“We should cut around the marina,” whispered Rebecca. “That way, we get cell signal and can call for help, but we don’t get caught up in the crowds out front.”
“Agreed,” whispered Dwight. The doors had closed early enough that there were probably almost as many people outside as there were inside. Thousands of them, crammed onto the sidewalks, trying to get into a sealed convention center. Even if the riots had spread, new fans would have been arriving almost constantly. Why—
Dwight stopped walking, heart sinking as he fully thought through the possible ramifications of the Comic-Con crowd. Rebecca kept going for a few more steps. Then she stopped as well, turning back and frowning at him.
“Dwight? What’s wrong?”
“What if this is the zombie apocalypse?” he asked, voice still kept low. “Do you really think we managed to lock them all inside?”
Rebecca’s eyes widened, visible even through the gloom. Then she nodded. Just once; once was enough. Dwight turned, and together they ran for the door back into the exhibit hall.
They didn’t run fast enough.
There weren’t many infected in the garage. Maybe a dozen, all fully amplified and demonstrating the common infected tropism toward dark, shadowy places. They were well fed and had left the pursuit of food to other, hungrier individuals. But Dwight and Rebecca had come too close and had triggered the need to hunt. As they ran, the infected pursued, moving with the graceless speed of the freshly seroconverted.
The infected caught Dwight first, bearing the former Marine down to the garage floor with the weight of their bodies. The Maglite flew from his fingers and went skittering across the concrete. “Rebecca!” he shouted, all efforts at subtlety forgotten. “Keep running!”
Rebecca looked back and screamed. The infected were already tearing into Dwight. Blood spurted across the concrete like oil. A wave of dizziness washed over her, costing her a few precious steps. She managed to swallow it, fighting it back, and resumed her flight toward the door.
She knew before she got there that she was never going to make it. The infected were too close, and she was outnumbered. All she could do was lead them into the unprotected rear of the convention center, where a bunch of scared people were trying to hide. It wouldn’t be a fair fight. It wouldn’t be the right thing to do. So Rebecca Safier became one of the first heroes of the Rising with one simple gesture: When she reached the door, she stopped running.
And she turned the dead bolt, locking both herself and the infected out of the convention center. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Then they were upon her, and she didn’t say anything else. After that, there was only screaming…and eventually, silence.
* * *
8:24 P.M.
“They’re not coming back, are they?” asked Vanessa. “They should have been back by now. They’re not coming back.”
“Shawn?” asked Lynn.
Shawn didn’t have an answer. He put his arm around Lynn’s shoulders and looked away, out over an exhibit hall that had gone from familiar ground to enemy territory in a single evening. There was nothing left for any of them to say, and so, for once, none of them said anything.
LORELEI TUTT’S APARTMENT,
LONDON, ENGLAND, JUNE 1, 2044
We have finished our first cups of tea. Lorelei is preparing another round, less out of thirst than from the simple need for something to do. It is an understandable impulse. I wish I had something to do with my hands as well.
LORELEI: We know more about what actually happened to Dwight and Rebecca than we do almost anyone else. It’s all supposition with the inside of the exhibit hall, but there were cameras running in the garage. I’ve seen her locking the door a thousand times. She didn’t have any other choice. There was nothing they could have done.
MAHIR: She was very brave. She could have sacrificed a lot of lives in the effort to save her own, and she didn’t.
LORELEI: No, she couldn’t have. Not Rebecca, and not Dwight, either. They were my friends. They were good people. They were heroes.
MAHIR: Yes, they were.
LORELEI: I was down at the base office while all of this was happening, trying to get somebody to listen to me. It turns out that teenage girls trying to report secondhand riots aren’t at the top of anyone’s priority list. I did get them to listen, eventually. It was too late by then—but I mean really, it was too late when Dad called me. It was probably too late by the time I left the convention center.
MAHIR: Everyone was doing the best they could with their understanding of the situation.
LORELEI: I wish they’d understood the situation just a little bit faster. More of my friends might have managed to get out alive. Or any of them.
The Second Act
Science fiction and fantasy literature has always been defined by tales of heroism. It is meant to represent humanity at our very best, willing to oppose all odds in order to protect the side of good. The Rising gave all people the opportunity to become heroes. Only a few rose to the challenge. Sadly, even fewer are remembered by name.
