We were waiting for three days, but over the course of three days, little by little, we brought down the overtaken inside Racers General Store. It's a damn good thing, too, because I was getting hangry, and you don't want to be around me when I need food.

  I was proud of us. We were disciplined. Slow and steady. Even when we got down to the last few zombies, we didn't rush in and try to take them out at the same time. We stuck with the plan. One at a time. Isolate and destroy.

  The best part was, like any good general store, they had a shotgun hidden behind the counter, which I let @astrowave wield.

  The worst part was that communications relays went down a few hours after we stashed ourselves away in Racers, leaving us isolated on Dactyl. Short-range communications worked, but The Pharaoh was too far away for our personal comms to reach them without the relays. They could talk to us with the more powerful comms on the ship, but we couldn't talk to them.

  I later learned that Dactyl had been put on complete lockdown and was under quarantine, but not because of the zombie virus.

  According to official reports, it was a neurovirus, something we had dealt with before and were regularly vaccinated against, a virus that causes the immune system to have an allergic reaction to the biotic implants and components. Going offline helps ease the symptoms a little, but it causes vision problems, motor problems, headaches, coughing, vomiting, and diarrhea.

  This was not neurovirus.

  This was the zombie virus, zos612, that we had encountered on the starlab, and Dactyl was Site Zero, the site of the first official outbreak. Someone had made a mistake or had been instructed to say it was neurovirus. I had my money on both. If you told people it was a zombie virus, they probably wouldn't believe you.

  The Pharaoh sent us regular status reports. @zerogstar would broadcast every four hours. It was mostly just SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up) updates, like this is messed up, but we're okay.

  I did not tease @astrowave about his crush, but I could tell that he was happy to hear her voice, even if we couldn't reply, and that was sweet.

  I ate a lot of ice cream over those three days. Not the bad stuff. The good stuff. My favorite was Creamy Cow's mint chocolate chip. I know what you're thinking. Diarrhea. Nope. I ate enough bananas and sweet potato chips to counteract the dairy. And salads. We ate a lot of salads. I tried electrocuting a steak, but it didn't work.

  Every so often, we would hear the terrordactyl meteor storms striking outside, hitting the protective pyramid roof. It was an odd feeling at first, but eventually we came to find it soothing when the storms hit. The dampeners made it sound like low sonorous thumps, like a low drum beat that could lull you to sleep.

  We had piled up the clothing from all the dead zombies to form little beds. It was the best we could do after trying to sleep on the cold tile floor. I woke up from a nap to catch the latest news from The Pharaoh, went for a quick pee, and joined @astrowave in the refrigerated section.

  Phunk. He shot a toy dart out of a little plastic gun, and it stuck to the glass door. We had made a game out of it over the last few days, with markers on the floor to shoot from. We had to prop open one of the doors so that we could get enough distance for it to be challenging.

  "Morning," he said, as I approached.

  "Nice shot." He was at the third marker. We had established it was about a 35% success rate from there. "Anything from The Pharaoh?"

  "Nope."

  "No news is good news," I said, trying to stay positive.

  "Unless they've been overrun," he replied.

  Okay, so today it would be somber and slightly depressed @astrowave. "We'll see," I said. "Check-in is in seven minutes."

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  @astrowave nodded slowly. "Your turn." He went to the glass door and retrieved his dart from within the little circle we had drawn with markers.

  "We should make a run for it today." I shot, and my dart dropped to the floor. Stupid plastic gun. "I refuse to just blow myself up, and if we don't do something soon, they're going to send a group out to get us."

  We had discussed this before. Nothing was changing. We were losing time. There was no way we were going to be able to safely locate @foxcutter with Dactyl now being a zombie colony.

  "Rufus and Doofus?" @astrowave said.

  "Like I said, I programmed them to guard @bitchfrog and @dustcaller. Even if they wanted to send the flamingos, they wouldn't be able to." @astrowave shot another dart, landing it to the right of the little circle. I stepped back to the fourth marker. I'm usually better at the more challenging spots for whatever reason.

  "That's my fault," I continued. "@zerogstar might be able to hack them, but I put bioencryption on them, and she's hopefully still looking for Repluser instead of trying to hack the flamingos. Trust me, if we could reach them, I would tell them to come get us."

