Excerpt: from Chapter One
As the light rail train approached the 3rd Street station, Vance Campbell felt female bodies press against both sides of him. He gave his daughter Claire a gentle squeeze with his left arm and kissed her on the head. He tried to pull his wife Tabitha close with his right, but she held herself away from him. He turned to find her looking at him, her forehead creased with a deep scowl.
“Are you doing okay?” she asked.
Vance looked away, shook his head, and shrugged. “I guess so,” he said.
“Good,” Tabitha said. “Just remember, everything is going to be all right.”
“Okay,” Vance said. “It’s just—why are we going to Comicon? We don’t really need to do this, do we?”
“Well, Claire is excited about it, for one thing,” Tabitha said.
Claire perked up at the mention of her name. “Allison’s going to be there,” she said.
“I know honey,” Vance said to Claire. He gave her another squeeze, then turned to Tabitha and quietly added, “But seriously, after last year? Why do we need to come here again?”
Tabitha gave him a smile that looked like she meant it to be reassuring, but he could see the concern in her eyes at his mention of last year. “Last year was a fluke,” she said. She shook her head, then scowled in an expression of determination. “The earthquake, that stupid lab work.” She glanced out the window, then back at Vance. “It was a freak accident,” she said. “Comicon just happened to be there.”
“No,” Vance said quietly, trying to keep Claire from hearing him. “Without Comicon, those things would have added up to nothing.” He turned his gaze out the window, where they could see dark masses of people crowding outside the Convention Center. “Comicon makes bad things happen.”
“That’s not true,” Tabitha said. “Everybody says good things about Comicon. That’s why it grows every year.” She looped her arm around his waist and gave him a reassuring squeeze. “Besides, they said that this year they will have special teams set up just to watch for zombies. They even canceled the zombie walk, and people in zombie costumes are being turned away.”
Vance looked at the other people on the light rail who appeared to be headed to Comicon. Not one zombie. Lots of vampires, though. “I still don’t see why we have to go,” he said.
“Well, they are giving you an award,” Tabitha said.
“So?” Vance answered.
“So, that’s a good thing,” Tabitha said.
Vance scoffed. “It’s an awards luncheon,” he said. “It’s barely ten o’clock now. Why do we have to get here so early?”
“They’re giving us five years’ worth of free badges. It would be a shame to waste them,” Tabitha said. “Besides, we need to get back to normal. We can’t be scared of things like Comicon.”
Vance groaned. “I’m not scared,” he said. “I just don’t want to risk our lives to see some movie stars.”
“We’ll just take a look around, we’ll go to the awards luncheon, and we’ll head home,” Tabitha said. “It’ll be fine.”
“It had better be good food,” Vance said, shaking his head. “And it better be a big award.”
“After what you did last year, I’m sure it will be huge,” Tabitha said with a smile. “They owe you big time.”
Vance sighed and turned to his daughter. “You aren’t scared, are you honey?” he asked.
“I’m not scared of zombies,” Claire said bravely. “But …” She looked away from Vance at the other passengers getting up to exit the train at Comicon. “Vampires aren’t real, are they?” she asked.
Vance followed her gaze. A tall man in classic vampire attire had risen from a seat at the front end of the train car. He had his hair slicked back, and he wore a long black cape wrapped around himself. The woman who rose beside him also had long black hair and a similar cape, and she appeared to be wearing colored contacts that gave her eyes an unnatural amber sparkle. As the train slowed, approaching the stop, the couple glided toward the front exit door, and their weird garb and movement made Vance uneasy. He put on a confident smile and turned back to his daughter. “No, honey,” he said. “Vampires are not real.”
Claire took Vance’s hand and held it tightly, and they moved to the exit and stepped out into the crowd of people headed to Comicon.
The Phoenix Comicon was an annual convention for fans of comic books and graphic novels, science fiction, horror, fantasy, games, and other elements of popular culture. Held at the end of May at the Phoenix Convention Center in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, the four-day event attracted dozens of celebrities, hundreds of vendors, and tens of thousands of fans, many of whom worked all year on elaborate costumes just for the event.
