Feed

“The cat isn’t the only one,” Shaun said.

“Behave,” I said. Keeping the hand that wasn’t holding the carrier on his arm, we turned and followed the agents to the car.

Steve and Andres took the front, leaving us with the back seat. A sheet of soundproof safety glass cut us off from our bodyguards, turning them into vaguely imposing silhouettes that might as well have been in another car. It was a small blessing, even if I couldn’t quite bring myself to relax. I didn’t trust it. I didn’t feel like I really trusted anything anymore.

Shaun opened his mouth when the engine started, but I shook my head, gesturing toward the overhead light. He quieted. Without Buffy and her tiny armada of clever devices, we had no way of knowing whether the car was bugged. It turned out that even with Buffy we’d had no real way of knowing whether the car was bugged, since she’d sold us out, but at least we’d believed we could protect our privacy.

Brow furrowed, Shaun mouthed “Hotel?” I nodded. Once we were in our own space with our own things, we could sweep for bugs and set up an EMP field. After that, we could talk in something resembling security—and we needed to talk. We needed to talk about a lot of things.

The drive from the CDC airstrip to the hotel took approximately twenty minutes. It would have taken longer, but Steve took advantage of the priority override available to government officials and law enforcement, turning on the car’s beacon and sliding us straight into the fast side of the carpool lane. The tollbooths flashed green as soon as we came into receiving range. Electronic pay passes have led to a general speed-up, but nothing moves your average driver as fast as knowing that someone else is picking up the ticket for his commute. We must have provided a free pass for dozens of commuters. That almost made up for the fact that we were cutting ahead of them during the beginning rush hour, when five minutes can make the difference between “home at a reasonable hour” and “late for dinner.”

Lois yowled the whole way, while Shaun made a vague, disinterested show of trying to pick the lock on his side of the car. My brother’s good with locks; the car’s security was better. He’d made no progress by the time we pulled off the freeway and turned toward the hotel, and he put away his lock picks with a silent expression of disgust.

The Downtown Houston Plaza was one of those huge, intentionally imposing buildings built just after the Rising, when they still hadn’t figured out how to walk the fine architectural line between “elegance” and “security.” It looked like a prison coated in pink stucco and gingerbread icing. Palm trees were planted around the exterior, where they utterly failed to blunt the building’s harsh angles. There were no windows at ground level, and the windows higher up the building were the dull matte of steel-reinforced security glass. The infected could batter on them for years without breaking through. Assuming they somehow made the intellectual leap necessary to figure out how to use a ladder.

Shaun eyed the building as we circled. It wasn’t until the car pulled off at the parking garage entrance that he offered his professional opinion: “Death trap.”

“Many of the early ‘zombie-proof’ buildings were.” I adjusted my sunglasses. The garage doors creaked open as Steve waved a white plastic fob in front of the sensors, and we drove on into relative darkness. “What makes this one so deadly?”

“All that froufrou crap on the front of the building—”

“You mean the trim?”

“Right, the trim. It’s supposed to be ornamental, right? Doesn’t matter. I bet it would bear my weight. So if I get infected but I haven’t converted, I can use the trim to climb the building looking for shelter. There are plenty of handholds. So I can get to the roof. And if this place followed the standard floor plan for the time period, there’s a helicopter pad up there, and multiple doors connecting it to the interior, so any survivors could use it to evacuate during an outbreak.” Shaun shook his head. “Run for the roof, it’s covered in the people who ran there before you. And they’re not looking for a rescue. They’re looking for a snack.”

“Charming,” I said. The car pulled into a parking space and the engine cut off. “I guess we’re here.”

The front driver’s-side door opened. Steve emerged, heading across the garage floor to the air lock. I tried my own door, but it was still locked; the safety latches hadn’t disengaged.

“The hell—? Shaun, try your door.”

He did, and scowled. “It’s locked.”

The car intercom clicked on. Andres’s voice, distorted by the speakers, said, “Ms. Mason, Mr. Mason, if you could be patient for a moment. My colleague is going to pass through the air lock and will wait for you on the other side. The lock on the right will be disengaged as soon as he’s tested clean, and Ms. Mason will be permitted to proceed. Once Ms. Mason has passed through the air lock, Mr. Mason will be permitted to go.”

Shaun groaned. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

The intercom clicked again. “Standard safety precautions.”

“You can take those safety precautions and shove ’em sideways up your—” Shaun began, pleasantly. I put a hand on his arm. He stopped.

“Mr. Rodriguez, it looks like Steve’s made it through,” I said, keeping my voice level. “If you’d unlock my door now, please?”

“Very well.” My door unlocked. “Mr. Mason, please remain seated. Ms. Mason, please proceed toward the—hey! What are you doing? You can’t do that!”

Ignoring the shouts from the intercom, Shaun finished sliding out of the car, blowing a kiss back toward the agitated shape of Andres before slamming the door and following me to the air lock. True to expectations, Andres remained seated, mouth moving as he swore at us through the glass.

“Nobody who cares that much about security is going to come out into the open with a possible infection,” I said, taking Shaun’s hand in my left, swinging Lois’s carrier in my right. She yowled, punctuating the statement. “We’re dangerous.”