Girls Save the World in This One

by Ash Parsons

  A bright jet of blood arcs into the air as the zombie lifts his face. Then he reattaches, sawing more with his upper teeth.

  “Oh my God!” the camerawoman gasps.

  “We have to go, we have to go,” Imani chants, pulling at my arm.

  “Where?” I ask, and I glance away from the attacking zombies. I look to the front of the ballroom.

  “I’m calling the police,” the camerawoman says, pulling a phone out of her jeans pocket.

  Siggy. Can she and Blair see what’s happening?

  The actors on the stage are frowning at the commotion in the back of the ballroom. Some crane their necks to see better. But there’s a sea of chairs between them and the back of the hall, row after row of seats filled with at least a thousand con attendees.

  All sitting there in the dimness of the room.

  They can’t see what’s happening.

  They’re not scared.

  Yet.

  “No signal.” The camerawoman jabs impatiently at her phone.

  In every row that isn’t in the back of the ballroom, the audience just sits calmly, glancing around, some standing, but most waiting for Michaela to tell them what’s happening, to get the panel back underway.

  But Michaela just stands there, holding the mic below her chin, staring in surprise as more herky-jerky bodies press into the ballroom.

  “It’s . . . is it . . . ?” Michaela says, squinting at the surging bodies in the back of the room. “Some kind of flash mob?”

  The standing-room crowd at the back of the ballroom has started shoving to get away, moving in isolation from the rest of the seated audience like the ripple of a larger wave to come.

  And in row two, Siggy is still blowing kisses at Linus, as Blair eggs her on, clapping.

  They don’t know. They don’t see.

  This is an attack.

  The scientist said the infected are here.

  Zombies. He called them zombies.

  The zombie apocalypse is here now.

  I have to warn them. Siggy, Blair, Hunter, all of them. Everyone.

  Imani is already ahead of me, of course, her thoughts and mine running together like always, almost as if we’re telepathic. She’s cupped her hands around her mouth, hollering at the stage.

  “Run, Siggy!”

  There’s too much noise. Too much confusion.

  Siggy’s head swivels slightly, like she’s thinking of glancing back where we were.

  Onstage, Linus says something and her head turns back toward him.

  On the giant screen over the stage, there’s a wide shot of the waiting actors. The shot wavers slightly with our weight as Imani jumps and waves her arms.

  “We have to show them!” I tell the camerawoman.

  I grab the side of the camera lens and push.

  The camerawoman takes ahold of the lever that tilts the camera and adjusts it down.

  On the big screen, the picture skims down and across the seated audience, then finally hits the aisle at the back of the room.

  The camera must have an automatic focus, or the camerawoman does it, because the picture first blurs, then pulls in clear on the face of another zombie, a woman with bright blood smearing her mouth and nose, making it look vaguely like she has a muzzle, except for the fact that it’s blood, and when she opens her mouth wide you can see chunks of bright red flesh in her mouth.

  I recognize her. It’s the rude woman with shiny lips from Autograph Alley. The one who pushed in front of me to get Janet’s signature.

  Something got to her. A zombie. The skin of one cheek is torn—white teeth gleaming through the gash.

  Through the close-up of the camera, I can see clearly not just the gray mottling on her skin, the coloring that makes it look necrotic, but also something else.

  A writhing, somehow under the skin. As if the musculature of her face is somehow undulating in a wave. It makes her skin look like a snake’s egg, pulsating with the movements of the snakeling within.

  I recoil instinctively as my stomach lurches. It’s disgusting and really, really disturbing, the ripples of the muscles under her gray and mottled skin.

  She jerks. Her arms give a spasm, and she falls forward as if tugged, flailing toward a man.

  The panic that began in the back of the hall sweeps forward through the seats, like a wave in a stadium, as the rest of the audience sees the zombies on the big screen. As they watch the zombie woman bite into the arm of the man. As they see his agonized, terrified face.

  Screams and shouts as people clamber out of their seats, or try to. There’s shoving in panic, trying to escape narrow rows and funneling into suddenly crowded aisles.

  Imani is still waving her arms over her head, and I see Siggy standing on her chair, searching for us in the back of the hall, where she left us.

  Where the zombies are.

  She doesn’t know to look for us anywhere else.

  Even standing on the chair she can’t see that we’re not there. The back of the hall and now the aisles are a churning mass of panicking people, shoving each other out of the way, rushing toward the exits.

  Which, except for the one funneling more zombies into the ballroom, are all locked.

  The scientist meant to protect us, but of course no one believed him.

  And now only one set of doors is open, and the zombies are erupting in, like ants streaming out of an anthill, angry, hungry, attacking us.

  Making this entire ballroom a trap. We’re trapped.

  “She can’t see us!” Imani yells over the screams around us. “She doesn’t know where we are!”

  Siggy climbs onto the back of her chair, perching there almost impossibly, like a cat—then she takes a few steps, walking along the tops of the chairs like a high-wire artist.

  “No!” I shriek. “Siggy! No!”

  “She’s trying to get to us,” Imani moans. “June, she can’t go there!”

