Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,113

Then I realize why.

They’d been drawn away from the balcony and its lobby by us. By the noise we’d made one floor below, when we were in the hamster tube. Banging the hatch with an ax, yelling, fighting.

They’d probably even been able to look down and see us. Or see movement, at least.

We should have thought of it.

The balcony is clear.

“This way!” I yell, pulling my hand to myself then swinging around the door.

Here we go again. This move, at least, I know.

Third verse, same as the first.

I pull one door closed with me, and hit my knees on the other side. The hex key is stashed in climber webbing on the front of the backpack.

I pull it out and jam the end into the crash-bar on the balcony side of the doors, turning turning turning as fast as I can, as the others rush toward me, and as the group of zombies chase.

And then I think . . . okay, but is the balcony really clear?

Just turn, turn, turn.

The others will be here in a minute, they can clear it.

But only if we can lock it first.

I try not to feel it, the exposed expanse of my back, unprotected, undefended to the space, to whatever might be left here.

I’m a turtle without a shell.

I glance back at the others. Imani’s drawer piece jabs out and lodges in a zombie’s neck. She gives it one tug, but it doesn’t come out.

She lets go of it and lunges for something, comes up spinning a stick, no, it’s a mop from the barricade. The one Janet handed up to me when Linus was being attacked on the escalator.

It whistles in a twirling arc, knocking the plank-necked zombie into another zombie.

Imani jabs the strings out like a spear tip, shoving them back. Then she pivots, and still holding the mop like a spear she sprints toward me, overtaking Blair and Scott, and nearly reaching the front of our group.

Simon arrives first, and he sweeps his eyes around, then turns to put hands on the open door’s crash bar.

“Come on!” he yells.

Imani and Siggy jump through the door next, followed by Annie.

Cuellar is . . . not coming.

He’s spraying blood with one arm, ripping it out of the zombie’s mouth. He swings the ax around and around his head, like a Viking.

Its fast-arc cleaves into the heads of the zombies approaching him.

“That’s right!” Cuellar whoops. “Get you some!”

“Blair!” Imani shrieks.

I glance up from my work, hex key gone still in my hand.

Blair is standing with Scott, trying to help him. She’s pulling him. Is he falling? Why? More important, why is he dragging her down?

Hunter takes the hex key from my limp grip and starts turning it in the second hole.

I stand and step out from the doorway.

“Blair! Scott!” I yell. “Get your butts moving, NOW!”

Blair gets Scott to his feet. He takes one step and falters, tipping backward over his own heel, like he’s fainting in slow motion.

A trio of zombies is distracted by the motion, turning away from where Cuellar fights.

Scott tries to right himself. He grabs at Blair’s helping arms, but instead of pulling himself up, he yanks her violently down.

“Hey, numbnuts!” I shriek, taking three steps out. “I’m the only one who gets to do that!”

I don’t even know what I’m saying, but I know what I mean, because it goes all through me, the sight of Blair being jerked so hard it knocks her hair back, like the whipping of a horse’s tail.

Don’t you dare hurt her, asshole.

A cluster of images fires in my brain as I run out, ignoring Siggy and Imani yelling No, June! Ignoring Hunter pleading Don’t! Ignoring the incoming trio of zombies, with their malignant skin, the mottled, bloated-corpse patterns of veins dark with pooled blood, and the