Yeah. A long pause, and the faintest sensation of a sigh at the back of my mind. But what else is new?
George always did everything first. She talked before I did, read before I did… about the only thing I ever did first was figure out the game the Masons were playing with us, and that was as much luck as anything else. She was the one who decided to become a professional journalist, hauling me along in her excitement. I went along with it in the beginning to make her happy, and later because it turned out I was actually pretty good at poking things with sticks for the amusement of others. It was the first thing I’d ever found that I was really good at, that I really enjoyed doing, and I never would have found it if it weren’t for her. She was the one who suggested we follow Senator Ryman’s presidential campaign. She was the first one to recognize what it had the potential to do for our careers.
She was the first one to die.
I drove quietly, giving her time to collect herself. Finally, slowly, she said, It’s different every time. Losing Buffy was… It was basically the end of the world, but I held it together. I had to hold it together.
“Why?”
Because, she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, you needed me to.
There was nothing I could say to that. I put my head down, gunned the throttle, and drove straight down the highway until the neon sign of a truck stop beckoned, promising food, fuel, and lots of burly rednecks with guns who were just aching for the chance to put down an outbreak. Everyone’s got the places where they feel safe. My top three would probably be the middle of an Irwin meet-up, inside a CDC lockdown facility, and any truck stop in North America. You want to talk scary survivalist mentality, go find yourself a trucker, and then get back to me.
Three guards in oil-stained denim met us at the gates with handheld blood testing units. One guard for me, two guards for the van. My attendant was an unsmiling, pimple-faced teenager whose nametag identified him, probably inaccurately, as “Matt.” I didn’t bother trying to engage him in conversation. I jus pulled off my glove and held out my hand to let him do his job. He grunted appreciatively at the professionalism, jamming the test unit over my hand without pausing to make sure my fingers were straightened properly. It wouldn’t change the test results; all one of those boxes cares about is blood. I winced as he bent my pinkie, but didn’t say a word. Better to let him take care of things before I made him think of me as a person.
The lights on the top of the unit cycled from red to green, stabilizing. A grin split his cratered face, transforming it into something that was almost endearing. “Looks like you’re clean and clear, Mr. Mason,” he said, further confirming that Becks had radioed ahead with our credentials. “Love your site. Those reports you sent out of Sacramento last year? They were amazing.” He paused before adding shyly, “I was really sorry to hear about your sister.”
I plastered my best “Gosh, no, it doesn’t hurt at all when you bring up George randomly in conversation. Thanks so much for checking with me first” smile across my face, glad that the helmet’s visor mostly obscured my eyes, and said, “Thanks. It’s been an interesting time.”
“Well, welcome to Rudy’s. I hope we’ve got everything you need.”
“Thanks,” I repeated, and tugged my glove back on before starting the bike and rolling past the gates, into the truck stop proper. The other two guards were still busy testing the occupants of the van; maybe even double-checking Kelly’s credentials. I felt better knowing that she was using something Buffy built. The Monkey might be the best in the business, but Buffy was the one whose work I knew and trusted.
I set my bike to auto-fuel while I ducked into the truck stop’s generously designed convenience store, wandering past racks of real artificial cheese nachos and withered all-soy hot dogs to find the sodas. I paused in the act of opening the Coke cooler, looking longingly at the pot of coffee simmering next to the hot dogs. That stuff was probably ancient, tarlike, created through the slow compression of the bones of prehistoric creatures until their fossilized blood was pumped up from the very center of the planet to fortify long-distance truckers.
Go ahead.
“Huh?” I stopped where I was, blinking like an idiot. Not exactly a safe thing to do, since disorientation and jerkiness are early signs of Kellis-Amberlee amplification. My team may be used to my conversations with my dead sister, but the rest of the world isn’t quite so understanding.
You want coffee. Get some coffee.
“But—”