to the director. Sure, I was technically in charge of our little fact-finding expedition, but of the two of us, I was the one more likely to launch myself for his throat, and we wanted to avoid that if at all possible. Attacking high-ranking CDC officials isn’t really the best way to get what you want.

“Now, then,” said the director, gracing us with a fatherly smile as warm as it was artificial. “What can I do for the two of you? I’ll admit, I was a bit surprised that you didn’t phone ahead. That’s standard for most representatives of the media.”

“Yeah, we’re really sorry about that,” I said, not bothering to inject the slightest note of apology into my tone. “See, we’d usually call ahead, only I managed to leave my address book—where did I leave that again, Becks?”

“In your office,” said Becks promptly. She knows her cues. With as long as we’ve been working together, she’d better.

“Right, in my office.” I bared my teeth at Director Swenson in an approximation of his smile. The corners of his mouth twitched downward, confusion flickering in his eyes. That was good. I wanted him off balance. “That’s sort of the problem, since my office is—my office was, I guess—in Oakland, basically right at the center of the zone that got firebombed. We were out camping when the quarantine came down, but not all my people made it out.”

“I see.” Director Swenson leaned back in his chair, expression smoothing into careful neutrality. The confusion in his eyes faded, replaced by wariness. “You’re very fortunate. That outbreak was particularly bad.”

“Yeah, how did that happen as fast as it did? Isn’t the CDC supposed to prevent things like that?” asked Becks. I shot her a sharp look. She ignored me, attention focused on Director Swenson like a sniper focuses on a target.

She had friends inside the blast zone, said George. Not just Dave. Civilian friends.

It was all I could do not to wince. I’d been withdrawn since George died, which meant I never really bothered getting to know the neighbors in our bucolic little part of Oakland. Becks was a hell of a lot more gregarious. She probably knew everyone on our block, not just in our building, and could recite the names of the deceased without cross-referencing the Wall. And now we knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the CDC was involv in something nasty. Put it all together, and I’d basically primed her to go off. The question was whether being stuck in the blast radius was going to be a good thing or a bad thing.

“It appears that someone in the area had been illegally breeding American pit bull terriers for use in dogfights,” said Director Swenson, smoothly as you please. “From what we’ve been able to reconstruct, one of the dogs became infected and attacked the others. The pack attacked their handler when he came to see what all the noise was about. The dogs were able to escape, and those large enough to amplify went on to infect individuals all around the area. It became too large to contain shortly after.”

It was a textbook example of a no-win infection scenario. That was the problem. Textbook examples almost never happen in the real world. I saw Becks opening her mouth, probably to say just that. I clamped my hand down on her thigh under the table, squeezing hard. The pressure was enough to cut her off. She shot me a confused look. I tried to look like I was ignoring her, and cleared my throat.

“Would’ve still been nice if you’d sent, I don’t know, a rescue helicopter or something for folks inside the blast radius, but that’s beside the point,” I said smoothly, keeping my hand clamped on Becks’s thigh. “Anyway, I’m sure you understand why we couldn’t call ahead, having lost your number in the explosion and all.”

The explosion didn’t wipe the CDC’s phone number off the Internet, but that didn’t really matter; my excuse was plausible enough that Director Swenson couldn’t get away with calling me a liar, and artificial enough that we both knew I was lying. His nostrils flared slightly from the strain of keeping his expression neutral. I smiled.

“Yes, absolutely,” said Director Swenson. “Now, to what do we owe the honor of this visit?”

“To get a little background, make sure we’re on the same page and everything, you remember my sister, Georgia Carolyn Mason?” Becks winced at the sound of George’s name, probably thinking of my recent tendency to fly off the handle whenever George came up in conversation. In the back of my head, George snorted with brief amusement but didn’t say anything. This was my party. She was going to let me be the one to send out the invitations.

Director Swenson nodded. “I’ve seen her file. Her death was—any death is tragic, but what she accomplished, even after the point of initial amplification, was—it was amazing. You must be very proud.”

“She died in the field,” I said, as flatly as I could. “Just the way she would have wanted to go.”

“I’m sure that must be a great comfort to you.” He sounded like he meant it, too. My hand clenched tighter on Becks’s thigh. It took every inch of self-control I had to peel my fingers away. She didn’t make a sound, even though the way I was squeezing must have hurt.

