"We've got weapons," Zane announced after they'd made their way to where his friends were. Much like Zane's parents, Wilson and the others had built a small barricade out of cots turned on their sides, and they were simply crouched and trying to avoid the zombies and bullets.

"Sweet," said Wilson. Joey, Hunter, Josh, and Mike Snow each took a baseball bat, while Dylan or Tyler grabbed a bow and some arrows.

Rebecka hefted a field hockey stick in her hands – well, one hand. The other was wrapped and could fit around the handle, but Zane could tell she wasn't going to be able to hold on to the stick with it. "I was on varsity freshman year," she told everyone.

Zane still had his aluminum bat, and Tamiko situated herself with a bow.

"Looking good, Katniss," said Hunter.

"Back off," Wilson said with surprising aggression.

Tamiko and Dylan or Tyler took a few good shots at the zombies. The rest of them stood back.

Zane looked down and realized his hands were still shaking. What was his problem? His hands hadn't shaken when he killed Brian Erickson, or when he had pushed Ricky away. But then, those guys were clearly zombies. Harmony, on the other hand...

"So, Zane, when were you planning on telling everyone about Harmony?" Tamiko asked. She had an arrow at the ready.

Wilson tilted his head. "What about Harmony?"

"Well, we ran into her in the locker room," Tamiko said. "Apparently she was hungry earlier, and decided to eat Zane's cat."

"What?" Hunter exploded. "Dude, I knew that chick was a zombie!"

"Did you gank her like you ganked Brian Erickson?" Josh asked.

Zane shifted his weight uncomfortably.

"What did you do?" Wilson asked. "Tell me you killed her. Please."

"Look, she isn't like the other zombies. I don't know what she is," Zane said. "I locked in the equipment cage."

"Seriously? Z, what is it going to take to convince you that there is something wrong with that girl?" Wilson cried.

"Look, I don't know." There was a tense moment as a couple of zombies came at a nearby soldier who was distracted. Tamiko and Dylan or Tyler pulled their bow strings back, but the soldier pulled out a handgun and shot both zombies quickly. Everyone relaxed. "She talks. Look at these zombies." Zane gestured to the moaning undead creatures stumbling through the pile of thin mattresses. "These things are definitely dead. But Harmony isn't."

"Interesting," Wilson said, stroking his chin. "Perhaps the virus mutated."

"Or maybe," Tamiko said, "Harmony is Patient Zero."

"What's patient zero?" asked Mike Snow.

"Patient Zero is the first victim of a plague, the carrier that infects everyone else," Tamiko explained.

Wilson hopped up and down. "She's right! Think about it: you and Harmony were at that party last weekend, right, Z? And that's when everyone got infected."

The stream of zombies that had been coming through the boys' locker room had lessened. The soldiers closed in and began radioing for reinforcements. Soon, more soldiers arrived. The survivors in the gym were instructed to back up toward the folded-up bleachers. Zane and his friends dragged their cot-bunker with them.

"Where did you kids get those weapons?" a soldier demanded.

"The girls' locker room," Tamiko replied.

The soldier looked conflicted. It was clear that all the survivors were to surrender their weapons as they had entered the gym, and if these kids had weapons, that meant someone wasn't doing their job. But the soldier just sighed and said, "Better armed than unarmed. Just so long as I don't see arrows flying around hitting the uninfected. Got it?"

"Yes, sir," said both Tamiko and Dylan or Tyler.

As soon as the soldier walked away, Tamiko turned to the group. "Guys, we can't stay here."

"Who invited you to the party, geek?" said Josh.

"Hey. Be cool," Zane said to him. He turned back to Tammy. "Why not?"

"Somehow Harmony got into the girls' locker room, and snuck through the inspection. That means the girls' locker room isn't secure. Right now, see? All the soldiers are working on the boys' locker room. And who knows what happened there. But meanwhile, the girls' locker room is wide open."

"Do you think we should tell someone? Like someone in charge?" Zane asked, looking around at all the soldiers in the room. None of them seemed to be in charge.

"Look, these guys are busy," Wilson said. "We can take care of this problem on our own. We go in the girls' locker room, secure it. No sweat."

"Secure it with what?" Zane asked.

"Let's go," Josh said. Baseball bat in hand, he headed toward the entrance.

"Great, now we're following this brainiac?" Rebecka asked.

Zane fully expected the soldiers to notice the movement of ten students, but they were preoccupied. More soldiers were heading into the boys' locker room. They made it to the girls' locker room without any trouble.

"This is so weird," said Josh out in front. He made an exploding motion with his fist. "Mind blown."

"Surreal, dude," agreed Mike Snow.

Chain-link rattled further back. The generators seemed to be dying now. The lights were dimmer than Zane remembered. He tightened his grip on his baseball bat.

Past the sinks lay a long aisle: shower stalls on the left, sections of lockers on the right. When Zane and Tamiko had rushed through the locker room only half an hour earlier, he hadn't been nervous at all. Something felt different now.

