It seemed both messy and pat, like things had been crashing toward a breaking point for quite some time. I wanted to put my head in my hands, to block out the world for a while—just long enough for me to get my bearings back. I did no such thing. Instead, I sat up straighter, and asked, “Where do you think we’re going to go?”
“That’s up to you,” said Dr. Lake. “I can’t get you any farther than ‘away.’ But I have faith in the two of you. I know that you can find a way out of this.”
“The three of us,” said Audrey. “I’m not coming back to active duty just because things got ugly. I meant it when I went on psych leave. Where Ash goes, I go.”
I gave her a sidelong look. “I’m still mad at you.”
“I’ve been mad at you for weeks,” she said. “I suppose we can balance out each other’s anger, hmm? Figure out where we’re supposed to go from here.” Then she smiled, small and shy and just a little hesitant, and my anger didn’t matter anymore. She was going to come with us. In the end, that was the only proof of loyalty I needed.
“The four of you,” said Governor Kilburn. We all turned to her, varying looks of confusion on our faces.
“Mat’s dead,” said Ben. “We’re not abducting a random EIS doctor. I’m pretty sure that’s the sort of thing that gets us arrested. So who—?”
“Me,” said Amber. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Governor Kilburn. “The CDC knows you’re Kirsten’s niece, and that you’re close to this team. Maybe she’s not a candidate anymore, but things can change, and I don’t want them to use you against her—or against me. They don’t know how much you know. And I’m not comfortable sending our bloggers into the wilderness without someone I know has common sense to keep them safe.”
“I can’t really take offense at that,” I said. “I want to, but I can’t.”
“I know.” Governor Kilburn sighed, running a hand through her hair before she said, “I am so sorry. If I’d had any idea…”
“If you’d had any idea, you would never have run for office,” said Amber. “I don’t think anyone would. Who wants to be a puppet for a bunch of asshole scientists? Uh, no offense, Dr. Lake.”
“None taken,” he said. “I think ‘asshole scientists’ is an excellent descriptor for our group as a whole. I wish you all luck.”
“How are you not worried about letting us leave when we know this much?” I blurted.
Dr. Lake paused for long enough that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Finally, he said, “Because the truth isn’t worth the screen that shows it these days. What matters is the fear, and what you have to say is frightening, but it’s not as frightening as the world outside. You say ‘the CDC is lying to you,’ and people will have to look at the world with new eyes, eyes that don’t forgive them for all the things they’ve done wrong in the name of keeping themselves safe. You’re trying to sell a story no one wants to buy. It would take a miracle to make people listen—and right now, you don’t have a miracle in you. None of the campaign journalists do. I’m sorry. It’s the truth. I can let you leave because you can never speak. You’ll be written off as cranks and conspiracy theorists if you try, and then the CDC will find you, and they’ll destroy you. Not just you: everything you’ve ever loved.”
“So you told us all this because…?”
“Because you had to understand why we can never, never come back,” said Audrey wearily. “We have to run, Ash. We have to run and not look back. This is where the story ends.”
I looked at her, and then at Ben, and I said nothing.
There was nothing left to say.
I’m not supposed to be posting here. It takes time and energy to boot up a connection and compose a sentence, and Ash tells me we can’t afford either of those things anymore. She says what matters is finding our way back to civilization. I don’t have the heart to tell her I’m not going to make it that far. My leg is broken and turning septic. We can’t get a stable enough connection for GPS triangulation; we’re lost in the wilderness, and we’re going to die out here. Or at least, I am. Mat’s already gone. I hope they’re on the Wall, grinning for the whole world, putting on eyeliner with a master’s hand. I’ll never know. The only reason I can get these posts out is because they’re pure text, piggybacking on the old SMS networks and bypassing all the high-traffic choke points.
I’m not supposed to be posting here. I don’t care. I’m so sorry. I’m going to miss you all.
We did our best. It wasn’t enough.
—From That Isn’t Johnny Anymore, the blog of Ben Ross,
May 3, 2040
Seventeen
The all-terrain vehicle trundled through the woods like an armored bear: fast enough to be better than walking, bulky enough to make driving a continuous adventure, and sturdy enough to give no fucks when I overcompensated for the slopes and sideswiped a tree—something that happened on a regular enough basis that we’d all stopped exclaiming about it. Amber rode shotgun, rifle braced against her shoulder, ready to shoot at the first sign of danger. Ben and Audrey were packed into the backseat, buffered by piles of clothing and equipment, hunched over their respective tablets. Ben was tapping out another of his increasingly fictional “man versus wild” blog posts, all of which were being dropped online with doctored location tags that would guide the CDC farther and farther down the coast. Audrey was monitoring the various mailing lists that she still had quasi-legal access to, thanks to her CDC background, looking for indications that anyone was looking for us. Anyone at all.
It had been almost four days since we’d left the rest stop and the presidential campaign behind, and if anyone was going to care enough to come looking, they hadn’t started yet—that, or they were smart enough to realize Audrey might be watching for them, and they had taken their communications to another channel. That was the trouble with suddenly finding ourselves dropped into the middle of some sort of disturbing spy thriller: There was no way of knowing what was going to happen next, or whether we were even doing the right thing. The world had become a never-ending carousel of bad plans and worse luck, and the ride operator didn’t seem inclined to let us get off.
