by Mira Grant
—MAHIR GOWDA
Me? Oh, I’m just your ordinary time-traveling badass with a badge. Now freeze, dirtbag. You’re going to Paradox Prison for a long, long time.
—CHRONOFORENSIC ANALYST INDICTION RIVERS, SPACE CRIME CONTINUUM, SEASON ONE, EPISODE THREE
11:30 P.M.
“Holy crap—Shawn! The wireless just came back on!” Robert waved his phone like it would illustrate the point. “I’ve got connection!”
“Me, too,” said Leita, holding up her own phone. “Maybe this means they’re finally getting ready to break us out of here.”
“Maybe,” said Shawn, with an utter lack of conviction. He didn’t want to discourage the others in their hoping—at this point, hope was about the only thing they had going for them, and he’d rather it lasted—but he couldn’t work up any excitement for something as small as the Internet coming on. Not unless it was accompanied by an announcement that the National Guard was on the way. He paused. The National Guard… “Shit.”
“What is it?” asked Vanessa. She was holding her iPad again, fiddling nervously with her new video-editing software. Maybe later, she could edit together a video about their Comic-Con adventure. Assuming they all survived.
“We need to get back to work on the barricades. Break time’s over.” Shawn grabbed a hammer. “I want this place so fortified that we could live in it.”
“What?” Vanessa’s eyes widened. “Why? Didn’t you hear Robbie? They’re going to come and rescue us soon!”
“No, they’re not.” Shawn shook his own phone at her. “You hear that? Silence. Lorelei’s at the Coast Guard right now, and what I’ve got is silence. That means she hasn’t managed to get them moving yet, and if the Coast Guard isn’t moving, neither is anybody else. We’re not being saved just because we can check our e-mail again. And when people realize that, they’re going to lose what little serenity they had left. The shit’s about to hit the fan in here, and all that’s standing between us and the chaos is the hull on this ship.”
“It’s a booth, Shawn,” said Lynn quietly, stepping up next to her husband.
“Right now, it’s our ship, and it’s the only way we’re flying safely out of this.” Shawn thrust the hammer at her. She took it. “Get to work, all of you. We don’t have much time.”
“I hope you’re wrong, Shawn,” said Lynn, and leaned up to kiss his cheek before walking briskly toward the other side of the booth.
Shawn sighed. “So do I.” He glanced around at the others, finally settling on Robert. “Hey. I need you to do something for me.”
“What?” asked Robert, putting down the box that he’d been lifting.
“Come here.” Shawn beckoned him closer. Robert came, and when he was close enough, Shawn murmured, “I want you to get online and start looking for anyone who has outside eyes on this place. We need to know what’s going on. We need to know how bad things are going to get. Can you do that?”
“Sure,” said Robert. He had to fight to ignore the sudden churning in his stomach. This wasn’t how his Comic-Con was supposed to go. Not a bit of it. “Is there anything I should be watching for, in specific?”
“Yeah,” said Shawn. “Look for people talking about the zombie apocalypse. I need to know whether this is the end of the world.”
Wisely, Robert didn’t say anything else. He just moved to one of the booth’s folding chairs, sat down, and started to search. Shawn watched him go. Then he picked up another hammer, and turned to his work.
11:30 P.M.
Elle’s phone pinged, signaling that her e-mail had successfully been sent. It was a familiar enough sound that it didn’t wake her. Sleeping sitting up with her back braced against a door wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, but she was tired enough and wrung-out enough from her day that she didn’t care anymore. On the other side of the replica office, Matthew and Patty slept sunk deep into their own respective dreamlands. Patty seemed almost entirely boneless, a limp puddle across the model of Indiction Rivers’s desk. Matthew was slightly more upright, but only slightly, with one arm curved protectively around her back.
