Ahead of the release of its film adaptation, we have an exclusive excerpt from Courtney Summers‘ young adult zombie novel This Is Not a Test.
Originally published in 2012, the book will be re-released on January 13 via Bindery Books. The new edition includes a bonus sequel novella, Please Remain Calm.
Written and directed by Adam MacDonald (Backcountry, Pyewacket), the movie version of This Is Not a Test is due in select theaters on February 20, 2026 from Independent Film Company and Shudder.
It follows Sloane and a small group of her classmates who take cover in their high school to escape their suddenly apocalyptic hometown. As danger relentlessly pounds on the doors, Sloane begins to see the world through the eyes of people who actually want to live and takes matters into her own hands.
Olivia Holt (Heart Eyes), Froy Gutierrez (The Strangers), Luke MacFarlane (Bros), Corteon Moore (“From”), Chloe Avakian (“Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy”), and Carson MacCormac (Clown in a Cornfield) star.
December 12 is a pivotal day in the book — that’s when the zombie apocalypse begins — so what better time to get a taste of the story? Read the except below.
Early-morning light streams through the window over the sink. Everything it touches turns gold. Everything looks gold, but it all feels so gray. I sit at the table across from him, in front of my plate. A pattern of robins circles the charred bread, all in flight.
“Anyone asks you where you were,” he says, “what do you say?”
“I had the flu.”
That’s what kept me home so long.
The flu that’s been going around.
“Let me get a look at your face.”
I turn toward him, eyes down. Not good enough. In one swift motion, he reaches across the table, and I flinch before I can stop myself. He exhales impatiently and takes my chin roughly in hand.
Mornings like this, I remember that sleepover at Grace Casper’s house. Sophomore year. I’d never been to one before, but we’d partnered for a science project, and for some reason she still liked me enough by the end of it to ask. The invitation was startling—the warmth of her voice, how warm it left me. My heart answered before my head. Yes. Yes to giggling through the night, to showing me how to apply eyeliner, to watching B movies, to falling asleep. Yes to waking up with her, to scampering downstairs in our pj’s to eat.
Yes, no matter the cost.
The television blared the news while her dad made pancakes and her mom cut fresh fruit. Her twin brother, Trace, called us ugly little freaks, then winked at me before turning the radio on over the TV. I was too overwhelmed to eat and no one got mad at me for it. Grace said she could tell it was different at my place and asked me what it was like. I lied to her. I said it was mostly the same.
What it’s like: My father’s face buried in the newspaper. My mother buried six feet underground. My sister, Lily, gone. And breakfast—well. I forgot the margarine, left it on the counter next to the fridge. I want it badly, but once I’m at the table, I’m not allowed to move until my plate is clean. I glance at Lily’s empty seat, where she’d watch each morning’s scene, her gaze shifting uneasily from Dad to me. Every so often, she’d touch her foot to mine, reminding me to breathe.
Breathe, Sloane.
“Eat, Sloane.”
But how can I do either when my throat is closed. I pick at a snag in my fingernail and peel it sideways, hoping to open my airways with the distraction of new pain. Blood prickles at the corner of my thumb. It doesn’t work. Dad sets the paper down, his mouth a thin line, and I still can’t swallow, so I try praying instead. I pray for anything to happen so I don’t have to eat this toast. I wasn’t raised to believe in God, but Lily is gone and I’m all that’s left and I never ask for anything so—
“HELP! Help me, please! Oh my God, help me—”
It stops as suddenly as it started.
“What—”
He nods sharply at my plate. “Eat.”
“But—”
“What did I just say?”
He rests his palms on the table and rises from his seat, shoulders squared as he exits the room. I listen for a moment but there’s nothing else. If the emergency outside has passed, that still leaves this one: I pick up the toast. It crumbles in my fingers, turns to black ash.
Eat.
I bring it to my lips. It turns my stomach and I gag. I hurry across the room to dump it in the garbage, covering the waste with a crumpled napkin. I dust my hands quickly, sit back in my chair.
I shouldn’t have done that.
