And she turned the dead bolt, locking both herself and the infected out of the convention center. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Then they were upon her, and she didn’t say anything else. After that, there was only screaming… and eventually, silence.
8:24 P.M.
“They’re not coming back, are they?” asked Vanessa. “They should have been back by now. They’re not coming back.”
“Shawn?” asked Lynn.
Shawn didn’t have an answer. He put his arm around Lynn’s shoulders and looked away, out over an exhibit hall that had gone from familiar ground to enemy territory in a single evening. There was nothing left for any of them to say, and so, for once, none of them said anything.
LORELEI TUTT’S APARTMENT, LONDON, ENGLAND, JUNE 1, 2044
We have finished our first cups of tea. Lorelei is preparing another round, less out of thirst than from the simple need for something to do. It is an understandable impulse. I wish I had something to do with my hands as well.
LORELEI: We know more about what actually happened to Dwight and Rebecca than we do almost anyone else. It’s all supposition with the inside of the exhibit hall, but there were cameras running in the garage. I’ve seen her locking the door a thousand times. She didn’t have any other choice. There was nothing they could have done.
MAHIR: She was very brave. She could have sacrificed a lot of lives in the effort to save her own, and she didn’t.
LORELEI: No, she couldn’t have. Not Rebecca, and not Dwight, either. They were my friends. They were good people. They were heroes.
MAHIR: Yes, they were.
LORELEI: I was down at the base office while all of this was happening, trying to get somebody to listen to me. It turns out that teenage girls trying to report secondhand riots aren’t at the top of anyone’s priority list. I did get them to listen, eventually. It was too late by then—but I mean really, it was too late when Dad called me. It was probably too late by the time I left the convention center.
MAHIR: Everyone was doing the best they could with their understanding of the situation.
LORELEI: I wish they’d understood the situation just a little bit faster. More of my friends might have managed to get out alive. Or any of them.
The Second Act
Science fiction and fantasy literature has always been defined by tales of heroism. It is meant to represent humanity at our very best, willing to oppose all odds in order to protect the side of good. The Rising gave all people the opportunity to become heroes. Only a few rose to the challenge. Sadly, even fewer are remembered by name.
—MAHIR GOWDA
I always knew my father was a hero. I never needed him to prove it.
—LORELEI TUTT, CAPTAIN, UNITED STATES COAST GUARD
8:37 P.M.
No one paid attention to the time. The people who were locked inside the hall had other things to worry about—like why the people who’d started the emergency by attacking their fellow attendees had stopped fighting and retreated to the doors. Anyone who tried to approach them was likely to find themselves bitten, or worse; but if the blank-eyed, bloody-garbed aggressors were left alone, they didn’t bother anyone.
Kelly Nakata didn’t know much about what was going on, but she knew that once a dog starts biting for no good reason, it doesn’t tend to stop. She made her way quickly away from the front of the exhibit hall, the owner of the booth where she’d originally taken shelter sticking close by her side. She didn’t know his name. She didn’t want to. With as quickly as things had gone sour, she wasn’t willing to go forging any lasting bonds. He was a good guy, and he’d equipped her pretty well for the fight she was sure they were walking into. She was still going to leave him behind if he turned into dead weight. It wasn’t the compassionate thing to do. Screw compassion. People in the middle of the zombie apocalypse couldn’t afford it.
“Zombie” wasn’t a word she would have brought into things on her own. It was a cliché, dead things and girls in lingerie and Elvira on a velvet love seat making cracks about impractical shoes. Still, it was an unavoidable idea, especially here, where every other person seemed to be a self-proclaimed expert on zombie culture. There were booths boasting every possible kind of zombie-themed goodie, from books and movies to artwork and couture. There was even a magazine called Chicks with Corpses that had decided to focus on the lingerie and impractical shoes over the carnage and destruction of mankind. The word “zombie” was everywhere, and it was as good a label as any for the psychos who were clustered at the front of the hall.
What some people didn’t seem to be taking into account was that zombies made more zombies. Kelly had seen it happen with her own eyes when the zombies turned on her Jedi-costumed rescuer. He wasn’t the only one who’d been bitten, and unless the zombie virus was selectively transferrable—which never seemed to be the case with zombie viruses, so it was a little too much to hope for in this situation—a whole lot of people were going to go rabid in the next few hours. Kelly was grimly sure that was why the first wave of zombies had withdrawn. They were waiting for their reinforcements to get hungry.
“Where are we going?” asked the booth owner.
“Back of the hall,” said Kelly. “Where there are exits. They usually have security mooks guarding them, but I figure a bunch of psychopaths biting people at the front doors takes priority. We may be able to get out that way.” And if they couldn’t, they would at least put some ground between themselves and the next big bite-a-thon.
“What if we can’t?”
“We start looking for a fire door. There’s bound to be some sort of an emergency exit in this place. We just have to find it.” Find it, and pray that it wasn’t already a solid wall of impassable meat thanks to other people with the same idea.
