The Give Yourself Goosebumps book where you join a boarding school.
You assume the role of a new student in an exclusive boarding school in Nevada, the "Ranewash Academy", which is reputed to be the best boarding school in the country. But right on your first day, you immediately realize something's amiss; the long-time students and their thousand-yard stares, the student body's motto of "Work, don't play!", the Detention Rules which makes the school seem like a covert military outpost... and eventually you managed to steal a monocle, which allows you to uncover Ranewash's dark, sinister secrets.
Zombie School provides examples of:
- Angry Guard Dog: The exterior of Ranewash is guarded by angry canines to prevent students from escaping, and in the first storyline you'll have to avoid them regularly.
- Boarding School of Horrors: The story of the book is that you're sent to an elite boarding school that turns out to be one of these when you discover that all your fellow students are zombies. The book is organized accordingly: you pick from a list of classes that you have to survive, and certain choices earn you "demerits" that will lead you to a bad ending in detention.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: What the Ranewash School is attempting to inflict on its students, including you, and it goes without saying more than one bad ending have you becoming their brainwashed slave forever.
- Covers Always Lie: At no point in the book do you — or any other characters, for that matter — get to enter the school's cafeteria, despite what the cover shows (a dead-eyed zombie kid in a cafeteria holding a food tray).
- Darker and Edgier: The book's writing style and many of its bad endings, which crosses with Bloodier and Gorier, often on par with Trapped in the Circus of Fear (a book that is already known to be excessively gory for a kid's book). What takes the cake is probably the bad ending where the school decide to harvest your organs and leave you for dead. You know, a kid's storybook!
- Detention Episode: Getting too many demerit points in Ranewash, and it's off to detention you go. Unfortunately that's also a one-way ticket to many of the book's bad endings, since the detention wing is where the teachers will trap you and put you under brainwashing.
- Empty Eyes: This is the default expression of the students in Ranewash School, having fallen under mind control and losing any remaining bits of their sentience. And yes, it can happen to you too, should you end up under their manipulation.
- Esoteric Happy Ending: Invoked / In-Universe example. One of the book's many endings have you being brainwashed, but in your delusional state you decide that you like being brainwashed after all, and so the book states that particular ending to be "The Happiest End of All".
- Imposter Forgot One Detail: Averted in one bad ending. You managed to summon for help, leading to a police officer arriving at Ranewash and picking you up, but then you realize the officer is wearing a ring with the Ranewash emblem on it. You still get arrested by the officer anyway, who locks you up to prevent you from spilling the truth about the school.
- Inventory Management Puzzle: This book has a scavenger hunt that works similarly, though not quite as good as the one in Shop Till You Drop... Dead!.
- "Kick Me" Prank: In one section, your teacher writes "HIT ME, KICK ME, SHOVE ME" on your forehead because she caught you trying to de-program your fellow students. Unfortunately for you, it's not just a prank; the zombies can't disobey an order, so they beat you to death.
- La Résistance: A student equivalent at least, but in the school there are a group of students who call themselves the "Runaways", who had escaped brainwashing and is secretly opposing the school. Both storylines have scenarios where you end up joining them.
- Luck-Based Mission: You pick from a list of classes you have to survive without getting too many "demerits" and being sent to an automatic bad ending in detention. Several important choices depend on factors like whether you can remember the last time you fell over in a gym class at school, or whether you are dressed correctly for the class you're supposed to be taking.
- Morton's Fork:
- You have been sent to detention and brainwashed into a zombie. The teacher then sends you back to class because your punishment is to spy on other students and report them if they start to think for themselves. You overhear some kids talking about how weird the school is, and have to decide whether or not you'll try to fight the mind control. If you do, you let them escape, but it is implied your head will explode because you weren't supposed to be able to do this. If you don't, you turn them in. They are taken away to be brainwashed just like you, and the book insults you for being a snitch.
- If you go with the Book's "B" storyline (requiring you to pick from a list of classes which you have to survive), pretty much all choices turn out to be this. They will either lead to a bad ending (where you usually get killed), or earning a bunch of "Demerits" which invariably push you towards doom in the Detention Room.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The "zombies" in this school aren't undead, per se; they're human children who are stripped of their will to disobey the school.
- Punny Name: The titular school is the Ranewash School in Nevada... which sounds like "Brain wash". Guess what kind of evil deeds they're pulling on the students?
- Shout-Out: The plot is kicked off by the protagonist finding a monocle that lets them see subliminal messages and shows other students as non-human.
- Would Hurt a Child: The teachers in Ranewash have NO qualms eliminating any kids who found out the truth about their academy (that means you). Including siccing guard dogs to rip children apart, harvesting their innards, or in one bad ending, turning on an electrified fence which you're climbing on and gleefully watching you fry.
- Zombie Apocalypse: Actually averted, since the "zombies" referenced in the title are living people who have just been brainwashed.
