“If that’s all right with you.” She looked miserable, standing there in the midst of her little swarm of rescue dogs and trying to seem like nothing was wrong. I wanted to comfort her. Only I didn’t have any idea how.
I was better with that sort of shit when George was alive, because I had something to protect. She didn’t like touching people, so I touched them for her. She didn’t like emotional displays, so I took up the slack. Only without her around to give me an excuse, it was like I didn’t even know where I was supposed to start.
We always figured she was the one whose emotional growth got stunted by the way we were raised. It was sort of weird to realize that the damage extended to cover both of us.
Alaric saved me from needing to figure out what I was supposed to do. He was out of the van almost before Becks had the engine off, running toward Maggie with total disregard for the dogs surounding her. Luckily, miniature bulldogs are smart enough to get out of the way when they’re about to be stepped on, and he made it to her without incident. Putting his arms around her shoulders, he pressed his face into her shoulder. She did the same to him, and they simply held each other. That was all. That seemed to be enough.
Breathe, George said.
“I’m trying,” I murmured. Watching Maggie and Alaric embrace felt weirdly like spying. I turned away.
“Hey,” said Becks, stepping up beside me. Kelly was close behind her, clutching one of the spare blankets we kept in the back of the van around herself for warmth. They both looked exhausted, but of the pair, it was Becks who looked like she was going to be okay. The circles under Kelly’s eyes were deep enough to be alarming, and her face was pale.
“Hey,” I replied. Nodding toward Kelly, I asked, “Doc get through the drive okay?”
“I slept some,” said Kelly, in a distant tone.
“No,” said Becks, half a second later.
“Didn’t think so.” I glanced over to where Alaric and Magdalene were still clinging to each other, and said, “Maggie made emu meatloaf. It’s inside. Maybe we should join it.”
“That sounds like an excellent idea to me,” Becks said. “I’ll get my bag.”
Now Kelly began to look alarmed. “Wait—this is where we’re staying? Here?”
“Yup,” I answered, turning to unhook the bike’s saddlebags and sling them over my shoulder. “Welcome to Maggie’s Home for Wayward Reporters and Legally Dead CDC Employees.”
“But this isn’t—it’s not—” She waved her hands, encompassing the wide green lawn, the patches of tangled, seemingly untended greenery, and the trees outside the wall. “This isn’t safe!”
Becks and I exchanged a look. Then, almost in unison, we started to laugh. It had the ragged, almost hysterical edge that always seems to come with laughter that’s halfway born from exhaustion, but still, it felt damn good to laugh about something. Just about anything would have been okay by that point.
Kelly looked between us, eyes widening with alarm that turned quickly into irritation. “What?” she demanded. “What are you laughing at?” That made us laugh harder, until I was bent almost double, and Becks was covering her face with her hands. Even George was laughing, an eerie, asynchronous echo inside my head. Alaric and Magdalene ignored us, lost in the private world of their grief.
Becks was the first to get control of herself. Wiping her eyes, she said, “Oh, Shaun, I don’t think anybody ever bothered to tell the Doc here exactly where it was that we were going.”
“Apparently not,” I said, rolling my shoulders back and forcing my expression to sober as I turned to Kelly and said, “Doc, we are fortunate enough to enjoy the hospitality of Miss Magdalene Grace Garcia.”
“Please don’t steal the silver,” added Becks.
Kelly’s mouth dropped open.
If Kelly’s family was responsible for many of the medical advancements of the past twenty-five years, it was Maggie’s family who made sure they had the equipment they needed to keep moving forward. Her parents were heavily into software before the Rising; their company had already made millions when the dead began to walk. They were savvy people, and they saw the writing on the wall: Either everybody was about to die, in which case money had just become an outdated concept, or we were going to beat back the infected, and folks were going to get real concerned about their health. They managed to shift most of their financial capital into medical technology before the markets froze. They didn’t make millions. They made billions, and that was after taxes.