8.

The second the door slammed behind her, Tracy knew she had made the biggest mistake of her life.

 

Tracy, Dan, Erika, Jeremy, and Lucas were surrounded by thirty bloodstained bodies.  There were three differences between here and the choir room, though.  One: a second after Tracy took her hand off the doorknob, she heard the click of an automatic lock.  Two: she recognized a few faces among the stiff, twisted bodies, including Desiree and the girl who sat behind her in English.  She couldn't examine further, because at the moment she was being distracted by number three.

 

Some of the students were still moving.

 

The five of them stood, paralyzed, as six or seven of the former corpses swung to their feet, their movements jerky and stiff, their fingers still frozen into claws.  Their eyes were red and wild and utterly merciless.

 

One of them stood fully, and examined its prey with a hungry, smirking look.  It shook its hair--which was plastered to its face in thick strands by the blood--out, and lowered itself into a crouch.  One that looked like a hunter preparing to spring.

 

In the instant before the zombie-creature slashed at her face with mangled, bloody nails, only one thought would permeate her frozen brain.

 

It was Joey.