It was the cool draft on his face that alerted him to the change.

"The exit door is open," he whispered.

Josh froze in front. "I can feel them in here. I can..."

He didn't have a chance to finish his sentence. A creature stumbled out through the frosted shower curtain right in front of Josh.

It was – or had been – a girl. Half her hair was gone, ripped out from the scalp, leaving her face and half her shoulders and front covered in blood. She gnashed her teeth and grabbed at Josh.

He didn't even have time to swing. The girl was on him. He pushed at her, screaming, and she fell back. She took a chunk of Josh's neck with her.

Blood jetted out of the wound, spouting straight out like water from a dolphin's blowhole. Mike Snow, Joey, and Rebecka jumped away, leaving an opening for Zane. He pushed Josh to the ground as the zombie recovered and lunged again. His baseball bat made a metallic clank as it hit the girl's skull. She staggered backwards, and Zane spent most of that moment wondering how her skull hadn't cracked.

"It's Chelsea Sutton," Mike Snow called out. "She has a metal plate in her head. She fell off the slide in second grade." Sure enough, Zane could see a patch of metal showing through the scalped area.

"Noted," Zane said, and swung again.

This time he could swear her skull indented.

He switched to the other side. One of his Little League coaches had made them practice both sides. "Don't want you to build muscle unevenly," he would say, and the team of fourth graders would look at each other like, What's this guy talking about?

Now he was grateful. His left-handed swing wasn't as smooth as his right, but there was enough power to crush Chelsea Sutton's face. The girl zombie went down like a sack of bricks.

"Zane Gibson, Zombie Hunter," announced Wilson.

But Zane didn't have time to revel in this one small victory. He heard more groans up ahead, and Josh was bleeding out on the floor.

"Shit, she bit me!" he was screaming, his voice gurgling. "She bit me! She blurgh may..."

Hunter ripped off his shirt, revealing abs worthy of an action hero, and pressed the wadded up fabric against Josh's neck. The white t-shirt turned red almost instantly.

"What do we do?" Hunter asked, looking up at Zane.

The light was already beginning to die in Josh's eyes.

"There's nothing we can do," Zane said. "He's infected now. You need to be ready to kill him again after he dies." He looked down the dim aisle, full of so many dark corners and places where the zombies could hide. "We need to close that door."

Tamiko stepped forward. "I'm decent at archery, but it's only useful far away. I can stay back with..." She looked at Dylan or Tyler, who also held a bow, and jerked a thumb in his direction. "Him. We'll cover you guys, and take care of Josh when he... turns."

Hunter looked down at his friend. "I should... stay here," he said quietly.

"Fine," Zane said softly. "Wilson, the rest of you, let's go."

Everyone clumped up behind Zane. "Come on, guys, I'm not a human shield," Zane said. He reached out with his bat and poked at the first shower curtain. Nothing. He moved on.

The first five shower stalls were empty. Then they approached the first partition, meaning that in the next couple of steps, there could be a zombie on either side.

Zane leaned his back against the partition, holding his bat in front of him. "I'm just going to go around the corner and swing. Wilson, you get my back. Mike and Rebecka, check the stalls."

"Count of three," Wilson said, holding up a fist. "One. Two."

On three Zane whirled around the corner, swinging his bat. He swung through empty air and struck one of the lockers.

"Shit!" Mike Snow yelled.

When Zane turned, he saw a zombie crawling out of one of the stalls. This was a soccer mom-aged woman wearing a polo shirt and a jean skirt. She had no shoes on. Her arms were both gnawed down to the bone.

"Hit her!" Wilson yelled as Mike instead pinwheeled backwards, slamming into Wilson and Zane and going down.

Rebecka raised her field hockey club and brought it down on the woman's neck. The zombie hissed in annoyance and glared up at Rebecka with dead eyes. "Sorry," Rebecka squeaked. "I was a little nervous."

This time she squared her shoulders and hips and brought the club down squarely on the woman's forehead. The zombie's neck cracked and the creature went lifeless.

Zane helped Mike and Wilson get up. Both were shaking like leaves.

"Come on," Rebecka said. "Grow a set, both of you."

"Hey, I would have swung," Wilson said.

They continued this way, with Zane taking the lead. The next time they reached a partition, Wilson took point on swinging around the partition with Rebecka covering, and Zane checked the shower stall. Mike stood uselessly behind them.

The soccer mom seemed to be an exception. All of the other stalls were empty. "Yeah, I didn't really think zombies were 'hiders.'" Wilson unpacked his air quotes. "They're usually more straightforward. Aargh, I'm gonna stumble after you until I wear you down then I'm going to eat you!"

"Wow, real sensitive," said Rebecka, glancing down the aisle at where Josh lay in a puddle of blood. With his head hanging down and his shoulders shaking, Hunter looked so heartbroken about his friend's death that Zane wondered aloud if Hunter and Josh had a "thing." He also used air quotes, since apparently that was a cool thing to do in this place.

