by Ash Parsons
Hunter leans down to hug her, and then so do I.
“How did you get through the zombies anyway?” Annie steps closer, like we are all somehow huddling around a fire instead of standing under the fluorescent stairwell lights.
“June’s idea,” Hunter says. “I was just hiding in the security booth.”
“You waved at me!”
“We both ended up there, under the desk.”
“At least the door locked!”
“And finally June says, ‘We have to go!’”
“Well, yes, but you also said, ‘Let’s use the cameras!’”
“I wish we had them now. Or, like, a drone or something.”
“June crawls out to put a radio on the fountain as a decoy.”
“Hunter’s watching the security monitors, but the zombies saw me, I guess?”
“Right, so we ran here when they ran there.”
“Anyway, that’s how we got away, and ran down the hall.” I turn to Imani, who’s watching me with a bemused expression.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says lightly, but she’s covering a smile as she turns away.
“What?” I ask Siggy.
Siggy leans over and speaks just to me in a low voice.
“You guys are finishing each other’s sentences.”
“What?”
“Just telling you.”
Huh. I mean. What?
But something about our telling of the story must have lessened the tension somehow because Imani and Siggy aren’t the only ones giving us amused looks.
“So, does anyone have an idea how many zombies were actually out there?” Blair asks. “Because I would say at least ten? Maybe fifteen? It was too hard to tell when it all started to go bad.”
“How many zombies were chasing you?” Hunter asks Cuellar, then winces at the flash of anger in his eyes.
Hunter puts up his hands in a placating gesture. “I’m just trying to figure out how many were loose on the first floor,” he says.
Cuellar shakes his head.
“I don’t know, if I try to think about them too much my brain goes all . . .” His hand comes up by his ear and wobbles there. “It probably felt like more than it actually was. But it felt like a lot.”
Hunter nods. A muscle jumps in his jaw, and I swear he looks like a poster of himself, except moving. A determined look enters his eye, and it’s his character he looks like, Clay Clarke, ready to face the odds.
“If this was a filming day,” Hunter murmurs to Cuellar. “And they were just extras on the show? How many are on the call sheet?”
Cuellar huffs a laugh, but his voice has lost its tight edge when he speaks.
“Twenty, I think. Yeah. Right around that.”
“And we had those two groups by the fountain,” I say.
“It’s the second floor you’ve really got to worry about,” Blair says. “That one set of ballroom doors is open, and there were almost a thousand people in there, easy.”
“Right, but there’s nothing to draw them out. They’re like flies in a bottle lying sideways.” I illustrate with my hand. “There’s only one entry and exit, and they have no lure to go out. Sure a few of them will be out, just due to sheer numbers and chance, but I don’t think it will be insurmountable.”
“Why does it matter?” Blair asks. It’s not confrontational, but more like she knows me, because she does. She used to be one of my closest friends.
“It matters because that’s where we’re going next,” I say.
27
I just wish we had those security cameras with us now,” Hunter says, but there’s no edge to it.
And we are about to run into the unknown.
We had waited in the stairwell, out of sight of the zombies in the first-floor hallway, until they wandered off, while we rested, hoping that Rosa might find her way back to us.
Eventually we had to admit that she might not come back. Probably wasn’t coming back, even if she wanted to. There was no telling where she was, or what situation she might be facing.
Janet said Rosa might have barricaded herself in a room, or met up with another group of survivors.
No one wanted to say what else might have happened.
But we had to keep moving, had to go on to our next plan. We’re hoping Rosa is, too.
We can’t wait in the stairwell forever.
We stand ready in the stairwell, behind the second-floor hallway door.
The others are ready; well, Annie’s as ready as a girl armed with a defibrillator case can be, I suppose, and the others are ready to get the hell out of here, after hearing about the woman in the hazmat suit pointing to the hamster-tube-skyway thing.
So, we’re going to rush out of our safe zone again. Out there.
Where zombies are.
But we have a plan, and I know if we can just get to the hamster tube . . . this whole nightmare could be over. We can get out, get screened, get quarantined, whatever.
And I can call my mom.
“Yeah,” I agree. “Everyone ready?”
I try not to put an overemphasis on everyone, but it’s there, unspoken. After the loss of Mia and also probably Rosa, I can’t think about them right now, or I won’t be able to do anything. And we have to go. We have to get out.
To do that, we have to stick together.
Cuellar must have been shaken by the loss of his barracuda, Mia, because in spite of himself and his harsh words before, he’s not insisting on going first anymore, and he seems content to follow along with our group.
Then again, what are his options?
The only thing he asked was, what happens if we get to the tube and the opposite side is blocked again? Like the atrium doors were.
So, I told him that unlike the atrium we can lock the zombies out of the tube by closing the hatchway behind us. And on the way to the tube we’ll stop at the fire-safety station for the ax.
Cuellar’s mouth flattened and then rose into a tight grin at that.
Janet made us all stop and practice a formation, of sorts. She said it was the way the ancient Romans used to be so good in battle; they would form a turtle shell with their shields close together, then fight while being protected and protecting each other.
