by Ash Parsons
“Where, Siggy?”
A smile rises on Siggy’s mouth, pure as a sunrise. Her expression is happily thunderstruck, like she bought the winning lottery ticket and just now found it in the bottom of her purse.
“The preppers.”
We explain to the others about the Apocalyptic Preppers panel, and how the preppers might still be in the same banquet room, just down the hall.
“They had an afternoon session on the schedule, too,” Siggy says. “We nearly decided to go to that one, but we worried it cut too close to our photo-op time.”
At the mention of the photo op, this thing from earlier today that now sounds like something from an alternate reality, Simon Wong smiles, Cuellar Tucker scowls, Annie Blaze unconsciously fluffs her hair.
And Hunter Sterling gives me a speculative look.
“What?” I whisper.
“Just wondering who your photo was with, that’s all,” he teases.
“Like I’ll ever tell you,” I sass back, but I also wink.
Siggy’s still talking excitedly to the others, telling them about the session and about the big yellow radio that was standing on the table to the side of the preppers.
Hunter bumps his hip against mine.
“So, it was with me.” His whisper is somehow also a crow, self-satisfied and jubilant.
“Don’t get too cocky.” I hip bump him back. “You still don’t know the props we were gonna make you hold.”
Which, okay, we weren’t going to, but you never know and some fans get very, well, shall we say elaborate.
Hunter lets out a little laugh, and smiles at me, this direct, almost admiring-feeling gaze? It beams right into my eyes.
I return it. I swear his eyes just sparkle, somehow.
I might get an anime nosebleed if I keep looking at him, I swear. He’s so handsome.
Siggy turns back to me.
“Right, June?”
Even though I wasn’t paying attention, her tone isn’t asking, it’s showing everyone else that she’s right.
So I don’t hesitate.
“Right,” I agree, backing her up.
“Well, let’s go, then,” Janet says. “Sounds like that radio could solve all our problems.”
The rest of the group agrees, so we move swiftly down the hall, away from the escalators and past a set of bathrooms, to the banquet hall.
It’s a strange sense of déjà vu, almost like we’re going to walk right back into another session. Like the zombie apocalypse hadn’t started at all.
Except, well, the door’s closed now.
One of the doors was open, propped open, so that latecomers to the sessions could ease in and find a seat without disturbing the rest of the audience.
But now both of the doors are closed. Siggy reaches out and tries the handles.
Locked.
“They’re in there for sure,” Siggy says. Her voice is still bright, and I can’t blame her. I’m excited, too. That radio could save us, could save everyone. It’s the link we need.
Siggy knocks on the door, three swift raps.
Behind us, Hunter, Simon, and Janet stand guard with Annie and Blair in between.
“Hello?” Siggy calls. “Are you still in there? Preppers?”
There’s no answer from the other side.
“It’s okay, there are no zombies here right now,” Siggy tells the door. “It’s just a few of us survivors, you know. Out here survivin’.”
She laughs, a “ha ha” of hopeful camaraderie.
With a door.
Is anyone even in there?
“If you could let us in, that would be rad. You have a radio, right? We saw some troops outside.” Siggy glances back at me and shrugs.
Imani steps forward and bangs her fist on the door, hard.
“We know you’re in there!” she says, her voice raised.
A low voice responds from the other side of the door.
“Keep it down!”
Siggy nods in victory.
“Talk to us and we will,” Siggy promises.
There’s a pause where there should be the sound of the door opening.
The door doesn’t open.
“Are you gonna let us in or what?” Siggy hisses, frustration spiking her words.
“No way. We talk, that’s it.”
“You can’t be serious,” Imani says.
“Damn straight we are. So talk or git.”
Imani steps forward like she’s about to start pounding on the door, or kick it in.
“Hold up.” Cuellar’s whisper is pitched for just our ears. “Let me talk to him.”
Siggy turns those hero-lit eyes to him.
“Okay,” she says, giving him her place by the door.
Imani moves a slight step back and crosses her arms, waiting.
Cuellar steps up to the closed door, puts a smile on, and scrubs a hand over his bristly hair.
“Hey,” he says to the door. “This is Cuellar Tucker, you know, from the show.”
He cocks a smile at the door handle, unconsciously, like it’s a peephole or a camera. Like they can see him.
“No shit?” The man’s voice from inside is interested.
Cuellar smiles at Siggy, then me. He whispers conspiratorially, “Preppers love me.”
Janet lets out a little snort-laugh, nothing mean, just the ridiculousness of our situation, and the weirdness of fame, that Cuellar knows his demographic like that.
“Yeah,” Cuellar says to the closed door. “And I got Simon Wong with me. And Janet O’Shea. And . . .” He pauses, and cocks an eyebrow at Annie.
Annie nods, and steps forward.
“. . . and Annie Blaze!”
“Hi!” Annie’s voice is high and bubbly.
“Dang!” The man’s voice is impressed. “I gotta say, I love the show.”
Cuellar nods sagely at the door. A yep, yep kinda gesture, like a quarterback methodically moving the ball down the field.
