After a lot of shouting, some plea bargaining, and an outright threat to leave Alaric sitting by the side of the road, we wound up with Becks driving the van, Alaric manning the forums from the passenger seat, and Kelly riding in the back. I drove the bike, Maggie riding pillion. She insisted, probably because she didn’t trust herself in an enclosed space with Kelly. Dave’s death wasn’t the Doc’s fault. Maggie would realize that eventually. I hoped.
I’d never driven any real distance with a passenger—not unless you counted George, who didn’t actually change the way the bike was balanced, or make it necessary for me to compensate for additional weight. Oh, I’d been a passenger on the bike often enough, back when George was doing the driving, but it wasn’t the same thing by a long shot. It didn’t help that Maggie wasn’t used to riding a motorcycle and didn’t know to shift her weight to help me keep us balanced. If we’d encountered any real problems, we would have been screwed.
There aren’t many real problems along I-5. The combination of tight security, large stretches with little to no human habitation, and most motorists being unwilling to drive more than a few miles has done a lot to make distance travel safer for those of us crazy enough to attempt it.
Buffy died during a long-distance road trip, when a sniper shot out the wheels of the truck she was riding in. But beyond little things like that, it’s perfectly safe.
Safe. Now there’s a laugh.
Nearly six hours and fifteen security checkpoints later, we were approaching Eugene. I-5 is the fastest route to damn near any major city on the West Coast, but it has its downsides, like the constant barricades. We had to stop every time we drove into or out of a city, or even too close to one, by whatever the local definition of “too close” happened to be. It was always the same song and dance: Where are you going? Why? Can we see your licenses? Can we see your credentials? Would you like to submit to a retinal scan? Do you really think you have a choice?
The CDC had no reason to be tracking our movement—not yet, anyway. Our papers were in order, and every checkpoint wound up waving us through, but the stops still made me nervous. I was being paranoid. After the past twenty-four hours, I figured it was justified.
The orange light in the corner of my visor started blinking, signaling an incoming call. “Answer,” I said.
“Hey, boss.” There was a note of tension underscoring Alaric’s normally laid-back tone. “We’re an hour and a half out of Portland, according to the GPS. You going to give us the actual address soon, or are we going to play guessing games with the surface streets?”
“We’re not going to Portland,” I said. Becks started swearing in the background. I almost laughed. “Tell Becks to keep her panties on. We’re going to a town near Portland. It’s called Forest Grove. We’re heading for an old business park that got shut down during the Rising and never officially reopened. The address is in the GPS. I uploaded it under the header ‘Shaun’s secret porn store.’ ”
Charming, commented George.
“Ew,” said Alaric. “Okay, accessing coordinates now. Ihere anything else we need to know?”
“You know what I do, and you can pump the Doc for information if you need to.” I swerved to avoid a pothole, feeling Maggie’s arms tighten around my waist. She was staying amazingly calm for a woman who almost never left her house. I was starting to wonder exactly what was in that “herbal tea” she drank right before we left. “We’re heading for an illegal biotech lab to talk to somebody the CDC is too afraid of to fuck with. What could possibly go wrong?”
There was a long silence before Alaric said, “I’m hanging up on you now.”
“That’s probably for the best.”
“You’re fucked in the head.”
“That’s probably true. See you in Forest Grove.” The amber light flicked off. I allowed myself a grim chuckle and hit the gas. Our little road trip of the damned was well under way.
Do you have a plan? asked George.
“You know better,” I replied. I wasn’t worried about Maggie hearing me talk to myself; the roar of the wind would keep my voice from reaching her. Weird as it might seem, George and I actually had a measure of privacy, despite having another human being with her arms wrapped around my waist. If Maggie had been driving, I might have actually been able to fool myself into thinking everything was the way it was supposed to be, even if the illusion would only last until the bike stopped.
George laughed. I smiled, relaxing, and kept on driving. Next stop: Forest Grove.