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  I couldn’t call the state troopers; ol’ Smokey would want to hold me for questioning, probably in the morning. I still have a scar on my hand from when a beam of sunlight came through a crack in the curtain in that hotel where she’d turned me. I would not survive a sunrise in a jail cell. No, local authorities were out.

  Unless… Were there any hereabouts who were turned, too? I’d met one or two troopers who’d been bit. It wasn’t easy for them, keeping a job like that, but a few managed. I’d always just bump into them by accident, usually on the wrong side of a speeding ticket, when they’d laugh in my face after I’d try a little nosferatu mind-control. How would I find one now?

  Damn, if I only had access to the Internet. The only thing she’d left me after turning me was a message scrawled on the mirror in lipstick: a web site and a password. There’s just about everything a vampire could need on the site, from survival tips to chat rooms to e-mail addresses of doctors searching for a cure and who’ll give you doctor’s orders to get out of daytime activities—something that’s come in handy when I’ve had to go to court over alimony and such. Anybody can add information; I’ve got a blog on the best all-night diners and gotten a few folks connected with trucking firms that hire for night-shifts only, no questions asked. Maybe someone there would know a local who would help. But I didn’t have a connection, didn’t even have a stupid cell phone to call one of my nosfer’ buddies. I--we--were alone.

  I could go for help. I couldn’t transform like others could--never tried, it just weirds me out too much--but with my vampire strength, I could pull her car out, drive to the nearest town--it’s what? 20 miles or so away? I could find a phone, call it in. I could--

  I couldn’t. She’d die before help got back. Besides, I couldn’t leave her alone.

  I’d been alone so often. It stinks, even when you’re alive. I hadn’t noticed it as much when I was young and first starting out. I’d loved the long hauls, just me and the road. Then the nights in hotels or in the sleeper of my cab started getting old. Then came the day I saw JoAnn, leanin’ against a hot red car. Hot was the word. Hot engine spewing steam; hot pants making me steam. I couldn’t stop fast enough. I took her the 200 miles to her new job, wasn’t even on my route. Started finding routes to take me near her, then found a job hauling gas around to local stations. Bought her a ring, said “I do.” Little house--even the stupid white picket fence, felt like I was livin’ some romantic country song. Then, just like a song, job goes bad, things get sour, she changes the locks, and I’m doing scab jobs for UPS to pay alimony. Then, if that wasn’t enough, some damn vamp decides it’s funny to make a truck-driving vampire.

  Now, I’m kneeling on the highway, praying over some stranger-girl who's going to be dead thanks to this truck-driving vampire, and I don’t even know if God’ll listen to me anymore.

  “You can’t die. Just hold on, honey, I’ll think of something!”

  I’ll put her in my cab, drive her to the hospital or a hotel or somewhere they can get her help. It can’t be any worse than leaving her, right? Then I’ll just use a little mind-control so they forget me.

  Who was I kidding? I never was very good at that, as my driving record will show, and what if there was more than one person around? Even if I could make them all forget me, it’d take too long. Besides, it’s one thing to forget a common garden-variety speeder; it’s another to forget a guy carrying in a girl who’s all hurt and bleeding. All that blood.

  All that blood…

  Oh, my teeth hurt. I was salivatin’, getting really heady. All that blood… I’d never bitten a human, but now, oh…

  I could turn her.

  I could bite her, three times--that myth was true--and save her.

  How long did I have? I remember she had said you had to take your time with turning. “It’s not like Thanksgiving, where you glut yourself then sit like a bloated whale in front of the TV,” she’d said. “It’s a feast of the senses, all of them. You need to feel your victim, smell him, savor his taste, open yourself to him as you take him within you. After each experience, there must be time for the hunger, the need to build again. This isn’t a matter of feeding; there’s a synergy, an intertwining of essence. A turning cannot be rushed.”

  I didn’t know if she’d said all that because it was true or to get me hot, to lure me to her hotel room. How much mind control had she done on me? It probably wouldn’t have taken much. She was pretty, in a Gothic sort of way, and I’d been so lonely--

  I don’t have time to think about that! Think back to the turning. How long had it been between the second and third bites?

  The young girl stirred slightly in my arms. Was it shock? Fear? She’d never opened her eyes. Did she somehow know what I was, anyway?

  “It’s o.k., honey. I’ll take care of you. I promise.”

  I would, too. No way I’d screw her like she’d screwed me, leaving me with the curtains drawn and that cryptic note on the mirror. God, what a shock those first weeks had been, until I’d found an all-night truck stop that had computers you could rent time on and I’d found others like me. No, I’d take care of this little lady from the start, teach her about her new life, take her with me on hauls until she’d learned enough and was ready to go on her own. Who knows? I’m an okay.-lookin’ guy and I won’t get any older. Maybe she’d stick around awhile. Maybe….

  I’d have to get some dirt from here, put it in the cab for her. Then I’d take her somewhere, probably someplace isolated. She’d panic at first. I did. I’d make her understand, sure I could. Then we’d figure out what we’d tell her parents. If we told her parents. I haven’t told nobody, just keep makin’ excuses, moving on when someone gets too nosy. Haven’t been home in five years, even missed grandma’s funeral. Went to the gravesite by night, but no one knew. Mom’s still angry. And JoAnn—she thinks I hate her, the way I keep doin’ stuff through a lawyer, never wantin’ to see her face-to-face.

  “Have you got family? A boyfriend? Honey, what do you want me to do?”

  Her shuddering stopped. She ain’t going to make it. God, she ain’t going to make it.

  I licked my lips, cut my tongue on my teeth. She wouldn’t be the same, but she’d be alive, in a way. That was better than dying, wasn’t it?

  Wasn’t it?

  Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator

  An excerpt from the novel by Karina Fabian

  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 that had more to do with good drama than good tactics. One cameraman continued to film while another had abandoned his camera and had 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 zo
mbie 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 severed 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 trainees, 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."

  And 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?

  "But, 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 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 that 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 un-gripping, 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 design th
eir 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. No one 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."