“Thanks, man,” he says. “We work hard on it.”
“And we love our fans,” Annie chirrups. “You’re all so supportive.”
Cuellar nods at her, like they’re two business hotshots in a well-worn scene: closing the deal.
“So, listen, if you could let us in, man, we’d really appreciate it.”
Cullar leans back, like he expects the door to be opened that moment.
It stays closed.
There’s what feels like a long moment of silence, like we’re all holding our breaths.
Finally the man on the other side of the door replies.
“I just can’t do that.”
Annie cusses under her breath and steps away from the door.
Cuellar smiles in disbelief.
“What?” His voice has lost its honeyed, wheedling tone.
“I know,” the man says. “It sucks, right? But we just can’t open this door. Rule number one of survival is—”
Cuellar cuts in.
“I don’t know where you get off, buddy, but there ain’t no rules now. Got that? So open this damn door. Now.”
There’s another silence that somehow feels affronted.
“No.” The man’s voice isn’t regretful anymore.
Cuellar turns to the rest of us, clustered around the door.
“Y’all move.” Cuellar hefts his fire ax.
We all make a hasty retreat, four or five steps back. This time Cuellar’s voice isn’t soft anymore.
“This is your last chance! Open this door or I’ll bust in there.”
“Start that crap and we’ll retaliate.” The man’s voice is every bit as pissed off as Cuellar’s.
“Oh yeah?” Cuellar taunts. “I got an ax.”
“We’ve got an improvised bomb a
nd Molotov cocktails.”
Cuellar looks surprised for a moment.
“Bull! You’re bluffing!”
A cheerful woman’s voice comes from behind the door. It sounds like the lady who looked vaguely like Mrs. Claus.
“No, we do, really! You can make them out of normal household chemicals, and for the explosive device all you need is—”
“Margaret, hush!” the man’s exasperated voice snaps.
“Sorry,” she says to him, then she raises her voice to us. “Sorry we can’t help y’all!”
Her tone is like if we’d knocked on the door looking to borrow a cup of sugar.
“Listen, okay, we don’t have to get in the room,” Siggy says, both to us and to the preppers on the other side of the door. “We saw troops outside, they’re going to come in. We need to warn them. Do you have that radio?”
“Already tried it,” the man says. “It won’t work, they got a dampener.”
“Right,” Siggy says, her tone conspiratorial. “But we got a signal when we went out into the skyway. Maybe if you give us the radio we could actually communicate with—”
“No.”
Just like that.
“You don’t understand,” Siggy begins, but he cuts her off again.
“Oh, sure. I get it, kid. And maybe you’re even telling the truth about the signal. But then what? I open the door to give you the radio. You guys try to force your way in here. Next thing you know you’re in, or you’re not. But at what cost? People could get hurt. My people. Then undead come. It’s a real snafu.”
Siggy’s mouth just drops open, the expression almost cartoonish. She’s just gaping at the door, head shaking gently in disbelief.
Then she swipes at her eyes with a hand. Shakes her head more forcefully, and steps back.
And I’m furious suddenly. White-hot rage at the obnoxious preppers on the other side of the door. Who wouldn’t even try to figure out a way to work with us. To help us.
And at how they just knocked her back like that. My Siggy. Stealing her hope, like taking candy from a baby. Like it didn’t matter.
Like she didn’t matter.
Janet repositions her drawer plank, resting it across the tops of her shoulders. She tips her head away from the door.
“Let’s go.” Her voice is tight with anger.
“Where?” Annie asks.
“Away from this toxic BS,” Janet says. “We’ll regroup, make a new plan.”
Cuellar nods. Simon moves out farther into the hall, like he’s on point.
Blair follows Simon, and the rest of us move into our turtle shape, our energies either dejected or infuriated.
Imani stays at the door; her body is rigid with fury.
I go stand beside her.
“Let’s go,” I say.
“These . . . these . . .” Her voice is so tightly wound it’s like she’s fighting to control the low words.
“People,” she hisses. And somehow it’s the worst insult.
“I know,” I tell her. “The worst.”
“What’s the point of rules?” Imani crosses her arms over her stomach, almost like she’s cradling an injury.
She looks at me.
“What’s the point of rules if there’s no empathy underneath?”
And it’s easy to forget, sometimes, that Imani needs rules so much because they’re protective. Because they make her feel safe.
Because underneath everything, her calm, strong demeanor, her academic gifts, and her beauty . . .
She’s a kid. My best friend in the whole world. And even though sometimes I put her on a little pedestal, with love, she’s human.
She’s scared, too.
“I know,” I tell her.
Siggy touches her arm. “It’s all right, Imani,” Siggy says, and her voice is so strong, it makes me feel stronger just hearing it. “We know better, they don’t. They have to live with that.”
“With themselves,” I add. “If they survive.”
Imani nods, and lifts her chin. Her hair shivers over her shoulders when she gives her head a clarifying shake.
“Okay,” she tells us.
But she steps up to the door again.
Her fist bangs on the door once.
There’s a startled curse, almost like the man on the other side had his ear pressed to the wood listening when she banged it.
