by Mira Grant
“I’m fine,” said Vanessa. “I’m just checking the news sites. I want to see if there’s anyone talking about the bombing. Maybe we can find out how long we have.”
“Just watch your step,” said Shawn, after a very brief pause. He wanted her paying attention. He wanted information even more.
“I’m watching,” said Vanessa, and kept tapping.
Lynn paced alongside her husband, her own makeshift weapon—a length of timber that was intended to be part of the booth’s main structure—clutched tightly in her hands. She didn’t say anything at all. At this point, she didn’t want to tell lies, and she didn’t want to hear them, either. All the pretty reassurances and mealymouthed platitudes in the world wouldn’t change their situation. So they just walked on.
The blockades around the webcomic district stopped them. “Now what?” asked Robert. “Do we go around?”
“Not if we can help it.” Shawn stepped forward, rapping his hammer against the nearest makeshift wall. “Hey. We’re clean. We need to get to the wall. Let us through.”
Silence answered.
Shawn rapped again, a little harder. “Hey! We need to get to the back wall, and we don’t have time to go around you! Let us through!”
This time, there was an answer from the other side: a single soft moan that made the hairs on the back of Lynn’s neck stand on end. She grabbed Shawn’s elbow before he could rap a third time, pulling him backward.
“Shawn,” she hissed. “They’re not going to let us in, and I don’t think we want them coming out.”
Shawn hesitated. Then, slowly, he nodded. “All right,” he said. “We go around.”
The zombies trapped inside the carefully constructed borders of the webcomics district gathered by the barrier and moaned as the Browncoats turned and walked away. But they didn’t break through, and for the moment, it seemed like escape might still be possible.
12:37 A.M.
A consensus had finally been reached, after a great deal of argument and some uncalled-for swearing: They would stay put, monitor the social media feeds, and wait for rescue. Looking quietly relieved, Matthew sank down into one of the desk chairs, with Patty standing somewhat sulkily next to him. Elle sat back down on the replica of the precinct captain’s desk, head bowed in a combination of resignation and simple exhaustion. None of them had eaten, visited a bathroom, or really slept for hours. Pris, Eric, and Marty gathered together near one of the other desks, unconsciously illustrating the ongoing divide between the two groups.
Only Stuart didn’t move. Stuart hadn’t moved for a while, sitting on the edge of a desk, resting most of his weight on the spear he’d taken from Kelly.
Stuart didn’t feel good. And by that point, he knew that something was seriously wrong. He made a small sound, somewhere between a grunt and a moan. It had been long enough since he’d made any sounds at all that the others turned toward him, somehow hearing him above the screaming from outside.
“Stuart?” said Eric. “You okay, buddy?”
“You need… to go,” said Stuart. Forcing out the words seemed like more work than it should have been. He raised his head. That was even harder than speaking had been.
Patty’s eyes widened. “Your nose is bleeding.”
“You need… to go,” repeated Stuart. “What Kelly had. Think she gave it… to me. You can’t. Stay.”
“Oh, God,” whimpered Patty, and plastered herself against Matthew.
“Please,” said Stuart. “Please.”
“But she didn’t bite him!” said Eric. “How the fuck did he get sick, huh?”
“Does it matter?” asked Matthew. He got to his feet, tugging Patty along with him. “Come on, sweetheart. We need to go.”
“There are more out there than there are in here,” said Marty. “I think the odds are still better if we stay put.”
“And get blood everywhere, when we’ve just shown that the damn stuff is indirectly transmissible?” snapped Matthew. “No. If we’re going to be fucked no matter what we do, I’d rather be fucked running than sitting still.”
Stuart moaned, the spear falling from his hands. And then he lunged.
Maybe it was the setting. The precinct was the office of the Time Police, after all; it was the place where Indiction Rivers fought the forces of evil, prevented paradoxes, and always had perfect hair, even in the middle of a firefight. Maybe it was instinct. Or maybe it was simply that Elle had put herself in charge of her little accidental group of refugees, and when they were put in danger, she had to react. Whatever the reason, she flung herself from the desk where she’d been seated and grabbed Stuart by the back of the neck before he could reach the shrilly screaming Patty.
Whirling, Elle slammed Stuart against the nearest wall, using every technique she’d learned in her self-defense courses and in training for her role with the show to keep him pinned. “Go!” she shouted. “Get moving!”
“We’re not leaving you!” said Marty.
“You won’t have to! I’ll let him go when I have a clear shot at the door—but I’m not doing it before! Now move it!”
The others moved.
Stuart squirmed. Elle shoved him harder against the wall. “You seemed like a nice guy,” she said. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”
The techniques Elle had learned were designed to restrain people without harming them, and worked partially because most people would not hurt themselves to get loose. They were never intended for use on people who no longer cared about pain. She was still holding Stuart in place when he twisted himself at an angle that dislocated his shoulder with an audible popping sound and sank his teeth into her upper arm.
Elle screamed. Matthew, who had been escorting the others out the door, turned and stared at her in horror.
