by Ash Parsons
“One thing at a time, okay?” Simon says.
“We should keep moving,” Janet says.
“Do you have a weapon?” Annie asks Scott, and is it just me, or is she holding her defibrillator case proudly?
Scott nods and produces a pristine fountain pen.
I mean . . . sure.
“How did you end up in the bathroom?” Blair asks him.
“I was in the first-floor lobby when it started. I ran upstairs and tried to get to the hotel through the skyway, but it was locked, then I tried to get in with the preppers.”
Imani snorts, but it’s a supportive-of-Scott’s-plight comment on the preppers more than anything.
“They wouldn’t let me in, so I avoided some more zombies, mostly, and ran to the bathrooms. The door didn’t have a lock, but I was able to hide there until the zombies forgot me and wandered away.”
“Well, that’s lucky,” Simon says encouragingly. “You’re lucky you didn’t get trapped in there.”
“Yeah, I know,” Scott says. “I know I should have come out; the first time you walked by, I heard you. But I just . . .”
His eyes drop, his chin drops, his whole demeanor gets smaller.
“I was too scared.”
Annie steps forward, lifting a hand from her defibrillator case.
“It’s okay.” She places the hand on his shoulder like a parent talking to a child. “We all get scared.”
I wasn’t sure at first, but Annie Blaze is all right. She’s more than all right. She’s awesome. It doesn’t matter who she’s consoling, it doesn’t matter that it’s Scott, just her instinct to do it, when we’re all so stressed out, is amazing.
It’s official. I’m an Annie Blaze fan.
Our group leaves the water fountains and continues creeping down the hall toward the escalators and the stairwell. We’re in our loose turtle shape, with Scott sort of absorbed into it near the back.
I pick up the thread of conversation from before my ex-boyfriend showed up.
I really am glad he’s alive. Really.
I’m also glad he’s behind me now, literally, muttering at the back of the group with Blair.
“So, you want to go down to the first floor, do our whole water feature schtick again, and check out the security booth for radios, just in case?” I ask Hunter.
I’m distracted but it almost seems like Scott and Blair are arguing.
“No, I wouldn’t say I want to do that.” Hunter shoots a sidelong glance at me. “Just it’s a thought. I don’t have any others.”
Call it nerves, but I’m speaking before I think about what I’m going to say.
“Well, don’t worry your pretty head about that, little mister,” I say, a joking bravado in my voice. “I’ll look after ya.”
Hunter laughs, and I steal a glance to find him smiling shyly back at me.
“You think my head’s pretty, huh?”
Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe the boy is flirting with me. In the middle of the zombie apocalypse.
Although I guess, technically, I flirted with him first.
In front of us, Cuellar stops short and drops low, although there’s no potted plant to hide behind this time.
We all freeze, just in time to see a teeming swarm of zombies gathered at the far edge of the second-floor lobby.
31
Then some of the zombies see us, and all hell breaks loose.
It’s like in the movies again, with that impossible time slowdown, in a way that it totally wouldn’t in real life, you would think, but you’d be wrong, because here we are, and there’s a mass, no, a horde, no, a killing of zombies ahead, and so yeah—time slows down.
My insides turn into Jell-O because there are so many. Too many, just a huge, huge number. If it was the SAT, the word question would be “How many zombies will be left with nothing to eat after our group is devoured completely, down to bones and gristle,” because it’s that many. Fifty? Eighty? A hundred? More?
Cuellar cusses.
Then several things happen at once.
A man wearing a maintenance uniform, one of those big zip-front jumpsuits made out of thick navy material, turns from the side of the herd closest to us. He’s wearing a welder’s mask with the visor up. Jaundice-yellow and blood-streaked eyes see us, somehow, because his jaw opens, no, it unhinges.
He’s terrifying.
I can’t take my eyes off him as he puppet-jerks forward, a single arm flailing toward us.
But he’s not the only one, and at least one other zombie is faster, a zoombie, because suddenly the welder is knocked slightly sideways by a guy in a yellow shirt, a security guard, just zooming up from behind.
Cuellar pops up from his crouch and steps forward, swinging high with his ax.
The blade impacts the jaw of the security guard zombie, a crunch of bone and spray of blood, and the ax stroke lifts him up and back, throwing him into the zombies behind him.
Our defense-turtle shape collapses as we stumble away, flattening into a row of sitting ducks just waiting for which zombie from the horde will reach us first.
Annie yelps in fear; Simon moves forward next to Cuellar, his stool swinging.
Hunter rushes to stand with his costars, lamp raised.
Two voices gibber in my mind.
This is it. This is it. This is it.
and
We have to . . . we have to . . . we have to . . .
Then Janet steps forward. Amazing Janet. There’s no stopping them, Vivian! Janet O’Shea. Looking like the coolest older lady you ever saw in your life, with her short, spiky white hair, and her drawer plank raised. She yells at me, her piercing blue eyes capturing mine.
“The elevators, June!”