“To be honest, I’d rather have her alive and pissed off than dead and happy,” I said, putting my hands flat on the table before I could grab hold of Becks again. “If you’ve seen her file, you must know she suffered from retinal Kellis-Amberlee.”

“Yes, I saw that. It’s amazingshe accomplished so much, given her disability.”

I somehow managed to smile at him. I may never know how I did that. “She did a lot with her life, it’s true. Now I’ve got to soldier on and take care of the things she wasn’t able to finish.”

“Oh?” Director Swenson gave me an attentive look. “What was she working on?”

“Reservoir conditions. See, she knew a lot of people through her support groups and mailing lists—”

Support groups? asked George, sounding horrified. I never joined a support group in my life.

I ignored her. “—and she started noticing this crazy pattern.” Was it my imagination, or was Director Swenson going still? “It was like her friends died faster than anybody else’s. I mean, even faster than my friends, and most of my friends are Irwins, which is sort of like waving a big red flag in the face of Darwinism. So she started to dig.”

“Funny, I don’t remember seeing any received queries in her file,” said Director Swenson. His voice had gone completely blank, neither excited nor cold. The voice of a man in the process of disconnecting.

“She didn’t query the CDC,” said Becks, before I could open my mouth. I decided to let her take the conversation and run. Her training was better for this bluff than mine was. “She figured that if there wasn’t a pattern, she didn’t want to bother you, and if there was…” She let the sentence trail off before lifting her shoulders in a “What are you going to do?” shrug, and said, “It was a pretty big scoop. If the reservoir conditions were that dangerous, and somebody was going to break the story, why couldn’t it be her?”

“I suppose her notes were lost along with your address book,” said Director Swenson, looking at me.

“Oh, no, not at all,” I replied. “I’ve been studying them, actually. I mean, they’re a little outside my reading level, but hey, what’s life without learning? She’s right, too. The death rate is, like, crazy. Some of these people, statistically, should have lived to see their great-grandkids. Which means either the overall mortality rates for the country need to be recalculated, because we’re calibrating something really, really wrong, or folks with reservoir conditions are dying at a really accelerated rate.” I gave him my best big-dumb-Irwin face, and asked, “Which do you think it is?”

“Well, now that you bring it up, there is some documentation to support your sister’s conclusions. I only wish she’d brought them to us before she died. It would have been a real pleasure working with her.” Director Swenson stood, motioning for Becks and me to stay where we were. “If you two will excuse me for just a moment, I’ll go and get the files that relate to this particular issue. I think you’ll find them very enlightening.”

“We’ll chill here,” I said, offering him a half-salute. Director Swenson mustered a wan smile and turned, walking quickly out of the conference room. He shut the door as he exited. Probably another of those crazy CDC security precautions… or he wanted us to think so, anyway.

Rxing in my chair, I pulled out my phone and fiddled with it, saying carelessly, “It’s cool that he’s going to share his research, huh?” as I texted Becks with He’s up to something. Watch yourself.

Becks didn’t look even slightly surprised when her phone started buzzing. Unclipping it from her belt, she read the screen and started to key in a reply as she said, “I told you the CDC was the place to go with this. They’re going to have files on anything and everything she could have found on her own, if she just hadn’t been so damn stubborn.” You think? That man couldn’t have rushed out of here faster if you’d been spurring him on with an electric prod. He’s not happy that we’re here, and he’s really not happy about this line of discussion.

“You know George. Stubborn to the end.” At least this confirms that it’s more than just Memphis. Did you keep track of escape routes on the way in?

“It was her best quality.” There really aren’t any, other than the way we came. These buildings are designed as giant kill chutes. If there’s an outbreak, staff is supposed to hole up and stay where they are until help shows up.

“You can say that again.” Isn’t that fucking awesome. While Becks keyed in her response, I dipped a hand into my pocket and withdrew one of our increasingly limited supply of Buffy-built bugs. You can buy listening devices from sources both legal and extralegal all over the world, and mail order makes it possible to make those purchases essentially untraceable. None of them hold a candle to Buffy’s work.

Hey, you’re the one who thought coming here was a good idea. I was following your lead. Do we want to scout while we wait for him to come back and get us?

I can’t imagine it would be a worse idea than coming here in the first place. I snapped the bug onto the bottom of the table, flattening its edges until they were flush to the frame. The CDC would need to be looking real hard to stand even a chance of finding it.

