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T.R.S.

Will Millar

    The house that crouched at the bottom of Odd End had a way of draining sunlight from the daytime sky; much like a bad alternator can suck the juice out of a car battery. It hid there like an enormous Venus Fly-trap for who-knows-how-long, swallowing up traveling salesmen, crusading Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the occasional pair of star-crossed lovers.
    Then the heavy machinery arrived.
    Utility sirens warbled a dirge as the cheery yellow beasts turned left on Odd End. Massive treads chewed up the crumbling macadam. Nary a speck of rust could be found on the line as they advanced; thunderous hulls painted the sunny bright color of a “Have A Nice Day” smiley face.
    The house fairly trembled in its foundations as the first pair of treads climbed the curb, raised high its heavy blade –
    - The edge of which, recently sharpened, winked in the sun for an instant.
    Then the blade whistled down, smashing the colorless front porch into splinters, toppling the ancient gabled roof in a single stroke. A kamikaze gargoyle leapt off a minaret, exploding into a scree of pebbles and dust as it dive-bombed the driver’s roll cage.
    Ed paused long enough to wipe a little dust off his work shirt before throwing the beast into reverse.
    “Hugghy huzz-wuzz izza bish!” he said.
    Tony half-listened as he shook the grit out of his hair and rubbed his eyes. Unlike Ed, he’d been startled by the pounding the cage just took, and was nursing a bit of a headache to boot. “Ed,” he said, “Either take out the fucking cigar or just keep your mouth shut.”
    Thick fingers plucked out the wet stump and deftly flicked it through the gaps in the steel mesh. Ed never looked away from the work ahead. “Don’t get attitudinal with me, Tony. Remember I’m doing you a favor here.” Ed paused, frowned, threw a couple levers and stomped on the gas.
    The beast’s blade shot out and punctured the house again, swinging to its apogee before crashing back down, tearing a hole through the front wall. At last, rays of sunlight pierced the house’s secret heart, illuminating a shabby front parlor festooned in moldy shades of crimson and olive.
    “What I was saying was,”
    “Yeah Ed, I got it. Haunted house work is the best.”
    Of course he likes this the best. His fat ass barely has to move on these jobs. Tony immediately chastised himself for thinking ill of Ed. The two of them had been tight since their Army days, and truth be told, Ed was doing him a favor today. In order to move up the ranks at T.R.S., you had to be able to handle the heavy equipment. Of course, handling the heavy equipment meant logging a few hundred hours in one of the cabs, and that usually didn’t happen without somebody vouching for you. It kept the grunts in the trenches, where the higher-ups wanted them.
     Tony swiveled in his seat and looked out at the front yard. Amongst the day laborers feeding chunks of the house into wood-chippers, he saw a few of his own donning gas masks already. Their bright yellow flight suits matched the heavy machines. With black body armor, black gas masks and MP-5 sub-machine guns hanging from black mesh webbing, they looked like a squadron of wasps. Tony didn’t envy the day they were about to have, not one bit.

___ ___ ___



    “A fucking lack of imagination is what that shit is, if you ask me. A haunted house ain’t no good these days without at least a serial killer or, I don’t know, something to set it apart. I’m amazed the damned thing ever got built in the first place.”
    The two men stood at the edge of the yard and watched the patch of scorched earth sink into itself, while grass that had been dead and patchy at sunrise grew verdant and lush with new life. Ed shook his head and lit another cigar.
    Tony marveled at how un-sinister the lot looked, now that the blight had been removed. “What do you think they’ll end up replacing it with?”
    “Don’t know, don’t care, amigo. Not our department.”

___ ___ ___



    It was the accent that set them off, not Russian but German. Even then, he might have been alright with some newer clothes, or maybe a little product in his hair. As it was, the old man was doomed from the minute he threw open the door.
    Tony shoved the pale wraith and marched inside, making no attempt to be subtle. “So, where are you keeping them?”
    Claude was his name, and his blood rimmed eyes flickered like a busted film reel as he tripped over his own feet and fell on his ass. He struggled to get up and coughed once, a raspy sound that echoed in the vast marble hallways of his lonely estate. His bony frame shuddered as he straightened up and looked at the two men, at their guns, at the doorway that stood behind them, now a long way off. His eyes pleaded with Tony. “I’m sorry, gentlemen-“
    Zorry...
    Tony shot him in the face. Claude’s body flopped and twitched in a swirl of black shrouds. They opened fire.
    Seconds later, slides racked on empty magazines. Claude was reduced to a bloody bundle of rags. A single twitch, then another, and Ed glanced nervously at Tony. “Hurry it up.”
    “Relax.” Tony reached into his jacket and pulled out a stainless steel beaker. He emptied the contents onto the shuddering heap while Ed popped a wooden match with his thumbnail. A flash of green fire marked the end of Claude.
    The pyre bathed Ed’s face in a sickly radioactive glow. “Call them in.” he said.

