Girls Save the World in This One

by Ash Parsons

  The roof access, if there is one, isn’t here. Isn’t in the balcony.

  There are zombies literally everywhere but this one balcony space.

  A presence approaches me, and I know without looking who it will be, then confirmation as I smell her lovely, familiar scent. She still smells like fresh apples.

  Imani turns another chair onto its legs and sits next to me.

  Our arms brush.

  She understands my need to be silent. Is there anything as pure and consoling as a friend sitting with you silently? Sharing your grief?

  No. There isn’t. I’m sad to say I know that now, empirically.

  Time passes, maybe just a few minutes, maybe a half hour. I don’t know and I don’t care. I feel untethered from everything, lost, until Imani’s voice calls me back.

  “I love you,” she says.

  She turns that beautiful, wistful smile to me. A smile that communicates that nothing has changed with us. With our friendship. That it’s steadfast, like a compass point. Like her ability to always find our way forward.

  “I love you, too,” I tell her.

  Another chair gets placed on the other side of me. Siggy sits and presses into my space, the three of us huddled together like kittens in a basket.

  “I’m proud of us,” Siggy says. “I’m proud of you, Imani. I’m proud of you, June.”

  Siggy’s blue eyes shine with tears, but she doesn’t look away. She doesn’t flinch or blink.

  And she doesn’t crack a joke.

  “I’m proud of us, too,” I reply. “I’m proud of you, Siggy.”

  Imani leans around me. “Yeah. You didn’t even faint or get nauseous once, Siggy. When you fought them.”

  Siggy sits up straighter, the praise making her grow from within.

  “I’m still squeamish,” she says. “I’ll probably throw up later.”

  “That’s okay,” I tell her. “You’ve earned it.”

  I didn’t mean for it to be funny, but it is.

  A small laugh ripples through us at the image, the thought of a well-deserved hurkening.

  Imani and Siggy wrap their arms around me and each other, and I do the same with them, a group hug.

  Then Siggy lets go and stands.

  “I’m going to go look around. See what all’s up here. Just to be sure.”

  Checking that there’s nothing else we can do, that there’s no surprise cache of supplies or a stowed prepper bugout bag. The instinct still there, keep searching. Keep trying.

  Maybe there’s something.

  I nod.

  Imani stands, too. “I’m going to see if there’s a way to reinforce the doors.”

  I nod again, and want to tell them I get the message.

  Don’t give up yet, June.

  I don’t want to steal their hope, or tell them it’s pointless.

  So I just nod.

  My friends walk off, my strong, beautiful friends. I want to cry, a mix of love and sorrow and I don’t even know what, a longing.

  Instead I just sit some more.

  On the ballroom floor below, zombies seethe, their guttural growls and the automaton clacking of their jaws rising into the air, like a buzzing of devouring bees.

  Hunter puts a hand on Imani’s chair, then sits down next to me.

  “A swarm,” I say, waving my hand at the zombies below us. “They sound like a swarm of zombies.”

  “I think they sound like a saw,” Hunter says, like this is a normal conversation. Like the zombies below us are performing. “A band saw of zombies.”

  I nod. Then I glance at him.

  “I was going to ask you a question,” I say. “When this day started. At your opening session.”

  Hunter shakes his head gently. “Feels like a lifetime ago.”

  “A whole other world,” I agree.

  He crosses his arms over his stomach and stretches out his long legs, crossing them at the ankles. He tilts that crooked grin at me.

  “So, you’re a fan, then?” he teases.

  “Oh yeah.” I push my hair back off my shoulders in an exaggerated gesture of preening-pride. “I was Clay Clarke’s biggest fan.”

  Hunter’s eyes cloud slightly. His eyebrow inches up.

  “Was?”

  “Welllllll.” I draw the word out. “Let’s just say I’ve decided that I like Hunter Sterling the person more.”

  Hunter gives a little laugh.

  “Oh,” he says. “That guy.”

  His tone is joking but there’s something underneath, small but noticeable, like a sliver of splinter under the skin.

  I touch his arm, just once, because it feels like I should be able to telegraph the truth to him through my fingertips.

  “Yeah,” I say. “That guy.”

  Hunter clears his throat, a little shy cough.

  I smile, and he smiles back, and below us the zombies buzz like summer cicadas.

  “What was your question, anyway?” Hunter asks.

  I laugh. Why not?

  “In that interview, you said you identified with Clay because he was searching for something.” I sit up and lean forward slightly, then glance back over my shoulder at him.

  “What is it that you’re searching for?”

  Hunter laughs, and shakes his head, the movement causing hair to fall over his eyes.

  His default shy-gesture.

  “I don’t know,” he says.

  I wait.

  “That’s the answer.” He glances at me. “I honestly don’t know. But sometimes I feel like there’s something out there, calling to me. Something I should find. Something that will make everything make more sense somehow. Like finding the key to a test. Does that make sense?”

  “Oh yeah,” I answer. “That makes sense.”

  I feel a light brush on my hand. Hunter’s knuckles rest tentatively against mine.

  Hunter smiles, sweet and sad, and I smile back. In spite of everything.

