Throwing things around. Disrupting class.”
“That was just a big misunderstanding, sir,” I said. “That’s not really what happened.”
“Sure, sure, Zellner,” my mentor said. He had heard this before. But it was the truth! Just because sometimes when I said that it wasn’t completely true, didn’t mean this time it wasn’t!
“Listen, Zellner, it’s time for you to straighten out,” my mentor said seriously, his voice deep and admonishing, yet compassionate. “Just because you look like a teenager doesn’t mean you have to act like one. You know what happens to Wakes who can’t fulfill their full potential.”
Yes, I did.
“Next year you’ll be starting fieldwork,” my mentor continued. “You’ll be training with me and my co-workers. It’s serious business. You can’t be goofing off in the field. That’s how you end up brain dead. Trust me, Zellner, I’ve seen it before. More times than I wish to.”
“I know, I know,” I sighed. My mentor had a way of rubbing things in until you just wanted to eat your brains out or throw yourself out a window.
“I won’t have my apprentice fooling around and causing other Wakes to get hurt or possibly even killed. What would that say about me as a human tracker?”
I didn’t say anything.
My mentor sighed gruffly, putting his hand to his head. “Zellner, when are you going to grow up?” He stared up at me when I offered no reply. “When I was your age I was dedicated to my craft. You zombies nowadays think it’s all fun and games, just because you have a little electricity and a few flesh nuggets to nibble on. When I first started my education we didn’t have any of that. We survived on one morsel a day – and that’s if you were lucky! You kids today are spoiled.” He shook his head. “You have to be careful, Zellner. Look at this,” he said, jamming his finger into the newspaper that now rested on the table before him. “Two Wake anarchists were arrested today. Human sympathizers! As if we don’t have enough to worry about keeping ourselves undead, we’re supposed to worry about how well we treat our human stock on top of it? These aren’t the time for human sympathies, Zellner. You remember what I told you about the Mutiny?”
I nodded blankly. It was one of his favorite stories.
“I was there. I was still in school, but I was there,” he continued. “Human sympathizers, objecting to how we treated the human stock. Why? Because they have intelligence? So do we, don’t we? Aren’t we as deserving of life as they are, even in death?” He looked up at me expectantly.
“More deserving,” I answered.
He nodded. It was the answer he had offered me many times when I had nonchalantly shrugged away my own. “Right. Right, exactly. Because we are superior. Because they failed. It’s our turn now, Zellner. Every species in the world will have its turn. Before humans it was the dinosaurs. And now it’s zombies. But this,” he said, pointing to the paper, “this won’t do. We have a very delicate system of government set up here in Revenant. It’s not perfect, but Mayor Hillard does what he can to maintain it so that we can survive. We can’t have anarchy, Zellner. The Mutiny almost destroyed our town. When those humans escaped, not only did we lose our main resource, the only thing on this earth that allows us to hold onto life day in and day out, but it began a civil war. So many Wakes died. It nearly destroyed the town. And we can’t have that again. Anarchists cannot be tolerated. The worst thing any of us can do is to cause the death of a fellow Wake. That kind of carelessness and disrespect for this town is the exact thing that sent it into civil war the first time. And no apprentice of mine is going to be a part of that. I’ll see you transferred to the Stockade before I allow that. That’s why it’s of immense importance that you take responsibility for your role in this town, and begin to take it seriously. The zombies who don’t meet the same fate.” He pointed again to the newspaper. “Anarchy cannot be tolerated Zellner. There is too much at stake for that. Do you understand?”
I nodded gravely. My mentor had a way of vocalizing a speech in such a powerfully intimidating and stately way that you couldn’t help but agree with him.
“Why don’t you go upstairs and study the Guide I gave you,” he said.
The Guide to Tracking Humans. If my mentor had a Bible, that would be it. “I’ve already read it,” I replied thoughtlessly.
“Read it again,” my mentor returned sharply. “You should know it front to back if you’re going to be a human tracker.”
“I was going to go study at Trevor’s tonight,” I said carefully. “Can I?”
“No,” my mentor said sternly. “You’re staying in tonight. I want your face glued to the inside of that book. Understood?”
