on a teenage zombie like me.
There were several minutes of aimless chatter and milling around before a woman who looked like she had lived a relatively short life before she had been zombified approached the podium. Her straight blonde hair ran behind her shoulders and gave life to her otherwise gray countenance. She tapped on the microphone, eliciting a pierce of feedback through the speakers. The young zombie woman cleared her throat and spoke clearly into the microphone. “Thank you ladies and gentlezombies for coming out today. Mayor Hillard will be here shortly to present today’s demonstration. In the meantime, I’ll recap some of the town affairs. Human acquisitions are down again this week. It’s a troubling trend, one we acknowledge. We are working with our lead human trackers to remedy the situation as best we can. Until then we will have to continue to lean more heavily on our rations, of which we assure you there are plenty of. On a more positive note, the human breeding programs are flourishing. Zone F in particular has had an upswing, with as many as five new births this month and counting. That is a new record, by the way. Other zones should take note, especially A and H. That takes care of business.” She glanced behind her, placing her hand over the microphone. She turned back at the crowd with a grin. “As punctual as ever. Ladies and gentlezombies, without further ado, may I present Mayor Hillard.”
The mayor ambled up the rear steps of the stage, making his appearance to a respectful round of applause. His face appeared as it did in the posters I had seen plastered on the walls of buildings near the Hub or the mall, or occasionally when I glimpsed the weekly edition of the Zombie Times, which was always concluded with a brief article written by the mayor himself containing his weekly thoughts. He was much lankier than I had thought, though, tall and skeletal. He wore a brown suit, jacket unbuttoned with a vest, black tie, and suspenders underneath, a red flower pinned to his lapel. His skin was white and his head was bald. The mayor’s only noticeable disfigurement was the flesh that had been torn from his lips, revealing his perfectly straight, white teeth at all times. He always appeared to be smiling, and even more so when he turned the edges of his mouth upward. I think that’s one of the things that made him so trustworthy and likeable.
He approached the podium as the woman stepped away. He raised his hands for silence, and as the applause died, he began speaking. “I’d like to offer my appreciation to each and every Wake who came out here today,” he boomed, his voice jovial and pleasant. “These aren’t the best of times to be living dead, I admit that. But we have to remember that we are the pioneers. We are building something. And the wonderful thing about being dead is that there is no end. One day we will be able to reap what we have sown in these days. It is only a matter of time. And you have to admit, it’s a hell of a lot better than being out there!” He pointed behind him, at the unknown world that was beyond the gates of Revenant. A scattering of cheers responded. “We’ve been graced with a second chance at life. Call it God, or a miracle, or science, whatever you like. We are dead, and yet we are still alive. And we can think. That’s the greatest gift of all. Because without that, we’d be just like the Stiffs. We’d be nothing. How grateful I am to be a Wake. It’s not a gift I take lightly. And it’s not one I plan to forfeit.
“In order to survive, we must work together and do what is in the best interest of the community. Living death has a price. We have all been brought to this town and educated to serve a purpose, to pay a price. If any of us fails in that, the town suffers. If the town suffers, we all suffer. If the town dies, we die. We all have been brought here to make a contribution to help our people prosper and survive. I am here to remind you of the importance of that contribution, and what it means to forsake it. I know you need not be reminded of what’s at stake. Your existence, my existence, depends on you making your contribution faithfully and sufficiently. One misguided Wake can turn this town to shambles. Such dissension will not be tolerated.”
He paused momentarily to scan the crowd, allowing his words to sink in. Then he continued:
“I know many of you read in last week’s Times about the human sympathizers who were arrested last week. Attempting to free a captive human, claiming unethical treatment. Unethical! I tell you what’s unethical. Putting the zombies of my town at risk. The only thing that keeps us undead is the brain tissue of living human beings. Now that’s a fact. And if you have any opposition to that, maybe zombie life just isn’t cut out for you. And if that’s the case, there’s the door. We offer you safety within our town’s gates, but you aren’t prisoners. You can leave at any time, and see how far human sympathies take you out there, among the Stiffs. If you believe that eating human brains is unethical, this isn’t the place for you. You’re not meant to be among the living dead. Just the dead.
