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 held 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 a**hole 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 f**k 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.