by Ash Parsons
Siggy gets her height from her dad, Harald, who, honestly, looks like a Viking or something; he’s this burly tall guy with red hair and a bushy beard. He’s so nice, though, gentle and boisterous both, with a hail-fellow-well-met laugh and whose favorite pastime is building miniature ships with Siggy’s little brother, Aksel.
It’d be pretty funny to hide one of their pirate ships somewhere in the massive water feature in front of us, tucking it into a fern for only observant people to find, like an Easter egg.
I tip my head up, taking in the tremendous size of the volcanic rock in the atrium.
“How’d they even get this big hunk of rock in here?” I ask. “They must have wide-loaded it down the interstate like a mobile home.”
Imani laughs. “I’d like to see that. But it’s poured concrete, June. Mom showed me a time-lapse video of the company that set up the molds and everything. They designed it with all the planters and maintenance panels and stuff.”
“Oh,” I say, and feel a bit disappointed that it’s not actually volcanic rock, carted all the way here from somewhere far away and sunny.
Then I picture a crew of construction people working on this one, beautiful thing, carving out places in concrete for hothouse flowers to grow.
“Can you imagine having that as your job?” I yelp. “Designing waterfalls! That would be so cool!”
Imani laughs, but it’s the warming kind that makes you feel like you’re lying in a patch of sunlight.
“Don’t ever change, June,” Imani says. “You see the good side of everything.”
She takes my arm and leads the way around the water feature.
Once past the huge rock, you can see the escalators that reach to the second floor, and then the third-floor escalators rising above that. Here the line of people entering the convention center splits into groups either heading to the open doors on the ground floor that lead into the exhibit hall, or riding up the escalators to the ballroom.
“Okay, let’s review,” I say as we wait in line to get on the escalator to the second floor.
Siggy claps, and Imani rolls her eyes.
“Ground floor?” I ask.
“Exhibit hall! Vendors! Autographs! Photo ops! Snack food!” Siggy rattles off the list like an A+ student.
“Good! Second floor?”
“Ballroom! Interviews and panels! Smaller panels in the banquet rooms! Dance party in the ballroom tonight!” Siggy says all in a rush.
“Excellent!” I praise her as we step onto the escalator.
“You forgot skyway to the hotel for lunch,” Imani says drily.
“Imani! You were listening to the orientation!” I tease her, but it’s all in fun. Imani is excited to be here; she just didn’t need the floor-plan prepping.
“Last but not least, third floor!”
“No con activities! Go up for extra bathrooms if there’s a big line!” Siggy says.
“Excellent! You pass with flying colors,” I say.
Directionally, Siggy is hopeless. She couldn’t find her way out of a paper bag, but she’s as ready for this con as I can get her, and anyway we’re using the buddy system today.
We step off the escalators on the second floor and walk to the ballroom lobby area, funneling into a pack of people moving into the ballroom for the opening session.
ZombieCon! is being opened officially by Hunter Sterling.
“Don’t forget to breathe,” Siggy instructs me as we catch a glimpse of the huge screen hanging over the stage. Hunter’s character, Clay Clarke, stares out at the audience.
“Who needs to breathe when you can see that face?” I reply.
“Imani, slow down, June is hyperventilating here,” Siggy calls to Imani in front.
I’m not, but I did just bump into Imani because I was looking at the screen instead of where I was going.
Once we’re through the doors, the ballroom buzzes with voices and excitement. There’s row upon row, easily twenty or thirty, of padded metal chairs set out in three sections facing the stage.
Imani doesn’t stop to get her bearings or scan the rows of chairs for a group of three seats; she just walks immediately to the left, and then straight up the farthest of three aisles toward the front of the hall.
I don’t even question it. After practically my whole life with Imani as my best friend, I can say without a doubt: that girl always knows where she is and where she’s going. It’s like she has a built-in compass or GPS. And she never gets vertigo or dizzy either; even when we rode the World-Famous Zip at the county fair she just laughed and laughed and walked right off it like it was no big deal.
Meanwhile I was stumbling to one side or the other like a person with an inner-ear disorder who had just ridden a ride that should only be used for astronaut training.
I follow Imani through the ballroom, which is already almost half full with audience members, people with the same idea as us: get here early.
I spot a clump of other kids from school as well as our English teacher, Ms. Guillory. Judging by the bright red shirts just past them, there’s also a bunch of college students from Georgia State here.
A zombie-fied group of cheerleaders, six guys and girls in ripped and stained cheerleader clothes and zombie makeup, stand on their seats in front of the red-shirts and lead a UGA cheer.
I’m surprised at how close Imani is getting us, and I turn and stare across the room at the other two sections of seats, which are fuller. Will our view be blocked? Why are these seats not as crowded?
Imani gets us in what feels like the thirteenth row, not bad at all, especially when you consider that the first five rows of each section are reserved for VIP badge holders and official photographers.
“Wow, Imani, got magic much?” Siggy says as we sit. “How’d you know these seats were here?”
