Do What You Love & Zombies Will Follow
When the zombie plague struck, I was just an office schlub.
You know the type. I was a coffee-fetching, doing-the-work-
and-getting-no-credit, screamed-at-by-suits kind of girl
who hated every damn second of her dead end job. Well, I
still have a dead end job… undead end, I guess is more
accurate. But instead of working for the man, I work for
myself. So I guess the lesson is that if you find work
that’s meaningful, that you love, you can start your own
business and make it successful.
So what’s my job?
Zombiebusters Extermination, Inc at your service.
My husband David suggested we add the “Inc” to make it seem
more professional. I guess in the old days we would have
had a website and all that, too, but now none of that
exists anymore, at least not in the badlands where the
zombies still roam free.
I have to say, I liked being in business for myself and I
liked working with my husband as my partner. The zombie
apocalypse had been surprisingly good for our marriage
(sounds weird, I know, but it’s true) and since we escaped
Seattle a few months before, we’d been doing great.
But that isn’t to say the whole “not working for the man”
thing didn’t have its disadvantages. Which is something we
were discussing as we drove down a lonely stretch of dusty
highway in Arizona. Why Arizona? Well, it was November and
fucking freezing anywhere else. So we did what old people
had been doing for generations and snowbirded our asses
down south. I figured when the weather got better up North,
we’d decide what to do next.
“Why did we take another job from Jimmy?” Dave asked with
annoyance lacing his voice.
I looked up from the business book I was reading. We’d
looted it and about twenty more from a bookstore a few
weeks back. I was all about making this work, you see.
Someday, I would be the Donald Trump or Bill Gates of
zombie killing. Only with better hair, obviously.
“Um, we took a job from Jimmy because he pays,” I said.
Dave shot me a side glance that was filled with
incredulity. “Not well. Last time I think he gave us a six-
pack and we killed three zombies for his chicken-ass.”
I laughed. “Hey, that’s two brews per zombie. Anyway, he
trades with everyone and brings us new business at least
once a week. He may not pay us as well as… well… anyone
else, but think of it as brand building.”
“My ass.” Dave didn’t even smile. “He has a lot of shit
stockpiled in his basement, I know he does. This time
before we start, we should tell that asshole we want
payment up front. Medical supplies and some canned goods.”
I tossed my book in the back of the van.
Oh, didn’t I mention it? We drive a van. Dave likes to call
it the Mystery Machine because it’s totally circa 1975, but
it runs like a gem and is heavy enough to do some push work
when needed. Plus, I had way too much fun
painting “Zombiebusters Exterminators, Inc” on the side
and “Who Ya Gonna Call?” on the back.
That one always gets a chuckle since there’s no way to call
anyone anymore. If people want us, they have to post notes
in the survivor camps and we go looking for them. Trust me,
sometimes by the time we’ve gotten to a job, there hasn’t
been anyone left to pay us. I always feel kind of badly
about that, but seriously, if you haven’t figured out how
to protect yourself after three months of zombie hell…
well, you sort of deserve what you get.
“Look, you’re the muscle in this operation,” I said as I
settled back in my seat and slung my booted feet onto the
dash. As I flicked a little piece of brains left over after
our last job from the toe, I continued, “If you want to
strong-arm the guy up front, be my guest.”
We were approaching our destination now and Dave slowly
maneuvered the vehicle off the highway into the area of
what was once southern Phoenix. There were signs of zombie
activity everywhere here, both from the initial outbreak in
the city and more recently. Black sludge pooled in the
gutters and blood streaked the walls of buildings. It was
all so commonplace to us, we didn’t really see it anymore.
Nor did we flinch when a single zombie stepped into a
crosswalk ahead of us.
He lurched forward, his right hand missing and his arm on
the same side waving in a disconnected way as he moved. He
had fresh blood on his chin and he grunted and groaned
loudly enough that we could hear him even with the windows
partly up.
We watched him make his slow cross for a bit, both of us
staring with bored disinterest. Then Dave gunned the engine.
The sound made the zombie turn and he stared at us with his
blank, dead, red eyes that never quite focused. Still, he
seemed to recognize the potential for food on some primal
level and he let out a roar.
Dave floored the van at the same time the zombie started a
half-assed jog toward us. We collided mid-intersection and
the zombie, gooey and rotting, took the brunt of the
impact. His skin split, sending gore and guts flying from
the seams of his torn clothing to splatter on our hood and
the ground around the van. He lay half-wrapped around our
bumper, staring up at us as he squealed and clawed along
the metal of the hood like he could somehow hoist himself
up and get to us, even though his lower body was probably
gone.
“Want me to take care of that?” I asked as I reached in the
back for an axe.
“No way,” Dave said. “And let you get ahead on Death Count?”
I laughed as he changed gears and rolled back in reverse.
The zombie fell backward and disappeared from view until my
husband got far enough away. Sure enough, his lower half
was gone, split off from the initial impact of
the “accident”.
Dave lined up the wheel of the van and rolled forward
again. He didn’t stop until we felt the satisfying rock of
hitting the zombie skull and popping it like a melon.
