Night of the Living Trekkies (6 page)

“What did you do?” Jim asked.

“I tap on the glass and there’s no response. So I figure she’s dead. I’ve found a dead body. I call out for Matt to come look, and in that split second the woman is suddenly grabbing me. Her hand’s through the open window and she looks nuts. Her face is smashed up against the glass and her mouth is snapping like a crocodile’s. That’s about all I remember. Matt says I did some crazy, girly-looking dance until she let go.”

“He didn’t get out and help?

“Nah. He said he felt obligated to stay clear, because he’d heard on a National Geographic special that you’re not supposed to screw around with nature’s rhythms. So he just sat there watching me while I fought off that crazy bitch.”

“But the stuff on your shirt—”

Gary nodded.

“It was all over her hands. Actually, I’d swear it was coming
out
of her hands. Like blisters or lesions or something. They were all over her face, too.”

Jim studied Gary’s face for a moment. Then he let out a long sigh.

“That sounds like Dawn of the Freaking Dead,” he said. “You sure you aren’t jerking my chain?”

Now it was Gary’s turn to study Jim.

“You got me,” he said. “It’s all a joke. I rolled in roadkill, just so I could get you to believe my story about being attacked by an insane milf in a Volvo. Because even though we’ve only just met, I
live
to jerk your chain. I fantasize about it.”

The elevator bell rang for the seventh floor and the doors slid open. Jim stepped out first to make sure the hall was clear.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“I wouldn’t worry about scaring the guests,” Gary told him as he emerged from the elevator and followed Jim down the hall. “I won’t be the weirdest sight at a Star Trek convention.”

“Maybe not,” Jim said as he stopped in front of room 744. “But you’re definitely the weirdest smell.”

He passed the room card over the door, unlocking it. The accommodations included two queen-size beds, a small bathroom, and windows overlooking the Botany Bay’s vast atrium. Over each bed hung a painting—the same paintings that could be found in the majority of the Botany Bay’s guest lodgings. One showed Captain Cook landing for the first time on the Australian coast—at a place he’d soon name Botany Bay. The other showed his sailing ship, HMS
Endeavour
, in storm-tossed seas. The paintings were the hotel’s most obvious—and pretty much only—attempt to explain its name to patrons.

Though why a hotel in Houston would choose for its theme the adventures of an eighteenth-century British sea captain was beyond Jim.

“Thank Surak!” Gary exclaimed. “All I want to do is lose these clothes, grab a shower, and have a long, long nap.”

“The first two are on the agenda, but not the third,” Jim said as he dropped his companion’s big, green duffle bag on the bed. “We’re due downstairs for the Klingon Feast.”

Gary looked at him wearily and then unzipped his duffle bag, fished out a large, cardboard shirt box and a shaving kit, and disappeared with them into the bathroom. A few moments later the toilet flushed. Then the shower kicked on.

Jim flopped into a tiny upholstered chair near the windows. He made a mental note to ask Gary to put his funky clothes in a plastic sack, so they didn’t stink up the place. He contemplated stepping out into the hallway and mooching a garbage bag from a housekeeping cart.

Then he pushed the idea from his mind. Why should he give a damn if one of the hotel’s rooms smelled? Or, for that matter, if a Klingon battle-cruiser cake was delivered? Or if the catering staff abandoned their posts?

None of it was life or death.

But that business with the woman in the Volvo. That
was
life and death. It added to Jim’s general sense of unease. People bitten. People sick. A woman moaning and biting and reeking of death, just like
Dawn of the . . .

Gary emerged from the bathroom wearing a stupendously ill-fitting blue-and-black jumpsuit. The sight utterly derailed Jim’s train of thought.

“First-season
Next Generation
,” Gary said. “My mom made it for me. What do you think?”

It looked to Jim like the Starfleet recruiters were really scraping the bottom of the barrel, but he tried to frame his appraisal more diplomatically. “I’m probably the wrong person to ask,” he said. “I feel like I outgrew Star Trek a few years ago. “Then he gestured at Gary’s crotch. “But your sack is, like,
right there
.”

Gary tugged resolutely at the suit’s inseam.

“Better?” he asked.

“You might want to do that every few minutes. Just to be safe.”

Gary sat down on the corner of the bed.

“I’m whupped,” he said.

