by Ash Parsons
I remember the look of them, graying, necrotic flesh, bloodshot, capillary-burst eyes. Herky-jerky locomotion like looking at a dancer attempting to perform a piece inspired by neurological damage.
“I mean,” I add, “I don’t think they’re actual reanimated corpses.”
Hunter cocks an eyebrow.
“How reassuringly technical,” he whispers, a rueful grin skewed sideways at me.
I grin back.
“That’s me, Miss Overly-Accurate-in-Life-and-Death-Scenarios,” I joke. I grab the air beside my eye and reposition fake glasses. “Actually,” I whisper in a quasi-nasal voice, “they’re not reanimated corpses.” I give a little sniff and simultaneously slide my index finger up the bridge of my nose, pushing the pretend glasses up.
Hunter snorts a laugh, then lifts a fist in a sky-punch of celebration.
“Death is still real!” he whisper-cheers.
I glance at my leg. I flex my leg gently, roll it side to side.
“How’s it feeling?” Hunter asks.
“Better,” I answer. “Thanks for helping with the bandana bandage.”
I don’t mean to, not consciously, but I’m feeling punchy and so I do it without thinking.
I repeat the phrase “bandana bandage” with over-enunciation.
Hunter curls slightly away from the wall, stifling a laugh.
“The only thing that would be better,” he whispers, “is if there was a fruit motif on the handkerchief, then you’d have a banana bandana bandage.”
I feel a fizzing laugh build in my chest. My hands flap in front of my face in a stop, I’m gonna bust universal gesture.
We don’t look at each other, taking deep breaths to disperse our overstressed, completely inappropriate given the situation, punchy laughter.
I can’t help it.
“It would be so great if you had that fruit motif handkerchief while you were on vacation,” I start.
“Staaaaaahp,” Hunter hisses, snorting.
“—by the beach,” I continue, and we’re both curling, trying to keep our laughter as quiet as our whispers.
“Don’t you dare!” Hunter gasps. “Don’t say cabana!”
We both eke out hisses of near-silent laughter, sounding like that old animated dog, Mutley, with his asthmatic heh heh hehs.
It must be stress, and the laughter must be some kind of stress relief, because apart from the stitch in my side from trying to hold the laughter in, I actually do feel better.
We agree to a truce on the bandana thing, so we take deep breaths and get ourselves back under control, carefully not looking at each other until the jag subsides.
When we’re quiet for a full minute, I take the lid off the water bottle and take a drink.
Hunter clears his throat.
“If the bandage got torn,” he begins.
I laugh-choke water into my nose.
25
After the laughing jag, we share another energy bar and the rest of the water bottle.
Hunter hands the last bite to me.
“I guess we can’t sue a zombie convention for having an actual zombie apocalypse,” he says. “But it does seem a little on the nose.”
“I just wish they would’ve put it on the promotional materials.”
I yawn.
“What time did your day start?” I ask.
“My driver picked me up from the hotel in Atlanta at seven.” Hunter repositions himself, propping his elbows on his knees. “How about you?”
“My driver dropped me off at six thirty,” I say.
His eyes narrow in concern. “I wasn’t trying to sound like a jerk. The driver was a convention volunteer named Cindy. It’s just an industry term to call it ‘my driver’ or ‘your driver.’”
I put a hand on his forearm.
“I was just kidding,” I say. “My driver was my mom.”
Hunter smiles. “She sounds nice, getting up early on a Saturday to drive you down.”
“Not only that but she bought us a drive-through breakfast on the way,” I tell him. “Me and my friend Imani.”
“I didn’t stop for drive-through breakfast,” Hunter says. “Just coffee.”
He sounds so adult. I don’t even like coffee unless it’s the sugary frozen kind.
“Imani didn’t really eat her breakfast,” I say. “But that’s probably because she had so much pizza last night.”
“So, you had a slumber party, too? That sounds like fun.”
I stop, carefully checking his eyes, because maybe it sounds silly. Makes me seem like a little kid. Maybe he thinks I’m younger than I am.
Maybe I am younger than I am, but that’s not the point.
But Hunter’s still smiling, this wide-open expression on his face, not like an adult at all but like a kid listening to story time.
“Yeah, we have sleepovers all the time,” I tell him. “We grew up in each other’s pockets, as my mom says. We live on the same block. If we cut through backyards it’s like only three houses away.”
Hunter’s expression turns wistful.
“I don’t have any friendships like that,” he says. “I mean, I have friends and stuff, but it’s not the same. We moved around too much and then when I got cast—”
His voice trails off. He catches himself, and looks down.
“It’s just hard to do long-distance friendships, and everyone on the show is older than me.”
I nod. Then I narrow my eyes at him.
“Tell me the truth, Hunter.”
“Okay, what?”
“Do you even like coffee?”
Hunter chuckles, and shakes his head. “It’s okay.”
“Put a lot of sugar and milk in it.” I wink at him. “Pro tip.”
Hunter laughs and sketches a salute at me.
I flex and lift my leg, then straighten it out again.