“Your actions have repercussions. You have to understand that. You can choose living death or death. Your actions choose for you. We each have a price to pay, a consequence and a debt for living death. If you fail in that, you forfeit that right. We brought you into this life, educated you, gave you intelligence. And if we must, we can choose to take it away. That is the law of this town. Dissenters will not be tolerated. There is no place for that in this town. I won’t stand for it. Under any circumstances.
“Now, Virginia, if you please,” the mayor said, turning to the woman. “Open the box.”
The woman nodded as she came down the stage and approached the crate. She threw a switch on the side of the compartment and the giant door on the front slowly slid open, screeching as it did. I swallowed in my dry throat and gazed into the emptiness behind the door. A hush had fallen over the crowd. It was so quiet and tranquil.
I heard the rattling of chains first, then the low, vicious grunts and growls. A figure emerged from the crate, stepping rigidly out into the light. It was a Stiff, wearing a white-collared shirt and necktie, hair slicked back and jaws snapping at the air. Another appeared behind it, dressed similarly. Both were chained around their wrists and ankles and moved with onerous steps. Their faces were pale, fresh. They hadn’t been Stiffs for long. Their clothes were clean, shirts neatly tucked in, as if ready to go to work that morning.
“Jared Laning and Robert Hargrave,” the mayor announced into the microphone. “Your human sympathizers.”
A purl of gasps swept forward through the crowd. I shifted uneasily where I stood. The Stiffs lurched forward, lunging at the collected group of Wakes before the stage. Everyone flinched back. The Stiffs were held firm by their chains, not allowing them to advance more than a few feet from the crate they had been stored in. The Stiffs thrust themselves forward, throwing out their chests as far as they could, the chains pulling their hands and feet behind them, to snap their mouths ravenously at the crowd.
“These are the faces of dissension,” the mayor continued. “Now you don’t have to follow the rules, but if you don’t, you don’t have any place in this town. That’s your choice. Living death or death. They made their choice. We must all stick together and do what we were brought here to do in order for this town to survive. I hope that’s understood.”
The inarticulate rumble of the two former Wakes, allowed to skid to become Stiffs again, answered him as they jerked forward with all their strength to attack the crowd. The Stiffs bumped into each other, and one growled with anger and bit into the side of the face of the other, scraping away a layer of its skin with its teeth. The two Stiffs were then snapping at each other, locked in battle with only their teeth as weapons.
“Well, I suppose they’ll make good candidates for one of our nightly Stiff matches anyway!” the mayor quipped.
The crowd laughed lightheartedly. I stared ahead at the Stiffs, unmoved by the mayor’s humor. There was nothing left of what they had been. Their intelligence and free will had been taken from them, and everyone was fine with this. Because they had disobeyed. Because they had not towed the line. Because they hadn’t done what they were awakened to do.
“Reel them in,” the mayor instructed.
The woman obeyed,
cranking on another handle on the side of the crate which drew the chains back inside. The Stiffs were forced backward and fell to the ground in a heap, still snapping at each other as their bodies were drawn into the box and the door slowly fell shut before them.
My mentor gazed down at me, resting a hand on my shoulder. “I hope the mayor’s demonstration has been enlightening, Zellner.”
“Yeah,” I uttered, nearly imperceptibly. There were rules and laws in Revenant. And you couldn’t fight the zombie man.
21. BREAKING IN
“The Stiff was huge! I mean gigantic! You should have seen him!”
“Bigger than you?”
“What do you think?”
“And you brought him down all by yourself?”
“Practically. I’m telling you, man, there’s nothing like it! My first kill. I shoved the knife into its head and twisted it, and it was dead meat. One lame Stiff.”
“Man, that’s something else.”
Big Jake puffed out his chest proudly. He parted his black lips, grinning. “It was nothing.”
I slammed my locker door, allowing the reverberation against the metal to echo through the hallway. Big Jake and his captivated crony stared back at me