Think, Ian, think....

The zombie grabbed him again.

Ian picked up the only thing he could reach.

A pencil.

Not just for doing homework.... They were good for all kinds of things. Resetting his Nintendo, undoing knots in his shoes, getting stuff out from under his fingernails, drawing on the wall....

And stabbing zombies.

"liiiyaaa!" he shouted as he stabbed it into the zombie's arm as hard as he could. The zombie screamed.

Like a frightened jackrabbit, Ian squatted between his legs and ran for the stairs. "Mom!" he called as he scrambled for safety. Luckily, he was used to running for his life from his two older brothers whose tempers and kill-the-little-brother mindsets made the zombie look like a girl.

"Mom!" he yelled again as he entered the kitchen and rounded the island where she stood, making dinner. "Help! A zombie's after me!"

She let out a frustrated breath as he grabbed her about the waist. "What in the world is wrong with you, Boo?"

Ian tried to explain but before he could get more than a handful of words out, the zombie was in the kitchen, glaring at him.

The pencil was still protruding from his forearm as he growled. lan's mom scowled at the teenager. "Danny? What are you doing here? How did you get into the house? I didn't hear the door."

"He's trying to eat our brains, Mom."

She tsked down at him. "Ian, don't be ridiculous. Danny goes to church with us. Don't you know him?"

"No." He would remember if he'd ever seen a zombie at church. The limping and groaning tended to stand out.

His mom turned back to Danny. "Are you here for a donation? I heard your youth group was—" Danny grabbed lan's mom and bit heron the head. She screamed.

"Don't you hurt my mama!" Ian ran at him with the whole of his weight, driving him back a few steps and causing him to let go of his mom. Ian clamped down on Danny's leg and bit him until he tasted blood.

No one attacks my mama!

Danny cried like a baby while lan's mom picked up the pan where she'd been making biscuits.

She bashed Danny's head repeatedly with the pan, forcing him away from them. "Get behind me, Ian."

For once, Ian did as she told him.

She backed away from Danny, toward the front door.

Ian was feeling pretty good about their escape until he turned around.

There were more zombies on the front porch and they all looked hungry....

Caleb's heart skipped a beat as he flew in as a raven and saw Nick and some unknown female completely surrounded by zombies while trying to fight them off. Malachai's going to kill me____

Because from his vantage point, it looked like the zombies were getting the better of them. Nick was covered in blood from various bite wounds while the female seemed to be doing a better job at keeping them off her.

Summoning his powers, Caleb sent a mental wave to the zombies to disperse them.

They didn't listen. If anything, it made them even more aggressive against Nick.

"What the crap?"

As a demon, one of their first learned powers was to be able to control the dead. It was the lesson Nick was supposed to be learning right now.

But Caleb's powers were useless against the zombies.

How could this be? It didn't make sense. Not that it had to make sense to thoroughly tick him off.

And then he realized why he couldn't control them.

They weren't dead. These zombies had been made from the living. The living he could possess or influence, but he couldn't control them without their cooperation.

Growling in frustration, Caleb flew toward the street, into the shadows, where he took human form. The demon in him wanted to blast the zombies into oblivion. But that would blow his cover and he'd already learned the hard way three years ago that his powers didn't work on Nick.

If he exposed his powers and Nick saw them, there was no way to undo it. He'd be screwed and Nick would never trust him again. Of course, he could try the clumsy and inexact human method of memory loss by bashing Nick on the head.

It might work.

Or it might give him a concussion. Worse, it might kill him.

And since Caleb's survival hinged on his ... best not to chance it.

So instead, he rushed into the alley to help them, then drew up fast as he realized the girl with Nick wasn't a girl after all. She was a demon, too.

A Charonte demon, to be precise.

Oh Dusseldorf, this was getting complicated. He shielded his powers immediately. The problem with the Charonte, they were highly territorial and didn't tolerate other demons in their domain. Ever. To them, if you weren't Charonte, you were garbage, and all garbage should be eaten. Literally. Slowly and with relish—or, more often than not, with barbecue sauce.

Since the Charonte were one of the most powerful branches of demon, it served him best to stay off her radar.

And menu.

But why she was with Nick and not attacking him, he had no idea. Charonte didn't normally associate with anyone unless, as previously noted, they were on the menu.

"Nick!" Caleb shouted as one of the zombies went for Nick's neck. "Behind you!"

Nick turned around as he heard Caleb's shout to see Brett Guidry, one of his classmates, coming at his back. Grateful Caleb had returned, he indicated Brett with his chin. "We've got to get these guys to Bubba's. Anyone got a clue how to do it?"

Simi looked at him. "They gotta be breathing?"

"Yes," Nick and Caleb said in unison.

"Well, pooh." Simi poked her lips out. "That just takes all the fun out of it." She let out a dramatic sigh.

Nick was overwhelmed by the herculean task. How did three high school students get a dozen zombies to Bubba's store without getting eaten?

Why didn t / stay home ?

Look on the bright side....

Trouble was, he didn't see a bright side.

/ knewl should have taken up lumberjackery and not the one where you shoot snot out your nose or the other one he didnt want to think about while fighting. 'Cause face it, both of those would be worthless right about now. Rather lumberjackery where you break Army of Darkness with a chainsaw all over the Deadites and send them into oblivion.

Or at least send them out of his sight.

The zombies closed in. Nick braced himself for more hand-to-hand (literally, in his case) fighting.