“I think I’m good,” I say. “And as restful as this has been, we should make a move.”
“Few issues. First: go where?” Hunter asks.
“There’s got to be a way out.”
“I don’t see how, if they have it all locked down and blocked from sight.” Hunter shakes his head. A lock of wavy hair falls over his eyes.
“That woman, the one outside, in the hazmat suit— where was she pointing? She was trying to tell you all something, what was it?”
“I’ve been replaying it in my mind,” Hunter says, his eyes closed. “Behind us. She was pointing behind us.”
“At the zombies coming, maybe,” I whisper, although no. It had to be something more.
Or is that just my own desperation?
“No, it was behind us and up. But not the escalator. I don’t think . . .” Hunter’s whisper trails off, a self-doubt that is so familiar to me under the soft tone. “I don’t know.”
“No, go on. What were you going to say?” I urge him, and touch his hand.
“It’s just . . . the angle was off.” His words are urgent, as he turns his hand up to squeeze mine, tight, like the pressure of his fingers can tell me more than his voice, what he means.
I would like to take a moment, right now, outside of time or mortal terror, to observe in my body the way it feels to hold Hunter Sterling’s hand. Surreal as it is, and not-really-a-hand-hold-kind-of-holding-hands as it is.
It feels nice. Really, really nice. So warm. So tingly.
“What was the angle?” I ask. “Where?”
“Up and outside,” Hunter says. “It doesn’t make sense. I can’t figure out where she was pointing. I would say down the street, but it was up.”
He lets go of my hand and points over his own shoulder and up at the desk surface above us.
Outside. Up. Down the street.
“The hamster tube!” My voice is quiet yet still loude
r than I intended. I glance back at the monitors. The group of zombies standing at the fountain haven’t really moved from their location, although their arms are now lowered.
The other screens are blank, the horde or pod of zombies having wandered into a blind spot.
“What?” Hunter asks.
“The walkway thingy! The skyway!”
“There’s a skyway?”
I see our town and Hunter’s experience with it for a split second, through his eyes. He probably watched fields and houses, trailer parks and denser subdivisions out his car window as the driver brought him in from Atlanta.
Depending on where he was dropped off, he wouldn’t know there was a skyway. Especially with as small as the town must seem to him.
As small as it actually is.
Midsized is what our mayor likes to call it. Midsized so that it doesn’t sound like “not as small as some.” Or “bigger than many!”
Tiny to Hunter Sterling, though.
And, like, we know, the hamster tube is ridiculous.
“It leads to the hotel,” I say.
And of course. The tube makes the most sense as a point of exit. It’s tiny. And I saw them, I saw the people in hazmat suits; we thought they were the same cosplayers from before but they weren’t, they were from the army or whatever group is trying to deal with all this. They pushed the security into the tube, they closed the entry into the hotel.
I tell all this to Hunter.
Maybe the hotel is in lockdown, too. The elevators locked, the army waiting in the lobby at the multiple points of exit or entry, and an orderly, safe, manageable quarantine and screening area.
“It makes sense,” Hunter agrees. “Too bad we can’t get there.”
“But we can!” My voice is a hiss, so I open another water bottle. “All we have to do is try to reunite with the others. With my friends Imani and Siggy and the rest who ran to the stairwell. And then the stairwell is already clear, I know that much, so we go back up to the second floor and then we make a break for it.”
“A few little hurdles,” Hunter says, and his voice is gentle, like he doesn’t want to be mean or deflating.
“Go ahead.” I take another drink.
“First, can you ‘make a break for it’? With your leg?”
I flex my toes, rotate my ankle, and lift my knees.
“Yes,” I say, ignoring the discomfort. “Absolutely.”
“Okay,” Hunter continues. “Second hurdle, Cuellar. What if he won’t let us in?”
I shake my head, although I guess he knows how Cuellar is better than anyone.
“He will,” I say. “And if he doesn’t, Imani and Siggy will. They’ll have our backs.”
Hunter nods.
“And if no one is there and the door is locked I have this.” I hold up the hex key. “It can open a disabled crash bar.”
Hunter shakes his head, but he doesn’t say anything about the possibility of no one being there, of the door being locked.
He clears his throat.
“Last hurdle,” he says, and he looks away from the screens into my eyes. His gaze is powerful, the green of his eyes pulling at me, like gravity.
“How do we get to the stairwell without the zombies getting us? Like, where even is that second . . . group? Herd? What is the collective noun for a group of zombies?”
“I know!” I whisper. “I’ve been wondering the same thing. I’d think a devouring but that doesn’t really trip off the tongue.”
“Sounds good though, a devouring of zombies.”
“Yeah. How about a shamble?”
“Doesn’t sound scary enough. A hunger?”
“Nah, sounds like a good snack would fix them.”
“I’ve got it, June,” Hunter says, and he smiles at me. “A killing of zombies.”
I try it out.
“A killing of zombies.” I smile.
I like it because it’s scary, but it also sounds like not just something they do, but something we can do.
“So how do we clear the hallway so that we can reach the stairwell door?” Hunter asks.
“I have an idea for that,” I say.