Got it. Becks glanced up from her phone, asking, “You think Director Swenson is going to be back soon? I need to tinkle, and he didn’t show us where the bathrooms were.”

I bit my lip to keep from laughing out loud. Everything gets funnier when you’re waiting to find out whether you’re in mortal danger, and Becks saying “tinkle” would have been hysterical under the best of conditions. This was, after all, a woman who once pissed off the side of a moving RV while fleeing from a mob of hungry zombies. On camera, no less. We got a lot of downloads that day, even with the modesty filters in place. “Well, last time we went to a CDC office, they were—hell with it, he won’t mind if I show you, and it’ll be faster this way.” I stood, sliding my phone back into my pocket.

“Thanks, Shaun.” Becks followed me. She was doing her best to look embarrassed, and she was doing a decent job. I would have believed it if I’d been watching the scene through a security feed, and if I hadn’t known her so well. “It’ll only take me a minute.”

“It’s cool. Keeps me from getting twitchy while we wait.” I hesitated, looking at the door. Something about it was wrong in a way that was so weird that I couldn’t figure out what it was. It was like waking up one morning to find that my hair had changed color—impossible, and hence invisible, at least for a little while.

Look at the light, advised George.

The light above the door—the light that should have been green, signaling that the standard security features were active, and that the door would open after a successful blood test had been run—was glowing a strong and steady yellow. I nodded toward it, watching as Becks followed the direction of the gesture. She went pale. A green light means everything is good, all systems go. A red light means a lockdown: Either there’s live viral material in the room with you or there’s live viral material right outside the room, where you don’t want to go. Either way, if you sit tight, the problem will resolve itself. A yellow light… I wasn’t sure what a yellow light could possibly mean, beyond the chilling “this door has not been properly locked.”

Ignoring the testing panel waiting for my palm, I reached out and gently grasped the doorknob. Nothing shocked or stung me. The light didn’t change. I gave a gentle tug. The door swung just as gently inward. There was no hydraulic hiss; the hydraulics were not engaged.

“I don’t think there’s a place anywhere on this planet where that’s a good thing,” said Becks, reaching under her jacket to rest her hand against the grip of her pistol. “Suggestions?”

“I suggest we go and find Director Swenson, let him know that he’s having some kind of security problem—and I don’t mean two reporters loose in his building. You’re going to have to wait for that tinkle.”

“I can hold it,” said Becks gravely.

“Good.”

We left the white-on-white confines of the conference room for the white-on-white of the hall we’d come in through. There was no one in sight in either direction, making it seem like we might be the last two people on Earth.

Something isn’t right here, said George.

“Got that right,” I muttered, drawing my own pistol and releasing the safety. Becks was looking at me intently, waiting for me to clarify whether I was talking to George or to her. I gestured down the hall in the direction we’d come from. “I think I can get us out if we go this way. But I’ll bet you a dollar our good director went the other way.”

“Then that’s the way we’re going,” said Becks, turning to scan the hall ahead of us. “Looks clear from here.”

“I think that’s the problem.” I started walking, keeping my pistol at a low, defensive angle. Technically, it’s legal for me to be armed anywhere I want to be, since I’ve passed my tests and I keep my licenses up-to-date at all times. Less technically, I’m not sure it’s a good idea for anyone, be he blogger, God, or the president of the United States, to go around waving a gun in a government building. It tends to give them the crazy idea that you might shoot, and things tend to get real unpleasant real fast after that happens.

The not-rightness of the situation became more and more apparent as we walked. We passed labs, break rooms, and more of the one-way windows into rooms intended for patient care. We passed bulletin boards, signs, and even the bathrooms. What we didn’t pass was anyone who demanded to see our IDs and asked what we were doing wandering around the building unescorted. Near as I could tell, the Portland CDC had been quietly and effectively deserted. All we needed was a creepy minor-key soundtrack to reinforce the idea that this was a bad situation. George waited silently inside my head, not making any comments that might distract me. That was good. I was already jumpy enough.

“We should be catching up to the director soon, assuming he hasn’t taken a turn we missed,” I said. “If he has, we better hope there’s an emergency exit somewhere in this place.”

“Pessimism doesn’t become you.”

