by Ash Parsons
I would like to tell him that I knew what she meant, and he doesn’t need to explain for her. Like anyone says “split” to mean “leave” anymore.
I keep my mouth shut, because Siggy doesn’t look upset with him.
Instead she’s looking at him like he’s her hero.
But Blair catches my eye and gives a slight eye roll. I tip my chin to let her know I saw.
Cuellar picks up the story.
“Half of ’em went one way, into the stairwell with the zombie chasing them, the other half ran out the lobby doors in a panic.”
He takes a big swig of the whiskey, making a face around the bite of it in his throat.
“Pointless, of course, because there was still a mess of zombies in the lobby. They ran right into them.” He shakes his head, scrubbing a hand over his beard stubble. “But it’s not like anyone was thinking. And anyway, it gave us at the back the chance we needed to get up here.”
“Why’d you come upstairs?” Linus asks, sipping from his glass like a gentleman in a club.
“No other option,” Cuellar admits, shaking his head. “I saw some in the atrium, maybe five or more, and sounded like a helluva lot more down there. I turned off all the escalators at least, so hopefully none of them will end up here by accident. They don’t seem too smart with climbing stairs or what have you.”
“We saw a group of survivors get to the balcony,” I say, pointing at the nearest set of doors. “We figured all the doors leading outside are locked like the scientist said, and so we decided to come up here to try to join forces.”
“Well, sure, but the problem with that is, they’re infected. Zombies, like you said.”
Somehow, Cuellar doesn’t look sad to say it.
Instead he’s got one of those looks on his face, the kind that only some men sometimes get. That makes me want to take a step away from him. This look that he’s somehow satisfied, no, that it somehow satisfies something in him, to be right.
To tell me that I’m wrong.
To be right over a girl.
That’s what it feels like.
Maybe I’m just being paranoid. I’ve been through a shock, and right now I’m overreacting.
I take a small step back anyway.
At the same moment, Imani moves behind Siggy, and comes around slightly in front of me, standing close.
She felt it, too.
“How do you know they’re zombies?” Simon asks, friendly tone, not suspicious like I would sound. But I’m glad he asked because I have the same question. Even if the last stuntman up the extension cord got bitten, it’s not been that long. He might still be fine. We were just downstairs, everything happened too fast—
“I saw them, the zombies in the balcony,” Cuellar says.
It sounds like the title of a deeply inappropriate picture book.
The Zombies in the Balcony.
I wrench my brain back to focus completely on what Cuellar’s saying.
“First thing I did when we got up here was turn off the escalators, then I barricaded the top of ’em.”
“Good thinking,” Janet says.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Then what?” I ask.
“Well, then me and my two little hitchhikers here—” He tips his head at Siggy and Blair indulgently, but something in his eyes is like a guy ogling a waitress.
“We’d be dead if it wasn’t for Cuellar,” Siggy interjects, her voice completely sincere.
Blair doesn’t say anything.
I meet her eyes and she gives me a look, the smallest of shakes to her head.
“—we went around to make sure it was safe, you know. So, I say wait here, girls, behind the bar. Then I go to that door right there and I ease it open. Perfectly silent.”
He drains his glass and puts it down on the bar quietly. It doesn’t fit with his self-satisfied air, the gentle motion, when it feels like what he wants to do is slam it down like a trophy.
“He didn’t see me,” Cuellar says. “Big guy. Infected now. He was attacking whoever else was up there. It’s sad, but at least he can’t figure out how to open a door, right?”
He grabs the bottle of whiskey and tilts another helping into his glass.
“They’re dangerous, but they’re mindless,” Cuellar says. “They can hear better than they can see, I think. Some of them are faster than the others, did you notice that?”
“Yeah. Zoombies,” I reply.
Rosa lets out a rich laugh. “Zoombies. That’s good.”
“What do we call the slow ones?” Mia asks. “Slothbies? Slowbies?”
“Walkers,” Janet says.
“We need to secure the balcony doors,” Linus says, but his voice is flat. I glance at him, and he looks pale.
“Hey, sit down, Linus,” I urge, gesturing at one of the barstools.
“You hurt or something?” Cuellar asks.
Linus gives him a wince-smile, and touches the back of his head.
Cuellar reaches behind the bar again and grabs a handful of square cocktail napkins, hands them to Linus.
“Hey, girlie, wanna help your boyfriend here?” Cuellar asks Annie, who just rolls her eyes at him. She drifts back toward the wall of windows, trying with her phone again.
Cuellar laughs.
“What’s so funny?” Blair asks, and her sudden voice must startle him, because he looks around as if he’s surprised by the source. Maybe he wasn’t expecting how sharp it sounded. How assertive.
But that’s Blair. She can be utterly fearless. And I can tell from her tone that she doesn’t really care what Cuellar is laughing about, but is just challenging the aggressive taunt underneath it.
“Nothing, just it’s all fake,” Cuellar answers, giving Blair that up-and-down look that makes me want to throw a drink in his face.
“Can it, Cuellar,” Mia says. “PR’s my job, remember?”
“It hardly matters now,” Linus says, but there’s apology in his voice.