Vance Campbell liked popular culture as much as most people did—well, probably not as much as most people. He was in his late thirties, past the age of playing games with his friends. When he wasn’t working as an ordinary garbageman, he liked to read good books, mostly westerns, and watch some television, mostly sports. He liked movies and television shows all right, but he did not care enough about them and the people who made them to pay exorbitant admission fees and fight the massive crowds just to be close to them.
His wife Tabitha, however, did. Tabitha was a few years younger than he was, and while she didn’t worship at the altar of celebrity, she recognized that she had only one life to live, and she wanted to live it to the fullest. She enjoyed good books as much as Vance did, but she also didn’t want to miss a good movie or television show. And when she got the opportunity to spend time with a bunch of like-minded people, she jumped on it.
Their only child, Claire, who was five, took after Tabitha. She loved good media in all its forms, and she wanted nothing as much as to spend time among its creators—and to become one of them.
With Claire in the middle, the three held hands as Vance led them down the sidewalk to the Convention Center. Though the Comicon programming didn’t start until ten-thirty, the sidewalk and street were mobbed with people heading inside. Again Vance was fascinated by all the costumes he saw: people dressed as superheroes, characters from movies and television, robots, and even animals. Scary costumes, furry costumes, subtle costumes, and costumes so large they couldn’t possibly even fit into one of the convention’s rooms except as an exhibit, including a rolling robot, a dinosaur, and even someone dressed as a Zombies Defense Crew jeep.
Vance was happy to see that his wife was right: he didn’t see a single zombie costume in the crowd. In fact, it looked as though the previous year’s drama hadn’t kept anyone away this year, and everyone who had dressed in a zombie costume last year was in a vampire costume this year.
Most of the crowd was headed the same way they were: into Comicon. A short way down Washington Street, they turned left onto 3rd Street. Police officers in safety vests directed traffic at the intersection. A massive tide of people walked north on 3rd Street, which was closed at Washington for the event.
Though it was early, a half-dozen or so food trucks were already parked along the sides of 3rd Street, selling everything from hamburgers to pizza slices to grilled cheese sandwiches and Navajo fry bread—and all at premium prices, Vance noted.
Past the food trucks, Vance saw the first real exhibits of Comicon: a row of fantasy vehicles, replicas or maybe originals of those found on movies and television. Among many others, Vance saw a black robotic Trans Am, a hearse for fighting ghosts, a time-traveling Delorean, and a car that had been modified to look like a famous brown hovercraft.
What caught his eye most, however, was a jeep with elaborate weapon holders, tall antennas, a five-gallon gas can attached to its back, a camouflage paint scheme, and a bold logo emblazoned on its hood: Zombie Defense Crew. Seeing the jeep, Vance felt the hair on his arms stand on end. Last year, Vance and a group of Comicon workers and celebrities had been trapped on the mezzanine level of the Convention Center when a bizarre combination of events unleashed a horde of zombies on them. When they had finally fought their way back to the surface, it was the Zombie Defense Crew that had rallied to help put down the zombie horde.
Vance was damn glad to see them, but their presence surfaced some disturbing memories.
Looking closer, he saw another Zombie Defense Crew jeep at the other end of the line of show vehicles. And another up 3rd Street at the intersection of Monroe. And another across the street by a band setting up on a small stage by the sidewalk. “Wow,” Vance said to Tabitha. “Lots of Zombie Defense Crew vehicles here.”
“Told you,” she said. “They’re not messing around this year.”
Claire pulled on his hand to get his attention. “But zombies aren’t real, are they, Daddy?” she asked.
“Not anymore, honey,” Vance said, giving her a confident smile. “Not anymore.”
“Let’s get inside,” Tabitha said. “It’s supposed to be record heat today, and I am already sweating.”
They joined the crowd heading to the main entrance into the Convention Center. The pace slowed as they got close to the doors, and once inside, movement became stop-and-go as people filed past the security guards.
Alongside the security guards stood men in camouflage uniforms with Zombie Defense Crew patches and what looked like shotguns slung over their shoulders. While Vance was happy to see the Zombie Defense Crew out in full force, and he was thrilled at the complete lack of zombies of any kind, he did find something troubling: the vampires. The trend that he had noticed on the light rail had continued to the Convention Center and inside. It seemed as though at least every third person was dressed as a vampire. They weren’t all the same. Some were traditional Gothic vampires. Some were southern-style Louisiana vampires. Others looked like vampire characters from movies or television programs. But all had pale complexions and pointy teeth. Even worse, most of the vampires and many of the others had what looked like bite marks on their necks. Just when Vance was feeling warm at the lack of zombies, the vampire spectacle gave him a chill.
