by Ash Parsons
Blair lets go of my wrist to hold up her hand, making a promise. “June, I swear to you. I swear, when we get out of here, I’m going to be a better friend to you, I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
She does the hand gesture, drawing an X over her heart, and it doesn’t feel ridiculous, the childhood oath.
It feels like a summoning of our past, the whole of it, playground games and spend-the-nights, that time we went to the beach together, playing with Barbies, whispering secrets in each other’s ears.
How I knew she had to feel left out sometimes, hell, lots of times, with me and Imani.
Everyone plays their part.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m sorry I ever hurt you, and I’m sorry for not letting you talk to me. To us. I’m sorry for the cold shoulder.”
“It’s okay.” Blair waves it away with her hand.
“No, it wasn’t right either.” I shake my head, embarrassed of how it had felt good to punish her.
“Okay.” Blair nods. “Thank you for saying that.” But when she glances up at me again, her eyes are shining.
I’ve never actually seen her cry before.
“Hey!” It’s my turn to want to pat-pat at her. To dab away impending tears with the press of my hands. “Don’t cry.”
Blair lets out a sob.
“Hey! What did I say?” I fret.
“I can’t help it, I love you,” Blair says, her voice a warble of tears.
“I love you, too.” My voice is frog-strangled, too.
We hug, and it feels like wringing out all the bad, and then soaking in the good, okay, except more elegant than that, but that clean feeling, at last.
We sit back, smiling.
“Friends again. Forever,” I say.
Blair stretches out a hand, and I put mine in hers.
“Damn straight,” she says.
Below us, the zombies groan and seethe, but up here there is space and air.
* * *
• • •
After we recover ourselves, Blair and I stand and walk back to where Siggy and Imani are waiting, a little separated from the rest of the group.
Imani runs up and touches Blair’s arm, smiling because we are.
Siggy is frowning, not in anger but in skepticism, and I want to kiss her cute mama-hen heart.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “We had it out.”
“Yeah,” Blair says. “I’m sorry. I guess I hurt us all, huh?”
Siggy watches Blair’s eyes closely.
Imani opens her arms and Blair steps into them. “Oh, good,” Imani says. “I couldn’t stand it. Either of you hurting. Or fighting.”
“It’s not gonna happen again,” Blair promises.
Siggy doesn’t look hostile, but she’s not warming up completely, either.
“Siggy?” Blair asks, when Imani lets go of the hug.
Siggy takes a deep breath. “I just want this to be real. To last.”
“I promise, you’ll see,” Blair says. “I am gonna be like Scrooge, you know? Better than my word.”
“Me too!” I promise.
Siggy studies our faces for a moment, and then she can’t help the smile that tugs at the corner of her mouth. The lingering tension in her forehead relaxes.
“Well, okay,” she says. “That’s better.”
And you know, it actually does feel better. Like we’ve opened a window, somehow.
Hunter’s voice calls to us from the mixing board. “Okay, we’re all set!”
Siggy hugs Blair and then Blair lets go and turns, pulling me into a hug, squeezing me way, way too tight. And that’s why I can’t breathe. That’s why my eyes are tearing.
Whatever.
We pull apart, and I swipe at my eyes. We walk back to the others, Hunter, Simon, and Annie, waiting for us in the center of the balcony.
Everyone is ready, determined looks on all our faces.
“Okay. Go time,” I say.
But first everyone moves in, the same unspoken instinct. To hold close, to huddle up. So we all hug, not just me, but each other, a standing puppy-pile of arms and elbows and heads.
Team Turtle is going in, one last time. All or nothing, baby.
35
You got this, June. You can do this,” I chatter under my breath.
The others are all standing at the opposite side of the parabola-shaped balcony, yelling, hollering, making noise.
Attempting to draw every bloodshot eye up, and away from me, huddled below the railing of the balcony, hands wrapped around the thick extension cord the balcony-escape group had tied into loops to make a rescue rope.
“Hey, zombies!” Annie screams. “Look up here, yummy!” She drags her hands up her arms, like a game-show model demonstrating cold cuts.
“Hey, zombies! Zombeeeeeez! Zombies!” Siggy and Imani call the zombies like they’re on a farm calling hogs.
Simon whoops and yells.
Hunter prances back and forth at the extreme front of the balcony, his hands planted in the small of his back, elbows jutting, an imitation of Mick Jagger.
A snort of laughter sounds at my shoulder. I whirl.
“Blair!” I hiss. “What are you doing?”
Blair shrugs, hands up.
“Helping you, aren’t I?” she says. “Someone’s gotta watch your back.”
I smile.
“Friends again, forever,” I say.
“All together or none at all,” Blair agrees, like it’s a call-and-response.
Which is how I end up climbing down the extension cord with one of my best friends, while our other friends do their part to distract a room full of zombies.
I land awkwardly, stumbling on my bad leg when I do, but Blair catches me, and we rush forward to the stage.
One of the zombies at the back of the crowd turns at our movement.
Blair vaults herself onto the stage like a stuntwoman, with agile grace and coordination.
