--

"Back up, I'm gonna shoot off the lock!" yelled Jim. But before he could turn around to begin firing, George was already rebuffing his idea.

"Bullets aren't breaking that lock…they'll just ricochet back at us!"

"Well, what the fuck then? I'm not going down because of a locked door at a fuckin' gym!"

"Alyssa can pick the lock," suggested Cindy. But the reporter hung limply on Yoko's shoulder, unable to respond with even her trademark wit. Yoko turned to her, and realized what she had to do. She fumbled through Alyssa's pockets, finally drawing out the small toolkit.

"Give me a minute," yelled Yoko, cracking opening the case. She looked over the four pick heads, her hand wavering indecisively over them. "God, I can't do this," moaned the girl under her breath, feeling hot tears well up in her eyes. If they all died here, it'd be her fault. Alyssa wouldn't have been badly hurt if not for her desire to use the computer, and they could've made it out earlier. Thinking over what Alyssa would do, she decided some action was better than no action. And so she grabbed the P shaped head and began to nervously slide it into the lock when she felt a soft hand on her own. Without a word, Alyssa waved Yoko's pick away, selecting the S pick and slipping it noiselessly into the lock. She began to fidget with the tool, twisting it and pulling on it gently. Perspiration poured down her forehead, her bangs caked in blood and sweat as she gritted her teeth in concentration.

"Sometime today, ladies…" urged George. Now wielding an empty rifle defensively, he ducked under a lunging zombie and threw it back with a shove from his makeshift club. Alyssa struggled with the pick, fighting the resistance of the inner cylinder. Yoko took a moment to load a shell of buckshot into her shotgun, ready to shoot off the lock if necessary. Ricochet or not, it was better than being eaten alive.

"Come on you bitches!" screamed Jim, but Yoko was unsure if he was referring to her and Alyssa, or the pair of undead he had just dispatched with his last bullets. He was frantically waving the flashlight back and forth now, blindly clubbing at zombies and surprisingly knocking them back with his panicked flurry.

"Yoko...?" began Cindy, her boundless optimism beginning to run dry. She turned back to give them a worried look, unaware of the zombie shambling towards her from the darkness, outstretched hands eager to grab her.

"Cindy, look out!" cried George, shoving a zombie back with a hard push from his shoulder. George looked desperately to Jim, but he was suddenly gravely winded from his swinging fury, and unable to move. George shoved him aside, hurrying over to protect Cindy. She was mere inches from his outstretched hand when the zombie grabbed her from behind, pulling her back and towards its waiting mouth.

--

Her shocked eyes met George's for just a moment; a raw terror and a wave of sadness in them. But her fright spurned her to action, and she fought to struggle from its iron grip, just barely able to duck away from its bite, twisting her body and throwing the zombie off balance as it tripped over her. Reaching into her pocket, she drew out a small device that resembled a remote control. Stark white electricty suddenly shot from its tips, and George realized then it was Alyssa's stun gun that she was ramming into the crotch of the creature.

Just as the zombie's flesh began to simmer, Alyssa's pick lifted the last divet in the lock's chamber, the lock finally clicking open. Yoko shoved the door open, calling out to the others to follow. Jim was diving through the door before she even finished her sentence, and she turned to see George pulling Cindy behind him as the door swung shut. She leaned over to lock the door, and felt the doors cave inwards, the huge mass of undead sensing their meal ticket slip away and making one last desperate rush to get it back. George hurried to help her, throwing his own tired body against the door and placing his rifle into the door handles in an attempt to jam them shut. The doors seesawed back and forth, nearly giving way, before Cindy simply reached up and twisted the heavy deadbolt as the door heaved into place. Everyone looked at her in quiet amazement as the doors stopped moving, the heavy steel deadbolt holding its own against even all that weight.

"Are you ok," asked George, hurrying over to her, his hands carefully checking her neck and shoulders for bite marks. Brushing her hair aside, he found her muscles surprisingly relaxed, and she couldn't help but smile at his gentle touch.

"I'm fine, George," said Cindy, shyly pushing his lingering hands aside, her face still flushed. "But Alyssa..."

"Of course, Alyssa," he said, moving quickly to their fallen companion. She was laying across a floor mat, but she didn't seem as bad as they thought, her eyes actually open and alert.

"You're awake," George said, shocked.

"The smell of cooking zombie balls tends to force one awake," she said, grinning at Cindy. "Glad you found some use for my zapper."

"That was some messed up shit," Jim said suddenly from behind them, shaking his head. He was reloading his handgun with loose bullets from his pockets before moving on to refill his empty clips. "Ain't no man deserve to go out like that; live, dead, or undead."

"Is anyone else injured?" Yoko interrupted, cocking her reloaded shotgun. She was glad everyone was alive, but they were still in an unfamiliar area...one bathed in shadows and darkness. If this experience had taught her anything, it was better to be ready for the worse.

"Me and George will take the upstairs," offered Jim, still eyeing Cindy with a wary nervousness. He clicked his flashlight on, glad to see it withstood the whipping he had given with it earlier. The light danced along the gym's first floor, a wide open area of scattered universal weight machines and treadmills. This was the high tech end, the fancy new equipment meant to draw in new members and showcase the beautiful people in the fitness club to the people on the street only a few feet below. A staircase with a landing bisected the room and lead to the second floor, a hallway by its right leading downstairs. "We'll meet back down here in five...got it?"

The women nodded, sure that the wide open first floor held no surprises. The two women helped Alyssa to her feet, still cringing at the tenderness of her burns.

"We need to get some cold water on those burns," suggested Cindy. If she remembered correctly from her short lived membership here, there was a locker room through that side hallway.

"How come George didn't recommend that," asked Yoko, slightly skeptical of Cindy's recommendation.

"Doctors never sweat the small stuff; it's usually up to the nurses to do the little things," she answered, throwing Alyssa's arm over her shoulder and pulling her up. "At least in my day..."

"You were a nurse?"

"Well, student nurse for a little while, but paying tuition got to be too much, so...well, you know how it is...things happen," she began, her voice suddenly wistful. "Dammit, I should've gotten some bullets from Jim," she said angrily, looking over her own empty handgun in frustration.

"Take mine," offered Alyssa, her normally hard eyes suddenly understanding.