The Zee Brothers Vol.1 & 2 Box Set [Zombie Exterminators]

by Grivante

  “Thanks for the peek.”

  “What?” her forehead scrunched together.

  His gaze shifted to her legs and he nodded at her skirt which had pulled up like a dance club mini, leaving her exposed all the way to her panties.

  She blushed and tugged it lower.

  He let her go and smiled. “Hurry up.”

  Bobbie walked back over to Tommy, who sat up with the cup of water in his hands, staring blankly ahead. She sat beside him, took the cup and set it on the floor. “It’ll be okay, Tommy.” She offered him reassurance while wondering when Nurse Janet would arrive. This was way over her head.

  Tommy slumped forward groaning, she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him against her shoulder. “It’s okay, Tommy. Let the medicine kick in.”

  Please don’t throw up on me. She squinted her eyes shut as she hugged him, reaching back to move her long blonde hair out of the way in case he got sick. Clothes were much easier to deal with than hair in that scenario.

  She could feel him moving his mouth back and forth against her blouse near her neck line. Is he trying to suckle? Poor kid. He needs comfort, but that’s a little much.

  She was ready to break the hug when he bit her.

  “Ow!” she cried out and pushed Tommy away.

  “Tommy, why did you do that?”

  Tommy let out a low moan and slumped against the pillow.

  Bobbie stood and glowered at him. Ow! She rubbed the spot he’d bitten and noticed droplets of blood on her finger tips.

  “Fuck!” The bite mark was red and swelling. She walked toward the door and looked back at Tommy. The sleeping pill appeared to have kicked in, he hadn’t moved from the pillow. Either way, she decided to close the door behind her as she left.

  She walked back into the office, pulling some facial tissue from a box, and dabbed at the blood on her skin, before heading to the principal’s office.

  Principal Hotchkins watched Bobbie walk around the corner, rubbing her shoulder. He stood and walked out to the reception area. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  “He bit me!”

  “What?” His eyes narrowed and he looked closer.

  “I was trying to comfort him and he bit me. Something’s really wrong with him.”

  “Ok, ok.” He put his arms around her and turned her toward the open door of his office. “Here, let me help you. We’ll call his parents and then see what we can do to take your mind off it.” He closed the door behind them.

  A moment later, the front office door swung open, and a third grader named Wendy wearing blonde pigtails came into the office. “Hello?” the little girl said, sniffing the snot that threatened to drip out of her nostrils. “Is anyone here?”

  Hearing no response, she pushed through the half door and wandered back to the nurse’s office. The handle was hard for her to turn, but she twisted with all her might and pushed it open. Inside, she saw the small form resting on the cot. She walked closer until she realized that she recognized the boy.

  “Tommy? Are you ok?”

  Principal Hotchkins pulled a chair from the front of his desk around to the side and sat Bobbie in it. Sitting in his own, he looked her over and then reached for his phone with one hand as he typed Tommy’s name into the computer with his other.

  After a moment, his face twitched and he waited. “Mr. and Mrs. Tucker, this is Principal Hotchkins; your son Tommy is in the nurse’s office. He’s not feeling too well and we’re gonna need someone to come pick him up. Please give the office a call back and let us know when you’ll be here.”

  “There.” He set the phone down. “That should do it.”

  Bobbie leaned forward in the chair he’d placed her in and stared at the floor. Her body felt stiff, her head ached and the bite on her shoulder burned.

  Principal Hotchkins leaned in, smiling, and tried to catch her eye.

  “C’mon Bobbie.” He reached over, taking her hand and tugging her forward.

  She looked up to the side, not meeting his gaze. “I don’t feel so good, Hank.”

  He smiled and turned her face toward his. “It’s okay. I’ll make you feel better in a minute.” He pulled her out of the chair and onto her knees on the floor before him, placing her hands on the zipper of his crotch. “C’mon now, you know what to do.”

  “But Hank...”

  “Do it,” he barked.

  Janet Mitchell, school nurse and cafeteria worker extraordinaire, pulled her hands from the mix of pink slime cafeteria meat and turned around to find a small blond girl with pigtails staring at her.

