by Mira Grant
“Daddy, you’re scaring me.”
Her father laughed unsteadily. That just scared her worse. Her father might say that she was strong, but she’d learned it from him. He had always been the rock in her life, and right now he sounded like he was on the verge of crumbling.
“I’m scared, too, Lorelei,” he said. “Remember those blog posts you tried to make me read? The ones about the people going rabid and attacking each other?”
“You mean the ones about the zombies?” whispered Lorelei.
“I’m not quite ready to use the Z word, but yes, those are the ones. Honey, something like that is going on here. Some people managed to lock the doors to the exhibit hall before too many sick folks could get inside, but we’re sort of stuck now, and we don’t know how much trouble we’re in. I want you to do me a huge favor. It’s going to mean keeping it together and staying calm for me. Can you do that?”
“Yes, Daddy.” Lorelei was still whispering. She couldn’t seem to make her voice get any louder.
“I need you to go down to the base office and tell them that we have a situation here at the convention center. I’m not in any position to contain it; I have to worry about our people. If they ask why I didn’t call this in myself, tell them that some idiot tried to play hero and shut off our wireless. None of us have a signal. If we hadn’t paid for the walkie-talkie feature, I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”
Shawn sounded totally calm. Somehow, all that did was make Lorelei feel even worse. She licked suddenly dry lips before asking, “Is—is Mom okay?”
“Your mother’s fine, or as close to fine as any of us can be right now. She’s currently helping Leita and Robert get the edges of our booth secured. The people next to us hadn’t shown up when the doors locked, so we’re expanding into their space for the time being, getting things settled while we’re relatively calm.”
Lorelei took a sharp breath. She knew what it sounded like when her father was getting ready to go on a dangerous mission; there was a certain tension in his voice that spoke of knowing that he might be just a man doing a job, but that job could still turn deadly. “Daddy…”
“We’re going to be fine, Lorelei. I promise. Now just go tell base that we need assistance here, and then get back to your room. I want you to stay put until all this is taken care of. You understand me?”
“But I could—”
“Stay away from the convention center. That is an order, Lorelei. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. She finally pulled on her jeans. “I’ll get your message to base. Be careful. I don’t want to pay for this hotel room out of my allowance.” The comment was made jokingly, but there was an air of desperation behind it, as much a part of the conversation as Shawn’s tension.
“We’ll be fine,” said Shawn. “Call me as soon as you’ve spoken with base. I need to go help Rebecca.”
“Daddy—”
But it was too late. He was already gone.
7:27 P.M.
Shawn lowered his phone, looking at it with a stomach-churning mixture of panic and pride. Thank God she was already outside the hall when things went bad. Thank God she was going to be okay. Even if the rest of them wound up stuck inside for days—and at the moment, that was the worst scenario he was willing to entertain—Lorelei would be safe at the hotel, running up a big room service bill and getting mad about being left out. She’d be fine.
“Shawn…” He turned to see the tears streaming down Lynn’s normally calm face. “Did I hear that right? She made it back to the hotel? She’s okay?”
Lynn’s worst fear—Shawn’s too, although Lynn had been more vocal about it—had been Lorelei getting distracted on her way out and somehow winding up trapped in the lobby. She would have had no way to get back into the exhibit hall, and if those doors were locked, the doors to the street were probably locked as well.
But they didn’t need to worry about that. Lorelei was safe. They could worry about everything else, like how to keep themselves safe, now that they knew they didn’t have to worry about her. “She’s in her room,” Shawn said. He put a hand on Lynn’s shoulder, trying to block out the distant sounds of screaming. “She’s fine. She didn’t even know we were having problems over here. She was taking a nap when I called.”
“Oh, thank God,” whispered Lynn.
“Lorelei is on her way to the base office now to notify them of the issue here. Assuming local law enforcement isn’t already on the way, it may help if they know that we have some military personnel inside.”
