Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,36

a bit firmer now that we’ve put some distance between her and the man.

“Seriously,” I say. “I think I’m in love. Did you see that move? And what she did with his arm?”

“Did . . . did it . . .” Siggy’s voice quavers, suddenly small. “Did it look like he was chewing on his own arm to you guys?”

“Yeah,” Imani says.

“It looked like it, but that was just the angle, right?” I ask. “It had to be.”

“Talk about an intense fan,” Siggy jokes weakly.

“He bit that boy,” Imani says.

“He was so out of it,” I say. “Maybe he was on something.”

“I bet he’s from Florida,” Siggy says, trying to smile bigger at her own joke.

Trying to laugh her fears away.

“Yeah, no doubt he was,” I agree, encouraging her laugh.

“The OG Florida Man,” Imani says.

We keep walking away from it, putting distance and humor between us and it.

He bit that boy though.

And he was chewing on his own arm.

* * *

? ? ?

The Undead Listen is already recording when we arrive, so we sit in the back row.

The crowd is laughing, so that’s a good sign that the trio of friends onstage are on a roll.

“Sure, you’d survive,” Melinda says into her mic. She cocks an eyebrow at her cohosts, Jilly and Billy, who are twins. The three of them have been best friends forever.

Jilly snorts into her mic.

“I would!” Billy’s voice comes out a bit higher pitched than perhaps he was prepared for. He coughs a little, laughs, and speaks again. “I would.”

It’s one of the running gags that they do on the podcast. Inevitably, after a new episode of Human Wasteland airs, Billy will work himself up about a “Pointless Zombie Death” (PZD) on the show that week.

“I don’t know,” Jilly says. “Since we’re live, what do you guys think? Would Billy survive the ZA?”

Imani cups her hands around her mouth and yells, “No!” along with most of the crowd.

Siggy and I yell, “Yes!”

“Sorry, Billy,” Melinda says. “Looks like you get et.”

“Okay, but at least I would have a good zombie death!” Billy argues.

Siggy looks at me, her blue eyes bright. “It’s Absurd!” she predicts, bouncing in her chair.

“And with that,” Jilly says, and pushes a button. Their original song, “It’s Absurd, but I Heard, You Got Eaten by the Herd,” plays. It’s a chipper 1920s-style song, and the audience sings along.

“Time to rank ’em,” Jilly says, fading the song out.

“I’m ready,” Billy says, leaning over his mic in readiness.

“Go. Top three PZDs. Is this guy in there?”

I know exactly who they’re talking about, even though I missed the start of the show, because in the last episode it was such a glaring PZD.

The guy (an extra in the opposition camp’s ranks) had seen the zombie, lying on the ground, just a torso. He’d laughed.

So that told you volumes. No respect for zombies, you become zombie kibble.

And then he’d decided to taunt it, to play with it. He poked it with his baseball bat.

So, it was hardly surprising when, in the middle of his fun, the zombie lunged and grabbed the guy’s feet, and he fell on the ground and like a snake the torso was on him.

It was not pretty.

But it had some amazing special effects!

“It was colossally foolish, but it does not go in the number one spot,” Billy says.

Number one, a teen girl who asked the approaching zombie who was her boyfriend, “Adam, is that you?” and “Adam, you’re scaring me!” and just stood there while he approached.

I should add that his head was at a gross-disgusting angle and you could see his spine protruding from his neck. Like, that should be mentioned or it doesn’t sound like a PZD.