He's lucky Eliza is wide awake when he climbs through her open window, on the second storey of her house, because she'd probably punch him if she woke up to him standing over her in the middle of the night. As it is, she just sits up and glares at him as he clambers awkwardly through the window and sits himself on the windowsill, half-perched like he's ready to flee if she starts throwing things at him.
She thinks about it, but it took her a week to fix her bedside lamp and he's not worth breaking it over.
"What are you doing?" she asks instead, her voice carefully neutral.
Zed looks around blankly. "I came to talk?" he replies, like climbing through her window at midnight is a perfectly reasonable way to contact her.
"Did you run out of rocks in the garden?" she snipes. That's how he would usually get her attention – stand down there amongst the chairs her mum has stacked into a fence and pelt the window with pebbles until she woke up or he got bored and went about his midnight business alone. Scaling the porch was…extreme, even for a boy who is known for bouncing off concrete floors like they're trampolines.
"No. I just didn't want you to ignore me." He leans forward and folds his hands in front of him, elbows resting on his knees.
Eliza lets out an angry huff and flops backwards onto her bed. "I don't want to talk to you, Zed," she tells him frankly, and then, realising how abrupt she's being, adds, "I'm glad you're okay, and that we're home, but I'm not interested in talking to you, or listening to any of your stupid ideas right now."
There's a pause. "You're angry with me," he says eventually, like he's just now discovering this.
Eliza grits her teeth. "Yeah Zed, I am."
"Why?" he asks, and it takes everything in her power not to throw the lamp at him anyway.
She doesn't throw it. Instead, she switches it on and then sits up slowly, studying him under its soft golden light.
"I know what you did," she tells him, her voice hard as the steel beams of the old power plant.
His eyes go wide with surprise – or guilt. "What?" he says, just a little too quickly, curling away from her like he's got something to hide. "I didn't do anything, why would you think-"
"You swiped right, Zed."
The room falls silent. For once, Zed Necrodopoulis has nothing to say.
"Why'd you do it, Zed?" Eliza asks, and spreads her hands wide in a helpless gesture. "Of all the dumb, stupid, deadbrained things to do…I told you so many times not to do it! How many times did I say never swipe right? I told you what would happen! And you just went and-"
"I needed to look human," Zed mumbles to the floorboards, his words almost lost in the dust and the mould that creeps around their edges. "Just for half an hour. I didn't think-"
"Why would you need to look human? Everything was going perfectly, people wanted us around – what was so important that you couldn't just…be you?"
He ducks his head, leaning so far forward in his study of the floor that he's teetering on the edge of her windowsill, about to fall forward. His shoulders hunch unhappily and his hands clench together, like he wants to lie to her again but he's realised that would be a bad idea. Or maybe he will run away, if he can't bear the tense silence that follows. Eliza waits for him to break, either one way or the other.
"Addison's parents," he mumbles eventually, like he's ashamed of himself. "They wouldn't let her cheer unless I met them."
"You couldn't do that as a zombie?"
He lifts his head, his eyes wide in horror. "No!" he replies. "They didn't know I'm a zombie. And they hate zombies, they never would have-"
Eliza stares at him, aghast. "You risked our lives to sell a lie to a couple of dumb humans who can't accept anyone different than them?"
"And I took Addison on a date to that icecream place," he blurts out before he can stop himself, and then grimaces at his own stupidity.
Eliza feels like she can't breathe.
"You're so stupid, Zed," she tells him, so angry that her voice is shaking and breathy, the words hard to get out. Tears prick the corners of her eyes, and she blinks them away, hiding her shaking hands in her lap. "You do all of this just for one stupid cheerleader-"
"Hey!" he straightens like he's been shot. "Don't call Addison stupid, this has nothing to do with her."
"It's got everything to do with her!" Eliza bursts out, loud enough to wake the whole street, and rockets to her feet. For the first time in her life, she towers over Zed, her gaze angry enough to burn right through him. "If you hadn't been trying to make her parents happy – to make her happy, none of this would have happened! Being unstable was already hurting you, idiot, did you think trying to be human would be fine? You think there's no reason why we don't just look like that normally? You literally could have died! For one stupid girl who, what, couldn't tell her parents she wants to date a zombie? Can't accept that you're a zombie?"
"Eliza," Zed tries, but he's on the back foot and his voice is weak and unsteady. "That's not how it happe-"
"I don't care why it happened," she informs him. She's actually yelling now, she's so furious, she realises as she says it, but she makes no effort to stop. If her parents have heard, they're wise enough not to come and interrupt.
"How long did you think that would last, anyway?" she asks next, when Zed has nothing to say for himself. "How long were you going to pretend to be human before you told them the truth? A couple of weeks? A couple of months?" She waits, eyebrows raised, but Zed just shakes his head. "Until the Z-band killed you?"
