“We have each other,” said Matthew. “We’re going to be fine.”
Outside their artificial shelter, someone screamed.
* * *
7:20 P.M.
In her family’s room at the small hotel reserved for visiting military personnel and their families, Lorelei Tutt slept and dreamt of the perfect convention. Every fan was enthusiastic and wide-eyed with wonder, not rude and shoving other people out of their way. The exclusives were plentiful, and freebies and swag flowed like water. It was wonderful. It was the kind of convention that could never exist in the real world but that a fan could spend her whole life dreaming of. It was…
It was…
It was slipping away as consciousness came oozing around the edges of her mind. Lorelei scowled, trying to force herself to stay asleep. It was no use; she was on the downhill side of waking up now, and momentum was taking over.
“—respond. I repeat, Lorelei, if you can hear me, please respond.”
“Daddy?” Lorelei opened her eyes, squinting groggily into the dim hotel room as she tried to reconcile the dream she’d been having with the note of panic in her father’s voice. He wasn’t in the room; she was alone.
Lorelei sagged back into the mattress. “Stupid dream,” she mumbled, and closed her eyes, getting ready to go back to her perfect convention.
“Lorelei Jezebelle Tutt, if you are anywhere near your phone, you will pick it up right now.”
Lorelei’s eyes snapped open. This time, there was no mistaking her father’s voice for part of the dream: It was too loud and too tense to be anything but reality. And it was coming from her jeans, which she’d left discarded on the floor when she crawled into bed.
“Daddy?” Lorelei lunged for her jeans, forgetting the blankets that were tangled around her legs. They pulled tight and she went sprawling, smacking her elbow in the process. She yelped, pausing for a few seconds to rub her injury before she grabbed her pants and fumbled her phone out of the front pocket. She had no missed calls, but several missed walkie-talkie connections. A feeling of inexplicable dread built in her chest as she raised the receiver to her mouth, pressed the walkie-talkie button, and said, “This is Lorelei Tutt. Mom? Dad? Are you there?”
There was no pause before she got her answer. As soon as she released the “transmit” button her father’s voice was there, demanding, “Lorelei? Are you all right? Where are you? Are you hurt?”
“What?” Lorelei sat on the floor of her hotel room and blinked at the phone, utterly puzzled. “What are you talking about? I’m in our hotel room. I was taking a nap.”
When she released the button, she thought she heard her mother sobbing in the background. Her father took a shaky breath and said, “I don’t want you to worry too much, sweetheart, but we have a bit of a situation over here at the convention center.”
“What kind of situation?” Lorelei finally boosted herself up onto the bed, grabbing her jeans at the same time. “Do you need me to come over there?”
“No!” The answer came from both her parents at the same time and was delivered with such immediate vehemence that Lorelei nearly dropped her phone. There was a pause while her father took another shaky breath. Then he said, “This isn’t the kind of situation that gets better by adding you. It would get worse, because then your mother and I would be worrying about you when we need to be worrying about the entire crew.”
The dread was solidifying now, turning into something concrete and real. “Daddy, what are you talking about?”
“I need you to be brave for me now, Lorelei. Can you do that? You’ve always been one of the strongest people I know—you’ll never understand how proud of you I am for being so strong—and right now I need that strength more than ever. So can you be brave for me?”
“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 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.”