Once that was done, Dave put the van in neutral. He pulled
his knife from his waistband and carefully etched a new
hash mark on the steering wheel, which was already covered
in crevices and digs from previous kills. Pretty soon we
were going to have to move on to the door.
“That’s another one for the Mystery Machine.” When I
laughed, he looked at me. “So if I’m the muscle of the
operation,” he said, returning to our earlier
conversation. “What does that make you?”
“Silly,” I laughed. “I’m the braaaaains, of course. And the
beauty.”
I fluffed my hair as he threw the van in first and we
roared toward our first job of the week.
#
Fire-bombing had been the way our government had dealt with
the zombie plague. Whole cities wiped out without warning
and without waiting to see if there were survivors as the
military kept its troops in the air rather than on the
ground where they could become undead soldiers.
Phoenix hadn’t escaped this “final solution” mentality any
more than Seattle of L.A. or San Diego had. While some
parts in the south end of the city were still partially
intact, the downtown area itself was a mass of twisted
burned metal and half walls.
Despite that, downtown was where Jimmy No-Toes lived. Why
No-Toes? Other than that he had no toes on his left foot, I
have no fucking idea.
“Watch yourself,” David muttered as he cut the van’s engine
and look at the burned out building our ‘employer’ for the
day called home.
It had once been a barber shop, I guess and Jimmy had found
it hilarious to paint the old fashioned barber’s pole with
black blood and sludge from dead zombies. Most of whom, we
had killed by the way.
I pulled my pistol from the back of my waistband as I
opened up the passanger door and both of us checked around
us. Guns were a great way to dispose of zombies, but the
sound brought others running to check it out, so whenever
possible we used other tools.
David pulled open the back of the van and I looked inside
at our arsenal, collected over the past few months and
tested tried and true (seriously, we should have made a
stamp for these things that said ‘Sarah and David
Approved!’ Maybe next apocalypse, huh?).
“What does my lady prefer for today?” Dave asked as he
flipped his hand palm side up and gestured to the weaponry
before me like he was Vanna-Fucking-White.
I stared at the cornucopia of choices stacked and hung in
the back of the van.
“Well, the scythe is always fun,” I mused. “But unwieldy in
tight places like Jimmy always calls us to. Same thing with
the chainsaw and it stalled the last time I used it in Mesa
Verde, which was almost very bad.”
David flinched at the memory. “True. How about an axe?”
I tilted my head as I examined the gleaming blade of my
favorite axe. “No, not today. Just not in the mood for
that, or the sword.”
Dave’s eyes lit up. “Wait, I know what you want.”
I gave him a look as he took off around to the driver’s
side back door of the van. In a second, he was back and he
was brandishing the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in
my life.
“I call it the home-run-you-through,” he said as he held
out a heavy wooden baseball bat that had a long, wicked
sharp spearhead firmly attached to the end by some kind of
metal twine. “And I’m copyrighting that as soon as we find
a patent office, so no trying to rip me off.”
I grinned as I reached out to take the bat. It was balanced
perfectly and would do the job of both smashing and
stabbing zombie heads nicely.
“You do know what to get a girl for Christmas,” I murmured
as I put my handgun back in my waistband and stepped back
to perform a few practice swings and stabs in the air.
“Oh no, baby,” Dave said as he grabbed a machete and shoved
his shotgun into the sling around his back. “This isn’t
half as cool as what I have planned for our first zombie
Christmas.”
I laughed, but the sound faded as he shut the double back
doors of the van and we faced Jimmy’s barber shop. “Want to
do this?”
Dave nodded and we inched forward, ever at the ready. The
door to the shop was locked, but the glass around it had
been broken, rendering the lock useless anyway, even to a
really stupid zombie. Dave rolled his eyes and reached
through to throw the latch and let us in.
Jimmy had no toes, but I should also mention he wasn’t
exactly brainy, either. Probably why he was constantly
asking for our help. He could find a pod of zombies better
than anyone I’ve ever met, but he was too lazy or dim-
witted or both to do anything about it.
“Jimmy?” David called out into the dusty dark of the front
room of the barbershop. “Hey, it’s ZBE, Inc!”
I rolled my eyes. “God damn it,” I whispered. “That isn’t
what we call ourselves.”
He never looked at me, just kept moving forward. “It’s a
perfectly legitimate shortening of our name and I think
it’s catchy.”
“We have a fucking brand to maintain here, David,” I
insisted. “All the marketing books say-”
I didn’t finish because off to my right I heard a faint
scrape. Both of us spun toward it, weapons lifted.
“Fucking Jimmy, if that’s you come out or you’ll be shish
kabob in about three seconds,” I snapped.
There was a low, entirely unzombie-like chuckle and then
Jimmy himself stood up from behind a bank of barber chairs.
He had long, unkempt hair and I could smell him from across
the room. And it isn’t like anyone could take a long, hot,
fabulous, steamy shower with shower gel and shampoo and
conditioner that smelled like lilac and… oh, sorry, had a
moment of fantasy there… but most of us had figured out how
to freshen up in the worst of circumstances.