26
This is so dangerous. So dangerous. This is dangerous, dangerous, dangerous,” I chant, because it is, but I’m doing it anyway.
Because we can’t just stay here forever, and we have a place to go, and then another place to get to.
The stairwell for Imani and Siggy and Simon and Janet and the others, and then the hamster tube.
I mean, assuming they’re all stuck in the stairwell the way we’ve been stuck here. But if they’ve moved to another floor, I’m hoping we can follow them somehow.
Either way, it’s better than hiding under the desk in the security booth.
Assuming this plan works.
“This is such a bad idea,” I whisper to myself, a goad but more just fear, plain fear, the edge of panic, and acknowledging it makes me feel a little less . . .
Panicked.
What I’m doing is carting the small, old-fashioned radio out to the front of the atrium.
Then I’m going to put it on the ledge of the fountain and turn it on. The zombies will be drawn to the sound and we’ll make a break for it.
So far, they haven’t seen me.
So far, it’s working.
So far, so good.
Before I can turn on the radio, though, it all goes sideways.
“Run!” Hunter urges, behind me. I take off and I hear him skidding on the tiles at the edge of the hallway; the squeak-then-slide of his shoes is almost comical.
I turn back to make sure he’s upright.
“Go!” he yells, as his legs slip and he practically pinwheels in place, almost like a cartoon character as he tries to get traction.
It’s just a split second, then he’s moving fast beside me.
And we don’t have time to notice, but we both saw that what he slipped on was a long smear of fresh blood.
We sprint down the first-floor hallway. Behind us, the frenzied groans of the zombies chasing us echo into the hall.
We’re almost to the stairwell door. Through the narrow window I see Janet’s surprised face as she looks out at the noise. She breaks into a huge smile, then her mouth moves and I see it almost in slow motion, as she’s calling to the others.
The door gets pulled open before we reach it. Imani reaches out, pulling us in, then Janet slams the door closed again.
The zombies chasing us crash into the closed door. The bangs of their impact echo up the stairwell.
Before I can even breathe, Imani’s there, hugging me and saying, “I knew you were okay. I knew you were okay.”
Siggy hugs me, too. “Oh, thank God, June!”
We all start crying but it’s relief.
Blair hugs herself, standing a bit back, but she smiles at me, so I return it.
“Hey, this is Imani and this is Siggy, my best friends,” I say to Hunter. “This is Hunter Sterling.”
“Well, duh, June,” Siggy says, but in a whoa-dude tone, her eyes wide.
“This is Blair,” I say pointing. Blair shakes his hand and says, “Nice to meet you,” like Miss Manners.
“So glad you’re okay, June,” Janet O’Shea says, and she hugs me like my mom would and I try not to think about my mom or my dad because if I do, I’ll start crying real actual sobs.
“Good to see you, kid,” Cuellar says, his voice strange, changed somehow, and he grabs Hunter by the scruff and gives him a little one-arm hug that Hunter seems more to endure than enjoy.
Simon and Annie come in, and it’s an actor group hug, mirroring my friendship-hug with Imani and Siggy.
I look around. A sinking feeling washes through me, with the memory of the long smear of blood at the hallway entrance.
“Mia’s gone,” Cuellar says, and his voice is rougher than usual. “Dead or one of them now.”
He turns his body partly away, bringing a hand to his eyes.
“Mia’s shoe broke,” Imani says softly, looking between us and Cuellar. “She fell when we got to the top of the hall.”
“We were too far ahead,” Janet says, dropping her eyes. “We didn’t realize she’d fallen.”
“It was so fast.” Tears spill down Siggy’s face. “The hall was like a bottleneck, and the only thing that kept the zombies off the rest of us was Mia’s scream.”
“We all kept running,” Janet says. The little group seems to shrink, arms coming up, hugging themselves.
“Of course we kept running.” Cuellar’s voice is a knife, cutting off the subject.
But his eyes are round, shining.
I remember him bear-hugging Mia.
Mia gone, and no one able to help her.
“But what happened to Rosa?” I ask, because she had sprinted in their direction the minute she heard the scream.
After the scream.
So she was on the other side of the bottleneck.
“I saw her at the end of the hall,” Simon says, hopeful dark eyes moving between me and Siggy. “She was too late to help Mia, but she didn’t get caught.”
“Not that we saw,” Cuellar says, voice rough.
“She couldn’t get down the hall, presumably,” Janet interjects.
Simon nods.
“She paused for just a moment, then kept running that way.”
Simon points in the opposite direction from the atrium, away from the front doors.
Rosa ran down the hall past the escalators, past the hallway with our stairwell, and beyond in the direction of the first-floor bathrooms and meeting rooms.
“I bet she made it,” I say. My voice grows firmer when I say it again. “I think she made it.”
“Maybe if we wait here, the zombies will go away, and she can make it back here, just like you did,” Annie says.
“We can wait here for a while,” Imani agrees. “Give her that chance, at least.”
Janet reaches out and touches first my arm, then Hunter’s. “I’m glad you’re both okay. So glad.”