Then the phone rang, and all three of them snapped awake. Matthew was on his feet before his brain and his body fully caught up with each other. Patty sat up, blinking bemusedly. And Elle, who knew that ring tone better than she knew almost anything else in the world, was simply reaching for the phone. It was reflex. If she’d been awake and able to think about what she was doing, she might not have answered… but she was half-asleep, and sleep can make you careless. The phone was almost to her ear before she realized what she was doing, and by then it was too late.
“Sig?”
“Elle?” The edge of panic on her girlfriend’s voice was painful. Elle winced.
Sigrid demanded, “What the hell is this e-mail I just got? What’s going on in there?”
“I’m sorry. I set my memo function to auto-send, and someone must have managed to turn the wireless in here back on. You weren’t supposed to see that.” Not while I was still breathing, anyway.
“The police have cleared and cordoned off the Gaslight District. The hotels were evacuated almost an hour ago.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m still in our room. I tried to go down to the convention center when I realized you were stuck there, but there are police blocking all the access roads. They’re not letting anyone near.” Common sense dictated that “the talent” stay as close to the convention center as possible, to make sure that they could get to and from their panels quickly and easily. Sigrid and Elle were staying at a very nice B&B almost two miles off-site. If Sigrid couldn’t enjoy the convention, she could at least enjoy their accommodations—and it made it less likely that there would be a public slip where one of Elle’s fans might see.
Elle had never been so grateful for her paranoia. “I’m glad,” she said quietly. “I don’t want you anywhere near here.”
“Are you hurt?” The edge of panic was spreading, saturating Sigrid’s tone. “Elle, are you alone in there?”
“No, no, honey, I’m fine. I’m here with two friends, Matthew and Patty. We managed to get to cover before the lights went out. None of us is hurt. We’re all fine.”
“I kinda need to pee,” said Patty, and promptly blushed a brilliant red, adding, in a mutter, “I don’t believe I just said that in front of Elle Riley.”
“Where’s your handler?” asked Sigrid. “Isn’t there someone who can get you out of there?”
“No, there’s not. I lost him when the screaming started, and I haven’t seen him since. Maybe he made it out of the hall.” Or maybe he got caught up in the riot at the front, and was out there somewhere, looking for her. Elle couldn’t manage to muster any compassion for his possible plight. He was the one who’d run away and left her with two strangers in the middle of the exhibit hall.
“That letter—”
“I meant it. I meant every word of it. I’m done pretending.”
“Why would you write that if you thought you were coming home? What would make you do that?”
Elle sighed, shoulders slumping. “Sigrid…”
“Are you coming home to me?”
Elle looked across the room to Matthew and Patty, who were watching her, not saying a word. She couldn’t see through the blocked-off windows, but she didn’t need to; she knew what the exhibit hall looked like. There would have been screaming if things had already started going downhill. It was probably only a matter of time.
“Yes,” said Elle calmly. She was an excellent actress, no matter what the critics said; she’d gotten her job because she knew how to do it, not just because she looked good in a bikini. “I’m coming home. I promise.”
“Elle—”
“I have to go, Sigrid. I love you. I’ll see you soon. I promise.”
“I love you,” Sigrid whispered.
Elle lowered her phone, hitting the button to disconnect the call at the same time. Then she just sat there, staring at it. Minu
tes ticked by.
Finally, hesitantly, Patty asked, “Are you okay?”
“I never lied to her before.” Elle raised her head, smiling sadly. “I’m not sure I want to make it out of here. I never wanted to know that I could lie to her.”
Outside the plywood walls of their room, someone screamed.
11:43 P.M.
Kelly Nakata opened her eyes.
Slowly, with none of her former grace, she clambered to her feet. She used both arms to push herself upright, not shying away from putting pressure on her wounded arm. Anyone looking into her eyes would have found a curious absence of pain, considering how much blood covered her skin and drenched her clothing. When she stood, she left behind a broad dark splotch on the carpet. But Kelly Nakata didn’t care. She was back on her feet, and unlike the zombies who had entered when the siege began—the ones who were well fed and seeking to expand the size of the pack—she was freshly risen, weak from blood loss, and hungry.