Not Jimmy, though I doubted he’d been much of a hygiene
freak even when the world was “normal”.
“Nothing turns me on more than hearing you two bicker.
How’s the make-up sex?” he said with a laugh.
I wrinkled my nose. “You are the most disgusting human
being I’ve ever met.”
He bowed slightly, greasy hair falling over his face for a
moment and blocking out the crooked, dirty teeth and the
scraggly beard that completed the picture.
“Pleased for the compliment.”
“Asshole,” David muttered.
Jimmy laughed again, finishing it up with a wet, sickly
cough that made me frown. As much as I disliked the guy,
the fact that he always sounded like he was on the edge of
keeling over worried me. There weren’t many of us humans
left in the badlands, we had to do everything we could to
stay alive.
“So what do you need, No Toes?” I asked with a sigh. “We
saw your note in the Sun Devil camp. It said something
about a pod?”
The jovial quality to Jimmy’s dirty face faded and his
bloodshot eyes went wide and, to my surprise, filled with
fear. His hands shook as he gripped the back of one of the
barber’s chairs.
“Y-Yeah, but this ain’t no ordinary pod, Sarah,” he said
with a shake of his head. “There’s something different.”
“Different?” David said with an incredulous lift of his
eyebrows. “What the hell do you mean, different? Zombies
are already pretty different.”
Jimmy shook his head quickly. “But these are… bigger. And
faster.”
“Jimmy,” Dave sighed in exasperation. “What the fuck have
you been drinkin’ man?”
“Naw, it’s not that,” Jimmy insisted as he came out from
behind the chairs and hurried toward my husband with
outreached hands. Both of us flinched at the increased
stench in the air that wafted ahead of him. “I swear, dude.
These ones, when they look at you… it’s like they see you.”
“Uh-huh.”
Dave shot me a look that said he thought Jimmy was coo-coo
for cocoa puffs, but I wasn’t so sure. He looked genuinely
afraid and not in the normal ‘I saw a zombie and I’m too
lazy to kill it myself’ way.
“So where did you see these… these… bionic zombies?” I
asked.
Jimmy turned on me, his neck craning as he jerked out a
quick series of nods. “Yeah, bionic. That’s right!”
“Where did you see them?” I repeated softly.
“Near that church by where the convention center used to be
downtown,” he muttered and then let out a shiver.
I nodded. The governmental bombing had destroyed most of
the buildings in the main downtown area, but the church,
which was actually called St. Mary’s Basilica, had remained
standing. Religious nuts called it a sign and kept trying
to go there to pray or whatever, which of course brought
the zombies there in droves to feed. They might as well
have changed the name to St. Mary’s Feed Trough and started
taking reservations from the zombie horde.
Would they require a jacket and tie for that?
I sighed. “Okay, we’ll check it out.”
Dave shot me a look, but my expression kept him from saying
anything to me. He shook his head. “Yeah, but we’re going
to need to get paid this time.”
All Jimmy’s fear fled his face and he looked at Dave like
he was the picture of innocence. He had the gall to sound
affronted when he said, “Of course. I always pay.”
“Six beers for three zombies is not a fair trade fucking
system, No Toes,” Dave barked. “We get paid in food,
medical supplies, ammo, all kinds of shit by everyone else
but you.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Yeah, my baby was an ass-kicker.
Gotta love that in a guy. Jimmy didn’t seem to, though. His
face darkened with fear again and just a touch of anger.
“I don’t got nothing else,” he insisted.
Dave moved forward. “Look you little looting scum, I know
you keep finding pods because you’re hauling all over
gathering up shit to trade at the survivor camps. You can’t
say anything that’s going to make me believe otherwise. And
this time I want payment up front or no killy the zombies,
bud.”
Jimmy shot me a look as if he hoped I might take his side
in all this, but I just shrugged as I flicked a piece of
lint off the blade at the end of my baseball bat. Finally
his shoulders slumped.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll go get you some shit now and I’ll
give you some more when you come back with zombie heads.”
Dave smiled, ignoring Jimmy’s muttering of all kinds of
slurs as he turned on his heel and headed toward the doors
that led to the basement area where he kept his stash.
“Nice,” I muttered when he was out of earshot. “Very brawn,
not brains of you.”
“He’s finally fucking cracked,” Dave said with a shake of
his head. He paced around the cramped barber shop
restlessly. “Bionic zombies? And thank you, by the way, for
encouraging him with that little label.”
“You saw his face, though,” I said as I stared where our
little friend had disappeared. “I think he’s genuinely
scared.”
“No way.” Dave shook his head. “He’s probably just high. Or
drunk. Or both.”
“He certainly reeks of it, but I don’t think so,” I
said. “Whatever he saw, he believes it’s real. Are we going
to check it out?”
Dave chuckled as we heard Jimmy coming back in the
distance. “Of course we’re going to fucking check it out.
We’re the Zombiebusters, aren’t we?”