Deadline

Fifteen

Writing up the events of the day was enough to leave me utterly exhausted. I just wanted to go upstairs, shower, go through a proper decontamination cycle, and crash for six to eight hours before something else demanded my attention. If I did that, though, my post would go up in plain text and I’d have eager beta bloggers flooding my in-box with offers to “help.” Their “help” would probably end in tears—theirs, after I dismissed them from the site for pissing me off beyond all hope of recovery. It was easier to force myself to stay where I was and go combing through the footage of the day, looking for suitable clips and screenshots.

There are times when I miss Buffy. I mean, I always miss her—she was one of my best friends, right up until she sold us out—but there are times when I really miss her. I could have handed her my report and told her to make it pretty, and she would have had a multimedia extravaganza ready to go almost before I could finish making the request. She was the best at what she did. Everything she did, which was sort of the problem, since in the end, what she did included betraying us and getting a lot of people killed. She said she was sorry when she came clean. I believed her then, and I believe her now. Sometimes people make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes are the sort that don’t allow for second chances.

Doesn’t make her any less dead, or make me miss her any less.

In the end, I chose three short film clips and ten stills and called it a day, slapping them into my article in the places where they’d have the most impact, or at least look like they were there for a reason. I dropped a note in the mod forum to let folks know I’d be going off-line for a few hours and that I was only to be disturbed if the world was ending. Even then, they were supposed to get clearance from Mahir before they called me. That wouldn’t guarantee I’d be left alone, but it would slow people down. Sort of like setting a snooze button on reality.

It wasn’t until I stood that I realized how sore I was. I stretched until something in my shoulders popped. That was the cue for half the muscles in my body to start complaining, while the other half seemed to turn to jelly. “Fuck. I’m not getting any younger,” I said, and walked toward the kitchen.

Alaric was gone, probably off doing his time on the message boards. I’d say better him than me, but I’ve done that gig more times than I can count, and it’s not something I’d wish on anybody. Becks and Maggie were still sitting at the table, watching the uncomfortable-looking Kelly the way cats watch mice. She turned toward me when I entered the kitchen, expression going pathetically relieved. If I was her idea of salvation, things must have been really nasty while I was in the other room.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m going to go upstairs and get a shower.”

Kelly’s look of relief died. “Don’t you want to finish your potpie?”

“No, I’m good. Maggie, can you take care of any comments I get for the nex few hours? I need to catch some sleep or I’m going to be useless tomorrow.”

“Absolutely.” Maggie smiled. “Now go. You’re running yourself too hard.”

“You’re probably right.” I paused, a thought hitting me. “Maggie, tell Alaric to check on the bug we planted in the conference room. It should be showing up on the live index now, and I want to know the second it picks anything up.”

“Decontamination will take a few days,” said Kelly. If she had opinions about the legality of bugging CDC installations, she was keeping them to herself. “You won’t be getting anything until that’s done.”

“Well, then, I guess I’ll have plenty of time to catch up on my beauty sleep. All of you, good night, and try to get some rest.”

“I will,” said Becks, giving me a thoughtful look as I turned to go.

Making it up the stairs took more effort than it should have. I was so damn tired. It seemed like too much trouble when I could sit down and sleep perfectly well on the steps. I knew I needed to shower. Strict field protocols said I should have showered the second I got to the house, like Becks did. It can really screw up your insurance if you don’t go through proper decontamination after every logged trip into the field, but there are loopholes to the law, if you know how to use them. We didn’t log the trip to Dr. Abbey’s lab, and CDC offices are counted as some of the few public places not considered hazard zones. My failure to scrub up like a good little boy was strictly legal, and I was aware enough of my exposure risks to know that I hadn’t been dangerously close to anything infectious. I just didn’t want to go to bed feeling like I’d never be clean again.

The showers in Maggie’s house are another amazing example of what you can achieve if you have enough money and don’t care how much of it you spend. The showers in the Oakland apartments were bare-bones, consisting of air locks, computer-controlled water sprays, and simple blood test panels. Using them was like getting scrubbed down by industrial robots that didn’t give a damn whether you were comfortable with the process. They didn’t quite perform involuntary enemas, but God, they came close. Maggie’s place, on the other hand… When her parents set her up with a place of her own, they took “spare no expense” seriously. Some of the bells and whistles she had were things I’d seen only in magazines and in articles about people with more money than sense.

