Free San Diego 2014 by Mira Grant

was just as important as what he was doing—maybe more. After all, he might be keeping them alive, but she was going to be the one who got them out.
    The sounds of humanity had grown softer as the minutes ticked by and rescue didn’t come. Marty could see people sleeping in the aisles, pressed up against the edges of the booths. The lucky ones who’d remembered to bring a sweater or coat into the convention center were hugging them around themselves, as much to be sure that they wouldn’t be stolen as for warmth. They had nowhere else to go. Marty felt bad for them, even as he patrolled the edges of his own booth every fifteen minutes or so, shooing away squatters. No matter how bad he felt, he wasn’t going to compromise his already fragile security by allowing people to get too close.
    He had people of his own to protect. Pris and Eric were his responsibility, and by God, he was going to get them out of here in one piece.
    “Marty?”
    “What is it, Pris?”
    There was a note of excitement in her voice that he wasn’t expecting. It seemed almost obscene, given the rest of the situation. “I got an answer.”
    “What?” Marty actually took his eyes off the aisle as he turned to face her. “From who?”
    “Convention center management. They finally noticed that I was pinging their private channels, and they decided to answer me.”
    “Well? What did they say? Is someone coming to get us the hell out of here?”
    Pris grimaced. “Not quite. They say there’s a problem outside. Some sort of riot is blocking the doors—they can’t get in to let us out.”
    “Fuck.”
    “They say that it’s pretty ugly. We should be glad that we’re in here.” Somewhere in the distance, someone screamed. Pris grimaced more. “I think they wouldn’t be saying that if they were actually in here.”
    “Did they have anything useful to say?”
    “Yes.” Pris held up her tablet, and smiled. “They told me how we can get the wireless back on. That’s something, right?”
    Marty frowned. No food, no water, no exit…but they could get the Internet back on. Somehow, that didn’t seem quite as valuable. On the other hand, they were in a convention center full of geeks. Maybe getting the Internet back up would distract everyone else, keep them from making things worse—and maybe they would be able to find a way out once they had access to the outside world. “What do we need to do?” he asked.
    “There’s a control room on the main concourse,” said Pris. “All we have to do is get to one of the house phones, call up, and tell whoever’s in there which switches to press.”
    “How do we even know that there’s someone inside?”
    Pris gestured with her free hand, indicating the convention center. “Look around. There’s no way someone had the opportunity to get into a secure room with a lock on the door and didn’t do it.”
    Marty looked at her. She looked back, a challenge in the tilt of her chin. Pris wasn’t a girl who enjoyed sitting idle; once she had a thing that could be done, she wanted to do it. Getting the wireless back on was something she could do, and that meant that she wanted to be doing it.
    As bad as things were, they could get a lot worse. This wasn’t the time to start trouble with the people he needed watching his back. “Wake Eric up,” Marty said gruffly. “We’re going to get the wireless back on.”
     
    * * *
    9:25 P.M.
    Shawn’s phone beeped softly, snapping him out of his light doze and into a state of almost instant awareness. The phone beeped again. He hit the button to activate the walkie-talkie function, and Lorelei’s voice said uncertainly, “Dad? Are you there?”
    “Lorelei?” He smiled as he raised the phone to his mouth. “I’m here, honey. What’s going on?” Around him, the convention center slept, or tried to. Dwight and Rebecca had never come back from their trip to the parking garage. Their absence had created an uneasy divide among the Browncoats. Half of