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“It is, but if the zombie actually grapples with anyone, tell the exterminators not to fry the victim.”

“If the zombie grabs one of us, we can’t use the napalm?” he said.

“Bingo.”

“You could have said this sooner.”

“I just thought of it.”

“Great,” he said.

I shrugged. “I’ll take point. My oversight. Just hang back and let me do my job.” I stepped in close to him to whisper, “And watch the woman. She looks scared enough to start shooting shadows.”

“They’re exterminators, Anita, not police or vampire slayers.”

“For tonight, our lives could depend on them, so keep an eye on her, okay?”

He nodded and glanced back at the two exterminators. The man smiled and nodded. The girl just stared. I could almost smell her fear.

She was entitled to it. Why did it bother me so much? Because she and I were the only women here, and we had to be better than the men. Braver, quicker, whatever. It was a rule for playing with the big boys.

I walked out into the grass alone. I waited until the only thing I could hear was the grass; soft, dry, whispering. Like it was trying to tell me something in a scratchy, frantic voice. Frantic, fearful. The grass sounded afraid. That was stupid. Grass didn’t feel shit. But I did, and there was sweat on every inch of my body. Was it here? Was the thing that had reduced a man to so much raw meat, here in the grass, hiding, waiting?

No. Zombies weren’t smart enough for that, but of course, it had been smart enough to hide from the police. That was smart for a corpse. Too smart. Maybe it wasn’t a zombie at all. I had finally found something that scared me more than vampires. Death didn’t bother me much. Strong Christian and all that. Method of death did. Being eaten alive. One of my top three ways not to go out.

Who would ever have thought I’d be afraid of a zombie, any kind of zombie? Nicely ironic that. I’d laugh later when my mouth wasn’t so damn dry.

There was that quiet waiting that all cemeteries have. As if the dead held their collective breath, waiting, but for what? The resurrection? Maybe. But I’ve dealt with the dead too long to believe in just one answer. The dead are like the living. They do different things.

Most people die and go to heaven or hell, and that’s that. But a few, for whatever reason, don’t work that way. Ghosts, restless spirits, violence, evil, or simple confusion; all of these can trap a spirit on earth. I’m not saying that it traps the soul. I don’t believe that, but some memory of the soul, the essence, lingers.

Was I expecting some specter to rise from the grass and rush screaming towards me? No. I had never seen a ghost yet that could cause actual physical harm. If it causes physical damage, it isn’t a ghost; demon maybe, or the spirit of some sorcerer, black magic, but ghosts don’t hurt.

That was almost a comforting thought.

The ground sloped out from under my feet. I stumbled and caught myself on one of the leaning headstones. Sunken earth, a grave without a marker. A tingling shock ran up my leg, a whisper of ghostly electricity. I jerked back and sat down hard on the ground.

“Anita, you all right?” Dolph yelled.

I glanced back at him and found the grass completely hid me from view. “I’m fine,” I yelled. I got to my feet careful to avoid stepping on the old grave. Whatever person lay under the earth, he, or she, was not a happy camper. It was a hot spot, not a ghost, or even a haunt, but something. It had probably been a full-blown ghost once, but time had worn it away. Ghosts wear out like old clothes and go on to wherever old ghosts go.

The sunken grave would fade away, probably in my lifetime. If I could avoid killer zombies for a few years. And vampires. And gun-toting humans. Oh, hell, the hot spot would probably outlast me.

I looked back to find Dolph and the exterminators maybe twenty yards back. Twenty yards, wasn’t that awfully far? I had told them to hang back, but I hadn’t meant for them to leave me hanging in the wind. I was just never satisfied.

If I called them to come closer, you think they’d get mad? Probably. I started walking again,