It's been four days since the football game that went terribly, horribly wrong. Four days since Zed put his Z-band's software through the virtual garbage disposal, and four days since she looked back at a booing, hateful crowd and spotted her computer in the hands of the Aceys.
Four days. Eliza's still pretty mad about it.
She's had a lot of time to think in those days, sitting here alone in what is basically a prison cell. Plenty of hours to lie there and stew on it, to stare at Zed next door and ruminate on all the things that have led them here. To look over and see how Bonzo's going with the piece of art he's trying to scratch into the wall of his cell with a loose button from his jacket.
Bonzo's holding up alright at least, over there opposite them just calmly doing the same thing he always does. She's fuming, and plotting, but she'll get past it eventually, when she has the time and space to scream at a few people. But Zed…
Despite what the humans might assume, there aren't many zombies in Zombietown that have been offline since the Z-bands were introduced. Full zombies wandering around hunting for brains are rare these days, between the Z-bands and the propensity of the Zombie Patrol to arrest anyone that looked even vaguely threatening. Even an Unstable reading, like the one Zed has been hovering at for months now, doesn't create a problem very often – any good knock to a Z-band can cause it, sure, but an unstable zombie still has most of their cognitive functions, and a second good whack usually jolts the band back to online.
The point being; Eliza had never seen a zombie before this week. She'd seen the uncertain crouch and black veins of Unstable – hell, she'd been there herself a few times, trying to fight off the rush of adrenaline and the distinct, clawing hunger that cramps your stomach the moment the band turns off, craving one thing only. But she'd never seen a real, brains-eating zombie before the football game, before Zed handed their lives over to some stupid cheerleaders.
And now the only zombie she's ever seen is her best friend, the one person she'd never even bothered to imagine like that because he's so zombie in the other way, the alive way. Zed is supposed to be the life of Zombietown, not the death of it.
She'll never forget what he looked like. Looks like. She'd seen it at the pep rally, when he'd just about smashed his Z-band apart on a bleacher and destabilised himself – the black of his veins bulging from his skin, the red of his eyes deepening and intensifying, his fingers curling into claws and his lips struggling to pull back into a snarl. He'd only been a little worse when he went offline for real, only a little more zombie than she'd ever set him at herself. The stark difference had been his eyes; there was fear there still, at the pep rally, the ability to look down and read the flashing screen of the Z-band and know just how close to offline he was. Once the Acey had their way, there was nothing, just a blank stare, fixed on whatever prey he thought was closest.
Eliza lies back and stares at the ceiling, for lack of a better place to put her eyes.
She should be angry at him. And she is, she'd screamed at him for most of her first day here, even though he wasn't listening. The hot anger she'd felt was the remnants of the zombie she'd become, she thinks now, the gnawing, insatiable hunger of the mindless beast finding an outlet, when her Z-band had tried to tamp it down. She feels none of that rage now, just a hollow emptiness, a gut-wrenching anxiety that she might have to live in here forever now, that the Aceys have sentenced them to death, that Zed-
She can hear a faint knocking from the hall and sits up, looking through the door. The whole front wall of Zombie Containment's cells is made of thick plastic, sturdy enough to keep them in but transparent so that the humans can study them as they walk past. So that they can watch each other slowly go mad, just barely out of earshot of each other. There's no hiding here.
Bonzo stands at the front of his cell, hands pressed up against the wall. He's looking between her and Zed uncertainly. When he sees he has her attention, he starts talking – she can see his mouth moving, his lips forming words in their mother tongue, but she can't hear any of it. She gestures to her ear and shrugs, to let him know she has no idea what he's saying. He points to Zed. And then again, more insistent.
Eliza doesn't want to turn around. She doesn't want to see what they've done – the humans, the Aceys, her. She's had four days to think about it and she's decided that if they aren't taking Zed home with them, she doesn't want to remember what he looked like in here. She's trying, instead, to remember their last Zombie Mash, to commit to her memory the way his voice had sounded as he shouted something to her over the sound of the music, and the steps to the dance he'd pulled out to impress that cheerleader he likes so much. But then Bonzo beats his fist against the wall again, and points more urgently, and she knows she will have to look, or she's only going to upset him too.
