before we idled into zone C and the bus emptied out. Trevor and I were the last Wakes off the bus. Nobody got on after us. Everyone was going to the action.
The town was alive. The lamps dotting the streets were glowing with electricity. Shops were open, the windows glowing with incandescent light. Wakes littered the streets and great buildings towered over them, stretching into the distance. Zone C hadn’t been a major city or anything when humans inhabited it, but it had been the major commerce district for the area. The mall was the biggest building, with two floors and a basement. Trevor and I would check it out, scour the stores inside for new clothes and occasionally a snack. They didn’t sell brains – they were too costly and were only provided by the government directly. The rations were delivered weekly, and payment for them was automatically deducted from every mentor’s salary. Brains were too essential to survival to sell casually at the mall, but they did serve some decent meals like fried human meat, cooked heart, or kidney steak – things like that. The food was still pretty costly, and it wasn’t really necessary, but when your brain was aching from not enough brains, especially after getting fried at the Hub, it would help you feel a little better at least. For the most part, though, it wasn’t worth the price considering how little it did to stem a Wake’s cravings. It was more comfort food.
Tonight neither of us felt like going to the mall. Trevor was anxious to get to the Hub. I was mostly listless, not in the mood for much of anything. I followed him without any argument. There was a line to get in, stretching out onto the pavement.
“We’re gonna be here all night,” I complained. The Hub was always packed on Friday night. All the kids from every zone came here.
“Relax,” Trevor said. “It won’t be that long.”
The line moved slowly. It was a little under an hour before we reached the front doors of the Hub. The bouncer at the front carded us. We flashed our fake IDs, which looked nothing like us. We had bought them from a Wake at school last year. We were permitted to enter.
The blaring sound of old hum rock and metal songs reverberated throughout the building’s interior. Lights flashed all around us and Wakes were huddled across the floor and against the counter ahead of us and to the right. It was hot and smelly and voices climbed upon voices, mixing with the music. Most of the zombies inside were unlicensed Wakes who had died when they were in their teens. There were very few adult Wakes. The community had to realize that the Hub was used mostly by young Wakes who hadn’t graduated yet for partying. I guessed they overlooked it, since there was so little else to do in Revenant.
We shuffled through the undead bodies toward the main bar. The server nearest to us eyed us leerily. “What’ll you have?” he asked after a few moments of silence.
“What have you got?” Trevor asked. He always asked, as if the selection would change, but the answer was always the same.
“10 creds gets you a spark, 50 a burst, and 100 a full jolt,” the server stated blandly.
Trevor slipped his hand into his jeans pocket and pulled out a star shaped piece of plastic, slapping it onto the tabletop. Creds were made to look like shapes, each shape representing a different denomination – a star was 100 creds, an octagon was 50 creds, a pentagon was 20, a square was 10, a triangle was 5, and a circle was 1. The more edges a cred had, the more it was worth.
“I’ll take a full jolt,” Trevor said with a smirk.
“Hey,” I said, grabbing his sleeve, “are you brain dead? That’s your entire allowance for the whole month!” Trevor’s mentor was pretty stingy with the allowance she gave him, but mine was even stingier. Still, we were lucky to have mentors who could afford to give their apprentice an allowance at all. Peggy, for instance, wasn’t given any allowance, and practically had to beg her mentor for any commodity she desired.
“YODO,” he returned with a wink. Then he gestured the server with his finger to proceed.
I shook my head. Trevor definitely wasn’t the most responsible Wake. Neither was I, to be honest, but a half hour of oblivion hardly seemed worth my entire month’s allowance. The server reached behind the counter and withdrew a long metal prod with two electrodes at the end. He brushed the trigger, sending two quick squiggles of electricity between the conductors. “Ready?” the server asked, lifting the prod toward Trevor’s head.
“You kidding? I died ready!” Trevor said.
The server snapped back the trigger and the electricity jolted through Trevor’s brain. His eyes rolled to the top of the head, and his head flung back. His body trembled as the server applied the electricity for a full ten seconds before pulling away. Trevor gradually stopped shaking, but his head still hung limp behind him. After a few moments it rolled forward and his mouth fell open, his eyes wide and dilated. He gurgled, attempting to move forward toward the bar. He was dead to the world now.
