Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,87
“I think it helped,” I tell him. Then I remember the scream. I glance as the angled TV monitors under the counter.
There’s a fat streak of blood on the floor at the top of the hall. As if someone got injured and then dragged.
“I heard a scream,” I whisper, and I can’t take my eyes off the screens because the zombies are suddenly there, shuffling back, aimlessly, under the lenses of the cameras.
“I’m so sorry,” Hunter says. “I couldn’t see much, but I think someone in the group got bitten. Or worse.”
My heart clenches. It wasn’t Imani. It couldn’t be Siggy. Certainly not Blair.
I will not believe it.
And with my heart, I can’t believe it. My Spidey senses reach out and I swear I can feel her, I know she’s okay. Imani is okay.
And if she’s okay, Siggy must also be okay. And Blair, too.
They’re okay. I know it.
“We’re getting outnumbered,” I whisper back. “But we thought we could get out.”
Hunter nods, and glances away from me, checking the monitors again.
I carefully pull the microphone arm out of the straps of the backpack I’m wearing on my front and place it on the floor alongside my leg.
Then I slip the backpack off my chest and slowly, silently unzip it and dig inside.
“Here.” I hand Hunter Sterling a water bottle.
The appreciation in his earth-green eyes makes my stomach do a little flip.
“Thanks,” he says, twisting the lid off and taking an enormous chug.
I try not to watch the way his throat works, with his head tipped up, as he swallows.
I mean, I watch. Appreciatively. But I tell myself not to make it weird.
Myself is not listening.
In myself’s defense, this whole thing is weird. Endorphins from my scraped-up leg are zinging through my body, endorphins, and hormones, okay—what does he smell like? I will have to make a note of it when I calm down a bit—Siggy will demand to know—
All of it is a bit much. I’m here hiding out from zombies and I’m with the star of my favorite show, a zombie show, and it’s as if nothing is real anymore.
Or it’s real, but it’s not real in the same way.
There’s probably a word for it. Hyperreal. Surreal. TV-real.
I shake my head and make myself look away from arguably the most beautiful human to ever walk the earth.
“I’m Hunter Sterling,” Hunter Sterling whispers, putting his hand out in a pleased to meet you shake.
It’s kind of adorable.
I smile like a dork.
“I know,” I say, but I take his hand anyway, trying to ignore the ZING! that shoots through my body at the touch of his skin on mine.
“I’m June Blue,” I say.
Then I let go and dig in the backpack again. I find a bandana in the scientist’s backpack. It looks clean so I lean over and start tying the bandana around my injured shin. My hands are shaking, adrenaline and pain and low blood sugar, probably.
“Let me help,” Hunter Sterling says. “Watch the monitors.”
I twist my neck to see the screens. So far, the large group of zombies hasn’t wandered back this way; they’re clustered around the hallway, their backs to the camera. The smaller pod hasn’t found their way around the volcanic fountain.
“So far, so good,” I report as Hunter Sterling cinches the bandana tight.
“Sorry,” he says.
I must have made a noise.
“It’s okay. I’m just hungry.”
Did I just crack a joke?
Hunter Sterling lets out a quiet laugh as he sits back against the wall.
“Too bad we don’t have a catering truck for the actual zombie apocalypse,” he says. And it takes me a second to realize he joking, too, and then I snortle a laugh out my nose.