Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,48
scrambling after me in a split second.
A moment ago, the camerawoman was asking us to move away from the platform. Now she’s helped us both up onto it. She’s looks younger than my mom, with surprise lines grooved into her forehead above wide brown eyes.
We stare at each other in shocked amazement, then the woman points to the doors, behind us.
“They’re fighting,” she says.
I follow the line of her pointing finger, looking at the mass of people at the back of the ballroom, churning in a pressing ball, like dancers in a mosh pit.
Sorta.
Sorta like that. Except more violent. More shoving, more darting, lunging movement. More bodies falling, actually falling, to the floor, then covered by the next pressing wave of bodies pushing into the ballroom.
They’re still coming in.
From the top of the camera platform, I can see what I couldn’t standing on the hall floor.
I can see the people who rushed into the ballroom, moving so strangely, jerked along by impatient strings.
I can see what they’re doing.
“That’s not fighting,” Imani says.
It’s attacking.
As I watch, a man, one of those who rushed into the ballroom, makes it through the churning ball of people at the doorway, breaking into the nearly open space at the end of the aisle. He then lunges at a woman. She shrieks and pulls away, into the back row of seats, climbing over people.
The man looks wrong, so wrong. His jaw hangs open as if broken, somehow, slanted and loose. A dark red liquid, a goo, that’s what it is, scientific term must be “gross goo,” drips out of his mouth steadily, like his throat is somehow a spigot left running in the winter.
A steady drip-thread of . . . goo.
Worse than that, somehow, is his skin. It’s . . . mottled like a vulture’s egg, gray and white and shiny at once, like a fever or—or—or like—
My rational brain shies away from the thought. From the idea. From the word.
At the same time, that other, panicked part of my brain gibbers the word incessantly, a panicked loop.
Corpse. Like a corpse. A corpse in water, except not bloated. But that color. That texture. Like a corpse. He’s a corpse.
A zombie.
The zombie man jerks sideways, shoulders first, then legs, then an arm flings out. His jaw hangs open, but his head lifts, somehow making his mouth wider, as he throws himself at a man, who’s just standing there, staring in shocked horror.
The zombie brings him down with an uncoordinated falling attack, with complete disregard for his own safety, the zombie just throws himself at the shocked man, bringing him down.
The man shrieks, falling backward hard, his head connecting with the back of a chair.
It must have knocked him out because he doesn’t make another sound, or move, as the zombie doesn’t pause, doesn’t stop, just presses his broken jaw into the man’s neck, leveraging and pulling down with his upper teeth, pulling and tearing side to side, like a dog with a rag toy.
A bright jet of blood arcs into the air as the zombie lifts his face. Then he reattaches, sawing more with his upper teeth.
“Oh my God!” the camerawoman gasps.
“We have to go, we have to go,” Imani chants, pulling at my arm.
“Where?” I ask, and I glance away from the attacking zombies. I look to the front of the ballroom.
“I’m calling the police,” the camerawoman says, pulling a phone out of her jeans pocket.
Siggy. Can she and Blair see what’s happening?
The actors on the stage are frowning at the commotion in the back of the ballroom. Some crane their necks to see better. But there’s a sea of chairs between them and the back of the hall, row after row of seats filled with at least a thousand con attendees.