Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,92
sideways.
“Run!” Hunter urges, behind me. I take off and I hear him skidding on the tiles at the edge of the hallway; the squeak-then-slide of his shoes is almost comical.
I turn back to make sure he’s upright.
“Go!” he yells, as his legs slip and he practically pinwheels in place, almost like a cartoon character as he tries to get traction.
It’s just a split second, then he’s moving fast beside me.
And we don’t have time to notice, but we both saw that what he slipped on was a long smear of fresh blood.
We sprint down the first-floor hallway. Behind us, the frenzied groans of the zombies chasing us echo into the hall.
We’re almost to the stairwell door. Through the narrow window I see Janet’s surprised face as she looks out at the noise. She breaks into a huge smile, then her mouth moves and I see it almost in slow motion, as she’s calling to the others.
The door gets pulled open before we reach it. Imani reaches out, pulling us in, then Janet slams the door closed again.
The zombies chasing us crash into the closed door. The bangs of their impact echo up the stairwell.
Before I can even breathe, Imani’s there, hugging me and saying, “I knew you were okay. I knew you were okay.”
Siggy hugs me, too. “Oh, thank God, June!”
We all start crying but it’s relief.
Blair hugs herself, standing a bit back, but she smiles at me, so I return it.
“Hey, this is Imani and this is Siggy, my best friends,” I say to Hunter. “This is Hunter Sterling.”
“Well, duh, June,” Siggy says, but in a whoa-dude tone, her eyes wide.
“This is Blair,” I say pointing. Blair shakes his hand and says, “Nice to meet you,” like Miss Manners.
“So glad you’re okay, June,” Janet O’Shea says, and she hugs me like my mom would and I try not to think about my mom or my dad because if I do, I’ll start crying real actual sobs.
“Good to see you, kid,” Cuellar says, his voice strange, changed somehow, and he grabs Hunter by the scruff and gives him a little one-arm hug that Hunter seems more to endure than enjoy.
Simon and Annie come in, and it’s an actor group hug, mirroring my friendship-hug with Imani and Siggy.
I look around. A sinking feeling washes through me, with the memory of the long smear of blood at the hallway entrance.
“Where’s Rosa? And Mia?”
“Mia’s gone,” Cuellar says, and his voice is rougher than usual. “Dead or one of them now.”
He turns his body partly away, bringing a hand to his eyes.
“Mia’s shoe broke,” Imani says softly, looking between us and Cuellar. “She fell when we got to the top of the hall.”
“We were too far ahead,” Janet says, dropping her eyes. “We didn’t realize she’d fallen.”
“It was so fast.” Tears spill down Siggy’s face. “The hall was like a bottleneck, and the only thing that kept the zombies off the rest of us was Mia’s scream.”
“We all kept running,” Janet says. The little group seems to shrink, arms coming up, hugging themselves.
“Of course we kept running.” Cuellar’s voice is a knife, cutting off the subject.
But his eyes are round, shining.
I remember him bear-hugging Mia.
Mia gone, and no one able to help her.
“But what happened to Rosa?” I ask, because she had sprinted in their direction the minute she heard the scream.
After the scream.
So she was on the other side of the bottleneck.
“I saw her at the end of the hall,” Simon says, hopeful dark eyes moving between me and Siggy. “She was too late to help Mia, but she didn’t get caught.”
“Not that we saw,” Cuellar says, voice rough.
“She couldn’t get down the hall, presumably,” Janet interjects.
Simon nods.
“She paused for just a moment, then kept running that way.”