11.

A Chapter by Kira

As if her body suddenly realized the mood needed lightening, Tracy's stomach gurgled loudly. Lucas half-smiled. "Didn't you eat lunch today? You can't fight zombies on an empty stomach, y'know."

"I wasn't hungry," Tracy said automatically. She changed tack abruptly. "I was so nervous. I bet you didn't eat anything either."

"Actually, I didn't," he frowned. "Do you think...?"

"This killer-thing is in the food?" Tracy said, repulsed. But the more she thought about it, the more sense it made. Her choir class, all of which had first lunch, had succumbed about half an hour after eating. By the time she'd made it back to Lucas's lunch, everyone there was fine.

Her stomach gurgled again. Then she remembered the single cold, slimy bite of cafeteria cheeseburger, and her heart nearly stopped.

"Tracy?" Lucas said anxiously. She barely registered that his face was inches from hers. "You okay?"

"Just fine," she gasped.

Surely, if that made any difference, I would be dead or a zombie by now, wouldn't I?

...Maybe that just means you get a low dose of poison. A slower, agonizing death, and an even more agonizing rebirth.

"Everyone can't possibly have had lunch today," she breathed.

"Yeah, I know that," Lucas said. "So there's got to be something else...if that's even the case. Maybe once people are bleeding, they can infect other people..."

"Then how come we aren't both dead too?" Tracy wondered.

"Maybe we're immune or--" Lucas started, but he was unable to finish because at that moment, there was a frenzy of knocks at the door, and a muffled, panicked female voice oozed over to them like a cloud of poisonous gas.

"Is there anyone in there? They're coming, oh God, please let me in!"

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