The entire bathroom was decorated in pre-Rising tile, with genuine porcelain fixtures, the kind that can get broken or splinter, thus becoming infection risks and requiring full replacement. It was easy to miss at first glance that the room was divided into two sections, since the main section contained the toilet, a full-sized sink, and an antique claw-footed bathtub. All you had to do to get inside was open the door—no blood tests required. If you were the sort of person who could ignore the heavy curtain covering one wall, you could pretend that it really was a pre-Rising bathroom, and that all that zombie nonsense had never actually happened.

I closed the bathroom door and crossed to the sink, where I emptied my pockets into one of the mesh baskets Maggie keeps for exactly that purpose. Once I was sure I wouldn’t accidentally sanitize my press pass orsomething, I stripped, tossing my clothes—shoes and all—into the bathroom hamper. As soon as I activated the shower, a chute in the bottom of the hamper would open and send my clothes for automatic sterilization. No human hands would touch them until they were certified infection-free. I glanced at my reflection and scowled. I looked exhausted, and I was starting to develop bags under my eyes. Good thing I wasn’t doing the Irwin circuit anymore. An Irwin who looks tired is an Irwin who’s losing merchandising points with every frame of footage he posts.

Pulling back the curtain revealed the hermetically sealed air lock door separating the shower from the rest of the bathroom. There was a testing panel to one side. I pressed my hand against it, feeling the needles bite into the base of my palm. The light over the shower began flashing between red and green. I cleared my throat, and said, “Shaun Mason, guest, requesting standard decontamination protocols.”

There was a pause as the shower’s computer ran my blood sample and checked my voice print against the house logs. The light stopped flashing, settling on a steady green. A chime rang, and a pleasant voice that sounded suspiciously like Maggie said, “Welcome, Shaun. Please enter.” The air lock hissed as the seal released and the door swung slowly open. I shuddered as I stepped through. The sound of hydraulics wasn’t going to sit easily with me for a while—not until something else horrible happened to make me forget about the events of the Portland CDC.

The door swung closed behind me, locking with a second, louder hiss. Once the decontamination cycle started, there was no way to cut it short.

“What sort of shower would you prefer?” The voice of the shower came from a speaker set high in the rear wall. Everything but the air lock door was tiled, the floor and ceiling in white, and the walls in a soothing shade of blue. There were four showerheads, set at levels ranging from shoulder height to almost ceiling level. A recessed nook in the left-hand wall held shampoo, conditioner, and a variety of shower gels.

“Hot, short, thorough,” I said. I hesitated before adding, “Please.” It never pays to insult computers that are smart enough to form sentences. Not when they’re in control of the locks, and especially not when they have the capacity to boil you in bleach.

“Absolutely,” said the shower. “Please close your eyes.” That was all the warning I got before the water turned on, cascading with a vengeance from all four showerheads. I closed my eyes half a second too late and sputtered as I tried to wipe them dry. At least this shower started with water. Some of them just go straight to bleach.

The initial blast of water lasted for thirty seconds, letting me get warmed up before the shower announced, still politely, “I will be commencing sterilization on the count of three. Please prepare yourself.”

“Got it,” I said, and screwed my eyes more tightly shut. The liquid raining over me cooled, taking on the sharp smell of industrial-strength bleach. I did my best not to breathe too much as I scrubbed myself down, working the bleach into my skin. It stung like a bitch, just like it always does, but it was a good sting; it was the sting of getting all the way clean and staying alive for another day.

The bleaching stuck to the absolute legminimum, lasting only a few seconds longer than the water. Finally, the shower said, “Normal bathing cycle is beginning. You have four minutes. Please speak if you want to extend this time.”

The bleach stopped immediately, replaced by rapidly warming water. I rinsed my face clean before saying, “Four minutes is fine, thanks.”

“You’re welcome, Shaun,” said the shower.

Creepy. I hate it when machines get chatty with me. I wiped my eyes before opening them and reaching for the shampoo. George and I used to have shower races. Who could get in and clean and out again in the shortest amount of time. All the guys we went to school with insisted that their girlfriends and sisters took forever in the bathroom, but George always beat me. She could scrub down in under three minutes if she was in a hurry and hadn’t been out in the field—bleaching added time to both our totals, so we started subtracting it when we compared times. It was the only way to keep the contest fair. Of course, once a month or so, she’d take over the bathroom for an afternoon to dye her hair back to its original color, which inevitably resulted in her shouting for me to come in and help her dye her roots. The sink on our old bathroom was stained a permanent shade of brown by the time we were sixteen, and we ruined so many towels—

The water cut off, leaving me with soap behind one ear and a goony expression on my face. I hadn’t realized four minutes could go so quickly. “Thank you for showering with me today, Shaun,” said the shower, as the air lock door unsealed and hissed open. “It’s been a pleasure serving you.”

“Uh, thanks,” I said, stepping out. “Same here.”

