Page 88 of Doomsdate

My head whips to hers. “Really?”

Maisie steps closer to peek through the window. “The lobby is full of sunshine, and nobody’s moving. It’s pretty empty in there.”

I press my lips into a line, then remove two Tasers from my belt, one for each hand. They spark to life.

“All right. Let’s go sightseeing.”

We enter the lobby ready to fight, but no need—the few zombies inside remain dull-eyed and still as we stride purposefully toward the elevators. It feels like forever before the car arrives, its doors twinkling open. Empty.

We exchange a surprised glance, then step inside. The car whizzes up to the eightieth floor, vibrating slightly as it picks up speed.

“I thought the observation deck was on the eighty-sixth floor.” Maisie frowns as the floors tick steadily upward, one by one.

“It is. We have to stop at the eightieth floor and transfer to a different elevator.”

Maisie’s eyebrows rise. Floor seventy-six. Seventy-seven. Seventy-eight.

She steps into fighting stance.

Seventy-nine…the elevator slows, as if it’s reconsidering our decision for us.

Eighty.

The door dings open. The stench of gored flesh hits first, then the mass of upright corpses making it. Chicken hisses, then yowls, long and low.

Maisie’s arms arch high, her Tasers spitting voltage. Mine do the same, and I yelp out a weird heee-yaah! that I’ll regret for the rest of my life.

Eight former humans stand clustered around the elevator, as if they’ve been waiting for a very, very long time. A red-haired fellow missing his nose tips forward inside, but only because he appears to have been waiting with his entire body smushed against the doors.

Maisie dispatches him quickly.

The rest don’t rush us—they stand frozen to the spot, their faces dumb and decaying in real time. Behind them, the eightieth floor is filled with gleaming, brilliant sunlight due to windows on every wall and bright, silvery surfaces, thank god, or else we’d have quite the fight in front of us. As it is, though, the zombies won’t move. Maisie glances at me, questioning. I shrug, then zap a big, beefy fellow hulking over us.

“Excuse us, coming through.”

Zap. “So sorry.” Maisie joins me. Zap.

“Pardon me,” I add as I step over the last body and accidentally crunch its hand. Maisie releases a choked giggle as we race over to the next set of elevators, punch the up buttons furtively, board, and finally arrive at the eighty-sixth floor. We spill out onto the observation deck, clutching each other and laughing as though we could expel the adrenaline firing through our veins like air. I let Chicken down immediately to do her own sweep of the area.

The deck is almost entirely empty, though there’s one woman standing alone at the north end, staring out blankly at the city before her. It quiets us. She stands so still, unmoving, even as we approach on either side, our Tasers at the ready. Her blond hair blows in the wind, whipping against her face in matted, tangled clumps. No gore on her clothes, no wounds. She died up here, alone, and now she stands here, reanimated and still alone, haunting the tower without food or prey or end. Dead days and restless nights. Waiting.

I lift my Taser pole and place the live end directly against her heart. Her blank eyes watch me do it. Maybe I’m just an excessively maudlin film professor, but the moment feels loaded and heavy, like somewhere a pensive violin solo should wail over the gusting winds as her body slumps to the ground.

Maisie holsters her Tasers, and so do I. Together, we wordlessly drag Sleepless in Seattle to a bench where she can finally rest. We leave her to her peace, and Maisie finds my hand, squeezes.

“I don’t want to be like that anymore,” she says quietly.

“Waiting to die?”

“No. Waiting to live.”

I turn, feeling hopeful and yet afraid to be hopeful, to meet her eyes already looking up at mine. There, in the shifting waters of her gaze, I see all the timorous, needful wanting of my own heart reflected back at me. I lift a hand to her soft cheek, smooth and ceramic from the whipping spring winds, and tilt her face up to mine.

“You don’t have to. Happy birthday, Maisie.”

I tell her in the fierce press of my lips against hers everything I’m too afraid to say. That I would venture into a hundred dead cities by her side. That her slow, cautious smile’s brought me back to life when nothing else could. That, thanks to her, I see beauty again.

I feel again.