“Get outta here,” the server said, shoving Trevor back and spinning him around. Trevor began to mindlessly amble toward the middle of the floor, moving with deliberate, wobbly steps. He was like a Stiff with brain damage. I watched him for a few minutes before the server said: “What about you?”
I looked to him as he pocketed the creds Trevor had given him. “No thanks,” I said. “I’m not in the mood.”
“I thought all you kids liked to get fried.”
I shrugged. “It’s just an escape.”
“When you’ve been a Wake as long as I have, you realize that sometimes that’s just what you need,” he replied.
I looked to the door of the Hub. “Yeah,” I said.
I turned from the server and moved through the bodies of zombies, following Trevor. He was way out of it. He would bump into some Wake who would shove him aside and laugh when he realized he was fried. A lot of the zombies in the Hub got a real kick out of watching fried Wakes stumble around disoriented. Getting fried triggered their cravings, but it also made them weak and confused. Trevor would drop open his mouth and growl, moving forward to bite into a Wake’s head, and the Wake would shove him aside with ease and he would stumble backward, nearly falling. He moved with stiff, wobbly steps. He didn’t have the strength to close his mouth, let alone bite anyone.
I had gotten fried a couple times, but I never remembered it. It seemed worthless, and the only memories I had came from Trevor or other Wakes that had been sober at the time. Doing mindless things for the sake of doing mindless things just to laugh at the mindlessness of it the next day got old real fast. I hoped there was more to zombie life than that. So far I hadn’t found it. Still, there was always hope that things would get better. We were still building something in Revenant, and I believed that if we kept working, eventually we would have all the resources we needed. The danger of roaming Stiffs would be gone, and we would have so many human captives that we would have more brains than we knew what to do with. That day was going to come in time. I believed that. I had to, because I didn’t want to believe that zombie life would always be a constant struggle to survive.
Trevor, on the other hand, seemed to thoroughly enjoy his time being fried. He said he never remembered much, but that just being shut down for a while relieved some of the anxiety and stress of everyday zombie life. I guess I could understand that. But I didn’t like it. The last thing I wanted was to become more like a Stiff again. That was a fate almost as bad as absolute death.
Trevor bumped into another fried Wake. He jerked back and turned and growled at him. The other Wake growled back. Cries of excitement rose up and a crowd formed around them. Everyone who came to the Hub seemed to love when fried Wakes got into a fight. It was pretty harmless. The Wakes were so disoriented and weak that they could barely do any harm to one another.
The Wake that Trevor had bumped into threw his arms forward weakly, causing Trevor to stumble back. Trevor threw back his head and snarled, then jerked forward to push back. The two became entangled as they weakly tried to push one another away.
“I got 10 creds on the one in the blue shirt!” someone from the crowd cried.
“I’ll take the one in the red!” someone else shouted.
They loved to bet on who would be the last Wake standing. Whichever Wake fell down first was the loser.
I rolled my eyes and turned away as the crowd filled in around them, cutting off my view. I decided to let Trevor have his fun. I returned to the bar and sat at a stool, resting my elbows against the counter and my chin against my closed hands. The music was blaring and colored lights flashed, giving me a headache.
“Hey, what’s up, Zellner?”
I turned to look across from me. It was a girl from one of my classes. She had long black hair, and ghostly white skin. Her face was caked in makeup, making her look creepily like a clown. “Hey, Marissa,” I said unenthusiastically.
“You not into the whole jolting thing?” she asked.
“Not really,” I said with a shrug.
“Yeah, me neither. It’s all kind of boring, right?”
“Totally!” a girl beside her, one of her friend’s, chirped.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“It’s all so immature really. We’re, like, too good for that kind of stuff.”
“Totally!”
I scrunched my face uncertainly. “There’s nothing to do in this town,” I said.
“Right?”
“It’s all the same stuff every day, right?” Marissa said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I