It's basically sunrise when Eliza is woken by the familiar pop…pop…pop of pebbles hitting the chipped and cracked glass of her bedroom window.
She groans as she pulls herself out of bed, rubbing her eyes and crossing the room to open the window. A rock sails over her head as she opens it and she flinches backwards, only to hear a, "Sorry!" echo from the street below in an all-too-familiar (yet rarely heard at sunrise) voice.
"Zed?" she calls back and cautiously returns to the window. Sure enough, there he is in her garden, with a handful of rocks and a cheery grin on his face. She leans on the windowsill and yawns pointedly. "What are you doing?"
"What are you doing?" he fires back, and she hopes he doesn't wake up her mum. "Hurry up! We gotta go sign up!"
"What?" Eliza asks in confusion. "Sign up for what, zombie containment? Curfew isn't even over yet, get out of the garden and-"
"Curfew ended ten minutes ago!" Zed informs her, tossing and catching a pebble in one hand. "Are you coming? We've gotta go now, or-"
"Where are you going?" she asks for the third time, hoping that one of these days he'll just answer the question.
"To sign up for human school!" he calls and grins at her like he hasn't just said something completely mad. Eliza frowns at him.
"Human school?" she asks.
"Yeah!" His smile drops. "Didn't you hear the announcement, last night?"
There's a faint shout from somewhere across the street, distant but angry. Zed freezes and glances behind him, suddenly realising just how loud he's being. "I'm coming down!" Eliza tells him, if only to save him from being killed by the neighbours, and waits for him to give her a thumbs up before she turns away to get dressed.
Getting ready to go out when you're a zombie only takes five minutes, a fact she is grateful for on days like this – just pick a pair of coveralls that look like they've been washed recently, pull your curls into something resembling a ponytail, and you're ready to go – no such thing as makeup or a filling breakfast (the only thing they ever seem to deliver from Seabrook recently is cauliflower, and it's not…appetising in any way). Eliza does it all even faster than usual, checks her Z-band is still working normally, and then sneaks down the stairs and out the door, snatching up her backpack and laptop along the way.
Zed's still in her front yard, kicking his stupid football straight up in the air while he waits for her. He won't tell her where he got it from, how a football in pristine condition ends up in Zombietown, and how Zed Necrodopoulis of all people ends up with it. She wonders sometimes if he stole it from Seabrook, despite curfew and the anti-monster laws and everything anyone had ever told him about committing crimes where humans could see you. Zombies are technically allowed in Seabrook these days, but no one actually goes unless they have a job over there, and Zed's dad didn't even want him near the wall, let alone on the other side of it.
"What's this about human school?" she asks as she clomps down the stairs, and he catches his ball and whips round to beam at her.
"You didn't hear?" he asks again. She crosses her arms and shakes her head like she's annoyed at him; and she is, because why would she ask if she already knew. "They're letting zombies go to Seabrook High."
"They're what?" Eliza says and drops the act, too busy staring at him in disbelief.
"Right?" he enthuses. "We're gonna go to real school, Eliza!"
"Why would they let zombies go to school in Seabrook? They all hate us."
"Because our school burnt down, remember?"
"Well, yeah, I remember," Eliza grumbles. "I was in the building with you. We saw that kid running away."
It's a hard thing to forget, the school burning down. The heat of the blaze, the roar as it burst through the roof, the smoke in the air filling up their lungs as the whole of Zombietown screamed and stampeded for the walls, begging to be let out. She can still remember smelling the first whiff of the smoke as it drifted down into the basement, and the crushing force of their whole class rushing for the door at once.
She can't remember anything past that, the escape from the building or Bonzo disappearing into the streets, not until they were standing outside, far away down the street and watching the flame spiral into the air. The fear had just engulfed her during that desperate scramble to escape, born from something hiding deep inside her, a fear so strong even a Z-band couldn't tamp it down-
Zed grabs her hand, just like he had as the class had risen to their feet, and a shiver shoots down Eliza's spine.
"I thought we were having another month off," she says, and there's an edge to her voice to cover up the way it shakes in second-hand terror.