  Meaning back into the aisle. Back where the zombies surge forward, attacking.

  Blair jumps onto a seat and grabs Siggy’s arm, pulling her back.

  The camera platform sways.

  I look down. A sea of shoving bodies buffet our spindly scaffold.

  “She’s got her!” Imani says, relief layering over the fear in her voice. “Good job, Blair!”

  I glance back at Blair, pulling Siggy. They’re not heading to the aisle anymore. In fact, they’re heading in the opposite direction. Instead of rushing toward the aisle, toward the doors, they’re clamoring over a row, heading to the stage.

  Which means they’re facing the screen again.

  Imani thinks of it first, moving like lightning. She grabs the camera and swivels it a full one-eighty degrees, to our faces.

  It blurs and tightens, blurs and tightens.

  “Here.” The camerawoman messes with something, and on the screen at the front of the hall, Imani’s face comes into perfect focus, selfie-close.

  Blair sees it first, pointing up.

  Siggy turns and sees us standing on the swaying platform.

  Imani turns, putting her back to the camera so she can face our friends.

  “We’re okay!” she yells, even though there’s no way that Blair and Siggy can hear her.

  And even though the platform sways so violently we stumble, gripping each other’s arms for balance.

  I push my hand at the stage in a shooing motion.

  “Go!” I yell.

  Imani points at Siggy, then at Blair. Then she makes running fingers and runs her hand to the right, offstage. She pumps her fist in the air twice.

  Gestures we know from the show. From James’s army ranger character, who’s now reaching down to the audience, pulling people onto the stage and out of harm’s way.

  Blair nods and give a thumbs-up. Siggy frowns,
worry stamped on her face.

  The platform lurches, and I stumble so hard I nearly totter off into the sea of bodies below us.

  The camerawoman grabs my arm, pulling me steady. “We can’t stay here!”

  All around us, hundreds of people panic, pushing and shoving each other out of the way, a stampede, headed to the exits, the sets of double doors placed at intervals along the back of the ballroom.

  From the platform, the panicking people look like a flock of birds, scattering in different directions from a gunshot.

  “We need to get to the stage,” I tell Imani and the camerawoman. “There are no zombies that way.”

  “And there’s a stairwell back that way,” the camerawoman agrees. “We can get out.”

  “Okay, let’s go.” Imani nods.

  The only problem is getting down without getting trampled. But then the buffeting crowd thins, suddenly, and rows of empty seats are in front of us.

  Screams punctuate the air.

  I glance behind us, at the center doors. The infected have stopped pushing in, and the doors hang open, empty.

  With a mass of swaying zombies between us and them.

  The screams cut off suddenly, and I don’t want to follow the sound. I don’t want to see why they stopped.

  I turn toward the stage.

  Most of the actors have exited into one of the wings. James Cooper is only now following after them, walking with an older man he helped onto the stage when the panic started.

  Right. They’re going right. The exit must be to the right.

  I climb down first, straight down the front of the platform. I rush across the small yellow-taped square and climb over the nearest row of empty seats, into the row.

  I’m now in the middle section of seats, about ten rows up from the back of the room.

  It feels a little safer with the chairs between me and the zombies.

  Imani and the camerawoman scramble down off the platform after me, and follow me over the rows of seats heading toward the stage.

  More screams and grunting behind us.

  I glance back. A pod of about thirty to fifty zombies are approaching a large group of people, maybe a hundred humans, trying to get out another set of double doors.

  The doors don’t budge, and the zombies hurtle into the scattering people. It looks almost like a football game, just lines of pressing and running people, struggling against each other, indistinct and violent.

  Some people have to be getting out, right? They have to be able to run around the zombies, or push them back. We can’t all be trapped in here.

  It’s impossible to tell. There’s so much chaos now, and without stopping to really watch, it’s impossible to tell how many groups are fighting the zombies, or simply fighting to get away, trampling each other.

  The ballroom feels like a bomb went off in the middle of it, the seating mostly empty, bodies and straining people ringing the edge of the room.

  We climb over the rows of chairs heading toward the stage, lunging and stumbling like the world’s worst hurdlers. Imani is the fastest, her long legs just letting her do these long steps; she’s about two rows in front of me. I start to get a rhythm going, though, using this sit-and-pivot move to nearly catch up.

  The camerawoman is right with me, until she looks over her shoulder as she’s leaning forward to grab the next seat back, misses her grip, and falls forward and sideways.

  The back of the chair catches her upper lip as she pulls back and tries to twist to minimize the impact.

  It still hits hard, and she falls awkwardly between the rows.

  “Hey!” I call to her, and I turn back, lunging over the row to get to her.

  Then I see what she was looking at. Why she looked back.

  A zombie man has spotted us. It’s the man with the broken jaw, one of the first zombies to make it into the ballroom and now one of the first to make it this far into the space.

  He throws himself over the rows of chairs with uncoordinated desperation, without looking at the seats, just throwing himself forward, tumbling, falling, standing, and thrashing forward again.

  The camerawoman lies on her back, blinking up at me. Blood gushes down her chin and neck from her split upper lip.

