Interlude: Kimberly

She didn't know the man's face, but his voice was unmistakable.

"Kimberly, sweetheart. Everything's okay. Just open up those beautiful eyes and look at me," Sal said.

He was holding her as she lay on the ground, feeling her forehead, dabbing sweat where it formed on her neck.

"You're looking so good. This is going to go marvelously," he added.

She stared at him. Somehow he was exactly as she expected him to be. Dapper. Clean. Stylishly dressed. A bit effeminate. She didn't even have to look at the Red Wallpaper, but when she did, it said Sal, Your Talent Agent.

"Sal?" she asked. She pushed herself up so she could look around.

Where was the river? Where was the stony beach she had lain down on? Where was Antoine?

"Am I dead?" she asked.

"No, sweetheart. But you might wish you were. We have work to do. Come on," Sal said.

He was wearing a blue suit and nice shoes. He didn't have a hair out of place. Nothing about his outfit or appearance belonged here in a parking lot outside of a racetrack.

"I don't understand," she said. "What's happening?"

Her head hurt. The virus. The infection. She checked her arm. It had only been a scratch, but now it was a bite. She could count the teeth that bit her.

Sal knelt back down beside her, and then, as sweetly as he could, said, "Honey, I wish we could be gentle here, but Carousel has given us some real restrictions. We are in a place called the Props Department, shooting some footage to help establish your character at the beginning of the rescue storyline your friends started. And we don't have forever."

He reached out his hand, and Kimberly took it. She trusted him. Her instincts and Moxie told her that she could.

She took a deep breath, and then with a confident look asked him, "What do you need me to do?"

He pulled her up from the ground and said, "We need promotional material. You're some sort of public relations manager or media coordinator for a racing team. We know that you get bitten in the parking lot on your way in, like most of the early-infected, which is actually pretty common for these kinds of events in real life. We need to show you reacting to that while being endearing and wonderful."

He pointed over toward a man holding a camera. The man dressed like he knew which direction the lens was aimed, which was to say, comfortably. Kimberly saw that his name was Danny on the Red Wallpaper.

"This is Daniel," Sal said. "Best in the business, trust me, he’s died lots of times, afraid of nothing. He's going to be doing a profile on you for a documentary or something. Don't think too much about it. He'll help you get acquainted with the audience, so to speak."

Kimberly walked over to him and held out her hand.

He reached over and shook it.

"You can call me Danny," he said. "I'm actually Riley's companion."

Kimberly's eyes widened. "His companion?" she asked.

"Yeah," Danny said. "Well, from his companion trope. I'm his cameraman. We'll meet later in the movie. Sorry, we don't have much time, and we have to do a walk-and-talk. We haven't even recreated the original bite yet."

"Yes, yes, yes," Sal said. "Don't rush her. We have plenty of time. From what I understand, some of the original infected off the ship spent hours out in the parking lot isolating victims and infecting them. What kind of people get bit by strangers and still decide to go watch a race, I don't know."

She took in her surroundings. It was a sea of cars next to a sea of water.

"So who's my character?" Kimberly asked as she focused in, trying to feel the person that she was going to portray. The probe she sent down into her heart came back empty. "I'm not playing a real person?" she asked, panicking a bit.

"Don't worry about it. You're a racing team PR manager. Your personality is that you're blonde and well-dressed in the Deep South, and you've already got that covered," Sal said with a smile.

Kimberly couldn't help but laugh, even as her head started to split in two from her infection.

A few deep breaths. She had to figure out who her character was.

"First, I need to know who the other players are," Kimberly said as she looked at her reflection in a nearby car window. "Second, how much is the infection going to change my appearance? And third, is that my makeup artist over there? Because if so, I think I'm going to need a touch-up on this forehead really quick, or else no one is going to call me Eye Candy, even ironically."

"That's my girl," Sal said.

He began giving her all the answers to the questions she had asked. Never once did she inquire about what had happened after she was infected on the Carousel River. Never once did she complain. And not a single time did she ask what the Props Department was, or how any of it worked. All she did was get to work.

She was what Sal would call a real pro.

-

Riley

The Final Battle was a simple game of escape. My role was complete many times over.

"Anna, are you out there?" Camden called over the radio. "Are you picking this up? We need some help."

His call was met by silence.

Things were going to the breaking point. Soon, Antoine, Kimberly, and Camden would be overrun.

"We have to make a break for it," Antoine said. "It's our only shot."

"No, don't do it," Camden said. "They see movement, and that's the end of us. These guys are trained well enough at least for that."

As the zombies squeezed down the tight opening between buildings toward them, Antoine had edged them closer and closer to the outside, where all that stood between them and the military was a tall rose bush.

"Maybe we duck away and let the zombies flood out?" Antoine suggested.

"There are too many variables," Camden said. At that point, he would have no idea that Anna had been overcome, nor that I had rescued her. He would be relying on her having gotten to the car.

He clicked his radio button one more time as he pushed his crowbar deeper into the mouth of the zombie closest to him. "Anna, if you're out there, we really need you to swing by the groundskeeping building and draw some of these things off us."

Silence. Even the moans and catchphrases of the zombies drowned out as the desperation of my friends’ situation was left to sit with the audience.

And then the roar of an engine, accompanied by a loud blaring siren from the speaker that Camden had hooked up to the back of the car.

"Sorry, I was just taking her for a test run," Anna said over the radio.

"Anna," Kimberly cried out.

Sure enough, the helmeted race car driver was accomplishing her dream. Going round and round the track, cutting short, trailing across the field, and then starting back up near the groundskeeping building, doing whatever she could to draw the attention of the zombies that were bearing down on Camden.

