by Ash Parsons
“Let’s go,” Siggy whispers.
Cuellar pushes to the front. He walks, cat-quiet, into the white hallway.
“Blair, Siggy, let me and Imani go first,” I whisper.
Blair nods and takes the door. Imani and I creep into the hall with our microphone stands raised, ready to swing or jab.
Janet takes the door and holds it open a crack. She watches as the five of us tiptoe-rush down the hall to the dressing room door.
It’s déjà vu all over again, as we reach not only the dressing room door, but the double doors that lead into the back of the ballroom.
The noise coming from the ballroom beyond the doors is both unmistakable and unmistakably louder.
Zombies. Groaning, shuffling, knocking against the doors, making them shudder in their frames.
“Shit,” Imani whispers, glancing at the doors, which are moving and knocking.
“Keep going,” I hiss.
Cuellar is already standing at the closed dressing room door. He points at it with his thumb, eyebrows raised.
Checking with me that this is the place.
I nod.
Cuellar holds his bottle up, bracing his wrist with his other hand, ready to jab. He tips his chin at the door handle for one of us to open it.
Like clockwork precision, as if we’ve planned or somehow rehearsed it, Blair jumps forward and grabs the door handle to the dressing room. She twists it and lunges silently into the room. Simultaneously, she plasters herself flat against the door, getting out of the way of our weapons should we need to fight.
But the dressing room is still empty.
We hustle into the space. Blair closes the door silently behind us, muting the noise from the zombies across the hall.
Cuellar wastes no time. He quietly puts the bottle down on a dressing table counter and grabs the other vanity stool, the match to the one that Simon has.
“Don’t take too long,” he murmurs to us.
He slides silently back out the door into the hallway.
“What a jerk,” Blair whispers. She looks around the dressing room.
“Seriously,” Siggy says.
“I didn’t like the way he was talking to you,” Blair says, glancing at me with that ready-to-brawl light in her eyes.
“Thanks for backing me up,” I say. And I mean it when I say it, but at the exact same time, the partner thought spikes out, and lodges in my throat.
Wish you were always so loyal.
I don’t say it, but there must be a residue of the emotion in my eyes, because Blair winces slightly, and moves to explore the small bathroom attached to the dressing room.
Imani doesn’t say anything, just waits by the closed door.
Siggy goes to the drawers set in the middle of the vanity table counter. There’s only one left that has a front piece, the top drawer, narrower than the other two.
Siggy opens the drawer and starts tugging at the front.
I walk over to a metal table lamp on an accent table, unplug it, take off the lampshade, and tuck it under my arm for Mia.
“Why didn’t you argue with Cuellar, back there?” Imani asks, her voice a low murmur when I lean against the door with her.
I shrug.
“Because he wasn’t wrong,” I whisper. “Linus is dead, and it’s my fault.”
Tears jump to my eyes, but I can’t hide from it, can’t hide from the guilt and the shame that I ever thought I knew what to do.
“What?” Imani’s whisper is pressured with incredulity. “No! Don’t you dare think that, June!”
Blair comes out of the bathroom carrying a heavy driftwood sculpture.
Siggy has the drawer front loose, but not completely off.
“Need a hand with that?” Imani asks her.
“I got it.” Blair walks over to the counter, puts her piece of driftwood down, and grasps the opposite side of the narrow front piece. Together they strain to quietly pull the drawer front the rest of the way off.
“It’s true, though,” I say to Imani. “Maybe he’d still be alive if—”
“That’s bull.” Imani’s whisper cuts over mine. “If it wasn’t for you, we’d already be dead or we’d be zombies. In the ballroom, remember? You found that bag. You opened the door.”
It helps a little to remember that.
“But—” I start.
“No buts!” Imani loops her free arm around my shoulders, squeezing me tight. “Sure, we might have made some mistakes, but they didn’t look like mistakes when we made them! No one’s psychic! No one’s right all the time, no matter what it looks like from the outside.”
She squeezes me again.
“We didn’t make the zombies. We didn’t cause this. We’re just doing our best to get through it. So, don’t you dare say that any of it’s your fault.”
I take a deep breath and nod. The tight feeling gripping my shoulders and chest loosens.
“Guys, we’re going to have to make a little bit of noise here,” Siggy says, standing up and panting, her breath moving a loose lock of white-blonde hair.
“No, we’ll try it all together,” Imani says. She looks at me, an eyebrow cocked, like a challenge. “All together, or none at all. Remember?”
23
All together we managed to pry the drawer front off without making too much noise. We rechecked the hallway, which was thankfully still empty, so we rushed to rejoin the others in the stairwell.
I gave Mia the metal lamp. We all stood, stretched, or put our shoes or backpacks back on, and climbed down the stairs, past the dead zombie, to the ground-floor stairwell door.
Now we’re piled up behind Cuellar, waiting as he cranes his neck, trying to get a clear view out the narrow window into the ground-floor hall that leads to the lobby and atrium.
Annie’s pressed so close to him, it’s like she wants to be grafted into his side.
