“All right, Magdalene,” said the house. Its tone was blandly pleasant as always.
“Thank you, house.” Maggie looked over her shoulder to me. “I warned Alex we might need to go, and that we’d need it to be as quiet as possible. He’s been waiting for my word.”
“And the house will let us out?” asked Becks.
“If the security crew outside says that we’re opening the isolation lock, even for a few minutes, the house won’t have a choice. My security logs are only uploaded if there’s an unapproved breach, so unless the infected take the house, no one will know for sure that we’re gone.” Maggie wiped her eyes again. “I hate this.”
“I know,” I said, quietly.
The house speaker crackled as someone switched to manual, and a man’s voice came through, asking, “Ms. Garcia? Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
Maggie smiled unsteadily at a point just above the door—probably the location of a hidden security camera. “No. But I’m sure it’s what I have to do. Please let us out, Alex.”
“Your father—”
“Sig your checks, but you work for me, remember? That was always the deal. Now please, just give us ten minutes to get out of here, and you can lock the place down again.”
He sighed heavily. “If anything happens to you, your father will have all our asses. You understand that, right?”
“I do.”
“Just checking. You have ten minutes. Now please, try not to make me regret this.”
The speaker crackled again as he hung up his end, and the house said, sounding almost perplexed, “The isolation order has been rescinded. Thank you for your patience. You are now free to leave the premises if you so choose.”
“Grab your gear, folks,” I said, picking up a duffel bag with one hand and my helmet with the other. “We need to get rolling.”
“On it,” said Alaric, grabbing the wireless booster.
Becks didn’t say anything. She just picked up a box filled with dry cereal and cans of soda and kicked the garage door open.
The van was inside, which was good. The bike was outside, which was not good. Working in tight tandem, the five of us were able to load the van in just under five minutes, cramming boxes and bags into every inch of available space. I didn’t question the amount of stuff that we were bringing. Since the odds of us coming back were pretty damn slim, we needed to take everything that was even potentially useful and assume that it was easier to throw shit away than it would be to find it once we were on the road.
We were halfway through the packing process when Alaric realized there wasn’t going to be room for everyone. “Wait,” he said. “We need to leave some of this. We’re filling the backseat.”
“It’s all good.” I raised my helmet. “I’m taking the bike.”
“But—”
“We need someone riding point. And besides,” I said and grinned, “you know I’m going to get the best footage.”
He gave me an uncertain look. “You’re going to be exposed.”
“We’ve all basically bathed in insect repellent—if they bite me, I probably deserve it. Now come on, finish packing the van. We have a pretty narrow time frame here, and we need to get out before it closes.”
Becks lobbed a duffel bag at him. He caught it with an oof, and gave me a wounded look before turning to resume packing the van. I didn’t really care if he thought I was being an idiot. Maybe I was. I was also being a realist.
When the last box was wedged into place and the last bag was stowed, the four of them got into the van, rolling the windows all the way up. I put on my helmet, sealing it tightly before nodding to activate the intercom. “How’s our connection?” I asked.
“Loud and clear,” Mahir replied.
“Great. Now le roll.”
The garage door rolled smoothly upward in answer to some unseen signal from Maggie, and the night air came flooding in, chilling me even through my leathers. It wasn’t the temperature so much as the uncertainty that the air represented: the risk of a kind of infection we’d never been afraid of before. Kellis-Amberlee was a known quantity; it was, for lack of a better phrase, a safe virus, something that could kill you, but which we understood. The thought of a new vector made it all terrifying again.
Becks started up the van engine and turned on the headlights. I didn’t need them to see where I was going, since the exterior house lights were turned up so far that it practically looked like noon out in the yard. I walked over to the bike and swung my leg over it, balancing myself. “Go,” I said, into the microphone in my helmet. “I’ll be right behind you.”
The van pulled out of the garage. I let them get to the first gate before I started the ignition and followed.
The trip down the driveway was harrowing. We moved slowly enough that I had to walk the bike about two-thirds of the time. When that wasn’t possible, I had to coast, trying to keep from either overbalancing or stalling out. Neither would be good. And I’d be dealing with it alone either way, since there was no way I was letting the others stop the van to help me. That wasn’t part of the plan.
All the gates stood open, allowing us to keep moving through as we wound our way toward the street below. Maggie’s security guards flanked the open gates, their guns held at the ready. I’m not sure they really believed that we were going until we’d passed the third gate. That was when they started locking things down behind us, each gate sliding shut and sealing itself with a clang that was audible even through my helmet. The guards moved forward as the gates closed, reforming their ranks around each new opening.
They stayed behind as we passed the last gate. One of them—Officer Weinstein, most likely—raised his assault rifle in salute. Then Becks hit the gas, speeding off down the road in answer to the instructions in the van’s GPS, and I had to gun the throttle in order to catch up. It took only a few seconds for the house to recede entirely out of sight. The view of the hill that it was on lasted for a little longer, slipping in and out of sight as we followed the curve of the road.
The lights from the house stayed visible even after the house itself was out of sight. They blazed up into the night, painting the clouds with tiered bands of light and shadow. I was relieved when they finally faded. They reminded me too much of everything that we were leaving behind.
The speaker in my helmet beeped to signal an incoming call. I nodded to activate it. “Go.”
“We’re heading for I-5 toward Portland,” said Becks, right in my ear. “We’re going to have to take the main highway for about forty miles, just to get past the worst of the forest.”
“Got it.” Under most circumstances, taking the highway would have been the safest thing to do. It was well-guarded, was well-maintained, and had access to multiple emergency services, including bolt holes we could flee to if things took a turn for the worse. It was also the single route most likely to be monitoed by anyone who was watching to see if we were on the move and, because of the nature of modern highway design, would be relatively easy to isolate from the rest of the grid. It was possible that some innocent bystanders might be caught up in an attack designed to target the five of us… and after everything we’d been through, I no longer had any illusions that the people we were running from would care.
“Watch yourself out there,” said Becks. Then the connection was cut and the van sped up, racing away from the lights of Weed, racing into the darkness up ahead.
The only thing I could do was follow her.
I-5 was eerily deserted. Even the guard stations were dark, proving once again that, when faced with a true national emergency, no amount of “duty” is going to be sufficient to get people to leave their homes. Half the men who should have been guarding the road were likely to be charged with treason if they were caught, and right now, they had absolutely no reason to care. Treason wasn’t as bad as infection and death. At least treason was something you stood a chance of surviving. We took the automated blood tests and rolled on.