Same problem on 2010 27" i7 iMac
This worked for me
I had to erase and format (APSF) my Startup Volume (Samsung 1TB SSD) reinstall a full new version of High Sierra (the undocumented version 17G66) in Recovery Mode, which brought up some error log which I sent to Apple.
*** Panic Report ***
panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff800f2b8220): "a freed zone element has been modified in zone kalloc.4096: expected 0xdeadbeefdeadbeef but found 0xdeadbeefceadbeef, bits changed 0x10000000, at offset 24 of 4096 in element 0xffffff80391d4000, cookies 0x3f0011dd73a016e0 0x53521c4435cb70b"@/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/xnu/xnu-4570.71.82.5/osfmk/kern/zalloc.c:1122
High Sierra installed correctly in a second try, which ocurred automatically. The Security Update 2020-004 from the App store then also installed fine. macOS 10.13.6 (17G14019).
I then migrated my old system from the backup disk (not Time Machine) to the iMac. This went smoothly, took some hours though (Firewire 800 Backup drive Lacie d2).
Then the file permissions on my second internal hard drive were totally chaotic. I could not access the files nor change the permissions. I formatted the 2nd internal HD and tried to copy from backup via CCC. This did not change the permissions.
I had to format the 2nd internal drive again. I then copied all files from the backup with drag and drop to the 2nd internal drive. This finally fixed all the file permissions.
Done. 2 days work.