"Well, yeah, but now we can go to Seabrook instead," Zed replies, and tows her off down the street. "Bonzo too, but he's doing some art thing today, I don't know."
"Why, so they can show us how nice it is on the other side and then send us back to the basement when they find one not owned by rats?"
"Come on Eliza, I thought you'd be excited about this," Zed pleads. "We get to go to Seabrook. Isn't that what your revolution is all about? Zombie rights and equality?"
"Getting to go to school over there because someone burnt ours down isn't acceptance, Zed," she points out. "It's just torture. Do you know how much stuff I am going to get done without having to go to school? Now I have to go and sit around with a bunch of dumb humans that hate me – us?"
Zed tosses his football and pulls a face, like there's something he's not telling her. She grabs his shoulder, pulling him to a halt in the middle of the deserted street. "Zed," she says, in her best I-won't-take-any-bullshit voice (she learnt it from her mum, the hardest person in the world to lie to).
"It's voluntary," he admits to her, all in one breath. "We only have to go to Seabrook if we want to." Eliza stares at him, and his face drops. "Please come with me, Eliza."
"You want me to volunteer to go to school with you?" she questions incredulously.
"It'll be fun!" he insists. "We can go to classes, and eat food that isn't vegetables, in a real cafeteria, and I can play football, and-"
"What's the point of going to human classes if the only job we're ever going to get is taking out the trash, or mopping the floor?" Eliza scoffs. "There's nothing they teach at that school that we need to learn. Besides, I'm busy working on my protest. You know that."
"If your protests work, you'll have to go to school to get a job anyway," Zed points out, leaning towards her so that he can be as obnoxious as possible, right up in her face. "You can always drop out if it's horrible. It's not like we have to be there."
"Ugh," Eliza grumbles and grits her teeth. "I hate it when you're right." He laughs at her.
"I'm always right," he claims, and then turns as someone shouts his name from somewhere to his left.
"You are definitely not always right," Eliza tells him, but he's busy calling back a greeting and then throwing the football to the other boy, darting off ahead of her as he prepares to catch it in return. Eliza rolls her eyes.
The other boy is Izaiah, she sees now; another kid from their borough, another boy who's been roaming around and causing nothing but trouble since they lost their school and gained way too much free time. He's a head shorter than Zed, and a couple years shorter too, but he makes up for it in malicious intent and an uncanny ability to slip through the Zombie Patrol's fingers.
He's not really one of Zed's friends, and he's most certainly not Eliza's, floating in and out of the crew as he pleases, but they've found themselves wound up in more than one of his schemes. Zed in particular, because if there's one thing you can rely on, it's that Zed will make bad decisions. Eliza knows for sure he's caught at least one beating from the Patrol because he's snuck out after curfew with this boy.
A whole lot of trouble, that's what she sees in Izaiah. And Eliza's all for trouble – hell, her life's goal is to lead half of Zombietown through those gates and refuse to leave until they are left open for good, but Izaiah's trouble only makes things worse for their kind, not better. And he doesn't care for his friends like she does, not if helping them means risking his own freedom.
"Excited yet?" Zed asks, jogging back to her. Izaiah splits with a wave, turning off deeper into Zombietown. They are headed for the main gate – as far as normal humans will venture into the town, probably. Zed doesn't try to convince Izaiah to come to school, at least. Eliza can imagine how well that would go down.
"I refuse to be excited about school," she tells him stubbornly as the gates appear in their line of sight. They are partially opened and guarded by two members of Zombie Patrol, welcoming only to citizens who happen to have a job to go to on the other side. To the right of the gates is a man with a table, looking at his surroundings with his lip curled in disgust. His hair is combed back and his shoes are freshly shined. It is his first time in Zombietown, Eliza thinks, and wonders if anyone has shown him the muddy streets of the other end of town yet.
"Well I'm excited," Zed proclaims, and then his voice drops to a more conspiratorial tone. "We're having a mash tonight, by the way. Even the Northside kids are coming."