—Mahir Gowda
I always knew my father was a hero. I never needed him to prove it.
—Lorelei Tutt,
Captain, United States Coast Guard
8:37 P.M.
No one paid attention to the time. The people who were locked inside the hall had other things to worry about—like why the people who’d started the emergency by attacking their fellow attendees had stopped fighting and retreated to the doors. Anyone who tried to approach them was likely to find themselves bitten, or worse; but if the blank-eyed, bloody-garbed aggressors were left alone, they didn’t bother anyone.
Kelly Nakata didn’t know much about what was going on, but she knew that once a dog starts biting for no good reason, it doesn’t tend to stop. She made her way quickly away from the front of the exhibit hall, the owner of the booth where she’d originally taken shelter sticking close by her side. She didn’t know his name. She didn’t want to. With as quickly as things had gone sour, she wasn’t willing to go forging any lasting bonds. He was a good guy, and he’d equipped her pretty well for the fight she was sure they were walking into. She was still going to leave him behind if he turned into dead weight. It wasn’t the compassionate thing to do. Screw compassion. People in the middle of the zombie apocalypse couldn’t afford it.
“Zombie” wasn’t a word she would have brought into things on her own. It was a cliché, dead things and girls in lingerie and Elvira on a velvet love seat making cracks about impractical shoes. Still, it was an unavoidable idea, especially here, where every other person seemed to be a self-proclaimed expert on zombie culture. There were booths boasting every possible kind of zombie-themed goodie, from books and movies to artwork and couture. There was even a magazine called Chicks with Corpses that had decided to focus on the lingerie and impractical shoes over the carnage and destruction of mankind. The word “zombie” was everywhere, and it was as good a label as any for the psychos who were clustered at the front of the hall.
What some people didn’t seem to be taking into account was that zombies made more zombies. Kelly had seen it happen with her own eyes when the zombies turned on her Jedi-costumed rescuer. He wasn’t the only one who’d been bitten, and unless the zombie virus was selectively transferrable—which never seemed to be the case with zombie viruses, so it was a little too much to hope for in this situation—a whole lot of people were going to go rabid in the next few hours. Kelly was grimly sure that was why the first wave of zombies had withdrawn. They were waiting for their reinforcements to get hungry.
“Where are we going?” asked the booth owner.
“Back of the hall,” said Kelly. “Where there are exits. They usually have security mooks guarding them, but I figure a bunch of psychopaths biting people at the front doors takes priority. We may be able to get out that way.” And if they couldn’t, they would at least put some ground between themselves and the next big bite-a-thon.
“What if we can’t?”
“We start looking for a fire door. There’s bound to be some sort of an emergency exit in this place. We just have to find it.” Find it, and pray that it wasn’t already a solid wall of impassable meat thanks to other people with the same idea.
Giving up wouldn’t do either of them any good. Kelly tightened her grip on her borrowed staff and kept on walking. Maybe they could find someone who was selling armor—Kevlar would be best, but she’d take leather, or even hardened canvas, if that was what she could get—and convince them to join their merry band. Like The Wizard of Oz, only with zombies instead of flying monkeys.
“I didn’t catch your name.”
“Keep walking.”
“My name’s Stuart.”
Kelly winced. “Oh.”
“What’s your name?”
If she told him, she’d be admitting that he was a person, too; she’d be making him real. In a way, she’d be making this whole crazy situation real, because real people didn’t show up in dreams. She’d definitely be making it harder to turn her back on him when the time came—and the time was going to come; she was absolutely sure of that. This was a zombie apocalypse. The time always came.
Kelly sighed. “My name’s Kelly,” she said. “Now keep walking.”
They kept walking.
* * *
8:45 P.M.
Exhaustion and panic had finally carried the day: Patty was asleep. She was draped half-over the authentic reproduction of Indiction Rivers’s desk, her head propped up on one arm, snoring softly. Elle paused in her attempts to peer through the blinds at the exhibit hall outside, shaking her head.
“How is she doing that?” she asked. “I can’t imagine sleeping before someone comes to get us out of here.” At least the screams had stopped, or at least faded back into the greater noise of the crowd. Even that seemed more subdued, as if people were getting quieter as they realized they couldn’t escape. That would change soon, she was sure: Panic would make a reappearance, and then their hidey-hole would become even more essential.