“We don’t have shields, but we do have long weapons, most of us anyway,” Janet said, smiling gently at Annie and her defibrillator.
“If we practice and stay close together,” Janet continued, “in a sort of turtle formation, we can protect each other’s backs.”
So, we practice, lining up in pairs, moving tightly together in a circle on the landing, like an imitation of an elite SWAT team or something.
Then we break and get ready, stretching or rolling our necks, checking our shoelaces and stuff.
Siggy makes quiet little “Vvvv! Vvvv! Cssssh!” lightsaber noises as she practices swinging and jabbing out with her drawer plank. She catches me watching and strikes a big Jedi pose, like a movie poster.
She holds the pose and nods her head.
“Ahhh yeeeaah,” she says, drawing it out like a surfer. “Dead-leeee.”
I snort and she laughs back.
We’re as ready as we’re gonna be.
I ease open the door, and peer out. It’s clear, so I lead the way down the hall.
The white hallway is the same, just as we left it. We move silently. The double doors that exit from the back of the ballroom still flap and strain from the zombies moving on the other side.
There’s no telling how long this hallway will remain passable.
We pause at the dressing room for Hunter to arm himself with a heavy wooden lamp, bigger than the matched pair Mia and Rosa had used.
I look at Annie and tip my head at the dressing room.
Annie shakes her head
, clutching her defibrillator case like a talisman.
It’s gotten her this far, I guess. Plus, to be fair, she looks pretty shell-shocked.
We go back into the hall and rush down to the double doors that lead out to the second-floor lobby and escalators.
“Okay, no one left behind,” I whisper over my shoulder. “Remember the turtle defense thingy.”
We cluster together with each other at our backs, our weapons bristling outward.
If two sections of a microphone stand, two vanity stools, front pieces of drawers, a lamp, a sculpture, and a defibrillator case can be said to bristle.
The point is, we’re going to work together this time.
Hunter stands to my right. We’re the front of our little phalanx.
“Yay, rah, turtle defense thingy!” he cheers, a low murmur so only I hear, then he shoots that crooked smile at me.
I smile at him, just a full-on beam of teeth and gums, I’m sure, and my heart does this squeeze-trip-skitter-lunge thing. Like it’s warming up for more work to come, if I ever get more of those smiles.
Which, like, how ridiculous am I for thinking about how nice the shape of Hunter’s lips are? Right now? When we’re going out to face certain danger and possible death?
Get it together, June.
Okay, except his lips are so nice. Call it a focus object.
A gal could go to war for a pair of lips like that.
We push open the door and run out into the second-floor lobby. Our turtle is basically two by two, Janet and Imani behind me and Hunter, Siggy and Blair behind them, Annie and Cuellar and Simon bringing up the rear.
The ballroom lobby is very bare compared to the balcony area upstairs on the third floor. There’s no bar and fewer seating areas. It’s just a wide sweep of carpet and entry points to the ballroom.
A single zombie, a man, stumbles haphazardly around the second-floor lobby.
He doesn’t see us. At first.
We don’t stop, simply rush across the carpet, across the area at the top of the escalators, turn down the side hallway.
Behind us, the zombie lets out an unholy roar.
“Don’t stop! Don’t look!” Cuellar calls, so we hightail it, bounding like deer toward the escape of the hamster tube.
Which means we have to run away from the top of the escalators, past the small banquet rooms, another set of bathrooms, another banquet room, and it’s there—clear and glinting in the late afternoon sun.
The hamster tube.
We back up, putting Cuellar’s side of the turtle formation beside the emergency fire station.
Cuellar drops his vanity stool. He opens the cabinet and pulls the fire ax out of its brackets.
That zombie’s roar must have drawn others; the noises behind us are . . . intimidating, but I’m not looking back until the turtles in the back tell us to turn and fight.
And yes, it looks like my hope and the hazmat lady’s gestures were right—there’s a barricade at the far end of the tube, the hotel entry side.
It’s a mostly round door, or rather a hatchway cover, a lid, shaped to fit exactly over the hamster tube entry. It’s flat only on the floor edge, and it looks like it fits over the hotel side of the tube sort of like the lid on a can of Pringles, a larger lip-edge stretching beyond the frame of the tube, but on the hotel wall side, keeping the whole thing from falling inward.
A duplicate lid is on the convention center side of the tube, stowed immediately to the side of the skyway, in a discreet, wallpaper-covered recess.
We run into the tube.
At the back of our phalanx, Cuellar and Simon grab the convention-hall side hamster tube cover from its stow position and haul it into position behind us.
Except something immediately goes wrong, or the convention center–side lid is broken, because it tilts inward at an alarming angle, only seeming to catch on the frame edge of the tube in two places, pivoting inward like a quarter held between two fingers.
Cuellar and Simon push it up, hard, just as the zombies arrive. Gray, vein-mottled arms tear at us.
The disc of the hatch lid slams upright into the zombies, thumping into place, but unsecured, held by the strength of Cuellar and Simon.
