WHO YA GONNA CALL?

I was excited to learn that today is World Zombie Day. It is an international effort to address and alleviate world hunger. I think it’s a great cause and who doesn’t love zombies? I know I do.

I just had to write a zombie tale in honour of such an auspicious day.

Enjoy World Zombie Day and please, when you smell rotting flesh at night – LOCK YOUR DOORS!!!!

Please help me

Please help me

Please help me

Becky started her chant every evening. She didn’t know who she was chanting to or if anyone at all could hear her, but she said it every evening and long into the night. It seemed to help a bit, but it didn’t stop them from trying to get in.

GAAARRGGHH

GRIIIIGGGGGGG

GLEEEMPPFFFFFFF

Guttural, horrible sounds thrown up from the bottom of the garden wall. Becky had reinforced the wall with steel and barbed wire but still they pushed against it. The unfortunate ones who managed to climb over got stuck on the barbs, ripped, left to moulder in the wet air.

Zombies. The undead. Creatures plucked straight from the grave trying to kill her. Trying to feast on her brains.

Every night they came. Ten, twenty, one night there were fifty; Becky kept them at bay with the electronic gadget she had originally bought to repel rodents. She couldn’t hear the frequency but the zombies could because they ran screaming in that clunking, discordant way they had –

GLEEEOORRRDDDDD

Running like rats.

Becky was tired. She had to stay up all night repelling zombies. She wasn’t sure how long she could keep it up; she wasn’t sure if the rat repeller would keep on working, so she chanted, her Skype channel pushed to open, in the hopes that someone would hear.

Two days later someone knocked at the front door. Becky got in a panic. It was only 3PM and she hadn’t yet turned on the electric fence that surrounded the front yard. The zombies never came this early. She was in trouble if they did.

There was another knock and another. ‘Becky Starburst?’ A voice inquired. It was her Skype name. Becky picked up the crowbar she kept in the umbrella stand and opened the door.

Two men stood there dressed in Stubbies, Blundstones and one T-Shirt that said: I went on holiday to the Gold Coast and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.  And another with a finger pointing sideways that read: I’m With Stupid. They held out their hands. ‘Bruce and Steve-O Singleton,’ they said. ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance little lady. We hear you have a zombie problem.’

‘Yes, yes I do,’ said Becky. ‘But who are you?’

‘Pest control, luvvie.’

Bruce and Steve-O spent the next two hours fortifying the house. They set up weapons at every window and doorway – rocket and grenade launchers, machine guns, flame throwers, sniper rifles and a multitude of  combat weapons.

They shut off the electric fence and removed the barbed wire from the garden wall. Becky was terrified. ‘They’ll get in,’ she said. ‘They’ll get in.’

‘No they won’t luvvie,’ said Steve-o. ‘Not with the Singleton brothers on the job’. He pulled out a six pack of beer from the middle of one of the machine gun stands and cracked a can.

‘Should you be drinking at a moment like this?’ Becky asked.

‘Bloody oath, I should,’ said Steve-o. ‘It helps me to focus.’

Becky watched as Bruce and Steve-o knocked back three beers each. They were laughing, relaxed, making idle jokes about football and the girl Bruce liked who worked in the Pub, when the shadows started to fall.

GREEEEEELLLLLMMMMMM

The thick roar was unmistakable. Becky screamed. The zombies were coming.

Bruce and Steve-o were unflappable. ‘I hear Missing Link’s a sure thing in the third at Randwick tomorrow,’ Bruce said. ‘Reckon I’ll put down ten bucks each way.’

‘You tight arse,’ Steve-o said. ‘I’m going to put down a hundred.’

Four zombies were walking up the front path, groaning.

GZZAAARRRPPP

Becky screamed again. And gagged. They smelled like rotten eggs. Bruce and Steve-o opened the front door and fired.

BOOM

POW

GLOOOOOOORRRGGGG

The zombies were blasted to smithereens. Their putrid flesh covered the garden path and the front lawn. More came. And more and more.

Bruce and Steve-o fired their weapons all night. ‘Some of these bastards have hides tougher than a crocs,’ Bruce said.

‘You’re not wrong there, mate,’ Steve-o said.

BAM BAM

GUUUUUUPPPPPP

KABOOOM

By 3AM there appeared to be no zombies left. The house was splattered with rotting skin and pus. An eyeball was wedged in the mailbox.

‘Time for a break,’ said Bruce.

‘Too bloody right,’ said Steve-o.

They opened an esky. It was full of  olives, sourdough bread and variety of hams. There was melon and a chutney that looked like it was homemade.

Bruce caught Becky’s surprised look. ‘We might sound like yobbos’, he said, ‘but that doesn’t mean we can’t eat well.’

For the rest of the night no more zombies appeared. Bruce and Steve-o came back every night that week ‘to polish off the stragglers, luvvie,’ but there were no more than a handful.

By the end of the week it was obvious Becky’s zombie problem was solved.

‘I am so grateful,’ she cried. ‘How much do I owe you?’

‘Nothing at all, little lady’, said Steve-o. ‘We’re government funded. Exterminating zombies is a little known Julia Gillard initiative, more important than the carbon tax; but please, pass the word on if you can.’

He handed Becky a card. It read: Bothered by goblins, trolls, gremlins or zombies? Who ya gonna call? Singleton Brothers Pest Control. Big jobs no probs. Behemoths our speciality.

The wave of relief that swept over Becky made her stagger. Help came along in unusual packages when you least expected it. Bruce and Steve-o Singleton were her saviours. At long last she would be able to get a good night’s sleep.