San Diego 2014 (4 page)

Wednesday, July 23, 2014: 7:08
P.M.

“What the
fuck
was that?” demanded Vanessa, jabbing a finger toward the front of the hall. The Browncoats had reacted with instinctive speed when the lights cut out, all of them forming a circle inside the boundaries of their booth. Dwight was still standing on his lookout point when the lights came back on. Shawn was standing so as to block the one access point from the aisle, a two-by-four in his hands and a menacing expression in his eyes. Even Lynn didn’t like to cross him when he looked like that. Maybe it was that look—like he knew exactly what was going to come next and was willing to do it, no matter how little he liked it—but all the others turned to him, waiting to hear what they were going to do next.

All except for Dwight. He kept watching the front of the hall. There was still screaming, but it was dying down, losing its immediacy; this sounded less like people who were wounded and more like people who were scared, confused, and being set off by the screams of those around them.

“Dwight?” said Shawn sharply. “Report.”

“The doors are closed,” Dwight said. “The biting seems to have stopped—the ones who were doing the biting have pulled back. They’re blocking access to the doors and snapping at people who approach them, but otherwise, they’re not moving.”

“What the
fuck
?” repeated Vanessa.

It was a sentiment the rest of the Browncoats not-so-secretly shared. Shawn pulled out his phone, checking for service. As he’d expected, there were no cell bars. He’d have to hope the radio signal would get through. “Start securing the booth,” he commanded. “Assume that if we’re not under attack right now, we will be soon. I’m going to see if I can call for help.”

“The police?” asked Rebecca.

“The Marines?” asked Dwight.

“My daughter,” said Shawn.

7:15
P.M.

Eric and Marty stood at the doorway to their booth, waiting for whatever was going to happen next. Eric held the crowbar he’d used to open the heftier book boxes, keeping it loose, ready to swing. Marty held a baseball bat. Neither Eric nor Pris had asked him where he’d gotten it; at the moment, neither of them was inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth. They’d all heard the doors slam shut after the screaming began, and what little they’d been able to learn from people fleeing for the back of the hall was…not good. That was putting it mildly.

It might not have been so bad if the screams had stopped, or if they’d been continuous. But there were patches of silence long enough to let them think that the worst had passed, and then the screaming would start up again, as loud and terrified as ever. It made it impossible to stop jumping, waiting for the screams to be their own. Maybe paranoid fear was the right emotion when locked in a huge building filled with dangerous strangers. That didn’t mean that it was easy on the heart.

Marty could hear the Browncoats—he could always hear the Browncoats, and for once, he found that comforting. They were hammering on something, probably shoring up the walls of their booth, and using call-and-response games to keep track of each other whenever they had to move out of direct sight. “Marco” and “Polo” seemed to map to moving forward or backward in the hall, while “Hidey” and “Ho” mapped to movement to the left or right. They were an organized group. He’d have to congratulate them on that, if they survived.

“How’s it looking back there, Pris?” Marty asked, as loudly as he dared. He might admire the Browncoats for their organization, but he was also concerned about all the noise that they were making. If they attracted the attention of whatever was attacking the convention, he didn’t want it coming after his crew, too.

“Whoever killed the lights took out the wireless signal at the same time, and they didn’t come back up. I’ve got no cellular signal. The best I can do is an emergency convention center service band that has about a thousand warnings on it telling me I’m not allowed to log in under penalty of being escorted from the premises and never allowed to come back for as long as I live.”

Marty snorted. “Right now, kid, I’d take that as a blessing from God. Go ahead and log on. We need help, and we need it about fifteen minutes ago.”

“On it,” said Pris, and began typing again.

In the distance, people screamed, and the Browncoats continued whatever strange things they were doing. Eric glanced anxiously at Marty.

“I’ve been hearing things on the Internet, you know,” he said. “Like people saying that the flu everybody says is going around isn’t flu at all—it’s something we made in a lab. Something to do with that cure for the common cold thing that was on the news a couple of weeks ago.”

“That was a hoax,” said Marty. “You can’t cure the common cold. You’d need something that could take out a million different germs in order to do its job, and that would be a superbug. No one’s stupid enough to make a superbug.”

“I don’t know,” said Eric. “People do some pretty stupid things because they want to see what will happen.”

Marty paused. His employee sounded pretty shaken up, and who wouldn’t be? They were apparently under some sort of attack. Crazy locals looking for fat geek wallets, most likely, but whatever it was, they couldn’t get out of the hall. All they could do was stand their ground. “All right, I’ll humor you for a second,” he said. “If it’s not the flu, what is it?”

“Zombies,” said Eric grimly.

