Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator

by Karina Fabian

  The zombie had started to calm and poke at the foam with her toe.

  “Unfortunately, as you can see, the effect does wear off as the foam disintegrates. It’s not ready as a long-term preventative until we find an agent that releases the chemical slowly. However...” He pressed another button.

  The mechanical arm whirled toward the zombie and hosed it down with pinkish foam. The zombie’s hunger screams rose into panic, and it flailed at the stream. It staggered back, clawing off its own face, until it collapsed on the ground, jerked once, and stilled.

  “It’s going to stay down?” Gordon asked skeptically.

  Spice looked away from the prone corpse to answer, but saw Gary’s pale face. “You okay, there, Gary?”

  Gary’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he collapsed.

  “Cut!” Dave snarled as everyone gathered around the unconscious writer.

  * * * *

  “Look, I know none of you watchers are going to see him, but that writer Gary was pissin’ me off! Gagging and swooning like he had the stomach flu—what’s he doing writing for this show? And what was he doing on our tour of ZERD? Damn fool probably looking for his fifteen minutes of fame. Well, if you get fame for barfing and falling on the floor, he got it, that’s all I’m saying.”

  * * * *

  Dr. Corriander Spice settled into the leather office chair and adjusted the mike on his lab coat. “You’re sure you don’t want to use the green suit again? Really, I don’t mind, especially here in private.”

  Off-camera, Gary answered. “No, sir. This is a different project. We’ll digitize your face and disguise your voice.”

  “All right then. You know, I’m not ashamed of the job I do. It’s just that we attend my wife’s church—the Second Generationalists of the New Tomorrow. They don’t believe in zombies.”

  “Uh, what do they think they are, then?”

  “Demons, plain and simple, animating the bodies of the damned.”

  “Actually, that’s not a bad description.”

  “Oh, it’s useful enough—until you try to tell them that a five-gallon jug of TidyToidy works better at stopping them than a five-hour prayer revival. I like what the Baptist Convention said—just because they’re evil incarnate doesn’t mean we can’t fight them with secular means.”

  “The Pope said the same thing.” Gary made a note to find a news clip.

  “Well, common sense isn’t tied to a particular religion. So what shall I talk about?”

  “Tell me more about your research—something you didn’t cover in the tour.”

  “Well,” Spice said as he rubbed his hands together. “One of our most challenging pursuits has been the search for Zombie Zero.”

  “Zombie Zero?”

  * * * *

  “All right, plebes!” Neeta gazed seriously at her trainees and tried to ignore the camera looming behind them. She stood with her back to the observation room, its plate-glass windows again darkened. Beside her, a large divider with the ZERD logo hid a table. Her trainees all wore rain suits and wide-brimmed rain caps. So did Ted, though she had no idea why—he wasn’t going anywhere near the tank. Still, she tried not to think about how he made cheap plastic look good.

  “You’ve toured the facility. You’ve seen the tools and the experimental devices, but more importantly, you’ve seen common household items in action.

  “They say seeing is believing, but I see in some of you that isn’t the case.” Dave told her to pause while the cameras closed in on each face for their reaction: Gordon, skeptical; LaCenta, annoyed as usual; Roscoe horrified; Spud and Nasir, thoughtful.

  “Go,” Dave spoke in her earpiece.

  “That’s why we’ve designed today’s challenge. On the table beside me, you will find a variety of everyday objects. Some repel zombies. Others don’t. Still others may or may not. You will select five different items.

  “Next, you will be put in the testing room. You must stand in the circle inscribed on the floor. Do not leave the circle! See that red line? It’s eight feet from the circle. You will be two feet from the door. Six zombies will be released—”

  Her plebes immediately shouted protests.

  “What?” shrieked LaCenta.

  “Neeta, are you mad?” Roscoe followed up.

  Neeta held her hands up, and the noise died. “There are fail-safes in place which I will explain in a moment. Six zombies will be released. You will use the five objects to stop or stall all the zombies before any of them cross the line, and keep them stalled for thirty seconds.”

  “If we don’t?” LaCenta demanded, her voice straining in disbelief.