“Go!” she shouted. “Just go!”
Matthew hesitated. Only for a second. Then he nodded, mouthed the words “Thank you,” and stepped out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him.
Elle Riley, who would be remembered by most of history for her portrayal of Indiction Rivers, Time Police, and by a woman named Sigrid Robinson for everything else, closed her eyes. And then she let the zombie go.
If she screamed, no one heard it. Elle Riley died bravely, and when she died, she died alone.
Outside, the others moved into the aisles, heading away from the sound of screaming, heading toward the unknown dangers lurking in the darkness along the back wall.
1:09 A.M.
“We don’t have long,” said Vanessa, scrolling through Twitter as she walked. “People outside are reporting that they’re being moved even farther from the convention center. It looks like there’s a half-mile perimeter being established.”
“If it’s only a half-mile, they’re not using anything radioactive,” said Shawn, walking a little faster. The rest of the group matched his pace. “That’s good. That means we have a much better chance of getting the hell out of here.”
“How much farther?” asked Robert.
“I don’t know,” said Shawn. “Those damn barricades…”
“Just keep moving,” said Lynn. “That’s all we can do. Keep moving.”
They hadn’t been attacked yet, but they all knew that it was coming. So when a single blood-encrusted figure stepped from behind a nearby booth, Shawn nearly bashed his head in with the hammer. Only the figure’s quick backward stumble and cry of, “No, don’t! I’m not gone yet!” held his swing.
“Who are you?” demanded Lynn, raising her board into a defensive position.
“Matthew. Matthew Meigs. Are you clean?”
“For the moment,” said Shawn, lowering his hammer. “You’re covered in blood.”
“None of it’s mine.” Most of it was Patty’s. Dear, sweet Patty, who had only ever wanted to be married, and to go to the San Diego Comic-Con, and to love him… Matthew shook his head, willing the thought away. “The back wall’s no better than the main floor, and in some ways, it’s worse. A lot of people fled there.
My group among them.” All those hands, grasping, and all those teeth…
“That’s where the exit is, and we have to get out of here,” said Robert. “We don’t have a choice.”
“We’re all infected.” Matthew’s tone was soft, even resigned. “It’s in the blood.”
“You’re the only one with blood on you,” said Leita.
“For now. But if you fight your way back to that wall, even if you make it there, you won’t be clean anymore. You may not be bitten, but you won’t be clean. And then what? If you make it out, then what? You spread this? You take it out into the world?”
“It had to come from somewhere,” said Vanessa.
“That doesn’t mean we have to take it back there.” Matthew shook his head. “You’ll never walk away. You’ll just find yourself on the business end of a sniper rifle instead of dying in here with the rest of us. You’ve no cause to believe me. I know that. But you can save yourselves a great deal of pain by staying away from that wall.” He looked at his bloody fingers. “As for me, I got a drop in my eye when the bastards took my wife, before I turned and ran. I haven’t long. I’m going back to where I left a friend of mine, in a little room with a door that shuts. I think I’ll go inside and shut the door behind me. Elle deserves the company. It was nice to meet you all.”
With that, the blood-covered little British man turned and walked away, vanishing quickly into the maze of aisles.
“What a crock of shit,” said Robert. “Come on. Let’s move.”
None of the others moved at all. Shawn and Lynn were looking at each other.
“Do you think he was telling the truth?” asked Lynn.
“It’s possible,” said Shawn. “It seems probable, even, given the reaction we’ve seen so far.”
“So what do we do?”
“Lorelei,” said Shawn quietly. It was all he had to say. They couldn’t take this out of the convention center, not when their daughter was out there, not when she would run to them at the first chance she got. He turned and looked to the others. “I can’t tell you what to do. It’s not my place. But Lynn and I won’t be carrying this infection out into the world. We’re going back to the booth. Seems a fitting place to wait for what comes next.”
Leita reached over and took her brother’s hand. Robert looked down at the floor. “We’ll come with you.”
“Me, too,” said Vanessa. She smiled, just a little. “Never leave a man behind. That’s what it means to be part of a crew, right? Never, ever leave a man behind.”
“It was an honor,” said Shawn.
“Same, Captain,” replied Vanessa.
They turned, five people in a convention center given, now, mostly to the dead, and slowly made their way back to where they’d started.
1:24 A.M.
The dizziness was coming in waves by the time Matthew reached the precinct. He’d passed a few of the fully infected on the way—not many; most were at the back wall, but enough—and none of them had troubled him. They knew their own.
No sounds were coming from inside. Either Stuart had killed her after he turned or they were both in there waiting, silently, for escape. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered at this point.
“Hello, Elle. I came back to keep you company,” said Matthew, and opened the door.
LORELEI TUTT’S APARTMENT, LONDON, ENGLAND, JUNE 1, 2044
The Browncoats on Lorelei’s recording are singing. They began shortly after they reached their booth, and have continued since, asserting over and over that they’re still free. Lorelei is singing with them, tears running down her face, and she keeps singing when the white flash of the bombs hitting the convention center wipes the image away. She knows the words they never had the chance to say. There’s something beautiful in that, a sort of immortality for the people who died that day.
