Girls Save the World in This One

by Ash Parsons

  A lump gathers in my throat. I want to say something about Janet. About how lovely she was to me, about how she made you feel the warmth in her eyes, in her smile. How she was a real person, and how Vivian was a great character.

  But even if I could think of what to say, my throat won’t work, thick with emotion and choked with the fact that nothing feels like enough when someone has sacrificed themselves for you.

  I still don’t know what to say.

  Cuellar, of all people, says it for us.

  “She was one in a million,” he says, swiping at his cheek with the knuckles of one hand. “A total class act, a true-blue broad.” He lifts the water bottle. “Let’s not let her down. She died for us. Let’s make it worth it.”

  We all nod, lift our water bottles or mime holding a glass, and toast Janet O’Shea.

  * * *

  • • •

  Once we’ve rested, we all agree there’s literally nowhere to go but up. The first floor is already a dead end, and besides, those exhibit hall doors didn’t seem all that secure. The second floor we just left is absolutely not an option, it’s overrun with zombies, so that leaves only the third floor.

  Which, we know, will have the zombies from the balcony. But that’s still way fewer zombies than on floors one and two. If the barriers at the top of the escalators hold.

  If.

  Our plan, such as it is, is to explore the back-office hallway of the third floor. It’s the only area of the third floor we haven’t tried, to see if we can find an office window to signal the army or SWAT team, whoever is massing at the loading dock to try to get into the exhibit hall floor.

  Plus, as Simon has noted, the freight elevator might go all the way up to the third floor, in which case it would be somewhere back in that hallway, given the layout of the building. And that makes sense because it would allow the convention center staff to not only bring all the heavy stage scaffolding, theatrical light rigs, cameras, amplifiers, and stacks of speakers to the second floor, but also continue up to the balcony level to deliver the sound and mixing boards.

  And if we can find the freight elevator, we can take a direct ride down to the loading dock.

  Even so it will be better to try to signal first, so we don’t all arrive just to get shot.

  So many things can go wrong with this plan, but it feels so much better to simply have one, to be making a move.

  I hit the stop button again, which starts the elevator.

  The elevator rises, and we all stand in the bunched turtle formation that Janet taught us, weapons bristling toward the doors.

  Imani has Janet’s drawer plank.

  “If we pass another defibrillator, I wanna grab it,” Annie says, hugging her used defibrillator to her chest.

  “Okay, Annie,” Simon says. “That’d probably come in handy.”

  “When we get to the third floor, we might see Linus.” Annie’s voice is smaller now, shrinking into itself, emotion squeezing it tight.

  We’re all silent, and I’m certain our minds are all in one of only two destinations. One, thinking about Linus, the horrid yell he made—the sight of him disappearing in the bodies that converged to feed on him. The noises—

  Or two, we’re imagining what he might look like now. Either truly dead, or infected, stumbling along on fed-upon legs, cataract-fractured eyes, seething snake-egg skin.

  “Be prepared for it, but try not to dwell,” I say. “He’d want us to save . . . everyone.”

  Annie nods, and hugs her defibrillator case.

  The elevator voice says, “Third floor,” and the doors slide open.

  At first everything looks clear. We move out onto the landing in front of the elevators.

  The barricades at the tops of the escalators have been partially dismantled. Not as if they’ve been cleared intentionally, more as if a battering ram has struck at them. Chairs and cleaning products and even the plant have fallen over.

  “Not good,” Cuellar whispers.

  We hustle away from the lobby, away from the escalators and semicircular wall smattered with sets of balcony doors.

  We arrive at a wide swath of carpeted hallway and framed art. At the end of the hallway is the stairwell door, and set into the right wall, where the back of the building will be, is a single door, with no crash bar.

  We rush to it. A sign reads STAFF ONLY.

  The offices where we can signal. That will lead to the freight elevators.

  The staff door is locked.

  “No!” Siggy tugs at the handle.