“But I’m so good at it.” We kept walking, Becks trailing about three feet behind me and turning every few steps to sweep the corridor. If anything came lunging after us, she’d have time to gun it down before it caught up. “Hey, did you ever see those fucked-up first-person shooter games that were so big before the Rising? The ones with the zombies chasing you through government buildings and creepy old houses and shit?”

“Shut up, Shaun.”

“That’s what this feels like. One big maze, and we’re the rats unlucky enough to be in it.” A reassuring exit sign marked one of the doors ahead, and the light above it was a steady, reassuring green. I started to think that maybe there was an innocent explanation for all this, like a broken circuit somewhere that had required a quick, quiet evacuation of the unsecured areas. The director might have been intending to come back for us.

Yeah, and pigs might fly. I slapped my hand down on the test panel as soon as it came into reach. The metal was cool and nonresponsive. No needles appeared to sample my blood, no anesthetics sprayed to numb the nonexistent sting. The light over the door stayed green. “Fuck.”

“What?” Becks stepped closer, still scanning the halls around us for signs of movement. “What’s it doing?”

“Nothing.” I took my hand off the panel. The light over the door went out. A moment later, so did the lights in the hall, plunging us into total darkness.

Fuck, said George.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I muttered, trying the door handle. It was unsurprisingly locked. It didn’t deliver an electric shock or shoot a sedative needle into my palm—both standard defensive measures for a sealed door in a government compound—but that was all I could say in the positive. I pulled my hand away and started rummaging through my pockets for a flashlight. “We could really use your eyes about now. Done being dead yet?”

Sorry, no.

“Shaun?” An amber light clicked on to my left as Becks produced the field light from her backpack and held it up between us. She still had her pistol in her other hand. That was probably a good idea. “I hate to interrupt, but can you maybe focus on the living for a little bit? I’d like to keep bathing long enough to get mad at you for this shitty idea.”

“You went along with it.” My fingertips grazed the hard metal base of my portable flashlight. I pulled it out and clicked it on, aiming it for the floor. The amber field light was night-vision friendly, but we’d need the extra illumination at floor level if we didn’t want to risk tripping over something in the dark.

“I never said I was the smart one. Thoughts?”

“These places are designed as kill chutes—they’re supposed to herd you deeper, so the infected can be picked off easily and the uninfected will stand a chance in hell at getting themselves to safety.” I gestured back toward the conference room with my pistol, keeping my flashlight pointed down. “We walk this way and hope we trip over a maintenance guy.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Then we hope we trip over an exit.”

“This plan sucks.”

“I know.”

We started back down the hall, me leading, Becks so close behind that her shoulders brushed mine every time she turned to do another sweep behind us. George had gone silent again. That was good; that let me narrow my focus until there was nothing that mattered but the sound of our slow progress. Field training involves learning how to step lightly and breathe slowly, so as to reduce your auditory impact on the environment. Viral amplification doesn’t give zombies superpowers, but it makes them really focused. Consequentially, they’re occasionally capable of feats of tracking that seem to border on the unnatural. They’re not. They’re just incredibly good at homing in on the little things. The little things are what get people killed.

We hit the first corner. I spun around it, raising my flashlight to light up the entire hallway ahead. What it cost us in night vision was more than balanced by its effectiveness as a defensive weapon: The retinal condition that kept George behind prescription sunglasses for most of her life is universal among the infected. They can adjust to going out during the day, but they always prefer to stay in the dark when possible, and having a flashlight shine directly into their eyes is never fun.

An empty hall greeted my sweep. I lowered the flashlight. “Clear,” I said, and we walked on, following the gently herding design of the CDC building. We were walking into a kill chute. Sadly, it was the smartest thing we could do. Going the other way would just take us farther from any help that might be waiting for us—assuming there was any help to be had.

We repeated the same procedure at the next three corners we reached. Each time, I spun around to blind any lurking infected with my flashlight, while Becks watched my back and got ready to start shooting. Each time, the light revealed nothing but featureless, utterly empty hallway. The white walls glimmered like ghosts through the dimness as we walked. My skin crawled, claustrophobia and paranoia beginning to speed my heart rate. Not enough to put me in danger of panic, but enough that I could feel it rising. From the way Becks’s breath was starting to hitch—just a little, every third inhale—she was in a similar state. It’s not the action that kills you. It’s the waiting.>

At the very next corner, the waiting ended.

