“Thank you for your cooperation.” He returned my card. I replaced it in my wallet before sliding my glasses back on. “Will your associates be joining us?”
“Not today.” The scan of my press pass would have told him everything there was to know about our organization: Our work history, what our ratings share was like, any citations we’d received for sloppy reporting or libel, and, of course, how many of us were traveling with the senator and his group. “Where can I find—”
“Information kiosks are inside, up the stairs, and to your left,” he said, already turning toward the next of the waiting journalists.
Assembly-line hospitality. Maybe it’s not that welcoming, but it gets the job done. I turned to head through the glass doors into the convention center proper, where I could hopefully locate a bathroom in short order. The light had left dazzling spots dancing in front of my eyes, and the only way I was going to make them go away was by swallowing some painkillers before the migraine had time to finish developing. It was a small hope, but as I didn’t exactly relish the idea of spending the day mingling with politicians and reporters while suffering from a headache, it was the best one I had.
The air conditioning inside was pumping full volume, ignoring the fact that it was February in Oklahoma. The reason for the arctic chill was evident: The place was packed. Despite the xenophobia that’s gripped the world since the Rising, some things still have to happen face-to-face, and that includes political rallies. If anything, the rallies have gotten larger, growing as the smaller events dwindled. There’s always the chance of an outbreak when you gather more than ten or twenty people in one place, but man is by his very nature a social animal, and once in a while, you just need an excuse.
Before the Rising, Super Tuesday was a big deal. These days, it’s a three-ring circus. Beyond the expected political factions and special-interest groups, the convention center has exhibit halls and even a temporary mini-mall of service and sales kiosks. Place your vote for the next presidential candidate and buy a new pair of running shoes! You know everyone in here has been screened for signs of viral amplification, so have a ball!
The combination of sudden cold and the press of that many bodies was enough to make my impending headache throb. Hunching my shoulders, I began cutting my way diagonally across the crowd, aiming for the escalators. Presumably, the information kiosk would identify the locations of both the bathrooms and whatever was serving as a press staging area in this zoo.
Getting there was easier said than done, but after swimming my way upstream against the delegates, merchants, voters, and tourists who felt that the inconvenience of going through security was worth the chance to have a little fun, I managed to reach the escalator and stepped on, clinging to the rail for all that I was worth. I think the average American’s tendency to hide inside while life goes whizzing by is an overreaction to a currently unavoidable situation, but I’m still a child of my generation; for me, a large crowd is fifteen people. The wistful looks older people sometimes get when they talk about gatherings of six and seven hundred are completely alien to me. That’s not the way I grew up, and shoving this many bodies into one space, even a space as large as the Oklahoma City Convention Center, just feels wrong.
Judging from the makeup of the crowd, I wasn’t alone in that attitude. Except for the people dressed in the corporate colors of one exhibitor or another, I was the youngest person in sight. I’m better crowd-socialized than most people born after the Rising because I’ve forced myself to be; in addition to the paparazzi swarms, I’ve attended technology conventions and academic conferences, getting myself used to the idea that people gather in groups. If I hadn’t spent the past several years working up to this, just stepping into the hall would have made me run screaming, probably causing security to decide there was an outbreak in progress and lock us all inside.
That’s me. The eternal optimist.
I saw the information kiosk as soon as I stepped off the escalator: a brightly colored octagon surrounded by scantily clad young women handing out packs of cigarettes. I pushed past them, refusing three packs on the way, and squinted at the posted map of the convention center. “You are here,” I muttered. “That’s great. I already found me. The drinking fountain, on the other hand, would be exactly where?”
“Nonsmoker?” inquired a voice at my elbow. I turned to find myself facing Dennis Stahl of the Eakly Times. He was smiling and had a press pass clipped to the lapel of his slightly wrinkled jacket. “I thought you looked familiar.”
“Mr. Stahl,” I said, eyebrows rising. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Because I’m a newspaperman?”
“No. Because this hall holds roughly the population of North America, and I wouldn’t expect to see my brother without a tracking device.”
Mr. Stahl laughed. “Fair enough.” One of the scantily clad young women took advantage of his distraction and pushed a pack of cigarettes into his hand. He eyed it dubiously before holding it toward me. “Cigarette?”
“Sorry. Don’t smoke.”
He tilted his head to the side. “Why not? I’d expect a cigarette to be the perfect capper on your ‘look at me, I’m hard as nails’ air of journalistic integrity.” I raised my eyebrows farther. He laughed. “Come on, Ms. Mason. You wear all black, carry an actual handheld MP3 recorder—I haven’t seen anyone use one of those in years—and you never remove your sunglasses. You really think I don’t know how to spot an image when I see one?”
“First off, I have retinal KA. The sunglasses are a medical necessity. Second…” I paused, smiling. “You got me. It’s an image. But I still don’t smoke. Do you know where the bathrooms are in this place? I need some water.”
“I’ve been here three hours, and I haven’t seen a bathroom yet,” he said. “But there is a cunningly concealed Starbucks at the end of one of the exhibitors’ rows, if you wouldn’t mind my walking you?”
“If it gets me water, I’m all for it,” I said, waving off another pack of cigarettes.
Mr. Stahl nodded, opening a path through the crowd with a sweep of his arm as he led me through. “Water, or a suitable substitute thereof,” he agreed. “In exchange, I have a question for you… Why don’t you smoke? Again, it seems like the perfect capper to your image. Personal reasons?”
“I like having sufficient lung capacity to run away from the living dead,” I replied, deadpan. Mr. Stahl raised an eyebrow, and I shrugged. “I’m serious. Cigarettes won’t give you cancer, but they still cause emphysema, and I have no desire to get eaten by a zombie just because I was trying to look cool. Besides, the smoke can interfere with some delicate electronics, and it’s hard enough to keep most kits working in the field. I don’t need to add a second level of pollution to the crap they’re already trying to function through.”
“Huh. And here I thought that once you took cancer out of the equation, we’d be back to a world where every hard-hitting journalist was up to eight packs a day.”
The exhibitors’ row was packed with people selling things of every shape and size, from freeze-dried food guaranteed to stay good for the duration of a siege to medieval weaponry with built-in splatter guards. If you were looking for fluffier entertainments, there were the usual assortment of new cars, hair-care accessories, and toys for the kids, although I had to admit a certain affection for the Mattel booth advertising Urban Survival Barbie, now with her own machete and blood testing unit.