"I don't know!" he snaps. "I didn't think about it like that. I just wanted them to like me, I just…" He swallows hard, like there's a stone stuck in his throat. "I just wanted to be something other than a zombie. Just for half an hour."
Eliza's shaking, from head to toe, and gasping for one deep breath that she just can't catch. Zed won't look at her, and part of her, the vindictive part, is glad he's ashamed of what he's said and what he's done, his abandonment of zombie values for the bright lure of humanity. The other part of her is sad, that of all the things she's seen people try to thrust upon Zed over the years, self-hatred is the one that has stuck – and she hadn't even noticed until he spelled it out for her.
She finds a breath and pulls it into her lungs, letting the air rattle in and out of her ribcage. Her head spins. She blinks, and she is sitting on the edge of her bed again. Zed is avoiding her eyes even though they are so close that their knees almost touch; even though they have been yelling in each other's faces for five minutes or more. Silence stretches out between them, and somehow it is more deafening than the screaming of before.
"Was it worth it?" Eliza forces out through clenched teeth, considerably quieter.
There's a pause, and then Zed tells her, "The ice cream at that place was as good as I told you it would be."
Normally she would laugh and then tell him to stop being stupid, but it's not a time for laughter. Instead, she glares at him. "Get out of my house," she tells him, and shifts like she's planning to throw him out the window.
He raises his hands in surrender, curling away from her. "I don't know, Eliza! I can't even – I don't even know what day it is. And I think I broke up with Addison at the game, but I don't…" He stops, looks around like something in her room might help him, and then sucks in a deep breath. "Do you…remember everything?" he asks. "Is it weird if-"
"It's Friday," Eliza informs him, cutting him off just before the panic starts to rise in his voice. "And if you ever listened in school, you would know that the first zombies didn't remember anything from before their Z-bands, so it's probably normal to be…missing stuff."
"But-" His hands twist together in his lap and when their eyes meet, his are wide and worried. "I was a zombie for five minutes and I can't remember the whole week? Or the football game. Why wouldn't I-"
"No." Eliza shakes her head. For the first time this evening, she feels compelled to reach out to him, to place one calm hand over his shiny new Z-band, the edges of her fingers just brushing his skin. His hands pause in their jittering. "You don't remember anything from containment? Nothing at all?"
"Did something bad happen?" he asks, and there's not much of a pallor to a zombie's complexion to start with, but his face drains of any colour it might have had at the possibilities, the unknowing of where he has been and what he has done.
"No," she hurries to assure him, before he faints or throws up or something. Under her hand, his arms tremble in fear and confusion, a tiny movement he cannot control. "Just…" There's no easy way to tell him. "They took your Z-band away when we got there, Zed. You've been a zombie for five days."
It's Zed's turn to stop breathing. He sways on the edge of the windowsill and her hand curls around his wrist just in case he falls. "Five days," he echoes, and she nods mutely. He laughs, a breathy, rasping noise that contains no humour.
"Did we win the game?" and of course football is the first thing on his mind. She's just glad he doesn't ask about Addison. She doesn't remember anything past the end of the game herself, much less what happened to the cheerleader.
She does remember the end of the game though. "We won," she assures him. "In the last three seconds, you won the game. Then your Z-band turned off, and…I think you went after Bucky? I don't know. Mine and Bonzo's turned off as well."
"Bucky?" Zed screws his face up in horror. "I think…did I…" She's worried he might say eat him, just because the thought of it and how close he'd come makes her stomach churn, but he just takes a deep breath and says, "I think…I think I stopped? Like, on purpose?"
Eliza lets go of his wrist, and leans back so that she can properly stare at him. "Stopped yourself?" she repeats, like she hasn't understood, but it's more of an automatic response than actual confusion. She's busy thinking, a hundred miles an hour, remembering Zed in containment, the zombie that had waved at her. Once was a coincidence, sure, but twice?
"I remember," he says. "I was – I wanted something - and then…I stopped myself. I thought I made it up. Is that even possible?"
"Zed," Eliza says slowly. "Are you sure you don't remember anything from containment? Anything at all?"
Zed shrugs. "Not really. Maybe a few things, but nothing solid. Nothing real."
"You recognised me," she tells him slowly. "Only once, a couple of days ago, but…you waved at me Zed, and when I asked you how this happened, you told me you swiped right." She gestures to his wrist, where the wounds are still healing over. The Z-band is still missing, moved to his right arm while the left heals.
"I don't remember," Zed tells her, and runs a hand through his hair. He sounds tired, defeated – desperate to reach a memory he just doesn't have. "Are you sure? I didn't think we could…I mean, a full zombie is supposed to have no control. That's why we have Z-bands."
"Maybe it's like I've always said," she suggests, and it's hard to hide the enthusiasm in her voice. "Zombies can learn to control themselves without a Z-band."