  Through the slight gap in the doorframe, I can see that the door is locked with a deadbolt.

  “Got anything in that bag for this?” Simon asks me.

  “No.”

  Cuellar puts his shoulder to the door, but it doesn’t budge.

  If the hinges were on our side, we could try taking them off and get in that way, but as it is, the only thing we could try to do is break the wire-thread-webbed narrow window.

  Which, if it worked, would still make a huge amount of noise.

  “I’m not staying here,” Cuellar says, and we feel it, too. That feeling of being bottled up, in a dead end with our backs to the wall, like in the hamster tube, no way out, nowhere to run.

  So, we all act on instinct, fear crawling up our necks, and rush back out to the third-floor balcony lobby where at least we can move in a few different directions.

  But in the moment, we simply rush away from the tunnel-trap of the hall.

  The curve of the balcony wall sweeps out away from me on the left.

  One set of balcony doors yawns open.

  I break from formation to ease up to the open doors, while the others either creep forward with Cuellar, to look down the hall that parallels the street and leads to the bathrooms, or stand waiting near the elevator, weapons outstretched.

  I put one eye to the hinge-gap at the back of the door.

  I’m afraid I’ll see the big cheerleader stuntman, or Linus, dead on the floor, or worse, lurching around aimlessly on the balcony with empty, blood-rimmed eyes.

  But there’s nothing, at least not in my narrow eyeline. No zombies, just rust-stained carpet and a few overturned chairs.

  I’m easing forward to crane my head around the edge of the door for a better look, when Cuellar yelps.

  A zombie man holds Cuellar’s arm, pulling and lowering his mouth to bite.

  The zombie was just right there, hiding in plain sight. He looked like part of the barricade, the upended sofa with the loud splashes of color across the back.

  Which doesn’t really speak well for this man’s fashion sense when he was a normal human.

  For a moment my brain can’t process it, and I wonder if the zombie was waiting to ambush us, getting sneaky.

  Impossible.

  Is it?

  Can they learn?

  But the zombie’s moving slow, so slow, was he just . . . tired? Or powered down? Fading from the virus, or whatever?

  How long until the virus really kills them?

  Maybe the man was too injured or maimed before the virus turned him. Whatever the reason, we weren’t prepared for him, we didn’t see him, and now it’s too late.

  Cuellar punches the zombie’s head, but he doesn’t let go, and he’s too close for the ax to swing enough.

  He bites, and Cuellar shrieks.

  Simon rushes forward, pushing out and back with his vanity stool—lion-tamer moves down now, and efficient.

  Simon pops the legs of the stool into the zombie’s chest.

  The zombie in the loud shirt falls backward into the barricade, sending the planter sideways, crashing into the shatterproof-glass protective railing at the top of the landing.

  “Run!” Cuellar yells, his eyes bulging over Simon’s shoulder, as he sees before the rest of us, the
gnashing, slavering group of zombies drawn to the noise.

  They’re coming from the long hallway that leads away from the balcony. No zombies are coming from the balcony lobby itself. Then I realize why.

  They’d been drawn away from the balcony and its lobby by us. By the noise we’d made one floor below, when we were in the hamster tube. Banging the hatch with an ax, yelling, fighting.

  They’d probably even been able to look down and see us. Or see movement, at least.

  We should have thought of it.

  The balcony is clear.

  “This way!” I yell, pulling my hand to myself then swinging around the door.

  Here we go again. This move, at least, I know.

  Third verse, same as the first.

  I pull one door closed with me, and hit my knees on the other side. The hex key is stashed in climber webbing on the front of the backpack.

  I pull it out and jam the end into the crash-bar on the balcony side of the doors, turning turning turning as fast as I can, as the others rush toward me, and as the group of zombies chase.

  And then I think . . . okay, but is the balcony really clear?

  Just turn, turn, turn.

  The others will be here in a minute, they can clear it.