"I thought Northside were still scared of their houses, after the fire," Eliza comments, because trying to tell him that hosting a Zombie Mash straight after the school announcement has stirred the pot in Seabrook is a bad idea is useless. Zed does what Zed wants, and even the threat of containment won't slow him down.
"Well, yeah, but who can resist a Mash?" he asks, eyebrows raised and arms spread wide. "When the Mash calls, we must go, Eliza."
She gives him a look, the one that says she's not impressed with his current performance, and then darts forward and slaps the football out of his hand, laughing as he almost trips over his own feet in pursuit of his most prized possession.
"Eliza," he exclaims once it is back in his grasp and spins on his heel. "Are you really going to try and tell me, right now, that you will not mash with me? You're going to make me go alone?"
"You've gone alone before," Eliza points out. "What's the big deal?"
"You invented the Mash! You can't just not come!"
"It's your Mash!" She points a finger at him, poking him hard in the chest. "I don't have to come to every single one. Baby's all grown up now, can do what she wants."
"Eliza!" Zed says again, and lays a hand over his heart dramatically, like she's physically wounded him. She's ready to bite back, but they're at the gates now, coming within earshot of Zombie Patrol, and you don't even whisper about Zombie Mash when the Patrol are near. That's rule number one; that's why the Mash is still running, three years strong.
Zed takes the lead undaunted by the humans who bar the gate and frown at them, tensed for any kind of untoward behavior. Any sign of interest in brains, but Eliza's never even felt a little of the supposedly insatiable hunger for blood and flesh. She tries to ignore the Patrol members, and focuses instead on the man with the table, watching with muted joy as he flinches away from Zed's direct approach.
Zed doesn't even notice that he's come far closer than the man is comfortable with. "Hi!" he says brightly. "We're here to sign up for school?"
"R-right," the man says and fumbles a clipboard into Zed's hands, snatching his own away before their fingers get anywhere near each other. He offers another one to Eliza. "Fill these out please. Your parents aren't-?"
"They're not coming," Eliza informs him and takes the clipboard. Her eyes trail down the page attached to it, to the required parent's signature at the bottom. She stares at it for a moment, and wonders if there are any zombies who even have signatures, and if the humans thought about that before they came. The whole form is in English too, when it should really be in Zombietongue – but no, she's getting ahead of herself. It's surprising that humans would even care if they have parents.
"It won't be a problem," she assures the man. He shrugs and retreats. Zed is already scribbling away happily. Eliza fills hers in slower, still not sure she even wants to go through with this.
It's an easy form to fill out. There's not much that humans want to know about individual zombies (the more they know, the harder it is to pretend zombies aren't people). They don't even ask about allergies. At the bottom, Eliza pauses and looks up at the man – who is purposefully looking in every direction except at them – and then shrugs and scribbles down a rough estimation of her mother's name. "Eliza," Zed hisses over her shoulder, and holds his out. She rolls her eyes and forges a signature for him too, turning Necrodopoulis into a fancy swirl because she can't be bothered trying to spell it in English.
"Welcome to Seabrook High," the man says when they return the forms, and doesn't say a word about the signatures. "Your classes start in one week. I have to remind you that uniforms and Z-bands must be visible at all times outside of Zombietown, and you are…encouraged not to leave the school grounds."
"Because you can't not know we're zombies for five seconds, we know," Eliza finishes dryly.
"Hey!" one of the patrol officers at the gate snaps, pointing a finger at them. "Don't get smart, zombie. It's a long way from here to the school, and if your application gets lost along the way…"
Zed blanches and grabs Eliza's shoulders, steering her away. "Thankyou!" he calls over his shoulder as they leave, talking to no one in particular.
"Why do you want to go to school with humans?" Eliza asks when they are safely out of earshot, shaking him off irritably. "Humans suck."
"They're not that bad," Zed argues, throwing his football to himself. "You don't even know any humans."
"Why would I want to? They're all like that." She gestures back towards the Zombie Patrol officer, who is still eyeballing them even from afar. "All they do is make fun of us and ruin our town and use us to do their dirty work."
