* * *
1:09 A.M.
“We don’t have long,” said Vanessa, scrolling through Twitter as she walked. “People outside are reporting that they’re being moved even farther from the convention center. It looks like there’s a half-mile perimeter being established.”
“If it’s only a half-mile, they’re not using anything radioactive,” said Shawn, walking a little faster. The rest of the group matched his pace. “That’s good. That means we have a much better chance of getting the hell out of here.”
“How much farther?” asked Robert.
“I don’t know,” said Shawn. “Those damn barricades…”
“Just keep moving,” said Lynn. “That’s all we can do. Keep moving.”
They hadn’t been attacked yet, but they all knew that it was coming. So when a single blood-encrusted figure stepped from behind a nearby booth, Shawn nearly bashed his head in with the hammer. Only the figure’s quick backward stumble and cry of, “No, don’t! I’m not gone yet!” held his swing.
“Who are you?” demanded Lynn, raising her board into a defensive position.
“Matthew. Matthew Meigs. Are you clean?”
“For the moment,” said Shawn, lowering his hammer. “You’re covered in blood.”
“None of it’s mine.” Most of it was Patty’s. Dear, sweet Patty, who had only ever wanted to be married, and to go to the San Diego Comic-Con, and to love him… Matthew shook his head, willing the thought away. “The back wall’s no better than the main floor, and in some ways, it’s worse. A lot of people fled there. My group among them.” All those hands, grasping, and all those teeth…
“That’s where the exit is, and we have to get out of here,” said Robert. “We don’t have a choice.”
“We’re all infected.” Matthew’s tone was soft, even resigned. “It’s in the blood.”
“You’re the only one with blood on you,” said Leita.
“For now. But if you fight your way back to that wall, even if you make it there, you won’t be clean anymore. You may not be bitten, but you won’t be clean. And then what? If you make it out, then what? You spread this? You take it out into the world?”
“It had to come from somewhere,” said Vanessa.
“That doesn’t mean we have to take it back there.” Matthew shook his head. “You’ll never walk away. You’ll just find yourself on the business end of a sniper rifle instead of dying in here with the rest of us. You’ve no cause to believe me. I know that. But you can save yourselves a great deal of pain by staying away from that wall.” He looked at his bloody fingers. “As for me, I got a drop in my eye when the bastards took my wife, before I turned and ran. I haven’t long. I’m going back to where I left a friend of mine, in a little room with a door that shuts. I think I’ll go inside and shut the door behind me. Elle deserves the company. It was nice to meet you all.”
With that, the blood-covered little British man turned and walked away, vanishing quickly into the maze of aisles.
“What a crock of shit,” said Robert. “Come on. Let’s move.”
None of the others moved at all. Shawn and Lynn were looking at each other.
“Do you think he was telling the truth?” asked Lynn.
“It’s possible,” said Shawn. “It seems probable, even, given the reaction we’ve seen so far.”
“So what do we do?”
“Lorelei,” said Shawn quietly. It was all he had to say. They couldn’t take this out of the convention center, not when their daughter was out there, not when she would run to them at the first chance she got. He turned and looked to the others. “I can’t tell you what to do. It’s not my place. But Lynn and I won’t be carrying this infection out into the world. We’re going back to the booth. Seems a fitting place to wait for what comes next.”
Leita reached over and took her brother’s hand. Robert looked down at the floor. “We’ll come with you.”
“Me, too,” said Vanessa. She smiled, just a little. “Never leave a man behind. That’s what it means to be part of a crew, right? Never, ever leave a man behind.”
“It was an honor,” said Shawn.
“Same, Captain,” replied Vanessa.
They turned, five people in a convention center given, now, mostly to the dead, and slowly made their way back to where they’d started.
* * *
1:24 A.M.
The dizziness was coming in waves by the time Matthew reached the precinct. He’d passed a few of the fully infected on the way—not many; most were at the back wall, but enough—and none of them had troubled him. They knew their own.
No sounds were coming from inside. Either Stuart had killed her after he turned or they were both in there waiting, silently, for escape. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered at this point.
