PRINCESS

I asked them how they got past the security measures. Shane explained that Olive had used 'parkour' to jump throw the lasers and he told her how to disable them from the other end of the hall. However, it was temporary. June's hair was lasered off at the very end of the hall.

Impressive. They had sent up Yuri and Vik back up to the tank, as they would most likely slow everyone else down, but Olive had Vik's gear on, as well as his grenades.

Shane told me that a room on the first floor below had a control panel, which I had seen, and that he had a good idea of the size of the bunker from the security footage. The downside was that Olive accidentally blew up the room and the ceiling caved in on it, which I also saw. Shane saved one piece of potentially helpful advice, however: a computer card with locations of other bunkers Picketfence had hid himself in before now, in case he was planning to run from us.

He told me the room they couldn't get into most likely held the president inside, and that there was no way in except for the door. Shane had already attempted to override the handprint reader but the system locked him out, so he tried to detonate it. Olive then tried to remove it from the wall while the rest of the team attempted to calm Shane down.

I kicked the box down from the wall with one try. People shouldn't make a girl like me angry. The wires stuck out and Shane quickly attempted to rewire them so that the door would open.

PRINCESS

Less than ten seconds later, the door opened, revealing pitch blackness ahead of us. Nobody dared enter, as all of us knew that Picketfence and his men were the nation's number one threat. Shane, Olive and June all stood in front of me, weapons drawn.

A voice came from inside the room, addressing me as miss Kennedy. I immediately recognized it as Picketfence.

I did not enter the room and instead asked the coward to come out and fight. There was no response for a good half a minute, then he continued by inviting us in. Olive, bless her stupid heart, went right on in. The sound of a gun hammer being clicked followed.

June and Shane entered as well, and the lights went on. In the room there were about twenty men, all surrounding a very large, very unsightly hairy six foot pink mushroom under a tall glass case.

Out from behind the case stepped the very man I was looking for. President Picketfence Johnson, in full-body military armor, and a gas mask. He told us to be very careful, 'else a stray bullet might hit the glass case and we'd all be infected, and we wouldn't want that.

But I didn't care, our cure was already being created back home. I took out my gun and shot down the man who had his gun at Olive's face. She thanked me and swung her rapier at the next guard over, cutting open his throat. The rest of men opened fire on us and it didn't take long for the glass to shatter.

Picket grabbed a piece of glass and jabbed it into one of his men on purpose, then backed into a corner. The man quickly succumbed to the microscopic spores, and flung his arms out at the two closest guards.

OLIVE

Wow! This guy is pretty dang evil! He just took out one of his own so that he could more easily get to us.

There are three zombies in the room with us now, along with like fifteen guys with guns. I had to do something. My friends were in danger.

I looked over to June - a man had her in a chokehold. I threw a ninja star at him and it got lodged right between his eyes - as I thought it would. June thanked me, but he couldn't stand around - the spores were taking over the dead guy's body. I grabbed the star from his dumb face and wiped it off on his shirt. It felt wrong to kill a government man, but it had to be done for June.

I stood back to back with her as the bullets flew all around us. Shane was blocking bullets with his baseball bat, but a zombie was growing closer to him. I lunged at it, and with a great effort I sliced through its neck, completely and cleanly beheading it. Shane said a couple things in Spanish to me, which better not have been profanity, then said 'gracias' which of course means 'gross', which is how cool people express gratitude these days.

There were still plenty of guards and zombies for me to fight off, but as soon as I turned around, I saw a terrible sight. Princess and the president both had their guns aimed at each other, and I knew that if I didn't intervene, Princess might be shot and killed.

Right before my blade met his collar, he stuck out his arm with another gun and shot me.

JUNE

That scumbag shot Olive! I used up my two rounds left, reloaded, and aimed my shotgun at him. He had both his guns on Princess now, and I knew under that gas mask he was smirking.

There was a loud couple of clunks and thuds, then I heard Shane whisper his presence beside me. In my peripheral, I saw that every single other man in the room of Picket's defenses was down. Some of them weren't even entirely recognizable as human, and some of them weren't in one piece anymore thanks to us.

I told Picketfence we had won, that he was out-numbered, but he laughed at us and shot at Princess with both guns. The force of the shots threw her back into me. She knocked me over, but she wasn't bleeding. Around the collar of her strangely un-military pink dress, I saw the black fringe of a bullet proof vest. She winked at me.

Picketfence was already starting his speech about finishing what he started when I aimed my shotgun at him. I knew he was protected by the same bulletproof material, but Princess would need some sort of distraction while she steadied herself. I shot at his gas mask, but the bullets exploded and merely scratched and broke it off of his face. His blue eyes glared at me.

Then there was a scraping sound on the metallic floor. Olive was still alive and conscious. She had removed a grenade from her gear and slid it over to Picket's feet. Every single one of us started screaming as Olive sent us a salute. The pin was between her teeth.

SHANE

Blam! The grenade went off and thew all of us backward into the wall, yet...none of us were physically injured. Princess and June were groaning in pain. I tried to stand, but couldn't. I saw everything around me, but it was all distorted, bright, doubled and tilted sideways, like a really bad drug trip.

Olive had thrown a stun grenade instead of an actual explosive. Picket was on the ground, clutching his head. His guns were lying on the ground, closer to us than him. Olive was curled up against the wall, bleeding badly.

I forced myself to stand, though, and dragged my disoriented legs to the two guns and kicked them over to Princess, who deserved to take the fatal last shot to Picket's exposed head, and made my way over to Olive.

The ringing took several seconds to stop, and even when it did, my teeth were still chattering. I pulled Olive over and she started telling me to tell her dog she loved it. Nonsense. I pulled my pocket knife out and stuck it into her flesh and underneath the bullet. She protested til I threatened to break both her arms. I finally pushed the bullet out, then unwrapped the bandage from my blood test arm and pressed it against her open wound.

When the effects of the stun grenade finally wore off, I looked over at Picket. Princess had his own gun to his head. She nodded to me in thanks, then said goodbye to Picket with a bullet.