17. The Sleepy Stick Has a Loading Screen
THE SLEEPY STICK HAS A LOADING SCREEN
GRACE
The big middle is where the people were.
I know because I was here, walking through the main hub, watching families pressed against restaurant windows and staff in polo shirts managing the situation with walkie-talkies and the organized urgency of people who still believed this was manageable.
That was then. Now the windows are dark. Some are broken. The polo shirts are on the ground in various states of no longer being worn by anyone who's making management decisions.
The plaza is open, wide, glossy tile and decorative planters and Wondie signage everywhere, and in the middle of all of it, the wrong people are milling around in the kind of density that makes my stomach do things no stomach should do after funnel cake.
There are a lot of them.
"How many is a lot?" Beck asked this morning in the thinking box when I used the word "a lot" to describe the expected opposition in the big middle.
"More than the adventure part. More than the garden part. A lot."
"A lot isn't a number, Grace."
"A lot is a feeling, Beck. And the feeling is bad."
Joel, being Joel, had actual data. "Solar Plaza had six operational restaurants, four gift shops, two first-aid stations, and multiple support buildings at the time of the shelter order.
If even half the guests and staff sheltered in those buildings, and if even a fraction of them turned...
" He paused. Did Joel math. "We could be looking at forty to sixty. "
"Forty to sixty."
"In the buildings. Plus whatever's been wandering the open plaza."
"Joel, I want you to know that I heard that number and my body had a response and the response was to eat a funnel cake, which I'm doing right now, and I'm not sorry."
That was this morning. Now it's midday and we're crouched behind the big fountain in the big middle, the four of us and Kevin, because Kevin followed us through the service corridor and nobody could stop him because Kevin doesn't recognize barriers or authority or the concept of "no, Kevin, you can't come to the zombie fight. "
Kevin is eating a decorative planter. The planter has a small tree in it. Kevin is eating the tree. The tree did nothing wrong.
"Okay," I whisper, unfolding the where picture on the fountain base.
The crayon plan now has a new section: BIG MIDDLE CLEARING - DO NOT DIE.
I've drawn the plaza layout in yellow crayon, which was a mistake because yellow on white paper is essentially invisible, so I traced over it in purple, which makes the whole thing look like a bruise with labels.
"Six food rooms. Four supply bedrooms. Two band-aid houses. Captain draws as many as he can to the east side of the plaza. We go building by building, same as before," I say.
Grant nods. Lifts his arm. Captain launches with a scream that splits the air and every wrong person in the plaza turns.
They shuffle east. Most of them. Some are stuck in their own loops, walking into benches, circling planters, one of them opening and closing a trash can lid repeatedly.
"There's like six still in the plaza," Beck says.
"I see the trash can one," I say. "And the bench bumpers. And... is that one wearing a Wondie hat?"
It is. A wrong person, formerly a guest, currently a biological malfunction in cargo shorts, is wearing one of those oversized foam Wondie heads from the gift shop.
The big spherical mascot hat with the sunglasses.
It's wearing it at a tilt, the sunglasses askew, and it's shuffling in a slow circle near the frozen yogurt stand.
"That's the saddest thing I've ever seen," I say. "And also the funniest. It's both. I'm feeling both at the same time and I don't know which one to go with."
"Go with funny," Beck says. "Funny keeps you moving."
"Funny it is. Joel, first building. What's closest?"
"Sunrise Grill. West side. Two entrances, main and kitchen. I'll take kitchen, Beck takes main."
"Grant and I take the windows?"
"There are no tactical windows, Grace."
"I meant watch. Take the watch. The watching. We watch while you go in."
"Yes. Watch."
We move. Crouched, quick, using the planters and overturned vendor carts as cover.
Kevin follows at his fifteen-foot radius of chaos, hooves clicking on the tile, chewing a piece of decorative shrub he brought with him from the planter.
Kevin has packed a lunch for the apocalypse. He's better prepared than any of us.
Sunrise Grill is a big restaurant, one of those theme park dining halls that seats three hundred and serves burgers that cost sixteen dollars and fries that come in a souvenir bucket that you'll throw away before you reach the parking lot.
The windows are intact but dark. Through the glass, I see tables.
Chairs. The buffet line with its sneeze guard.
And shapes. Moving shapes. Slow shapes. Wrong shapes doing the wrong-person shuffle in what used to be a family dining experience.