“Hello, Elle. I came back to keep you company,” said Matthew, and opened the door.
LORELEI TUTT’S APARTMENT,
LONDON, ENGLAND, JUNE 1, 2044
The Browncoats on Lorelei’s recording are singing. They began shortly after they reached their booth, and have continued since, asserting over and over that they’re still free. Lorelei is singing with them, tears running down her face, and she keeps singing when the white flash of the bombs hitting the convention center wipes the image away. She knows the words they never had the chance to say. There’s something beautiful in that, a sort of immortality for the people who died that day.
The screen goes from white to black. Lorelei goes silent. I keep watching the screen, giving her a chance to compose herself as we both pretend that I didn’t see her cry. Finally, when she’s ready, she speaks again.
LORELEI: So that’s what happened. That’s everything I know about what happened.
MAHIR: I have other pieces of the story. I was able to interview Sigrid Robinson. She knew more about what happened with that poor man who warned your parents off going to the rear.
LORELEI: I’ve always wondered. If they hadn’t met him…would they have made it out? The Rising happened. A few more people wouldn’t have changed anything.
I’ve seen the blueprints of the convention center as it was before it fell. I know the answer. I do not hesitate.
MAHIR: No. They would simply have died in a different place, and without making the right decision.
LORELEI: That’s good. That’s…good.
She turns to look at the poster behind the television set. It looks almost like a comic book cover, lovingly drawn: a group of people, some of whom I now recognize, standing against a field of stars. Their clothing looks something like the American West, something like what they wore in the video. They are looking off into the distance, staring forever toward a future they died before seeing.
Beneath them is written a simple epigram:
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, 2014
KEEP FLYING
MAHIR: Thank you for speaking with me today.
LORELEI: I miss them.
For once in my life, I have nothing to say, and so I don’t say anything at all.
* * *
Remember, when you talk about the Rising: The story you know is not the only one that contains the truth. We may never find all the pieces, and some of them may be broken beyond understanding. But we must all, in the words of a doomed man to his child, keep flying.
It is the only way left for us to honor the dead.
—Mahir Gowda
If you enjoyed SAN DIEGO 2014,
look out for
FEED
BOOK ONE OF THE NEWSFLESH TRILOGY
by Mira Grant
Chapter 1
Our story opens where countless stories have ended in the last twenty-six years: with an idiot—in this case, my brother Shaun—deciding it would be a good idea to go out and poke a zombie with a stick to see what happens. As if we didn’t already know what happens when you mess with a zombie: The zombie turns around and bites you, and you become the thing you poked. This isn’t a surprise. It hasn’t been a surprise for more than twenty years, and if you want to get technical, it wasn’t a surprise then.
When the infected first appeared—heralded by screams that the dead were rising and judgment day was at hand—they behaved just like the horror movies had been telling us for decades that they would behave. The only surprise was that this time, it was really happening.
There was no warning before the outbreaks began. One day, things were normal; the next, people who were supposedly dead were getting up and attacking anything that came into range. This was upsetting for everyone involved, except for the infected, who were past being upset about that sort of thing. The initial shock was followed by running and screaming, which eventually devolved into more infection and attacking, that being the way of things. So what do we have now, in this enlightened age twenty-six years after the Rising? We have idiots prodding zombies with sticks, which brings us full circle to my brother and why he probably won’t live a long and fulfilling life.
“Hey, George, check this out!” he shouted, giving the zombie another poke in the chest with his hockey stick. The zombie gave a low moan, swiping at him ineffectually. It had obviously been in a state of full viral amplification for some time and didn’t have the strength or physical dexterity left to knock the stick out of Shaun’s hands. I’ll give Shaun this much: He knows not to bother the fresh ones at close range. “We’re playing patty-cake!”
“Stop antagonizing the locals and get back on the bike,” I said, glaring from behind my sunglasses. His current buddy might be sick enough to be nearing its second, final death, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a healthier pack roaming the area. Santa Cruz is zombie territory. You don’t go there unless you’re suicidal, stupid, or both. There are times when even I can’t guess which of those options applies to Shaun.
“Can’t talk right now! I’m busy making friends with the locals!”