Despite shocking current events, resistors limited the flow of unregulated transmissions.
Until they couldn't.
Usain gripped his balcony railing, the metal thrumming beneath his fingers. Below, the fallen sparked to life, their bones traced in arcs of wild blue energy. The storm had ravaged everything—power grids, comms, the very foundations of their carefully regulated city—but no one expected it to energize the dead.
Lightning split the sky, illuminating the sea of reanimated figures as they shuddered, steadied, then surged upright. Their hollow sockets fixed on the darkened towers.
As one, they rose to the occasion, demanding an investigation into the highly irregular recalibration of volts.
Some moved in sharp, broken rhythms, their limbs remembering ancient dances of defiance. Others leaped skyward, caught in currents that had yanked them from their grounded state.
"Well," Usain whispered, watching his city's familiar patterns dissolve, "at least they're alive again."
Below, the electrified revenants raised their arms in unison. Lightning forked down, not striking but feeding them, coursing through every reanimated bone.
The city had lost power.
The dead had found it.
And now, ten thousand electrified souls surged toward the gates of city hall.