Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,98

“SRT, you copy?”

“Heading to position now,” a young man’s voice answers.“Ready by 1800.”

“No, no, no!” I moan, picturing it now, just like it would be if it was on the show. If it was Human Wasteland, this plan would go horribly, horribly awry. There would be mass carnage. Mass death.

The infected would erupt from the exhibit hall, into the loading dock area, out into the world.

That scientist. That rogue scientist, and maybe even the hazmat not-actually-cosplayers . . . they locked us in here, but they also locked them in here.

It doesn’t matter how it started; well, I mean, of course it matters. But it doesn’t matter to me, here and now.

All that matters is I am not ready to die, and I’m tired of sweating in this hamster tube, and I’m mad, dammit, because I’m supposed to be having the Best Day Ever and instead I’m fighting for my life.

“Can you hear me?” Imani talks into her phone, pushing an on-screen button. But the app isn’t designed that way, doesn’t actually have the frequency to send directly back to the police. Instead she’s trying to talk to anyone who’s listening, kind of like a CB, except both it and the police band signal are actually rerouted.

And we don’t have time to hear if anyone has their ears on, so to speak, because at that moment the embattled hatch tilts inward, a sudden spill of arms and fingers clawing around the top edge.

Simon screams a curse and shoves back. We rush to him, and all push at the arms and fingers, bashing them, trying to get the zombies to pull them back.

But their pain response isn’t there. So, the arms don’t draw back, even though Siggy stabs one clean through with the pointed corner of her drawer plank.

“We have to get out of here!” Simon pants, shoving at the bottom edge of the hatch, struggling to keep it from tilting farther inward.

No one has to say it, we just push against the hatch, our faces grim.

If Cuellar can’t break that other hatch down in time . . .

There’s no way out.

28

There has to be a way. I got us in here, I can get us out.

Except, my plan, such as it was, kind of hinged on the idea that someone would be waiting on the hotel side of the hatch.

And that the convention-side hatchway would actually lock behind us.

And that we’d have time to break down the hotel hatchway with the ax if no one was there.

“Can we ever catch a bloody break!” Janet yells.

If it was an SAT math question, it would be something along the lines of a ticking clock.

How long will it take the zombies to break down the hatch and kill the humans trapped inside?

“Now what?” Hunter says, as we strain to hold the tilting hatch in place. His voice isn’t angry, just scared.

And seeking inspiration.

What would Clay Clarke do?

Can’t hide. Can’t run.

I yell down the tube to Cuellar.

“Out of time! We have to fight!”

Cuellar stops his attack on the hatch and runs back toward us.

“If someone can lift me or Siggy, we can take a few of them out through the gap.”

I make a downward stabby motion with my microphone stand.

Which, okay, we try that plan. But then the microphone stand isn’t exactly sharp, and the hatchway is already tilted too far, and then it’s chaos as the hatch spins in place, tilting in, and zombies fall over the hatch and each other, grasping for us. Then the hatchway comes away from the wall-edge completely. It tips onto its rounded edge and wobbles in a slow roll into the tube before falling flat.

Imani swings the weighted disc-base of her microphone stand, and it impacts a zombie head with a crunch.

I jab upward, and my microphone stand arm goes into the gut of a zombie woman. It feels like it . . . might have impaled her?