"They're letting us go to their school!" Zed points out insistently. "They can't all be bad, if they're doing things like that."
"They're treating us like a charity case," Eliza snaps.
"We are a charity case," he declares, unafraid.
She crosses her arms. "Only because they made us one," she grumbles, and then looks pointedly at Zed. "It was humans that burnt our school down, and it's humans that don't give us space to grow our own food, or have our own businesses, or…god, even wear what we want!" She gestures to herself, to the dark brown coveralls she's wearing, the same thing she's worn all her life. "And we just sit here and let them pretend that they're doing us a favour by letting us go to school in their 'perfect' town. How is that fair?"
Zed shrugs noncommittally, having nothing further to add to the conversation, and goes back to tossing and catching his football, humming something familiar under his breath. Eliza walks the rest of the way home in sullen silence, trying to be angry at Zed for never agreeing with her, and for waking her up so early just to voluntarily be threatened and belittled by a couple of clueless humans.
She's not really angry at him, no matter how much she wants to be; there's precious little change in their lives to be excited about, and he is kind of right. A chance to go to school in Seabrook and prove they are just like everyone else, is something to be excited about. Whether or not it will actually make a difference is…doubtful, to Eliza, but she can't deny him the right to try. To experience life on Seabrook's side of the wall.
Seabrook side. Eliza's never been to Seabrook, only seen little glimpses of it on her way past the gate. It's supposed to be a paradise, all neat and shiny and perfectly planned so that everything has its place, a stark contrast to the jumbled and clashing décor of Zombietown. Seabrook has a proper school building, and restaurants where people can eat whatever they want, not just a ration of whatever vegetables were delivered that morning. Their roofs don't leak, they have animals in their houses that aren't rats and spiders, and they can come and go whenever they please, without ever facing the threat of a night in containment for breaking curfew. On the far side of town, their houses stand in rows on the slope of a hill, overlooking Seabrook Bay and the glittering blue of the ocean. Eliza's never seen the ocean. Zed wouldn't have either. Imagine it; born and raised in a seaside town, and you've never even glimpsed more than a bathtub full of water.
Well, that's a lie. The old power plant and the houses around it had all filled up with water once, during a torrential rain storm that hadn't seemed to stop for a week. She had a feeling the ocean would be far more refreshing to wade through than murky flood waters though.
"Want to come over for breakfast?" Zed breaks the silence, and it registers with her that they have reached their street. Eliza has spent the whole walk daydreaming about Seabrook – and boy, Zed would never let her live it down if he knew just what she'd been thinking about all this time. "Pops says he's got something special today."
Eliza hesitates, glancing towards her own house. She should turn him down, leave the food for him and his family, but the thought of her mum trying to make something new out of cauliflower makes his 'surprise' breakfast sound even more tempting than it already does. She knows what it means when Zevon labels his meals a surprise. It means he's gotten his hands on something rare, something they haven't had for a while, or (every now and then) something they've never tasted before.
"Are you sure?" she asks, which seems like a fair compromise between her desire to eat something that isn't cauliflower, and her guilt over eating Zed's food.
"Yeah," Zed assures her. "Dad said I should invite you guys anyway. He thinks there'll be plenty."
"Okay," Eliza agrees and steers away from her own house. "I'll take anything that isn't cauliflower at this point."
Zed huffs a laugh. "There has been a lot of cauliflower recently. Did you see that stand that's opened down the street? It's all cauliflower shaped like brains. That's all they sell."
"It's just offensive," Eliza complains. "Only sending us food that looks like brains? If they're going to lock us in here and force us to eat vegetable, they could at least give us some variety."
"You know what I want to eat?" Zed says, cutting into her building tirade before it can get out of control.
"Brains?" Eliza jokes dryly, and now it is his turn to give her a look. "Just checking," she adds.
"Ha ha," he replies sarcastically. "No. I want a burger. Or like, a steak or something. Steak's the best food in the world."
"How would you know? You've never had steak. Or a burger."
Zed shrugs. "The old guy down the road was talking about it the other day. Then he told me that brains taste like fish, but in a steak kind of way."
