Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,16
the stage. Hanging in front of it, above the scenery, is the massive video screen. Since we arrived in the hall, it’s simply been playing a repeating slow-motion reel of the stars of Human Wasteland, dressed as their characters, turning to or away from the camera, looking heroic, stoic, and some other word that rhymes with “-oic,” probably.
And sweaty.
There’s no air-conditioning in the ZA.
The lights flicker, then dim, and the screen immediately cuts to the main character, the army ranger Captain Cliff Stead, played by actor James Cooper. He’s handsome in a grown-up way, with a strong jaw, intense eyes, and beautiful brown skin. His hair was in a military buzz cut when the first season started. On the show he’s searching for his family, but he’s managed to cobble together a ragtag group of followers, including my favorite, Clay, who’s been out looking for his own dad.
The audience screams raw-throated approval as Cliff speaks.
It’s the scene from the first episode, the one when the characters first realized what odds they were facing.
“I may not know how this happened,” Cliff says, his voice intense as he looks around at the others in his group. “Hell, I don’t know what those things are or if they’re everywhere. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s our reality now.”
His jaw tightens and he glances at Clay, who’s looking up at him with luminous green eyes.
Hunter was so cute even then.
He’s gotten taller and cuter in the past two seasons.
Cliff drops his eyes in shame. “I don’t know anything. I don’t even know where my son is.”
He swipes at his mouth, a pulling motion, like he’s trying to pull off worry, trying to wipe away fear.
He looks up, and a new determination is in his eyes.
“But I know one thing. I know what I’m gonna do.” He looks around to the others. “I’m gonna fight.”
In the ballroom, the audience whoops a hell yeah! sounding yell.
Clay steps forward, the first of the group to reply. “Me too.” He looks around at the others. “We have to fight together. Or end alone.”
The audience cheers a damn straight! kind of cheer.
Cliff looks at Clay, and gives him a tight, proud nod, as the others all promise to fight.
Then the scene cuts, and I realize it’s a compilation of greatest hits, Clay’s best scenes over the first three seasons.
I scream louder than anyone.
The new scene is when I went from thinking “He’s cute” to “He’s the most precious cinnamon roll and must be protected.” And, in my opinion, it’s the best episode of the second season, when Clay goes rogue against Cliff’s orders. Clay’s committed to doing his shift as perimeter guard, even though Cliff told him not to, because Clay wasn’t looking so hot. Because he was sick! But he was just too damn stubborn to accept his own helplessness, and he didn’t want to be just a kid, so he went anyway. And while he was out there on patrol he thought he heard a child calling for help, so he started searching the woods, going farther and farther out, sweating and shaking and just a mess, and what he didn’t realize was, his fever was so high he was having auditory hallucinations.
And. AND, AND!
The child he heard crying in the woods turns out to be himself. So when he finds this bedraggled bundle in the woods, you think, oh sweet lord, it’s a zombie. He’s going to die because he’s so sick and he’s not thinking right, ohmygooooooood—
And then he touches the thing and turns it over and he sees a little kid and it’s HIM.
And the little kid that’s him says, “Why did you leave me?”
And that’s how we start to get an idea about his backstory: That the dad he’s been searching for all this time maybe left him? Or something worse? We don’t know; it’s one of the big mysteries of the show.
The scene cuts to when Clay was accidentally shot while he was trying to get back to camp. The newbie guard on