  “Get up!” I yell. I pull at her arm, trying not to hear the guttural noises the infected man makes as he advances.

  She nods, and sits up, shakes her head like a cartoon character trying to scatter circling birds around their head.

  I glance toward the stage.

  Imani has just realized I stopped. She’s got the fiercest expression I’ve ever seen on her face—this determined anger.

  She’s damn near leaping over the rows to get back to where I pull the camerawoman after me, over the next row, and the next.

  We’re moving too slow.

  The zombie man is four rows behind us.

  “Come on!” I scream at the camerawoman.

  Ten more rows and we’ll be there.

  It’s going to be close.

  I refuse to think about what happens if the zombie man follows us onto the stage.

  Just get to the stage, just get to the stage.

  We keep hurtling forward. Two rows left.

  Second row. Where Blair and Siggy sat, my brain comments, like it matters AT ALL.

  We’re not going to make it.

  “Get her on the stage!” I yelp at Imani, and I dash sideways in the row instead of climbing over the next one, trying to draw the pursuing zombie away.

  One row behind me, the zombie rushes after me.

  I feel the brush of his fingers on my arm.

  And then I realize the fatal flaw in my plan.

  Because there’s an aisle I have to cross to get to the next section of chairs.

  And not even the flimsy barrier of a row of seats will be between me and the zombie chasing me.

  And there’s another zombie, a woman in a loud, jaguar-patterned sequined shirt, stumbling down the aisle toward the front of the stage.

  Two zombies converged in a ballroom, and I—I ran right into both of them.

  14

  Behind me, Imani’s voice shrieks like metal on metal.

  “JUNE, LOOK OUT!”

  At the sound of her voice, the jaguar-print zombie looks away from me toward the stage.

  It gives me the split second I need.

  If I was coordinated, it would be kind of beautiful.

  I burst out into the aisle as both zombies turn.

  They flail toward me, but they’re heading where I was.

  Not where I am, where I’ve ducked, tucked, and rolled into the world’s clumsiest somersault.

  But muscle memory takes over and I feel like I’m in elementary school again, wearing pink tights and a black leotard.

  The two zombies collide above me. The impact is so hard they spin off each other, knocked back like billiard balls.

  I rocket to my feet, spin, then I’m back in the rows, rushing back the way I came, headlong to the stage.

  Imani and the camerawoman grab my forearms and boost me so hard I can almost stick the landing on my feet.

  Or at least it feels like that as I fall into their arms.

  “You jerk!” Imani scolds, giving me a quick hug, as the two zombies chasing me reach the stage. They batter against it with their chests, arms reaching out.

  They can’t climb it. Or perhaps, like all their movements so far, it’s completely uncoordinated, unthought, and they simply can’t get enough of their mass to fall forward over the stage lip.

  “Thanks,” I say to Imani and the camerawoman.

  “No, thank you,” the camerawoman says. “I’m Rosa García.”

  She gently wipes her sleeve across her bloody chin.

  “You’re welcome, Rosa.” I pant. “I�
�m June Blue.”

  “I’m-Imani-Choi-and-we-can’t-stay-here,” Imani says in a rush. She points.

  At least ten more zombies from the huge mass in the back of the ballroom have noticed us. They stumble down the aisles toward the stage.

  “What happens when they all see us? There are what, two hundred of them? Three hundred? At least. The stage could break or they might find a way up,” Rosa asks.

  “Agreed,” I say. “We need to get to that stairwell.”

  “Siggy and Blair and the actors went that way.” Imani points stage right.

  We start moving, behind the row of chairs and toward the edge of the stage. I glance back out at the scene behind us.

  The biggest clump of bodies, both human and zombie, is by the main set of doors. From the stage it looks surreal, like the set of a war movie, or like the carpet is somehow an ocean, and the bodies are the debris of a shipwreck, washing against the walls in undulating waves.

  Except the carpet isn’t moving, and the movement is only from the zombies now, tearing, pulling, and ripping . . .

  There’s a second, smaller group of bodies a short distance away from the main entrance, at the next set of doors. Mostly silence, and tearing movement. No survivors.

  But at the next set of doors after that, a huddle of around ten humans has rallied and stands in a semicircle. A table has been turned on its side, legs jutting out. Two burly men stand on either side, protecting the small cluster of people behind it.

  As I watch, one of the men swings a huge canister at a zombie. It connects to the zombie’s head with a resounding clang.

  A fire extinguisher. He’s armed himself with a fire extinguisher.

  The zombie goes down, skull misshapen by the impact.

  Past that small huddle of fighters is another group of humans. It’s the group of six UGA cheerleaders from this morning, still dressed in their zombified bright-red uniforms. They stand under the curved edge of the balcony. The boy cheerleaders, the stuntmen, are helping the girl cheerleaders up to safety.

  Which is impressive, since there aren’t any stairs and given that the balcony is at least twelve feet above their heads.

  One cheerleader girl is already up on the balcony, running sideways, looking for something, while two of the three stuntmen on the ballroom floor have lifted two other girls expertly, heels in their hands as they carefully launch first one, then the other into the air and at the balcony railing.