Free San Diego 2014 by Mira Grant Page A

them were firmly convinced that Dwight and Rebecca had managed to find a way out and would be coming back with emergency services. The other half believed that Dwight and Rebecca were never coming back at all.
    After spending most of his adult life in the Coast Guard, Shawn knew better than to pin all his hopes on empty wishes. Dwight was a Marine. If he’d been able to come back, he would have done so, leaving Rebecca to organize a rescue party while he told everyone else what was going on. He hadn’t come back. That meant he couldn’t come back…and anything that could stop a Marine who didn’t want to be stopped was probably stopping that Marine permanently.
    “I finally got them to listen to me at the office. Lieutenant Farago said to let you know that he’s working on getting cell service into the hall, but nobody would tell me what was actually happening .” There was a note of panic in Lorelei’s voice that Shawn didn’t like. At the end of the day, she was his daughter, and she shared his tendency to go running toward danger as fast as her legs could carry her when she felt like the people she loved were at risk. “Are you okay?”
    “Well, honey, we’ve had to redefine the local standards for ‘okay,’ but none of us is hurt right now.” Not unless you included Dwight and Rebecca, and that was just a possibility, not a definite fact. “So they think they can get our phones to start working? That’s a good thing.” It would have been better if it had happened faster. Most of the people in the convention center probably weren’t carrying chargers. Shawn could see outlets and universal connectors becoming the start of the next big fight.
    “Yes. But getting the phones working won’t get you out right now.”
    “I understand that, honey.”
    Lorelei paused for a long moment before she asked, “Doesn’t that worry you?”
    “Yes,” admitted Shawn. He couldn’t think of any good reason for the relative peace that had settled over the hall. After the screaming and hysterics that had accompanied the beginning of the siege, he was expecting all-out chaos, not this strange and sudden lull. “But worrying about what we can’t change won’t do us any good. You tell Lieutenant Farago that we need an exit strategy as soon as he can get us one. Things are calm right now. I don’t know how long that’s going to last.”
    “Okay, Daddy,” said Lorelei. “I love you.”
    “I love you too, sweetheart. Just keep flying, okay? Everything’s going to be just fine. You’ll see.”
    Lorelei didn’t answer him.

LORELEI TUTT’S APARTMENT,
LONDON, ENGLAND, JUNE 1, 2044
    Our tea is cold. Lorelei doesn’t seem to notice, and I don’t feel that pointing it out to her would be beneficial. Her gaze is far away. Sometime during the most recent part of her story, she left the present behind and slipped into a time and place that I have never seen. She is back in San Diego, back in the first summer of the Rising, and I begin to understand why she never wanted to tell her story.
    LORELEI: We didn’t know how the infected behaved yet. Fuck. We didn’t even know for sure that they were infected. Maybe if we’d had more information… [ she stops for a long moment; when she speaks again, her voice is even more distant ] It wouldn’t have made any difference at all. Those doors were already locked. What was going to happen was already a foregone conclusion. All that could have changed is the details.
    MAHIR: Sometimes, it’s the details that matter the most of all.
    LORELEI: The people who’d been infected were skulking around the edges of the hall, waiting for the lights to dim. They weren’t hungry yet. They had enough to eat, and they were in the incubation phase. Once in a while they’d grab someone from the edges of a group, but my dad didn’t know that.
    MAHIR: Kellis-Amberlee had a longer incubation in the early days of the Rising. Today, it’s all through our bodies even before we begin to