Imani smiles, this gorgeous curve of righteous satisfaction. Her voice is just loud enough to carry to the preppers hiding in the banquet room.
“Enjoy your piss-water, assholes.”
Cuellar lets out a guffaw. Janet laughs that gorgeous villainess laugh, as Imani and I join the rest of the formation.
30
Since the preppers wouldn’t let us in, we decide to return to the stairwell to talk over our next move. For one thing, it feels like a space we can be marginally secure in, and for another, no matter what we plan next, it gives us access to the other floors.
And maybe we might find Rosa there, in the stairwell waiting for us. Even though it’s unlikely, it could happen, right?
“We have to figure out something,” Siggy says as we move down the hall. “How to stop the zombies before the army comes in the loading dock. We can’t let them out after all this.”
The second-floor lobby balcony is still a ways off, at the end of the hall past the escalators.
“I know,” I say.
The sudden image of the zombies being released by the SWAT team, swarming into the sleepy downtown of Senoybia, causes my heart to stop in my chest, a physical ache.
“I know it’s dinky,” Imani murmurs. “But I kinda like this town.”
“Me too.” I think of the park with the duck pond, the playground behind the cemetery, the cute downtown streets, and the hardware store with one of the first Coke murals ever painted.
They all seem almost indescribably precious now. Maybe they are. Maybe they always were.
“Not to mention, like, the people,” Siggy says, her voice a bit croaky, as we draw even with the water fountains and bathrooms. “Lots of good people in this town. You know. Our parents and siblings. And Mark.”
Her voice breaks on his name.
“Absolutely,” Hunter agrees, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Tishala could be anywhere,” Imani murmurs. “And Mom. They’re out on their girls’ day. Shopping and looking for—”
She looks at me, her eyes agonized at the jagged line of her thoughts.
“What if they’re close by? Looking at the Japanese bridge or the gazebo? And they don’t know, and the zombies get out?”
“We’ll save them,” I say, my voice steady, even if my heart is goldfish-out-of-the-water floppy. “We’ll save all of them. We’ll save Senoybia. And, like. The world.”
There’s a moment where we silently look at each other, acknowledging the task. And not knowing how we can do anything. But knowing we have to do something.
“Yeah,” Annie agrees. “But first, can we get some water?” She steps up to the fountains set between the men’s and women’s bathrooms.
We all stop, forming a protective ring around the water fountains and whoever’s turn it is to drink.
Imani takes a big drink. “Ahhh!” she exclaims, exaggerating. “That’s nice.”
We all laugh, thinking of the preppers.
Hunter steps up for his turn at the water fountain. He takes a long drink then lets the water run over his face for a moment.
He stands, swiping a hand down his face, scattering water droplets.
His eyelashes are bunched together by the water, looking impossibly darker. Thicker.
Imani nudges me with her elbow.
“Jeez, girl. Thirsty much?” she whispers, just to me.
I smirk back at her, then st
ep up for my turn at the water fountain.
I’ve just taken my first big gulp of chilled water when I notice movement in my peripheral vision. The door to the women’s restroom is opening.
I react on instinct, lunging forward with the mic arm raised.
“June! It’s me!” Scott falls back against the open bathroom door with his hands up.
There’s not really a word for the stew of emotions that churns in my gut at the sight of him. Relief is in there, not just that he’s not a zombie, but also that he’s alive. By which I mean, I am glad he’s not dead or a zombie. I’m not a total hate-monster.
So, yes, there’s relief there. But also anger, annoyance, betrayal. The usual ingredients.
Plus a fun! Bonus! That feeling? The one where you want to curl up and die and never have anyone look at you again? That level of embarrassment so strong it’s practically visceral horror?
That’s there, too, when Blair steps forward.
“Scott!” She opens her arms to hug him.
I guess my shunning of him at the back of the podcast session a few hours ago (it feels like another life now, honestly) must have made some impression at least, because he glances at me uncomfortably while returning her hug with one arm.
“Where are the zombies?” Scott asks, stepping back from the hug and glancing past me. His eyes take in the others.
“They’re around,” I say, because who has time to get into it all, right now right here, when we have to figure out how to warn the military or police or whoever is outside readying to try to come in.
Scott looks around at the others, and his eyes lock on Hunter, Annie, Cuellar, and Simon.
“Hey, hello,” Scott says, and he nods at them in greeting.
“Everyone, this is Scott,” Blair says.
“Hello,” Janet says in her polite, sweet voice.
“I’m a big fan,” Scott says, ignoring Janet, just completely zeroed in on the other, bigger stars. “I run a little podcast, Wasteland Stans, maybe you’ve heard of it?”
Cuellar cuts him an expression that if voiced would say, “Kid, are you serious with this crap right now?”
“If . . . I mean . . . when we get out of here would you—”
“Sure, buddy, sure.” Simon smiles at Scott and lays a reassuring hand on Scott’s upper arm. His demeanor is like he’s a) used to pushy fans, b) in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and doesn’t have time for podcast hosts right now, and c) both a and b.