___ ___ ___



    Tony watched the sunrise and felt depression settle on his shoulders like a heavy coat. Of all the vampires he’d seen this week, Claude was the one he wanted to shoot the least. The coffins in his basement were, in Tony’s opinion, ultra-cool. The castle’s whole layout reminded him of the Hammer films that got him so juiced up as a kid.
    Those movies were the whole reason Tony signed on to T.R.S. in the first place; to kick a little monster ass, long before he ever knew what a trope was. The company explained it all in orientation, and it seemed a little backwards to Tony. But hell, the salary and benefits were amazing.
    So, Tony sold out. Welcome to adulthood.
    He felt Ed staring at him and grew annoyed. “What is it, man?”
    “Nothing. Just making sure you weren’t nodding off at the wheel.”
    “Nope, just thinking. Hey Ed, you ever try nailing one with a stake?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “You know man, vampires. You ever try driving a stake through one of their hearts?”
    “Have you lost your mind, Tony? Jesus, why would anyone try something like that?”
    “I don’t know, maybe to see if some of the old stories are true.”
    “Fuck, Tony, keep it down!” Ed straightened up in his seat and watched the line of headlights in the rear view. “You better cut that shit out if you don’t want to find your ass in a sling, amigo.”
    “Come on, man. It’s just us two talking.”
    Ed turned the rear view back in place and slumped down low. When he spoke, he kept his voice low, too. “You better listen to me very carefully, Tony. Number one, on the job, you never talk about stories, myths, legends or folklore.”
    “What about the collective unconscious?”
    “Don’t be a fucking smart-ass. They’re tropes, and that’s it. We identify them, and we get rid of them, and we don’t ask any questions. Number two, never, ever assume it’s just the two of us talking.”

___ ___ ___



    “This is bullshit.” Tony crumpled up the memo and threw it across the break room.
    Ed waddled over and deposited it in the trashcan before sitting down. He sipped greasy coffee from a paper cup and pushed a pair of dimes across the table. “Don’t sweat it, amigo. People around here got a short memory. Just keep doing good work and keep your ideas to yourself, and they’ll put you in the driver’s seat next year. Forget about it and grab yourself a cup of go-juice. We’re heading into the city.”

___ ___ ___



    A laptop had been hardwired into the front passenger seat, so Tony sat in back next to one of the noobs. He was ignoring Tony and tapping on a smart-phone with a white ear-bud jacked into his skull. Tony ignored him back and leaned between the front seats. The SUV threaded row after row of crumbling tenements coiled in barbed wire.
    Tony saw the exit to the bridge that would take them east, towards the waterfront, and held his breath. Another word he’d never heard before taking the job was “batrachian,” but he sure as shit knew it now. Batrachian meant unpredictable, and damn near impossible to kill. Even when a team figured out how to knock out a nest, it didn’t matter, because the squishy fuckers turned out a little different every time.
    Didn’t matter anyway. Tony breathed a sigh of relief as the truck swung uptown, away from the shoreline, towards the projects. More than likely then, it was zombies. Zombies, Tony could handle.

___ ___ ___



    A charnel smell, thought Tony.
    Ed frowned at him. “Screw your fucking head on straight.”
    Tony nodded and glanced back at the trio behind him, held up 3 fingers, 2, 1...
    The front door cracked in the middle and burst out of its frame into the small apartment. Tony glided inside as it skidded across the carpet, leveling his front sight at the head of a man seated in a high backed easy chair. A cathode-ray TV wrapped in a cocoon of warped mahogany groaned in applause at sit-com antics.
    The trigger creaked under the weight of Tony’s index finger. The man threw his hands up, over his head.
    “Don’t shoot!” cried a voice like rusted fish hooks in stagnant water. His face had been flayed open, exposing a row of molars slimed with blood. One eyeball jiggled and bounced on his cheek like a tetherball in a high wind. He rose up out of the seat. “Don’t shoot!”
    Tony’s finger relaxed, almost against his will, as he surveyed the room over the muzzle of his gun. “Jesus wept,” he muttered to himself.
    A blue-skinned woman staggered out of the kitchen, holding a tarnished silver serving tray with a human head bleeding on a pile of decaying lettuce leaves. Tony swung the gun at her and she shrieked as she threw her hands up. The tray clattered to the floor, sending the head tumbling over to Tony’s boots. A yellow apple, spotted with brown rot, had been wedged into its mouth with toothpicks.
    “Quiet, Shirley,” he said, slowly turning to face Tony, still with his hands high in that universal don’t kill me gesture. “There’s obviously been some sort of mistake.”
    “I’ll say there’s been,” said Ed, stepping around the grunts as they lowered their weapons. “I’m very sorry Mr-“
    “Argus.” The zombie reached out a rotting claw to Ed-
    -Who shook it, firmly, and then pulled out a handkerchief and cleaned the blood and ichor from his hand. “So this is what, some kind of social commentary?”
    “That’s right. You see, we’re actually just a metaphor for...”
    Tony wheeled away from the conversation and examined the den, a blood soaked abattoir alive with blowflies and roaches. The TV guffawed again, and Tony saw more zombies on the analog bubble screen laughing over a dinner table laden with body parts. Blood roared in his ears at the wrongness of it all. He blocked Ed’s path to the front door.
    “We are not giving them a pass on this.”
    Ed’s jaw pulsed under his heavy jowls. “Shut your fucking trap and get downstairs. This doesn’t concern us.”
    “But this-“
    “-Is a new idea.”
    “But, it’s not even a good idea! What was wrong with things the way they were?” Whatever Ed started to say was lost in the hail of gunfire that nearly ripped Tony in half.
    Tony watched the darkness gather in the room as Ed’s porcine face swam into view. “Tough break, amigo. Friendly fire. Seems to happen a lot, especially to certain ah, types. An idealistic upstart who asks too many questions, that kind of character, well... Some might even say it happens too often to retain its impact. Some, but not us. Not yet, anyway.” Ed bit the end of a cigar and lit it. “Gavvaghh wigg-wogg.”
    Tony puzzled over that last one. Ed might have said “Go with God,” or “Go fuck yourself,” or something else entirely. Then he decided it didn’t really matter, and then it didn’t.
    Ed was careful to step around Tony’s body on the way out, while Mr and Mrs Argus salivated over the evening’s unexpected windfall.



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