  “This room is designed for live trials. As soon as a zombie crosses the red line, an acrylic wall rises between you and the zombies. You will also be doused in shower scrub. If that’s not enough, the entire room will be coated in antihistamine foam, and you can spend the weekend with a vaporizer—but if you experience irritability, don’t take it out on me.”

  “Not like we’ll notice,” Roscoe whispered sotto voce to Spud, jerking his head LaCenta’s way. Spud bit back a snort.

  “What was that?” LaCenta growled.

  “Neeta?” Roscoe raised his hand like a teacher’s pet. “What if we run out of objects before time is up?”

  “Then you’d better get creative. Nasir, I see a frown. Problem?”

  “Neeta, we know zombie instincts are acculturated, and my culture—”

  “Cut!” Dave screamed. “Accent! Take two!”

  Nasir heaved a sigh and started again. “Neeta, I am being most certain that these items will work on the American zombie, but the Afghan zombie, he will not be so interested.”

  Neeta smiled. Gary had thought of that and planned for it, right to this scene. “We realize that, Nasir. That’s why Cory—shoot! Sorry. Take two?

  “We realize that, Nasir, that’s why Dr. Hansen and his team have set up a special table for you.” She moved aside another screen to reveal several somewhat different objects.

  “Each of these have been tested by ZERD’s sister laboratories in Baghdad and Riyadh. Obviously, we couldn’t import Afghan zombies, but the ZERD team has treated each item with chemicals that will simulate the effect.”

  Nasir hadn’t seen the table before this. He stared at it, speechless, reaching out to turn an object here, prod one there.

  Neeta said, “Zombies are mindless. You can’t negotiate. You have to handle them on their own terms. We get that—and we want you to go home able to do this job, and to do it well.”

  “I’m...I’m touched.” He replied, voice hoarse, accent forgotten.

  For once, Dave let it slide.

  They drew names, and LaCenta went in first. She shook as the door opened, but once the small horde had shambled out, she burst into action. She threw her pound of hamburger into the center of the group. They all clustered around it, but too soon, two established dominance and the other four came at her while the two split their winnings. She ripped the packet of cigarettes and threw one half to each side. One zombie lunged for them, taking another out in the process. The rest circled the fallen case, making the fake coughing sounds of the militant non-smoker. These she took out with well-aimed shots of chemical cleanser from a super-powered water gun.

  The buzzer rang and the wall came up just as she was running out of cleaner. She hustled to the door.

  Her cheering comrades met her just outside. She gave Gordon a high five.

  “Oh, honey, that was hard core.” Roscoe enthused.

  Neeta nodded. “You only used three of your items.”

  “Tried and true. It worked for Momma, it’ll work for me.” she replied.

  Nasir went next. Even as the door was sliding open, he ripped the cover off the package of bacon and tossed them in a messy row just on the zombie side of the red line. He wrapped the political cartoon around a package of cigarettes and threw them hard so that they landed in the middle of the horde. As with LaCenta, the zombies stopped and bic
kered, but two females quickly broke off and staggered again. He lobbed his bottle of eyeliner and the novel, Under My Burka. It stopped one, but the other sneered and ignored it. She, however, paused at the line of bacon, her head shaking spasmodically.

  The buzzer rang, hailing his victory.

  “W-what’s the story with the b-bacon?” Spud asked.

  LaCenta rolled her eyes. “They’re Muslims, fool!”

  Gordon went next, but alone, he moved without a clear plan, tossing his items haphazardly, running out of distracters before he ran out of time. As a linebacker-sized zombie, still clawing Drano out of his eyes, stepped over the line, the wall went up. A trapdoor opened in the ceiling above Gordon and a bucket of TidyToidy emptied over his head.

  True to form, Roscoe and LaCenta met Gordon at the door with jeers.

  “Oh, boyfriend, chlorine and lavender are so not your scents!” Roscoe howled. He and LaCenta leaned on each other, laughing.

  Gordon glared at them, hands balled into fists.

  Quietly, Spud stepped forward. “W-w-wasn’t so bad,” he said. “You moved in t-to-too kw-quick, is all.”

  Gordon rounded on the skinny Idahoan. “I don’t need no fucking stuttering hick to tell me how to do a fucking job!” he snarled and stormed off.

