After escaping a stalled elevator into a zombie apocalypse, Emily must learn how to trust people again or risk losing everything in this terrifying world. ***** For Emily, every day of the last two years have been a blur. She keeps her head down, takes her college courses online, and only goes out to work at her mandatory internship. But all that changes on the day the office elevator breaks down, leaving her trapped when the screams begin. And when the doors finally open, revealing a dystopian world ruined by bloody teeth and disease, Emily is launched into a terrifying run for her life, caught between the strangers she's not sure she can trust and the man-eating monsters that hunger for her flesh. Now she must learn not only how to survive in this new and dangerous world, but also how to overcome her own inner demons before they cost her something more precious than her life. [[Wattys' Shortlist]] [[Promoted by AMC]] Content and/or Trigger Warning: The story contains some gore, violence, strong language, and dark themes. [[word count: 100,000-150,000 words]]

Going through my pictures, I went to the one that I had just taken, and the phone slowly slipped out of my grasp. What had escaped my notice before is that the couch I had taken the picture on was against a window, which showed the backyard of the house. But in this picture, it wasn't an empty backyard. No, behind my smiling face was another one, outside the window. It was his face. Covered with a black ski mask, watching me. *** All 19-year-old Layna wanted to do was forget about the guy that broke her heart, and move on with her new boyfriend Brian. But instead, she unwittingly attracted the attention of a stalker. Someone who had been watching her every move for a month, plotting and planning for the perfect moment when he could take her. What Layna never would have expected was that when he finally kidnaps her, she would have to undergo "The Test". The Test that the girls before her had gone through. The one they failed, and payed heavily for. Will she pass The Test or will she die like the others?

Seventeen-year-old April Parker wakes up in an underground facility, a shock bracelet on her wrist and a five-day countdown on the clock. Dozens of other teens share her inexplicable fate, but their unseen captors never intervene no matter how brutal conditions become. When the ruthless - and unnervingly magnetic - Marcus seizes control, April's trauma-forged instinct is to lay low. But protecting her friends drives her to bargain with the boy she should fear most - a boy whose reality fractures with every tick. Then the countdown ends, and the real terror begins. Powers ignite. Alliances shatter. And predators are born. And with a saboteur among them determined to keep the doors closed forever, escaping what comes next may be the only way to survive it.