Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,65
but she’s with us.
She sees it.
A plan.
“I dunno.” Simon winces, letting us see he’s not trying to be hostile to the idea, just cautious. “What if going up is just another trap? What if we’re trapped up there? What then?”
“There’s firefighter roof access up there,” Imani says. “It’s like a hatch door that lets them come in from the roof but lets us get out, too. If we can find it.”
She turns and explains to everyone. “My mom took me all through the construction phase of this place. She’s all about learning opportunities and stuff.”
“Oh, so that’s why you watched the fountain video?” I ask. But really, it doesn’t surprise me. Imani’s mom is so cool.
Imani nods.
“Hothouse flowers in concrete.” She gives me a little hug. “But who cares if it’s concrete?”
Janet smiles at us, a gentle expression on her face, like reliving a memory.
“A group of survivors made it to the balcony of the ballroom earlier,” I say, running my index finger along the edge of the diagram where the balcony would be on the third-floor layout. “If we get up there maybe we can join forces with them.”
“There are no con events on the third floor,” Rosa says, her tone growing more certain as she talks. “That means there might not be anyone else up there!”
“Like the kid said. No people means there will be no people who now might be zombies.” Mia barely looks up from whatever she’s trying to do on her phone.
Linus nods.
“Here’s what I would do.” I take a deep breath, turning back to Janet, who asked for my plan in the first place. “Get to that third floor. Either up the escalator, or the regular elevators since the stairs are . . . compromised.”
Janet gives me a smile and an approving nod.
“Good. Yes.” Mia’s agreement is more like an order.
“Okay,” Rosa says.
Linus hoists his fire extinguisher.
Annie’s chin lifts. Her tear-tracked makeup doesn’t take away from her new determination.
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s go to that damn lobby door.”
18
We all cluster behind the door in the white hallway. We can’t see into the second-floor lobby area. At the opposite end from us, in the stairwell door, the woman zombie is attacking the window again, banging and thundering at us.
“Remember, to our left is the ballroom.” Imani holds up her left hand and gestures a flat circle area. Then she makes her other hand a blade, like a wall, and holds it perpendicular and solid. “To our right is a wall that is part of the banquet rooms. We’re running along that wall all the way to the end where we’ll reach the escalators.”
Sometimes I wish I could just download Imani’s directional awareness straight into my head, like an upgrade.
But right now I’m just glad she’s right here with me, keeping us all on the right track.
“Got it.” Linus nods at Imani, a crisp motion that conveys both appreciation for the reminder and assurance that we have got this, as a group, we have got this, by Jove.
Somehow the nod conveys all that.
Linus volunteered to lead the way with Janet; and Simon and Mia (now armed with a drawer front piece of her own) agreed to bring up the rear.
I stand with Imani and Annie and Rosa, in the middle. Ready to run. Or to fight.
But mostly to run.
Discretion is the better part of valor and all that.
Now that we’re standing here, at the doorway, getting ready to leave the temporary safety of the backstage hall, my heart is thundering in my chest and my palms are slippery and I’m more than a little bit terrified.
What’s on the other side of the door?
Simon has a vanity stool he’ll swing at any zombies behind us, and Linus has his fire extinguisher. Rosa traded her antenna for a metal table lamp. Imani and I have our microphone stand pieces, and Janet and Mia have drawer planks.