“Maybe the zombie milf infected you,” Jim suggested.

“Dude, I never said she was a zombie. That’s
you
talking.”

“But think about it. She tried to bite you,” he mused. “She was obviously out of her mind. And at least
some
of that slime on your shirt is blood. I’ve seen enough to know the look. And the smell.”

“Now you’re freaking me out,” Gary said.

“I’m freaking myself out,” Jim said. “But I know two people who were bitten today. One of them developed a really strange rash on her shoulder. And a lot of my coworkers are calling in sick. Isn’t this how zombie movies always start? With lots of minor, seemingly unrelated incidents?”

“There’s just one problem with your theory,” Gary said. “Zombies don’t exist. Those movies are fiction.”

“I know,” Jim said, “but the data all points to the same conclusion.”

“The same highly illogical conclusion,” Gary clarified. “Speaking as someone with a really tenuous hold on reality, I think you might want to take yourself offline and undergo a full diagnostic, if you get my drift.”

I’m not the one in a form-fitting jumpsuit
, Jim thought, but he didn’t see the point in debating it further. He didn’t really believe that the world was being overrun with walking dead—he just knew that his instincts were buzzing, and he was desperate to understand why.

But first, they had a feast to attend.

Jim and Gary left the room and headed down the hallway toward the elevators. Gary quickened his step when he realized it was almost seven o’clock. “I don’t need any shit from Matt for being late,” he said.

“Relax,” Jim said. “Why do you put up with him?”

“Matt can be a real jerk, but he’s already a legend in gaming. You’ll see tomorrow at the autographing session. He’ll have fans lined up for hours. I guess it goes to his head sometimes.”

The elevator arrived and they stepped inside. “Being talented is no excuse for treating your employees like dog shit,” Jim said.

Gary sighed. “He’s actually
my
employee. I’m his boss.”

“Seriously?”

“It’s like this,” he explained. “Thinking up a fresh, hugely popular game is hard. Designing one is even harder. Matt thought of one and also designed it. That means he’s valuable and has to be tolerated. My job—one of my biggest jobs—is keeping the talent in my company happy.”

The elevator descended smoothly and quickly. Its glass walls offered a panoramic view of the Botany Bay’s vast lobby.

“You’re a professional punching bag,” Jim said.

“An extremely well-paid professional punching bag,” Gary said. “But I’ll give Matt some credit: at least he doesn’t make stuff up. He says I’m fat, and I am. He says I can’t get a date, and I can’t. He says I live with my mother, and I do.”

“If you’re so well paid, why don’t you get your own place?”

Gary’s face suddenly grew serious.

“Look, Mom’s sixty-seven years old and she’s been confined to a wheelchair since I was in high school. Ever since . . . the accident. She tells me I should get my own place, live my own life, but I can’t just dump her in a rest home and walk away. I want to take care of her, the way she used to take care of me. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” Jim said. “Actually, I do.”

“Awesome. Because I just made all that shit up. My mom is healthy as hell. I live with her because I’m a social cripple.”

Jim smiled.

“And I thought Matt was a jerk,” he said.

The elevator dinged, announcing their arrival on the lobby floor. Gary started to exit, but Jim stopped him with an arm across the chest.

“Sack,” he said.

Gary adjusted himself once more, and then they were on their way.

Jim pointed Gary toward the Gweagal Room and then detoured to the Botany Bay’s front desk. He found Janice at the counter, all by herself.

And none too happy about it.

“Why are you still here?” he asked.

“Dwayne hasn’t come in,” Janice said. “And his phone’s out of service, or something. I can’t reach him.”

“Isn’t there anyone else?”

“Would I be standing here if there was?”

Janice gave Jim a long, appraising look. He thought he could hear the wheels in her head turning.

“I suppose
you
could fill in,” she finally said.

“Can’t,” Jim said. “I have a thing.”

“Oh, a thing,” Janice repeated testily. “What’s her name?”

“It’s not like that. My sister is here for GulfCon. I’m meeting her at the Festival of Klingons, or whatever it’s called. I can’t get out of it.”

He backed his way down the hall before she could press him further.

“Way to take one for the team,” she called after him.

