Becks ignored my interction as she replied, “We’re way ahead of you. Alaric dug out one of Buffy’s old clubbing IDs for her. It won’t hold up to major scrutiny, but it’ll do until we get to Maggie’s and he can find something more stable.”

“Awesome. Get a hat or something on her—we don’t want anybody getting a good look at her face. And she stays in the van; somebody else can buy her drinks.”

“Got it,” said Becks. “Terminate call.” There was a click, and I was alone with the sound of the wind once more.

The wind and the voice that lurked inside my head. “George?”

Yeah?

“Is it always like this? Losing somebody that counted on you?”

You say that like it happened all the time.

“You did it first.”

Yeah. A long pause, and the faintest sensation of a sigh at the back of my mind. But what else is new?

George always did everything first. She talked before I did, read before I did… about the only thing I ever did first was figure out the game the Masons were playing with us, and that was as much luck as anything else. She was the one who decided to become a professional journalist, hauling me along in her excitement. I went along with it in the beginning to make her happy, and later because it turned out I was actually pretty good at poking things with sticks for the amusement of others. It was the first thing I’d ever found that I was really good at, that I really enjoyed doing, and I never would have found it if it weren’t for her. She was the one who suggested we follow Senator Ryman’s presidential campaign. She was the first one to recognize what it had the potential to do for our careers.

She was the first one to die.

I drove quietly, giving her time to collect herself. Finally, slowly, she said, It’s different every time. Losing Buffy was… It was basically the end of the world, but I held it together. I had to hold it together.

“Why?”

Because, she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, you needed me to.

There was nothing I could say to that. I put my head down, gunned the throttle, and drove straight down the highway until the neon sign of a truck stop beckoned, promising food, fuel, and lots of burly rednecks with guns who were just aching for the chance to put down an outbreak. Everyone’s got the places where they feel safe. My top three would probably be the middle of an Irwin meet-up, inside a CDC lockdown facility, and any truck stop in North America. You want to talk scary survivalist mentality, go find yourself a trucker, and then get back to me.