"No way," Wilson said. "They just had a sweet, sweet bromance. Kinda like you and me, Z. You're the yin to my yang. The salt to my pepper. The beans to my frank... wait, that sounds phallic. Do you get what I'm saying? You're my brother from another mother."

"I think you'd get along great with my actual brother," said Zane. His smile faded, remembering that Owen's life was still in danger. Or maybe he was actually safer where he was. This place didn't seem all that safe anymore.

"Enough talk. Let's just close that door," said Rebecka.

She strode down the aisle. The guys were feeling pretty safe about letting her just go on and close it on her own, until Rebecka slowed down. She was looking at something beyond the partition. The equipment cage, Zane realized.

She cocked her head, then spun around slowly. "Uh, didn't you say you had locked Harmony in the equipment cage?" she asked.

The blood in his veins ran cold. He began walking before he answered her. "Yes," he said. As the full realization of what Rebecka was saying finally reached his legs, he began running.

He ran without thinking, right past the partition, and stopped next to Rebecka.

The equipment cage was empty.

He stepped forward and touched Tamiko's lock. It was still bolted in place. The door was still locked. He looked up. The chain link fencing that made up the walls of the storage area didn't reach all the way to the ceiling.

"Shit," he said.

"I didn't think zombies were really 'climbers' either," Wilson said, coming up behind them.

"She's out," Zane said.

Harmony could be anywhere. He turned to look behind him, and jumped when he found Mike Snow standing in his shadow. The locker room behind him was empty.

"Well, we've checked the whole locker room," said Rebecka. She headed back toward the door and reached out to grab the push bar to pull it shut. "She must have –"

Before Rebecka could finish her sentence, a blood-soaked hand reached out and grabbed her arm. She screamed.

Zane ran toward her, and Rebecka's club hit his jaw on the upswing. He flew back and slipped on the floor and went down.

He had taken hits before. Years of football practice and he knew what pain was. Anyone else might have gone unconscious, but Zane clung to consciousness like a barnacle on a lifeboat. The coppery taste in his mouth reminded him of countless tackles, and the ringing in his ears made him think of that smell of late autumn and sweat and Gatorade.

So he saw when Mike Snow pulled Rebecka back from the door, and Wilson raised his hockey stick and stopped, and he might have even yelled something like, "Do it, Wilson!" but he couldn't hear his own voice so he wasn't sure. Then Wilson dropped the hockey stick and grabbed the creature outside with his bare hands.

"No," Zane said voicelessly. He watched Wilson pull it inside, and then a body was flying down on the floor toward Zane.

Zane tried to roll out of the way. He felt like his hands weren't listening to his brain. They didn't want to grab whatever traction they could get on the tiles. So he just rolled and tried to sit up. It didn't work out very well. He fell back down, shook his head, threw up, and pushed himself up again. This time his head felt clearer, and sounds were starting to break through the buzz in his ears.

"...okay? Ross?" Rebecka was yelling.

Wilson said something low, and they all looked at the person they'd dragged in.

The boy's face did look familiar. Ross was pale and shaking, but very much not a zombie.

"Sorry, man," Wilson was saying. Zane could hear him now. He shook his head again and things cleared up even more.

"Are you bit?" Mike Snow demanded, waggling his baseball bat in Ross's face. Wilson pushed the bat away.

"He's fine," Wilson said, but Rebecka said, "Let him answer. Are you?"

"N-no," Ross stammered. "Nope. Not bit."

"Well, except for the zombie dog," said Wilson flatly.

"Yeah." Ross forced out a laugh and held up his bandaged arm. The bandage looked worse for the wear, as did the rest of him. "Zombie dog. Remember that? Ha, ha, that was so funny. You know, because it wasn't a zombie dog. Just a regular dog."

There was something off about Ross's answer, but Zane's thought process was cut off by a pulpy smashing sound at the end of the hallway. All five heads at this end of the locker room turned to see Hunter standing over Josh's body. His baseball bat was smeared with lumpy bits of gore that dripped off like the tears dripping from Hunter's cheeks.

"Who's that on the floor?" Ross asked.

"Josh O'Brien," said Mike Snow quietly.

"Damn," Ross said, and slowly began to get to his feet.

Using the wall, Zane did the same, and after checking that the gym door had locked automatically when it closed, they made their way back to Tamiko, Hunter, and Dylan or Tyler.

"Ross! My man!" said Dylan or Tyler.

"Is he clean?" Tamiko demanded.

"I think so," Wilson said. "He's not a zombie, anyway."

"And the door is locked?" Tamiko asked.

"Mission accomplished," Wilson said.

But the question remained: where was Harmony?

I feel like my similes were really on point this chapter... I hope you all are enjoying the story so far, I just realized there are only a few chapters left (unless I decide to break them up into shorter chunks).  Anyone want a bonus chapter about what Owen is up to?