Well.. I said I was done with these but...as usual, fictional real life has prompted yet another one. Meaning I just read yesterday that there is a 'Bring Ziva Back' campaign in the works. What else could I do?

Things had settled down as well as could be expected in the two months following NCIS Agent Ziva David's untimely demise while attempting to rescue her partner, Tony DiNozzo, from a highly dangerous walk across the street to his breakfast burrito dealer. Contrary to his protests of being perfectly capable and competent enough to cross the street on his own, she had insisted on accompanying him the entire way, and stopping any suspicious looking vehicles with either her classic ninja Mossad skills, or slashing their tires with her arsenal of glinting, highly sharpened knives.

Tony had pithily told her just last week that she obviously spent as much time sharpening her tongue as her cutlery, to which she had retaliated by pinning him to the cubicle divider with a thrown box of paper clips from her desk drawer. He kept his opinions to himself for the rest of the day, and the team mistook his reticence for embarrassment, but he smirked to himself about it – the team had always underestimated him, even the all-knowing Gibbs – there would be no problem hatching a decent plan. And there hadn't been, and no one had suspected a thing. He had played the part of a grieving, broken-hearted partner and would-be lover in an Oscar-winning performance. Granted, it had tested his undercover skills to the max, but he had pulled it off, and Gibbs, even the Probie, had treated him with kid gloves to make sure he got through it all, bringing him coffee and pastries and holding off on the barbs and head slaps. Life couldn't get any better – his annoying, shrewish 'cold sore' finally out of his life and the rest of the team waiting on him hand and foot.

Then it happened, before he even realized it had started. 'It' was something that he had grown up watching in movies, never for one minute believing them to be anything other than pure silliness and wild diversion. How could anyone even remotely believe such a thing existed, it was just utterly laughable. Until...on a day off, he had done some banking and shopping on his computer, and happened across an article in the entertainment section of the on-line news source he tried to read at least a few times a week. 'It' had forced him to sit back in his chair, mouth agape, sucking in air like he was back in the 'blue light special' isolation chamber of Bethesda trying not to die of the plague.

While he was enjoying his Ziva-free time, highly content and purring like a cat with a stomach full of canned cat food and milk, while he finally slept the night through now knowing that his future was so bright he needed to wear shades in the bullpen, a faction of Ziva lovers had stealthily begun a campaign to resurrect her, to force the powers that be to bring her back no matter the cost. He had heard of those sorts of fan support crusades, where the die hards refused to accept the demise or exit of a beloved character or show and spent time, money and energy better directed elsewhere to pressure the big bosses into bringing them back. And sometimes it actually worked.

Even though Tony never let on to his friends ands team mates that he still had nightmares from some of the movies he'd watched while growing up – well, he had admitted his fear of vampires – he was plagued by them. Bullies from boarding school, criminals he'd arrested throughout the years, came back to him in a parade of monsters and ghouls. Rarely did they haunt him in the guise of Billy Crystal's Miracle Max. And now – his most dreaded horror-flick monster was about to come to life. Again. And again. Zombiziva. This was truly the stuff of nightmares. He knew what he had to do, and to do it now. Dialing Abby's cell, he prayed that she'd pick up, and in the course of their conversations, he could very casually ask her what she knew about putting down zombies, once and for all.