Four days of driving an ATV through the coastal woods of California, heading up the coast toward Oregon, where Amber said she knew some people who might be able to help us get to Canada. Four days of taking turns behind the wheel, because we didn’t dare stop for longer than it took to refuel and use the bathroom. The last thing we needed was for all of us to fall asleep and wake to find that our vehicle had been surrounded by the hungry infected while our eyes were closed.
At least the “supplies” we’d been promised had included almost twenty gallons of petrol and a map of the black market stations farther up the coast. Our fuel consumption was running slightly higher than the estimates, probably due to the irregular terrain and our need to avoid major roads, and on some level, I was relieved; if the estimates had been perfect, that would have said something about how long this plan had been under construction, and I would have needed to pull Audrey aside for a talk about what was really going on. Thus far, the man from the EIS seemed to have been on the up-and-up. Ben wrote posts detailing our slow progress down the coast, the ATV devoured the miles on the way up the coast, and Audrey and Amber took turns keeping watch, their eyes locked on the tree-clotted horizon as they waited for the other shoe to inevitably drop.
“We’re going to need to stop in an hour or so,” I said. I didn’t need to raise my voice to be heard. The ATV was virtually soundless as it rolled through the forest, thanks to a hybrid engine and a whole lot of carefully designed sound baffling. Anything that was intended to be driven off-road needed to be that kind of quiet, to avoid attracting the dead. The motion was bad enough. It would have been better if we could have hovered above the ground, flying in some sort of magical science-fiction machine, rather than our Prius of the woodlands.
We kept the windows cracked as we drove, trading the risk of being overhe
ard for the advantage of being able to hear if someone was coming. Birdsong had become our near-constant soundtrack. When it went silent, so did we, creeping along and listening for either the moan of the dead or the crunching tires of the living. Both could spell disaster at this point. We’d chosen to believe the EIS—and to believe Audrey—when we’d agreed to run, and that meant the CDC could be sweeping the state trying to find us and prevent another outbreak. Or they could be preparing to cause one, to take care of us once and for all.
It was a little arrogant, assuming the CDC would waste time and resources on us. Sure, we’d found some things they might not want getting out, for whatever reason—and thanks to the EIS, we now knew more than was really safe for anyone—but they were still a national organization with better ways to waste their time than trying to find three missing journalists and one former security guard as we raced for the Canadian border. Yes, Canada. There was no better place in North America to disappear, and from there, we could get virtually anywhere in the world if we had the money, the patience, and the willingness to make a deal. Touching our accounts while we were in America would have been suicide, but there were hackers in Canada, people who’d be happy to get the money in exchange for their cut. There were hackers in America, sure. The CDC had jurisdiction in America. None of us were willing to risk it.
Ireland didn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States anymore. We might not wind up charged with a crime, but if we did, there were worse places for us to run. I’d sworn once that I would never go back there. I was willing to reconsider that decision if it meant we got out of this alive. I was willing to reconsider a great deal if it meant we got out of this alive. We could always move on again after we had our feet under us.
“Map says there’s a fuel depot ten miles ahead, if we get out of the woods and switch over to a frontage road,” said Audrey, looking up from her tablet. “It’s supposedly secure. Part of the black market network that distributes medical supplies to the people who’ve been living off the grid on the coastal highways.”
“I don’t believe there are really people living out here,” said Amber. “No one would do this to themselves voluntarily.”
“Says the woman who just walked away from her entire life,” I said.
She was quiet for a moment before she said, “You needed me. I didn’t have anything to stay for except for my aunt, and I’d be putting her at risk at this point. She doesn’t deserve to be put under pressure because of me. She’s already done so much, you know? Mom’s not a good lever. Aunt Kiki has always been super open about how she helped Mom with her gambling problems and helped to take care of us kids. There’s not much that can be done to make Mom into a tool. And my little brothers, they’re little brothers. Kids. Jake’s going to be eleven in August. Joe’s not even seven yet. The only thing they can be threatened with is no ice cream before bed. If I stick around, I’m a much better target. I needed to remove myself from the field.”
Privately, I thought that there was plenty that little boys could be threatened with, if the person doing the threatening had no scruples and didn’t care about looking like a monster. Children are always the most vulnerable part of any conflict. I didn’t say anything. Amber thought she was doing the right thing, and even if she wasn’t, it was too late now; there was no going back for her. For any of us. We’d run from the CDC. Ben and I were legally dead, thanks to whoever at their office had transmitted those fake test results before John opened fire; Audrey and Amber were missing, which had to look suspicious as all hell. Ben was laying a false trail for me and him farther and farther down the coast, with the intent of ending it with our “deaths,” since they knew by now that no bodies had been found. By the time the CDC got to wherever we “died,” our supposed bodies would be gone, but that was nothing new. In the post-zombie world, dead bodies got up and walked away all the time.
