Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,110

a bit unhinged, like a determinedly upbeat airline attendant who’s been awake too long, but she’s stepping over us, around us.

She expertly dodges the sweeping hand, and turns to look at me.

“Can you keep his hand up, please?” she asks, voice bright but with a terrified light in her eyes.

“S-s-sure . . . ?”

I step up, shift my grip to Janet’s weightlifter hold, then jab the mic stand up under the welder zombie’s arm and press it up, up, up.

Imani grabs one side, and I shift my arms in, so we’re both lifting his arm up, and away from Annie, who now kneels on the tiled floor of the elevator.

“What the hell?” Cuellar grunts.

Annie opens the defibrillator case and squints at the contents of the case, at the instruction card, then she shrugs and pulls out a broad electrode pad, yanks the paper off the sticky side, and stands up, slapping it on the welder zombie’s exposed throat.

She quickly slaps on two more, one next to the first, and the third on the visor.

She flips on the defibrillator base, and the unit makes a high-pitched whine.

An automated man’s voice comes out of the unit.

“Heartbeat irregular or absent, please reposition the contact pads, and press to detect again.”

“No, thank you,” Annie says, and her hand hovers over the red shock button.

“You guys get ready to let go,” she says to . . . all of us, I guess.

“And you better get away from the walls, too. Just in case,” Annie continues, calmly.

It’s a stainless-steel box, so yeah. Blair and Scott scooch in on their butts.

“Okay!” Annie’s voice is officious and cheerful. “Clear!”

Imani and I duck and drop the metal mic stand. Hunter and Simon step back from the stainless-steel doors, which start to grind open.

Annie presses the button.

A bolt of sound, a zap, a ka-chung, and you can actually see where a small ridge of electricity arcs over the visor.

The welder zombie convulses once. His arm collapses like . . . like . . . well, like he’s been shocked in the head with enough voltage to stop a heart.

The zing of electricity quiets.

Blair stands with her driftwood sculpture. She plunges the wood into the welder zombie’s chest, shoving him back out of the door gap.

The defibrillator’s electrode cords pop out of the unit as the zombie falls.

I push the door-close button. The doors close all the way.

The elevator starts to lift.

There’s a crackle in the speakers that wasn’t there before as the elevator lifts, and Muzak drifts down.

32

Hit the stop button,” Hunter pants. He’s bent over partway with his palms planted on his knees.

I hit the stop button.

“What if the elevator stops working?” Blair asks, her hands raised in a wait a minute gesture.

Oops.

Well, too late now. The alarm is a separate button, so while the elevator has stopped we can at least rest in peace.

Not rest in peace.

Rest, you know, in peace.

Ugh.

I dig in the backpack and pass around the last water bottles and energy bars. Cuellar and Simon sit and press their backs against the doors.

Annie packs up the electrode- and cable-free defibrillator. The red case closes with a gentle snap.

“Annie, that was brilliant,” I say. “Thank you.”

Hunter stands, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “Seriously!” he agrees. “Brava.”

Annie simpers. There’s no other word for it. She twists her head, tilting one ear a little toward her shoulder, smiling, eyes up then lowered, a pleased-yet-shy smile on her face.

“Thanks,” she says as the others echo our praise. “Thanks, it was nothing. I just saved the day, that’s all.”

We laugh, but Annie’s eyes grow dark and glisten with gathering tears. “Me, and, uh, and Janet.”

A lump gathers in my throat. I want to say something about Janet. About how lovely she was