Let her brush her hair so we can get moving, said George.
“Fine,” I said, digging my equipment out of the bike’s saddlebag more briskly than was strictly necessary.
“What?” asked Becks.
“Nothing.”
“Right.” She shoved the brush back into her bag. “There, all done.”
“Really?” I lifted my eyebrows, giving her an appraising look. “You sure you don’t need to touch up your makeup or something before we can go in?”
“I’m sure the CDC will be thrilled to know that you made such an effort on its behalf,” I said, and started down the path that was labeled ENTRANCE in more large yellow letters. At least these ones were on a sign, not painted onto the pavement. Becks made an entirely unladylike snorting noise, and followed me.
After all the security checks required to get to the parking lot, walking up to the front doors of the Portland CDC was almost anticlimactic. They were clear glass, making a point with their total lack of reinforcement—this was the CDC. If the infected made it this far in, the city was already lost, so why bother wasting money that could be put to better use elsewhere? These were scientists. They didn’t feel the need to squander public funds on fripperies.
Those fripperies included furniture for their front lobby. A wave of comfortably chilly climate-controlled air hit us as we walked into the building, so devoid of character that it might as well have been an unused movie set. The floor was black marble, and the walls were white, except for the large steel sign proclaiming this to be the Portland office of the Centers for Disease Control. “Got that part, thanks,” I muttered, arrowing toward the one piece of furniture in the room: the sleekly futuristic reception desk.
The receptionist herself was also sleekly futuristic, possibly because she felt the need to live up to her workstation. Her hair was pulled into a bun so severe it looked almost molded, her jacket was impeccably cut, and the eyes behind her black-framed glasses were cold. “Names and business?” she asked as we approached. Her fingers never stopped darting across her keyboard, even as she glanced in our direction, looked us up and down, and dismissed us as unimportant.
“We’re with the After the End Times news site, and we’d like to speak to the director of this installation,” I said mildly, leaning against the edge of her desk as I flashed her my ID. Becks did the same, unsmiling. “Don’t worry, we can wait if we have to.”
The receptionist gave us another of those quick, cold, up-and-down glances before asking, “The nature of your business, sir?” The “sir” was grudging, purely a formality to check off some internal list marked “proper procedure.”
“That’s for us to discuss with the director,” said Becks.
“I see.” The receptionist sniffed. “If you’d like to make an appointment, I’m sure we can fit you in sometime this week. In the meanwhile—”
“Sometime this week? Really? That’s awesome.” I smacked the edge of the desk for emphasis as I straightened, and was only a little gratified to see the receptionist jump. “Okay, Becks, you start setting up the cameras, and I’m going to analyze the light levels in here, see where it’s best for us to start shooting.”
“Excuse me?” The receptionist half rose from her seat, revealing a pencil skirt as precisely tailored as the jacket. I found myself wondering if she starched her underpants to keep them from ruining her mood through excessive softness. “What are you doing?”
“Well, this is a government building, right?” I asked, guilelessly. “Which means that we, as citizens, are totally entitled to be here whenever and whyever we want, as long as we’re not actively disrupting normal business or committing acts of vandalism? No appointments required unless there’s an active state of emergency?”
“Yes, but—”
“So we’re going to be streaming live from the lobby here until we get in to see your director. Let the good citizens of Portland—and the world, did I mention we’re a top-rated global news site? Right, I may have left that little tidbit off when we were making introductions—see what an awesome job the CDC does responding to visitors.”
“I think we can set the cameras up right over there,” said Becks, stabbing a finger at a random patch along the wall.
“You can’t do that!” said the receptionist. She sounded agitated. Poor thing. She’d probably sprain herself if she tried for any real facial expressions with her hair pulled back that tightly. “I’m sorry, there was a little—this is all a misunderstanding, give me a moment and I’ll get Director Swenson for you.”
“Thanks,” I said, flashing a wide grin in her direction. “It’s cool, Becks, you can hold off on setting things up.”
“Check,” said Becks. She re-shouldered her pack. We watched as the increasingly anxious-looking receptionist picked up her phone, muttering into it with her palm cupped around the receiver, like that would magically keep us from hearing what she was saying. It worked, a little; most of her side of the conversation was too garbled to understand, although I was pretty sure I caught the words “crazy,” “reporters,” and “threatening to.” As press went, it wasn’t bad, and might actually give the director an idea of what he was about to be dealing with.
Nothing could ever prepare him for you, said George.
“Flatterer,” I murmured. The receptionist shot me a wary look, hand still cupped around the receiver. I smiled at her. Brightly. She looked away again.
“Yes, sir; of course, sir,” she said, and set the receiver back into its cradle, not looking in our direction as she said, “Director Swenson is on his way down and apologizes for any inconvenience that you may have experienced in being forced to wait so long.”
“It’s cool,” I said.
The receptionist didn’t say anything. She leaned slightly forward, shoulders hunched as she focused her attention on her computer. It was obvious that she couldn’t entirely dismiss our presence as a bad dream—we were a little too solid for that—and it was equally obvious that she was giving it the old college try. I rocked back on my heels, content to let her ignore us. There’s pushing the envelope of polite behavior to get what you want, and then there’s just plain being mean. I try not to cro the line when it can be avoided.
We’d been waiting less than five minutes when the sound of crisp footsteps echoed through the lobby and an immaculately groomed man in a white lab coat stepped around a corner and into view. He was dressed like a generic midlevel bureaucrat at any corporation in the country, assuming you could overlook the lab coat: gray slacks that were probably some sort of insanely expensive natural fiber, white button-up shirt, sedate blue-and-green tie, and immaculately polished black shoes. Even his lab coat looked like it was tailored for him, rather than being the standard off-the-rack lab wear. If the CDC was running in the red this season, his wardrobe definitely wasn’t feeling the pinch.
Neither was his plastic surgeon. His hair was thick and well-styled, but still uniformly silver, and his unwrinkled skin had the characteristic tightness of a man in his late fifties paying through the nose to maintain the illusion that he was a well-preserved thirty-seven or so. He walked to the receptionist’s desk with the calm assurance of a man who knows himself to be in absolute control of his environment, extending a hand in my direction. “Shaun Mason, I presume?”