So hungry.
The exact mechanics of the Kellis-Amberlee virus were not yet known on that hot July night, but that did nothing to stop them from working as nature and genetic engineering had intended. Kelly Nakata was no longer in her right mind, and the virus controlling her body knew what it needed to do. It needed to spread. It needed to nourish itself. It needed to feed.
As Kelly began walking toward the sound of living food—moving not with the characteristic lurch of the long-infected, but with a smooth, almost fluid gracelessness, like all her joints had lost their tension—other infected emerged from the shadows and followed her. It was as if she had provided some final tipping point to their number, taking them from the need to grow and leading them into the need to hunt.
Somewhere in the middle of the slowly expanding pack, one of the infected began to moan. The rest echoed it, until the entire mass of stiff-limbed people with glazed eyes and bloody hands was moaning in near-unison. Together, they half-shambled, half-walked down the aisle, heading for the unmistakable sounds of the living.
11:45 P.M.
“We shouldn’t have left her,” said Stuart, shifting Kelly’s spear from one hand to the other. “This is just crazy. Things like this don’t really happen.”
They weren’t moving as fast as Marty wanted them to be. Pris was distracted by poking at her tablet, and Stuart had been dragging his feet ever since they walked away from Kelly. Only Eric seemed to understand how important it was that they make it back to the fortified safety of the booth, where they might have a chance in hell of keeping themselves alive until rescue came. “It’s happening, and we need to deal with it,” Marty snapped. “Kelly knew the score. She’s the one who told us to leave her behind. Now keep on moving. We have a long way to go before we get back to where we need to be.”
“Facebook is going nuts,” said Pris, eyes still glued to her screen. “There’s a lady over in Artist’s Alley who says her best friend flipped out and ate her husband. Like, actually ate him. And there’s a bunch of interns holed up in one of the big toy company booths using boxes of action figures as barricades. They’re freaking out because people keep stealing pieces of their walls.” She snorted. “I guess it’s never too bad for people to want their exclusive swag.”
“Is anyone saying anything about a rescue?”
“Lots of rumors on the inside—jeez, it’s like half the convention was just waiting for the chance to get online and start screaming—and some people on Twitter are talking about the military moving in around the convention center. Maybe they’re coming to break us out of here.”
“Yeah,” said Marty gruffly. “Maybe that’s what they’re doing. Just keep moving, okay? I want us all back where we know the territory as fast as possible.”
“What’s that sound?” Much to Marty’s disgust, Eric stopped walking and turned to look back in the direction they had just come from. “Do you hear that?”
“All I hear is a convention center full of geeks who finally have their e-mail back, which means this is our best shot at getting back to the booth without anyone stopping us,” said Marty. “Now move.”
“It sounds like someone’s hurt or something. They’re moaning.”
“We are in the middle of what looks increasingly like the zombie apocalypse,” said Marty, stressing his last two words as hard as he could. “Moaning people don’t need help. Moaning people are intending to eat us.”
To illustrate his point, Kelly came around the corner of the aisle they had just walked down, with half a dozen more blood-drenched people shambling along behind her. Kelly was leading the others straight for her former companions.
“Kelly?” said Stuart uncertainly.
“Kelly’s dead,” said Marty. Any doubts he’d had about the nature of their predicament vanished when he saw Kelly’s blank face, mouth half-open as she moaned with the others. He grabbed Stuart’s arm before the other man could do anything they were all going to regret. “That’s not Kelly anymore. Now move.”
Much to his surprise, the other man moved. Hauling Stuart along with him, Marty ran. Eric and Pris followed… and the zombies, as one, followed them.
After hours of waiting, the chase was finally on.
11:51 P.M.
The screaming was getting louder and more frequent. Patty pressed herself against Matthew, moaning slightly with fear. It was a living, vital sound, very different than the soft, insistent moans that Elle could hear under the panicking crowd outside their hidey-hole. She slid off the desk where she’d been sitting, taking a long step backward.