  It’s confusing, but no one cares, so I smile back.

  I turn my hand over, and Hunter takes it, pulling it onto his leg and threading our fingers together, squeezing just so.

  My heart does a little skitter-jump, and I can’t help it, but here it is anyway, this swelling-to-burst feeling in my chest, like a bubble of doomed happiness.

  “What a way for the world to end, huh?” I ask. “Ridiculous old world.”

  “There were parts of it I liked,” Hunter says.

  “Me too,” I say. “Kittens and stuff.”

  “Ice cream,” Hunter says.

  “Weighted blankets.”

  “Drive-through food,” Hunter says. “And . . . you’re pretty cool.”

  A flock of butterflies launches itself into a swirling victory lap in my stomach.

  “You too,” I say. “Also I like butterflies. All the butterflies. Heaps of them, a flutter-by, or whatever they’re called.”

  “A kaleidoscope,” Hunter says, smiling at me shyly. “A kaleidoscope of butterflies.”

  Yep. Exactly.

  Only losers fall in love during the zombie apocalypse.

  * * *

  • • •

  After a while, the others drift over to where we sit, in our little theater row. First Imani and Siggy, who adds her seat next to Imani. Then Blair, pulling up a seat next to Siggy, then Annie and Simon next to Hunter.

  And then there were seven.

  Annie leans forward, gently depositing her defibrillator case on the floor in front of her.

  The hard plastic shell is Red Cross red, blaring out help that we won’t receive.

  Behind us, the doors knock incessantly. The zombies, trying to get in.

  “How long do you think the doors will hold?” Simon asks.

  “Pre
tty long?” Hunter guesses. “It helps that they open outward.”

  “They’re still weak at the middle, though,” Imani says. “I didn’t see any way to strengthen them.”

  “I wonder if anyone else made it out?” Hunter asks. “Maybe they did, and they’re telling the army to try a different route right now.”

  It’s a hope. But it doesn’t seem likely, given everything we’ve seen.

  “Maybe there are little groups of survivors,” Imani says. “Hunkered down in places like the preppers. Waiting to be saved.”

  It’s a nice thought, if only the end of the world wasn’t at hand.

  Zombies, rushing into the army, overrunning and attacking them, keeping going past the barricades, into Senoybia.

  We stare down at the horde of zombies, easily over five hundred of them, and only some of whom have seen us and are flailing claw-handed arms impotently at the air.

  “I guess we’re just gonna sit here,” Siggy says. “When it all hits the fan.”

  The army or SWAT team, unleashing the zombies into the unsuspecting world.

  It doesn’t feel good. Just waiting for the inevitable. As if that’s our only choice.

  “Well, I don’t even have a weapon anymore,” Annie says, but her voice is light, she’s making a joke. “If I had found that new defibrillator, I’d give them what for.” The teasing tone falls out of her voice. “Like Linus would have said.”

  The defibrillator.

  “Damn right you would,” Simon says. A low, exhausted laugh rumbles out of his chest. “That was just about the best thing I’ve ever seen, Annie.”

  “It was pretty badass,” Annie agrees.

  At the front of the ballroom, the giant screen hanging above the stage glows a digital blue. Under it are preamps and speaker stacks, scattered chairs. Above it are the glowing lights of a theatrical light rig, suspended on a long pole at the front of the stage.

  The defibrillator.

  If only there was a way to zap them all at once.

  It takes me a minute to realize someone is saying my name.

  “June?” Hunter’s looking at me with a question in his eyes. “What is it?”

  I give my head a little shake.

  “Nothing. It’s just a brain fart.” I smile at the others. “It was nothing.”

  “Bullshit,” Imani says, leaning into my face, her eyes searching.

  I let go of Hunter’s hand and work my fingers into my hair.

  “It’s nothing—just—” I wave at the red case. “Defibrillator. What Annie said. If we could only shock them all. I was thinking, I don’t know . . . if we could somehow get on that stage and electrocute them.”

  “One at a time?” Annie asks, her eyebrows coming together in a frown.

  “No, all together,” I say.

  “The defib’s not that strong,” Annie says.

  “I know, I was thinking, the lights. Or the speakers. They must have those really fat plugs. Draws a huge voltage.”

  The others just look at me, and I feel silly.

  “I know it won’t work,” I say hastily. “I mean, if there was one of those fire hoses in here, maybe we could soak them all from up here, then do it.”

  “The water would conduct the electricity,” Simon says, nodding.

  “But there’s not a hose up here,” I say.

  Siggy points up.

  “We have those,” she says.

  As one, our row tips our heads back.

  34

  This is the worst idea in the history of ideas,” I say. “It started as mine, so I get to say that.”

  I’m wrapping electrical tape around the handle of the hex key, winding it around and around a wooden mop handle and the hex key, an infinity, figure-eight loop-de-loop.

  “Well, I’d rather die with a bad idea and moving than no idea and standing still,” Annie says.

  “That’s the spirit!” I say, giving her a little hug.

  Simon jogs back to where I stand. He’s been running back and forth at the edge of the balcony, waving his arms and shouting.

