Bitter amusement tinged her tone as she replied, So, what, they’re only supposed to die on mine?
I didn’t have an answer for that, and so I didn’t answer her at all. She took the hint, falling silent as the bike chewed away at the miles between us and our eventual destination. The van stayed visible in my mirrors, following at a close but careful distance. There were no other cars to be seen anywhere along the highway in either direction. A reflective yellow sign caught the light and threw it back at me as we went roaring past: CAUTION—DEER HABITAT.
Deer can grow to more than forty pounds and meet the standards necessary for Kellis-Amberlee amplification. We can’t wipe them out wholesale—ecological concerns aside, they’re herbivores, which means their food supply hasn’t been compromised, and they breed like the world’s biggest rabbits. Periodically, somebody introduces legislation to firebomb the forests and take care of the deer problem once and for all, and promptly gets shouted down by everyone from the naturalists to the lumber industry. I don’t have an opinion one way or the other. I just find it interesting that kids apparently used to cry when Bambi’s mother died. George and I both held our breaths, and then cheered when she didn’t reanimate and try to eat her son.
A small orange light started blinking at the top right-hand corner of my visor, signaling that the van was trying to open a connection. Did I want to talk to any of the people who were in the van? No. No, I did not. Did that mean I could get away with ignoring the call?
Unfortunately, no, it didn’t. Smothering the urge to hit the gas and drive away from the trappings of responsibility as fast as I could, I said, “Answer call.”
Becks spoke in my ear a moment later, voice rendered irregular and crackly by the sound of the wind whipping by outside my helmet. “Shaun, you there?”
“No, it’s the Easter Bunny,” I said. “Who do you expect is going to be answering my intercom? What do you want, Becks? We’re a long way from Maggie’s.”
“That’s actually what I wanted. We didn’t have time to prep the vehicles for another road trip before we left the—” She stopped, choking off the sentence with a small hiccup. Her voice was softer when she spoke again, making it even harder to hear above the roaring of the wind. “I mean, we’re not all that good for gas over here. I don’t know what your status is, but we’ve got about another fifty miles, tops, before we’re going to have an emergency.”
Fuck. “What does the GPS say?”
“There’s a truck stop about twenty miles up the road that takes journalist credentials and has a good safety rating. Clean, reliable blood tests, no outbreaks in the past nine years.”
With our luck, we’ll fix that for them.
“Probably,” I said, my shoulders sagging with relief. George had been quiet since I told her I wasn’t in the mood, and I’d been irrationally afraid that somehow, the trauma of losing someone else who mattered to me had combined with my anger and managed to repair my brain, making me fit the normal standards for “sane.” Screw sane. I don’t want anything that makes her stop talking to me. That would drive me crazy for real.
“Shaun? What was that?”
“Nothing, Becks. The truck stop sounds fine. Why don’t you call ahead and let them know we’re coming?” If the truck stop was ready for our arrival, they’d have someone waiting at the gate to run the blood tests and let us inside. Much faster and more convenient than calling from the driveway and chilling our heels while some underpaid attendant tried to pull himself away from his coffee.
I was about to hang up when a thought struck me, making my stomach drop all the way to my toes. “Fuck—what about the Doc? She’s legally dead, and her only clean ID just went up with Oakland.”
She’s died twice in under a week, commented George. Even I never managed that.
“Hush,” I muttered.
Becks ignored my interction as she replied, “We’re way ahead of you. Alaric dug out one of Buffy’s old clubbing IDs for her. It won’t hold up to major scrutiny, but it’ll do until we get to Maggie’s and he can find something more stable.”
“Awesome. Get a hat or something on her—we don’t want anybody getting a good look at her face. And she stays in the van; somebody else can buy her drinks.”
“Got it,” said Becks. “Terminate call.” There was a click, and I was alone with the sound of the wind once more.
The wind and the voice that lurked inside my head. “George?”
Yeah?
“Is it always like this? Losing somebody that counted on you?”
You say that like it happened all the time.
“You did it first.”