The screen goes from white to black. Lorelei goes silent. I keep watching the screen, giving her a chance to compose herself as we both pretend that I didn’t see her cry. Finally, when she’s ready, she speaks again.
LORELEI: So that’s what happened. That’s everything I know about what happened.
MAHIR: I have other pieces of the story. I was able to interview Sigrid Robinson. She knew more about what happened with that poor man who warned your parents off going to the rear.
LORELEI: I’ve always wondered. If they hadn’t met him… would they have made it out? The Rising happened. A few more people wouldn’t have changed anything.
I’ve seen the blueprints of the convention center as it was before it fell. I know the answer. I do not hesitate.
MAHIR: No. They would simply have died in a different place, and without making the right decision.
LORELEI: That’s good. That’s… good.
She turns to look at the poster behind the television set. It looks almost like a comic book cover, lovingly drawn: a group of people, some of whom I now recognize, standing against a field of stars. Their clothing looks something like the American West, something like what they wore in the video. They are looking off into the distance, staring forever toward a future they died before seeing.
Beneath them is written a simple epigram:
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, 2014
KEEP FLYING
MAHIR: Thank you for speaking with me today.
LORELEI: I miss them.
For once in my life, I have nothing to say, and so I don’t say anything at all.
Remember, when you talk about the Rising: The story you know is not the only one that contains the truth. We may never find all the pieces, and some of them may be broken beyond understanding. But we must all, in the words of a doomed man to his child, keep flying.
It is the only way left for us to honor the dead.
—Mahir Gowda
How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea
Introduction
Between this and San Diego 2014, I’m starting to feel like the recipe for me writing a Newsflesh story is really loving something, and wanting to fill it to the absolute brim with zombies just to see what happens. I love Australia. I love the island ecosystem. I love the snakes. And I love the passionate Australian conservationists who I have had the pleasure of meeting, listening to, and learning from. So bringing the Rising to Australia was inevitable.
But more than that… for me, one of the beauties of the Newsflesh world is that what happened, happened globally. It wasn’t just an American apocalypse. The fact that the books have, thus far, been based in America, doesn’t change the fact that the Rising happened everywhere, all over the world. I wanted the opportunity to show its effects on a continent as removed from North America as I could manage.
Plus, zombie wombats. I mean, come on. How could I resist?
How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea
Part I
Around the World in Eighty Permits, Seventy-three Blood Tests, and More Trouble than the World Is Really Worth
People used to travel for fun before the Rising. Can you believe that?
—ALARIC KWONG
No.
—MAHIR GOWDA
1.
My flight left London at six o’clock on Friday morning. We made a stop in Hong Kong twelve hours later to change planes, at which point everyone had to go through the entire security and boarding process again, complete with medical screening. It’s something of a miracle that I was permitted to return to business class—same seat number, virtually identical seat, for all that it was on a different airplane—given that I was half asleep the whole time. After you’ve been pursued across the United States by a global conspiracy, it’s rather difficult for airports to disturb you. All the same, my lack of response and glazed demeanor should have singled me out for additional security measures. There’s little that can spoil a trip more than being trapped inside a flying metal tube with someone who has just undergone amplification.
Being in coach might well have done it. I reclined in my spacious seat, sipping my complimentary cup of hot tea—if you can call so
mething “complimentary” when it requires buying a ticket that costs several thousand quid before they’ll give it to you—and watched the other passengers being herded back to their seats. Each group of five was escorted by two flight attendants who made no effort to conceal their firearms. Before the Rising, guns were verboten on airplanes, carried only by government agents and representatives of local law enforcement. Now most passengers flew armed, and the flight attendants carried more weapons than your average Irwin. It’s funny how the world can change when no one’s looking.
The business class flight attendants were a slightly less menacing breed, although they still possessed the warmth and personal charm of cobras considering whether or not you were worth biting. The attendant on my side of the cabin stopped by long enough to collect my cup and check the lock on my seat belt. It would release only after a clean blood test from me and a keyed-in okay from the flight attendant. I smiled at him through the fog of my exhaustion. Staying on his good side would be extremely helpful for my bladder in a few hours.
“State your name,” he said.
“Mahir Gowda,” I replied. I’d been through this routine before. There was nothing personal about it.
“Place of origin.”
“London, England. I flew out of Heathrow.”
“Destination.”
“Melbourne, Australia.”
“Will you be having the fish or the chicken for this evening’s supper?”
“The chicken, please.”
“Very good. Welcome aboard, Mr. Gowda.” He continued on with a perfunctory nod, already keying up the next passenger on his datapad.
I saluted him silently before setting my head against the thin airplane pillow. No matter how plush they make the upper tiers of flying, they’ll always have those same thin, lifeless pillows. Hong Kong was a blur of lights and motion outside the window, all of it set back at a respectful distance, which blurred it even more. One more place I hadn’t been, not really; one more example of “just passing through.”