But I can’t blame her. Ever since his speech when he trashed the idea of self-sacrifice or even teamwork, it’s like he’s grown larger somehow.
Become a person you could see surviving.
Not because he’s good, or particularly smart.
But because he’s pragmatic. Unhesitant.
Even though Imani consoled me, and did make me feel better, I’m still exhausted and a little dispirited. I feel like I’m underwater, somehow. My brain feels like when I took the SAT the first two times.
Swollen and sluggish. Like a computer that just keeps spinning that “loading” wheel . . . but nothing is happening.
“I don’t see any of ’em.” Cuellar’s voice is a low gravel whisper. “So. All yer shoes tied? Weapons ready?”
We’re all standing, almost on our tiptoes like sprinters, various makeshift weapons held in tight grips.
“Then let’s go. Quiet and slow down this hall, then we’ll stop.” Cuellar opens the door.
Since I’ll be last out, I step forward and hold the door open for the others. Simon goes next to last, and I let the door fall after myself, then catch it at the doorframe, easing it closed as quietly as possible.
Our motley crew tiptoe-rushes after Cuellar, down a tan-and-white hallway, industrial carpet silencing our steps even more.
This hall runs along one of the interior walls of the exhibit hall. We pass a set of closed double fire doors. If the scientist guy made all his rounds, then this set of doors and all the others will be locked tight.
And I have the hex key.
We pass a series of framed paintings, tranquil and bland scenes of lakes and trees, pass another set of fire doors, go a little farther, and stop at the corner where a large potted fern and some trees in massive ceramic containers stand in a row, like soldiers standing guard.
Cuellar crouches behind the fern, glancing around the corner into the lobby that connects to the atrium.
Waiting
in the back of the group, all I can see are the escalators and a few motionless or twitching zombies lying on the tile around them.
Linus and Simon’s zombies, thrown down from the fight on the escalators one floor above.
Behind the escalators is an open space, then the window wall, the polarized glass filtering the bright afternoon sunlight.
Except there’s also a glare, reflected from the large, white piece of fabric that has been hung up outside, blocking the view out.
But also blocking the view in.
My heart does a happy little leap in my chest at this confirmation that there will be help outside, that already military or police or whoever have started assembling a plan, cordoning off a quarantine zone, and blocking the windows so the zombies inside don’t bash themselves against the glass trying to reach the humans outside.
Before I can point out the cloth to Simon, Cuellar stands all the way up and shifts his grip on the vanity stool.
“Now!” Cuellar says, and darts out into the lobby.
We move out, running behind him, less in a line now, and more in a clump, as we dash between the front of the exhibit hall and the escalators.
There are only a few zombies on the ground level at all, apart from the incapacitated ones Linus and Simon threw down. So, it would seem that our reasoning was correct—when the outbreak started, most people were locked into the exhibit hall or were attending the panel session in the ballroom one floor above us.
Which means that there are not currently a lot of zombies on this level, or at least not many we can see right now, between us and the atrium front doors.
A group of eight zombies stands on the opposite side of the escalators from us, facing the whiteout windows, seeming oblivious to our presence.
They start groaning and reaching toward the glass as we rush past on the opposite side of the escalators.
At first I’m confused; then I realize they’re like a cat chasing a shadow.
They’re reaching for our reflection in the whiteout windows.
We run silently past the front of the exhibit hall, past the tiny security booth beyond that, and then we’re almost there, rushing around the back of the volcanic water feature, onto the tiled floor of the three-story atrium.
Where some of our more fashionable shoes start to make noise.
Blair tries to rush quietly, taking shorter steps, trying to keep the back of her boot heels from landing so hard.
Mia runs silently, those amazing, tiny tiptoe steps.
Annie doesn’t bother. She clatters as she runs in her wedge sandals.
She doesn’t let a gap form between herself and Cuellar.
Miraculously, it looks like we have enough of a lead. Even with the noise now drawing their attention, we’re going to make it, all of us.
Behind us, the zombies trying to reach our reflection turn at last in the direction of the noise.
Cuellar reaches the doors, the center set, modern glass and steel with wide crash bars.
The doors are also swathed in white fabric or canvas, no doubt for the same reason the window wall is wrapped in white: to stop zombies from trying to reach the teams of people on the other side.
Cuellar thrusts an arm out, and the crash bar goes in smooth, just like it’s supposed to, like no one’s tampered with it.
Even though I can’t see outside past the white, I know they’re out there.
People who know what to do. The army. The police. Anybody.
Cuellar bumps into the door with a grunt.
“Go!” Annie urges.
As if spurred by her voice, the group of zombies behind us makes a sort of roar, a guttural cry as they stumble forward, flailing toward the atrium.
They’re not zoombies, at least. All moving more slowly, more jerkily, lurching as if from injuries or other damage.
Cuellar throws his shoulder into the door, jumping at it. There’s an echoing bang that bounces up the atrium.
He falls back, rubbing his shoulder and cursing.
“No!” Annie yelps. “It has to open!”
Simon runs up the semicircle to the next set of doors and pushes. The door doesn’t budge.