Suddenly, Simi grabbed him and Caleb by their hands and ran with them to the corner. She hesitated under the street sign. "Where's Bubba's?"

Nick pointed down the street toward the store.

"Okay." Simi released their hands. "You boys run on and I'll get them there right behind you."

Nick shook his head as all the lessons his mom had taught him roared to the forefront. "That's not right. I'm not about to leave a girl to be eaten by crazies."

Caleb looked over his shoulder to where the zombies were closing in fast. "Folks, we stand here arguing and we're going to die." He grabbed Nick and pulled him forward. "Let her be the bait. We need to get the doors open."

Nick would have fought him too, but Caleb's grip was too fierce, leaving him no choice except to follow or lose his other arm.

They only got half a block before two more zombies stepped out of the darkness to attack them.

Nick cursed as he pulled up short and kicked the first one back into the alley. "How many of these are there?"

Caleb shook his head. "I'm beginning to wonder if Madaug didn't license the game to Sony or something. Where are all of them coming from? Raccoon City Cloning Farm? What is going on here?"

Nick stepped back to avoid being bitten. "We're about to get our butts kicked. That's what's going on." He scissor-kicked the zombie closest to him. Then he looked to see Simi leading the others closer. "I'm beginning to feel like Jim Bowie at the Alamo."

Caleb knocked the zombie in front of him back. "Yeah, but we're not going to die."

/ w'sh I could be so sure of that. 'Cause right now, things were not looking good for him and if he was a betting man, he'd be betting on the zombies.

Even so, Nick pushed his fear and panic down and kept moving toward the store, drawing the zombies along behind him while he continued to beat them off. Gah, if one more of them touched his wounded shoulder, he was going to forget the ban on killing them and go hog wild—chainsawor not. "I really don't like being the dangling carrot."

"Better than being the dead duck." Caleb smacked the zombie closest to him.

He had a good point with that.

Nick was the first one to reach the store. He opened the door and called for Bubba, Madaug, and Mark. "We got a group coming in. You might want to widen that room and be ready to lock it tight."

But getting them into the store was hard enough. Into the room...

Where were the X-Men when you really needed them?

Nick grabbed the cattle prod that Bubba kept hanging on the wall behind the counter... again for those "just in case" moments. He was beginning to not only understand Bubba's paranoia, but be grateful for it.

Bubba was right. You never knew when these things could come in handy. It did pay to keep a cattle prod and axon hand. The necessity of the rocket launcher and blasting caps remained to be seen.

At least the cattle prod would make it easier to corral them. But the moment Nick touched the prod to the zombie closest to him, Brett, he realized Mark and Bubba had made some serious modifications to the voltage. This wasn't a typical cattle prod to move people along. This one was meant to stun and stun hard. The jolt was so severe, it drove the zombie to the floor like a million-volt stun gun.

"What the ... ?" Nick gaped at Bubba, who grinned in all his unabashed glory.

"Neighbors don't complain when I shock people, only when I shoot them."

Mark agreed. "But the downside is it's a pain to drag them out of the store, and if you leave them in here, when they can move again, they're usually pretty pissed and looking for blood."

Madaug, Caleb, and Simi continued to try and beat the zombies into the holding cell.

Nick zapped another zombie that was going for Simi. It was actually kind of fun. He'd touch them with the prod. They'd scream and then flop to the ground like dying fish. Made him wonder what would happen if they were wet, but he wasn't sadistic enough to test that curiosity. Lucky for them.

He shocked another one who went for his head and sent the zombie flailing. A guy could get used to this, especially if he didn't go to jail for it.

By the time Nick had stunned the last one and Bubba and Mark were dragging the first one into the room, they made a "shocking" discovery.

As the voltage wore off, the zombies returned to normal.

"Get your hands off me!" Brett snarled as he shoved Bubba back. "My dad's a lawyer and I'm going to sue you for offensive touching."

Bubba arched a brow. "You might wanna rethink that, boy. 'Cause if I'm going to get sued for offensively touching you, I'm going to make it worth my while. Think about it."

Brett's face paled. He looked around the store as if he was waking up from a nightmare. "How did I get here?"

Nick angled the cattle prod at him, still not trusting that he was completely normal. He'd seen that movie too many times where the idiots think the monster's gotten over whatever had it possessed, only to turn back into the monster and kill them the instant they let down their guard. No way. He wasn't about to become intelligent-zombie kibble. "You were trying to eat my brains, you psycho."

Brett gaped at him. "What?"

Caleb nodded. "It's true, dude. You went for Gautier's throat, and mine too."

Madaug took the prod from Nick so that he could examine the prongs on the end of it. "Wow, Nick. You found the cure. That's how we fix it."

"Electrocution?" Nick tried not to smile as he thought about seriously zapping Stone.

Madaug nodded. "The voltage works on the central nervous system.... I'm thinking it works like a power surge that causes the programming to dump and essentially reboot to the original that existed before they played my game. It reverses everything. Nick! You're a friggin' genius."

Nick rested the cattle prod up on his good shoulder. "Well, someone slap my butt and give me a hero cookie."

Simi stepped forward and slapped him on the right cheek.

"Hey!" Nick snapped, rubbing his offended buttocks.

She blinked innocently. "You told me to. Or would you rather have had one of them men slap your butt instead?"

Nick was horrified by the mere suggestion. "If someone is touching that part of me, I'd much rather it be you than one of them." Or better yet, Kody.

"Us too," the guys said quickly.