by Ash Parsons
The audience laughs. On the video screen above the stage, the camera zooms in as Linus laughs along, and yes, yes, he’s quite handsome, with floppy sandy-blond hair and blue eyes that look simultaneously sad, gentle, and happy all at once.
Soulful, I guess you’d call them.
Later I will probably take it to heart that I’m not as goodlooking as these people. But right now, it’s just too much fun being in the audience with them up onstage.
“But seriously, the reaction to you two together! That was fast, even for the zombie apocalypse!” Michaela says.
Annie laughs, and stretches a hand toward Linus. “Well, I’m lucky.”
On the video screen above, I can see in close-up how Linus’s eyes go soft and puppy-dog-ish when he looks at her. The audience holds their breath.
“Why lucky?” Michaela asks.
“It’s how the Brits put it,” Annie says. And her hand extends. Linus takes it gently. “I rather fancy him.”
Siggy is going to lose her goddamn mind.
The audience whoops and screams. Onstage Linus and Annie smile shyly, still holding hands.
“Is that so, Linus?” Michaela prompts.
Linus clears his throat, but it sounds shy, like he’s nervous. “Yes, I mean, you all saw it. We had instant chemistry. And we spend so much time together.”
The audience coos and sighs.
“Oh my gosh, this is a Senoybia ZombieCon! exclusive!” Michaela yelps into her mic. “Thank you, Annie, and Linus, for sharing your new relationship with us!”
We shriek and clap.
“Okay, well, now let me ask you two, Hunter and James,” Michaela begins, moving to center stage.
James interrupts her. He flicks a thumb at himself, then at Hunter.
“We’re not dating,” he teases, smiling out at us.
Hunter laughs.
Most of the audience laughs, too, but there are a couple of playful boos.
There are so many ships on this show, let me tell you.
“Well, that’s okay. Give it time,” Michaela teases back. “Maybe it’s a slow burn.”
Just the right, fun tone. Makes the playful boos turn into cheers, and the audience laughs along.
She’s a really good host.
“What’s your favorite part about the new setting and how—” Michaela asks, glancing at her card—but she doesn’t get a chance to finish the question.
A man is hoisting himself onstage.
Linus leans forward—holding a hand up in a stop gesture—“Hey, mate,” he says into the mic. “You’ve got to stay off the stage.”
The man rushes at Michaela, who yelps and takes several steps back.
The man grabs her mic and whirls to us.
He’s familiar. Wearing a faded JUST DO IT T-shirt and jeans. A battered backpack slung over his shoulders.
It’s . . . I swear it’s the same guy who was messing with the crash-bar doors over on Autograph Alley.
“None of you are safe! The virus is here!”
A few people boo and hoot from the audience.
A yellow-shirted security guy on the ballroom floor is yelling into a radio and trying and failing to hoist his bulky self onto the tall stage.
The guy who grabbed the mic is pacing, pulling back a hank of greasy hair in agitation.
“I’m a scientist, a biomedical researcher from the CDC. You’ve all been locked in, okay? The whole convention center is in lockdown. There’s been an exposure. But I’ve locked us in here, in the ballroom and the exhibit hall downstairs. It’s the only way we stand a chance. Do you understand? The contagion is fatal—always fatal. There’s no cure, but if we can isolate—”
“Get off the stage!” a man’s voice yells.
Michaela stands to the side, holding out a hand for the mic, smiling with the expression you give a shrieking toddler.
A second security guard in a yellow shirt walks out onto the stage.
The scientist edges away, putting the row of seated actors between himself and the approaching guard.
“The infected are here. We need to establish quarantine procedures,” he pants into the mic as he darts to the opposite side of the row of chairs, keeping it between himself and the security guard. “We don’t have much time!”
Hoots and laughter scatter through the audience as the scientist runs back around to the opposite side of the chairs.
The security guard chases him like it’s a preschool game.
Another security guard trots onstage, then two more. They split and approach the scientist from both sides.
The audience applauds.
“You think you know zombies?” the scientist yelps into the mic, and he ducks under the reaching arm of one of the guards.
He zigs around another set of grasping arms, vaults over Simon Wong in his chair, darts forward to the stage edge.
He stands, looking out at us, his eyes wide, wild. His voice sharp, like a slap.
“The zombie apocalypse is here now.”
The audience cheers.
“Listen to me! It’s the only way we’ll survive!”
The audience hoots and shrieks applause. A guy yells, “Bring it on!”
The guards walk forward, hands up, telegraphing easy, easy, fella.
Behind me, there’s a commotion, rippling through the pod of us clustered at the back of the room.
People are talking, normal-volume voices, suddenly turning away from the stage.
“What’s going on?” Imani asks the man standing behind us.
“Someone said the door is locked,” he says, shrugging, like he doesn’t really believe it.
The back of my neck prickles.
“This better not be a performance art thing,” the man grumbles.
Imani looks at me, and I can tell she feels the same unease.