"How many?" Joel asks, pressing against the wall near the kitchen entrance.
I peer through the glass. "Eight. Maybe nine. One's behind the buffet line and I can't tell if it's standing or just... propped."
"Nine," Joel says, assigning the higher number because Joel always rounds up on threats and rounds down on optimism.
"Grant, the sleepy stick. If any come through the door, can you zap them?"
"I wouldn't count on this as a primary strategy," Grant says. "It worked in the pavilion because the infected was already partially pinned. It doesn't stop them immediately."
"So the sleepy stick has a loading screen."
"These aren't designed for this application," Grant says, unholstering. "We can't count on how it affects someone who's already..."
"Dead," Beck says.
"Neurologically compromised," Grant says, because his veterinary brain can't categorize mobile organisms as dead and I respect that even though those organisms are definitely dead.
"Let's find out," I say.
Joel opens the kitchen entrance. Beck hits the main door at the same time. They move into the dark restaurant from both sides and I hear the immediate sounds of engagement. Beck's axe, Joel's wrench, the wet impacts that I've trained myself not to visualize.
One comes through the kitchen door. Toward me and Grant. A big one, formerly a cook based on the stained kitchen whites.
Grant raises the sleepy stick, aims, and fires.
The dart hits the cook in the shoulder. The cook keeps coming.
"It's still coming, Grant."
"The sedative needs time to get in the system."
"It's five feet away."
"The pharmacokinetics are different in compromised tissue, the uptake rate is…"
"Grant, I don't want to die during a vocabulary word." I swing the friendship paddle.
The oar connects with the cook's chest. It stops the forward momentum, pushes the cook back two steps, gives Grant's pharmacokinetics another few seconds to do their pharma-whatever.
The cook takes another step. The jaw is still going but the legs are negotiating with the sedative and the sedative is winning.
The cook sways. Leans. Sways more. One knee buckles.
The other follows. The cook sinks to the tile, first kneeling, then sitting, then slumping sideways with the gentle finality of a person falling asleep on a bus and missing their stop.
Nap Chef is finally down. Grant moves past me with the knife, and I look at the ketchup bottles because ketchup bottles are my emotional support object now.
The kitchen door swings. Another cook comes through. Then another. Because of course Sunrise Grill has a staff meeting now.
"Joel," I say.
"I'm coming."
"That's a great future event, but I'm experiencing a present issue."
There's a rolling tray cart beside the kitchen entrance. Stainless steel. Three shelves. Loaded with ketchup bottles, napkin dispensers, and the sad little plastic cups restaurants use for ranch.
"Cart," I say.
We push it.
The cart slams into the doorway and wedges between the frame and the first wrong person's knees. Ketchup bottles explode.
Joel appears behind the second cook, inside the kitchen, wrench up, breath tight, shirt smeared with something I'm not looking at. He's driving them toward us, which is helpful in theory and deeply unpopular in practice. "Move," he says.
I move because Joel's voice has found a command setting.
He grabs the kitchen door from the inside and yanks it toward the frame while Grant and I shove the cart from the outside. The first cook hits the cart. The second gets caught between the door and the jamb, teeth snapping through the narrowing gap.
The door doesn't close.
Joel shoves harder.
The cart squeals.
The wrong person's jaw snaps inches from my hand.
Then Beck comes through the kitchen behind them. He hits the one caught in the gap. Joel kicks it clear, slams the door, and turns the lock.
"Clear inside," Beck says.
I mark the Sunrise Grill with an X on the where picture. Purple crayon.
When we step back into the plaza, Wondie Hat has drifted closer. He's twenty feet away now, sunglasses tilted, foam face smiling over a mouth that definitely is not.
"Wondie Hat moved," I whisper.
"Toward the noise," Grant says.
"Toward us," Joel says.
We move to the next building.
The WonderSphere Emporium is the big gift shop, the one near the main entrance, the one I raided on Day One for my tote bag and my hoodie and my stabby fork, may she rest in peace.
It's two stories, which is ambitious for a gift shop, with a grand staircase connecting the floors and a huge Wondie statue in the center atrium that's still lit up because it has its own dedicated power circuit, because WonderSphere cares more about Wondie's illumination than it does about literally anything else.