“We got a problem here, girly!” Cuellar yells.
“I see it, sonny!” I yell back. “Hold it!” I point to Janet, Blair, and Imani. “Stay here, help hold the lid. We’ll get to the hotel side and get help.”
“Done,” Janet says, as Imani nods. Blair presses her hands flat on the lid.
Hunter and I sprint across the tube, over the distance of the three-lane street below us. The back of my neck prickles at the yawning distance between us and the others, between me and Imani and Siggy, and yes, even Blair, and the thundering pounding on the hatch behind us magnified by the tube.
We reach the hotel-side hatch and pound on it.
“Hey! Anyone there? Help! Help! We’re normal! Let us through!” I’m yelling and pounding, Hunter is doing it, too, our voices booming back with the sounds of our banging on the lid
Nothing. Not a sound, not an answering call, nothing.
It’s growing hotter in the tube, the sun beating down onto the film-covered glass, cooking us like bacteria in a test tube.
“Where are they?” Hunter asks. “She pointed here. She was pointing here!”
He steps back into the tube and cranes his neck, looking farther up the street below and behind us.
“Help!” I yell, and kick the hatch with my foot.
Sweat pools in my armpits and butt crack. I feel a droplet run down my temple.
“Cuellar! Bring your ax!” I yell.
Cuellar pivots away from the broken convention-side hatch, leaving the others to hold it, and comes running.
“No one’s here,” I say. “Or if they are, they aren’t coming.”
Cuellar wastes no time. He lifts the fire ax and starts chopping.
The first impact splits the plastic coating of the hatch cover, showing the wood beneath.
“Good, keep going!” I say.
Hunter looks at me, frustration, anger, and apology in his vibrant eyes.
“I guess I got it wrong,” he says. “She wasn’t pointing here.” Both hands drag hanks of dark hair off his forehead.
“Maybe, maybe not,” I say. “But she was pointing somewhere.”
We look at each other, and have the idea at the same time. We leave Cuellar working frantically with his ax, and we pivot and run back out into the center of the tube, and stop in the middle.
“Any luck?” Blair calls over her shoulder toward us.
A crashing, battering of knocks and thumps against the broken hatch.
“Not yet,” I yell back.
Hunter shields his eyes against the sun and peers out, up the street, toward the front of the convention center.
But I look the opposite way, down the street, toward the back of the building.
And that’s where I see people.
“Hey! Hey!” I yell, jumping up and down, waving my arms at the soldiers and scientists, whoever it is out there, in hazmat suits erecting barricades and more tents. There are what look like security trucks, and prison buses, more orange plastic barricades, and fully armed soldiers standing behind it all.
None of them look up, or even down the street.
Where are they? What part of the convention center is their staging area? If that’s even what I’m looking at?
I mean, when you think of it, that’s not really that many people. For what’s going on.
There should be way more people.
Unless I’m looking at the back of it, the rear, and around the corner, in the back parking lot of the convention center, there are more people.
Hunter keeps waving and yelling, even after I stop.
“Where
are they setting up?” Frustration makes my voice sharp. “There has to be an exit point, a screening point. That’s what she was trying to tell you. So where is it?”
“On the back of the building,” Hunter says. “The loading dock to the exhibit hall.”
“Why there?” I ask.
“It’s wide, there’s room to set up, I don’t know, a funnel or something.”
“I don’t know, this whole thing is starting to feel particularly mismanaged.”
I’m thinking of the scientist, how he didn’t appear to have any backup, not even a PR liaison to break the ice or vouch for him before he jumped onstage. It was almost like he had gone rogue, was acting on his own or something.
Trying to save us.
What if there is no actual exit point? No screening point? They just want to keep us all locked in?
Hunter says it.
“They’re going to just let us die in here.” His eyes are wide, shocked.
The pained disbelief on his face hurts me to see. Maybe because I know now: his goofy sense of humor and his loneliness. His consideration, his kindness. It shoots through me, goes all through me, as my mother says. Pulses like a lightning stroke of pure rage and protectiveness.
I feel myself grow in power. In fury. In energy, a dump of adrenaline making me feel invincible, making me refuse it.
“We’re not doing that,” I tell him, voice strong as a mountain. “We’re survivors. If they locked us in, we’ll break our way out.”
Somehow.
Hunter locks his eyes with mine, and there’s a look in them I’ve only seen on the show, when his character Clay Clarke looks at his surrogate father, Captain Cliff Stead.
Awe. He’s looking at me with awe. And something like hope, and something like worship.
Admiration.
The sun glares onto my back, and sweat is literally pouring down my face, under my hair, as I cook in the tube.
There’s no AC in the ZA.
It’s just a clear tube. Who designed this? Haven’t they ever been outside in the South? Lord. It’s so hot. Like we’re in a greenhouse or something, the only thing above us film-tinted Plexiglas and sky.
Nothing between us and the sky.
A sudden picture pops into my brain, swooping in there like a fancy zoom-special-effect camera shot.