Zed pulls a face. "Eliza," he says, the colour returning slowly to his voice. "That's just a myth, there's no proof that-"
"But there is proof!" she replies, right over the top of him. "You're the proof!"
"Am I? We don't even know what happened to me, Eliza. And I don't remember-"
"So? We could try it again. I bet I can still hack these new Z-bands – if we just go somewhere quiet, I could turn it off, we can see what happens-"
"What? No, Eliza, that's crazy, we can't just…zombie out. What if the Z-Patrol come? You just yelled at me for messing with my Z-band, and now you want me to do it?"
Eliza sits back and thinks about it. Her eyes rove around the room and land on the broken speaker that's sitting in the corner behind the door. She'd brought it home after a Mash a month or so ago, intending to fix it, but since then she'd just been too busy.
"We should use the Mash space," she says, and turns back to Zed. "Zombie Patrol won't notice just two of us down there. And even if I can't turn your Z-band back on – which won't happen anyway – there's no way you'll be able to climb out of there while you're all zombie."
She waits, expecting him to say yes – Zed always says yes, even to the dumbest ideas she's ever had the pleasure of hearing. But he is hesitant, his hands wringing together nervously.
"I don't want to lose control again, Eliza," he tells her quietly. "I can't remember anything I did, and I don't want to – I don't know if I can control it."
"You'll never know if you don't try," Eliza points out. "You did it Zed, I swear – I watched you answer my questions. Just one try."
There's a pause while he thinks about it. "Will you forgive me if I do it?" he asks.
Eliza smiles. "Of course," she promises. And really, now that she's had the chance to scream at him, she's almost forgiven him already, like she always does – but now there's a question in her mind, an itch she can't scratch, and Zed is the answer. And yeah, maybe she's being a little manipulative – but he'd manipulated her into giving him the hack in the first place, and she'd ended up in containment for that.
"And you'll be in control? No matter what?" he presses.
She scoffs. "Zed," she says pointedly. "When do my hacks ever fail?" He shrugs and looks down at his feet, like he's still unsure. "Tomorrow night?" she presses – and she'd go for tonight, before he has time to think up a way to worm out of it, but she's dead tired and after all this noise, her mum is definitely awake – no sneaking out of the house after this.
He huffs an unhappy breath. "Okay," he agrees half-heartedly, and stands, climbing back through the window. "Tomorrow. One try"
"Good night, Zed," she says in his wake, but it's to an empty room and an open window, Zed already escaping into the dark of the night.
The basement they use for Zombie Mash is dark and cold in the night, devoid of all life except the skittering of rats disappearing into the building's underbelly at the mention of their presence. They climb down into the basement through one of the narrow, winding tunnels that they usually use to escape Zombie Patrol on raid nights, and follow the wall around to the big switch that controls the lights.
The place looks big and shadowy without the crowd of a Mash to fill in its corners, to shake the floors and rattle the walls with the force of their feet and their voices. To the left, the light slowly makes its way down the hall and into the long strings of bulbs that illuminate the light garden. Eliza shuts and locks the door before it is fully alight, confining them to the main room and the big, open dance floor.
Zed stays down there, standing in the centre of the floor and watching as she climbs up to the rusted catwalk that criss-crosses the floor from above, far out of reach of clawing zombie hands. She settles herself in Bonzo's music booth, laptop set on the centre of his desk. She's spent the day running through the hack, picking apart the new Z-band programming they'd been given (no more adjusting them, she'd heard someone lamenting at some stage, but that was untrue; it's barely a new system, just patches on the old one and a few new tricks).
"Ready?" she calls down to Zed, her finger resting on the key that controls his Z-band. He frowns up at her, shifting from foot to foot. He's nervous; afraid of everything he's capable of, even in an environment like this. Maybe this time, he's thinking twice about placing his life into her hands – except this time, she's the one who came asking for it, rather than him begging her to take it.
"If you smell smoke, stop, drop, and roll," Zed jokes weakly, and fiddles with his Z-band.
Eliza doesn't laugh. "Are you ready, though?" she asks again, insistent. She could swear she sees him roll his eyes.
"Yeah," he says, in a voice that's supposed to be convincing but is not, and bounces on his toes. "Let's do this."
Eliza doubts he's actually ready – she doubts they should be doing this at all, now that the initial excitement and curiousity of it has worn off – but she presses the key anyway, and listens as her computer beeps in acknowledgement of the command. And then, she watches.
She watches as Zed goes very still.
As his shoulders hunch, and his body twists, like it wants to turn itself inside out.
As his veins blacken and his eyes turn bloodshot, his skin cold and pale, his fingers curled.
As his lungs pull in a great big breath of air, and let out a bellow, the angry sound of a zombie devoid of a meal.