The ground floor is clear. Ransacked, the shelves knocked over and the merchandise scattered, evidence of people grabbing supplies during the initial shelter chaos, but no wrong people.
I feel a brief pang of something, looking at the overturned racks and the emptied cooler.
This is where I started. This is where I became whatever I am now.
"Second floor," Joel says.
The staircase is wide, themed, wrapped in decorative railing designed to look like coral reef. I'm already on the stairs before anyone can argue.
"Grace, wait."
"I'm already on the stairs, Joel. The stairs are happening. You can't un-stair someone."
"You can't un-stair?"
"The stairs are happening."
I reach the top. The second floor is the premium merchandise area.
There are three wrong people up here. Two near the art gallery. One tangled in a display of plush animals, its legs caught in a rack of stuffed dolphins, shuffling in place, going nowhere, surrounded by plush marine life like the world's worst claw machine prize.
The dolphin-tangled one is almost funny. In the way that a lot of things in this world are almost funny if you let them be and almost devastating if you don't and I keep choosing funny because funny keeps me moving and moving keeps me alive.
"Beck," I whisper.
"On it." He takes the two near the art gallery. I don't watch.
The dolphin one is still tangled. It's thrashing weakly, its legs kicking against the display rack, stuffed dolphins falling off the shelf in a cascade of plush that would be adorable in any other context and is deeply horrible in this one.
Grant raises the sleepy stick and fires. The dart hits the tangled wrong person in the thigh. We wait.
The thrashing slows. The jaw stops moving. The wrong person sinks into the pile of stuffed dolphins and goes still.
Grant steps in after, clinical and quiet, and I let the dolphins block my view because they've suffered enough and so have I.
Joel locks the exterior doors and checks the fire exit. We move on after I grab a change of clothes.
When we step back into the plaza, Wondie Hat is closer again.
Fifteen feet now. Still smiling. Still wrong. Still wearing foam sunglasses.
"Wondie Hat is stalking us," I say.
"Stimulus following," Grant says.
"Stalking. With branding."
Captain’s first shift buys us Sunrise Grill and the Emporium. Then Grant recalls him, and we lock ourselves inside the gift shop while the wrong people drift back across the plaza. We eat, regroup, and give Captain an hour to rest.
When he goes up again, furious as ever, the plaza empties east for round two.
The next three buildings go faster. The smoothie bar is empty.
The WonderSphere Information Center has one wrong person inside wearing a GUEST SERVICES name tag and still standing behind the counter as if waiting for the next complaint.
The pizza place has four wrong people. Beck and Joel handle them while Grant and I watch the doors.
Each time we clear a building, Joel locks it. And each time Joel locks a building, he does something that I don't notice at first because I'm busy coordinating and managing Kevin, who is treating the clearing operation as his personal buffet, eating decorative plants from every planter we pass.
After he locks a door, he takes a black marker from his pocket, a maintenance Sharpie that he's had since Day One, and he writes on a piece of cardboard from the nearest available source, and he tapes the cardboard to the door.
I notice it at the pizza place. He's finishing with the tape when I come around the corner.
THE PIZZA FOOD ROOM, the sign says. In Joel's handwriting.
I look behind us, at the trail of buildings we've already secured. There are signs on every door.
The smoothie bar: THE DRINK ROOM. The information center: THE QUESTION ROOM. The Emporium: THE SUPPLY BEDROOM.
He's been doing this the whole time. Building by building.
"Joel."
"It's faster," he says matter-of-fact. The tone of a man explaining a maintenance decision that has nothing to do with feelings and everything to do with efficiency. "If you need to find a building in an emergency, you'll look for your name for it. It's wayfinding. It's practical."
"You're putting my words on the buildings."
"I'm putting clear labels on secured locations."
"You're putting my words on the buildings."
"They're practical labels."
"Joel, you wrote 'the supply bedroom' on a gift shop."
"That's what you call it."
"I know that's what I call it. I call it that because my brain calls it that. I didn't think anyone was listening."
"I'm always listening." He says it like it's a spec. "It's practical," he says again, and walks toward the next building.
I stand there for four seconds, looking at Joel's handwriting on a piece of cardboard labeling a pizza restaurant with my made-up name in the middle of the apocalypse.
Then I follow him.
Behind us, Wondie Hat bumps slowly into the fountain and turns, still smiling at nothing.
The big middle isn't clear yet.
But my words are on the doors.