Neeta Lyffe
Zombie
Exterminator
By
Karina Fabian
Damnation Books, LLC.
P.O. Box 3931
Santa Rosa, CA 95402-9998
www.damnationbooks.com
Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator
by Karina Fabian
Digital ISBN: 978-1-61572-272-3
Print ISBN: 978-1-61572-273-0
Cover art by: George Silliman
Icons by: Amber Fabian
Edited by: Kim Richards
Copyedited by: Penny Ehrenkranz
Copyright 2010 Karina Fabian
Printed in the United States of America
Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights
1st North American and UK Print Rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
To Audrey Shaffer and all my friends at The Writers Chat Room.
—Because you educate, you inspire, and you give “doorknobs” a whole new meaning!
Acknowledgements
The question shouldn’t be “Where do you come up with ideas?” but rather “How do you decide what to write next?”
I’ve been pretty lucky the past few years to not only be blessed with an overflowing cup of ideas, but also with good people to give me a push on which to write first. Neeta Lyffe is one example.
Kim Richards, publisher of Damnation Books got the ball rolling with her anthology, The Zombie Cookbook. She asked us authors on The Writers Chat Room at www.writerschatroom.com to send her zombie stories. Personally, I’ve never cared much for zombies—never read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, haven’t seen Zombieland yet—so while I wanted to write for Kim, I didn’t have a solid idea and kept procrastinating.
Then while house-hunting in Utah with my husband, Rob, my friend Rebecca Butcher from the chat room IM’d me. “We need to write something for the Cookbook. Kim’s getting worried!” I didn’t have any zombie ideas, so much as a few wise-cracks, particularly about election fraud with the dead voting. I was also feeling sarcastic about environmentalists, as my daughter was in a debate with her science teacher in California about this sacred cow. Chatting with Becca brought out the idea of a zombie exterminator having a hard time doing her job because of a new law that replaced her useful zombie repellent with less effective environmentally friendly stuff. It turned out to be such fun, I wrote it completely in an hour, giggling the whole time and sharing the jokes with Becca as I went.
Neeta Lyffe made her appearance in “Wokking Dead” in The Zombie Cookbook. (Incidentally, after writing it, I was in a such a groove, I wrote “My Big, Fat, Undead Wedding” which is in the Cookbook, too.)
I figured that was the last I’d see of Neeta and the shambling undead, but it turned out people liked Neeta and someone (Cinsaerae? LisaB?) asked Kim when I was going to write a novel about her.
Once again, I put it off. I had two other novels I was working on, but Kim mentioned it during the Wednesday chat in The Writers Chat Room, and others agreed it was a great idea. In that chat, we also talked about reality TV and someone mentioned the best opening lines he’d recently read: “They ate Jorgenson first. They were gnawing on his leg, his fine, white leg…” I think that story was about people resorting to cannibalism to survive, but like so many serious things, it got stuck in my head and demanded to be twisted. So the project went into the back of my brain, to be started sometime after my current work in progress.
On the way to Long Beach to go whale watching New Year’s Day, I decided to give it a start and wrote the scene on my netbook. Soon, I was giggling as Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator, led her plebes on a zombie run for a reality TV show. I enjoyed it so much that when my computer died, taking the back-up (including my serious sci-fi work in progress) with it, I decided I’d rather have fun writing something that I knew a publisher wanted.
So, thank you, Kim, Becca, and all the folks at The Writers Chat Room, for bringing Neeta to life.
And thank you, Audrey Shaffer, for creating The Writers Chat Room and for working so hard to make it a place where authors of all levels can meet to learn, to gripe, and to build friendships and support. You’re awesome, my friend!
A lot of folks helped in the development of the story:
Rob Fabian, my idea man, my pun partner, my support and my true love. He came up with the zombie cell phone commercial in the book, BTW.
Tony Valdez, our neighbor who is in the LAPD. He and his wife, Christine, took the time to educate me on some of the finer zombie-fighting areas in the city.
Jason Carrier and Walt Staples, who by example as well as by answering questions, helped me flesh out ex-Marine Gordon Makepeace. OOH Rah!
My children, Steven, Amber, Alex and Liam, who always listen to me read my manuscripts aloud. (Amber, 15, caught all the jokes and was both proud and a little appalled at Mom’s humor.)
Ann Lewis, my writing buddy and best friend. Even though she’s been swamped this year, she took time to read some snippets, share her ideas and just be there for me.
To my critiquers: Becca Butcher, Walt Staples, Devon Ellington, for catching typos, noting what didn’t flow, and polishing it until it was brighter than a zombie on Porcelain Sparkle. Special thanks to Devon, who teaches the best workshops on dialogue. She taught me just how fun dialogue among a large group can be.
Chapter One
They ate Eidelberg.
Dammit! Neeta thought. I was still training him.
The zombies gnawed on his abs, his fine, tanned, eight-pack abs, while he screamed and blubbered and somehow still managed to flip his surfer-blond hair stylishly over his shoulder.
Not that anyone really noticed. The zombies had more interest in his meat than his pelt. There were only eight, but that was still too many for a bunch of unwashed trainees, particularly with the idiot film crew hounding them and getting in the way.
