For a brief moment, all Kelly could think of was the pale-faced girl with the bite on her arm and the resignation in her eyes. That girl had known what the real score in the convention center was. She had known that the time for hope was long over.
Somehow, Kelly couldn’t bring herself to make the same leap. “Fine,” she said. “You’ve convinced me—and since we just came from the front of the center, we can show you which way not to go. Let’s go turn the Internet back on.”
The older of the two men, the one Pris had identified as Marty, eyed Kelly suspiciously. “Not to sound like I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth, but why should we trust you, young lady?”
“Because I have a spear and you don’t, and right now, that means I’m a lot more likely to stay alive than you are,” said Kelly, in what she hoped was a reasonable tone of voice. She wanted to yell. She just wasn’t quite sure at whom. “Look, listen to me, don’t listen to me, it’s no skin off my nose. But if you really want to fix the wireless, you probably shouldn’t go sneering at anybody who’s actually willing to help you.”
“Besides, she hasn’t stabbed me or anything yet,” said Stuart, in what was probably intended as a helpful tone. “She sort of saved me, actually, when those freaks first came breaking into the hall. You know. Before we realized that they were zombies.”
“We still don’t know that ‘zombie’ is the right word to use here,” said Kelly.
Eric rolled his eyes. “You’re not one of those people who calls it ‘the Z word’ and refuses to say it, are you? Look: If what we’re dealing with here is that disease people have been whispering about in the blogosphere for the last few weeks, then ‘zombie’ is the best word there is. Are they alive? Yeah. But they weren’t at one point, and if they get hold of you, you won’t be for long. That’s zombie enough for me.”
“Semantic arguments won’t turn the wireless on,” said Marty.
“Then let’s go,” said Pris, and started walking. Marty and Eric followed her.
Kelly and Stuart exchanged one last look. Then they fell into step beside the trio, starting back the way they’d come.
* * *
10:10 P.M.
Patty was still asleep, slumped against the replica of Indy Rivers’s desk. Matthew had joined her, slipping reluctantly into a light doze. Only Elle remained awake, sitting with her back to the room’s thin plywood door and listening to the sounds of the convention center outside. Lacking anything better to do, she had her phone out and was using the memo function to type out a message.
Sigrid—
If you have this, it’s because someone has given you my personal effects. (That may be wrong. I can never remember the difference between ‘effect’ and ‘affect.’ That’s your job.) I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you alone. I’m sorry I didn’t come home. But I’m not sorry that you aren’t with me, because I’m scared, Sig. I’m scared enough that having you here would just scare me more. I’d be so afraid of losing you that I wouldn’t be able to breathe. It’s better this way. Really.
You’re probably watching this on the news by now. Comic-Con is a pretty big deal, and something like this happening to it has got to be a headline. I’m sorry if you’re scared for me. If it helps at all, I’m scared for me too. That probably doesn’t help. I wouldn’t want to know that you were scared. I’d want to be there to hold you, and to take the fear away.
Patty stirred in her sleep, making a small protesting noise as she rolled over. Elle looked up, eyes narrowed. Patty didn’t move again, and Elle went back to tapping laboriously away.
I love you, Sigrid. I haven’t always been as good at showing that as I should have been, but it’s true. If I make it out of here, everything’s going to change. No more letting agents or focus groups run my life—run our life. I promise you. I am so scared, but I have never seen things as clearly as I do right now.
Yours always, Elle.
Elle hit “save” and put her phone back into her pocket, slumping against the door. She felt better for having written the letter, even if the odds were good that Sigrid would never see it. It was the sort of thing people did in horror movies, usually right before they got eaten. She’d always thought they were idiots for attracting the attention of whatever force controlled the narrative. Now, though, she finally understood why they did it.
They did it because it felt like closure, and when you already felt like you were going to die, closure was just about the only thing left to aspire to. She closed her eyes, picturing Sigrid’s face, tight with concentration or lit up from within as she laughed. Elle smiled a little. Sigrid was always beautiful, even when she was angry.
Holding the image of Sigrid’s face firmly in her head, Elle relaxed against the door and finally let herself drift into sleep.
* * *
11:11 P.M.
