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The light dimmed, and I scooted back to the place I’d staked out earlier. A spotlight hit Justine Chu as she stepped onto the stage. Everyone applauded because it seemed like the right thing to do, but she held up a hand, expression grave, until the clapping died away.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Justine said in a campy Deathly Serious mode. “The documentary that you are about to see contains images you may find disturbing.” She paused, shook her head. “No. You will find them disturbing. Prepare yourselves. Because—zombies are among us!”
The lights went out, leaving the interior of the tent far darker than I would have expected considering the bright daylight outside. Excited and nervous laughter tittered through the crowd. After all, this was what they were paying for. They wanted to be scared and shocked and disturbed.
“Those of you with weak stomachs should turn away now,” Justine warned.
Ominous music swelled to a nerve-jangling discordance. Images of bodies and panicked mobs flashed in chaotic patterns, gradually resolving to longer shots of the melée at the Tucker Point High football field during the filming of the movie.
“Zombies—a source of primal terror,” a deep-voiced narrator intoned as soundless chaos reigned on the screen. “Implacable. Hungry. A threat to all we hold dear. The mythology is as old as time, from the slow and relentless to the fast and strong. From conscious creations to viral-infected monsters.” More images of shamblers. Rotting arms reaching through broken doors. I slowly relaxed. Okay, this was nothing more than a bunch of cheesy shit to get people fired up over the movie.
“Yet, the nightmare,” the voiceover continued, “the truth—is worse than we ever imagined.”
More long shots of the high school melée scene, then the image jerked as if the camera had been bumped. The video transitioned to a jerky handheld news camera style in the thick of the action. It swung to a broad-shouldered zombie just as he smashed a man’s head against a cinderblock wall.
Every cell in my body went numb even as a gasp and delighted shudder swept through the crowd. Not a special effect. That was Philip killing a Saberton operative.
Philip dropped into a crouch as the body fell, tore the man’s skull apart and began to shove chunks of brain into his mouth. His dead-grey face was plenty horrifying without a speck of movie makeup, and his entire body jerked every few seconds as though jolted by electricity. He screamed through a gory mouthful, spattering the pavement with blood and brain bits.
I watched in growing horror while the rest of the crowd laughed nervously and applauded the realistic “effects.” That was real, I thought in shock. Someone filmed the whole thing. It doesn’t look like studio footage, but surely they realized it wasn’t their special effects when they put the documentary together?
“A new generation of zombies is here,” the narrator continued. “They aren’t slow and stupid.” I held my breath, tense and sweating as a shambling zombie woman morphed into a smiling college professor. “They look like us, but don’t be fooled. When they get hungry—” The scene changed to the campus at night, where the now-rotting professor stalked a lone football player. “—they must feed.” The crowd sucked in a collective breath as the professor took the football player down and cracked his skull like a walnut against the sidewalk.
And, in the next scene, the professor—smiling and whole again—gave a lecture as if nothing had happened. I breathed in shallow sips. Didn’t matter that these were actors. This whole scenario hit too damn close to the truth.
“They’re fast and strong.” A very realistic zombie ran down a sprinter, lifted him over his head then let out a terrifying scream.
“These zombies can’t be stopped by the swing of a machete.” The shot zoomed to a dark-skinned arm strapped to a wall. I jerked as one swift stroke of a machete hacked off the hand with too-real-for-prime-time brutality. Even as the horrific image registered, time-lapse video showed a new hand regrowing from the stump—starting out as a bud then growing to full size. Just like Kang’s body had been regrown from his head.
That shit was real. Saberton lab footage. It had to be. Dark skin. Oh god. Was that Kyle Griffin’s arm? When I’d found him in Saberton’s New York lab, he’d been mutilated and tortured, with his entire lower jaw removed. My gorge rose, but I forced myself to stay put, focused on the words and images. I needed to know exactly how fucked up it was.
“They’re smart. They’re strong. They’re fast. They can heal.” The shocking scene shifted to a postal worker walking down a street. To a nurse in a hospital. A church choir. A dentist.
“They live among us. Right here. Right now.”
Scenes bled together showing everyday people going zombie, feeding on neighbors and customers and patients and students and coworkers. Actors and special effects. Mostly. But too real. Too goddamn real.
“Don’t get caught. ZOMBIES. ARE. AMONG. US!”
The screen went dark. The lights came back up, and wild applause broke out an instant later.
I didn’t clap. Couldn’t. Not even to pretend I was part of the crowd. Nausea threatened to bring the canapés right back up. The hideous documentary had segments that matched each of the single asterisk filenames on Seeger’s list. But what about the double asterisk files? What else was out there? Were there videos of Marcus being broken over and over? And would anyone recognize the crazed zombie at the melée as Philip?
More importantly, would anyone wonder if it could be real?
I looked around wildly for Andrew then froze like a rabbit beneath an owl. A broad-shouldered man stood on the other side of the tent with his arms folded over his chest. Bear, with Nick beside him. I wasn’t surprised to see Bear here since his shop was one of the main sponsors. But knowing that Nick had seen the real zombie footage—even if he didn’t know it was real—left me feeling weirdly off-balance.
The tent slowly emptied, and at long last I spied Andrew sitting in a folding chair near the back of the stage. Shoulders hunched and face sheet-white, he looked every bit as appalled and freaked as I felt. It was a double whammy for him. Real zombie stuff on top of insider footage from his company.
Braddock stepped into my path when I was a dozen feet away from him. “Now isn’t the time,” sh
e told me, gaze hard and voice firm. “I’m taking him out of here.”
Damn it, why did she have to be such a good bodyguard? “I know,” I said. “Everything’s screwed up, and he needs to leave.” I gave her my best sincere and pleading look. “But it’s vitally important that I talk to him, for his own sake. I swear I won’t cause a scene.”
Her eyes narrowed in distrust, but uncertainty flickered in them as well. She glanced toward the screen as if remembering the horrors shown there. Months ago she’d caught a glimpse of the atrocities taking place in the Saberton basement. She couldn’t help but wonder how much of the film was real.
Mouth tight, Braddock shifted her regard to Andrew. He clutched his phone in one hand, and his cool business attitude was in tatters. With Snyder’s help, he waved off eager fanpoodles but gave Braddock a nod when he saw me.
