The Eliminators | Volume 3

by Druga, Jacqueline

  He climbed out of his crib the next morning and the police found him sitting by his mother’s body. The neighbor in the next townhouse called the police when she heard the baby screaming, ‘mama’ over and over. She never went over to check.

  Jeremiah was a tragic story.

  Barry tried to bring him into his family’s fold. He and his grandmother never missed a holiday dinner or BBQ. Barry’s son, Len, and he were inseparable.

  He looked at Jeremiah with such gratefulness. He always looked at him like a son and at that moment, he was so happy he still had him.

  Rigs was the last one to open his gift. Barry had already put on the cardigan sweater that not only still had the tags on it, it was in a Christmas bag left over from the previous year. Kasper said it was in a closet, either a gift someone didn’t want or one they never gave out.

  Rigs’ gift was small and he lifted it up. “Wow, this is a unique keychain.”

  Kasper nodded. “Dude, it is. It’s like the mini Swizz Army knife for personal stuff. Bottle opener, nail file, baby screwdriver.” He stood up. “Tiny knife. You never know when you’re gonna need it,”

  “Thank you, guys, very much. I feel bad. I don’t have anything to give you.”

  “It’s not about getting them,” Kasper said. “Seriously, it was fun just looking for things.” He walked to the window. “Hey guys, we have Christmas company.”

  Barry turned around. “Command or another Eliminator team?”

  “Neither …” replied Kasper. “Even better.”

  <><><><>

  It was like nothing they had expected to see.

  From the window of the house, it was the words to the song White Christmas.

  No threat could be seen by anyone.

  In fact, at first glance no one saw anything,

  They all argued with Kasper.

  “Ha, ha,” Belinda said. “Very funny.”

  “Kasper,” Sandy said. “There is nothing out there.”

  “Look.”

  “I’m looking,” Barry told him. “I won’t look much longer or all I’ll see is green when I turn around.”

  “Everyone grab your coats.” Kasper walked to the chair where his coat hung, he put it on and handed Rachel hers.

  “You’re really going out there with him?” Rigs asked.

  “Kasper doesn’t prank me.” Rachel put on her coat.

  “Oh, wait.” Barry said. “I see. Oh my goodness. I have to get a closer look.”

  Rigs hurried to the window. “I still don’t see … oh shit.”

  “Language.” Barry scolded.

  Rigs scoffed and grabbed his coat.

  Sandy and Belinda were the last to jump on board the bandwagon and they followed Kasper outside.

  At least two and a half feet of snow had fallen. It blanketed the entire area, white and perfect. A sweeping snow glistening from the morning sun. In fact, it was what Kasper would call virgin snow. It would have been picture perfect had it not been for the undead.

  There were twenty of them and they came from somewhere close. That was what Kasper figured.

  They couldn’t have been far and had it not snowed, they would have been in trouble.

  They herded close, in a dangerous formation. They were fast ones, Kasper could tell by the way they waved their arms, reaching or more like swimming in the air.

  Not a single one of them moved forward.

  They couldn’t.

  They were covered with a thin layer of snow on their heads, all of them sticking out of the cold white substance like snow bunnies.

  The undead at some point in the night became human snowplows. Pushing through the snow, moving it forward until each of them had created a barricade wall for themselves.

  It was such a spectacle, Kasper laughed hard, it had a deadened sound to it, acoustically muffled by the snow. But it reached the dead because they all started groaning.

  “This is too fucking funny,” Kasper said.

  Rigs looked at Barry. “Not gonna yell at him about language?”

  “Kasper, language.”

  Kasper turned to Rigs. “Dude, you are such a tattletale.” He spun in the snow. “Rach, have you ever seen or read anything like this?”

  “Never. This is a first,” she replied. “I think the closest thing I saw was a zombie tornado.”

  “Which was entirely unbelievable but cool.”

  “Visually cool for television.”

  “I need to see where they came from. It’s a lot,” Kasper said. “Too big of a hoard for the sweep teams to miss. They had to have been placed somewhere.”

  Rachel snaped her finger. “Like Hershel’s barn.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Wait,” Rigs said. “Who is Hershel and why did he have people in the barn?”

  “They were family and friends,” Kasper replied. “One was even his wife. He couldn’t bring himself to admit they were the walking dead. He thought they were sick or something.”

  “Did he not watch the news?” Rigs asked.

  “Yeah, but the news was calling it a virus,” Kasper replied.

  Rachel added. “He was a good man. Really good. A Christian man, his family loved him. But Shane opened the barn and shot them all.”

  “I liked Shane,” Kasper said. “Dude, you know if he wouldn’t have died they would have found that prison in a week.”

  “I know, they walked around in circles,” Rachel waved her arm. “For what? Seven months.”

  “Stop,” Rigs held up his hand. “Why don’t I remember meeting this Hershel. Did you guys meet him at Command or something?”

  Kasper snickered, reached out and gave a swat to Rigs. “It was a TV show.”

  “Oh.” Rigs grunted. “I hate when you guys do that. Let’s go see where they came from. TV show or not, you have a point.”