It started out like the turns before it: Becks braced to shoot, while I stepped around the corner and swept my flashlight over the hall. Only this time, the hall in front of us extended for only about five feet before splitting into a T-junction… and this time, something up ahead and to the left responded to the light with a moan. It was still out of sight around the turn, but that didn’t matter; once you’ve heard the moaning of the infected, you never forget it. It’s the sort of sound that hardwires itself into your primitive monkey brain, and the message it sends is simple: run.

I took a hasty step backward, keeping my flashlight pointed in the direction of the moan. It wouldn’t ward off the infected—nothing stops a hungry zombie once it has an idea of where a free lunch can be found—but the pain would slow them down. “Becks?”

“Yeah?”

“Is the other direction clear?”

“I think so.”

“Good. Becks?”

“Yeah?”

“Run.”

There was no grace or artistry in our flight. Becks was running almost before the word was out of my mouth, waiting only for the confirmation that I didn’t have a better idea, and I was only half a heartbeat behind. We ran as fast as we could, our footfalls echoing off the walls around us and making it impossible to tell whether we were running for safety or into the arms of another mob. The moaning started behind us, distant at first, but growing louder with bone-chilling speed. That’s one thing the old movies got wrong. Real zombies—especially the freshly infected kind—can run.

Call for help!

“What?” I gasped, still running. Becks shot me a look. I shook my head, and she returned her attention to the serious business of running for her goddamn life.

You have a phone! Think, Shaun!

It was hard to focus on running and think about what George was trying to tell me at the same time. She was always the smart one, and that’s held true even now that she’s nothing but a ghost in my machine. I struggled to make sense of her words, and nearly stumbled as it hit me.

“Oh, motherfuck,” I said, causing Becks to shoot me another sharp look. “Becks, I need you to buy us some time. Don’t worry about the interest rates.”

“Got it,” she said, obedience winning out over confusion. She turned to face the direction of the moaning, still pacing me down the hall. If she tripped, it was all over, but that didn’t seem to bother her. Her hands were steady as she pulled a ball-shaped object from her belt. The motion was followed by the distinctive sound of a pin being pulled, and then she flung the grenade in the direction of the moaning. She whipped around as soon as she let go, grabbing me by the arm. It was her turn to haul me down the hall, and she did it wne-chillindmirable force. “Run!”

I ran.

The grenade Becks had thrown exploded about six seconds later. It wasn’t a big enough boom to come with a back draft but it was big enough to fill the hall briefly with light. I risked a glance back over my shoulder. The walls were burning. That should be enough to slow the infected for at least a little while. “Cover me,” I said.

Becks nodded, slowing enough to let me pull a few feet in front of her before speeding up again, holding a position about a foot and a half behind me. I felt like a total shit putting her between me and the danger we knew, but I needed the breathing space. It might be the one thing that could save us.

Fumbling an ear cuff from my jacket pocket without dropping my flashlight wasn’t easy, especially not at a dead run. Somehow, I managed. I slammed the ear cuff into place, pressing the Call button as I snapped, “Secure connection, command line ‘Hi, honey, I’m home,’ open channel to Alaric Kwong.”

The ear cuff beeped. For a long, undying moment, the only sounds were footsteps, harsh, exhausted breathing, the distant moans of the infected, and the overstrained beating of my heart. We couldn’t run forever. Eventually, the kill chute was going to close, and if we were in the wrong place when that happened…

The ear cuff beeped again as Alaric came on the line: “Secure connection confirmed, please verify your identity before I hang up on you.”

“Fuck you, Alaric, I don’t have the time to remember some stupid code word.” That was a lie: “some stupid code word” was the current call sign. If the CDC was recording, which they probably were, this might make them think our security wasn’t as good as it really was. I could hope, anyway. “We’re in a little bit of trouble here. Is the Doc there?”

“Shaun? Why are you breathing like that? What’s—”

“I need you to put the Doc on the line right fucking now, Alaric, or you’re getting a goddamn field promotion! Am I making myself clear, here, or do I need to get footage of the zombies trying to eat our asses?”

“I’ll get her,” said Alaric. The line beeped again, going silent.

Becks pulled up almost even with me. Sweat was adding that new-penny shine to her cheeks. “What are you doing?”

