Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,124

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.

I like him as much as blankets.

“As much as that, huh?” He’s laughing.

What?

“God, you scared me,” Blair says. One of her hands is on my arm, the other swipes tears off her face. “Don’t ever do that again, okay?”

My voice sounds weak, and a bit furry, cotton-wrapped.

But I know I’m speaking this time.

“Deal,” I say.

Footsteps rush in, and Imani and Siggy are there, hugging me tight, lifting my shoulders, not listening to Hunter’s “Careful!”

“It’s okay,” I say, moving my toes, lifting my knees. Wrapping my arms around my friends.

“We did it,” Siggy sobs, part laughter, part exhaustion and relief. “We saved the goddamn world.”

We stick to the edge of the ballroom as we help each other out.

Okay, so basically everyone’s helping me. But with each step I feel stronger, and by the time we get to the doors into the second-floor lobby, I’m only holding on to Hunter, and that’s really for another reason.

I don’t look at the dead zombies. I keep my eyes away from the inert, infected bodies splayed across the ballroom floor.

The scientist’s voice replays in my head, a self-comforting reel. “Too late for them” and “no cure,” he’d said.

Simon opens the door first, sticks his head out.

We’re all still carrying our weapons. There might be stragglers, plus we’re not foolish. And we’ve all become a little bit attached to our weapons.

Annie even trades her used defibrillator for a new one.

“Okay. Now all we have to do is find the SWAT team. Get to the loading dock. Make sure there’s no chance a loose zombie can get out.”

I nod tiredly.

“Even if there are stragglers, it’s not a herd. We lured most of them up,” I say.

“Yeah, at some point, we have to trust the professionals to get it right,” Hunter says. “Now that there’re not hundreds and hundreds of zombies.”

Still, we sweep our eyes around as we make our way to the escalators, then clear the rest of the barricade to walk down.

On the ground floor, Annie crosses to Cuellar’s body, and covers his face with her jacket.

Two sets of doors to the exhibit hall hang open. I was right, that boom was the zombies breaking out.

We turn away from the locked doors of the convention center, and away from the