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grabbed me and shoved me through the hole. Before I could even protest, I was flying through the air, heading toward a brown pool that I hoped wasn’t full of gnashing teeth. 

Chapter 3
    J umping into a cold pool wasn’t my favorite thing to do, but I only had three choices at that point: fight the white freaks, fight the crazed gang freaks, or jump down into the pool and fight the green freaks. It was going to be a freak-fest either way.
    I crashed into the water with a giant splash and landed in the deep end. The ice-cold water hit me hard. I spread my hands and feet apart and flailed my arms, trying to slow my plummet; it had always worked for cliff-diving after all.
    “Everyone okay?” Nick yelled.
    “Made it,” Asia answered.
    “I’m good,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
    “All right, kiddos. Everybody outta the pool,” Lucas ordered, fear tightening his voice.
    My eyes widened in horror as I was suddenly greeted by a milky-white glare. My pulse ramped up. I blinked the water out of my eyes, then shined my light up on the withered face. I jumped back, dizzied by blood rushing into my ears. The decapitated head was still blinking its eyes and snapping its jaws, bouncing around in the water and moaning. I had never seen such a grotesque display, and the scent of death invaded my senses. I knew then that our reality was far worse than anything my mind or even horror movie makers could ever have dreamt up. In a blind panic, I reached for my knife. I stabbed the bobbling head through the eye and moved away from it as blood gushed from its open wound. It gurgled for a moment, but the moaning finally stopped. 
    The smell of decaying flesh was overpowering, like something out of a nightmare. My muscles tensed as I realized I was immersed in some sort of zombie stew. Countless dismembered hands, arms, legs, torsos, and heads floated all around me. I wasn’t sure if that was a result of Val’s shooting or just their decayed bodies disintegrating from being in the water so long. 
    Through the darkness, I spotted a rotting arm with peeling skin and a deep gash. I splashed to move it away from me, but another arm and leg came my way as the ripples drifted in my direction from all the others splashing in my direction. I gasped in horror and gagged at the noxious odor. “Jackie!” I screamed when I looked around and couldn’t see her through the blackness of shadows.
    Something bumped my leg, and I looked down but couldn’t make out what it was. I quickly moved away from it to look for Jackie, but something brushed against me again. I shined my flashlight down and could have sworn I saw a huge figure swimming through the murky water. “Uh, guys,” I said, “Watch out! The girls didn’t kill ‘em all.”
    I knew I had to get my butt out of the pool, but I also wanted to make sure that all of my friends were okay and weren’t being drowned or eaten. I blinked and looked again, but I didn’t see anything but darkness. My hands began to tremble, and I had to take several deep breaths to calm myself as I headed toward the blue-tiled edge to climb out.
    Suddenly, a horrible thought raced across my head: What if one of those things bit me in the water? Before I could consider that any of the undead, floating debris might have sunk its teeth into me, I was hit in the head by crumbling dust and plaster. Splashes echoed beside me as the others jumped and landed in the water, and I tried to move out of the way so I wouldn’t get hit. A giant piece of the ceiling and part of a humongous beam fell into the water next, blocking our way, and we had to swim to the shallow end to get out. More of the ceiling crumbled, dropping chunks of plaster into the water around us. When two more beams fell, pinning me underwater, I was terrified. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, but I used all my might to desperately push and shove the heavy beams off of me. With a grunt and a heave, I was free.
    I kicked hard to swim to