The hairs on the back of her neck stand up. A shiver runs down her spine. But this is her idea, her experiment, and she's promised not to let him lose control, so she doesn't hide. Instead, she leans out over the edge of Bonzo's space, far enough that the zombie will be able to see her.
"Zed?" she calls experimentally. Bloodshot eyes turn upwards, black veins bulging from his face. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, his tongue paralysed by the mutation.
"Can you hear me?" she asks. "Are you…there?" He stares at her, blank-faced. And then, painfully slow, he nods.
Eliza's breath catches in her throat, a thrill of excitement rising in her chest. It works. She has no idea what Zed has done, how he has achieved it, but he has managed the impossible. It occurs to her that she is one of the first people to ever see this; to look down upon a zombie who is in complete control of himself, able to reach beyond the constant hunger that haunts their kind, and become something more.
He is able to fight past the physical mutation too, she notices, as he rulls his shoulders and paces a few steps to and fro. His stride is loose and even, and his shoulders slump back into place when he decides he feels comfortable, none of the stiff stumbling a zombie usually suffers present. She's got worse problems moving her own feet some days than Zed does as a full zombie; it's kind of annoying, actually. Just her kind of luck.
He wanders away from her, expanding the space in the room that he's allowing himself. As he reaches one of the concrete pillars that hold up the basement, she notices his hand, clenching and unclenching into a fist at his side. "Zed?" she calls experimentally. He twitches, but doesn't turn around this time. She reaches for her keyboard, for the command that will bring him back to life.
There's a scratching from the side of the room, a squeak and the clatter of something toppling over, and then a rat bursts from the shadows in a mad dash for the far side of the room. Zed whips around, his eyes following it as it passes under the lights, and his whole body tenses and stiffens, as if he's about to pounce.
Eliza swears loudly and hits the key that will restore power to his Z-band.
He comes back gasping and clutching at his wrist, his back pressed against the pillar. He's still staring at the spot of darkness where the rat had disappeared, eyes wide and unfocused.
Eliza grabs her laptop and climbs down swiftly, reaching him in record time. "Hey," she says, and tugs at the sleeve of his jacket, the one that covers his injured arm. "You okay?"
"That was…" he says, and then stops to draw in another breath. "That wasn't as bad as I thought it would be."
"You weren't going to eat that rat, were you?" Eliza deadpans, only half joking. The way he's looked at it as it ran past… There were older zombies still who were known around town for eating whatever unfortunate creatures they manage to catch – not large animals, usually, but small fry like rats were a popular choice. Too zombie, Eliza's always thought at the sight of them clutching struggling rats and mice and frogs and god-knows-what else. She's never seen Zed even look sideways at a rat until today.
She hopes it isn't a quirk that catches on.
Zed is shaking his head before she's even finished asking though, faintly disgusted at the thought of it. "I was just watching it," he claims. Eliza decides to believe him without further question. "It's weird, Eliza, it's like…everything is more. That thing falling over sounded like a gunshot, and the lights hurt my eyes, and-"
"Can you see in the dark now?" Eliza jokes and circles around so that she can see the read-out on his Z-band. "X-ray vision? Do you think you could fly?" The bracelet reads ONLINE, and inwardly, she breathes a sigh of relief – she hasn't broken it, hasn't irreparably corrupted it. She's kept him safe, just like she'd said she would.
"The shadows were pitch black," Zed tells her, and chooses to ignore her other, stupid comments. He's still wide-eyed and starey, still rattled from the experience. "Like I was blind. I couldn't see anything over there." He gestures to the side of the room, where the rat had come from, and then looks back to the shadows on the other side, where the rat had gone.
Eliza swallows down her good humour at having achieved what they did. "Want to go home?" she asks instead of trying to jibe him into laughing. He rubs his wrist around the Z-band again and nods.
Silence stretches between them as they turn off the lights and hoist themselves up into the nearest tunnel, well-practised at finding their way out of the basement in the dark. The first thing the Patrol always do on raid nights is cut the power. The second thing they do is grab the slowest zombies out of the room, with tasers or hands or a boot to the stomach. This is how you stay out of their hands; by practising all the ways out until you know them just by feel.
Eliza doesn't like how quiet Zed is being, how he lets the air fill with the soft scuff of their boots in the dirt and their fingers trailing along the wall. It is too tense and too drawn out, and there are too many things they haven't said about what they've just done.
"Are you ready for school on Monday?" she asks just to break it, aware that if she tries to talk about anything she really wants to talk about, he won't give her any answer. Even now, he is cagey and reluctant, his boots skipping a beat somewhere ahead of her.
"Surprised they'll even let us go back to school," he replies in a voice that is carefully neutral. "I'll never get to play football again."
"At least you'll get to see Addison?" Eliza suggests, trying to stay upbeat.
There's a long pause, and then Zed tells her, "Let's just go home, Eliza."
They walk the rest of the way in silence.