  Neeta pushed herself off the wall to follow, but Nasir stopped her. “Go on with the challenge. I will speak to him. Perhaps he will listen to a fucking former militia, no?”

  Neeta watched as Nasir caught up with Gordon, keeping a respectable distance, nonetheless. The second cameraman, a new guy, followed. She didn’t want to see it aired, but she did plan on asking Dave to let her see the tape.

  “Okay, Spud, into the room with you.”

  If Gordon moved too fast, Spud moved with almost too-slow deliberation. Not that he was stupid, of course. He stopped four zombies—two male and two female—by turning the TV from the Spike to the Oxygen channel, then throwing the remote at them. The other two, he held off with measured shots of 409 until the buzzer rang.

  “Now that’s how it’s d-d-done!” he hooted.

  Roscoe slapped his shoulder with the back of his hand. “Plenty of ways to do it. Just keep your baby-blues on me.”

  Roscoe, however, didn’t have as much luck with his set of zombies, and with ten seconds on the timer, he’d exhausted his items and still had one zombie shambling toward him. A pre-teen in the late stages of decay, she advanced with slow, forced movements. Frantically, he unsnapped his raincoat and started feeling around his pockets.

  “Hey! Can he do that?” LaCenta snarled.

  “He’s allowed,” Neeta answered. She stepped closer to the windows, watching him intently. “Whether he can do anything that way...we’ll see.”

  Roscoe took out his cell phone, shook his head, and put it back. He pulled out a thin tube and with a flourish, yanked off the lid off and flung it toward the last zombie.

  It fell at her feet. She staggered, stopped, and with what could only be described as a joyful cry, flopped onto the floor and started rubbing the stick on her lips, flaying off bits of skin in the process. The buzzer sounded.

  Roscoe sauntered out of the room.

  “Lip balm?” Neeta asked.

  He winked at her, making sure his face was angled toward the camera. “Well, the poor dear looked a little chapped.”

  For the first time on the show, Neeta burst out laughing.

  * * * *

  Gordon stared into the webcam with narrowed eyes, his jaw set and so tense he had to force the words out of his mouth.

  “That whole challenge was BS, man, fucking BS! Sitcoms and magazines and Chapstick™— I’m not going into a horde of zombies with intent to stall! Go in. Take them out. Make sure they don’t come back. Maximum firepower. Maximum carnage.

  “I’m not stupid. This was a confidence-building exercise. I’ve got to tell you, a pansy-assed exercise like this wasn’t going to build my confidence. Back in the Marines, you failed at something, you got put right back into the line of fire. That’s how you build confidence. OOH Rah!”

  “Speaking of pansy...Chapstick™? And Neeta gave him points for that?”

  “BS. It’s all BS, but that won’t stop me. I will embrace the suck. I will persevere. I will win that million. OOH Rah!”

  Chapter Four

  Notes for: The Zombie Syndrome

  A Documentary

  By Gary Opkast

  Episode: Zombie Zero

  Film clip of a zombie clawing its way out of a grave. (NOTE: Check YouTube; InsaneCandid is supposed to have a good one, and his family may sell the rights to pay for his funeral expenses.)

  NARRATOR: The world has been living under the zombie threat for over two decades, yet where did this threat originate? Did it begin with a single human, or a simultaneous uprising? Did the zombie syndrome migrate to other countries, or did it spring simultaneously, as it were, from the grave? The answers to these questions could give scientists a much-needed break in isolating and resolving the cause of zombie-ism. So the search continues for that elusive first case—the one scientists call “Zombie Zero.”

  Cut to DR. BEN HANSEN (CORRIANDER SPICE). (Need background visuals—something non-zombie-ish but interesting enough to detract from digitized face effect): The problem we’re coming up against is in the reporting. Sure, now, you call 9-1-1 and tell them there’s a zombie on your lawn, and the Z-mat team comes right away, but who would have believed this twenty-three years ago?

  Cut to re-enactment of 9-1-1 call. Note on bottom: 9-1-1 call, Pleasantville, KY, Oct 31, 2019, 11:35 p.m.