If he finds out, his face will purple. His lips will turn white. He’ll say, We have to talk about this. But we won’t. Talk, that is. Mornings like these, I need Lily, but all that’s left of her is the note she slipped under my bedroom door six months ago.
I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore.
My ears prick up. A new sound.
Sirens.
Sirens closing in on our street.
“Sloane!”
Dad charges in, chest heaving, eyes wide and wild. My pulse spikes. His fingers curl into fists.
“Dad, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t eat—”
“Shut up.” He grabs my arm. “Get up. Get up. We have to go.”
And then I see the blood.
“Sloane, move! We have to go. We have to—”
There’s so much blood. His white shirt glistens with it, its cold copper scent covering his cologne. Whose blood? Is it mine? It’s not mine, is it? I look down at myself to be sure.
His grip on my arm tightens. “Listen to me—”
I twist away, darting for the front door. I grab the knob and wrench it inward, but it won’t give. Locked. He locked us in. He closes in as my shaking hands fight the chain release—
I stumble into the street. Smoke billows from a house down the road. Ms. Yee’s place. Fire. A police car is parked crossways on her lawn, its lights flashing. A cacophony of alarms and sirens are going off, near and far. A loud crack. Another scream. A group of people rush past, directionless, their movements jerky and uncontrolled. One of them falls, a man. The others surround him, so desperate to help him back to his feet, I can’t tell where he stops and they begin. A car careens past, takes out our mailbox and keeps going. A woman staggers awkwardly across our lawn. She’s covered in red, half hunched over, her arms out.
Is she the one who needed help?
“Hey,” I call. “Are you okay?”
She turns at the same time Dad yanks me inside, throwing me into the foyer. I hit the wall as he slams the door shut and I glimpse the woman’s crimson-stained mouth just before she collides against it and her eyes—
Something’s wrong with her eyes.
“No,” I beg as Dad approaches. “No, no—” He drags me down the hall and I trip, landing hard on my knees. He whirls around and I cover my face, but he hoists me to my feet.
An awful sound explodes from somewhere inside.
The picture window shattering into a thousand pieces.
He lets me go. “Get in the rec room, Sloane, and don’t move!”
Get in the rec room. Move. Don’t move. Move. I crawl after him until I see the living room carpet glittering with glass. The woman writhes through our window, oblivious to the shards digging into her legs and hands. She streaks blood on the white sill and, as soon as she’s through, steadies herself on our pale yellow couch, leaving an angry red handprint in her wake.
Black veins slither up her neck.
Her eyes are white.
There’s nothing in them.
She lunges for my father.
Because she’s small, she’s nothing, it’s easy for him to overpower her. He pins her to the floor by the neck with one hand as the other gropes for something to defend himself with. She gnashes her teeth and claws at his arms so hard she breaks skin. His blood makes her feral. She twists her head toward it, jaw snapping. My father finds a large piece of broken glass and thrusts it into her.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The woman doesn’t realize she’s supposed to be dying. It’s like she’s becoming more alive, stronger each time the glass is forced into her. She fights to free herself from my father’s waning grip and he stabs erratically until finally, desperately, he drives the glass deep into her left eye.
She stops moving.
He straightens, straddling her, and he’s calm, the way he gets calm, after. Calm like he knew this was coming—that the way the morning started, it was only ever going to end like this, drenched in someone else’s life.
“Sloane.”
I run.
“SLOANE—”
I run for the chaos just in time to see two cars meet in the middle of the street, but not in time to get between them. The raw crunch of metal sends me reeling and puts everything on pause for one brief moment. I edge around the wreckage, trying to focus on something that makes sense. This: our neighbor, Mr. Jenkins, spread eagle on his lawn, his legs and arms twitching, his head jerking side to side. Mrs. Jenkins kneels over him, ripping his shirt open. Heart attack. Mr. Jenkins has a bad heart. She’s giving him CPR.
Except that’s not what it is at all.
Mrs. Jenkins’s fingers have torn past the material of her husband’s shirt.
Now they are tearing into his chest.
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