Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,75

just checked is just like the one that’s one floor down, metal, white, and with a long, narrow window set above the crash-bar handle.

Between the elevators and the stairwell, we might have access to the whole building. If we can deal with the zombie in the stairwell. Assuming there’s only one or even if there are two, we can probably make it down to the second floor again or even the exhibit hall ground floor, if we need to.

We should try to find the roof access next. It might actually be in the balcony. That would be a problem.

Okay, but we’re in a pretty good location right now, all things considered. A barricade, a mostly okay emergency escape route, two if you count the elevators, bathrooms and water . . . I have a weapon and snacks . . .

And no zombies. Well, if we can completely secure those balcony—

Electric guitars wail into the quiet, a hard rock-and-roll riff made tinny from Siggy’s phone speaker, but still plenty loud.

Siggy looks simultaneously horrified and reflexively happy, standing on one of the cushioned chairs, holding her phone high in the air.

It’s Annoying Mark’s annoying ringtone.

She has a signal, he’s calling, and it’s making a god-awful racket.

Siggy lowers the phone and swipes mute or answer, as the balcony doors closest to her flap and strain against the belt tied around the handles.

There’s a bang as one of the unsecured doors flies open and bashes into the wall, and zombies push out, maimed and groaning, jerking along on the tugging strings of their unnatural hunger.

The one in front is the stuntman from the cheerleader squad, the last one who made it into the balcony by climbing up the thick orange extension cord. Now his eyes are cloudy and crisscrossed with burst capillaries. His skin has the writhing ripple of twitching muscles, and the mottled, necrotic coloring all the infected have.

Other zombies pour out the door behind him, the rest of his cheer squad and the others they rescued from the ballroom floor. They’re all zombies now, some with horrific, gaping, torn, and bloody injuries, and all of them with jerky, flailing movements, as if they’re being yanked toward our movement and our noise.

Annie lets out a shriek and everything starts happening very, very fast.

I leap to my feet and run around the edge of the barricade toward Imani, Siggy, Blair, and the rest of the group.

Simon sprints down the hallway toward us, vanity stool raised. Cuellar spins on his heel and runs away to the stairwell door.

The stuntman zombie in the front of the pack lunges at Rosa.

Linus jumps in front of her, swinging his fire extinguisher up in a short arc.

“Run!” he yells, then gives Rosa a shove toward me. “Hey! Come at me!” he calls to the zombies.

He moves back, away from us, toward the bar, yelling, whooping, thrusting his fire extinguisher up and out.

Most of the zombies follow the noise and the movement. No, all of them. They all follow Linus.

“Move it!” I hiss to Imani, Siggy, and Annie. “Stairwell!” I point down the hall.

I rush to the bathroom alcove and wait for the rest of the group to get past me, standing like a guard with my mic arm cocked like a bat.

Simon takes up a similar pose with his vanity stool, facing me from the curving wall across from the bathroom like a matching bookend.

Or a gate.

Annie, Imani, and Siggy rush past us to the door at the end of the hall.

Blair and Mia run past. Mia is taking the lightest, shortest, fastest steps I’ve ever seen, keeping her stilettos from clacking on the floor.

Rosa and Janet are last. Janet is pulling Rosa, tears and horror plain on the camerawoman’s face.

At the bar, Linus is surrounded.

Simon grabs my shoulder, pulling.

I can’t watch.

I spin on my heel and sprint down the hall with Simon.

Behind us, a piercing scream, and then other noises I don’t