Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,51
I turn toward the stage.
Most of the actors have exited into one of the wings. James Cooper is only now following after them, walking with an older man he helped onto the stage when the panic started.
Right. They’re going right. The exit must be to the right.
I climb down first, straight down the front of the platform. I rush across the small yellow-taped square and climb over the nearest row of empty seats, into the row.
I’m now in the middle section of seats, about ten rows up from the back of the room.
It feels a little safer with the chairs between me and the zombies.
Imani and the camerawoman scramble down off the platform after me, and follow me over the rows of seats heading toward the stage.
More screams and grunting behind us.
I glance back. A pod of about thirty to fifty zombies are approaching a large group of people, maybe a hundred humans, trying to get out another set of double doors.
The doors don’t budge, and the zombies hurtle into the scattering people. It looks almost like a football game, just lines of pressing and running people, struggling against each other, indistinct and violent.
Some people have to be getting out, right? They have to be able to run around the zombies, or push them back. We can’t all be trapped in here.
It’s impossible to tell. There’s so much chaos now, and without stopping to really watch, it’s impossible to tell how many groups are fighting the zombies, or simply fighting to get away, trampling each other.
The ballroom feels like a bomb went off in the middle of it, the seating mostly empty, bodies and straining people ringing the edge of the room.
We climb over the rows of chairs heading toward the stage, lunging and stumbling like the world’s worst hurdlers. Imani is the fastest, her long legs just letting her do these long steps; she’s about two rows in front of me. I start to get a rhythm going, though, using this sit-and-pivot move to nearly catch up.
The camerawoman is right with me, until she looks over her shoulder as she’s leaning forward to grab the next seat back, misses her grip, and falls forward and sideways.
The back of the chair catches her upper lip as she pulls back and tries to twist to minimize the impact.
It still hits hard, and she falls awkwardly between the rows.
“Hey!” I call to her, and I turn back, lunging over the row to get to her.
Then I see what she was looking at. Why she looked back.
A zombie man has spotted us. It’s the man with the broken jaw, one of the first zombies to make it into the ballroom and now one of the first to make it this far into the space.
He throws himself over the rows of chairs with uncoordinated desperation, without looking at the seats, just throwing himself forward, tumbling, falling, standing, and thrashing forward again.
The camerawoman lies on her back, blinking up at me. Blood gushes down her chin and neck from her split upper lip.
“Get up!” I yell. I pull at her arm, trying not to hear the guttural noises the infected man makes as he advances.
She nods, and sits up, shakes her head like a cartoon character trying to scatter circling birds around their head.
I glance toward the stage.
Imani has just realized I stopped. She’s got the fiercest expression I’ve ever seen on her face—this determined anger.
She’s damn near leaping over the rows to get back to where I pull the camerawoman after me, over the next row, and the next.
We’re moving too slow.
The zombie man is four rows behind us.
“Come on!” I scream at the camerawoman.
Ten more rows and we’ll be there.
It’s going to be close.
I refuse to think about what happens if the zombie man follows us onto the stage.