Author's Note: Because Monday is a holiday in the US, Chapter 58 will appear either late Monday or early Tuesday. Chapter 59 will appear on Wednesday, at the usual time. Have a great weekend.

The feeder road was lined on either side by high fences, so there was only one way they could go. It lead deeper into the city, farther away from Vashon Island. That was fine by Tim but he wasn’t sure how Sasha would feel.

Even on the motorcycle they had a hard time dodging around the abandoned cars. Sasha took her time, wheeling them around and around until Tim felt carsick. She never stopped moving—the soldiers had helicopters, and could follow from the air. It was crucially important to get some distance from the airport before those choppers scrambled. Time kept moving, too. Darkness fell before they found their way out of the maze of roads around SeaTac. The roads cleared up a little as they shot out into a grid of residential streets but Sasha actually had to slow down. Every third streetlight flickered into life but failed to shed enough lights for them to read the street signs as they rolled past. They had to stop frequently to make sure they didn’t get lost.

Sasha seemed to know where they were going. Tim kept wondering when she would turn west and head back for the Sound and for the Island—if she did, he would have to convince her somehow to head northeast instead, toward Seward Park. She passed up every good chance she had to turn off, though, and eventually he realized she was taking him home.

He had no idea why she would do that. It could only put her in danger.

“You know what I’m here for, don’t you?”

“Revenge, yeah. Buzzard told me the whole story about the guy who ate your family.”

Tim bit his lip. “I get why Tony owed me—” he said, but she cut him off.

“Why he thought he owed your sorry white ass,” she said, laughing. “We both know what happened, don’t we? I know, anyway, what kind of pills you gave him. Goddamned thorazine. Like that was going to help.”

“You knew what it was?”

She shrugged. It was hard to hear her over the roar of the engine but her voice was clear and she knew how to project. “My Dad went a little crazy before he died. Started hearing stuff in the night time, voices calling him and all. He would toss and turn all night and sometimes he would get up and walk around the house, looking for where the voices were hiding. The doctors gave him all kinds of drugs to try to calm him down, to help him sleep, and thorazine was one of the ones that actually worked for a while.”

“So you knew what I was doing. You know that I was trying to trick Tony, but you didn’t stop me.”

“I saw that pill bottle and thought, shit, if it calmed the drooler down maybe we could all sleep a little better. Then when it seemed to work I was just happy for Tony and his Mom. They were so damned excited. I knew what would happen after that, of course. The drooler would build up a tolerance and eventually it would stop working. So I fed him that line about if one pill was good, then two would be better.”

Tim was shocked. “You must have known—”

“Guy, the best thing you can do for a drooler is put him out of his misery. Who wants to live like that? I was doing everybody a favor—especially Tony’s Mom.”

It wasn’t what Tim would have done, given any other options. He could follow her logic, though, and even admit she could be right.

“Okay, but that just begs my next question. Why are you helping me now?”

She shrugged again. “I know you ain’t done yet, and that if I try to turn around you’ll just jump off the bike. Let’s just say I got no desire to head back to Vashon all alone.” She stopped the bike and looked around. “We turn right here, yeah?”

Tim looked at the street sign she pointed out. “Yeah,” he said. “You know this place pretty well. Are you from here?”

“I lived in Ballard before this. But I know the whole town, mostly. I used to be a taxi driver.”

“Seriously?”

She looked at him over her shoulder. “Uh-huh. I’ve been all over the Emerald City. It was the only way I could make ends meet. Then the world went and ended and here I am, driving the white folk around still. Alright, hold on.”

Tim grabbed the sides of the bike seat as she wheeled them around and headed north. “This might not be it, you know,” he told her.

“What do you mean?”

“The end of the world. This might not be it. I know things look bad, but it sounds like the government actually has a plan to fix things. Horne was going to poison all the droolers so people could move back into their homes.”

“He the one got his brains scrambled back there?”

“Yeah,” Tim admitted. “But that doesn’t mean the plan won’t go ahead. That’s one thing the Army’s pretty good about—if the guy in charge gets killed, they already have somebody else ready to pick up right where he left off. In a month Seattle might not be a Plague Zone anymore.”

“Tony’ll hate that. Hey, though—that’s good for you, isn’t it? You can just let them kill your guy. Problem solved.”

Tim laughed bitterly. “Nope.”

“Why not?” she asked. “Why not just tell me to head back to Vashon where we can hole up for a month in fine style, then come back when they’re done—you can even identify the body afterwards, if you need that.”

“It’s not the same. I owe my wife and my son a debt. Letting somebody else get revenge for me won’t fix what’s broken. If I don’t do it I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Fair enough,” she said, and goosed the throttle.