“Yeah,” said Shawn. “Look for people talking about the zombie apocalypse. I need to know whether this is the end of the world.”
Wisely, Robert didn’t say anything else. He just moved to one of the booth’s folding chairs, sat down, and started to search. Shawn watched him go. Then he picked up another hammer, and turned to his work.
* * *
11:30 P.M.
Elle’s phone pinged, signaling that her e-mail had successfully been sent. It was a familiar enough sound that it didn’t wake her. Sleeping sitting up with her back braced against a door wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, but she was tired enough and wrung-out enough from her day that she didn’t care anymore. On the other side of the replica office, Matthew and Patty slept sunk deep into their own respective dreamlands. Patty seemed almost entirely boneless, a limp puddle across the model of Indiction Rivers’s desk. Matthew was slightly more upright, but only slightly, with one arm curved protectively around her back.
Then the phone rang, and all three of them snapped awake. Matthew was on his feet before his brain and his body fully caught up with each other. Patty sat up, blinking bemusedly. And Elle, who knew that ring tone better than she knew almost anything else in the world, was simply reaching for the phone. It was reflex. If she’d been awake and able to think about what she was doing, she might not have answered…but she was half-asleep, and sleep can make you careless. The phone was almost to her ear before she realized what she was doing, and by then it was too late.
“Sig?”
“Elle?” The edge of panic on her girlfriend’s voice was painful. Elle winced.
Sigrid demanded, “What the hell is this e-mail I just got? What’s going on in there?”
“I’m sorry. I set my memo function to auto-send, and someone must have managed to turn the wireless in here back on. You weren’t supposed to see that.” Not while I was still breathing, anyway.
“The police have cleared and cordoned off the Gaslight District. The hotels were evacuated almost an hour ago.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m still in our room. I tried to go down to the convention center when I realized you were stuck there, but there are police blocking all the access roads. They’re not letting anyone near.” Common sense dictated that “the talent” stay as close to the convention center as possible, to make sure that they could get to and from their panels quickly and easily. Sigrid and Elle were staying at a very nice B&B almost two miles off-site. If Sigrid couldn’t enjoy the convention, she could at least enjoy their accommodations—and it made it less likely that there would be a public slip where one of Elle’s fans might see.
Elle had never been so grateful for her paranoia. “I’m glad,” she said quietly. “I don’t want you anywhere near here.”
“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.”