It was the summer of 2014, and the true horrors of the Rising were only just beginning to reveal themselves. Fans from all over the world gathered in San Diego, California for the annual comic book and media convention, planning to forget about the troubling rumors of new diseases and walking dead by immersing themselves in a familiar environment. Over the course of five grueling days and nights, it became clear that the news was very close to home. . .and that most of the people who picked up their badges would never make it out alive.
Release date:
July 11, 2012
Publisher:
Orbit
Print pages:
368
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San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats
Mira Grant
LORELEI TUTT’S APARTMENT, LONDON, ENGLAND, JUNE 1, 2044
Lorelei Tutt is a harshly attractive woman in her forties, tall and lean, with scars from her combat gear on her hands and elbows. Her naturally brown hair is streaked with natural gray and sterilization blonde, and she wears it in a short-cropped, almost military style that does nothing to soften the lines of her face. She walks with a subtle limp, the result of learning to walk on a prosthetic right leg at the age of twenty-five. Her left eye is shaped normally but filmed with cataract white from an old war injury. She moves with studied precision, and it is clear from her expression that she is not happy to see me.
The front room of her London flat is at odds with her appearance: The time she spent in the United States Coast Guard has left her seeming businesslike and cool, but her decor is that of a teenage member of the science fiction and fantasy subculture that thrived before the Rising. Books and assorted forms of recorded media pack her shelves, and the walls are covered in posters advertising long-canceled television shows, long-forgotten movies.
She indicates that I should sit. She does not do the same. Her accent is American: She may have left the country of her birth after she left the Coast Guard, but some things are not so easily forgotten.
LORELEI: You know, I don’t know why you people keep coming looking for me, sniffing around the graves like this. San Diego was thirty years ago. There’s no reason to keep dredging up what happened.
MAHIR: Actually, ma’am, that’s precisely why people are becoming interested again. Thirty years…that’s long enough for terror to fade and nostalgia to start taking over. Did you hear that there’s been talk of doing another convention? The city of San Diego has expressed a willingness to host it. They think it might help restore the tourist trade.
Lorelei freezes. I have never seen this happen so literally before: One moment I am speaking to a living, if cold, woman, and the next, I am sharing a room with a statue made of flesh. When she speaks again, what little human warmth her voice contained is gone.
LORELEI: This interview is over. Get out.
MAHIR: You never intended to speak with me today, did you? [silence from Lorelei] That’s your right, of course, but I have to ask you…why? Why did you let me come here if you weren’t intending to actually have a conversation about what happened?
LORELEI: You people have wasted so much of my time over the last thirty years—all you damn bloggers acting like you’re heroes because you stayed in your rooms and told each other about the zombie apocalypse. You people had been doing that since long before the zombies came. You weren’t heroes.
MAHIR: But your parents were. [again, silence from Lorelei] Isn’t that why you’re angry? Because your parents were true heroes of the Rising, and almost no one knows their names? It was very hard to track you down, Miss Tutt. You have no idea.
LORELEI: I thought I told you to leave.
MAHIR: Miss Tutt…I’ve lost people, too. Maybe not as many as you have, maybe not the way that you did, but I’ve lost them, and I can’t have them back. And I know that the only thing that would have made it even harder for me—the only thing that could have made the worst thing that ever happened to me even worse—would have been knowing that someone else was telling their stories, and telling them wrong. This story is going to be told. I can’t stop it. Neither can you. But what I can do, what I have the power to do, is to ask you if you’ll let me tell it the way you want it told. If you’ll let me tell the truth.
There is a long silence. I begin to think that I’ve lost her—and then Lorelei gestures for me to stand, beckoning me deeper into the flat.
LORELEI: I need to put the kettle on. If I’m going to tell you what happened, I’m going to want a cup of tea in front of me.
I nod, rise, and follow the last known survivor of the 2014 San Diego International Comic Convention out of the front room. She leads me to the kitchen, where she fills the electric kettle and sets the water to boil. She moves with nervous efficiency. She does not look at me. The time for looking at me is done.
