Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,121
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 with 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.