Jim had no idea what took place at a Klingon Feast, but he had assumed it would be a little livelier than the scene he discovered in the Gweagal Room. It was in one of the Botany Bay’s smaller meeting areas and seated 150 guests for receptions, banquets, and corporate functions. Tonight, Jim pegged the head count at fifty, sixty tops. Most were either huddled around the bar or clustered in tight groups at tables. A few wore various iterations of Starfleet crew uniforms. The rest were done up in leather or faux leather and carrying fake blades.

In one corner, several Klingons were engaged in a head-butting contest, slamming their cranial crests together like rutting mountain goats. And over by the bar, someone pounded out a monotonous Klingon opera on a synthesizer keyboard. A few onlookers sang the libretto in guttural, artificially low baritones. Jim’s understanding of the Klingon language was sketchy, but he recognized the words “fight,” “kill,” and “death” in the lyrics.

He surveyed the banquet table, laden with Terran approximations of various Klingon delicacies. The sights and smells ranged from exotic to flat-out disgusting. Among the more palatable items were krada legs (smoked turkey), pipius claw (conventional crab), and heart of targ (a quivering, livid, red Jell-O mold).

Two men in full Klingon drag bellied up to the buffet. One grabbed a mock krada leg and took a hearty bite.

“How is it?” Jim asked.

“Bland,” the Klingon replied. “Needs more crapok sauce.”

Jim grabbed what he hoped was an ordinary cheeseburger and then set off for the large, round table where Matt, Rayna, Gary, and T’Poc were already eating. Sitting across from them were a knot of Klingons.

As soon as Matt caught sight of Jim, he glared at him.

“Dude, what kind of shithole is this place?” he asked.

“Excuse me?” Jim said.

“This is the worst Klingon Feast in five years of GulfCon. Look at all the empty chairs. You can’t even get a plate of gagh.”

Now that
was
strange, Jim thought. Sarah Cornell had seemed determined to pick up those gummy worms, but apparently she had never made it back from the warehouse club.

“We were expecting up to three thousand walk-ins,” Jim said.

“Three thousand, my ass,” Matt said.

Jim surveyed the room. The gathering didn’t look very festive. From what he could tell, there were only two distracted-looking servers. Ordinarily, for a dinner banquet in a hall this large, there would be seven.

“Maybe everyone has con plague,” said Rayna. “Too many people, too many germs, too much alcohol, and not enough sleep. I had it pretty bad in San Diego last year. I spent the last two days of that show flat on my back, fighting a virus.”

“Or maybe,” Gary said, delaying his response for maximum dramatic impact, “it’s the zombies.”

“What?” Rayna and T’Poc exclaimed simultaneously.

“Jim was talking about it earlier,” Gary said. “He thinks Houston’s been overrun by zombies.”

“I didn’t say
that
,” Jim corrected. “I just said a zombie outbreak would explain some of the strange things that I’ve seen today. Two of my coworkers were bitten. The cops have been crazy busy. Some psycho lady smeared blood all over Gary’s shirt. This is not a normal day.”

“You know zombies don’t exist, right?” Rayna asked.

“I’m not the one with antennae sticking out of my head,” he reminded her. “Don’t accuse me of having an overactive imagination.”

It was a slightly awkward moment, but T’Poc jumped in to defuse the tension.

“Bring on the braaaaains!” she cheered. “I’d rather deal with the undead than a bunch of
Babylon 5
fans!”

Everyone at the table, Klingons included, voiced their hearty approval.

“Most sci-fi conventions cover all the bases these days,” T’Poc told Jim. “But GulfCon’s just for Trekkers.”

“Now that’s something I’ve never understood,” Jim said. “Is there really any difference between a Trekker and a Trekkie?”

The table erupted in conversation. Several people tried to answer at once, but Rayna’s voice won out.

“Everybody’s got their own opinion about this,” she said. “Some people consider ‘Trekkie’ to be a derogatory term coined by those who don’t understand the scene. They think it denotes someone without social skills who gloms onto Star Trek as a sort of substitute life.”

“Trekkie,” Matt shouted, pointing at Gary.

“Asshole,” Gary responded, pointing back at Matt.

“I get it,” Jim said. “So what’s a Trekker?”

“A Trekker is someone who tries to live by the philosophy and ideals espoused in the Star Trek universe,” Rayna said.

“Like what?” Jim said. “Paint yourself blue?Wear shiny clothes?”