I dropped to my knees and leaned over Marcus. “Are you okay?”

His eyes fluttered. He hadn’t lost consciousness, but he seemed about to. Something wasn’t right.

He sat up, blinking slowly at all of us. “I’m really tired, guys. And I feel super-weak. All I want to do is go to bed.”

Charlie carefully helped him to his feet. “Okay, but we have to get out of the school first. It’s not safe. There are zombies in here.”

Marcus scrunched up his nose. “You keep saying that, but I’m having a hard time believing it.”

Willa sighed. “Everyone who played Zombie Town got sick yesterday. And today they’re actual zombies. But also, if they bite someone, that person turns into a zombie, too. Like you did after Ms. Happel bit you. So no one is safe.”

“But we can cure them with the game,” I added, “like I cured you.”

Marcus looked at me, and I could tell his mind was slowly putting it all together. “How did you know that it would work for sure?”

I shrugged.

“You risked your life to try to cure me?” he asked, eyes wide.

I stared down at my shoes as I felt my cheeks turn bright red. “Uh—”

Smooth, Bex. Real smooth.

“Yes, she did,” Willa piped up. “She was the only one brave enough to try it.”

Marcus’s drained face broke out into a grin. “Thanks, Bex.”

“You’re welcome,” I said and grinned back.

“Let me look at your wound,” Charlie said, pulling Marcus’s clothing off his shoulder a bit. “It doesn’t look too bad.”

Willa rose up on her tiptoes and took a look. “My little brothers bite me harder than that, and they’re human.”

“So I don’t have an oozing, zombie-infected wound. That’s good.” Marcus swayed a little. “I still need to lie down, though.”

“We have to get him somewhere safe,” I said.

“My house . . . is not safe,” Marcus slurred. “Both parents played the game.”

“No one was home at my house this morning,” Charlie said. “I’d assumed my parents had taken Jason to our doctor.” His voice caught a bit. “But now it seems more likely that Jason bit them while I was sleeping, and they ran out of the house while they could still open doors. At least that means the house is a safe spot. I could bring him there.”

“Okay,” Willa said. “But I think Bex and I should head somewhere else.”

I furrowed my brow. “Where?”

“We have to go to the police this time. No one is picking up at 911, but maybe there are still some officers at the station.”

We didn’t go to the police during the summer’s monster problem because only people who’d played Monsters Unleashed could see the monsters, and we knew the police wouldn’t believe us. And I hadn’t wanted to involve any authorities with the previous month’s alien invasion because I only wanted to send the aliens home, not get them captured. But Willa was right—this time we were in over our heads. Enough people had played the game to fill the town with zombies. And if they could spread the zombie infection with a bite, the whole town would soon be overcome. We had to get help. And fast.

“You’re right,” I said. “But I don’t like the idea of splitting up.”

“It’ll be okay,” Charlie said. “Let’s text each other every few minutes for updates.”

I shook my head. It felt strange to split up and go our separate ways. “Isn’t this what dumb people do in horror movies before they get killed?”

Willa snorted. “When did you become Queen Pessimist of Negative Land?”

“Since monsters from my phone escaped into the real world, and then I went on a field trip and summoned aliens to town, and then—”

Willa held a hand up. “Okay, okay. I get it. But you’re just unlucky. None of that was your fault.”

“It was my phone both times!”

“You were playing a game,” Charlie said. “It’s got to be Veratrum’s fault. For however they developed these games. They’re not normal.”

“Charlie’s right,” Marcus said. “You saw that line of code in Alien Invasion. It was like nothing we’d ever seen before—it was a new programming language! Veratrum did this. Maybe even on purpose.”

Veratrum was totally shady. And they’d even sent someone to follow us in a fake plumbing van, which wasn’t something a normal game developer did to its best customers. I’d thought they were just watching us because we had messed up their games, but maybe they were watching us because they thought we’d caught on to what they were doing. There was something bad going on at Veratrum. But I still felt responsible. I couldn’t shake it.

Marcus came closer and said in a low voice, “You need to look at the whole picture. Not one part of it. Remember that.”

I nodded and agreed, mainly to get everyone to stop talking. I knew they were only being good friends and trying to make me feel better, but part of me didn’t want to feel better. I knew that wasn’t healthy, but I had bigger things on my plate at the moment.

“Fine,” I agreed. “We’ll split up.”

We made it out the back exit and successfully avoided the handful of zombies staggering through the parking lot. If Marcus didn’t believe us at first, he definitely believed us now. We’d become a real zombie town.

And as Charlie and Marcus took a left at the end of the road and Willa and I took a right, I gave one last glance over my shoulder. Charlie held Marcus’s arm across his shoulders, keeping him upright as they chugged along.

I knew this made the most sense. We had to go to the police station and get help. And Marcus was almost asleep on his feet. He’d only slow us down and get us all eaten. This was the right decision.

But my stomach still felt like I’d chugged a full glass of sour milk.