Giving up wouldn’t do either of them any good. Kelly tightened her grip on her borrowed staff and kept on walking. Maybe they could find someone who was selling armor—Kevlar would be best, but she’d take leather, or even hardened canvas, if that was what she could get—and convince them to join their merry band. Like The Wizard of Oz, only with zombies instead of flying monkeys.
“I didn’t catch your name.”
“Keep walking.”
“My name’s Stuart.”
Kelly winced. “Oh.”
“What’s your name?”
If she told him, she’d be admitting that he was a person, too; she’d be making him real. In a way, she’d be making this whole crazy situation real, because real people didn’t show up in dreams. She’d definitely be making it harder to turn her back on him when the time came—and the time was going to come; she was absolutely sure of that. This was a zombie apocalypse. The time always came.
Kelly sighed. “My name’s Kelly,” she said. “Now keep walking.”
They kept walking.
8:45 P.M.
Exhaustion and panic had finally carried the day: Patty was asleep. She was draped half-over the authentic reproduction of Indiction Rivers’s desk, her head propped up on one arm, snoring softly. Elle paused in her attempts to peer through the blinds at the exhibit hall outside, shaking her head.
“How is she doing that?” she asked. “I can’t imagine sleeping before someone comes to get us out of here.” At least the screams had stopped, or at least faded back into the greater noise of the crowd. Even that seemed more subdued, as if people were getting quieter as they realized they couldn’t escape. That would change soon, she was sure: Panic would make a reappearance, and then their hidey-hole would become even more essential.
Matthew smiled. “It’s a fairly impressive skill, I admit. She actually fell asleep on me the very first time we met. It was at a Doctor Who convention in Chicago. I’d flown out for the con. We wound up standing next to each other in the autograph line, and got to chatting. From there, we took our conversation to the bar, and I thought, ‘This is splendid; this is a splendid girl.’ Only next thing I knew, she was snoring on her stool, and it was, well, ‘Right, then. You’ve blown a
nother one.’”
Elle smiled a little. “And you hadn’t blown it at all.”
“Not a bit. My Pat just sleeps when she’s tired, that’s all. It’s like convenient narcolepsy. I envy her a bit. We’ll all want to be well rested come tomorrow, and she’s going to be the only one standing up straight.”
“As long as we have a tomorrow, I’m happy.” Elle took another peek out the window. “I admit, I was wishing I’d have an excuse to spend some time in the exhibit hall without being rushed along by a handler, but this isn’t what I meant.”
“So you miss it, then? The convention scene?”
“It’s different when you’re a professional. Even when you wish it weren’t.” Elle stepped away from the window. “I can’t really tell what’s going on out there, but I don’t think going out to check would be a good idea.”
“In that, we are agreed.”
“That’s a relief.” Elle put her hands on her hips and studied the room. It both was and wasn’t like the set where she spent her workdays: For one thing, it had all four walls, rather than being an open sound stage. They had a complete precinct room, but they very rarely filmed there. Too hard to get all the cameras inside.
Working together, the three of them had managed to shift the filing cabinets up against the room’s single door, effectively locking it, and three of the four windows were completely covered with leaning sheets of plywood that Matthew had discovered being used to prop up the “chrono monitor” behind Indy’s desk. Leaving the fourth window uncovered was a calculated risk. It left them vulnerable to attack, but covering it would have meant cutting off all contact with the main room. For the moment, the window was more valuable as it was.
“Patty’s quite excited to have met you, you know,” said Matthew. “I hope it’s not too forward to say this, but Space Crime Continuum is one of our favorite shows. We watch it together, and we both enjoy it quite a bit.”
Elle blinked at him. Then, slowly, she said, “We’ve been fortifying a replica of my fictional office against attack together because we’re afraid of I don’t even know what, and you’re worried about me deciding you’re being forward because you like my work?”
Matthew paused. “When you put it that way, it does sound a bit silly, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, just a bit.” Elle leaned up against the nearest desk. “I just wish there was something else we could be doing. I don’t like just standing around.”
“It’s too bad Patty left her knitting back at the hotel, then.”
Elle blinked at him before she snorted laughter, and said, “Even if I could knit, which I can’t, I don’t think I’d feel right knitting while I was potentially in mortal danger. It would just seem a little weird.”
“Has anything about this day not been a little weird?” asked Matthew.
“Fair enough.” Elle sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m just tense. I wish we had cell service in here. I was supposed to be back at the hotel as soon as my panel ended.”
“Have you got someone waiting?” Matthew blanched almost as soon as the words were out. “I’m sorry. That’s none of my business. I was just making conversation.”
“No, it’s all right—I brought up the hotel; it’s a reasonable question.” Elle shrugged. “I do have someone waiting, and I hate being inconsiderate like this.” She was hedging, she knew she was hedging, but she’d been doing it for so long that it was almost second nature. Pretense came with the job.
“Ah,” said Matthew. “Well, I’m sure he’ll understand.”
