The Zomb
The phone rang, but I wasn't about to answer it. I'd gotten too many crank calls in the last week and half to bother with the damn thing anymore – it was email or nothing for me, now.
I get it, believe me. Listing myself as an undead extermination service wasn't exactly par for the course, and I can tell you the guys over at the phone company had a hoot when I called in to set up my account. Jokes about their boss being a zombie or the girl down the hall being a “ghoul” took up most of our conversation, but I managed to keep my cool.
Gotta say, I'm rather proud of that.
This isn't a joke; I'm not trying to make fun of “legitimate” exterminators out there. I know my business as well as any of them, and I know there's a market for it. Half of your basic hauntings are actually undead infestations, and a third of all bug exterminations have the risen dead at their source. When a corpse claws its way from the ground, animated by the dark magics of the underworld, it infects the earth around it and drives out any bugs that are living in the area. Often, these bugs will migrate to a home in the hopes that the wood and metal there will keep them safe. That's when my regular exterminator counterparts get called, and sure, they can take care of the creepy-crawlies that infest a place, but they have no way to target the thing that would love to have those crawlies for breakfast. That's where I come in.
A chime from my desktop let me know an email had arrived. I'll admit that deadundead@gmail.com wasn't exactly the most original address I could have come up with, but with all of the other details involved in setting up shop, I hadn't given the name too much thought. Honestly, I'd believed I would get a few real calls in amongst the kooks.
My finances hadn't supported the renting of an office, so I was stuck in the spare room of my apartment. There was no way I was going to be taking walk-ins, and the truth was I didn't really like people in the first place. I had more in common with the undead, at least when it came to their aversion to humans. Both of my parents had dabbled in the occult, something that took them to an early grave – one they thankfully didn't rise from.
Grand Magister Kevin Geldon had been the god-parent I'd been sent to after my parent's death, but he had no idea what to do with a twelve-year old boy. With no frame of reference for raising children, the Magister had treated me like an apprentice, someone who was going to follow after him in the ranks of the Occulus Occult.
When I turned twenty-one, I had quickly disabused him of that notion, and he sent me packing.
Shaking my head, I focused on the email in front of me. The Magister couldn't help me now, and would have nothing but scorn for what I was trying to do. I was on my own.
Dear Mr. Laster, the email began. So few people used “dear” any longer, and this one had actually bothered with punctuation. I was used to spam emails about the size of my genitals or “hilarious” pictures of zombies that clever people kept sending me. This was a nice change.
I'm writing to you because I have a problem, the email went on, and I scanned the rest of it quickly for any tell-tale signs that it might be a fake. Nothing popped out at me, so I went back to the beginning and actually paid attention.
My husband thinks I'm stupid to be writing you this, but then, there's a reason I'm kicking that bum to the curb.
Matrimonial acrimony – always good for business.
I have something undead in my house, I'm sure of it. Every night, there's a steady thumping noise coming from the basement, and two or three days during the week I can hear a soft moaning coming from the furnace room. I've gone down there to check when the sun's out, but I've never seen a thing.
Of course not. The moaning pegged it as a Zomb, a zombie that hadn't quite reached maturity, and that spent its days groaning through its adolescence. It was just a human teenager in that respect, though instead of eating you out of house and home, it would just eat you.
Zombs were made up almost entirely of reconstituted plant matter and dirt, which let them disperse and slide into walls whenever a curious homeowner approached. Basements were their favorite adolescent grounds since bugs and other small food sources could be easily found, and the scent of humans was always strong. My emailer – Ms. Patterson, from the signature line – had two weeks, maybe three, before she turned up dead in her own house.
Please, I don't know what else to do. I can't sleep more than few hours a night, and I'm scared. I swear the moaning is getting louder, and yesterday I found a box of laundry soap on the basement floor, open and spilled across the concrete. Something is in my house, Mr. Laster, and I can't get rid of it.
Help me, please.
- Emily Patterson
I whipped up a quick reply, along with my quote for the work, and then threw on my hat and coat. She'd included her address, so I'd be paying her a visit no matter what her reply. A small vial of mercury and two ash wands were the only materials I needed for a Zomb, and with any luck I'd be home by dinner, enough money in my pocket to pay rent and my first client on the books.
If things went sideways I'd be Zomb-food, but hey, I'd always wanted to go out saving a damsel in distress.
- D
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