“Aislinn?” asked Ben. “What do you think?”
I thought a lot of things, only a few of which could be repeated out loud. “Give me the directions and I’ll head for the fuel depot,” I said. “We need to start making contacts if we’re going to make it to Canada, and I’m worried about how much fuel we have left in the back. They gave us trade goods for a reason.” Not money—money held little weight in the badlands—but medicine and prophylactics, chocolate and small, canned things with elaborate names. Caviar and tinned asparagus and pears in heavy syrup were what passed for a credit card out here.
It was difficult not to wonder whether my companions had stopped to really think about what that meant for our futures, or at least the part of our futures that would take place on this long, semideserted road to the Canadian border. There’d never been much money in our home, but we’d gotten by. Audrey knew how to stretch a single chicken into three meals without anyone going to bed hungry, and my frugal upbringing had left me capable of twisting a grocery budget until it screamed. Ben and Mat had been left to keep the power on and the Internet running, and they’d never needed to worry about how the food got onto the table. Now there was no power to worry about. We recharged our electronics off the ATV’s battery, and recharged the ATV by means of the solar panels bolted to the roof. It could run forever, if we kept supplementing it with gasoline. The world was a sea of free Wi-Fi signals and cell phone towers. We had always been swimming in it, and now we were finally taking proper advantage, piggybacking on a hundred signals to make it to the outside.
Things were getting pretty grim out there. As we rolled up the coast, the campaign for the presidency continued. Governor Kilburn was polling well, but not well enough to win; she’d made a few gaffes and missed a few political cues that anyone who didn’t know her would take for inexperience, and anyone who did would take for careful, measured refusal to play along. She was bowing out, but privately; publicly, she was continuing to fight, at least in part to give us the time we needed. The Masons had survived their time in CDC custody and come out full of fire and brimstone and the absolute conviction that they were on the road that would lead them to the truth. I envied them their certainty. I envied them their soft hotel beds and easy access to hot tea a hell of a lot more.
“Turn left; there should be a road about twenty yards to the east of our current position,” said Audrey.
“On it,” I said, and hauled hard on the wheel, sending us bumping and jittering through the forest, which ended abruptly at a small embankment. I drove down that, ignoring the way the ATV bounced—what was the point of driving an all-terrain vehicle if you weren’t going to drive on all the available terrains?—before our tires hit the broken concrete, and we were suddenly rolling down something comparatively smooth.
It was amazing how much easier it was to control the wheel once I was no longer off-roading through an endless parade of tree branches. Amber looked over her shoulder at me.
“Huh,” she said. “Look at that. You can drive.”
“Did you want to walk?” I asked pleasantly. “I could stop the car long enough for you to hop out. I’m sure the zombie deer around here would just love the chance to chat about my driving with you.”
“Aislinn, please don’t kick Amber out of the car,” said Ben.
“I’d love to see her try,” said Amber.
“Just follow this road until you come to a large fence and a lot of people start threatening to kill you,” said Audrey.
We all stopped bantering. Threats of sudden death had a tendency to kill a mood. Ben recovered first, asking delicately, “Why will they be threatening to kill us? We’re not with the CDC, and we’re not here to arrest anyone. We want to buy gas.”
“Because that’s the standard means of greeting strangers out here. Think of this entire network as being Aislinn when she has to wake up at seven in the morning. She’s not really going to remove your kidneys with a fork and fry them up for you before you die, but she’ll come up with a lot of interesting ways to threaten to do it.” Audrey shook her head before reaching up and pulling the hair tie from he
r ponytail. Her hair fell into its usual place, framing and softening her face. She was still wearing her black EIS gear, but that little change made her look almost infinitely more approachable. “Of course, these people will kill us if we force the issue. Don’t force the issue. Don’t pick fights, don’t talk back, and if they ask you a question, answer it. There are no training wheels on these social interactions. They will back up their threats with pain.”
“I’m good with people,” said Ben. “That’s why I’m the Newsie.”
“You’re great with people,” said Audrey. “You’re great with the kind of people who looked at the shape of society and thought ‘I should be a part of this thing.’ These are not those people. These are the people who looked at the shape of society and thought ‘this is a trap, I’m getting out while I still can.’ They haven’t been playing by the rules you know for years.”
I glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “I suppose these are the rules you know?”
Audrey shook her head. “No. Not really. I did some surveys in these communities—not this one in specific, I was working on the East Coast at the time—to find out what medical issues they face, what resources they have the most need of, that sort of thing. It was all informal, under the EIS ‘monitoring and management’ purview. We said we needed to know what diseases were circulating in the country, even if we had no way of addressing them. A lot of parents who choose to live off the grid will agree to have their children vaccinated, for example, if they can be sure that they’re not going to lose them. You know Doctors Without Borders? Well, this was Doctors Without Borders in Appalachia and the Pine Barrens, looking for people who needed us, but who were never going to come out and say it. I learned enough about their rules that most of the folks I dealt with didn’t want to shoot me on sight. That was as far as I got. They don’t like outsiders in these places. They have no reason to.”