Screw pretense. “I’m sure she will,” Elle agreed. Sigrid had always been so very understanding. Understanding when the producers said she couldn’t show up on set, as their viewership was made up almost entirely of heterosexual males and Indy Rivers was supposed to be their newest geek sex goddess. Understanding when Elle took her male costar to the Spike Awards. Understanding when she didn’t get to come to Comic-Con to see Elle’s panels.
Then again, maybe that last bit of understanding was enough to balance out some of the others, because Sigrid was safely back at the hotel, far away from all the chaos at the convention center, while Elle was trapped inside the building while all hell was breaking loose. Maybe the universe had been testing them, and Sigrid had passed while Elle hadn’t.
Matthew, meanwhile, was looking at her with that wide-eyed expression of sudden comprehension that she’d been seeing on the faces of straight men since the first time she explained that no, she really wasn’t interested, ever. “Sister?”
“No.”
“Friend?”
“Significant other. Six years. We’re going to get married as soon as I’m well established enough that it won’t kill my career.” Elle crossed her arms defensively, and hated herself for it. This wasn’t supposed to be an issue anymore. It wasn’t her fault that she’d been called to a profession where people still cared, at least if you were a woman new enough to be trading on tits and ass. “Are we going to have a problem?”
“Not a bit of it. I’m just surprised is all.”
“Why? Because I’m gay?”
“Because you’ve managed to hide the existence of a significant other from the blogs. I don’t care if you’re involved with a man, a woman, or a sapient pear tree. You ought to go into international espionage. I never even heard a rumor.”
Elle blinked at him before laughing again. “I’ll have to tell Sigrid you said that.”
“You do that,” he said, and smiled.
“Heck, if we get out of here soon, you can tell her yourself. I figure this is the sort of experience that justifies buying you dinner, if anything will.”
Matthew nodded. “I’d like that. I think that will elevate you to some form of godhood in my lovely wife’s eyes.”
“I’ve always wanted to be a god,” said Elle.
Patty sighed a little in her sleep, snuggling up against the replica of Indiction Rivers’s stapler. For the moment, everything seemed to be calm. There was no way the moment was going to last.
9:16 P.M.
Terror makes you tired. Marty and the others were taking turns sleeping, one of them retreating to the back of the booth and curling up in a makeshift bed of plush toys and wadded-up newspaper while the other two stood watch. They’d decided on three-hour shifts as the most efficient, allowing them to get through one deep REM cycle—maybe; it was Eric’s idea, and he wasn’t totally clear on the science—before they had to get up and let someone else have a turn. At the moment, it was Eric curled up in the back, while Marty watched the aisles for signs of trouble.
Pris, who was supposedly standing guard with him, was actually seated at the register, tapping madly away at her tablet. She didn’t look like she was even remotely aware of her surroundings. Marty found himself envying her, and he didn’t interrupt. What she was trying to do was just as important as what he was doing—maybe more. After all, he might be keeping them alive, but she was going to be the one who got them out.
The sounds of humanity had grown softer as the minutes ticked by and rescue didn’t come. Marty could see people sleeping in the aisles, pressed up against the edges of the booths. The lucky ones who’d remembered to bring a sweater or coat into the convention center were hugging them around themselves, as much to be sure that they wouldn’t be stolen as for warmth. They had nowhere else to go. Marty felt bad for them, even as he patrolled the edges of his own booth every fifteen minutes or so, shooing away squatters. No matter how bad he felt, he wasn’t going to compromise his already fragile security by allowing people to get too close.
He had people of his own to protect. Pris and Eric were his responsibility, and by God, he was going to get them out of here in one piece.
“Marty?”
“What is it, Pris?”
There was a note of excitement in her voice that he wasn’t expecting. It seemed almost obscene, given the rest of the situation. “I got an answer.”
“What?” Marty actually took his eyes off the aisle as he turne
d to face her. “From who?”
“Convention center management. They finally noticed that I was pinging their private channels, and they decided to answer me.”
“Well? What did they say? Is someone coming to get us the hell out of here?”
Pris grimaced. “Not quite. They say there’s a problem outside. Some sort of riot is blocking the doors—they can’t get in to let us out.”
“Fuck.”
“They say that it’s pretty ugly. We should be glad that we’re in here.” Somewhere in the distance, someone screamed. Pris grimaced more. “I think they wouldn’t be saying that if they were actually in here.”
“Did they have anything useful to say?”
“Yes.” Pris held up her tablet, and smiled. “They told me how we can get the wireless back on. That’s something, right?”
Marty frowned. No food, no water, no exit… but they could get the Internet back on. Somehow, that didn’t seem quite as valuable. On the other hand, they were in a convention center full of geeks. Maybe getting the Internet back up would distract everyone else, keep them from making things worse—and maybe they would be able to find a way out once they had access to the outside world. “What do we need to do?” he asked.
“There’s a control room on the main concourse,” said Pris. “All we have to do is get to one of the house phones, call up, and tell whoever’s in there which switches to press.”
“How do we even know that there’s someone inside?”
Pris gestured with her free hand, indicating the convention center. “Look around. There’s no way someone had the opportunity to get into a secure room with a lock on the door and didn’t do it.”