  “I need a bang-bang.”

  “What?”

  “For my boo-boo!” She held up her finger, which was red and swollen, blood dripping from a deep hole near the tip, the telltale signs of teeth marks around it.

  “What happened?” Nurse Janet asked.

  “I started sneezing.” The girl stopped, sniffed, saying nothing more.

  Janet waited a moment, then asked, “Well, what happened to your finger?”

  “Oh,” she said. “My teacher told me to go to the office and see the nurse. When I went in, no one was in the office. I walked down the hall and into the nurse's room. Tommy was in there sleeping. I sat on the cot next to him and saw his lips were red. I touched them and he bit me.” She held her finger up again.

  Janet’s eyes grew wide, her body stiffening. “Tommy bit you?”

  “Yeah. He’s a big meany pants. I pulled my finger out and told him so and he just went back to sleep. I tried to reach the first aid kit, but it’s too high for me. I came out into the office and heard Principal Hotchkins yelling at Bobbie in his office, it was scary, so I thought I might have better luck finding you in here.”

  Janet stared at the red and swollen finger, a knot tightening in her stomach.

  “Ok, what’s your name again?”

  “My name’s Wendy. Can I get a bang-bang for my boo-boo now?”

  Janet shook her head and put on her best fake smile. “Sure thing, honey. I’ll get you a bang-bang.” She washed her hands and walked over to a first aid cabinet mounted on the wall and opened it, her mind racing. Lunch starts in less than two hours. I need something to feed these kids. What am I supposed to do?

  Wendy watched as Nurse Janet peeled the covers off the sticky part of the bandage and rolled it onto her finger. “My mom always kisses it,” she said expectantly.

  “I’m sorry honey, I’m not your mom. They don’t let us kiss boo-boos at school.” She watched as tears welled up in the girl’s eyes and sighed. “Here, honey.” She bent at the waist and put her lips to the top of the bandage. “There, all better?”

  Wendy beamed. “Thank you. My finger's better, but now my tummy hurts. And I know you’re not my mom, but you do kinda remind me of my gramms.”

  Nurse Janet took Wendy’s unbandaged hand and straightened one of the child’s pigtails. “C’mon, let’s get you to the office and see...”

  Nurse Janet hustled into the office with Wendy in tow, only to find it empty. No one was attending to the front desk and Principal Hotchkins’s door stood closed. She shook her head. Time for his ‘Monday Morning Knob Job.’ She walked over and listened at the door.

  “Uhh, uhh, that’s right, take it!”

  She grimaced and stormed down the hall toward the nurse’s office. The bucket sat outside the door. “Surprised he let her get that done first,” she spat. The stench caught her nostrils and brought her up short. Something inside her old bones twitched with familiarity. She looked through the small window to where Tommy lay facing the wall, chest rising and falling, apparently asleep.

  She spun Wendy around and opened the door across the hall. The testing room was dark and cool. Janet flipped on a light and spied the big office chair sitting before the computer desk and smiled. Perfect! “Come here, Wendy. See that big chair?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Go sit down and make yourself comfy, I’m gonna check on Tommy and afterward I’ll get Bobbie to write you a note
so you can return to class. Ok?”

  “Ok. Thank you.”

  Wendy climbed up into the chair, made herself comfortable and watched as Janet closed the door.

  Janet took a deep breath, turned and opened the door to the nurse’s office, whispering, “Tommy, are you awake?”

  He didn’t move. She stepped in closer, ignoring the foul odor, and peered over his shoulder. He had sunken cheeks and a ash-green pallor. She put her hand on his back; it was sweaty, yet chilled. She pulled him up and looked closer at his face. There was little color except the red on his lips that looked like... blood.

  A long buried yet familiar feeling came over her from her days training to be a nurse for the Army. She gasped, stood and made for the door. Nurse Janet stopped short and turned back to the boy. How? How could this be happening here?

  She closed the door behind her, clicking the lock and made her way to Bobbie’s desk, where she pulled out the ‘Emergency Services’ binder and flipped through it until she came to the card she was looking for.

