The chemistry classroom wasn't locked, but the door to the small room that held all of the chemicals was. "Damn," Wilson said, pressing his face and hands against the glass. "So close, yet so far."

"Far for you," came a voice behind them.

Zane's heart jumped up into his throat as he spun around, despite recognizing the voice almost immediately.

"Tamiko," growled Wilson. "I should have known."

She smirked. She was dressed in army fatigues, like all the soldiers. Her name patch said "Maxwell."

"You should have known... and yet you still almost lost your shit just now." Tamiko approached them. "Hi Zane."

"Hey, Tammy."

"So, you're going to make a bomb?" Tamiko asked Wilson, as she began picking the lock to the chemicalcabinet. "You?"

"I am in Advanced Placement Physics," Wilson said. "And I took AP Chem last year. Which I passed. With an A plus."

"I know. I was there." Tammy cocked her head. "I'm just wondering what exactly you want to blow up."

"Isn't it obvious? Zombies. Duh."

"Yes, but really, what is your plan? Are there zombies here in the safe zone? Or are you planning on heading back out to the streets and givin' them zombies some vigilante justice?"

"I... I..." For once Wilson looked lost. Then he said, "Hey, what are YOU doing here?"

"I've been following you two morons. I bet you didn't even notice me back there in the gym."

"If you were dressed like that, then no. I wasn't really paying attention to the soldiers."

Zane shook his head. "I don't buy it."

Tamiko looked at him. "You don't buy what?"

"I don't buy that you were just following us. You're in disguise. You have some agenda."

"Fine." Tamiko crossed her arms. "I was at the movies when this whole thing went down. A bunch of my friends and me."

"Yeah. The Asian-American Club," Wilson said snidely. "I think having your own club is racist."

"Too bad having a club of all white people is called the Ku Klux Klan," Tammy shot back. "I was out with my friends, and we got herded onto a bus and shuttled here. My little sister was at home by herself while my parents went shopping at Pottery Barn, and I tried to text her the minute we got on the bus, but she hasn't answered. I'm really worried."

"I'm worried about my little brother, too," Zane said. "I mean, he was sleeping over a friend's house, so he's probably safe, but I..." He trailed off. He'd almost said he'd left his phone at his house. He'd almost told them all about Harmony. "I mean, when this craziness started, I bolted, and I lost my phone somewhere between running to the school and Wilson and Ross and Mason picking me up."

"Mason," Wilson said in an odd voice. It took Zane a moment to remember that Mason was dead, and Ross was currently MIA. "It's Ross I'm worried about. He's my home dog."

"Really? Home dog?" Tamiko said.

"Rebecka thinks Ross ran off," Zane told Wilson. "Who knows where he might have gone."

"I have an idea," Wilson said. "And I'm going to get him. And then we'll find your brother." He nodded at Zane. Zane raised his eyebrows and tilted his head toward Tamiko. Wilson sighed. "And your sister," he muttered.

***

"This is the shittiest plan ever," said Tamiko.

"You're just saying that because you didn't come up with it," Wilson said. "It's easy. We use one of these bombs—" Wilson indicated the load in his backpack, "to distract the soldiers. We steal a tank. Then we find Ross."

They crouched by the windows in a French classroom. This side of the building didn't have much army activity going on. Zane cranked one of the windows open. The window had a narrow horizontal pane across the bottom of the window that unfolded in to about a forty-five degree angle.

"You think you can fit through there, Z?" Wilson asked. "I know I can, and Tammy's smaller than me."

"You didn't mention stealing a tank before," Tamiko said.

"And I still don't get why we couldn't just leave through a door," Zane said.

"Who knows what alarms they've got? We need to sneak out without them realizing it so they don't shoot us."

"Fine," Zane said, and stepped up onto the sill. "This is definitely going to be a tight fit."

He had read somewhere that if you could get your head through an opening, you could fit the rest of your body through. Or maybe it was if you could get your hips through. He managed to get his hips through, and squeezed his shoulders, then his head stuck a little.

"Guys, help!" he groaned. His fingers were losing their grip on the window.

Someone shoved at the top of his head.