I grabbed two towels from the pile by the sink. I wrapped one around my waist and used the other to dry my hair, rubbing briskly all the way around my head before slinging the towel around my shoulders. I needed to sleep. The basket full of my crap would be safe on the counter for the night, and it was long past time for me to get to bed.

I started for the door, and stopped in the process of reaching for the doorknob. “Oh, crap.” When we arrived, Maggie apologized for having only three guest rooms—one each for Alaric, Becks, and Kelly. That left me sleeping on the front room couch, which was fine, when I had, y’know, clothes. Nudity was definitely going to be an issue if I was intending to sleep there again, and since I hadn’t exactly taken time to pack when the building was exploding, I didn’t have spare jeans.

I was too damn tired to make a decision. I was still standing there, trying to figure out what to do, when somebody knocked on the bathroom door. I let out a relieved sigh; saved. Clearly, Maggie had realized I was going to have a problem and was bringing me a bathrobe, if not actual pants left behind by one of her Fictional houseguests. “You have no idea how glad I am that you’re here,” I said, opening the bathroom door.

Becks was on the other side. She looked at me with wide, solemn eyes, and said, “I hoped you would be.” Then, before I had a chance to react or say anything, she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind herself.

She stayed there for a moment, one hand behind her back and clutching the doorknob, the other hand resting against her uppet, agh. It was somewhere between a pose and a pause, and I had no idea what it meant.

“Uh.” I took a step backward, making room for her to do, well, whatever it was she was getting ready to do. “Hey, Becks, are you okay? I was just about to clear out, so if you need the bathroom—”

“Shut up, Shaun.” She let go of the doorknob and walked toward me. Once she reached me, she took the towel from my shoulders and tossed it carelessly to one side. “For once in your life, just once, why don’t you. Just. Shut. Up.” She stepped a little closer, leaning up onto her toes, and kissed me.

I wasn’t expecting the kiss. I didn’t have a chance to step aside or deflect it. So, no, I couldn’t have prevented it from starting… but I could have pulled away from her. I could have stopped it right there.

Instead, I kissed her back.

Becks pressed herself hard against me as soon as I started to respond to her kiss, arms tightening around my shoulders and holding me where I was. I wrapped my arms around her waist, as much to have a place to put them as anything else, and almost involuntarily pulled her closer. The heat coming off her skin felt like it would steam the remaining dampness from the shower right off me. Through it all, she kept on kissing me, the urgency in her movement growing with every second. Suddenly exquisitely aware of how close to naked I was, I raised my hands and took hold of her forearms, pushing her gently away. She fought to maintain the kiss for another few seconds before the distance between us made it impossible.

Her eyes were bright and her cheeks were flushed. She was still wearing the bathrobe she’d borrowed from Maggie, and the belt was half-untied, letting the top gape open enough to give me a really good view of her cleavage. I swallowed. Hard. Tired or not, I was still male, and it had been a long damn time since I’d had a look at that particular vista. Parts of my anatomy that I’d been willing to write off completely were waking up and announcing their interest in the situation. Loudly.

“Becks, I don’t know if—”

“Do you want me to stop?” She twisted out of my grasp, moving with a simple grace that made my breath catch in my throat. Then she reached up to take my hands, sliding her fingers into mine. “I’ll be totally honest. I don’t want to stop. But I will, if that’s what you want.”

“I… I don’t know, I just…” I looked at our joined hands, studying the short, practical shape of her nails. She had the nails of an Irwin. That made me feel better, oddly enough. I was just another hazard zone for her to explore. “I don’t know if this is such a good idea.”

“Hey. Look at me.” I raised my head. Becks met my eyes and said, “I’m not going to ask you for a commitment. I don’t want to go steady. You’re my boss, and you’re my colleague, and I respect that. But we almost died today, and I’d like to remind myself that we didn’t.” She stepped back, still holding my hands. “I’m lonely. Don’t you ever get lonely?”

It was suddenly hard to breathe. “Every damn night,” I said, and closed the distance between us with a step, yanking my hands free before wrapping my arms arounwaist again. This time, I was the one initiating the kiss; this time, I was the one pressing with increasing urgency as she kissed me back, bringing one hand up so she could curl her fingers through my hair and pull my head a little farther down. We kissed until my lips felt bruised and my chest hurt with the effort of continuing to breathe.

Becks pulled back, fingers still knotted in my hair. “Does that mean you don’t want me to stop?”

“Don’t stop,” I managed, and kissed her again.

