Meet Troy Tanner, he works for the part of the EPA that cleans up behind Zombie Crawls... for one thing...
I really hate the calls that come in after midnight. But, working for CRAPP, its the time of day most of our messes occur at. This one caught me on vacation in some mountains.
The thing on the desk I rarely get to sit at claims my name is Troy Tanner, then lies by saying I am a "remediation specialist". That is government-ese for being a janitor, and one stuck with the worst jobs that sink three floors below the streets to the Cleanup, Remediation And Paranormal Protection division of the EPA. CRAPP.
October calls after midnight are the worst, especially when you don't have a partner to gripe about being rousted from a nice warm bed as the glorious inebriation of the night before is morphing into tomorrow's spectacular hangover. The suits inside the beltway tend to hide after disturbing me like this, which is why DC is no longer the murder capital of the country.
I wasted the first dozen or so century long minutes looking for the phone. Cells should come with a cord attached, for easier retrieval and so you can sling them further away or harder against the nearest wall. Found it hiding on the bed stand, in plain sight again.
"Tanner. This better be good, I'm on vacation."
The voice at the other end was weary and weak. "Troy, its Rob. I would not do this if we were not so short handed, but I need you to deal with something for me." Rob Atkins is a former partner of mine, and acting director until the politicos got wind we have competent leadership still. The fatigue of being the only one still functional after the mess in Boise was obvious. If he was calling me, the boy was really desperate.
"Give me the details, then get back to Michelle." Michelle, his wife, was one of the casualties from the before mentioned catastrophe, along with my last partner, half the division and goodly chunk of Idaho.
"Quick job. Zombies have infiltrated one of those crawl things. Just keep the fatalities low and the newsies distracted." Keystrokes told me something I really did not want to hear, as I'd no idea where my laptop absconded off to. "Details in you inbox."
"Fine."
I won't bore you with the details of finding another electronic device using Purloined Letter stealth tech. Suffice it to say, the witching hour was over thankfully though. Losing things is nothing new for me. Few years back I lost three partners in one week, two are still MIA. The other is a POW in Hell.
Luck was with me, it was the crawl I'd detoured around to get back to my motel. Near the mall across the highway. I grabbed a dustpan, broom, and a bottle of bleach from the janitor's rollagon, leaving a fifty. The sawed off twin barrel with rock-salt loads moved from my duffel bag to inside my jacket. With any luck, the humans were clear of the area, and all that would be left were the undead and a few stray reporters and lawyers. Too damned many of those anyway. no one would miss them if I needed to put them down.
Lady Luck apparently left me an old used oil barrel someone welded to a handcart neat the freeway exit. Which was good, Zombies shed, which is the main problem. The brain eating thing is just a Hollywood myth. But zombie guts and flesh tend to be a major hazard, not just from the OSHA Slip-Trip-Fall issue, nor the diseases like athlete's foot or crotch rot. Nope, its the radiation that trips me out onto the streets after every one of these weird mobilizations. Baba-Yaga particles can wreak havoc on a city if allowed to sit around too long, and the more zombie parts, the more of those little buggers dancing down the streets there will be.
When it comes to a clean up, most folks wear full gear, like a bubble suit or military MOPP gear. Me, I figure after all I've seen and been exposed to, it no longer matters. Kinda like that lava sampler who never wore safety gear out on the islands of paradise. All a person really needs is a pair of leather gloves and brains enough not to inhale any dust. Like I said, I'm just a glorified janitor, who cleans up the messes you never hear about.
So, halfway down the trail of rotting flesh bits, I stumble upon a human munching on a zombie. Cannibals seem to always turn up after these things. Normally for human scraps. This sort of threw me for a loop. I checked to make sure it was human. No fangs or fur, so the vamps and weird-wolves were out. Lack of a cloud of flatulence eliminated ghoul. Trim, uncorrupted flesh knocked zombie of another sort than the standard off my list. This puppy suffered from serious issues if it thought zombie was a delicacy.
Unless it was seeking to gain some serious mojo, say by consuming the powers or attributes of a foe. Certain magic slingers promote that view, one which leads to a considerable number of my cleanups over the years.
And to my packing heat against government regulations.
Now, I have seen stranger, pardon the pun here, crap before. But only on Election Day, Halloween or New Year's Eve. The general rule of thumb on Zombie contamination is blast first, justify the shoot in the report and blame the CIA for everything. While I rarely follow the rules in my division, this is one of maybe four I tend to be religious in following.
Until I noted the teen-aged girl digging in on a zombie just a few doors down.