“CDC installs are all built on the same basic floor plan, right?” Another T-junction came into view ahead of us, my flashlight barely illuminating it enough to give us warning before we hit the wall.

“Right, but—”

“Doc gets us out or we’re dead, Becks.” The moaning from behind us was still getting louder, and that wall was getting closer. “Keep running!”

The ear cuff beeped, and Kelly’s hesitant voice took the place of the silence, asking, “Shaun? Is that really you?”

“In a pickle, Doc! Zombies are chasing hrough the Portland CDC, and we need out before we’re on the menu! There’s a T ahead of us—which way do we go?”

I had to give Kelly this: She recovered damn fast to what must have seemed like a totally random question. “Have you already passed a T-junction?”

“Yes! We went right!”

“You went—damn. Okay. At the T ahead, take the left, and try the third door you pass. Is the place in lockdown yet?”

“Do you mean ‘Are the lights all fucking out, and did half the doors go amber before the power failed’? Because then yeah, we’re in lockdown!” I grabbed Becks by the wrist, hauling her along as I veered left. “What kind of door?”

“Same size as the rest, but it should open when you push it.”

One door flashed by on our right, followed about six feet later by a second door, this one on the left. I slowed to keep from overshooting the third door and grabbed for the knob, all too aware of the advantage I was throwing to our opponents if Kelly was wrong. The zombies weren’t going to slow down just to keep the playing field even.

The knob turned without any resistance and the door swung inward, nearly spilling me—and by extension, Becks—into a pantry-sized room with glowing amber tubes running all along the edges of the ceiling, like supersized versions of the portable field light. I recovered my balance and stumbled fully into the room, thrusting Becks behind me before slamming the door shut. There were three old-fashioned deadbolts on the inside, the kind of things that can never go down, not even in a power failure. I slid all three of them into the closed and locked position before I’d even finished processing the impulse to do it.

“Shaun?” Kelly’s voice was strident enough to make me wince. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

“We’re in some sort of weird closet.” I backed away from the door, keeping my pistol trained just above the knob. If the infected started trying to batter their way inside, I’d make them pay for every inch they gained.

“Are the lights red, yellow, or green?”

“Yellow.” It was close enough to the truth, and closer than either of the other options.

Kelly sighed in obvious relief. “That means the security system is engaged, but you’re not in one of the sections already locked down. The door is soundproof, scent-proof, and splatter-proof, so as long as everyone inside is clean, you should be okay.”

“As long as we don’t mind dying like rats in a cage, you mean. How do we get out of here, Doc?”

“There should be a door directly opposite the one you came in through.”

The wall was blank and featureless. “No door.”

“Touch the wall.”

“What?”

sighed in Just do it.”

If Kelly was trying to kill us, she wouldn’t have given us a bolt hole. I nodded toward the far wall, saying, “Doc wants us to touch it.”

“Touch it?”

“Yeah.”

“Anything’s better than going back out there.” On this philosophical note, Becks slapped her left palm flat against the wall—which immediately wavered and turned translucent, revealing a second wall behind it. There was a door at the center, twin to the one we’d entered through.

Becks yanked her hand away, swearing loudly. In my ear, Kelly said, “I hear shouting. Do you see the real wall now?”

“You could’ve warned us!” The newly revealed wall included three testing panels, all with reassuringly green lights shining next to them.

“I wasn’t sure it would be there,” said Kelly. Her tone was sincere; either she really meant it, or she was a much better actress than she’d been letting on. “Put your hands against the test panels. You’re going to need to check out as clean if you want the glass to lift. If you’re not…”

If we weren’t, we’d never get out of this room. “Are you sure the tests will work?”

“It’s a secondary system. It doesn’t run off the main grid. If the screen was still in place and the interior lights are on, it should work.”

“I’m trusting you on this one, Doc. Don’t fuck us.” I holstered my pistol and walked over to join Becks at the wall, slapping my hand against one of the testing units. She lifted her eyebrows. I nodded to her, and she mimicked the motion. From her grimace, the needles bit into both of us at the same time. These tests were built for crude effectiveness, not reassurance. They didn’t waste time with any of the niceties like stinging foam or pretest hand sterilizer—or full-sized needles. The feeling of the test engaging was like brushing my palm across the surface of a cactus, all tiny pinprick stings that didn’t hurt because they didn’t last long enough to totally register. They just itched like a sonofabitch.