She turns around slowly, almost afraid of what she might find. He's gone through about every stage of bloodthirsty monster by now – unbridled rage, throwing himself against the walls, sobbing in a corner, screeching at every human that walks past. Dead eyed, pained, suffering. He's been pacing for the last day or so, beating a path into the dark concrete floor with his feet, and even that is maddening to watch because he just doesn't stop, just keeps walking around and around, waiting for it to kill him.
The wall between them is solid brick and mortar, but it has a long window so that they can always see each other, even if they can't touch or talk. It's like they're caged animals, given just enough social interaction that they won't go insane. The only person Eliza has had any interaction with over the past few days is Bonzo (and the humans that come, to check vitals and ask questions, but they aren't people. They are monsters). Zed hasn't acknowledged either of them, or anything he doesn't want to eat. Eliza isn't expecting him to when she looks now either – she just hopes he is still alive, not trying to hurt himself like he had a few days ago.
She is surprised, when she finally finds the courage to look at the window, to find Zed standing at the glass, staring at her. She almost jumps in surprise, but she's Eliza and she doesn't jump at anything, so she stands and stares instead.
It's not Zed, not really. It's a monster wearing Zed's skin, something without thoughts and feelings and with only one desire in the whole world. Or maybe, as she's thought about over the nights she's been here, maybe this is Zed. The real Zed, the real them. She could look like this too, if she wants to – just a good few cracks of the Z-band against the wall and she could be free of everything that's ever bound her, everything that makes her life a misery.
But she doesn't. She won't. One day she might, when she finds a way to control herself without it (she's convinced that it's possible, that zombies without Z-bands are more than just monsters). But right now, staring this thing that is only half Zed in the eye, she has never wanted to be a zombie less. Has never felt so afraid of her own people, her friends. Herself.
Zed sighs, his breath fogging the glass for a moment. He looks terrible, eyes red and bloodshot and sunken into his face, his veins stark black against his grey flesh. His hair is still full of dirt from the football field, and from being tackled to the ground by zombie patrol. It's darker than it should be, the green only glimmering through when the light catches it right.
It's kind of awful. Zed's always been the pretty boy of Zombietown, tall and handsome and with a devil-may-care sort of attitude that half the girls in their class at school fawn over (not Eliza though – she just thinks he's kind of an idiot, albeit one she is very fond of). He's light on his feet and the life of a party – he plays every sport known to zombies, he's the first to start dancing at Mash, and he'll spit a verse to any beat Bonzo cares to drop. This zombie is slow and staggering, ugly in the way that humans like to describe zombies when they think the zombies can't hear them. This creature won't spin you a rhyme or drag you out dumpster diving on the edge of Seabrook after dark. It doesn't even know it has a sister, let alone that what she wants most in the world is a dog.
No, the monster is all the wrong parts of Zed, and none of the good ones. There's always been something manic about Zed, something a little too zombie and not enough Z-band. She's thought before that maybe his Z-band isn't set quite right, that the default frequency or strength of the pulses is too low for him, lets too much zombie through. He's too reckless, and has no regard for his own safety when he's fixed on an idea – and when he's decided on something, he's just a little bit too obsessive. She'd be lying if she said that she had never thought about adjusting his band, just to see what would happen, if her theories were correct. She'd sat there before, late at night, and mulled it over, wondering if taking the edge off would change who he was. But she'd never done it, not like the humans had done now, taking his Z-band away completely. She never would, because she has a conscience, and a sense of what is right and what is fundamentally inhumane.
Yeah, she's still pretty angry at the humans. That wasn't going to change any time soon.
Zed growls at her, a low and guttural sound she can only just hear through the thick glass. It sounds like his throat might rip itself apart. It's no kind of human sound…but it's not a zombie noise either. It's not angry enough, there's no longing in it. If anything, it reminds her of the way he would call for her and Bonzo if he was across the street from them on a quiet morning. Curious, she takes a step closer to the window.
Zed stares at her. His eyes are the same as they were yesterday, bloodshot and starey and slightly squinted, like he's in pain. Today though, they are focused directly on her, not some random middle distance she can't see. It would be kind of creepy if it wasn't such unusual behaviour for a mindless zombie.