“Did you tell her to stay on the base?” Lynn’s eyes widened. “Please tell me you told her to stay on the base. Please tell me she isn’t going to try coming back here.”
“I told her to stay put, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to do it.”
Lynn sighed. “I know.”
Shawn squeezed her shoulder before pulling his hand away. “It’s going to be okay, Lynn. She’s a smart girl. She won’t come back here unless it’s safe, and we’ll all be back at the hotel getting on each other’s nerves before you know it.”
“Maybe faster than that,” said Dwight from behind him. Shawn turned. The ex-Marine was holding a heavy Maglite-brand flashlight, the sort that could be used just as easily as a club when the situation demanded it. He smirked a bit at the look on Shawn’s face. “It’s not the size that counts; it’s how hard you’re willing to swing it.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Lynn.
“Rebecca and I are going to go check the parking garage. All the locks here are manual, and whatever shit’s going down started at the front of the hall. We may be able to get out the back if we’re real careful about it.”
Shawn straightened. “That’s a great idea. I’ll get Robert and—”
“No, boss. This is a scouting mission. We don’t know whether the garage has been compromised, or what might be going on back there. It’s best if we don’t risk the entire crew on something that might not pan out.” Dwight’s smirk faded into something much grimmer. “You know shit in here is going to get worse before it gets better.”
Someone in the distance screamed, punctuating his words. The screams seemed to be getting less frequent. None of them knew whether this was a good thing. None of them wanted to be the one who guessed wrong.
“All right,” said Shawn finally. They all knew that his consent was just a formality—his leadership was always conditional on the other members of the group wanting to do what he told them to do, and getting a bunch of fans to do anything was a lot like herding cats—but formalities can help a lot, when you let them. “Take Rebecca and anything you think you might need. Report back here.”
“All right. And, boss?”
“Yeah?”
“If we don’t come back in half an hour, don’t send anyone looking for us. Either we’ve made it out and we’re coming back with help, or we didn’t make it and we’re not coming back at all. There’s no sense in you throwing good people into a meat grinder for our sakes.”
For a long moment, Shawn didn’t say anything. Then he nodded and saluted the other man. “Good luck, soldier.”
“Oorah,” replied Dwight solemnly as he returned the salute. Somehow, the strangeness of the moment did nothing to rob the traditional battle cry of the United States Marines of its efficacy. Then he turned and walked away, off to find Rebecca.
Lynn Tutt stepped up next to her husband, watching Dwight go. “Is it silly of me to be afraid that we’re never going to see him again?” she asked.
“No,” said Shawn. “You’re not the only one.”
“Oh, good. I’d hate to be silly right now.”
Shawn took her hand, and the two of them stood there for a moment, and neither of them felt silly in the least.
7:30 P.M.
“The worst of it is, Unis, I don’t even know how we got up here.” Lesley Smith, British journalist and sudden shut-in, gave the chair she was perched on a little kick. It spun in another l
azy circle, carrying her with it. Her view of the room remained the same: almost total blackness, broken here and there by smears of light. “It’s a bloody joke.” Her chair drifted to a stop. She didn’t kick it again.
Unis lifted her head off her paws, ears cocked inquisitively upward. The Woman was speaking. The Woman was using her name. Perhaps that meant that something was about to be requested of her—but no, The Woman had returned to scowling at the big flat place. As long as The Woman wasn’t scowling at Unis, all was right with the world. Unis yawned and put her head back down.
The big flat place that Lesley was scowling at was a control panel of some kind. She’d been able to work that much out by feel, running her fingers over the dials and buttons with labels she couldn’t read. As for what it controlled… no one had thought to label anything in braille. Why would they? It wasn’t like there was any chance a woman with severely impaired vision would ever be locked in their little control room, unable to figure out how to turn the damn lights on. That would just be silly.
The room they were in had two large glass windows looking out over the convention center’s main exhibit hall. Thousands of people were locked in down there, and Lesley was locked in up here, along with her guide dog, half a bottle of water, and a granola bar. And no bathroom. And no lights.