It took only an hour to get back to the front of the hall. It was faster partially because Kelly and Stuart knew the lay of the land now—where the blocked halls were, where the clusters of scared or wounded people had built up—and partially because they were going against the flow of traffic. Almost everyone was heading for the back, where the bathrooms and the food court were, and where there weren’t any bloodstains on the carpet.
Yet.
Kelly found herself eyeing the shadows with her hands clenched tight around her spear, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Pris and Eric walked almost carelessly, not seeming to realize how much danger they were in. Even Stuart seemed more relaxed now that they were in a larger group, like that was going to make any difference to people crazy enough to attack with their teeth. Only Marty seemed to understand how dire the situation really was. He walked quietly, with his bat swinging ready at his side.
It was hard to really focus on watching for an attack. Even with most of the people in the hall busy moving toward the rear, there were enough of them around to make it difficult to know whether something was dangerous or not. Some enterprising souls had turned to looting, either through smash-and-grabs, or simply by strolling up to booths that had been abandoned and starting to fill their complimentary Comic-Con bags. Stuart grimaced every time they passed a looter, probably thinking of his own unguarded wares. His life was worth more than all the weapons on his table, and he seemed to know that, because he didn’t say anything about going back. Privately, Kelly hoped he did get looted. Maybe if a few more people had been armed when all this started, they wouldn’t be locked inside now.
When they reached the last broad open space before entering the maze of narrower aisles leading to the locked doors at the front of the hall, Kelly stopped. “All right,” she said. “Where, exactly, are we going?”
“There.” Pris pointed up to the large glass windows that overlooked the convention center floor. “There’s supposed to be an access panel on the wall under them. We can use that to see whether anyone’s in the control room, and if not, we can try to do this manually from down here.”
“Why can’t we do that anyway?” asked Stuart.
“Because if there is somebody up there, we don’t want them to start hitting switches randomly when the alarms go off. And trying to turn the wireless on manually will trigger a bunch of alarms, at least according to the instructions I have.”
Kelly looked at their destination and sighed. “Right.”
From an architectural standpoint, Pris’s goal made perfect sense. It was a natural recess between two of the large doors leading to the lobby. There were usually trash cans and small kiosks set up there, reducing the chances of people wandering over and prying open the access panel out of simple curiosity. It was a great place to put a backup system. It was also shadowed, providing no clear line of sight, and close enough to the doors that the biting people had probably taken refuge there.
“It looks dark and stupid,” said Stuart dubiously. “I’m not really sure we should be going anywhere near there.”
“We probably shouldn’t, but we have to if we want to get the wireless on,” said Pris. She straightened up, mouth set in a thin, hard line of determination. “People need to be able to communicate with the outside world. As bad as things are, they could get worse. We need to have hope.”
Hope. What a funny idea that was. Kelly looked from Pris, so determined, so convinced that this was worth whatever it cost her, to Stuart, so scared, so ready to run back to his booth and hide from whatever was coming. Dammit. This was Comic-Con. It wasn’t supposed to be hard on anything except her bank account. “Supposed to” never changed anything. This was how things were, and what came next was up to her.
Kelly Nakata had always wondered what it felt like to truly understand that she was going to die. But here and now, in this place…
If this was the zombie apocalypse, no one was coming to let them out. They were already compromised, already potentially infected, and no sane person would open those doors ever again. If this wasn’t the zombie apocalypse—but ah, that was the problem, wasn’t it? There was nothing else that this could really be. It made too much sense. It fit the facts too well, and that meant that everyone inside the building was going to die there. They could die scared and hiding, doing nothing. Or they could try to make things a little better in whatever way they possibly could.
Kelly gave her spear an experimental twirl. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she muttered, before saying, more loudly, “All right. Marty and I are the best-armed, so we should go in first, in case of trouble. Pris, you’re next. Eric and Stuart, you bring up the rear, make sure nothing comes up from behind us to try getting in the way.”
“What do we do if something does come up behind us?” asked Stuart.
“Hit it until it stops coming,” said Kelly. “Pris, you do whatever it is you need to do to get the wireless back online.” The few people who were in earshot were turning toward them, suddenly interested in what they were hearing. It figured that mentions of a working Internet would be enough to get people’s attention, no matter what other crap was going on at the time. “This is where we start moving, or we’re going to get mobbed.”