  It stunk as bad as the dead and Rigs wasn’t genuinely bothered by it. It was evident that Kasper’s theory was right.

  An old detached garage a block and a half up the street was the starting point for the mob.

  It set in the back yard of a home, the double, wooden, barn style doors were open. One of them broken.

  Rigs felt the wood. It was old and must have gotten damp and when the temperature dropped, it froze, making it easier to break.

  In a dead silent night, the sound of the generator carried, maybe even voices, he wasn’t sure, but they broke through.

  Just like Hershel’s barn, they had been in there a while. Bones of animals scattered about, old memorabilia, like pictures and toys. Items placed in there with the dead.

  There were two remaining in there. They wriggled without lower limbs barely able to inch forward. Belly crawling their way to Rigs and Kasper, arms reaching out.

  Kasper raised his honing rod above the head of the one. It crunched.

  “Wow, that wasn’t easy,” Kasper said. “It was like stabbing frozen meat.”

  “So they won’t decay. Not while winter’s here,” Rigs stated.

  “Not up north.” Kasper put down the other one. “Basically, the winter gave them extended life.”

  “Swell. You know if it weren’t so cold they would have swarmed the house. They were coming our way.”

  “I know.”

  “Let’s go back and take them down.”

  Kasper headed out of the garage.

  “And Kasp, really I’m sorry I didn’t get you a Christmas present.”

  “No, but Santa did.”

  “What?” Rigs chuckled.

  “The stiffs in the snow. Like Frosty the freaking dead man.”

  Rigs just shook his head with a smile.

  “And like the song says. The sun is hot today,” Kasper returned the smile. “Let’s go before they melt away

  Rachel had been up close to the dead before. Close enough to smell how foul their breath was, how a sour iron odor emanated from them. But in all the months she had been taking them down, it was the first time she could stand so close and truly get a good exam
ining look.

  Despite Kasper’s Frosty the Snowman warning about the sun, Rachel knew better. She lived in the area. It was cold, at least below thirty-two, and while the sun would melt the snow, it would only cause it to get hard like ice, making it more difficult for the dead to move.

  She inched close to the woman stiff. Her arms were frozen, barely moving and two of her fingers had broken off.

  The dead woman looked to be about thirty. Her hair was long and brown, blood had matted it along with dirt. She could see chunks of something in her hair, but the snow and ice mixed in giving her a weird Game of Thrones white walker appearance.

  The color portion of her eyes were a milk gray with no pupils whatsoever. The whites had a strange blue tint. Her face had decomposed some, not much, parts of flesh peeling back on the boney portions of her face. Her neck was the source of her infection. A gaping hole right over where the jugular would be.

  The dead woman’s mouth moved in a chewing motion, like those people Rachel’s father said used to chew their gum like a cow.

  Her teeth were impeccably perfect. It looked like veneers.

  Strange the things Rachel noticed being so close.

  She was dressed in a tee shirt and jeans, probably just going about her day when she was attacked.

  Rachel had heard from so many about how fast the virus hit and how rapidly it spread and took lives.

  Did this woman know? Was she scared?

  Did she have a family and were they mourning the loss of her? She believed so, someone that knew her and loved her put her in that garage.

  Rachel hated the dead woman. She didn’t know her name or anything about her, but she was one of them. One of the types of creatures that ripped her daughter from her grip.

  Senseless, mindless, murderous beings.

  “Rach,” Rigs called her name.

  Rachel jumped.

  “You gonna take that thing down?”

  “Yeah. I was just looking.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can.” Without saying another word, almost as soon as she finished her sentence, Rachel, shoved her honing rod under the woman’s chin, aiming it toward the back of her head.

  The woman stopped moving.

  She didn’t drop. Her head just fell back in an unnatural tilt.

  “Almost seems too easy,” Rachel said.

  “That’s because it is.”

  “It’s like a team building exercise.”

  “Only did you notice which team member isn’t joining us?”

  “Sandy?” Rachel guessed.

  “Sandy never joins us. Belinda went inside with Sandy.’

  “Maybe they’re making breakfast.”

  “Maybe …” Rigs replied. “Let’s finish these off.”

  “We should actually test our skills,” Rachel suggested.

  “Rach, I don’t think you have a single skill that needs to be tested.”

  “Aren’t you sweet.” Rachel moved to another one. “Did you contact Command?”

  “I did. I told them about this.”

  “What did they say?” Rachel asked.

  “To let them know when we’re done. Who knows what they’ll do, if anything. Probably just tell us what to do.”

  “Nothing we can do with all this snow.” Rachel stopped at the undead man. He was larger, heavier, he wore a dress shirt that was ripped apart. “None of these look like virus victims. They all were bit. But the neighborhood cared enough about them to Hershel them.” After staring down the undead man, she put him down, the same way she did the woman. “Kind of mind boggling.”

  “What is?”

  “If you think about it, every one of these stiffs. Everyone we see, fight, kill, they all were someone’s child. They were someone’s mom, father, husband, wife. They were people Rigs, like you and I.”

  “You never thought like that before?” Rigs asked.

  “If I did, I don’t remember. To me they’ve always been monsters.”

  “Do you feel differently now.”