“Disney trick,” she says, flashing a shy smile at us. “Always cut left as far as you can.”
Imani’s family is amazing. Her mother, Naomi, is an aerospace engineer, and her dad, Sejun, is a history professor. Because of the nearby army arsenal and all the civilian contractors that work with them, they moved up here for Naomi’s job from Florida when Imani was a baby. But when they lived in Florida, they fell in love with Disney World. And I mean, they are fanatics—they go at least once a year. Their house is this faintly ridiculous but also cool combination of museum reproductions and Disney World figurines.
Naomi is African American and is gorgeous like Imani—but Naomi has darker brown skin and wears her hair in a tight, short afro. She looks like a high-fashion model, too, with her style. Vibrant colors and what she calls “accent pieces,” which means the most perfect-looking, distinctive piece of jewelry you ever saw. She’s an amateur genealogist and has traced one branch of her family back to Kenya, so she’s collected a lot of jewelry from there: beautiful, bright beadwork or carved wood pieces.
Imani’s dad is just as good-looking, for a dad. He’s Korean American, and currently teaches at Emory. He’s an avid video gamer and it was probably through watching play-throughs with him that Tishala got into her sci-fi cosplays in the first place.
Fortunately, Imani’s dad thought that the cosplay stuff was amazing, and he gave Tishala her first camera setup. Now Tish constantly works on her photos, planning them, building the costumes, props, and looks, and pestering anyone around (usually Imani) into helping.
Next to me, Siggy flops into her seat.
“These seats are great! See, I didn’t ruin everything!” Siggy says, and she smiles at me and Imani, a happy, relieved-of-guilt look in her eyes.
“Well, it was a close call,” I grumble. Because really.
Siggy leans into me, then puts her head on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry. Can you ever forgive me?”
“Maybe. Since you’re cute.”
Which, hand to God, she is
. And she’s so narrow. As in her actual bone structure is slender.
Elfin. She’s built like a twig.
A really cute twig.
“Why were you late anyway?” Imani asks Siggy, across my lap. “Did Mark hear about the early decision?”
The big drama of Siggy’s life currently is whether or not she and Mark will end up at the same college next year. They’ve both applied early decision to Oglethorpe. Siggy is sure to get in. Mark . . . maybe not.
Siggy shakes her head. Instead she sits up and pulls on a lock of her hair, stroking it while tipping her chin down and looking at us through the tops of her eyes. Her eyebrows waggle.
“Forget I asked,” Imani says. Her tone more resigned than annoyed.
She has more patience than me when it comes to Mark and Siggy.
“Seriously?” My voice is harsh, because now I’m a bit mad.
Annoying Mark Annoying Carson.
“Yeah, but when you fall in love, you’ll understand,” Siggy says, immediately defensive.
Imani puts a hand on my shoulder as she feels me bunching up.
“It’s okay,” Imani says. “She didn’t mean it that way.”
Siggy immediately turns doll-wide eyes at me. “Did that sound bad? I didn’t mean it like that!”
I know she didn’t, but it’s hard not to feel self-conscious about being the only one in our group who hasn’t had an actual, committed-and-into-me boyfriend. Someone exclusive.
Especially because I would really, really, really love to be in love. To be in a relationship like that.
And because of what just happened with Scott. And Blair.
Siggy didn’t mean to hurt my feelings. And I shouldn’t have sounded so mad about Mark. She already knows I don’t like him that much.
That’s not entirely my fault because I didn’t realize that they were going to get back together the first time they broke up. Or the second time. Also, you know, the third time.
I’m a slow learner, okay? I think I’ve put that on the record already.
Now when they break up, I just listen to her cry about him and don’t tell her what I actually think. Because they’ll just be getting back together in a few hours or the next day.
“It’s okay,” I say. “We’re here now, and that’s all that matters.”
“Thanks, June,” Siggy says.
“All together or none at all,” I mutter.
“Don’t start that again!” Imani says.
We start laughing as Siggy asks, “Don’t start what?”
5
The music playing from the massive speakers onstage changes. I glance up but the stage is still empty.
The ballroom is a huge multipurpose room that can be easily reconfigured for different uses. There’s even a semicircular balcony above the entryway, accessed from the third floor. For the con, on the main floor of the ballroom there’s a massive, tall stage that’s been erected in the rear center of the room, opposite the main doors.
Next to me Siggy is trying to scoot her chair to the left a bit. She grunts with the effort.
“Help me, June,” she says, tugging on her seat and lunging at the same time.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“We’re sardines. I’m just trying to get a teeny bit more room.”
I try to scooch my chair in the opposite direction.
“It won’t work.” Imani points at the row of chairs in front of us. All the seats are those fancy, cushioned metal kind that stack.
I still don’t see why they won’t move.
“What?” I ask Imani.
“See the clips?”
Then I do see them, on the back legs of the chairs in front of us: locking clips that allow convention center workers to place the chairs in rows that make it impossible to spread out and ruin the carefully laid-out aisles.
“Sorry, Siggy, looks like we’re trapped,” I say.