Because if we fall back, what do we fall back to? Just barricades that will be overrun or doors that will give way against the onslaught of the horde.
And we have to stop them. We have to. They can’t be released into the world. Into Senoybia. Into our sleepy little Saturday downtown, they just can’t.
I nod at Janet, and spin on my heel, darting behind the line of zombie defenders, real life imitating reel life. Who is better suited to survive the zombie apocalypse than those who’ve done it before?
Even if it was only make-believe.
I sprint around the corner and along the wall and start mercilessly jabbing the elevator button.
Without thinking, I’ve just picked a direction; I’ve picked up.
Up up up.
Up and away.
I don’t look over my shoulder. Why would I? It’s just a matter of time now. Which will arrive first . . . the killing of zombies or the elevator?
“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” Imani chants next to me, watching the doors like she could summon the elevator with her mind if she just focused hard enough.
Siggy stops on my other side.
I dart a glance behind. The others have followed me: Blair and Scott standing right behind Imani and Siggy, with Annie behind them, still clutching the bright-red case to her chest.
Between us and the zombies, standing in a loose semicircle of defense, are the actors, Simon, Cuellar, Hunter, and Janet. Swinging and shoving with their weapons, pushing the zombies back as best they can, holding out for just moments, just moments.
We only need moments.
The elevator door dings.
The stainless-steel doors part, revealing a single zombie man, turning to stare at the door with blood-fogged eyes.
“Oh, for f—,” I curse, and continue cursing a blue streak as I lunge forward into the elevator, mic arm raised.
Imani jumps in beside me, and holds the doors open for the others.
Siggy follows me with her pointy plank.
Together we stab and jab the zombie, over and over, until he falls.
/> I’m grunting as I jab. Siggy’s making her “ew, ew, ew” energy-up noises as she jabs.
The zombie falls dead, and we shove him back against the back wall of the elevator.
I spin to the control panel.
“Come on!” I yell to the others. They fall back, still fighting, into the steel-framed cube.
“Go, go, go!” Imani yells.
I jab the third-floor button, then the door-close button.
It is the door-close button, right? I get confused by those drawings, sometimes.
I glance down and confirm, yes, it’s the door-close button.
The button makes a rapid clicking noise as I press it frantically.
The doors start to close, and our line of four defenders pull their weapons in.
But then a zombie pushes into the closing doors, triggering the safety bar.
The doors start to open again.
“Dammit!” Cuellar yells. He pushes the ax head out, into the zombie, pushing him back.
I jabjabjab the door-close button.
The doors start to close again.
But the same problem happens again on Hunter’s side, a woman zombie reaches an arm through, triggering the doors to open again.
I glance over the heads of the fighters defending the breach and the zombies trying to reach us in the elevator, to see the rest of the horde advancing. Soon they’ll be too many. Soon we won’t be able to hold them back. The sheer weight of the zombies in the back will push the front row forward, first onto our weapons, then into us.
“I know what to do,” Janet pants, turning to look at me as the others push and shove.
Her bright eyes are determined.
“Make sure you stop them. This stops here, with you.”
“No! Wait!” I yell, but it’s too late.
“Move!” Janet yells, and she pulls Hunter’s shoulder back roughly. He stumbles and falls into me. I catch him, but the wind is knocked out of me as we careen into the wall behind us.
Janet has grabbed Imani’s longer base of the mic stand and flipped it sideways in both of her hands, holding the pole with the grip of a weightlifter, high on her chest, crosswise to her body.
She yells and digs with the balls of her feet, like a sprinter when the starting pistol fires, and runs into the line of zombies trying to get into the elevator, pressing the bar of the mic base into their arms, then spinning and sweeping it down, pivoting, knocking a zombie back with the sweep of the mic base, knocking the welder zombie aside with the impact of her own back, and then she throws herself at the third zombie, the woman.
“No!” I sob.
But it works.
The zombie arms are clear of the elevator doors for a split second.
I jab the door-close button, and try not to see the determined grimace on Janet’s face when the zombies grab her. When the woman zombie bites.
“Janet.” My voice is shivering with tears. “Janet!”
The doors, unimpeded, start to close.
Janet keeps her eyes squeezed tight, then I can’t see her anymore as zombies cover her, as they—
“Dammit!” Cuellar shouts.
The welder zombie pushes forward again, trying to get to us. As he reaches the closing door, his lunge into it knocks the welder’s visor closed over his face.
The elevator starts to protest, pinging and bonging. An automated voice sounds.
“Please clear the doors.”
Then repeats the instruction in Spanish.
“Jesus! Close the doors!” Scott yells to the ceiling, like the elevator voice is an AI of some sort, and can hear him.
It’d be funny if I wasn’t hoping it might somehow work.
Hunter and Simon put their palms flat on our side of the doors, straining without a handhold, trying to slide the doors shut, quicker, faster, and in spite of the fact that the huge welder zombie is now filling the closing gap.
I’m sobbing, tears streaming down my face for Janet, and out of anger; she didn’t deserve this, none of us deserve this, and we have to stop it, we have to stop it!