  “No.” Rachel shook her head. “They may had been someone’s child at one time, but they’re monsters now.”

  She allowed Rigs to take down the next one frozen there, and together they moved on.

  It didn’t take much or long to eliminate the undead snowbound on the street.

  After warming up and eating, they began to head out and the question on how Command would handle the frozen snow bunny dead was answered.

  They handled it like a dystopian movie from the seventies.

  A big dump truck with a scooper on it, not only plowed the street, it plowed and lifted the dead, tossing them in the back end of the truck.

  Much like the riot garbage truck in the old classic Soylent Green.

  Scooping up the bodies, tossing them in the back.

  Another similarity of how life imitated art.

  In all the fictional apocalypse tales that Rachel encountered in her life before hand, as farfetched as they seemed at times, there wasn’t a single one of them that didn’t get something spot on correct.

  FOUR – UNIT

  January 6 – Day 261

  It was by far the fastest elimination stop they had made. If it weren’t for the snow, Rigs figured they’d have been done two days earlier. Then again, the snow made the eliminations easy.

  Command had the roads pretty clear and the temperature increase made them passible. He pulled the RV to the temporary command post to hand over his reports and get their next assignment.

  He didn’t say much to the others but he was hoping for something south, even if it meant a long drive there and a stop at another temporary command. It was only two weeks, but he was over the snow.

  As usual, Command was set up in a school, the check in table right in the main hallway and he walked up to the woman there with the reports.

  “E-Team Division One, Unit four.” He handed her the reports.

  “Team name.”

  “We don’t have one. We’re working on it.”

  “It’s been eight months.”

  “Yeah, I know, but it has to be something we can live with. We don’t want it to divide us,” Rigs said.

  “Unit four … Unit four …” She nodded and pulled forth a small slip of paper. “Where is the rest of your team right now?”

  “Well, Barry and Sandy are at medical supply. Kasper is at food. I think maybe Rachel and Belinda are there. Not sure, they might be doing girl things.”

  She cleared her throat. “Okay, we’ll find them. You’ll get your assignment after you get a new team member. As of now, you have to go see the Inspector. Ralph Conway.”

  “Wait. What? A new team member?”

  “It’s what the note says and to see Mr. Conway.”

  “Who is that?” Rigs asked.

  “The inspector.”

  “Of?”

  “Internal affairs.”

  Rigs was shocked. “I have to go to internal affairs.”

  “Right down the hall.” She pointed,

  “Do you know why?”

  She held up the paper. “Do you think this little slip of paper tells me that? No. You can’t miss his office. It’s the guidance counselor room.”

  Internal affairs? Rigs walked to the office but couldn’t figure out why he had to be there. His mind raced as he walked there.

  He poked his head in and looked. No one was there.

  “Oh, good, you’re here first,” the male voice said. “Rigs, I take it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have a seat.” He walked in the office and stepped behind a desk, taking a seat. “We’re waiting on Rachel and … Kasper, is it?”

  “I suppose. What’s going on?” Rigs asked.

  The man clearly wasn’t military. He wore a button-down dress shirt, had a neatly trimmed beard and just something about him screamed to Rigs that he was some sort of attorney before the virus.

  “We are replacing a team member due to complaints of a serious nature,” Conway sa
id.

  “Oh my God. Who complained?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Can you tell me what the complaints are?” Rigs requested.

  “Sexual innuendos, sexual harassment, bigotry, bullying, aggression, misogynism.”

  Rigs groaned out, sitting back and shaking his head. “Look. I know Kasper can be annoying, but he didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Conway asked.

  “Isn’t it Kasper the complaints were directed against? Isn’t he the one you’re replacing?”

  “No, Rigs. It’s you.”

  Before Rigs could even shake off his shock enough to be surprised, he heard Kasper’s voice.

  “Oh, we’re in trouble,” Kasper said jokingly. “Look Rach we’re called to the principal’s office.”

  “It’s the counselor’s office,” Rachel said. “They’re trying to thwart trouble.” She was smiling and the smile dropped from her face when she saw Rigs. “What’s wrong?”

  Rigs widened his eyes. He couldn’t speak, he literally couldn’t talk, a lump formed in his throat.

  “Have a seat,” Conway directed.

  Kasper sat down. “Uh, oh.”

  Rachel sat on the other side of Rigs.

  “Someone has filed a serious complaint against Commander Rigs,” Conway said.

  “Someone meaning someone on our team?” Rachel asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well that’s an easy deduction. It isn’t me or Kasper,” Rachel said. “Barry is like your dad and Sandy would never say anything about you. I don’t think. Would she Kasper?”

  “Nah, Sandy is cool,” Kasper said. “What is the complaint?”

  “Complaints plural,” Conway replied. “Sexual innuendos, sexual harassment, bigotry, misogynism, bullying and aggression.”

  “Fucking Belinda.” Rachel stood up. “I’m finding her and kicking her ass.”

  “Rach, sit down.” Rigs said.

  “No, what the fuck, Rigs? I don’t care how big she is or tough, she’s gonna hear it from me.”

  “Rach.” Rigs grabbed her arm. “Please sit.”