  "@auroraloon?" @astrowave asked.

  "No, she'll stay with @dustcaller."

  Would I swoon if @auroraloon showed up atop a flamingo to rescue me? Yes, I would. But given she abandoned me on Flipper in her quest to do the right thing, I had no doubt she would stay put on The Pharaoh. She was probably restless and annoying everyone on board, but she would stay there.

  "What about one of the humans?" @astrowave inquired, pushing the conversation. "They're immune, aren't they?"

  I had seen what these overtaken could do to a person. I didn't think they could infect a human, the virus being a digital and organic hybrid, but I did know they could rip a person apart.

  "Not a chance," I said, hoping I was right. "They probably are immune to being infected, but I doubt the overtaken would just let them saunter by unaccosted. They'd likely be ripped apart."

  I shot from the fourth marker, and I swear I would have nailed that shot, but my comm unit captured a signal, and I sent the dart flying over the door and down the aisle.

  zerogstar: "This is The Pharaoh."

  I checked the time. She was early.

  zerogstar: "We have a ship incoming."

  A ship! That probably meant trouble. They needed to get out of there.

  The thing about quarantines is that they usually lean in one direction. Try to get off Dactyl, and there would be hell to pay. Try to get onto Dactyl, into the quarantine area, and it's kind of like do so at your own peril.

  @astrowave and I exchanged a look of eager dread.

  "Should we make our run?" he asked.

  If the ship was hostile, it didn't matter. We wouldn't make it in time. I cursed at myself. We should have run for it days ago. What was I thinking, letting us sit here doing nothing? I knew the answer. We didn't have a lead on Repulser. We didn't have a lead on @foxcutter. I was hoping the time would allow @zerogstar to find out where to go next. Then we would take our shot, run for The Pharaoh, and chase down our next target.

  "No," I said, hating the words. It meant we were stuck here on Dactyl with the zombie colony to keep us company. "They need to get out of here."

  The silence was killing me.

  The comm lit up again.

  awesomedog: "This is @awesomedog, broadcasting on all channels. Please respond."

  Thank @3Beak! It wasn't an enemy. It was our lost Infiltrator. I crouched to my knees, listening carefully, annoyed that we couldn't respond.

  zerogstar: "We hear you, @awesomedog. This is The Pharaoh. Pulling you into a private channel."

  I grabbed @astrowave's big shoulder and fiddled with the toy gun. I hoped @awesomedog had brought more people with him, but he was an Infiltrator, and if I knew @horus, he would be alone. I was thrilled when the comm lit up again. @zerogstar had added @awesomedog to a channel that included us. She was smart.

  zerogstar: "We have two lost crew, @kittyboy and @astrowave. Last reported position was Racers General Store. The moon is overrun."

  She hadn't mentioned @foxcutter, but I get it. We didn't know where he was, just hoped he was here on Dactyl.

  awesomedog: "Copy. Approaching the landing zone."

  zerogstar: "We thought you were lost. What's happened?"

  awesomedog: "I was lost, but I have a trace on my prior location. I had found your crew member, @foxcutter. When The Pharaoh didn't arrive, I went to find him. My last memory is heading toward his location. @horus sent me back. You say the place is overrun?"

  I couldn't help but smile. Finally, we had something to act on.

  @foxcutter was here after all, hopefully not overtaken. And, even if it was just one aiways, we had a reanimated @awesomedog to point us in the right direction. If only we could talk to him.

  zerogstar: "Yes. Dactyl is overrun with zombies. I mean, overtaken. You know what I mean?"

  awesomedog: "Understood. I was briefed. So the virus is out?"

  zerogstar: "Here on Dactyl it is. It happened suddenly. @kittyboy and @astrowave were able to make it to Racers General Store, but communication relays went down. We haven't heard from them in 69 hours and 21 minutes."

  Silence. What were they going to do?

  "Wherever @awesomedog is heading, that's where we should go," I said, making eye contact with @astrowave.

  He looked poised and ready. He got up from where we were crouched and fetched his shotgun from where it was leaning against a shelf.

  "Aye aye, Captain."