  “Rogers Roto-Rooter,”

  “Pests B’ Gone,”

  “Biohazard Bob’s Clean-Up Service,”

  “Emerson’s Cooling & Heating,”

  “Aha, that’s the one!”

  Part II - The Zee Brothers

  Ring!

  The side door to the garage the Zee brothers called home swung open. JJ Hembrook, wearing a tight pair of low rise blue jeans and a white tank top that had the faded words ‘Suite Peas’ stenciled across the chest, stepped inside. Her dog, Xanadu, close on her heels.

  “Hello?” she looked around.

  Judas lay sleeping on the couch, next to a coffee table littered with beer cans. One leg was on the floor, next to a few more empty cans. His bedroom door stood closed and a piece of paper with the word ‘Larry’ scribbled across it hung above it. Jonah’s door was also shut.

  Ring!

  She chuckled to herself as Judas groaned. “I’ll get it!” she called out and walked toward the kitchen. Xanadu wandered over to the couch and sniffed at the cans on the floor.

  Jonah’s beaten and battered flip phone lay plugged in, next to a pile of paperwork being held down by the 8-ball shifter. They had salvaged it from the remains of their truck, Sasha. The papers sat on the table he used for a desk near the window in the kitchen. The phone rang again and she snatched it up.

  “Zee Brothers,” she answered.

  “Yes, hello. Is this Jenny?” a shaky female voice asked.

  Smiling, then shaking her head, remembering the brothers’ long running joke on their business card, she said, “Well, yes it is. How can I help you?”

  “I need to report a possible outbreak.”

  “Are you safe?”

  “Yes, I think so.” The woman took in a deep breath.

  “Ok, what’s your name and where are you located?” JJ looked around for something to write on, but saw nothing useable except the paperwork in front of her. She moved the 8-ball aside, saw the title, ‘Incident Report’ and looked around for anything else she could possibly use. Jonah was still filling out these forms from the outbreak at Winter Oaks a few weeks back.

  “My name’s Janet, I’m the lunch lady and school nurse over at Savini Charter School.”

  JJ grabbed a pen and flipped the paperwork over. Scribbling on the back, she wrote the word’s ‘Savini School’ “Ok, what is the situation there?”

  “We’ve got a sick kid here, only,” Janet’s voice got quieter, “I’ve seen this before. The sunken skin, the green-grey pallor. I think he might be turning into a zombie.”

  JJ kept scribbling. “What do you mean, you’ve seen this before?”

  “Well, I used to be a field nurse, back before the military was folded into the U.C.A., and I was on-site during the first chemically caused outbreak back in the sixties.”

  “Is he the only one? Where is he now?”

  “He’s asleep in the nurse’s office, we gave him some sleeping pills and there is one other. A girl. She... well, he bit her.”

  A bell rang inside the school, the mid-morning bell, causing Janet to glance up at the clock, her hands gripping the phone tighter. Lunch needed to be in the oven cooking in five minutes or else they’d only be getting potato salad on their trays today.

  “There’s two?”

  “Well, Tommy looks pretty green, the other one is just bleeding from her finger.” A moan of pleasure came from Principal Hotchkins’s office, causing Nurse Janet to scowl. She barked into the phone. “Look, what do I need to do? I’ve got two jobs to do and the only other job that’s getting done around here is a blow job!”

  JJ held the phone away from her ear a moment and looked at it, startled. “Ma’am if you can just keep an eye on them and don’t let them out. I’ll get the,” she glanced at Judas snoring on the couch and then to Jonah’s door which was still closed, “Um, the brothers over there right away.”

  “Look, I’ve got them in closed rooms. I’ll let the principal know you’re on your way. I’ve got to get back to the kitchen.”

  “Ok, ok.” JJ said and then breathed a sigh of relief as Jonah’s door swung open. She grinned as she took in the sight of him.

  He walked out in nothing but a pair of boxers, rubbing his eyes. Seeing JJ standing in the kitchen, he smiled and squinted at the bright light coming in the window. He walked over, put his left hand on her back and looked down at her notes as she closed his phone.