Then more beyond her. Dozens of folks, some dressed as zombies, others in the human mode. But all of them pigging out on rotted flesh. I checked my watch, my phone and the calendar in a bank as I passed it. Yep, October first, not that day in April. '
Out of general procedures and just so I could get an idea on the scope of my problem, I finished out the course of the run. Not much was in the final klick. Seemed the greatest concentration of feasts lay in that sweet zone, the one where normally the zombies ate the human runners, or at least pretended to. Each case merely confirmed my worst fears.
Somewhere out there a wizard possessed or was possessed by a wicked sense of humor.
Juju zombies normally are tougher undead to kill. Unless you substitute gummy worms for the maggots when conjuring over the corpse. Then you get walking undead vending machines, complete with a whacked out frequency of Baba-Yaga particle motion which induced the munchies as surely as a doobie-snack. It left me with my own temptations. To just let his little scenario play out or take him a bottle of scotch for reviving a dirty old April Fools Day joke in time for the fund raising run.
Then I started calculating paperwork versus the overtime that dealing with it as an on-call situation would get me.
Look, you want a saint, search amid those who minister to the poor, mentally ill, and children in burn wards. Me, I'm just a regular Joe, who has rent to make and bills to pay. To cover my ass on the OT, I called in for approval. Lucky me, Rob must have taken a smoke break from Michelle's bed.
"Atkins." Just his voice left me fighting a yawn.
"It's real. Get this, April Fool Zombies are back in vogue." Rob worked that case with me, he should have at least chuckled. Instead, all I got was a groan.
"Look, Michelle will understand if you grab some rack time. I got this, just call Jen and approve the OT and on-call status change." That got the chuckle at last.
"Candy zombies? You need OT for candy zombies?" Smiles can be contagious, even if you can't see them. I felt my grin ripping the grim face I'd worn since Boise.
"Yeah, well, I lost several more partners. You know that means I have a huge tab to pay off."
After a minute of howls at the other end, he caved. I'd still call our division secretary before noon to make sure of it. At least the healing had begun. We were laughing again.
Which died for me when I wondered just how improved over the original a real jester's sense of humor could make the Juju Zombie joke go. Now I was wishing my path headed south back to my room, instead of west to the mid-point of the Crawl's path. Things were worse. Now there were spectators to deal with, unless this tomfoolery really turned twisty.
Checking my watch, I noted it was barely 2 A.M., so there was not much time left to deal with this before folks woke up for the Mormons semi-annual gatherings relaxation day. Considering the whole thing started at five in the evening, it was gory, yet fascinating. I doubted then that any of the original vectors of the spell survived the evening hours, just from the way the folks were all clustered up down around the mall. You could hear the satisfied belches, then the farts and groans started, as rotten flesh corrupted their guts, spreading swiftly.
The scents of candies in the air left me ill. I reviewed mentally that old case. Salt loads are wasted candy zombies. You need sour with the salt to counter the sweet. Pickles do okay, but its a royal pain in the ass loading them into shells, which then leak brine everywhere.
Then I saw the kid with the super soaker. How anyone under twenty-five managed not to succumb to the lure of sugary sweet corpses I don't know, and forgot to ask afterwards. The wince on my face threatened to break some bones, I'm sure. I hate bargaining for tools with kids, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do. A check of my wallet gave me a clue as to how much I could afford, which had better be enough, payday was not for another week.
Wandering through the mess on the street, trying to avoid stepping in the sticky remains, I spent more time thinking about how to negotiate with this little punk than on stopping the spell. Trust me, dealing with kids is far tougher than defeating most mages and their minions.
"Hey, kid! How much you want for that squirt gun?" Flashing a couple of Jacksons, I slowed down, looking around to make sure of the remainder of the path to him.
"More than that, old man." Got to love the future leaders of America, things will be even more screwed up when they take over.
Exerting patience, I refrained from knocking him into the next decade. "Look, will it be a down payment if I show you how to use the damned thing to kill zombies?" Disbelief started a war with the extreme interest in things undead and gory behind eyes jaded by too much television.
Then they turned crafty. "Only if I get to pull the trigger."
I blame the first-person shooter games for what happened after that. Luckily, the nearest convenience store had lemon juice, pickles, and some parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (forgive me the musical reference there, but those four spices do work against most zombie types, look it up). The smart-mouthed kid, proved an apt student, once he realized I was not joking.
"You sure your not one of those dudes with the suits and zappy things?" The Men in Black references were too much. Dealing with the public just after one of those movies is released makes the paperwork seem pleasant.
"Nope, I'm just a janitor. Here to clean up the mess." Which was only half true. I came here to get drunk, and catch a flight home afterwards.
"You sound like my Uncle 'Rico." The kid puttered for a few minutes opening bottles and loading the tank of his toy. "But I don't get to talk to him much since he got promoted at the Vatican."
The name and location collided with the abnormally high coincidence rate I should be used to after years in CRAPP. "Father Enrico Sanchez?"