I jump at the stage after her and catch the edge with my solar plexus, knocking the wind out of myself. I kick my legs, hoisting my tummy up and onto the lip of the stage like a seal.
But it works, and we’re up before the row of zombies at the back can see us.
Now here’s hoping they still haven’t figured out how to climb.
I give the balcony a thumbs-up while Blair starts searching through the folds of the curtains at the edge of the stage.
Hunter gives me a thumbs-up in return, and runs to the soundboard table in the middle of the balcony, and the only reason I wouldn’t let him come with me when he tried to insist was because he was the only one who knew how to work it.
Showbiz kids.
Time for phase two of our plan: lure.
Suddenly the screen above our heads changes from blue to a picture of Hunter Sterling as Clay Clarke, bright and clear and in close-up.
And silent.
I make a what the? gesture to Hunter in the sound booth.
He makes a wait gesture, then pushes a few more buttons.
Sound blares out, loud, then louder, as Hunter turns the volume up.
“I don’t know what those things are or if they’re everywhere.” It’s Captain Cliff Stead’s speech from the first episode.
The zombies on the floor of the ballroom, all five-hundred-plus of them, stumble toward the stage, drawn by the voices of the actors, and by the sight of me and Blair, standing on it, waiting.
Up in the balcony, Imani and Siggy begin the third step.
Imani runs back and grabs the mop from where it rests against the back wall. She approaches the edge of the balcony and leans out.
Simon holds her around the waist, and Siggy helps support her uplifted arms as she stretches.
The end of her mop handle, tipped w
ith the hex-key screwdriver, connects with the sprinkler head.
Imani jabs.
The thin plastic stop-toggle breaks off, and a twelve-foot circle shower of water falls on just the edge of the balcony; the rest of the water lands on the zombies below.
Several zombies rush headlong at the front of the stage. Two fall back. A third falls onto it, arms out.
I pick up a microphone stand from the stage and bash the base into his face, pushing him back.
“But I know one thing,” Cliff says from the screen.
Imani and her helpers rush along the front edge of the balcony to the next sprinkler.
The water landing on the hardwood floor of the ballroom spills out into a wider and wider area; as the heavy shower continues to fall, the water spreads outward, toward the side wall, toward the front of the ballroom, toward the back doors.
“I’m gonna fight.”
I hear a thunderous boom, and my eyes jump to the back of the ballroom.
The single set of open doors has slammed back against the walls, pressed by the massive influx of zombies.
It’s working.
The sound lure is drawing them, from the hallway, up from the first-floor lobby, over the barricades, and with those numbers, probably from the exhibit hall itself.
I feel triumphant, then tiny, then terrified as hundreds more zombies press into the ballroom.
The zombies at the front of the stage are buffeted by others arriving. I can feel the vibrations through the stage floor.
The curtain behind the stage billows against the chain-link set dressing. The zombies that found their way backstage to the double doors now trying to find their way back, following the noise.
How many zombies can press in until there are enough to collapse the stage? Or to climb over each other to reach us?
I lift my eyes, looking for Imani, and clever Siggy, who had said, “Haven’t you been in a hotel and seen those little No hangers! signs below the sprinkler heads? When they’re set in the wall? That’s because you can set them off just by trying to hang a shirt there!”
Imani’s taller and so she has longer arms; that’s the reason we chose her to do the sprinkler-jabbing. She’s working fast now; three more sprinkler heads have been set off and she’s working on another. When that one pops open, water gushing out in its wide circle, Imani, Siggy, and Simon sprint around the soundboard, ignoring the two sprinkler heads in proximity to it, and rush to the opposite side of the balcony and start again.
I run to the edge of the stage and grab a white hard-sided briefcase. I open it. Inside it’s filled with foam rubber, with little nests for battery or broadcasting packs.
I carry it out to the center front of the stage again, and look out over the sea of straining, grasping bodies. More and more push into the hall, tracking through the rapidly pooling water.
The front edge of spreading water isn’t far enough yet.
Almost. Almost.
I open the case and place it, rubber side down, on the carpeted part of the stage behind me.
“Got it!” Blair yells from the side of the stage.
She pushes the curtains back, revealing a square aluminum truss that runs up and over the front of the stage. Hanging off the center top piece of the truss is a huge light bar, easily ten feet in length. It hangs out just slightly beyond the front edge of the stage.
Blair has her hand on a lever of some sort. She gives it an experimental crank.
The lights lift an inch.
Blair steps back and looks up, taking in the cables.
At the front of the stage, the movement of the zombies piled up, trying to reach us, has changed. Instead of reaching, and ineffectively pushing their chests against the edge, they’re starting to rise, somehow.
It’s uncoordinated, nothing like a predetermined movement. A susurrating noise under their groans, a slight rise and fall, like a wave.
Like popcorn in a pan, as kernels expand beneath kernels.
The stage shifts, I can feel it start to slide slightly backward.