“I’m so glad I came to Comic-Con,” Lesley muttered bitterly, giving the control panel another spiteful glare. She could still hear the madmen who’d chased her up the stairs milling about in the convention center outside. The door between them was thick enough that she wasn’t worried about anyone breaking in—well, she wasn’t worried much, and that was the best she could say at the moment.
Unis thumped her tail once against the floor, acknowledging that she’d heard The Woman speaking, but didn’t otherwise move. Unis was resting. Unis had already had a long day.
If Unis had been able to speak, she could have told The Woman how they reached the small, safe room with no other people in it, the one with the door that could be shut, and locked, to make safety where there had been only danger. She could have told The Woman that when she’d been given the command to get away from the bad people who smelled like blood and sick—and “Unis, away!” was such a rare command, a danger command, that she obeyed it even more fervently than she obeyed all the others—when she’d been given that command, she had followed it to the letter. She had led The Woman to this safe place, this good place, because she, Unis, was a Good Dog.
Unis let her tail smack the floor again. Lesley glanced over toward the flat-coated retriever and smiled despite her anxiety.
“Silly dog,” she said. Then she went back to glaring at the control board.
8:03 P.M.
It had taken longer for Dwight and Rebecca to reach the back of the hall than they had expected. Preview Night had barely begun when the doors closed, but thousands of people had still managed to cram themselves inside, and many of them had fled for the walls when the chaos began. Several of the display booths looked more like armed encampments now. The jokingly named “webcomic district”—three half aisles of semi-affiliated booths manned by the teams from popular online comic strips—was already completely shut off to outside traffic. A surprising number of webcomic artists turned out to be pretty good with tools; they had constructed barriers over the mouths of the aisles in record time and were in the process of shoring them up with chairs and sheets of plywood scavenged from the booths at the center of their territory. It would have been impossible for anyone to get in without a crowbar. Anyone who wanted to use a crowbar would find themselves facing some stringent resistance from the assembled artists and their respective staffs, all of whom watched passersby with wary, narrowed eyes.
“It’s starting to look like a Mad Max film in here,” said Rebecca, as they finally reached the wall. Between the detour around the sealed-off webcomics district and the detour around the seating area in front of the snack bar—which had turned into an impromptu babysitting crèche and gathering place for the wounded—they had already been gone longer than either one of them wanted to be.
Dwight nodded grimly. “It’s just going to get worse from here, you know. If we don’t find a way out… how many of these people do you think remembered to bring food or water? How many people with medical conditions didn’t bring an extra dose of their medication?” He hooked a thumb toward the snack bar, still being manned by anxious-looking employees. “If those people had a brain in their heads, they’d lock up and run. There’s going to be a riot when folks start getting hungry, and this place is going to be the epicenter.”
“We have food,” said Rebecca, looking shaken.
“We also have a lot of people who’ve got each other’s backs. Besides, Leita and Shawn have got everybody continuing the fortifications while we’re away. We’re going to come back to an impenetrable fortress. Just you watch.”
Rebecca sighed. “I’d just like it if we made it back.”
Dwight smiled, nudging her in the ribs with his elbow. “Come on. This is Comic-Con. How dangerous can it be?”
In the distance, someone screamed. Rebecca raised an eyebrow, and just looked at him. They kept walking.
“Do you really think it’s the zombie apocalypse?” asked Rebecca, after they’d traveled another fifteen yards or so through the crowded hall. At least most of the people near the wall were relatively nonviolent unless approached too quickly, and very few of them had visible injuries. Rebecca paled every time she saw someone with blood on their shirt, but managed not to keel over. There were times when a fear of blood became a genuine inconvenience, and this was one of them.
“I don’t know.” Dwight shook his head. “There’s been some really weird stuff on the Internet lately. I just wish we could get online from in here.”