“What’s with all the vampires?” Vance asked his wife.
“It must be because of Sonoran Suckers,” Tabitha said.
Vance frowned, always surprised at pop culture things he’d never heard of. “What’s that?”
“It’s a web series about vampires,” Tabitha said.
“Web series?” Vance asked.
Tabitha gave him a look. “Like a television show, but online,” she said. “At the kickoff event I took Claire to in January, they mentioned it would be prominent, but I had no idea it was this popular.” She nodded at a display at the side of the entrance. “Wow.”
Vance looked at the display, which showed an enormous mouth, probably eight feet tall, formed out of plywood. The mouth was open wide for a bite, with bright red lips and long, sharp canine teeth. The mouth had hinges and slides on its sides, and a worker on a long ladder was fastening a rope to the top of the back of the sign. On the front of the sign, just below the bottom lip, fancy lettering read: Sonoran Suckers, and under that, a row of large, block letters added: starring Maranda MacIntyre. Lines at the bottom added Season 3 Premiere 9 PM Tonight! and A MacIntyre/Walker Production.
Claire gave the teeth a wary look. Tabitha noticed and said to her, “It’s just a show, Claire. It’s not real. Remember when we saw the people who were making it?”
Claire nodded, but pressed herself against Vance without taking her eyes off the teeth on the sign.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Vance said to her. “I’ll make sure vampires don’t get you, even if they aren’t real.”
Clair looked away from the sign long enough to give him a smile so sweet and trusting that Vance felt his heart melt a little.
Suddenly, someone to Vance’s right screamed, and the crowd instinctively flinched away from the noise. Then a loud voice commanded, “Zombie Defense Crew. Stand back!”
At the words, the crowd shrank away from the security checkpoint to Vance’s right, revealing what looked like a high-school kid wearing glasses … and dressed as a zombie.
“Wait!” the kid said, panic widening his eyes as the Zombie Defense Crew member’s shotgun came up at him. “I’m not a zombie! It’s just a costume!”
“That’s a forbidden—” the Zombie Defense Crew man started to say.
Another scream pierced the air, this one from close by Vance’s left. He turned, expecting to see another zombie, but instead saw that the crowd that had shifted away from the zombie had bumped into the ladder of the worker installing the Sonoran Suckers sign. As Vance watched, the worker lost his balance. His arms flailed, and he pulled at the top of the sign to regain his footing. He managed to get hold of the ladder and not fall, but he had shifted the top of the sign. The tension seemed to go out of the hinge, and Vance saw a pin fall loose.
Then the sign pitched forward. The worker grabbed at it, but the wooden structure must have been four feet wide and three tall, and accordingly heavy, and it slipped from his grasp.
Under the falling board was a little boy, probably no more than three or four, wearing a furry kitten costume except on his right hand, which was bare. A woman who must have been his mother was a step away from him. She wore a cat costume like his, and she must have tried to pull him out of the path of the board, because she had the kid’s costume glove in her hand and a horrified expression on her face.
The crowd gasped as the board fell.
Vance leaped forward, parting the crowd with his left hand. In an instant, he reached out, seized the scruff of the boy’s costume, and yanked him back. Vance felt a puff of air on his forearm as the falling board missed the boy by inches and crashed to the floor.
After a moment’s shock, the crowd cheered at Vance’s rescue, then broke into scattered applause. Vance let go of the boy, who ran back to his mother. With tears in her eyes, she scooped him up and mouthed the words Thank you to Vance.
Vance nodded, gave her a smile, and headed back to his wife and daughter.
“That was a great save,” said a woman’s voice behind Vance. “I see you’ve still got it.”
Vance turned to the voice, and his smile grew bigger. “Hi, Allison!” he said.
She pushed her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose and gave him a crooked smile. “Hello, Vance,” she said. “Welcome to Comicon.”