Somehow we made it out of the bathroom and down the hall to the guest room where she’d been sleeping. I managed to keep the towel on until the door was closed behind us, when Becks resolved the question of what I was supposed to do with it by removing it from my waist and throwing it to one side. She untied her bathrobe and pressed herself hard against me before resuming her frantic kisses. The feeling of her skin touching mine was almost more than I could handle. I groaned. She moaned appreciatively, the sound of a living woman desiring and being desired, rather than the sound of the dead. God, I needed to hear that. I didn’t spend nearly enough time among the living.

The ringing silence in my head was forgotten, drowned out by the sounds our bodies made—skin sliding against skin, fingers rustling through hair, lips meeting and parting and meeting again. Becks kept moving steadily backward, forcing me to follow if I wanted to keep kissing her. I wanted to keep kissing her, and so I kept going until she pulled me onto the bed and slung one leg over mine, keeping me there. I didn’t resist. I didn’t want to. For the first time since George died, I really didn’t give a shit about anything but the present. It was a nice feeling. I’d missed it.

“Shaun.”

I started kissing her neck, tasting the slightly salty flavor of her skin. I’d missed that, too. The taste of a woman’s neck, the way it moved when she breathed—

“Shaun.”

It took a moment for the fact that Becks was talking to me to sink all the way into my brain. I stopped kissing her in order to push myself back and look at her face. Her hair was rumpled, making her look like she’d just finished running a marathon after holding off an entire horde of zombies with nothing but a shotgun. I was starting to understand why she kept it long. It might be impractical as hell, but it made views like this one possible, and that was worth a little inconvenience. “What? Did I do something wrong?”

“No.” She smiled, a little wryly. “I just wanted to let you know that I have condoms.”

I hadn’t even thought that far ahead. I blinked for a moment, and then nodded. “Cool, because if I have any, they’re downstairs.” Actually, I wasn’t sure whether I had condoms in my pack or not. I hadn’t needed that sort of thing in so long that I’d stopped thinking about it, since thinking about it didn’t do me a damn bit of good. Sex wasn’t a factor in this post-George world. There just wasn’t time.

Becks smiled a little more, looking surprisingly shy, considering that we were buck-ass naked and twisted around each other. “Will you let me up?” she asked.

“Um, right.” It took some effort to untangle our limbs. She stood, stretching to give me the best possible view of her body—and I had to admit, the girl was stacked—before crossing to her pack and bending to rummage through one of the inside pockets. I stayed on the bed, feeling suddenly awkward and not exactly sure where I was supposed to put my hands. That was another thing I never had to worry about before. I wasn’t even sure I was supposed to be looking at her when she wasn’t in the bed. I settled for sitting up with my hands resting loosely between my thighs, looking in her direction, but trying to keep myself from really looking. She might get upset if I looked away. She might decide I didn’t like the way she looked or something.

Jesus. When did life get so damn complicated?

“Here we go.” Becks turned, a foil-wrapped condom held between her thumb and forefinger, and walked back toward the bed. “I’ve got a birth control implant, but you can’t be too careful, right?”

“Right,” I echoed, faintly. The pause had given me time to think, which wasn’t such a good thing. My body was still voting in favor of going through with things, but now my brain was trying to weigh in on the topic, and it wasn’t convinced that this was a good idea. It was reasonably sure that this was a really bad idea, and if there was any time to stop, this was it.

Becks tore the foil.

My brain found itself outvoted in a sudden upset sponsored by the body and supported by every hormone I had. I was reaching for her, and she was reaching for me, and then her fingers were unrolling the condom along the length of my cock, and then coherent thought took a backseat for a while. Its services were no longer required, or really wanted. Everything that mattered was in the bed, and none of it took the slightest bit of thinking. All I had to do was act. So I closed my eyes, cupped my hands against the side of her waist, and let the moment do the driving.

I don’t know how long the moment lasted. Long enough that when it ended, I was even more exhausted. It was a better exhaustion, it was just… all-consuming, the kind of tired that it’s almost impossible to fight. I helped clean up the mess with my eyes half-closed, fumbling as we got the damp sheets and the used condom into the appropriate hampers and waste baskets. Then I sagged back into the mattress, relaxing utterly as my head hit the pillow. It felt like all the tension was finally running out of me, leaving me floating in that wonderful horizon between half-asleep and all the way gone.

Fingers trailed down the length of my chest, coming to rest just above my navel. “Good night, Shaun,” whispered a voice, inches from my ear.

God. For the first time in longer than I could remember, the world felt like it was actually back the way that it was supposed to be. I brought up a hand to brush my knuckles against her cheek, smelling the sweet-salt-sex smell of her, and smiled.

“Good night, George,” I said, and slipped away into sleep.