"Cardinal Sanchez now." The kid had his feathers up that I knew his uncle, but not about the elevation to the red robe.
"Hot damn. You talk to him again, tell him Troy says hi, and you bought the Benjamin he owes me over the Holy Water mess." Rico loved telling that tale to others. His only trip out in the field, against the Holy Father's orders even, and him saving the day.
Now I got the hero worship eyes. "Impossible. No scruffy hombre like you would be Troy Tanner."
Its so nice to have a legend, I just wish folks would at least describe me correctly. Then again, I suppose few folks expect the hero of the moment to wear dirty Levi's, torn flannels shirts, grey pocket T's and sneakers. But, even the guy I speared has his depictions wrong everywhere. His beard was scruffy as mine and the hair was black and curly, not brown and wavy.
One flash of an official EPA CRAPP ID card later, and the kid was gung-ho about me, and the mission. "Outstanding!" was his rating of it.
A check of my watch showed three thirty. We had about another three hours before the city woke up, and in the Sandy part of the Salt Lake Valley, they frown on messes like this.
"Let's rock and roll." Lucky me, these kind of zombies clean up easy. The salt and sour stuff would break the enchantment, and the local water had enough lime in it to help dissolve the bodies quicker. One of the victims carried in a large enough pipe wrench to open hydrants with, so once the kid wasted them in an area, I flooded the streets and sent the remains off to feed the brine shrimp in the Great Salt Lake. Between hydrants, I made a note to lay an option on the soon to be cheaper sea monkeys that wound up in dog and cat food, and to watch for any possible side effects in those critters next spring.
The sky was just turning that steel gray to fade away the stars as we finished up the easy part. I probably had a couple thousand casualties of various sorts to deal with. Most were going to be missing persons reports after the General Conference ended, and families gathered for a big meal to celebrate. I wanted to be on the first flight back to Baltimore or Dulles before that point in time.
There was still one person not fleeing or joining the feast besides the kid and me. Female, stunning blonde, the statuesque type, tall and curvy. And she was packing heat, magical and lead slinging kind. In the back of my head, I'd pegged her as a minion, but now I was not so sure. She followed us around the loop the course followed, observing us coldly, careful to look away when I glanced her way.
"Hey, since you are 'Rico's nephew, I can't call you kid anymore. Como su llame?"
The laugh was wicked. "Pablo Etruscus Gomez, but my crew calls me Lobo."
"'Kay, Lobo it is then." I looked around, then slid my hand to the riot gun. "Catch the blonde over there?"
"Yeah. The one that walks like a man?" The boy's eyes were sharp, and he had street smarts.
"Got it. You distract her, so I can flank her." You'd have thought I was handing over the keys to the Mormon Rocket. He moved away fast, charging the gal. I never got the chance to flank her. The kid showed skills I would not have expected a Hispanic Goth to have, football ones. The tackle was perfect, until he leapt off.
"Its a dude!" He shouted, running off.
The mage looked up, facing the twin barrels of my side by side shotgun. "Hi, when I take mages alive, they get to do the paperwork."
"You must be Tanner, then." The drag queen smoothed out her hair. "Funny, for all the drafting you folks do, you never accept applications for employment."
Something tweaked the back of my brain. "Gunnery Sergeant Mike Hamilton, right?"
"You remember! Such a mess I ran into in the Sandbox, but you folks refused to clean it up. So I learned how." The smile faded to a grimace a Drill Instructor would approve of. "Sadly, the military had to let me go. Still no tolerance for the transgendered, you know."
I laughed. "Well, if this was your application, welcome to CRAPP, but unlike the military, here lifers really serve until they die." Safing my weapon, then breaking it down fast, before a cop came around to find out why the barricades were still up, I held out a hand, almost jerking it back as hers changed to a man's mitt, stuck on a woman's body.
"Bloody curse. Nothing personal, but that mess with the candy zombies seemed the safest way in." She took my hand pulling herself up. "I knew you would remember how to kill them, and relax, the bodies reconstitute after immersion in salt water." She laughed. "They'll all think they had one hell of a bad trip is all."
I generally don't deck ladies. But Beths once told me that if you want to be my partner, you leave the lady behind and become half hellcat and half witch. And as Mike Hamilton had been a recondo, I sucker punched her after she turned to walk away.
Hell, my military days were a long time back, no need stirring up a fair fight with someone fresh out of a war, I'd lose. Especially if they were going to be in the same office with me. Besides, I really could have used that hundred the cardinal owed me, and at least Lobo could have left me the squirt gun, instead of taking the marker and running.
I pinned a note with acceptance of her application, directions to the office in DC and a warning to her blouse. The warning? "Never disturb me until after the hangover wears off, or I will feed you to your curse."
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