I run past Cuellar, down to the last set of doors on the side closest to the exhibit hall.
Behind me there’s a tremendous echoing crash as Cuellar swings the metal stool legs at the glass door.
I push at the bar and it goes in, but the door doesn’t budge.
Cuellar swings again, and again. Imani runs next to him and hefts the heavy disc end of her mic stand. She swings it like a sledgehammer.
The glass cracks. Cuellar slams his stool into the same spot. He and Imani swing and draw back in rhythm, as the glass fractures into spiderwebbing, peeling away from the metal frame, crumpling but not falling outward.
Something’s wrong.
The glass should be falling outward.
The guttural noises of the zombies have changed, becoming amplified.
Which means I know without looking that they’ve reached the atrium.
“It won’t work!” I yell, turning to look back where I came, up the semicircle of the atrium entry. “The doors are blocked!”
Simon stands at the opposite edge of doors, my mirror image.
“They’re boarded up!” he yells back.
As if confirming whatever Simon could see out his set of doors, the spiderwebbed glass at last folds, like a shutter, and falls back toward us, onto the floor.
Cuellar rips the white cloth, revealing a broad plank of wood, completely covering the door.
They hung the cloth to stop the zombies from breaking the glass, then they boarded up the doors.
“Dammit!” Cuellar shouts.
“We have to fight!” I call. “Then retreat!”
Someone yells, “RUN!”
The first zombie, a man, rounds the edge of the water feature farthest from me and closest to Simon. The zombie man moves in a twitching lurch, dragging one half-eaten leg behind him.
Two more zombies emerge behind him, another man and a woman, jerking and lurching from their own injuries that happened before they . . . changed.
The woman has a torn and bloody calf and lower leg, white bone and torn tendons showing through the shredded meat. She has to lift and throw that leg forward first, propping back on her good leg.
The third zombie, a short, bald man, is not injured, that I can see. But he has the same twitching jerking on his unseen virus-strings, tugged forward faster when he sees Simon, bloody mouth opening, spilling chunks of raw meat.
More zombies shuffle forward behind these three, stumbling sluggishly, then with increasing speed as we come into view.
The bald zombie breaks into a lurching run toward Simon.
Simon lifts his vanity stool.
Annie screams, and the bald zombie turns, shoulders, then head, then hips, in her direction.
Cuellar tears Annie’s grip off his shirt.
And he runs back the way we came, toward the stairwell.
Annie follows, and so do the rest, Rosa, and Imani, and Siggy. They run instinctively, like gazelles leaping away from a lion. As a group, they press between reaching zombie hands, shoving their weapons out.
Simon rushes after them, arcing the seat of the vanity stool sideways and into the head of the slower zombie reaching for him, knocking her sideways.
Simon sprints ahead of the others, stands guard at the top of the hall, and yells.
“Hurry!”
My group runs and I’m still standing here, frozen against the boarded-up doors so the rest of the zombies won’t notice me.
Except, no. Rosa isn’t running away.
As the short, bald zombie reaches for Siggy at the back of the pack, as his fingers twist at the edges of Siggy’s scarf of trailing hair, and as his lur
ching rush amps up another notch . . .
While I stand helpless and rooted to the floor with my heart in my throat—
Rosa pivots and runs back, toward the bald zombie, and then diagonally down, toward the exhibit hall and where I stand, even though she’s about twenty feet away from me. Her voice lashes out.
“Hey! Mr. 305!”
Okay, I hadn’t really thought of it, but yes, he does sort of look like the zombie version of the Miami-based rapper Pitbull.
The bald zombie spins away from Siggy in that disjointed way again, first shoulders, then hips, then feet, and runs toward Rosa.
Rosa takes a wide stance and cocks the metal lamp on her shoulder, holding it upside down in a choke-tight double grip. The felt-covered base rotates in small circles by her ear, as she watches, and waits.
It’s a thing of pure beauty, the way she steps forward, the lamp’s whistling arc, composed of hours spent in the batting cage or on the field. So, I guess Rosa must have been on her high school or college softball team, because that lamp swings out like whip-crack poetry in motion, and it catches the Pitbull zombie mid-run.
The lamp hits him square in the throat. His legs keep running, as the top of him is knocked back, held in sudden place by the impact. His feet run right out from under him and up into the air, almost like he’s trying to run up an invisible wall.
The bald zombie slams onto his back, a horrible, wet choking noise rattling out of his throat as he scrabbles on the ground.
A piercing shriek sounds from the opposite end of the convention center ground floor, coming from the direction of the hallway where Simon was standing guard moments ago.
Rosa whirls in the direction of the scream and sprints toward it, as Mr. 305 struggles up to his knees, and falls over again, arms and legs thrashing.
I step out to follow Rosa, which is when I realize there are more zombies streaming around the opposite side of the water feature, the lower half of the circle, moving between the waterfall and the exhibit hall.
Way more zombies. Ten? Twenty?
And I realize I’m too far behind Rosa. And far, far too far behind the others.
Time slows, for a split second, like in a movie, or a football replay. In the taffy-slowdown, I have a math epiphany.