“You’re . . . not dating?” Siggy’s voice is small, her tone like a little kid asking if Santa is real.
I can’t help it. After everything.
This.
This is what breaks me.
A laugh burbles up from my chest into my throat. I cough to choke it out, because I don’t want to hurt my friend, don’t want to hurt my Siggy.
I’d probably be disappointed, too, if I hadn’t already seen with my own eyes how very NOT into each other Linus and Annie are.
“Sorry,” Siggy says. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. None of my business.”
“We all made it your business,” Linus says. He gently repositions the stack of cocktail napkins on his head. “Mia thought it might help keep our characters on the show longer, you see.”
Siggy nods, and waves her hand like of course, of course.
“I wasn’t wrong,” Mia says. “Can you keep it confidential, kid? When we get out of here?” she asks Siggy.
Siggy nods.
Linus winces again, but it doesn’t look like it’s from the injury on his head.
We seriously have such bigger fish to fry, but it’s encouraging that Mia’s so confident we’re getting out.
“So, what do we do now?” Simon asks.
“Right,” Janet agrees. “We need to formulate a plan.”
They both look at me.
Linus turns on his seat to look at me as well.
Cuellar looks at me, too, in absolute disbelief, looking from them to me, back to them.
“What, you think y’all are in the army or something?” Cuellar asks, his voice scornful. “What you gonna do, just go out there and reconnoiter?”
He laughs, a dismissive huff, but still friendly. Like he expects us all to laugh along with him.
No one else laughs.
/> I don’t say it, but yes, we should absolutely “reconnoiter” or whatever. We already know there are zombies on the balcony, but where else might they be? Before we can do anything else, we should secure ourselves here—which mainly means taking a moment to make sure we won’t be surprised by zombies—which sounds like a soap opera, Surprised by Zombies—either coming out of the balcony, out of a bathroom, around the hallway corner, or anywhere else.
Like out of a maintenance closet or whatever.
We should check the utility stairwell door, too.
I think that’s all that’s up here.
But we should try to find a fire evacuation map for the third floor, like there was in the dressing room. Then we’ll know for sure if there are any other rooms up here.
Then we can decide what’s next. Try to get a signal, or try to find roof access.
“Safety first, right?” I say to Linus and Janet. “First we should try to secure those doors, or perhaps confirm how many zombies are up there? In the balcony? I wouldn’t want to be surprised if they suddenly blunder their way out.”
Linus nods encouragingly.
Siggy puts her hand a little ways into the air, like she’s in class and I’m the teacher. I nod at her. “We should check all our phones over by the windows in an organized way,” she says.
“Great idea,” I tell her.
“None of ’em are gonna work, but go right ahead, chickadees.” Cuellar knocks back the rest of his drink like I’ve personally offended him somehow, and he has to knock a bad taste out of his mouth.
“What’s your problem, buddy?” Blair asks, and I have a rush of gratitude—that she’s backing me up and that it’s not just all in my head.
Then I remember about Scott. About running around behind my back, instead of just telling me. And the gratitude slips away like a receding tide, quick, leaving gross flotsam on the shore.
“Nothing,” Cuellar says. “I just don’t think we should be taking orders from a teenager.”
The teenage “girl” part is unspoken.
“No one’s taking orders,” Rosa says. “We’re all strategizing, here. And she thinks clearly, and we can all use a bit of that right now.”
Simon nods, arching an eyebrow at Cuellar’s empty glass.
Cuellar’s eyes tighten.
“Someone should check the bathrooms, and that balcony door,” Mia says, defusing the moment. “We hide out up here long enough we’ll want the bathrooms, plus we can see if they lock from the inside.”
“Right,” Simon agrees. “And we can control the access now. Take out the zombies one at a time if there are any.”
He hoists the blood-and-goop-spattered vanity stool.
“Cuellar, how about you come help me?” he asks.
“Sure thing, Wong,” Cuellar says, a bitter undertone to his voice. But he lifts the empty whiskey bottle in his hand and flips it around, grasping it by the neck.
“I like bashing things in the head,” Cuellar says as they walk to the bathroom doors.
20
Cuellar stands behind the door, waiting. Simon nods his head, and Cuellar pops it open.
No zombies rush out. Simon eases into the men’s room to make sure it’s clear.
“I’ll go test our phones by this window,” Imani says to me, pointing to the window on the exterior wall close to the bar. I hand her my cell. Blair and Siggy move over to the windows with her. Annie is already walking along the wall farther up by the upholstered chairs, holding her phone like a dowser’s wand.
They hold their phones up and start slow-walking forward along the window wall, watching their screens.
“Is anyone wearing a belt they don’t need?” Linus asks. “I can start with the doors.”
Rosa nods and takes off her belt, handing it over.
“No belt, but I have this.” Mia digs in her sharp-edged, small purse. She pulls out a braided nylon strip. She gives it an expert tug, and it twirls open into a thin cord.
“That’s . . .” Linus trails off and laughs. “That’s paracord, right?”
Mia smooths her bangs. “Yeah, it’s one of those survival bracelets. Bear gave it to me.”