"Ow, ow, ow!"

"Sorry," said Tamiko.

Zane dangled there for a second.

"Maybe if you twist your neck..." Wilson mused.

Somewhere out in the darkness there was an inhuman groaning.

He had never been claustrophobic until that moment. "Get me out!" he shrieked. "There's something out there, get me back in!" He flailed and pulled. It was the hardest pull up he'd ever done, and he wasn't sure he could get himself back in the window this way.

Then hands reached under his armpits and hauled him upward. His upper body reentered the classroom and he hung half over the open window before the sound came again and he scrambled all the way in.

"Close it," he said, already reaching for the crank. "Shut the window!"

"Okay, man! Calm down!"

"Didn't you hear that? There are... those... those things! They're out there! They heard me!" Zane shut the window and locked it for good measure.

"I think you're paranoid..." Tamiko started to say, then trailed off. Her mouth hung open as they looked at the dim world outside the window.

The zombies drifted out of the night, some wearing slouchy pants and some wearing skintight jeans ripped just so. Some wore hospital johnnies and others wore pajamas and bathrobes. All wore the same blank, hungry look on their deathly pale faces.

"Quick, we need to get back," Tamiko said.

Zane and Wilson were already running.

They raced through the hallways, this time not caring if anyone saw them, but taking the unoccupied halls anyway. They had just reached that hallway between the cafeteria and the auditorium when they finally saw someone standing in their way.

Zane had been out front, and Tamiko and Wilson slammed into him. For a moment he tried to make his brain understand what was happening.

Then he said carefully, "Hey, Ricky. How are you doing?"

Their friend stood at the dim end of the hallway, half shrouded by darkness. He still had blood all over the front of his clothes from the stab wound, but there was other blood too. Around his mouth.

"Shit," Wilson said.

"Ricky? Are you all right?" Zane asked again.

"No. No, he is not okay," Tamiko said. Zane could feel her fist gripping the back of his t-shirt. "He is definitely not okay."

Ricky swayed for a moment, then lurched forward.

"Wilson!" Tamiko said shrilly.

"I can't use the bomb here," Wilson said. "How would we get back? Shit. Shit shit shit!"

Zane remembered something. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the steak knife he'd taken in Ricky's house. He held it out in front of him.

"Like fighting him off with a toothpick," Wilson said.

"Come on, guys, think," Tamiko said. "Logic. We can do this. Okay. He's moving pretty slow, right? If we run past him, we could make it."

"But if he bites us, we're freaking dead." Wilson jumped from foot to foot.

Zane had an idea. He moved sideways. "We need a shield," he said, pulling off the plastic lid to a trashcan.

"One shield, three people," Wilson said. "I'll carry the shield, you have the weapon, and we'll protect Tamiko."

"Screw that!" Tamiko said. "I'll hold the shield."

Ricky continued to shuffle forward.

"Guys," Zane said, and moved forward. The two behind him clung to his back.

"We're all going to die," Wilson moaned into Zane's back.

Zane inched forward as best he could with the weight of his friends dragging him down. Ricky didn't look that bad, blood aside. Part of Zane thought maybe Ricky could just wash off the zombie make up and he'd be fine. Aside from that bullet hole in his shoulder. The soldiers must have tried to kill him, and missed.

The hand holding the steak knife shook ever so slightly. Zane held it out to the side of the trash can lid.

Zane recalled going to a haunted house back in Orlando with his girlfriend at the time, Lauren. She had been all for it, and he had shrugged and gone along because he hadn't thought it would be all that scary. The insane clowns and zombies and escaped mental patients were all actors, and they weren't allowed to touch you. Seconds after entering the haunted house, Lauren had grabbed him and buried her face in his back and had acted as a dead weight that he'd had to basically carry through the maze of rooms. Along one stretch of hallway, there had been a crazy looking person with a grin on his face and shredded clothing standing right in the middle.

Much as he was now, Zane had tried to edge past the guy, keeping his girlfriend at his back. Only then, he was waiting for the actor to jump at them.