  But only if we can lock it first.

  I try not to feel it, the exposed expanse of my back, unprotected, undefended to the space, to whatever might be left here.

  I’m a turtle without a shell.

  I glance back at the others. Imani’s drawer piece jabs out and lodges in a zombie’s neck. She gives it one tug, but it doesn’t come out.

  She lets go of it and lunges for something, comes up spinning a stick, no, it’s a mop from the barricade. The one Janet handed up to me when Linus was being attacked on the escalator.

  It whistles in a twirling arc, knocking the plank-necked zombie into another zombie.

  Imani jabs the strings out like a spear tip, shoving them back. Then she pivots, and still holding the mop like a spear she sprints toward me, overtaking Blair and Scott, and nearly reaching the front of our group.

  Simon arrives first, and he sweeps his eyes around, then turns to put hands on the open door’s crash bar.

  “Come on!” he yells.

  Imani and Siggy jump through the door next, followed by Annie.

  Cuellar is . . . not coming.

  He’s spraying blood with one arm, ripping it out of the zombie’s mouth. He swings the ax around and around his head, like a Viking.

  Its fast-arc cleaves into the heads of the zombies approaching him.

  “That’s right!” Cuellar whoops. “Get you some!”

  “Blair!” Imani shrieks.

  I glance up from my work, hex key gone still in my hand.

  Blair is standing with Scott, trying to help him. She’s pulling him. Is he falling? Why? More important, why is he dragging her down?

  Hunter takes the hex key from my limp grip and starts turning it in the second hole.

  I stand and step out from the doorway.

  “Blair! Scott!” I yell. “Get your butts moving, NOW!”

  Blair gets Scott to his feet. He takes one step and falters, tipping backward over his own heel, like he’s fainting in slow motion.

  A trio of zombies is distracted by the motion, turning away from where Cuellar fights.

  Scott tries to right himself. He grabs at Blair’s helping arms, but instead of pulling himself up, he yanks her violently down.

  “Hey, numbnuts!” I shriek, taking three steps out. “I’m the only one who gets to do that!”

  I don’t even know what I’m saying, but I know what I mean, because it goes all through me, the sight of Blair being jerked so hard it knocks her hair back, like the whipping of a horse’s tail.

  Don’t you dare hurt her, asshole.

  A cluster of images fires in my brain as I run out, ignoring Siggy and Imani yelling No, June! Ignoring Hunter pleading Don’t! Ignoring the incoming trio of zombies, with their malignant skin, the mottled, bloated-corpse patterns of veins dark with pooled blood, and the fine muscles somehow twitching, writhing under the lingering sheen of a fever-popped sweat.

  But I’m not looking at them as I sprint silently to my friend.

  I’m looking at Blair, and remembering instead.

  Blair, on the day I met her in kindergarten. This cute brunette with an upturned, freckled nose and a wide satin ribbon pinned in her hair.

  Which she pulled out the minute her mom left. Just as she ignored the girls her mom tried to introduce her to, when they walked into the room, girls with ribbons of their own and smocked-bib dress fronts, or ruffles upon ruffles upon ruffles.

  Instead she walked up to me. And she said, “I’m Blair. Will you be my friend?”

  Like she saw something in me she liked, right away.

  I felt like a flower in the sun.

  When I puked on Brandon Huckabee in third grade she said he deserved it. When I got drunk for the first time at Chastain Walker’s barn party the summer before our junior year, she took care of me and wouldn’t leave me alone for a second. A kid fell out of the hayloft and broke his collarbone that night. I always knew it would have been me who got hurt if it wasn’t for Blair.

  Sure, there was always other stuff between us, the competitive stuff I didn’t understand, and still don’t, and try not to feel, but even though it’s there, and even though it hasn’t changed and probably never will, it doesn’t change everything else.

  She can always get a rise out of me.

  Because she’s Blair. And I guess I’ll always love her, okay?