We all just kind of blink at her for a moment.
Then Linus thanks her and drapes the cord over his shoulder alongside Rosa’s belt. He lifts his shirt and goes to pull his own belt off.
Which is when I notice his hands.
They’re shaking. But more than that, they’re . . . off-color. Paler, and lightly mottled. Like the vessels under the skin are faintly bruising. Or like blood is becoming sluggish, pooling somehow.
Or starting to.
“Linus?” I ask. My heart feels crouched in my chest, tiny and frightened.
“Yeah,” he says. “I was waiting for the right moment to tell everyone.” He glances around, making sure no one else other than me, Rosa, and Mia is paying attention.
Then he rolls up one sleeve.
A bite.
Ragged and still bleeding, or more like oozing, with teeth marks clear.
“But he didn’t get you.” My voice is a whisper. “You fell under him and he couldn’t reach you.”
Linus smiles at me.
“The tall guy? No, he didn’t get me,” he agrees. “This was from the first one, while you were climbing. I recognized him, well, sort of, from today. A fan.”
His tone is self-mocking as he pulls his sleeve back down.
“I couldn’t hit him, not fast enough at least. Or not hard enough.” He shakes his head, dragging a hand through his still perfectly floppy hair. “He’s lying on the floor of the atrium now.”
My voice is quavering when I speak.
“Maybe, when we get everything locked down, we can get a cell signal. And then—”
Linus stops me, shaking his head.
“June, I heard that scientist. He said there’s no cure, re-member? And I’m on a zombie show. I know what this means.”
The scientist’s voice echoes through my memory, words he huffed into the microphone as security chased him around the stage.
Too late for them and fatal.
“Oh, Linus.” Mia’s voice is soft. She puts a hand out to him.
“So, don’t argue with me if I decide to act like a hero, okay?” Linus says. “Just let me go out in a blaze of glory, right?”
I swipe at my eyes.
“Okay.” I try to match his light tone. “Only if you promise it’ll be a bonfire.”
“Yes ma’am.” Linus sketches a salute at me. “And if I start to . . . change before then, you have to take me out. Or be sure you lock me up or something.”
“I’m sure we have time,” Rosa murmurs, her voice small.
“Well, only if you don’t tell Cuellar,” Linus says. “He probably won’t want to wait to bash me in the head.”
It’s supposed to be funny.
Over Linus’s shoulder, I see Cuellar and Simon come out of the men’s bathroom and take up the same ready pose outside the women’s bathroom.
Rosa gives Linus a hug. Together they carry their weapons and the belts over to the first set of balcony doors and begin tying the handles.
No zombies emerge from the women’s room, so Simon and Cuellar go inside, then come back out in a few moments.
Clear.
Good.
The two men turn left, heading past the curving balcony wall as they walk down to check the stairwell door.
The girls looking for a signal aren’t having any luck, so I decide to recheck back by the windows above the escalator, just in case. If I stay low, any zombies who might be on the second-floor level below won’t be able to see me over the railing or the balcony.
I grab my cell from Imani, and, hunched over like a crone, I scuttle to the top of the escalator. I sit cross-legged on the floor by t
he windows, and get out my phone.
It’s dead, the battery gone from low to empty. I shove it back in my pocket.
Out the window I can only see rooftops of downtown, and the sweeping covered walkway that runs alongside the convention center.
I crane my neck, trying to see if there’s a sign of . . . well, anything. Police, or ambulances, or army trucks.
But from this vantage point I can’t see. And the road could be closed.
They have to be out there. After all, they locked us in here with the infection, right? To contain it.
I glance back to check on the others. Rosa and Linus are trying the handles of the second set of balcony doors. Everyone else: Janet, Annie, and Mia, and Siggy, Imani, and Blair are moving in a loose clump across the windows—holding their phones up and out.
Cuellar and Simon turn and head back up the hall from the stairwell door, giving a thumbs-up.
The stairwell door they’ve just checked is just like the one that’s one floor down, metal, white, and with a long, narrow window set above the crash-bar handle.
Between the elevators and the stairwell, we might have access to the whole building. If we can deal with the zombie in the stairwell. Assuming there’s only one or even if there are two, we can probably make it down to the second floor again or even the exhibit hall ground floor, if we need to.
We should try to find the roof access next. It might actually be in the balcony. That would be a problem.
Okay, but we’re in a pretty good location right now, all things considered. A barricade, a mostly okay emergency escape route, two if you count the elevators, bathrooms and water . . . I have a weapon and snacks . . .
And no zombies. Well, if we can completely secure those balcony—
Electric guitars wail into the quiet, a hard rock-and-roll riff made tinny from Siggy’s phone speaker, but still plenty loud.
Siggy looks simultaneously horrified and reflexively happy, standing on one of the cushioned chairs, holding her phone high in the air.
It’s Annoying Mark’s annoying ringtone.
She has a signal, he’s calling, and it’s making a god-awful racket.
Siggy lowers the phone and swipes mute or answer, as the balcony doors closest to her flap and strain against the belt tied around the handles.