Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,81

all together,” Imani says. She looks at me, an eyebrow cocked, like a challenge. “All together, or none at all. Remember?”

23

All together we managed to pry the drawer front off without making too much noise. We rechecked the hallway, which was thankfully still empty, so we rushed to rejoin the others in the stairwell.

I gave Mia the metal lamp. We all stood, stretched, or put our shoes or backpacks back on, and climbed down the stairs, past the dead zombie, to the ground-floor stairwell door.

Now we’re piled up behind Cuellar, waiting as he cranes his neck, trying to get a clear view out the narrow window into the ground-floor hall that leads to the lobby and atrium.

Annie’s pressed so close to him, it’s like she wants to be grafted into his side.

But I can’t blame her. Ever since his speech when he trashed the idea of self-sacrifice or even teamwork, it’s like he’s grown larger somehow.

Become a person you could see surviving.

Not because he’s good, or particularly smart.

But because he’s pragmatic. Unhesitant.

Even though Imani consoled me, and did make me feel better, I’m still exhausted and a little dispirited. I feel like I’m underwater, somehow. My brain feels like when I took the SAT the first two times.

Swollen and sluggish. Like a computer that just keeps spinning that “loading” wheel . . . but nothing is happening.

“I don’t see any of ’em.” Cuellar’s voice is a low gravel whisper. “So. All yer shoes tied? Weapons ready?”

We’re all standing, almost on our tiptoes like sprinters, various makeshift weapons held in tight grips.

“Then let’s go. Quiet and slow down this hall, then we’ll stop.” Cuellar opens the door.

Since I’ll be last out, I step forward and hold the door open for the others. Simon goes next to last, and I let the door fall after myself, then catch it at the doorframe, easing it closed as quietly as possible.

Our motley crew tiptoe-rushes after Cuellar, down a tan-and-white hallway, industrial carpet silencing our steps even more.

This hall runs along one of the interior walls of the exhibit hall. We pass a set of closed double fire doors. If the scientist guy made all his rounds, then this set of doors and all the others will be locked tight.

And I have the hex key.

We pass a series of framed paintings, tranquil and bland scenes of lakes and trees, pass another set of fire doors, go a little farther, and stop at the corner where a large potted fern and some trees in massive ceramic containers stand in a row, like soldiers standing guard.

Cuellar crouches behind the fern, glancing around the corner into the lobby that connects to the atrium.

Waiting in the back of the group, all I can see are the escalators and a few motionless or twitching zombies lying on the tile around them.

Linus and Simon’s zombies, thrown down from the fight on the escalators one floor above.

Behind the escalators is an open space, then the window wall, the polarized glass filtering the bright afternoon sunlight.

Except there’s also a glare, reflected from the large, white piece of fabric that has been hung up outside, blocking the view out.

But also blocking the view in.

My heart does a happy little leap in my chest at this confirmation that there will be help outside, that already military or police or whoever have started assembling a plan, cordoning off a quarantine zone, and blocking the windows so the zombies inside don’t bash themselves against the glass trying to reach the humans outside.

Before I can point out the cloth to Simon, Cuellar stands all the way up and shifts his grip on the vanity stool.

“Now!” Cuellar says, and darts out into the lobby.

We move out, running behind him, less in a line now, and more in a clump, as we dash between the front of the exhibit hall and the escalators.

There are only a few zombies on the ground level at all, apart from the incapacitated ones Linus and Simon threw