Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,97
not really that many people. For what’s going on.
There should be way more people.
Unless I’m looking at the back of it, the rear, and around the corner, in the back parking lot of the convention center, there are more people.
Hunter keeps waving and yelling, even after I stop.
“Where are they setting up?” Frustration makes my voice sharp. “There has to be an exit point, a screening point. That’s what she was trying to tell you. So where is it?”
“On the back of the building,” Hunter says. “The loading dock to the exhibit hall.”
“Why there?” I ask.
“It’s wide, there’s room to set up, I don’t know, a funnel or something.”
“I don’t know, this whole thing is starting to feel particularly mismanaged.”
I’m thinking of the scientist, how he didn’t appear to have any backup, not even a PR liaison to break the ice or vouch for him before he jumped onstage. It was almost like he had gone rogue, was acting on his own or something.
Trying to save us.
What if there is no actual exit point? No screening point? They just want to keep us all locked in?
Hunter says it.
“They’re going to just let us die in here.” His eyes are wide, shocked.
The pained disbelief on his face hurts me to see. Maybe because I know now: his goofy sense of humor and his loneliness. His consideration, his kindness. It shoots through me, goes all through me, as my mother says. Pulses like a lightning stroke of pure rage and protectiveness.
I feel myself grow in power. In fury. In energy, a dump of adrenaline making me feel invincible, making me refuse it.
“We’re not doing that,” I tell him, voice strong as a mountain. “We’re survivors. If they locked us in, we’ll break our way out.”
Somehow.
Hunter locks his eyes with mine, and there’s a look in them I’ve only seen on the show, when his character Clay Clarke looks at his surrogate father, Captain Cliff Stead.
Awe. He’s looking at me with awe. And something like hope, and something like worship.
Admiration.
The sun glares onto my back, and sweat is literally pouring down my face, under my hair, as I cook in the tube.
There’s no AC in the ZA.
It’s just a clear tube. Who designed this? Haven’t they ever been outside in the South? Lord. It’s so hot. Like we’re in a greenhouse or something, the only thing above us film-tinted Plexiglas and sky.
Nothing between us and the sky.
A sudden picture pops into my brain, swooping in there like a fancy zoom-special-effect camera shot.
A communications satellite, bleeping and zipping by, high in the atmosphere above us.
“Hunter! Go trade with Imani!”
Hunter doesn’t ask why or hesitate. He sprints to the embattled hatchway and takes Imani’s place.
“Here!” Imani rushes up next to me. She’s holding out her phone. I try 911 and get a recorded message.
How many people are calling?
“No answer.” I hand the phone back.
Imani opens the Code Blue police scanner app. The spinning wheel connecting to our local frequency is aggravatingly slow as it loads.
I glance down at Cuellar. The hotel-side hatch is splintering, but not broken yet, in spite of how he’s attacking it.
Imani and I huddle close to each other, bent over her phone like it’s a sacred flame as a fusillade of booms echoes from the hatchway into the convention center.
“We’ve got to make a move soon!” Simon’s voice is part yell, part grunt of effort. Blair repositions herself, shoving her back against the lid.
The phone connects, and a man’s voice blares into the tube.
“. . . dock. We are prepping for SRT entry and extraction at 1800 hours. Consult the building map from the fire inspector. Ground team A will clear the loading dock area.SRT will enter and proceed to the first-floor exhibit hall. Clean and sweep.”