“Got it,” she called back. “Should I pack any of the antibiotics?”
“No, but grab the poison oak cream. That probably has some local demand.” I turned my attention back to the road. The counter on the GPS indicated that our turn was somewhere just up ahead. “How we wound up here is a mystery to me,” I said, almost under my breath.
The part where we’re about to bribe criminals for gas, or the whole situation? asked George.
“A little bit of both.”
“I wish I’d known about this while I was alive.” It wasn’t that surprising when I heard her voice coming from the seat Becks had vacated. I glanced over to see George with her feet braced on the dashboard and her knees tucked up almost against her chest. “I mean, Becks is right. This would have made a fantastic exposé.”
“And destroyed these peoples’ way of life. They’ve never done anything to earn that.”
“How many of the people we exposed did? I mean, we were never tabloid journalists—”
“And thank God for that,” I muttered.
“—but we weren’t saints, either. If a story caught our eye, we chased it down, and sometimes people got hurt. Like that woman with the dog that you were just thinking about.”
“Can you not remind me that you can read my mind? That’s where I keep all my private thoughts.”
“Please. Like there’s anything in your head that could shock me?” George leaned forward, resting her cheek on her knee as she smiled at me. “The woman with the dog, Shaun. Even if she got out, how many of the routes we documented her taking were closed by Homeland Security immediately afterward? How many people like her tried to run when they saw our report, and got driven straight into a trap we’d created?”
“That’s not our fault.”
“Was it Dr. Kellis’s fault when Robert Stalnaker decided to write a sensationalistic article about his cure for the common cold, and kicked off the whole stupid Rising? We’re supposed to be responsible journalists. How do we cope when the stories we report get people hurt?” She sighed. “Do you honestly think Buffy and I were the first casualties?”
“Right now, I just think I’m lucky Buffy isn’t haunting me, too,” I said sourly.
“Shaun?”
I twisted in my seat to see Becks standing behind me. She looked concerned. I couldn’t blame her. I’d have looked concerned, too, if I were the one in her place.
“Hey, Becks,” I said, glancing to the empty passenger seat as I turned my eyes back to the road. George was gone. She’d be back. “Everything okay back there?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine—is everything okay up front?”
“Just arguing with myself again. Nothing new.”
“Please turn left,” said the GPS, cutting off any reply from Becks. That was probably for the best. Ignoring my crazy might seem okay when we were in a nice, relatively safe lab environment, but that didn’t mean her tolerance was going to extend to the field. I really didn’t feel like arguing about whether or not I could decide to be sane again.
The road the GPS directed us down was barely more than a dirt path winding into the trees. Tires had worn deep ruts into the earth, and the van shuddered and jumped as we jounced along. Becks dropped into her seat, grabbing hold of the oh-shit handle with one hand and bracing the other against the dashboard.
“Are you sure this is the right way?” she demanded.
“Destination in one hundred yards,” said the GPS.
“According to the creepy computer lady, yeah, it’s the right way.” I eased off on the gas. No sense in killing our shocks over a road that didn’t even come with any zombies.
“I hate this road.”
“It clearly hates us, too.”
“Destination in twenty yards,” said the GPS.
I frowned. All I could see ahead of us was more dirt road… at least until a pair of men stepped out of the trees, each holding a shotgun large and impractical enough to be essentially useless. Sure, you could shoot a zombie with one of those things, and sure, it would go down, but the kick from a shotgun that size would probably knock you down at the same time. Not to mention the weight of the ammunition. If you wanted to carry something like that and have the option to run for your life when the need inevitably arose, you’d be carrying less than two dozen rounds.
“Shaun…”
“It’s cool, Becks,” I said, turning off the engine. The men with the shotguns trained them on our windshield. I responded by blowing them a kiss and waving cheerfully. “They’re not planning to shoot us. Those guns wouldn’t make sense if they were planning to shoot us.”