Around Neeta, seven panicky apprentices screamed and flailed with their tools, forgetting everything she’d taught them over the past six weeks, while through their headpieces, Dave shouted directions having more to do with good drama than good tactics. One cameraman continued to film while another had abandoned his camera and fallen to his knees vomiting.
Zombies grunting, plebes screaming, someone calling for her mother...
Wait, that was Neeta—and she wasn’t calling; she was apologizing. She just knew Mom was spinning in her grave.
“Fall back!” she shouted into her mike. “Roscoe, Katie—take point and keep the path clear. Everyone else, orderly retreat. Move, move, move!”
Neeta dashed to the front line, wielding her chainsaw as much to badger her students into action as to keep the zombies at bay. She kicked the kneeling cameraman with her heel.
“Come with us if you want to live!” she snarled.
“I do want to live! I do want to live!” he blubbered and dashed into the center of her retreating students.
“Help me!” Eidelberg wailed. A zombie was now pawing at his hair. Young thing, not long turned. Probably some surfer boy’s dream girl once.
Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator, lunged forward with the chainsaw and seve
red the zombie’s hands—and Eidelberg’s head with it. The titanium teeth of the saw made a clean cut, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t messy. Gore and blood splattered her rubber hazmat suit and coated the visor of her faceplate.
Didn’t slow her, of course. She let go of the saw with her right hand, swinging it to the left and removing something’s arm, and wiped her visor, while still backing up. All part of the job.
Meanwhile, her plebes, finally remembering their training, had formed up in a neat diamond pattern, stepping back in rhythm. Katie and Roscoe swung their blades like paired ninjas. LaCenta and Spud kept their flamethrowers shooting out at regular intervals. Gordon on the right lunged forward low and severed one shambling undead at the knees.
“Score! OOH Rah!” he shouted, as he pulled back into formation.
On the left, Nasir’s cheap Craftsman Treesplinterer 5000 shook so hard, he’d only sever something by accident. Gordon shouted for him to keep the blade up. “Remember Heisman!”
Nasir replied in what Neeta thought were Arabic curses. She made a note to learn them. There weren’t enough swear words in the English language for her job.
Inside the diamond formation, the on-location film crew huddled and moved with her team. Only one cameraman remained outside.
Neeta ignored him. If Ted got brained, wasn’t her problem. Guy was a lunatic, anyway, whooping and getting into the fray. Still, he had good instincts. She’d seen him skip out of the way of a flailing arm just in the nick of time, and once, he used his camera to knock a zombie off Katie before it tore her helmet off. He wore an industrial-grade protective suit and helmet, too. Reckless, but not stupid.
As the last of her trainees cleared the building, Neeta made a wide sweep with the saw, causing the horde to pull back long enough for her to jump out and slam the door. Gordon and Spud braced it shut while she reached into her pockets and pulled out a napalm bomb.
Director Dave screamed, “Stop! No, Neeta, those things are expensive.”
Ted the cameraman crouched low to get a good angle as Neeta pulled the pin. Behind the faceplate, she could see him grinning encouragement. Gordon had pulled out some of his own grenades.
She shouted, “Napalm sticks to zombies!” for effect and because, well, Ted was kind of cute.
Spud eased up on his door, and she and Gordon tossed their grenades in, thrown high, like she’d taught them. Then they ran.
There weren’t any dramatic flames and no exploding door. Nonetheless, Dave yelled for them to run ten feet then dive to the ground dramatically.
“Screw that! Keep running!” Neeta told them. Only after they put several yards between them and the building did she spin around, chainsaw at the ready.
The door burst open.
Rather than a horde of flaming zombies, only one walking ball of flame, groaning “Brains!” emerged to fall mere feet from the threshold.
Neeta waited. One minute…then three. At five, she clicked off the saw and lowered it to her side.
“Good job Gordon,” she said.
“Cut!” the director snarled.
* * * *
Katie Haskell stared straight into the camera, trying to sniffle without sounding gross. Why did they have to film this now? Couldn’t she blog it later, when she could talk without her nose dripping?
“I...I can’t believe it. He’s gone, just gone. One minute, he was all, ‘Let’s do this thing, Baby!’ then they were gnawing on him, and he was screaming and Neeta just…” She bit her lip to stop herself from shrieking.
From where he sat behind the camera, Dave motioned, “Go on.”
“I can’t. I just can’t! I mean, what am I doing here, anyway? Is it really worth a million? Bergie had a shot—more than me—and now he’s dead! And…and he’d be even worse than dead if Neeta hadn’t…”
She buried her face in her hands and sobbed, uncaring of the sloppy sounds she made.
* * * *
Gordon spit out the chewing tobacco as Dave ordered, glaring at the director as he did so. Didn’t he understand he needed something to cool his nerves? Asshole was watching the whole thing from a nice safe location—he wasn’t there! He didn’t know!
Use the anger, man. Use it and don’t let it use you.
“Bergie was an idiot,” he told the camera. “Broke formation, mugging it up for points. I did six years in the Marines, man. Taught me the importance of listening to your CO. I seen stuff make your short hairs stand and scream—but what they was doing to Eidelberg...”
