“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. Minutes 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 hel
d 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?”
She was crying; he could hear it even before she spoke again. Little hitching sobs that she was trying, and failing, to hold back. She’d cried that way since she was a little girl. “D-Daddy, they’re…I just heard them saying…”
“Slow down. Breathe. Are you all right?”
“They’re going to blow up the convention center!” This was less a wail, and more a scream. Shawn went cold, his fingers clenching on the phone as she continued: “They didn’t know I could hear them when they started talking about it. They said there was no safe way to do an extraction. There are too many z-z—” She broke down and started crying in earnest before she could even get the word out.
“Zombies,” said Vanessa quietly, stepping up next to Shawn. “There are too many zombies for them to get us out.”
“Damn,” whispered Shawn. Then he raised his phone again and said, “Okay, honey. I need you to breathe deep and stay calm, and listen to me. Do not try to get off the base. Do not try to get over here. Whatever’s going to happen, I don’t want you in the middle of it. Do you hear me? You stay where you are. Your mother and I need to know that you’re safe.”
“Didn’t you hear me?” Lorelei wasn’t screaming anymore. She was barely even whispering. “They’re going to blow it up. The whole thing. They’re going to kill you.”
“And I wish that wasn’t going to happen, but, sweetheart, what matters here is that you’re safe. You’re not in this building. You’re going to be fine.” Shawn closed his eyes. He didn’t want to risk seeing his wife’s face. Once she started crying, there was no way he’d be able to keep from doing the same. “It’s going to be hard. Everything’s changing. But you got out. That means we won.”
Someone was crying; he could hear them, even with the screaming that was starting to get closer and closer to their position, even with the sound of distant moans. It didn’t matter. What mattered was Lorelei’s whispered reply: “I don’t want you to die.”
“I don’t want to leave you. We all have to do things we don’t want to do. Can you keep flying for me, baby girl? Please? Because all I need to know right now is that you can do that.”
“I’ll try,” whispered Lorelei.
“That’s all I’ll ever ask of you.” Shawn opened his eyes and turned to his right, where he knew Lynn would be waiting. The tears were running down her cheeks, but her expression was calm. She knew what was coming next. “Honey, I’m going to give the phone to your mother now. You need to talk to her before we lose connection. I love you, Lorelei. Don’t ever forget. Promise me that you won’t.”
“I won’t, Daddy. I love you.”
“Good,” said Shawn. He handed the phone to Lynn before he could say anything else—before he could stretch it out any further, before he could insist that she keep talking to him until it was too late to say anything else. He’d said what needed saying. Everything else would just be self-indulgent, and they were past the time for things like that. He had work to do.
Vanessa and Robert followed him to the far side of the booth. “Tell us what to do, and we’ll do it,” said Vanessa.
“If they’re going to blow this place to Kingdom Come, we’ve got two choices,” said Shawn. “First, we sit here and wait for the boom. Odds are we wouldn’t feel anything. That sort of thing tends to happen pretty damn fast.”
“And our second choice?” asked Robert.
Shawn smiled grimly. “We get the fuck out of here.”
Vanessa nodded. “Sounds good to me. Lead the way.”
* * *
12:02 A.M.
Unis lifted her head off her paws, attention fixing on the door. Her ears pricked forward and her nostrils flared. The smell coming through the door wasn’t a good smell. It was Bad. It was a Bad Smell, bad enough to stand out against all the other smells in the world. A low growl started in
her chest, shaking her body as she got slowly to her feet. The Bad Smell was getting stronger. But she was a Good Dog. She wouldn’t let the Bad Smell reach The Woman. No. That wouldn’t happen while she was standing guard.
“Unis? What’s wrong?”
Unis kept growling. She knew that her duty was to The Woman—and yes, usually that meant answering to her name, because The Woman might need something. But Unis knew that The Woman’s nose wasn’t as good as hers. The Woman didn’t know that there was a Bad Smell. It was up to Unis to protect her.
“Unis.” This time, Lesley’s voice cracked with command. Unis’s growl wavered, losing focus for a moment as instinct warred with training. In the end, instinct and loyalty won: No amount of training could have pulled her attention away from that door.
For her part, Lesley was becoming alarmed. She knew her dog. Unis was the best service dog she’d ever had, and if Unis was ignoring her, that meant that something was seriously wrong.
“This isn’t good,” she whispered, and wished, not for the first time, that she wasn’t locked in alone with her dog, who might be excellent company but had never quite mastered the art of conversation.
Unis continued growling. It was getting louder now. It still couldn’t quite block out the new sound that was coming from the other side of the door: human voices, moaning.
“Here!” said Lesley, sitting up a little straighter. “Whoever you are, you can just go away! You’re frightening my dog! We don’t want any!”
The moaning didn’t stop. If anything, it increased, and someone began banging on the door. Several someones, from the sound of it.
“Go away!” shouted Lesley.
They didn’t go away.
Unis stopped growling and began barking wildly when the door started caving inward. By then, it was too late to do anything about the infected who were smashing their way into the control room—but really, it had been too late since they were locked in. Lesley screamed.
Unis, who was a very good dog, fought to the end to defend her mistress, and died knowing that The Woman was safer because she had been there. Out of everyone who fell during the siege of San Diego, she may well be the only one who died at peace, knowing that she’d done her best.