Marty stared at him and didn’t say anything. It should have been funny. It should have been an excuse to laugh out loud. But somehow, with the sound of screaming coming from the front of the hall and Pris typing frantically away behind him, it wasn’t funny at all.

Pris got up, moving to stand between the two men. She kept her tablet clutched to her chest.  “I spammed every port I could find asking for help,” she said. “Now what do we do?”

“We wait,” said Marty grimly. “That’s about the only choice we have.”

7:15
P.M.

At the same time, on the far end of the hall, Kelly Nakata was beginning to believe that she had somehow offended God.

The people who’d attacked her were disorganized, unlike the mob of men in Jedi robes who’d come to haul them off of her. She’d been able to roll under the nearest table in the confusion, scrambling to get herself as far away from danger as she possibly could. And then the lights had gone out—only for a few minutes, but long enough that when they came back on again, nothing was the same.

The Jedi were gone, or mostly; some of them were in pieces on the convention center floor. Others staggered, wounded, and were ignored by the people who’d been attacking them before. It was like they didn’t care about their targets anymore, not once they’d been bitten. It didn’t make any sense.

Bitten… Kelly paled, beginning to do a quick inventory of her limbs. No bite marks. The mob had come at her from all sides at once, and they’d managed to block one another from getting a really good shot at her. She was bruised, and her back felt like it was seriously rug-burned from where she’d hit the floor, but she wasn’t bitten. Kelly had no real idea what was going on around her. She still knew enough to know that when people who were acting like they had some kind of rabies tried to bite you, your best move was to not get bitten.

“Miss? Are you all—”

Kelly whirled, slapping her hand over the stall owner’s mouth before she could really consider the inanity of a move like that immediately after she’d been thinking about teeth. Luckily, the scared little man who was now staring at her didn’t seem inclined to attack. Faint, maybe. “Shhh,” she hissed. “Don’t attract attention.” She glanced over her shoulder, in case even that much noise might have reminded her former attackers that she existed.

Once again, luck was on her side. The convention hall presented a target-rich environment, and with so many people screaming and running madly from place to place, there was little chance of a whispered conversation standing out. As Kelly watched the chaos, a chilling new factor introduced itself: One of the Jedi who had previously been sprawled on the carpet, eyes open, unblinking, and staring into nothingness, was back on his feet. That wasn’t a bad thing…except that he had the same slack expression as the people who’d attacked her. His eyes still seemed empty—until a screaming girl dressed as Rainbow Dash from
My Little Pony
ran too close. Then he reached out with surprising speed, grabbing the girl and dragging her into biting range.

“I gotta get out of here,” whispered Kelly. She turned back to the stall owner. “I’ll take you with me if you let me take whatever I think we’ll need.”

“It’s a deal,” said the stall owner, eyes flicking to the girl in the Pony costume. The Jedi was gnawing on her throat now, and she was twitching helplessly. “Just get me the hell away from these freaks.”

“All right,” said Kelly. “Here’s the plan…”

7:20
P.M.

“Are they gone?” whimpered Patty.

“Where are we?” asked Matthew. He looked around the shabby little room in confusion, trying to figure out how they’d gone from the madness of the convention center floor to this…this office. There were desks and everything. It made no sense.

Elle mirrored his glance. Then, much to his surprise and dismay, she started to giggle.

“Do you mind telling me what’s so funny?” he asked.

Her giggles turned into full-blown laughter, which she did her best to smother against the heel of her hand. Finally, shaking her head, she managed, “We’re in my precinct.”

“She’s right!” said Patty. Her fear was gone, replaced by sudden delight. It was remarkable how quickly that woman could bounce back. Then again, that was part of what had attracted him to her in the first place. “We’re in the Time Police Paradox Control Unit headquarters! Oh my gosh, that’s Indy’s desk! I mean, your desk. I mean…”

“The network built a full-scale replica for fans to tour and have their pictures taken in,” said Elle. “We’re supposed to do some video interviews here with bloggers later in the weekend. I just ran for the nearest door.”

“Well, let’s see. On the plus side, we now have four walls between us and the crazy people,” said Matthew.

“On the minus side, those walls are made of plywood,” Elle shot back. “At least the shades are closed. As long as we keep those down and don’t make too much noise, they may not realize that we’re in here. If they do, we’re sitting ducks. There’s nowhere left for us to run.”

“Come on, Elle,” said Patty. She smiled hopefully at the actress, every line of her body broadcasting the message that they were friends now, good friends even, since they were going through adversity together. “Indy would find a way out of this.”

Elle bit back her first response, which would have been far harsher than the other woman deserved. “I know,” she said. “But Indy has scriptwriters and a director to help her out. We don’t have that.”

“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.”