  “Nine-one-one, how may I help you?”

  “Please. Help me! There’s a…a zombie and it’s—”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in a barn off Countryside Lane. My boyfriend and I were on a drive, and we ran out of gas and now—”

  “’Ran out of gas?”

  “Shut up, okay? There’s a zombie, and it broke the window and pulled Billy out of the back seat and—”

  “Miss, have you been drinking?”

  “Shut up and help me. I’m in the barn. It’s coming after me, and I think Billy is, too!”

  “Miss, could it be they’re just playing a joke?”

  Screams.

  Cut to clips of the barn, the bodies with sheets over them, one hand, obviously zombified, peeking out.

  NARRATOR: It was no joke. Barbie Munchausen, 17, and her boyfriend, Billy Stakes, were discovered by police officers lurching hand-in-hand down Countryside Lane. When they attacked Policeman Lance McRue, his partner, Dougie Marsh, a longtime fan of zombie films, decapitated them with an ax. Even so, officials were slow to believe the zombie story until McRue himself re-animated an hour later. This was the first confirmed case of zombie-ism in the United States, but was it the first?

  HANSEN: Not a chance. We have found veiled references to the undead back to the mid 2010s. Before that, we had some vampire sightings, but we’re pretty sure that was part of the Twilight craze. Vampires? Come on—who’s going to believe that old tale?

  * * * *

  “Neeta, baby. So glad you could make it. We’ve got important work today—a real crisis.”

  Dave held out his hands in welcome.

  Neeta sidestepped him, flopped down onto a plastic chair and plopped her feet onto the table. She nursed her second cup of coffee and resisted the urge to tell Dave where he could stick his “real crisis.” What could he know about a crisis? Maybe she should let him live her life a while—then he’d know about crisis. As Dave nattered on, her mind replayed the phone call that woke her at six that morning.

  “Ms. Lyffe, this is Brian Wanker from Wanker, Wanker, and Twiddle.”

  “What do you want? I made my payment to your client on time.”

  “Yes...just barely. We felt it prudent to remind you the next one is coming in two weeks, and your license to re-kill depends on your prompt compliance to the schedule. After all, your little flirtation with fame won’t protect y
ou from the real world.”

  Dave addressed the room at large. “This is real, people. We’ve got trouble. Potentially big trouble! Sharon, chart.”

  Sharon tapped a key on her DoDroid, and a bar chart appeared on the wall screen, showing viewers vs. time. Neeta gave it a disinterested glance as Dave flung his hand dramatically toward the screen, his laser pointer shining at the lowest spot on the chart.

  “’Flirtation with fame?’” she’d sneered at the lawyer. “Listen, Wanker, what you call my ‘flirtation with fame’ is a lot of pain-in-the-butt, dangerous work that is barely—just barely—keeping a roof over my head and your ‘schedule’ kept. Meanwhile, I just heard that Twiddle—or should I say ‘your client’—is using my money to put in an in-ground pool. You want to explain that?”

  Dave didn’t shout, but spoke with harried, urgent tones. “A thirty-three percent drop, people. How do you explain that?” He went on without waiting for replies.

  Wanker had said, “Ms. Lyffe, zombies fell into it. You could hardly expect them to use it after it’d been contaminated with those...remains...”

  “I get splattered with remains on a regular basis. They wash off—more easily than lawyer ghwal.”

  “Perhaps you should calm down...”

  “I don’t care if Woodland Forrest chose that time to announce he’s thinking about running for President. ‘Thinking about it?’ That should not even compete. Sorry, sorry. I am doing my best to be calm, people. But we are talking about millions of viewers who simply clicked away from our show. You promised this wouldn’t happen, Gary. Perhaps if we’d listened to my instincts...”

  “Perhaps you should remind your client if it hadn’t been for me, he and his guests would no longer be in the real world. Who in their right mind sets out pickled beets in this day and age—especially when they live so close to a cemetery?”

  “Which does not negate the fact you set fire to their home.”

  “The back awning. And I did not set fire to it. I flamed a zombie, which staggered onto their porch, and if some idiot hadn’t thrown vodka on it, it would never have set their awing on fire!”