My currennt short stories have an origin from this challenge and the story that follows it. This is the first hints at Troy Tanner, the main character. Its clunky, not well worked out (I just wanted this one done, at first) and a bit too heavy on certain words. I will be reworking it to make it something else this week between other projects and little bits of work to make my hapless ends meet.

The Challenge was from this list:

1 - a jar of frogspawn
2 - a tattered photo of a distant galaxy
3 - a snowflake on a fingertip
4 - a zombie survival guide with brain stains on the cover
5 - a ragdoll with pins stuck in its head
6 - a broken lightsaber
7 - a newspaper dated August 7th, 1945
8 - a battered copy of 'Twilight'
9 - a radio station playing 'don't stop believing' by Journey
10 - a tin of sunflower yellow paint
11 - a three-legged dog
12 - a packet of M&Ms with all the green ones missing

Send your entries to my inbox by next saturday.
Anything up to 600 words is fine, but try not to go over please.
Multiple entries, collabs, basically anything goes as long as you get the buggers in on time.


And now the story:

In my line of work, sooner or later you see it all. Some jerk back in DeeSee had screwed up and agreed to subcontracting the military's new Soldier Superior Therapy program out to a lab in Haiti as part of the rebuilding. I could have told them it would go sideways, letting voodoo mix with big pharmaceuticals dreams.

But, they never call me until its time to clean up the mess. Now I was walking down a deserted street in a forgotten place called Dugway, testing grounds of all the military's bad ideas. Lucky its in the middle of nowhere.

There was a broken lightsabre toy on the walk to the side, stepped on, military boot print. Yep, I had his trail . He had stepped in a mess left when he feasted on the head cheese of some poor s.o.b. painting the gatehouse at the east entrance to town. Sunflower yellow, must have been left over from some TV show filmed out this way once.

I followed the tracks up to the house we were in front of, the last one for me to clear. There was a ragdoll with pins in its head on the porch swing, holding in the strips of purple cloth hair, needle and thread on the ground, pooled around some poor Army wife's corpse. She had not much of a skull left. I pumped both corpses with rock salt. Only good thing about this place, I could restock my supply of shot and catch a few runs on the Measured Mile afterwards.

Inside, I knew they had some inkling of what they were messing with, there was a zombie survival guide covered with half digested brains and more flies than Beelzebub's last picnic drew. There was also a bag of a certain melt in your mouth, not in your hand candy, and all the green ones were missing. Damn, they finally listened to the Nuncio about that, making them inoculate themselves to keep it to the test subjects only. Made my job easier, and harder. Now instead of shooting all the corpses, I had to look for ones without flies.

The trail led over the dead sergeant's body to the stairs, up which I heard the pants I knew meant at least one family member had failed to eat power pills. The radio in the master bedroom kicked on with that tired old Journey tune, the one about never giving up belief. While I hate that tune, it gave me cover on the steps about a creaking riser.

There was a poster of a Hubble shot of the Sombrero galaxy on the wall over the bed, with battered copies of Twilight and other trashy vampire novels all over the floor. Great, this one had wanted to be undead. Right up until she realized she had to swallow the barf of the zombie after it drank a jar of frogspawn while they had sex.

I reloaded, as they were occupied with her transition, as well as the fun stuff, waiting for the moment. I did not want to kill a living human today. As they got off, I fired all five shells, cutting them in half.

As I left, I caught a flake of snow on my fingertip, and realized it was too late in the year to hit Bonneville. So I headed to Wendover, where in a museum, I bowed my head before a framed copy of the Deseret News from August 7, 1945. On the way out, I saw the three legged dog, and knew there was another job waiting at the Stateline.