  “It’s going to work, June,” he says. “But I still think you should let me be the one to climb down.”

  “Why, because you’re a guy?” I shake my head. “Besides, I need you up here if anything, you know . . . goes wrong. You’ll have another shot at it.”

  I hand the mop to Blair.

  “Wait till I go before you start.”

  “Do you have a minute?” Blair asks, tipping her head to the side, indicating that she’d like privacy.

  I follow her a few steps away from the others.

  I know what this is going to be. A Blair version of an apology. Words that feel regretful, but which don’t take ownership, don’t take the sting away, and filled with these voice-trailing-off gaps that take the place of actually saying I’m sorry, which she has never been, will never be, able to do.

  But I owe it to her, and to the entire history of our friendship, to hear her out.

  And I’m ready to accept her for who she is, and that includes her flawed apology.

  “I just want to say I’m truly sorry,” Blair says.

  My heart stops, and then it speeds up, and I feel blood rush to my cheeks and ears in shock.

  She said it. She actually said it.

  And she’s still talking.

  “—for everything. I don’t really know why I do the things I do, sometimes. And it’s not like he was that great.”

  I feel my lip push out in a wasn’t he? expression as my heart rate calms back down.

  Call it the zombie apocalypse, but I decide that I really don’t care why anymore.

  “It’s okay, Blair,” I say. “Thank you for saying that. It’s okay.”

  Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. Or something like that I saw on a mug sometime. But pithy as it sounds, it must be true, because the minute I say it, I actually do feel better. Not because it doesn’t still hurt about Scott, not because suddenly all is well, or that I somehow magically can trust her again, but maybe just simply because I don’t feel poisoned by my anger. I’m just letting it pass through me, and letting it go.

  I’m not going to nurse it anymore. Not going to fan its flames, or push out with that feeling of being wronged.

  And suddenly I feel bigger. Stronger.

  “Thanks for letting me off the hook, but I have to say it.” Blair’s hand opens and bobs at me, pleading.

  “Okay,” I agree.

  “Can we sit?” Blair walks to the front of the balcony, and sets up two chairs behind the rail.

  She’s not done?

  I sit next to her, looking out at the blue screen hanging over the sea of groaning, straining zombies below.

  Blair takes a deep breath. “I’ve . . . I guess I’ve been jealous for a long time.”

  I want to say Aha! Or Eureka! Or something that a scientist might say. I also want to argue, because what? Why?

  What I say is “Me too.”

  Blair looks at me. She tucks long, honey-brown hair behind one ear.

  “Really?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I reply. “Of you, or parts of you. Things that I’m not.”

  “Yeah.” Blair smiles a little, and then she’s turning on the seat, twisting sideways so our knees nearly touch. “And I don’t like the way that makes me feel.”

  I nod. “Me either.”

  “I don’t know why it started, or how,” she says, words rushing out. “But it did and it’s been there for so long. And then I was just reacting to it . . . and then Scott. I’m so sorry, June.”

  Scott. A jerk. A charming guy. Dead now, and does any of this matter next to that?

  I try not to flinch but it’s there, it must be, because Blair looks distressed, almost like she wants to pat at me or hug me.
<
br />   “I wish I could take it back,” she says, her voice urgent. “But I did it. I knew how you felt about him, but I wanted . . . I wanted to take him. I liked him, but I also wanted to take him from you. I didn’t really think when it started, we started flirting online, and I haven’t had that many boyfriends—”

  “Gee, I wonder what that’s like.” It comes out harsher than I mean it, but it’s there, the truth.

  We are the same in so many ways.

  “Sorry,” I say. “That was a knee-jerk.”

  Blair sighs. “It’s a fair point.”

  There’s a moment of not-silence, but not talking, as we sit and try to process what we want to say, what our emotions are doing.

  The moans of the zombies stretch up to us, life-and-death context.

  “Listen,” I say, turning to Blair, meeting her eyes for the first time. “I want to be friends again. But I want to feel safe with you.”

  Blair is nodding rapidly, her eyebrows up in a yes! expression.

  “I understand,” she says. “I don’t know how I can fix it. Except to tell you the truth, and to keep saying it.”

  She takes a deep breath.

  “I have to find a new way. Because I can’t just feel better about myself when I can do better than you.” She looks down. “And I don’t know why we should feel—why I should feel . . . competitive. Like there’s only so much to go around, attention, or whatever.”

  “Control,” I whisper.

  Blair glances at me.

  “I do it, too,” I continue. “I don’t like it, but I feel . . . like I have to compete with you. Like we have to struggle for . . . control. Which is ludicrous. It doesn’t even make sense!”

  “Right?!” Blair grabs my wrist, squeezing it in agreement. “What even is that?”

  We meet each other’s eyes, shaking our heads in mutual dismay and confusion.

  “Is it the patriarchy?” I ask.

  “I mean, I would like to blame the patriarchy?” she answers.

  “Let’s blame the patriarchy,” I suggest, and then we’re laughing, small little huffs at the ridiculousness of the place, the patriarchy, the zombies below us, but also laughs of relief.

  It feels like we’ve climbed over something, this huge obstacle, together.