LORELEI: I was just a kid when the Rising started. I didn’t think of myself that way—I was eighteen, I was a grown woman, I was not a child—but I was still just a kid. I had no idea how ugly the world could be, or how bad things could get. We’d heard the news. I mean, who hadn’t? But we didn’t think it was really happening, and even if it was, it wasn’t happening where we lived. We did the con every year. It was one of the things we all looked forward to as a family. Me, and Mom, and Dad, rolling into San Diego like we were going home…
Wednesday, July 23, 2014: 10:24A.M.
The sky over San Diego was a beautifully pristine shade of blue, the sort of thing that triggered a thousand tourist snapshots and seemed impossible to anyone who hadn’t seen it with their own eyes. The streets were already beginning to fill with the early arrivals, the people who had come to town for whatever reason before the official start of the convention. Some were there to wait for the doors to open on Preview Night, hoping to snag early bargains or rare collectibles. Others were there to settle into their hotel rooms and prepare for the chaos to come. And still others—such as the California Browncoats, a nonprofit fan organization modeled around the protagonists of a canceled science fiction Western called Firefly—were there to set up their official booths.
“I know you don’t have much respect for authority, Dwight, but around here we respect the laws of physics,” said Rebecca, a petite brunette with a clipboard in one hand. She looked from her paperwork to the former Marine, who was trying, somewhat vainly, to hang the awning from their booth’s precarious piping-and-plywood frame. “That means that if you’re not careful, you’re going to plummet and crack your skull open on this lovely concrete floor. Can we try to not have any major injuries before the show opens this year? It would be a fantastic improvement over last year.”
“I’m not the one who injured myself last year,” Dwight shot back as he continued tinkering with the bolts that were supposed to hold the awning in place. “That honor goes to Leita, who doesn’t understand that you’re not supposed to pick up knives by the pointy end.”
“Hey!” Leita’s head popped up over the edge of the display case. She pouted prettily at Dwight, the studs beneath her lower lip poking upward at an angle. “It’s not my fault.”
“It never is,” Dwight said, and kept working.
Rebecca sighed. “Just please try not to fall and die before we’re finished setting up? I am begging you. This is my begging-you voice.”
“Do you need me to whip these heathens into shape?” demanded a voice from behind her, loud enough to command attention without shouting, the kind of voice that made cadets jump and crowds clear out of the way.
“Oh, thank God.” Rebecca turned, shoulders sagging in relief. “I thought you were never going to get here.”
“Traffic was worse than we expected. This year is going to be crazy.” Shawn Tutt—United States Coast Guard and designated booth organizer—walked over and gathered Rebecca into a firm hug. He was tall enough to tower over her, something that didn’t seem to bother either of them.
Shawn’s wife, Lynn, and teenage daughter, Lorelei, followed him to the booth, slowed by the large plastic tub that they carried between them. It was packed to capacity with T-shirts and rolled posters.
Lorelei cleared her throat. “Is there someplace we can set this down? My arms are getting tired.” She was almost as tall as her father, and her naturally brown hair was streaked with bright green.
“Let me.” Vanessa—a quietly pretty woman in a black T-shirt—put down her iPad and hurried to relieve Lynn and Lorelei of their burden. Before they had a chance to thank her she was gone, carrying the tub off to put it with the rest of the merchandise.
“The van’s stuffed,” said Lynn. She was shorter than Lorelei and taller than Rebecca, with short brown hair. “If we can get some people to help us unload it, we’ll be able to help set things up in here.”
“Of course.” Rebecca pulled away from Shawn. “Dwight…”
“I know, I know. Strong back, weak mind.” Dwight climbed down from the stepladder, putting the hammer he’d been using down on the nearest stack of boxes. “I’m on it.”
“Take some of the others with you. Anyone who looks like they’re not doing something absolutely vital is fair game.”
“I’ll start unpacking shirts,” said Lorelei.
“No, you won’t, but that was a nice try,” said Shawn. “You’ll empty the van with the rest of us.”
Lorelei sighed, managing to express in a simple exhale just how frustrated she was with the entire situation. “I. . .
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