They’re being pressed so hard against the front edge that it’s rupturing lungs, breaking ribs. Several of the zombies start to pour blood and other effluvium out of their mouths, noses, eyes. The pressure of the mass of bodies behind them is quite literally crushing them.
And causing others to rise, squeezed in and up, like . . . like . . . like—
Okay, like a push-up bra? Except grosser.
Like a pimple.
My stomach lurches with nausea. I take a deep breath and look away so I don’t hurl.
It’s only a matter of time before one of them, through the combined lift and squeeze, tips over onto the stage.
If it doesn’t simply collapse first.
“Ready when you are!” Blair yells.
There are too many bodies in front of me. I can’t tell if the water has reached far enough forward. It must.
We can’t wait much longer. The stage shifts again, like a raft on an ocean, drifting back. Shuddering.
I glance up at Hunter. At Imani and Siggy.
I lift the microphone stand and wait at the front of the stage.
“Get ready to jump!” Blair yells at me.
“Wait for it!” I yell back, rolling my shoulders and jabbing the heavy mic stand out in front of me experimentally.
On the balcony, Imani makes a hand gesture like water, a snaky wave. Then she gives a thumbs-up.
The water has reached far enough.
Thank you, Imani.
“Get ready, Blair!” I yell.
Blair wraps her arm, then a leg into the curtains at the side of the stage, winding it around herself like an aerialist on webbing.
She pulls herself up, off the metal stage, but tilts sideways, still keeping a hand on the ratchet lever.
At the very back of the hall, I see the silhouette of two shuffling zombies, turning away from the stage, from the room, running out into the hall.
What the hell?
Maybe the SWAT team has arrived. We have to light this thing up now.
“Three, two, one, GO!” I yell.
There’s a whizz of wires as Blair releases the lights.
I lunge forward with the mic stand, and heave with all my strength, knocking the aluminum light bar out that tiny, extra, necessary little bit.
Over the zombies. Over the water.
I’m supposed to jump up and back now, in the split second it will take the lights to drop, hit the water, and send out deadly bolts of electricity.
I leap up and back, extending toward the open white case.
From the balcony it looked like it was made of fiberglass-type plastic, white like a construction helmet, so it shouldn’t conduct electricity. Plus, bonus, it’s lined with that foam rubber to hold the battery pack things.
And I’m hoping between those two things, and the thin carpet that lines the plywood square top of the stage, that it will be just enough of a dampener, that in killing the zombies, I won’t also be killing myself.
But if I do, well.
It was an honor serving with me.
My brain is so inappropriate, but that doesn’t stop it from cracking the joke as I stretch my toes down to try to stick the landing on the case.
The light bar falls into the zombies, hard. The bar snaps in two, crashing heavy spotlights blaring out red and blue beams of light into the zombies, then past them, into the water.
There is an audible pop and sizzle as arcing power bolts through the crowd of bodies, backward, sideways, and forward, all at once, like branching lightning.
My feet don’t ever get to connect with the case to test my theory. Electricity shoots into the air, twisting up metal and aluminum, through the air and into me.
The bolt goes in my ankle, shoots up my leg, and comes out on my
outer hip in an instant; a simultaneous, painful shock, like it’s one motion, not two moments, the lightning like a gunshot. I’m blown forcefully up and back, rotating around the axis of my jolted hip, flying off the stage, over the edge, into the chain-link set dressing and heavy backdrop of curtain that stops me, catches me, drops me.
And everything goes dark.
36
If I’m dead, it shouldn’t hurt, right?
So, I’m probably not dead?
There’s a ringing in my ears, and everything hurts, especially my leg, somehow both novocaine-numb and shooting pain at the same time.
I feel like a cartoon, like there’s still a draining, drifting power pinballing in me. My hair should be twisting from static. If I held a lightbulb between my teeth, it should light up.
“. . . oooon?”
The voice is like a muted whale song. I can’t discern words, just noises. Swooping ups and downs of tone.
Scared. Urgent.
A finger pokes my ribs. A hand rests on my sternum.
The warmth of a body close to mine.
Leaning over mine?
“Joo-uuun?” the voice repeats.
A girl’s voice. High.
Another, deeper voice whale-songs next.
“Tss oooaaak,” it rumbles. “Eeee iiiiid iiiit.”
Opening my eyes is a struggle. Then when I get them open, my vision is all haze, darkness and haze, until I blink it away.
The sounds clarify when I see lips, or when I wake up fully, I’m not sure which.
I’m lying on my back, on the ground, no, on a waffle iron. It’s the chain-link, now flat on the back of the stage. It’s dim-dark; we blew out the circuit, I guess. Only the lights in the balcony are still on.
There’s a glow of a cell-phone flashlight in my face. It tips sideways when I try to lift my hand to shield my eyes.
First, I see Hunter’s gorgeous mouth, and then face; he’s leaning over me, eyebrows drawn together in concern, but also, he’s smiling.
His hand rests, warm, on my sternum.
“We did it,” he repeats. “It’s okay.”
He smiles at me, like a sunrise: it lifts across his face, lights it, and warms me like a blanket. A really lovely, soft, heavy blanket.
