Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,55

resistance, no zombie interest.

So, I reach out and twitch the curtain aside.

15

No one stands on the other side of the curtain.

Imani moves swiftly and silently down the steps and peers around. I pull the curtain back in place.

We can’t see the zombies, and they can’t see us.

Rosa and I join Imani at the bottom of the stairs. To our left is the tall, floor-to-ceiling black curtain. That curtain and a freestanding panel of chain-link fence are the only things that separate us from the zombies in the ballroom.

It feels bizarre to be protected by something so flimsy. It’s like when I was a scared kid, in bed, pulling my covers over my head.

If I can’t see it, it can’t see me.

Except it seems sort of true. So far.

It’s only a matter of time until one of those things blunders into the curtain, and then comes through to the other side.

Or worse, the zombies might knock over the chain-link panel, which would take down the curtains.

We can’t be here when that happens.

Right now, all the zombies are preoccupied with the humans who remain on the other side of the curtain. When that distraction ends, we need to be gone.

To our right is the back of the stage. There’s a strip of floor between the stage and the back wall of the ballroom. The floor-to-ceiling curtain that runs along the back of the stage makes the area feel like a tunnel.

There’s one set of double doors set into the back wall.

And no actors. No stagehands or security.

No Siggy. No Blair.

They got out.

“Those doors have got to be unlocked,” I whisper to Imani.

She nods and darts to them.

I follow.

She reaches out her free hand and quietly pushes the crash bar.

It doesn’t budge.

She pushes harder. It makes a slight knocking sound, but the door doesn’t budge.

“Shh!” I hiss.

“You shh!” she hisses back.

I trade places and try the door. Then Rosa joins me, putting her shoulder against the door.

The quiet bump comes again, but the crash bar doesn’t budge.

“Now what?” Rosa whispers.

The tunnel.

“That way.” I nod at the curtain-lined walkway.

“Eek.” Imani’s voice squeaks.

“Yeah,” I whisper. “But we have to go. They went. No one’s here. We have to go that way.”

I go first, and we rush along the back of the stage, trying not to rustle the curtain, trying not to make a sound, unable to see what happens at the next open area on the opposite side of the stage platform.

And trying not to think about hands coming at my legs from the empty space under the stage.

There’s so much adrenaline in my blood I don’t stop when I get to the edge, just burst out into the second “backstage area” on the other side.

We’re still in the back of the ballroom, only separated from the zombies by the black floor-to-ceiling wing curtain and the smaller freestanding chain-link panel beyond it.

But this curtained-off section is bigger. Clearly, it’s where the actors gathered to wait for their panels. There’s a catering table stocked with snacks and drinks, and a few tall director’s chairs, some with coats and bags still sitting in them.

But I’m lucky, because there are no zombies here.

However, there are three people, two of them famous, standing by the closed double doors, staring at us and blinking.

Linus Sheppard speaks first, his British accent somehow sounding crisper in his urgent whisper.

“Are they chasing you? Are they backstage?”

He sounds like an ultra-posh librarian.

“No,” Imani whispers back. “Not yet.”

Annie Blaze crosses her arms. “They probably saw you, though.” Her whisper is a hiss of anger or fear. Or probably both, but it still sounds like an accusation.

“Take it easy, Annie.” The third person is a woman dressed in a rock-and-roll-looking red-and-black