He shook his head. “Neeta, though. She’s got monkey’s brass balls, she does.”
You ought to be fragged, he thought at the grinning man sitting beside the cameraman.
* * * *
“Oh, my gawd.” Roscoe ran his fingers through his still wet hair. He’d just left the shower, where he’d washed four times to get even the thought of that zombie vileness off, and was doing his video blog, like he promised Dave, in his towel. Dave had liked the casual, risqué effect, and it certainly fit Roscoe’s persona. Still, he was careful about how he kept his legs. Didn’t want to give the girls too much. Or the guys for that matter.
“That was just perfectly horrifying, you know? I totally can’t blame Neeta, though. Bergie’s uniform was so wrong. I mean, I tried to warn him. If you want to show the bod, it’s transparent Kevlar all the way! More expensive, sure, and it doesn’t breathe, but really! I’d rather be able to breathe after the extermination, you know?
“Oh, gawd, didn’t he have a beautiful bod? If I were a zombie, I’d have eaten him up, too.”
* * * *
Dave Lor, King of Reality TV, Czar of the Candid Outtake, stood outside the conference room and shook himself like a runner preparing for a race.
“Producer’s in there. Gotta look sharp, stay positive,” he muttered to himself.
One deep cleansing breath, then two, then he shot out his arm toward his personal assistant. Sharon slapped an Electrolyte Jolt drink into his hand with the efficiency of a surgical nurse. Then she pulled her DoDroid SuperSmartPadPhone from her purse and called up the myriad of notes and raw footage from the dailies, transferring files into his own DoDroid. No one would have guessed she’d just spent the last two hours screaming into a couch cushion. Days like this, she regretted her second grade pledge to DARE to stay off drugs.
She just finished calling up the footage Dave had already set aside for the blooper reel when he stuck out his arm again, empty bottle in his hand. She traded it for the phone. He gave her a roguish, caffeinated grin.
“In the words of the late Donald Eidelberg, ‘Let’s do this thing, Baby!’”
She pushed open the door for him, trying hard to imagine herself into a cocaine high.
* * * *
“All right, people!” Director Dave said as he strode toward the table, which the producer shared with two depressed writers, one resigned lawyer, and various cameramen and production crew. Plus, of course, Neeta herself, whose hands kept gripping and ungripping, as if missing her chainsaw or longing to close around someone’s throat.
Dave didn’t notice. No, Neeta amended herself; he noticed but chose to pretend he hadn’t. Very little escaped his director’s eye, she’d learned during the past six weeks of filming Zombie Death Extreme. Instead, he projected an image from his DoDroid onto the large screen so that Eidelberg stared helplessly at the people around the table, his mouth frozen in a scream, his head resting in the lap of a teenage zombie who was running her fingers through his hair.
One of the writers, Gary, gagged. Quickly, Neeta passed him a bag. It wasn’t the first time.
Dave waited, a paradigm of patience and sympathy. Neeta would have liked to slice up some of that paradigm and feed it to him fist-first. Mom, I’m sorry!
“So let’s talk about what went wrong,” Dave said when Gary had wiped his mouth with a muffled apology.
“Wrong?” Neeta growled. “Where shall we start? How about when you said, ‘Let’s give them a budget and have them desig
n their own gear’? How about we start there, Dave!”
As usual, Dave looked deeply concerned while his “people” jumped to the rescue.
Lawyer Larry decided to jump in first. “We clearly stated that every uniform meet OSHA standards—”
“OSHA?!” Neeta slammed her hand on the table and pushed herself up. “Do you know when the first zombie infestations were discovered, Larry?”
He sighed. “My name is Eugene.”
“When, Lawyer Larry?”
“Twenty-three years ago,” he snapped.
“And the first OSHA regulations concerning the make of protective gear, types of tools and general working environment?”
“Twenty-two, as dictated by the Zombie Extermination Authorization Act of—”
“And when was the last time they were updated to reflect what we’ve learned about zombies?”
He faltered. “I fail to see—”
“Never, Lawyer Larry! Twenty years of research and raw experience by people like my mother, God rest her soul, and the only thing the OSHA standards have even addressed are ‘environmental’ issues suggested by know-nothing big-lobbying companies like Bioclowns—”
“Bioclonz,” Wang Bastille corrected. His partner, Gary, looked at him with wide eyes as if to say, Are you freaking mad? She’s on a roll!
Gary was weak, but at least he wasn’t a fool. Neeta turned on Wang with a snarl. “Thank you, Wang the Waste! And where were the specifications I told you to write into the script?”
Wang chose the better part of valor and turned to the producer for the answer.
Alberts leaned back in his chair and spread his hands. With as many heavy gold rings as he had on his fingers, she was constantly amazed that he could move them so easily. “Neeta. Be reasonable. None of our contestants could have afforded to make the kind of suit you specified.”
“Larry” continued for him. “Ever since the UN Environmental Accord and the subsequent US Petroleum Product Limitations Acts, industrial grade, man-made rubber is hard to come by and expensive to obtain.”
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