Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,71
way, into the stairwell with the zombie chasing them, the other half ran out the lobby doors in a panic.”
He takes a big swig of the whiskey, making a face around the bite of it in his throat.
“Pointless, of course, because there was still a mess of zombies in the lobby. They ran right into them.” He shakes his head, scrubbing a hand over his beard stubble. “But it’s not like anyone was thinking. And anyway, it gave us at the back the chance we needed to get up here.”
“Why’d you come upstairs?” Linus asks, sipping from his glass like a gentleman in a club.
“No other option,” Cuellar admits, shaking his head. “I saw some in the atrium, maybe five or more, and sounded like a helluva lot more down there. I turned off all the escalators at least, so hopefully none of them will end up here by accident. They don’t seem too smart with climbing stairs or what have you.”
“We saw a group of survivors get to the balcony,” I say, pointing at the nearest set of doors. “We figured all the doors leading outside are locked like the scientist said, and so we decided to come up here to try to join forces.”
“Well, sure, but the problem with that is, they’re infected. Zombies, like you said.”
Somehow, Cuellar doesn’t look sad to say it.
Instead he’s got one of those looks on his face, the kind that only some men sometimes get. That makes me want to take a step away from him. This look that he’s somehow satisfied, no, that it somehow satisfies something in him, to be right.
To tell me that I’m wrong.
To be right over a girl.
That’s what it feels like.
Maybe I’m just being paranoid. I’ve been through a shock, and right now I’m overreacting.
I take a small step back anyway.
At the same moment, Imani moves behind Siggy, and comes around slightly in front of me, standing close.
She felt it, too.
“How do you know they’re zombies?” Simon asks, friendly tone, not suspicious like I would sound. But I’m glad he asked because I have the same question. Even if the last stuntman up the extension cord got bitten, it’s not been that long. He might still be fine. We were just downstairs, everything happened too fast—
“I saw them, the zombies in the balcony,” Cuellar says.
It sounds like the title of a deeply inappropriate picture book.
The Zombies in the Balcony.
I wrench my brain back to focus completely on what Cuellar’s saying.
“First thing I did when we got up here was turn off the escalators, then I barricaded the top of ’em.”
“Good thinking,” Janet says.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Then what?” I ask.
“Well, then me and my two little hitchhikers here—” He tips his head at Siggy and Blair indulgently, but something in his eyes is like a guy ogling a waitress.
“We’d be dead if it wasn’t for Cuellar,” Siggy interjects, her voice completely sincere.
Blair doesn’t say anything.
I meet her eyes and she gives me a look, the smallest of shakes to her head.
“—we went around to make sure it was safe, you know. So, I say wait here, girls, behind the bar. Then I go to that door right there and I ease it open. Perfectly silent.”
He drains his glass and puts it down on the bar quietly. It doesn’t fit with his self-satisfied air, the gentle motion, when it feels like what he wants to do is slam it down like a trophy.
“He didn’t see me,” Cuellar says. “Big guy. Infected now. He was attacking whoever else was up there. It’s sad, but at least he can’t figure out how to open a door, right?”
He grabs the bottle of whiskey and tilts another helping into his glass.
“They’re dangerous, but they’re mindless,” Cuellar says. “They can hear better than they can see, I think. Some of them are faster than the others, did you notice that?”