But all I can do is keep jabbing the door-close button.
Something must be working, maybe the button abuse, maybe Hunter and Simon straining against the doors, trying to keep them from opening, because even though the welder zombie has pressed a snatching arm and a bit of his shoulder and head through the gap, and even though he’s pressing against the automatic emergency-open bar, the doors don’t open.
They can’t close, but they don’t open.
And the welder zombie’s bulk is sufficient to close up the gap so no other zombies can reach us.
Cuellar tries to stab him with the legs of his stool, but it doesn’t seem to affect the zombie and his face is now protected by the welding mask.
Annie and Scott stumble back from the swipes of his muscular arm.
Blair tries to follow, but the welder’s thick fingers tangle in her hair.
Scott cringes against the farthest wall. Annie steps forward, one hand lifting from the red case.
Blair lets out a yelp as the zombie hand yanks.
The zombie’s face and body are trapped in the door, but his hand pulls inexorably back.
Even though his mouth is covered by the welder’s mask, with enough force he could yank her out.
I lift the mic arm and jab his neck, his throat, and it doesn’t change a thing. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t totter, doesn’t seem to be affected at all.
So, I attack his arm instead. I break his finger, dislocate his thumb, and tear at her hair.
Blair yelps and strains, ripping her own hair even more to get loose.
We fall down, leaving hanks of hair in his grip, but she’s free.
We scrabble like crabs, backward, up against the opposite wall.
The welder zombie still strains toward us, faceless and huge, and the doors start to open again.
“Excuse me, please.” Annie’s voice is airy and just a bit unhinged, like a determinedly upbeat airline attendant who’s been awake too long, but she’s stepping over us, around us.
She expertly dodges the sweeping hand, and turns to look at me.
“Can you keep his hand up, please?” she asks, voice bright but with a terrified light in her eyes.
“S-s-sure . . . ?”
I step up, shift my grip to Janet’s weightlifter hold, then jab the mic stand up under the welder zombie’s arm and press it up, up, up.
Imani grabs one side, and I shift my arms in, so we’re both lifting his arm up, and away from Annie, who now kneels on the tiled floor of the elevator.
“What the hell?” Cuellar grunts.
Annie opens the defibrillator case and squints at the contents of the case, at the instruction card, then she shrugs and pulls out a broad electrode pad, yanks the paper off the sticky side, and stands up, slapping it on the welder zombie’s exposed throat.
She quickly slaps on two more, one next to the first, and the third on the visor.
She flips on the defibrillator base, and the unit makes a high-pitched whine.
An automated man’s voice comes out of the unit.
“Heartbeat irregular or absent, please reposition the contact pads, and press to detect again.”
“No, thank you,” Annie says, and her hand hovers over the red shock button.
“You guys get ready to let go,” she says to . . . all of us, I guess.
“And you better get away from the walls, too. Just in case,” Annie continues, calmly.
It’s a stainless-steel box, so yeah. Blair and Scott scooch in on their butts.
“Okay!” Annie’s voice is officious and cheerful. “Clear!”
Imani and I duck and drop the metal mic stand. Hunter and Simon step back from the stainless-steel doors, which start to grind open.<
br />
Annie presses the button.
A bolt of sound, a zap, a ka-chung, and you can actually see where a small ridge of electricity arcs over the visor.
The welder zombie convulses once. His arm collapses like . . . like . . . well, like he’s been shocked in the head with enough voltage to stop a heart.
The zing of electricity quiets.
Blair stands with her driftwood sculpture. She plunges the wood into the welder zombie’s chest, shoving him back out of the door gap.
The defibrillator’s electrode cords pop out of the unit as the zombie falls.
I push the door-close button. The doors close all the way.
The elevator starts to lift.
There’s a crackle in the speakers that wasn’t there before as the elevator lifts, and Muzak drifts down.
32
Hit the stop button,” Hunter pants. He’s bent over partway with his palms planted on his knees.
I hit the stop button.
“What if the elevator stops working?” Blair asks, her hands raised in a wait a minute gesture.
Oops.
Well, too late now. The alarm is a separate button, so while the elevator has stopped we can at least rest in peace.
Not rest in peace.
Rest, you know, in peace.
Ugh.
I dig in the backpack and pass around the last water bottles and energy bars. Cuellar and Simon sit and press their backs against the doors.
Annie packs up the electrode- and cable-free defibrillator. The red case closes with a gentle snap.
“Annie, that was brilliant,” I say. “Thank you.”
Hunter stands, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “Seriously!” he agrees. “Brava.”
Annie simpers. There’s no other word for it. She twists her head, tilting one ear a little toward her shoulder, smiling, eyes up then lowered, a pleased-yet-shy smile on her face.
“Thanks,” she says as the others echo our praise. “Thanks, it was nothing. I just saved the day, that’s all.”
We laugh, but Annie’s eyes grow dark and glisten with gathering tears. “Me, and, uh, and Janet.”