  “A school?”

  “Yeah, she said she used to be an army nurse and had been present at the first chemically caused outbreak. She said it looked familiar.”

  “How many?”

  “Two. A sick kid who looked like he was turning and another who he may have bitten.”

  Jonah shook his head. “Kids, that’s never good. Ok. I’ll get Judas and load up Sasha—, crap!”

  They both looked out the window to where the demolished body of the brothers’ modified 1950s Chevy pickup truck lay in pieces. Another leftover mess from their time at Winter Oaks.

  “Can we take your Charger?” Jonah asked JJ, picking up the 8-ball and shaking it. It displayed the answer, ‘Don’t count on it’.

  “Sorry sugar, I’ve got to take Xanadu to the groomers this morning. You’re gonna have to take the rental the insurance company gave you until Dave’s Custom Remodels can come and get Sasha and fix her up.”

  He looked at the red Prius parked next to JJ’s Charger, lowered his head and sighed. “I’ll go wake Judas.”

  “Hey, did you get my text?” JJ shuffled her feet.

  “Huh?”

  “My text message? I sent you a message last night.”

  “Oh,” Jonah picked up his phone, flipped it open and fumbled around with the numerical keyboard. “I’m not really sure how—”

  “XANADU!” JJ shouted.

  Jonah’s head swung around.

  Judas shot up on the couch, the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball hat he always wore falling off, and looked around. “JJ?” he squinted.

  “Dog nammit!” JJ stormed across the living area to where Xanadu had knocked over a half drunk beer and was lapping it up.

  Xanadu looked up at her, licked the foam from his whiskers and waited expectantly.

  Judas looked at Xanadu and then at JJ. “Where’s all the disco and stuff?”

  “That only seems to happen when he’s in the air. I don't know how it all works.” JJ picked up Xanadu and scolded him. “Beer is not for dogs!”

  Jonah walked up behind her, “C’mon Judas, time to get up. We’ve got a job.”

  JJ tapped Xanadu on the head and walked over to the door with the hand written sign reading, ‘Larry’. “May I?” She looked at Jonah with a raised eyebrow.

  He bit his lip a moment then nodded.

  She swung the door open and caught her breath.

  Hanging from the center of the room, suspended from various ropes tied to eye-bolts in the ceiling and walls, Larry the Zombie stared at her. The ropes wrapped aro
und his body in an ornate criss-cross harness, with intricate knots that held him immobile. The room smelled of daisies.

  JJ turned to Jonah with a huge smile. “I see you’ve been practicing your rope skills!”

  Jonah cleared his throat. “He makes a good rope bunny.”

  JJ giggled. “I’ll be your rope bunny!” She made a little hop in his direction.

  Jonah blushed and smiled back. “I’d like that.”

  Judas shot up from the couch. “We’d better get moving, Jonah!”

  Nurse Janet turned to go knock on Principal Hotchkins’s door, more to break up his fun than anything else, but as she walked up, she could hear the sounds coming from inside.

  “Suck it, bitch!” she heard Principal Hotchkins shouting and wrinkled her nose. The clock read five minutes to ten, she didn’t have time for this. Throwing her hands up, she turned around and scribbled a note on a piece of paper on Bobbie’s desk. ‘Tommy really sick. I’ve called professionals. Don’t open his door.’

  “I’ve got lunch to make,” she grumbled and stomped out of the office.

  Part III - Savini Charter School

  Inside the principal’s office, he had Bobbie’s head gripped between his hands, ramming her up and down between his legs.

  “I’m so close,” he spat. “Do something besides just holding your mouth open!”

  He didn’t wait for any kind of reply, he just slammed her head up and down harder and faster. “C’mon!”

  “Grr... unnhh,” Bobbie grunted.

  “Yeah, that’s more like it! Make some noise. Choke on my python!”

  “Grrrugg.”

  His forced ramming into her open mouth continued as he neared climax. He grunted himself, so close now, but he needed something to push him over the edge - then he started screaming.

  “Ahh!”