Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,74
me, Rosa, and Mia is paying attention.
Then he rolls up one sleeve.
A bite.
Ragged and still bleeding, or more like oozing, with teeth marks clear.
“But he didn’t get you.” My voice is a whisper. “You fell under him and he couldn’t reach you.”
Linus smiles at me.
“The tall guy? No, he didn’t get me,” he agrees. “This was from the first one, while you were climbing. I recognized him, well, sort of, from today. A fan.”
His tone is self-mocking as he pulls his sleeve back down.
“I couldn’t hit him, not fast enough at least. Or not hard enough.” He shakes his head, dragging a hand through his still perfectly floppy hair. “He’s lying on the floor of the atrium now.”
My voice is quavering when I speak.
“Maybe, when we get everything locked down, we can get a cell signal. And then—”
Linus stops me, shaking his head.
“June, I heard that scientist. He said there’s no cure, re-member? And I’m on a zombie show. I know what this means.”
The scientist’s voice echoes through my memory, words he huffed into the microphone as security chased him around the stage.
Too late for them and fatal.
“Oh, Linus.” Mia’s voice is soft. She puts a hand out to him.
“So, don’t argue with me if I decide to act like a hero, okay?” Linus says. “Just let me go out in a blaze of glory, right?”
I swipe at my eyes.
“Okay.” I try to match his light tone. “Only if you promise it’ll be a bonfire.”
“Yes ma’am.” Linus sketches a salute at me. “And if I start to . . . change before then, you have to take me out. Or be sure you lock me up or something.”
“I’m sure we have time,” Rosa murmurs, her voice small.
“Well, only if you don’t tell Cuellar,” Linus says. “He probably won’t want to wait to bash me in the head.”
It’s supposed to be funny.
Over Linus’s shoulder, I see Cuellar and Simon come out of the men’s bathroom and take up the same ready pose outside the women’s bathroom.
Rosa gives Linus a hug. Together they carry their weapons and the belts over to the first set of balcony doors and begin tying the handles.
No zombies emerge from the women’s room, so Simon and Cuellar go inside, then come back out in a few moments.
Clear.
Good.
The two men turn left, heading past the curving balcony wall as they walk down to check the stairwell door.
The girls looking for a signal aren’t having any luck, so I decide to recheck back by the windows above the escalator, just in case. If I stay low, any zombies who might be on the second-floor level below won’t be able to see me over the railing or the balcony.
I grab my cell from Imani, and, hunched over like a crone, I scuttle to the top of the escalator. I sit cross-legged on the floor by the windows, and get out my phone.
It’s dead, the battery gone from low to empty. I shove it back in my pocket.
Out the window I can only see rooftops of downtown, and the sweeping covered walkway that runs alongside the convention center.
I crane my neck, trying to see if there’s a sign of . . . well, anything. Police, or ambulances, or army trucks.
But from this vantage point I can’t see. And the road could be closed.
They have to be out there. After all, they locked us in here with the infection, right? To contain it.
I glance back to check on the others. Rosa and Linus are trying the handles of the second set of balcony doors. Everyone else: Janet, Annie, and Mia, and Siggy, Imani, and Blair are moving in a loose clump across the windows—holding their phones up and out.
Cuellar and Simon turn and head back up the hall from the stairwell door, giving a thumbs-up.