Siggy huffs in frustration but soon gets over it as the music gets louder. We crane our necks trying to see if anyone is getting ready to walk out.
Onstage there’s a sofa and two easy chairs, talk show style. Behind them the stage is decorated with rubble, and even a rusted-out car chassis.
Zombie apocalypse set dressing.
At the side edges of the stage, long black curtains hang behind freestanding chain-link barriers. The chain link isn’t anchored to the floor, and it doesn’t run all the way from the stage edge to the wall, but the fencing gets the point across: behind the curtains is off-limits.
Behind the car chassis and rubble is another huge black curtain pulled closed along the back of the stage. Hanging in front of it, above the scenery, is the massive video screen. Since we arrived in the hall, it’s simply been playing a repeating slow-motion reel of the stars of Human Wasteland, dressed as their characters, turning to or away from the camera, looking heroic, stoic, and some other word that rhymes with “-oic,” probably.
And sweaty.
There’s no air-conditioning in the ZA.
The lights flicker, then dim, and the screen immediately cuts to the main character, the army ranger Captain Cliff Stead, played by actor James Cooper. He’s handsome in a grown-up way, with a strong jaw, intense eyes, and beautiful brown skin. His hair was in a military buzz cut when the first season started. On the show he’s searching for his family, but he’s managed to cobble together a ragtag group of followers, including my favorite, Clay, who’s been out looking for his own dad.
The audience screams raw-throated approval as Cliff speaks.
It’s the scene from the first episode, the one when the characters first realized what odds they were facing.
“I may not know how this happened,” Cliff says, his voice intense as he looks around at the others in his group. “Hell, I don’t know what those things are or if they’re everywhere. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s our reality now.”
His jaw tightens and he glances at Clay, who’s looking up at him with luminous green eyes.
Hunter was so cute even then.
He’s gotten taller and cuter in the past two seasons.
Cliff drops his eyes in shame. “I don’t know anything. I don’t even know where my son is.”
He swipes at his mouth, a pulling motion, like he’s trying to pull off worry, trying to wipe away fear.
He looks up, and a new determination is in his eyes.
“But I know one thing. I know what I’m gonna do.” He looks around to the others. “I’m gonna fight.”
In the ballroom, the audience whoops a hell yeah! sounding yell.
Clay steps forward, the first of the group to reply. “Me too.” He looks around at the others. “We have to fight together. Or end alone.”
The audience cheers a damn straight! kind of cheer.
Cliff looks at Clay, and gives him a tight, proud nod, as the others all promise to fight.
Then the scene cuts, and I realize it’s a compilation of greatest hits, Clay’s best scenes over the first three seasons.
I scream louder than anyone.
The new scene is when I went from thinking “He’s cute” to “He’s the most precious cinnamon roll and must be protected.” And, in my opinion, it’s the best episode of the second season, when Clay goes rogue against Cliff’s orders. Clay’s committed to doing his shift as perimeter guard, even though Cliff told him not to, because Clay wasn’t looking so hot. Because he was sick! But he was just too damn stubborn to accept his own helplessness, and he didn’t want to be just a kid, so he went anyway. And while he was out there on patrol he thought he heard a child calling for help, so he started searching the woods, going farther and farther out, sweating and shaking and just a mess, and what he didn’t realize was, his fever was so high he was having auditory hallucinations.
And. AND, AND!
&nb
sp; The child he heard crying in the woods turns out to be himself. So when he finds this bedraggled bundle in the woods, you think, oh sweet lord, it’s a zombie. He’s going to die because he’s so sick and he’s not thinking right, ohmygooooooood—
And then he touches the thing and turns it over and he sees a little kid and it’s HIM.
And the little kid that’s him says, “Why did you leave me?”
And that’s how we start to get an idea about his backstory: That the dad he’s been searching for all this time maybe left him? Or something worse? We don’t know; it’s one of the big mysteries of the show.
The scene cuts to when Clay was accidentally shot while he was trying to get back to camp. The newbie guard on duty stammers apologies as Cliff runs down to the boy (fortunately only winged by the bullet).
Cliff puts pressure on the wound, murmuring, “It’s okay, son. I’m here.”
And omg, my heart.
The next clip is Clay and Sugar, his short-lived love interest. I mean that literally. She was a zombie by the end of her second episode.
Tragedy follows Clay Clarke, I’m telling you.
Clay and Sugar kiss tentatively over heartbreaking music. Then it cuts to him crying, whispering, “I love you,” to her dead, post-dead, post-zombie-transformation-and-now-dead-dead body.
It’s the zombie apocalypse. Falling in love is the most ridiculous thing you can do.
After the scene with Sugar, it’s a kick-ass compilation of Clay’s zombie kills, or his big moments when he had to step up, to become a leader, even when he’s just a kid, and nobody thinks he can do anything. But he does, he proves himself again and again. There’s the clip where he breaks into the veterinary office to get the antibiotics, then as a zombie is coming at him, Clay just whirls and stabs it in the eye, straight up. Crunch.