  If we get out of this alive, I should end the ice-out. I should at least hear what she has to say.

  I’m not sure if it’s a baby in bathwater, our friendship, but there’s something there, something important that can maybe be saved or salvaged, and I am not going to let Scott or anyone else drag her down to be zombie kibble.

  If this was an action movie, I’d skid to a stop next to Scott, and I’d deck him, or something, and I’d have a cigar jammed into my mouth and I’d say, “Not on my watch, pal.” And I’d pull Blair into a bridal carry and we’d run back to safety.

  But instead I sprint up and sling a sloppy punch down at his wrist, his hand still closed around Blair’s arm.

  Scott is making a horrible choking sound, like his throat is swelling, or like water is pouring into it.

  He doesn’t let go of Blair’s wrist, so I start peeling his fingers back, one at a time, like when I was a little kid and my dad dared me to get the quarter out of his fist.

  “Run, girls!” Cuellar yells, his voice raw and ragged.

  I glance up as Scott’s hand finally slips off Blair’s forearm.

  The trio of zombies is almost on us, arms outstretched.

  I drag Blair up. One of her arms comes up behind my shoulder as we turn.

  “Wait!” Scott coughs. His voice somehow submerged.

  I look down at him.

  Blood courses down his face, pouring out of his nose like a spigot.

  No one hit him.

  He’s infected. I remember the girl on the floor of the exhibit hall, before it all started.

  Selfish, scared Scott. He had to know he was already infected, when he was bitten. But he chose to hide it.

  “Run!” Blair says, giving my shoulder an urging shove with her hand.

  We run.

  I expect to hear the ugly sounds of the zombies attacking Scott, but they don’t come.

  When I reach the balcony doors, I turn to look back.

  Hunter works furiously at the last lock.

  The trio of pursuing zombies is close; they’ve ignored Scott, just moved right past him, something about the virus already making him seem like one of them.

  Not worthy mea
t.

  We’re going to get to the balcony in time, though. We’re faster. I stop once inside the balcony door, and glance past Scott to see Cuellar.

  He’s climbed atop what’s left of the wavering barricade. Sitting up there, watching us leave, waiting for it. Making sure we’re safe.

  Annie is crying.

  “I’ll never forget you!” she yells to him.

  Cuellar holds up a hand, puts two fingers to his lips, then holds the fingers out to us.

  He lets himself fall, headfirst, off the barricade and over the guardrail.

  Annie sobs as Hunter pulls the door closed behind us with a resounding bang.

  33

  Annie hides her face in her hands, not trying to stifle her tears so much as abandoning herself to them.

  Simon touches her shoulder gently, and she turns to him, pressing into his consoling hug.

  “Thank you, June,” Blair says. “For coming to get me.”

  She’s looking at me with big eyes, and I feel a self-deprecating grimace crawl across my face.

  It was all for nothing. I might have saved us temporarily, but now we’re trapped, zombies behind us, zombies below us, and there’s literally nothing else we can do. Nowhere else to go.

  If we leave, we’ll just lose more people. And what would we even leave to do? All our plans are for nothing.

  “You’re welcome,” I tell her anyway. “Wish I could have done more.”

  Linus and Mia. Janet and Cuellar. And Scott. All gone.

  Blair looks like she wants to say something more, to argue, or tell me it’s not my fault, and honestly, I don’t have the heart for any more reassurance in this moment.

  I give her an apologetic smile that I hope she understands, that I’m not trying to cut her off, I just can’t, I really can’t, in this moment, I can’t think about it, can’t replay what happened to exonerate myself, I can’t. I need a minute to sit with it, literally.

  I walk over to a cushioned folding chair, lying where the back row should be, knocked onto its side. I pick it up, set it back on its feet, and collapse into it.

  I hear murmuring behind me, the others discussing, perhaps, what we do now, if anything, when the fact of the matter is we’re trapped. Boxed in. There’s nothing left to do.