“I don’t think that’s the cavalry,” she said.
“Matthew, I’m scared,” wailed Patty.
“I know, love.” He put his arms around her, looking grimly at the door. In that moment, he wished he’d never heard of the San Diego Comic Convention, or allowed himself to consider it as a location for his honeymoon. He held his wife as tightly as he could, and wondered whether he was ever going to see England, or his family, again. “Just hold fast. Rescue is coming.”
“We’re as secure in here as we’re going to get,” said Elle. “We—” Her words dissolved into a yelp of fear as someone started banging on the door, sending it shuddering. It wasn’t constructed to stand up to any sort of pressure, after all; it was only intended as a replica.
“Let us in!” shouted a male voice, very real, and very much alive. “We can hear you in there!”
“Please!” added a second voice—female this time, and very clearly terrified.
Matthew and Elle exchanged a look. They didn’t say anything. In a moment like this, there was nothing to be said. Matthew let go of Patty, pressing a kiss to the top of her head as he stood to help Elle move the filing cabinets. As soon as they were out of the way, Elle stepped forward and opened the door.
“Get in here,” she said to the small group of people clustered in the aisle outside. “Now.”
“Thank you,” said their leader, an older African-American man with a death grip on an aluminum baseball bat. He turned and started gesturing for his people to get into the building: two other men, both younger than he was, one Asian, one white, and a pale-faced woman with a mop of wild, uncombed curls. Once all three of them were in, he followed, and Elle slammed the door behind him.
“Matthew, the filing cabinets,” she said.
“On it,” he replied. To his surprise and mild relief, the newcomers hastened to help him. With all of them working together, they had the door blocked in a matter of seconds.
“Good,” said Elle. The moaning outside was getting louder. “I guess this means help isn’t on the way, huh?”
“Not quite yet,” said the older man.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
The wild-haired girl was staring at Elle. “Aren’t you…”
“I used to be,” Elle replied. “Hi. I’m Elle. This is Matthew, and Patty. They’re on their honeymoon. I have no idea why I thought it was important to tell you that, but I did, so there you go. The censors are officially
off duty for the duration of this convention.”
“I’m Marty,” said the older man. “These two are Pris and Eric.”
“I’m Stuart,” said the Asian man. He was holding a spear like he didn’t really know what to do with it but was terrified of what would happen if he put it down.
“Nice to meet you all,” said Elle briskly. “Now, what sort of danger did you people lead to our door?” She realized she was falling into the speech patterns she used for Indiction Rivers—and well, so what if she was? Indy Rivers got things done. Maybe she was a fictional character, but they were in a fictional place, in a fictional situation. There were worse things to be than fictional.
Fictional people cried only when the story told them to.
“Well, ma’am, I don’t know how to break this to you, exactly, but I’m afraid we’re in the middle of the zombie apocalypse here,” said Marty. “One of our friends got bitten. She’s outside now, leading a whole mob of them after us.”
“And you came here?” cried Patty, standing. “Why would you do that? We were doing just fine before you came crashing in here! Now we’re probably going to die, and it’s going to be all your fault!”
“Patty.” Matthew put his hand on her shoulder. “Patty, sweetheart, hush. It’s not their fault. It’s not anyone’s fault.”
“That asshole who decided to cure the common cold, maybe,” said Eric.
“Or maybe not,” said Elle. “I don’t think ‘blame’ is what we should be looking for here. Survival is. If those zombies are behind you, this is where we start shoring up the walls, and we get ready to make our last stand. Are you with me?”
Marty nodded. “Just tell us what to do.”
Elle told them.
11:57 P.M.
“Daddy!” Lorelei’s voice came through the phone in a wail, terror and heartbreak warring with fury for dominance.
Shawn snatched his phone from his belt and depressed the walkie-talkie button as he raised it to his mouth. “Lorelei, what’s wrong?”
