Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,93

from the atrium, away from the front doors.

Rosa ran down the hall past the escalators, past the hallway with our stairwell, and beyond in the direction of the first-floor bathrooms and meeting rooms.

“I bet she made it,” I say. My voice grows firmer when I say it again. “I think she made it.”

“Maybe if we wait here, the zombies will go away, and she can make it back here, just like you did,” Annie says.

“We can wait here for a while,” Imani agrees. “Give her that chance, at least.”

Janet reaches out and touches first my arm, then Hunter’s. “I’m glad you’re both okay. So glad.”

Hunter leans down to hug her, and then so do I.

“How did you get through the zombies anyway?” Annie steps closer, like we are all somehow huddling around a fire instead of standing under the fluorescent stairwell lights.

“June’s idea,” Hunter says. “I was just hiding in the security booth.”

“You waved at me!”

“We both ended up there, under the desk.”

“At least the door locked!”

“And finally June says, ‘We have to go!’”

“Well, yes, but you also said, ‘Let’s use the cameras!’”

“I wish we had them now. Or, like, a drone or something.”

“June crawls out to put a radio on the fountain as a decoy.”

“Hunter’s watching the security monitors, but the zombies saw me, I guess?”

“Right, so we ran here when they ran there.”

“Anyway, that’s how we got away, and ran down the hall.” I turn to Imani, who’s watching me with a bemused expression.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing,” she says lightly, but she’s covering a smile as she turns away.

“What?” I ask Siggy.

Siggy leans over and speaks just to me in a low voice.

“You guys are finishing each other’s sentences.”

“What?”

“Just telling you.”

Huh. I mean. What?

But something about our telling of the story must have lessened the tension somehow because Imani and Siggy aren’t the only ones giving us amused looks.

“So, does anyone have an idea how many zombies were actually out there?” Blair asks. “Because I would say at least ten? Maybe fifteen? It was too hard to tell when it all started to go bad.”

“How many zombies were chasing you?” Hunter asks Cuellar, then winces at the flash of anger in his eyes.

Hunter puts up his hands in a placating gesture. “I’m just trying to figure out how many were loose on the first floor,” he says.

Cuellar shakes his head.

“I don’t know, if I try to think about them too much my brain goes all . . .” His hand comes up by his ear and wobbles there. “It probably felt like more than it actually was. But it felt like a lot.”

Hunter nods. A muscle jumps in his jaw, and I swear he looks like a poster of himself, except moving. A determined look enters his eye, and it’s his character he looks like, Clay Clarke, ready to face the odds.

“If this was a filming day,” Hunter murmurs to Cuellar. “And they were just extras on the show? How many are on the call sheet?”

Cuellar huffs a laugh, but his voice has lost its tight edge when he speaks.

“Twenty, I think. Yeah. Right around that.”

“And we had those two groups by the fountain,” I say.

“It’s the second floor you’ve really got to worry about,” Blair says. “That one set of ballroom doors is open, and there were almost a thousand people in there, easy.”

“Right, but there’s nothing to draw them out. They’re like flies in a bottle lying sideways.” I illustrate with my hand. “There’s only one entry and exit, and they have no lure to go out. Sure a few of them will be out, just due to sheer numbers and chance, but I don’t think it will be insurmountable.”

“Why does it matter?” Blair asks. It’s not confrontational, but more like she knows me, because she does.