She's holding her breath, she realises, but she doesn't let it go. Is he…here? Aware of his surroundings, of something other than the firing pins of the brains of the humans that occasionally come through? Does he recognise her? There's no real way to tell – all he does is stare, unblinking. Eliza bites her lip and thinks about it for a moment.
She lifts a hand, and waves.
For the longest time, he doesn't move, just stares at her blankly. There's nothing in his face, no recognition, no sign that he understood the basic social cue. She lets out her breath and goes to turn away, trying not to be disappointed.
He makes the noise again, the one that sounds like he's calling to her. And then, slowly, his arm visibly shaking, he lifts his hand and waves in return.
She hasn't seen his hands since they came here, not properly, hasn't been able to get a look at the rashy burn that had been slowly spreading up his arm for the last four months. Even before that, he'd been all cagey about it for weeks now, hiding it from her like she might not notice him wincing in pain every time he moves the wrong way. Now, just by luck, he lifts the arm that is supposed to be shackled by a Z-band, and she gets as clear a view of it as she could have asked for.
It's…bad. His arm is still red and raw, though it looks like the humans have attempted to clean it up, to help it start healing. She hadn't realised just how far it had gotten, but it reaches all the way up his arm and disappears under the sleeve of his shirt. And where his Z-band would usually sit is rubbed raw, open sores glaring at her from around his wrist.
She stares, and wonders if it is all from her hack, or if some of this is from before that. It's a running joke between the three of them that Zed's Z-band is always broken, because it is – every time he gets it fixed or replaced, two days later the screen will have been smashed by a football, or part of the lock has split from hitting the floor during a zombie mash, or he's jiggled the wiring loose doing whatever the hell it is that he does when she's not around, and now every now and then it gives him a proper zap that's more electro than magnetic.
It's part of the reason that they'd taken it away when they brought him here, that they'd let him go back to zombie and left him there for so many days. Hers and Bonzo's Z-bands had rebooted easily, only turned off for those few awful minutes when the Aceys had been in control, but Zed's had been utterly destroyed, had just glitched out and switched itself off again every time they'd tried until they gave up and wrenched it off his arm, to replace when they had the time.
She'd thought, at the time, that it was just worn out from all the times they'd overridden the programming to keep Zed unstable enough to play football. It was hard work for a little thing like that, to override every failsafe and fallback the band had to keep zombies online and allow its charge to stay in that grey area between life and undeath. She'd thought he'd just fried it doing that, that the Aceys turning it off had just been the last straw for the poor thing. But now, looking at his arm, she remembers the little green monster that had come up on her own screen, and she wonders…
He makes another noise, a question. "What did you do?" she asks and points to his wrist, to the big, open wounds that sit in place of the Z-band he should be wearing. She can feel her own pressed against her skin, warm from her body heat. She wonders if she has any scars underneath it, on that part of herself that she's never seen.
His eyes trace from her, to his wrist, and back again. She's not sure he's understood the question, but she waits patiently. Slowly, he lifts his other hand, and places his forefinger on the burnt and broken flesh.
He drags it across his wrist, to the right.
"Oh my god," she whispers, and steps back from the window – and she'd known it all along, really, but she'd been trying to tell herself that there was no way he was dumb enough, no way Zed would do that to himself – to them. "You swiped right. That's why the software corrupted. That's how they hacked into my computer." The zombie stares at her, uncomprehending. "I'm going to kill you when we get out of here!" And maybe there is a little bit of zombie still coursing through her veins, because she punches the glass, hard enough that she almost splits her knuckles open.
Zed flinches and stumbles backwards, like he's been stung. For a few seconds, he stares at his hands. And then he starts walking again, around and around and around in endless, mindless circles.
Eliza sits down on her bed, her hands curled into fists, and waits for it to be over.
A/N: Thankyou for reading! Feel free to check me out on tumblr as zombiedadjokes or apocalyvse, and on AO3 as apocalyvse! This will be a four-part series. Please remember to leave a review if you enjoyed it, or if you have any suggestions on what I should write next!