Eliza stares at him in disbelief. "You mean the crazy guy on the corner? The one we're not supposed to talk to, ever?"
"…yeah?" Zed admits hesitantly. Eliza snorts in derision.
"I'm so telling Zevon," she informs him, right as they reach his front door. "You're going to be grounded for weeks."
"What? No!" She laughs and opens the door, merciless.
The house is not so quiet as the street, but still maintains that early morning stillness, when the world isn't quite ready to be moving yet. Zed's family are in the kitchen, towards the back of the house, out of sight but within earshot. Zoey can be heart from down the hall, talking to her toy dog, and Zevon is clattering around with some pots and pans somewhere. There's a quiet humming to their left too – Eliza looks, and is surprised to find Bonzo sitting on the couch, fiddling with a bit of old newspaper. There's a stack of origami animals in front of him already – mostly dogs, for Zoey.
"Bonzo!" Eliza says, in surprise just as much as relief. "You've got to help me. Zed's gone mad."
"Mad?" Bonzo asks over the top of Zed's offended hey! and abandons his origami to accompany them to the kitchen.
"Yeah." Eliza nods. "He wants to go to school in Seabrook. With humans."
"I know," Bonzo grunts, and Zed offers him a high five.
"Bonzo was paying attention when they announced it last night," he tells her smugly as the other boy half-heartedly slaps his hand.
Eliza huffs in annoyance. "I was busy last night," she pleads; and yeah, she vaguely remembers her dad calling to her that there was something happening on TV, but she'd been busy with a new hack she's trying for the Z-bands.
"Zombie Mash?" Bonzo asks, which is his way of asking both if that's what she was working on and if she's coming tonight.
"No, something else," she answers, and is trying to decide whether she can let down Bonzo as flippantly as she'd let down Zed when Zoey spots them and stands up on her chair, clinging to the back of it like a monkey.
"Eliza!" she greets them happily as they enter the kitchen, honing in on the newest arrival. "You came for special breakfast!"
"Can't let you and Zed hog all the good stuff," Eliza replies and pokes the girl gently in the side on her way around the table, making her squirm. "Sit down before you fall over."
"Where's my special welcome?" Zed asks as he sits down opposite Eliza, feigning disappointment.
Sitting properly now, Zoey reaches out and pats her brother on the head in sympathy. Zed has to lean down for her to reach, but does so without complaint.
"Are you going to the other school, Zed?" she asks, and his grin slips right back onto his face.
"'Course I am," he says proudly. "Why wouldn't I be?"
Zoey giggles and picks up Xander, clutching him to her chest. "Are you going to play football?"
Zed leans down, so that he can look his sister right in the eye. "I am going to be the best football player Seabrook ever had," he tells her, straightfaced. Zoey beams.
"Wait," Eliza puts in, and Zed straightens. "You think you're going to play football?"
"I don't think, I know," Zed replies. "I told you that before. Did you listen to me at all?"
"Zedika zon gry," Bonzo puts in with a wicked grin.
Zed pulls a face. "I can be quiet," he claims. "Maybe you should listen to me more often."
Eliza shakes her head. "Zon," Bonzo agrees with her, much to Zed's disgust.
"Breakfast is ready!" Zevon calls, totally unaware of the current topic of conversation (or, if he's been listening, tactfully choosing to keep out of it). He's got something in a pan, still sizzling a bit – rings of something yellow and juicy. Pineapple, Eliza realises as he sets it down on a mat in the middle of the table. The kind that comes from a can, cut into doughnuts and sealed up in preserves. She can't help but stare at it for a few seconds, speechless. She hasn't seen pineapple in months, maybe even years, and even then, it has never been a regular in the Zombietown rations rotation.
Zevon comes back again with a bot of green beans, boiled just enough to soften them. Zed is the first to attack the food, piling a good serve first on Zoey's plate and then on his own. Eliza and Bonzo split the rest, assured by Zevon that he has already served himself in the kitchen.
"You don't even know how to play football," Eliza shoots at Zed once they are ready to eat, bringing the conversation back to where it had been before they were interrupted.