The guy onstage who says he’s really a scientist. Could he be dangerous? He was tampering with that door in the exhibit hall. Has he locked us in? I’m suddenly grateful we all had to go through security, so we know no one has a gun, at least.
“Let’s move,” I say. “I don’t like this.”
“Follow me,” Imani says, and leads the way, weaving through the crowd at the back, moving away from the doors, moving away from the crowd of people straining to see the stage, working our way parallel to the stage, wriggling through clumps of standing people.
We cut left, Imani’s Disney trick, moving through the standing people who line the back of the hall.
We get to the side aisle, where Imani stops and we look around. About ten rows in front of us stands the camera platform. There’s a small patch of empty floor on every side. I nod at it, and we leave the wall and head for it. I’m thinking we can put our backs to the platform at least, and we’ll be able to look back and see the doors more clearly.
And then it happens.
There’s a boom from the central set of doors at the back of the hall. The boom increases to a sudden incessant banging.
The attention of the crowd is splintered, with half swiveling their heads to look at the commotion in the back of the hall, while the others keep hooting and mocking the guy on the stage.
“Here,” I say, pulling Imani close as we step into the semi-sheltered space at the front of the camera platform.
“Can you see Siggy and Blair?” Imani asks, straining to see our friends in the second row.
“No,” I say. “She’s still there, though, right in front of Linus.”
Imani keeps looking.
The platform itself is only about five feet tall, just enough of a rise that the camera and its operator are assured a clear shot of the stage.
The camera operator, a woman with wavy black hair and tawny skin, spares a glance down at us. She’s dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans like the r
est of the crew.
She doesn’t let go of the camera arm, but she tips her head at the ground.
“Hey, girls, you can’t stand there. See the yellow tape?”
A tape line forms a box-shaped barrier on the carpet around the camera platform.
There’s a cheer as onstage a security guy finally gets a grip on the sleeve of the scientist’s shirt.
“Okay, we’re moving,” I say to the camerawoman.
But we don’t move.
I’m following my instincts, and my instinct is to keep the platform to my back, and to stay away from the back of the hall.
The echoing booms continue from the closed sets of doors at the back of the hall.
“It’s them! The infected!” the scientist yelps into the mic. He struggles, and his sleeve rips as he tries to pull away from the guard.
Another guard swiftly moves up behind him, unseen.
“There’s no cure! It’s too late for them, but we can save ourselves if we—”
The sneaky guard jumps at his back, pulling the scientist’s arms down and away, then locking them up high, some kind of wrestling move—a Melvin. No, a full Dawson. Something like that.
The mic drags on fabric, amplifying the rustling and thumps of the struggle.
The scientist keeps yelling, but the mic is away from his mouth so I can’t make out what he’s saying. No doubt more about the infected, how to save ourselves from the infected, or how the door is locked.
Impossible.
Except the doors are locked, right?
But he did that.
Then who’s banging on the doors?
The mic falls, landing on the stage with a thump so loud it gives a feedback whine.
The barrage of banging on the doors intensifies. It almost sounds like a large animal, a bull or something, running repeatedly into the door.
Two of the security guards have the scientist pinned between them, hauling him across the stage, his arms and shoulders jacked so high by the wrestling hold he’s stumbling along on his tiptoes.
Michaela steps forward and picks up the mic. She turns it off, and the shriek of feedback silences.
On the stage, the actors are all looking at each other with concern or amusement, as they once again become the center of attention.
Michaela turns the mic back on.
“Okay, sorry for that disruption. Whoa.” She smiles out at us, but on the big screen above her head we can see that her smile is edged with a tension that wasn’t there before.
The pounding on the doors is incessant.
“Thank you to con security, you guys are awesome. A round of applause, everyone.”
The audience applauds dutifully.
Except for those of us who were standing at the back. We’re not really paying attention, not even to the actors onstage.
Instead, unspoken, and en masse, people are all moving into the ballroom, away from the walls.
Away from the doors.
Imani and I stay in front of the camera stand, set near the aisle, away from the clump of standing-room-only audience.
We ignore the dirty looks the camerawoman keeps giving us.
It feels better to have my back to something, even if it’s just a black carpet-covered square of low platform.
“Sounds like that guy might have some weirdo friends, huh?” Michaela says into the mic. “Sit tight. Security is working on it.”
The banging on the door intensifies, but it has no rhythm, just a flurry of blows, deeply unsettling.
It doesn’t stop.
Four security guards make their way down the twin aisles of the hall, moving fast past the approximately thirty rows of seats, converging on the central set of metal doors where the banging is the loudest.
One of the guards is talking into his radio. No doubt trying to call up the rest of the security team outside.
“There’s not enough security,” Imani murmurs. “Listen to that pounding. That’s way more than one person.”
We look at each other, eyes saucer-wide.
And the thought registers on my face at the same time I see it reflected on hers . . .
What if it’s real?
No. Ridiculous.
You’re just scaring yourself.