“But –”
“No but’s. Go on, Zellner. No more backtalk.”
I sighed. I rose from the couch and went upstairs, sulkily dragging my feet. My mentor never gave me a break. He had such high expectations of me, and I didn’t even really care that much about tracking humans. I mean, sure, it got you outside of the town’s borders, but there were so many rules and conditions. It took all the fun out of hunting humans. Sometimes I wondered why I had been selected in pre-education to be a human tracker. I wasn’t sure I was cut out for it. But if I wasn’t, then I would end up in the Stockade. I could never let that happen. Human tracking is what I had to do, even if it wasn’t what I wanted to do.
Some human tracker’s apprentice I was.
8. ZOMBIE NIGHTS
I waited until my mentor left, two hours before curfew. In Revenant, all zombies still being schooled had to be indoors by 10:00. Apparently you couldn’t be trusted to roam the streets at night until after you’d graduated. Most zombie kids snuck out after curfew anyway. There was no way to tell if you were still in school or not by just looking at you. What you like doesn’t matter. My English teacher looks fourteen, but she has been a zombie for twenty years, and she’s very smart, a postgraduate. How old you look means nothing in zombie terms. The only way you could tell is if you had an Advanced license, which was issued after graduation. Fake licenses weren’t that hard to come by though, especially in zone C.
My mentor had left at 8:00 to get ready for his nightly patrol with the other human trackers. Patrols were done in shifts every night after curfew, but being the community leader, my mentor made a point to be present for all of them each night. It made him keep weird hours, but since zombies don’t need to sleep, it didn’t really matter.
Sleep is recommended by the way. It helps lower brain activity and that reduces the amount of brain morsels we need to eat to keep us going. That’s another reason for school zombies to have curfew. We are still learning to curb our cravings, and sleep helps reduce our hunger. Plus, we use our brains a lot since we’re still in school. Mindless, menial tasks require less brains. The more you think, the more brains you need, so zombies in school tend to need a lot.
My mentor sleeps more during the day and wakes up in the afternoon. It’s probably hard keeping those kind of hours, but I think he likes it. Some zombies like working after dark.
I crept downstairs, sneaking a piece of brain preserve from the chem dish to snack on before I left. To keep the brain pieces fresh, they have to be kept in a chemical mixture. This suspends the brain function so that the tissue and synapses don’t die. As long as you douse a brain in the chemical preserve directly following death, it will keep its effectiveness forever. If the brain is already dead or infected it doesn’t work, though. Infected brains have to be eaten before death, while the human is still alive for them to have any effect. Zombies’ brains are technically dead, but something about the zombie virus causes them to keep working as if they weren’t. But that’s why zombie brains, when eaten, don’t do anything to keep Wakes going, since they’re still effectively dead.
I peered out my front door. My mentor had taught me to always take inventory at night before you went somewhere. No Stiffs. Definitely no humans. It was only very rarely that a Stiff stumbled into Revenant, and the patrollers who policed the town usually caught the
m quickly enough, and humans never came, unless they had a death wish or were so completely lost they didn’t realize this was zombie territory. Still, it was better to be safe than sorry. My mentor was always saying that.
I hurried down my driveway and got on my skateboard and rode down the street. Trevor’s mentor’s place was in the opposite direction of the main town in zone A. They lived on the outskirts of the zone, near the boundary. It was so quiet there you could hear a Stiff grunt from miles away. Sometimes I really liked it, and other times the quiet really got to me. I spent a lot of time at Trevor’s. It was a good escape from my mentor’s vigilant eye. Even when he wasn’t around it was like he was watching me. Somehow, having only one eye made him even more watchful.
It took me twenty minutes to ride to Trevor’s. It helped take my mind off things. I slowed to a stop at his driveway, a dirt path that reached way up a grassy hill to a little farmhouse at the top. It was an old white building with a gray tiled roof. It was in pretty good condition, though. The humans who had lived there must have abandoned it, because it didn’t seem like Stiffs had ever attacked it.
I ran across the grass field, swatting away the flies as I went. Revenant had major problems with flies. I guess it’s all those dead bodies walking around.