“Step away from the testing center,” intoned a pleasant female voice.

Becks and I exchanged a look as we took a long step backward. “Doc, the room’s talking,” I reported.

“That’s normal,” she said. Somehow I didn’t find that particularly reassuring.

The lights next to the two units we’d used began to flash through the familiar red-green pattern as the units themselves filtered our blood looking for live viral bodies. There was still no sound from the hall outside, which wasn’t helping. Sure, we knew that we weren’t going to be eaten in the next thirty seconds, but the entire infected staff of the Portland CDC could be out there, and we’d have no idea. Not the sort of thing I really wanted to be thinking about.

Breathe, said George.

I took a deep breath as the lights nexr red-g testing units turned a uniform, steady shade of green. “Thank you,” said the female voice. “You may proceed.” The glass slid to one side, vanishing into a groove in the far wall.

“This is your fucking fault, Mason,” growled Becks, starting for the now-accessible door.

“How are you coming to that conclusion?”

“You’re the one who said this was like a pre-Rising video game.”

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. I didn’t really want to give Kelly any reason to doubt our infection status—not when I still needed her to guide us to safety. “Okay, Doc, the clear wall’s open now. There’s a door. What do you want us to do?”

“Listen closely: You’re in one of the secondary escape corridors. They’re designed to get essential staff out if at all possible, even during an outbreak. They aren’t public, and they’re never used for the transport of biological materials, just evacuations. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

My skin crawled. “They’re set to autosterilize if there’s any sign of contamination, aren’t they?”

“Yes, they are. My suggestion?” Kelly paused before finishing, grimly, “Go as fast as you possibly can. Follow the yellow lights. They’ll lead you to an exit. As long as your infection status hasn’t changed, it’ll let you out.”

“And if it has?”

“If anyone in the escape corridor goes into conversion, the autosterilize initiates.”

“Fuckin’ swell. Okay. Tell Alaric I’ll call back if we’re not dead.” I cut the connection over her protests, yanking the ear cuff off and shoving it into my pocket as I turned to Becks. “We’re pulling a last run. Once this door is open, you haul ass, and if the lava comes down while we’re inside, it was nice knowing you.”

“Got it,” said Becks, with a small, tight nod. It wouldn’t actually be lava. It would be a highly acidic chemical bath, followed by flash irradiation, followed by another chemical bath, until everything organic in the corridor had been reduced to so much inert slime. That sort of thing can’t really happen in places where humans are expected to be on a regular basis, since it tends to render the environment permanently toxic, but for a rarely used, last-ditch exit, it made perfect, if horrible, sense.

I hesitated, and then offered her my hand. “It was nice knowing you, Rebecca,” I said.

“The same, Shaun. Believe me, the same.” She laced her fingers into mine and smiled wistfully. “Maybe when we get out of this alive, you and me can go for coffee or something.”

“Sure,” I said. She didn’t let go of my hand, and I didn’t pull away. Leaving our fingers tangled together like computer cables, I reached for the second door and pulled it open. An amber light clicked on across from us. Becks and I exchanged one final look before stepping through the doorway, into the relative darkness on the other side.

e door swung shut as soon as we were through, hydraulics engaging with a loud hiss that was almost reassuring. It meant all systems were go; even if those systems got us dissolved, they’d be doing so while fully operational. Another amber light clicked on to the left of the first one, and another, and another, until a line of tiny glittering beacons led the way deeper into the dark.

There was no other way to go, and Kelly’s instructions said to follow the light. We’d trusted her this far. The worst that trusting her the rest of the way could get us was dead. “Come on,” I said. We started in the direction indicated by the lights, moving as fast as we dared.

Distances always seem longer in the dark. The greater the darkness, the longer the distance. The amber lights were meant to guide us, not show us where we were going, and even my flashlight wasn’t enough to beat back the shadows. We probably traveled no more than a few hundred yards, but it felt like ten or twelve times that. Our breath was impossibly loud in the confines of the tunnel, and my toes kept catching on the floor, which wasn’t completely level. After the third time I almost tripped, I realized we were running across the floor of an enormous shower, complete with drains every ten feet. They’d be essential if the CDC ever needed to sluice the place down—say, after melting a few unwanted guests. I sped up, pulling Becks along with me. She didn’t argue. She was smart enough to want out of there as badly as I did.