“The wireless will come back eventually. It has to.” The exhibit hall security officers who were supposed to be flanking the door to the garage were gone. Fortunately, it looked just like every other locked door in the center.
Unfortunately, it was just as locked as the rest of them.
Dwight gave the bar one last, futile shove. “This is hopeless,” he said. “We should get back to the others and tell them we’re stuck in here.”
Rebecca smiled. “Oh, ye of little faith.” She dug her hand into her messenger bag, coming up with a Swiss Army Knife. “My dad didn’t believe in leaving a key under the mat. He said it was a security risk, even if I was supernaturally skilled in the area of losing my keys.” She pushed Dwight to the side, crouching down in front of the lock.
Dwight blinked, watching her. “I take it you decided to find other avenues for getting into the house after you’d been locked out.”
“If by ‘other avenues,’ you mean ‘taught myself to pick locks out of an old Boy Scout manual I found at the library,’ you’re totally right.” Rebecca carefully inserted the thinnest blade on her Swiss Army Knife into the keyhole and began to twist. “Dad was actually really proud of me for that. He said it showed initiative. And then he grounded me for a month for picking locks without permission.”
“You have a weird family, Rebecca,” said Dwight.
“Oh, you have no idea.” There was a soft click as the lock turned. Rebecca withdrew her knife and turned to beam up at Dwight as she straightened. “But my weird family just got us into the parking garage. Let’s go.”
“Ladies first,” said Dwight, and clicked his Maglite on.
8:05 P.M.
The lights were off inside the parking garage, but that didn’t matter as much as it could have. It was summer in San Diego. The sun had only recently gone down, and every light outside the convention center was turned on full-watt, as if that could make up for the hour. Even so, Dwight’s Maglite provided much-needed extra illumination as the pair began walking carefully through the maze of close-packed cars. It seemed even more deserted after the chaos inside the convention center.
“We should cut around the marina,” whispered Rebecca. “That way, we
get cell signal and can call for help, but we don’t get caught up in the crowds out front.”
“Agreed,” whispered Dwight. The doors had closed early enough that there were probably almost as many people outside as there were inside. Thousands of them, crammed onto the sidewalks, trying to get into a sealed convention center. Even if the riots had spread, new fans would have been arriving almost constantly. Why—
Dwight stopped walking, heart sinking as he fully thought through the possible ramifications of the Comic-Con crowd. Rebecca kept going for a few more steps. Then she stopped as well, turning back and frowning at him.
“Dwight? What’s wrong?”
“What if this is the zombie apocalypse?” he asked, voice still kept low. “Do you really think we managed to lock them all inside?”
Rebecca’s eyes widened, visible even through the gloom. Then she nodded. Just once; once was enough. Dwight turned, and together they ran for the door back into the exhibit hall.
They didn’t run fast enough.
There weren’t many infected in the garage. Maybe a dozen, all fully amplified and demonstrating the common infected tropism toward dark, shadowy places. They were well fed and had left the pursuit of food to other, hungrier individuals. But Dwight and Rebecca had come too close and had triggered the need to hunt. As they ran, the infected pursued, moving with the graceless speed of the freshly seroconverted.
The infected caught Dwight first, bearing the former Marine down to the garage floor with the weight of their bodies. The Maglite flew from his fingers and went skittering across the concrete. “Rebecca!” he shouted, all efforts at subtlety forgotten. “Keep running!”
Rebecca looked back and screamed. The infected were already tearing into Dwight. Blood spurted across the concrete like oil. A wave of dizziness washed over her, costing her a few precious steps. She managed to swallow it, fighting it back, and resumed her flight toward the door.
She knew before she got there that she was never going to make it. The infected were too close, and she was outnumbered. All she could do was lead them into the unprotected rear of the convention center, where a bunch of scared people were trying to hide. It wouldn’t be a fair fight. It wouldn’t be the right thing to do. So Rebecca Safier became one of the first heroes of the Rising with one simple gesture: When she reached the door, she stopped running.