“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.