Where is Siggy?
I crane my neck to locate her. Since we’ve moved to the left, there’s now the entire middle section of seats between us. It takes a moment for me to reorient myself, then I spot her, bright hair shining like a flag.
She’s blowing kisses at Linus—so clearly the banging doesn’t feel as scary from the front of the ballroom.
“Okay, let’s get back on track,” Michaela says over the banging. “They’ll sort it out, let’s just deprive them of the oxygen of our attention, right?”
She hands a second mic into the row of actors on the stage. “Cuellar, a question for you first.”
The actor with the aggressive energy nods, reaching for the mic. His dark sunglasses make him look like a biker, or some corrupt cop or drill sergeant. Insectoid and ominous.
I’m sure he’s not like his character. He just comes across that way.
“Sure thing, Michaela,” he says into the mic. “Whatcha got?”
“What’s your favorite—” Michaela begins, voice raised over the continuing disruption.
There’s a blistering barrage of bangs on the door.
Cuellar laughs into his mic. “Little pig, little pig, let me in,” he chants ominously into the mic.
I wish he hadn’t done that.
A shiver races over my skin.
I lean around the platform again, looking back toward the doors.
The security guys batter at the doors from the inside, putting their weight into it, trying to budge them open.
“Imani.” My voice is tight. “They are locked!”
“Isn’t that a fire hazard or something?” Imani asks. Her arms are clenched tight across her stomach.
“Yeah, they should be unlocked,” I say. “I don’t like this.”
And that’s when the doors suddenly give way.
13
There’s a moment of surprised and curious silence as every pair of eyes in the room turns to the center set of doors, now yawning open.
Then someone, no, several someones, lots of them, pour into the ballroom.
There are screams, but I can’t see what’s happening. Just a mass of people pushing through the doors into the ballroom, moving . . . there’s something wrong about the way they’re moving.
Fast, but uncoordinated. A herky-jerky, twitching lurch. Like a puppeteer is pulling their strings, yanking them forward in a way opposite to how most people move.
But even from where I’m standing, I can see that audience members are pushing, shoving, screaming to get away.
Without questioning the instinct, I kick at the bottom of the platform, parting the pleated black skirt that covers the spindly struts. My foot finds a point of leverage, and I hoist myself up, pulling at the base of the camera stand.
The camerawoman reaches down and pulls me up. Then we pull up Imani, scrambling after me in a split second.
A moment ago, the camerawoman was asking us to move away from the platform. Now she’s helped us both up onto it. She’s looks younger than my mom, with surprise lines grooved into her forehead above wide brown eyes.
We stare at each other in shocked amazement, then the woman points to the doors, behind us.
“They’re fighting,” she says.
I follow the line of her pointing finger, looking at the mass of people at the back of the ballroom, churning in a pressing ball, like dancers in a mosh pit.
Sorta.
Sorta like that. Except more violent. More shoving, more darting, lunging movement. More bodies falling, actually fall
ing, to the floor, then covered by the next pressing wave of bodies pushing into the ballroom.
They’re still coming in.
From the top of the camera platform, I can see what I couldn’t standing on the hall floor.
I can see the people who rushed into the ballroom, moving so strangely, jerked along by impatient strings.
I can see what they’re doing.
“That’s not fighting,” Imani says.
It’s attacking.
As I watch, a man, one of those who rushed into the ballroom, makes it through the churning ball of people at the doorway, breaking into the nearly open space at the end of the aisle. He then lunges at a woman. She shrieks and pulls away, into the back row of seats, climbing over people.
The man looks wrong, so wrong. His jaw hangs open as if broken, somehow, slanted and loose. A dark red liquid, a goo, that’s what it is, scientific term must be “gross goo,” drips out of his mouth steadily, like his throat is somehow a spigot left running in the winter.
A steady drip-thread of . . . goo.
Worse than that, somehow, is his skin. It’s . . . mottled like a vulture’s egg, gray and white and shiny at once, like a fever or—or—or like—
My rational brain shies away from the thought. From the idea. From the word.
At the same time, that other, panicked part of my brain gibbers the word incessantly, a panicked loop.
Corpse. Like a corpse. A corpse in water, except not bloated. But that color. That texture. Like a corpse. He’s a corpse.
A zombie.
The zombie man jerks sideways, shoulders first, then legs, then an arm flings out. His jaw hangs open, but his head lifts, somehow making his mouth wider, as he throws himself at a man, who’s just standing there, staring in shocked horror.
The zombie brings him down with an uncoordinated falling attack, with complete disregard for his own safety, the zombie just throws himself at the shocked man, bringing him down.
The man shrieks, falling backward hard, his head connecting with the back of a chair.
It must have knocked him out because he doesn’t make another sound, or move, as the zombie doesn’t pause, doesn’t stop, just presses his broken jaw into the man’s neck, leveraging and pulling down with his upper teeth, pulling and tearing side to side, like a dog with a rag toy.