Even though those zombies didn't have an eyeline on her car, they could hear her. And, more importantly, the zombies outside the building could see her.

Camden's plan was coming together.

First, the zombies outside the groundskeeping building saw her and started to move away, carrying their high-energy repeating phrases with them, which attracted the zombies next to them, and those next to them, until eventually the groundskeeping building emptied of all the infected.

"Look that way," Camden said, pushing his crowbar further, forcing the zombie to look back the other direction down the narrow passage.

Zombies in that direction were starting to pull back to pursue Anna instead, and so those near Camden started to copy them. One by one, they pulled away, inching back down the narrow passage toward the interior of the track.

"Thanks for everything, Anna," Camden said solemnly.

"You can thank me when you're outside," she said.

She accelerated the car and started to move it around the track, attracting as many zombies as she possibly could.

Commandant Caster fought her as best he could too, commanding the zombies to disperse, sending out as many low-energy signals as possible to some and commanding others onto the track to try to stop her.

Long story short: they didn't stop her.

She found a thin line of those poor souls that were standing in her way, and she absolutely crushed them, sending them flying over her hood. We'd spent an entire movie establishing that these were still people, but they were being used as tools by the enemy, and any audience member who bought a ticket for this show would expect to see at least a few zombies killed with a race car.

Anna did her best to give them exactly what they would have wanted. She did donuts, peeled out, took out any zombies that got in her way, and shepherded those that she could to follow her by the thousands.

Her real goal, as she went around, was to crush any speaker she came across, gradually shifting control over the horde from the commandant to herself, just as Camden had instructed her.

In the battle of wits, Camden was quite the competitor. All that was left was execution.

I had led my horde off the track and into the building right next to Camden, Antoine, and Kimberly. It had taken some work because the building had been secured, but a couple hundred highly motivated zombies could accomplish a lot.

It was actually quite finicky and difficult to stay Off-Screen as I guided the zombies through the building.

Carousel was sure to capture the footage of the horde taking out a sniper's nest on the third floor of the building, but it didn't stick around long. The real money shot was coming from Anna out on the track.

My zombie followers went into screensaver mode the moment there was nothing left in the building for them to do.

"I am the queen of the damned," Ramona said to me. She couldn't speak freely anymore, but I knew her mind was her own.

"You certainly are," I said.

Out on the track, Anna had lined up her shot, positioned the zombies as close to the gate she was about to crash through as possible so they could easily climb through it after she took it out, and then she gunned the engine. Instead of following the steep curve around the track, she ramped it, breaking through the barricade and launching into the outer gate, which she absolutely demolished.

Her Along For The Ride trope buffed the car's Grit and Hustle, which were not normally stats we got to know about. The car made it all the way through the outer gate and continued going, breaking through another barricade, and then another.

Sand and dust flew up into the air as a bunch of surprised soldiers started flocking around in formation, pointing their guns at Anna's now totaled car. All she could do was hide down in the floorboard as much as possible, hoping not to get shot to pieces. It wasn’t clear how well that worked.

Camden's alarm continued to play through the bullets.

Owing more to Camden's Savvy and plan design than to any real-world logic, where there were no infected, suddenly there were thousands pouring out through the gate despite how steep that climb must have been for them.

The thing about the zombies was that while individually they were just sick people, together their Plot Armor could grow exponentially, and it sure did. Even as wave after wave was mowed down by the soldiers, more made it through and began spilling out into the parking lot, overwhelming the soldiers in the area.

More importantly, they were giving a good show for all the news crews and bystanders down the street who had been watching the Speedway with rapt attention.

The military coverup of the virus was officially beaten.

Finally, after Camden's work was displayed, it was time to go back to the actual escape. Most of the soldiers near the secret passage had begun running back toward the breach in the perimeter, leaving a wide open path for Antoine, Kimberly, and Camden.

They took it as fast as they could. Antoine had to knock out a soldier on the way, but it was hardly worth noting.

They were escaping out into one of the many parking lots surrounding the racetrack. We had won. We had to have. In fact, I could see the end credits starting to run. The Plot Cycle was moving to the end.

We had beaten the storyline. Kimberly had lived long enough to recover from the virus, and they had escaped.

But someone wasn't willing to give up.

A cold voice came over the radio after the credits rolled.

"Congratulations," Commandant Caster said. "You know, when the virus escaped our ship out into the city, I was worried that it would be traced back to us, but I persevered. I am diligent, you see. What I needed was someone else to blame, a new origin point for the virus. What I needed was a terrorist. But where could I possibly find one on such short notice? How about a disaffected ex-agent of a nameless non-governmental organization? A man with talents beyond the understanding of any ordinary citizen, who had access to the Speedway and the skill set needed to enact such a horrible crime. I thought I needed a miracle, but it turned out, Camden Tran, all I needed was you. And in a few minutes, the world will know the fault lay at your feet, not ours. We will simply call in an airstrike and wipe up all the evidence. Do you think my name is even really Commandant Caster? Why would I ever give an opponent an advantage as crucial as my identity? No, Camden. You've won noth—"

Carousel cut him off. It would seem that our ultimate opponent was a bit of a sore loser. To be fair, his win condition was a bit obtuse. If he had been allowed to use tactical strikes, we would have been toast.

I looked down at my body and saw that I was back in my hoodie, minus the Wimpaway logo. I was fully healed, and I knew that because it ached just like old times.

I looked over to see Ramona, Cassie, and Isaac back to normal. Our zombie posse had disappeared.

"I really did try to be a queen of the damned," Ramona said. "But this story wasn't about me."

Out the window, I saw Antoine, Kimberly, and Camden standing on the beach next to the ocean.

"Don't worry," I said. "It wasn't about me either."

We walked out of the building and quickly ran to join our friends.