The amber lights winked out about thirty seconds after we passed them, winking on ahead of us at the same rate. After the second time I looked back into the encroaching darkness, I forced myself to stop looking. It wasn’t doing a damn bit of good, and it was doing damage to my nerves that I really couldn’t afford.

I’m here, said George.

I squeezed Becks’s hand and kept going.

The amber lights led us around a corner and into a narrower hallway with lights lining the walls on either side. They were still small, but they were plentiful enough to show the outline of Becks’s face and shoulders. Being able to see her walking beside me lowered my stress levels like nothing else. I saw her head turn toward me, and I felt her fingers relax around mine as the same wave of relaxation washed over her. Maybe it was going to be okay.

The lights continued lighting up in front of us, finally circling a door frame directly ahead. Becks and I broke into a sprint at the same time, heading for the exit at full speed. I got there half a step before she did, purely by virtue of having longer legs, and I grabbed the door handle with my free hand. Needles stung my palm, biting deep and then—unlike every other blood test I’d ever taken—staying where they were as the light above the door flashed between red and green. The light stopped on green, and then went out, replaced by a single green bulb off to the left. The needles withdrew. The door didn’t open.

“Oh, those slick bastards,” I muttered, pulling my hand away. “Your turn, Becks. They’re not going to let us out of here until we’re both clean.”

“Yippee,” she deadpanned, and stepped up to take my place. The lights repeated their flickering dance, and a second green bulb came on next to the first. The latch released and the door swung inward, knocking us both back a sep. Cool air rushed into the hallway like a benediction. I took a deep breath, glorying in the taste of clean air, and let Becks pull me for a change, hauling me into the light.

Kelly’s emergency exit let out on the edge of the employee parking lot. About a dozen people were already there, most wearing lab coats… and there, off to one side, was Director Swenson. He was standing in a small cluster with two of the people in lab coats and Miss Lassen, the receptionist. She was the first to see us. Her shoulders went stiff as she straightened, whispering something urgently to the director. He turned his head in our direction, and his eyes widened before he could compose himself.

Becks squeezed my hand. I hadn’t even realized she was still holding it. “Don’t,” she whispered. “We have what we need. The recorders were running the whole time. This story will end him. We have everything we need.”

I nodded curtly as I pulled my hand away. Then I smiled. “Director Swenson!” I called, raising my arms and waving them overhead like I was signaling a plane to land. “Good to see you made it out! What happened, dude?”

“Mr. Mason—Ms. Atherton,” said the director. He’d managed to compose his face, but there was still a quaver in his voice. The bastard really didn’t think we’d make it out. “I’m so glad to see you both. I was so afraid you wouldn’t realize what had happened in time to make it to an exit.” His eyes flickered toward the door that we’d emerged through. “I had no idea that you knew about the evacuation tunnels.”

Which explains why he didn’t have them purged while you were still inside, said George. She sounded furious. No one threatened me and got away with it.

“We’ve done our homework.” I kept smiling. It was that or punch him in the face, and that seemed a hell of a lot less productive, if a hell of a lot more fun. “So seriously, dude, what happened? Was it pit bulls again? Another illegal breeding program like the one in Oakland?”

“I—we’re not quite sure yet.” Director Swenson’s eyes darted toward the door again. He clearly hadn’t prepared a cover story. Why should he have bothered? We weren’t intended to survive. “There will be a press release as soon as we have a better idea of what went wrong.”

“Cool. Make sure we get a copy. Oh, and also, that documentation you said you had, the stuff that related to Georgia’s research? I’ll expect copies, since we couldn’t, y’know, go over it together. I guess if I don’t get it, I’m going to have to assume you’ve got something to hide.” I turned, still smiling, and started for the visitor parking area.

“Wait—where are you going?”

I turned back to Director Swenson long enough to flash him the biggest shit-eating grin I could muster. It felt more like I was baring my teeth. Maybe it looked that way, too; he took an involuntary step backward, eyes going wide. “We’re going to do what we’re paid to do,” I said. “We’re going to go and tell everybody the news.” I waved to the rest of the survivors of the Portland CDC and kept on walking, with Becks following close behind me. Neither one of us looked back as we got to the bike, stowed our gear, put on our helmets, and drove away.