"I can play football," Zed replies, in the sort of voice that implies he is offended. "I'm good at football. I taught all the kids at school how to play."
"Yeah? And who taught you how to play? How do you even know human football has the same rules?"
"Zed knows everything about football," Zoey puts in unhelpfully, and then slaps her brother's pro-offered hand, giggling.
"Eliza," Zed says, and leans forward across the table to look her in the eye. "There's only one way to play football. I'm just going to go out there, I'm going to be awesome, and they're going to put me on the team. Easy!"
Eliza huffs unhappily and shoves a couple of soggy beans in her mouth, chewing in silence. She's not going to agree with him, but there's no point arguing with him, not when he's got that look in his eye, that stubborn will that isn't going to back down. Zed is going to play football with the humans, and nothing they say will change that.
"I want to join the music club," Bonzo says quietly from the seat next to her, and Eliza almost chokes on her beans.
"Not you too!" she sputters in surprise. "Bonzo, you're supposed to be on my side!" Bonzo shrugs and ducks his head. Zed smirks.
"What's a music class?" Zoey asks, without looking up from the beans she's trying to stack into a pyramid.
"It's a group where you go and play music with other people after school," Zed explains over crossed arms, leaning back in his seat like he owns the place. "Like a 'Mash, but boring." Bonzo grunts in complaint, but Zed's in fine form today and doesn't even notice.
"You're too good for them, Bonzo," Eliza tells him and pats his arm. Bonzo studies his beans rather than her face, so she leaves him alone to mull it over.
"You know, there's a computer club too," Zed points out, entirely unhelpful. Eliza glares at him. "What? I'm just saying, you know…they have nice computers in Seabrook…and if they're anything like Z-bands…"
"You are not stealing things from the human's school, Zed Necrodopoulis!" his father's voice calls from the kitchen. Zed tilts his head back towards the kitchen door. "Or doing anything illegal to them!"
"Not what I said, Dad!" Zed calls back, and then grins at Eliza like he does when they're strictly told not to go to Mash after curfew; like they share a secret, like they're conspiring together. She's still annoyed at him, so she throws a bean at him instead of smiling back. He catches it as it flies towards him, unperturbed, and pops it in his mouth, chewing noisily.
He's so smug that it's infuriating, particularly because he's right and now she is kind of interested in the computer club. Not that she wants to learn anything from the humans, having spent several years now building and coding her own machines, but Zed's right about there being nice computers at the school. He's also right that she was planning to strip them for a few parts, if she could find the things she needs (although she wasn't going to say that out loud, and certainly not where any responsible adults would hear her).
"What do you think it'll be like a human school?" Zoey asks in the interim, and then finally decides to eat her beans.
Eliza thinks Zed will have something to say, but it is Bonzo who answers first. "Human-y," he says, and Zoey laughs and pokes him with her fork, a habit she's picked up from Zed (the savage, corrupting sweet little Zoey like that).
"It's going to be awesome," Zed answers next. "Isn't it, Eliza?" His gaze turns pointedly to her, and now Eliza is in a pickle, because she's got Zed across from her trying to win today's award for best smart-ass, who she could blow off without a second thought - but she's also got Zoey and Bonzo to either side, quietly excited about this whole school thing and far too earnest in their excitement for her to ever let down.
And if she's being honest…she's a little bit excited. A little bit optimistic. Though it's by far not a big enough step towards the equality she's spent her whole life sitting around derelict streets waiting for, and she still wants her revolution…it's something. And it's given her friends new life too; maybe Bonzo will learn to come out of his shell, or maybe Zed will put his energy into sport instead of testing the enforcement of curfew and messing around with people he shouldn't be.
They are all waiting. Eliza sighs, and cuts herself a piece of pineapple. "It might be fun," she admits, in as casual a voice as she can manage, and fills her mouth before she can say any more.
A/N: Thankyou for reading! Please leave a review if you liked it, I love hearing from you 3 For more of my stuff or if you just wanna chat, see me on tumblr as swiftly-heart (main) or apocalyvse (writeblr).