Here and now, there weren't any rules about touching. Ricky was going to try to attack them, and bite them, and infect them all, unless he managed to eat off their faces first. And all Zane had was a plastic garbage bin lid.

Every nerve in his body tensed for that moment when Ricky would lunge. They edged closer and closer and Ricky shuffled nearer and nearer. They were mere feet apart when Wilson said, "God, I hope these aren't fast zombies."

Zane was distracted for that moment nearly missed it. Ricky lunged, hissing with blood dripping down his chin.

Shoving the lid out, he pushed Ricky to the other side of the hallway. "Run!" he called to Tamiko and Wilson.

They obliged without hesitation.

Zane gave Ricky one more shove, so that Ricky fell to the ground. Then Zane dropped the lid and ran, too.

"You didn't take him out?" Wilson said as Zane busted through the doors at the end of the hallway.

"Keep running!" he yelled.

They made it to the gym doors, and were momentarily confused when the doors refused to open. "Shit! They locked us out!" Wilson said. He banged on the doors. "Let us in!"

"We went out through the locker room, remember?" Zane said. "Come on!"

He turned to go to the boys' locker room entrance a few feet back, but Tamiko grabbed his sleeve. "The girls' room. Come on."

"Why?"

"Don't you hear it?"

Precious seconds wasted while they listened. They heard Ricky. Then, faintly, they heard sounds coming from the boys' locker room.

"Shit," Wilson said. "Sounds like quarantine got a little out of control."

"Come on!" Tammy was already halfway to the girls' locker room past the gym's main entrance doors on the other end.

The girls' locker room, to Zane's momentary surprise, was a mirror image of the boys' locker room, minus the urinals. He glanced around, noting that it was deserted. Worse still, he could hear the sounds of panic from the gymnasium.

They ran out like the pro football teams run from the locker rooms, a victory parade.

What greeted them caused them to stop dead in their tracks.

No one was sleeping anymore. Civilians hid under cots or huddled in groups while soldiers approached zombies and shot them through the heads at close range. People were screaming. A group of soldiers was trying to create a barricade out of cots at the entrance to the boys' locker room, which was turning out to be highly unsuccessful. The sheer force of zombies pushing to get out, and the screams of those still unturned within the locker room screaming for help, made the barrier useless.

"We need to evacuate!" said a soldier near to where Zane, Wilson, and Tamiko stood.

"Evacuate where?" said another as he hit a zombie with the butt of his rifle to get enough space to turn the gun around and shoot it through the skull. Gray brain matter splattered all over a family of four huddled behind a mattress, the father wielding a piece of metal broken from one of the cots.

Zane looked for his parents, and saw them bunkered behind a couple of beds. He headed in that direction, ducking low to avoid any stray bullets, although the soldiers at least had that under control.

"Zane! Honey! Where have you been?" His mother pulled him into a hug and refused to let go. Zane looked at his dad.

Mr. Gibson had a baseball bat. He nodded at Zane but kept vigilant about anything or anyone approaching. Luckily Zane's parents had chosen cots far from where the zombies had emerged, so none had made it past the soldiers... yet.

"I was going to sneak out and try to find Owen," Zane said. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, honey," Mrs. Gibson sobbed into Zane's shoulder.

"You came back just in time for the action," Mr. Gibson said, shouting over the repeated gunfire. "Oh – hello."

Wilson and Tamiko had arrived just behind Zane.

"Tamiko, right?" Mr. Gibson said, smiling. "Good to see you again. And you are?"

"Wilson," said Wilson.

"Nice to meet you."

"Likewise."

No one said anything for a few moments, instead watching the battle playing out before them.

"Oh, there's Hunter, and the rest of them," said Wilson, pointing. "We should probably tell them about Ricky."

"I have a plan," Tamiko said. "Zane – come with me?"

Zane was torn. "I don't know, I should probably stay with my parents."

Wilson was giving him a look that said if he was going to leave his parents, he'd better go with Wilson to his friends.

"I need your help, please?" Tammy grabbed his arm.

"Okay," Zane said finally.

Wilson rolled his eyes.

"Zane is a ladies' man," Mr. Gibson said with a shrug to Wilson.