“The man she buried is back and knocking-“


“Okay, okay, stop reading it!“


Steph snatched the newspaper out of McGuller’s wispy hands and threw it on the table before lighting a cigarette. The two were currently hiding in the break room from Dr. Morlo’s rampage, because the sudden influx of pregnant women that had only been increasing the past few days had made the vampire head nurse go from shouty to earsplitting. Earlier, Nurse Pumpkinhead accidentally gave her the wrong ultrasound gel wand and Dr. Morlo slapped his head all the way across the room. 


“You know Donny’s the one behind all this, right?” said McGuller, pulling a flask out of his pocket and taking a sip that just splashed vodka all over the floor. “Oops.”


“God! Can you stop fucking doing that?” Steph screeched, since she was supposed to be on cleaning duty today. “Now I have to mop again just because someone keeps forgetting that he’s not a human being, but just a cloud of vape smoke who’s taken the form of a metrosexual librarian.” 


She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and grabbed the filthy hospital mop, grumbling to herself as she smeared it around in haphazard lines. Once the tiles were at least reasonably dry she collapsed into a flimsy chair with her head in her hands. Where unfortunately the newspaper was lying right in front of her, still open to the page about Donny’s insufferable widowed girlfriend, Margaret McDowell. Steph rolled her eyes at the picture’s stiff black dress and blotchy tearstained face, and the text beside her that read WE WISH MCDOWELL WELL AS SHE GROWS TO ACCEPT THAT THE MAN SHE BURIED IS BACK AND KNOCKING PEOPLE UP LIKE THERE’S NO TOMORROW. 


Steph remembered Donny, his towering frame and cigarette stubs. How those long fingers plucked screeching guitar strings and gave fleeting touches in dark alleyways and crappy motel rooms and his basement after his stupid roommates finally went to bed. He was dark and brooding, just the way she liked it, and he would’ve been perfectly messed-up, perfectly hers, but he was going out with Margaret. The human girl who thought they were married while he thought they were friends. Well, friends with benefits. Steph met Margaret once at a party and Donny said after that Margaret would bitch about it all the time. Apparently she’d threaten to tie a rope to Donny’s spike-studded dog collar and drag him around like a leash. He never told her he was a zombie because he knew she’d freak out, but she freaked out anyway when she found him blacked out on the floor and assumed he was dead. 


“I don’t know how many more women are left in town, since they all seem to be here,” McGuller said airily. “Eventually he’s going to run out of seme. Steam. Sorry.” 


Steph groaned loudly. “Damn Donny. He just had to go on a stupid sex rampage and now we’re the ones on the hook for all his collateral damage. No wonder Morlo’s so upset.”


“I didn’t think this place could get any more tense. Did you hear that Pumpkinhead’s been hiding in the physical therapy wing by pretending to be an orange medicine ball?” 


“Poor bastard.” Steph took another drag, watching the smoke curl out into the air. “How the hell is Donny even able to knock these girls up, anyway? He’s a zombie! Isn’t their whole thing that they’re bitten instead of born? Imagine some dumbass little moving corpse shooting out of the womb, like what would you even call that thing?”


“A baby, Stephanie. That’s literally how normal births work.” 


Glaring, Steph pushed the cigarette deeper into her mouth before spitting it at McGuller like a dart even though it, unsurprisingly, flew right through him. Rolling his eyes, he picked up the newspaper and peered at it. 


“Didn’t you say he was a sex zombie? ‘Cause it says here he accidentally drank something that amplified his libido, on top of already craving sex instead of brains like the others. So he’s just been going around shoving that undead schlong raw into anything that moves.” McGuller looked up, unfazed by Steph’s obvious disgust. “You never used protection with him, right?”


Steph nearly choked on her new cigarette. “No way am I discussing that, you translucent pervert.” 


He ignored her. “Apparently undead semen disintegrates condoms and conception is possible if it’s in contact with a human egg cell, but the research in that field is practically nonexistent as zombies aren’t typically interested in anything besides brains. So in the next few months, the ward will be too full to take in new patients and good as useless to its current ones ‘cause we simply don’t have the resources.”


Steph swore loudly, the cigarette hissing as she put it out on McGuller’s forehead. “I’m going to kill Donny for making me spend so many extra hours here. Wait, that gives me an idea!” 


Dropping the cig, she plopped her worn, stained backpack onto the table and began rummaging through it, occasionally tossing spare needles and stray pieces of string behind her. It had to be here somewhere…


“Aha! Found it!” she said at last, triumphantly pulling out a three-foot-long bolt-action hunting rifle, smiling as it gleamed in the dinky fluorescent light. 


“WHOA WHOA WHOA!” shrieked McGuller, cowering in his chair and once again forgetting that he was just a cloud of vapour and therefore couldn’t really be injured. “That’s your- why did you even have that with you?


“For when I take the bus at night, duh,” Steph said with a huff as she placed the rifle down on the table with a heavy clank. “Everyone always says to just carry garlic or holy water and whatever, but why beat around the bush when you can get straight to the point?” 


She looked up at the ghost and grinned, and McGuller must have seen something in her face because he just gulped and nodded. 


“Anyway, everyone knows that zombies can only be killed by damage to the brain. But since Donny’s a sex zombie that craves seminal release instead of brains, then his penis would be his weakest point and shooting it would either make Donny infertile so he can’t keep impregnating people, or just straight-up kill him. And either way, problem solved.”


McGuller warily eyed the gleaming weapon as though it’s what killed him. “I don’t know, Steph. Isn’t it kind of ironic for maternity nurses to murder someone?”


“Gully, don’t tell me you’re getting cold blood right when we’re about to save the day!” Steph groaned, waving her hands around. “And it’s not murder, it’s more like extermination. Trying to eliminate the source of a specific issue for the greater good of our community. And we wouldn’t even be trying to kill him! Just, like, shoot his dick off.”


“Didn’t you use to date that guy?” McGuller pleaded. “My ex may be a total bitch-wad who pushed me off a four-storey building, but that doesn’t mean I’d want to see her blasted to bits on a random afternoon!”


“That’s your problem, pal,” said Steph, rolling her eyes. “And obviously I’d wait til it was reasonably dark out before I pull the trigger.“ 


She glanced down at the newspaper again, gaze catching on the picture of Donny’s supposed funeral and Margaret sobbing all over the stuffy casket. Donny probably hated that thing. 


McGuller groaned, cutting off Steph’s memories. “Oh God, five more just came in and Morlo’s screaming about all hands on deck- I really don’t know how many more cases I can take. Maybe Pumpkinhead can hide us in the spare equipment closet.” 


Steph shoved the rifle back into her backpack and shrugged it over her shoulder before hurrying after him. 


“Relax, man. We won’t have any new patients soon enough!”