DEATH AND TAXES
by
Galen Surlak-Ramsey
A Tiny Fox Press Book
© 2019 Galen Surlak-Ramsey
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by U.S.A. copyright law. For information address: Tiny Fox Press, North Port, FL.
This is a work of fiction: Names, places, characters, and events are a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Covers by Christian.
ISBN (Print): 978-1-946501-20-2
Tiny Fox Press and the book fox logo are all registered trademarks of Tiny Fox Press LLC
Tiny Fox Press LLC
North Port, FL
For my brothers, Michael and Sean,
who got me hooked on Night of the Living Dead at the tender age of 5
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Apocalypse How
Chapter One
Chapter Two
The Gorgon Bride
Little Computer People
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher (and other stuff)
Chapter One
Of the two things in this world that are an absolute certainty, death and taxes, Ryan Conner ended up with a career in the latter. He had thought about pursuing a career as an embalmer, a funeral director, or even as a doctor. After all, people would always get sick and die, and even if they skipped the first stage, all three professions would still be involved in the second. There was tremendous job security in death. But none of those careers held any lasting interest. They lacked power. They lacked excitement. They lacked the frequent use of cheap, red, ballpoint pens and rubber stamps.
Thus, Ryan Conner had settled on being a tax collector.
“Ms. Clarice,” he said without looking up from his desk.
There was no immediate answer, and he tired of his new secretary’s newness.
“Ms. Clarice!” he bellowed as he glared at the door. He glanced down at the plethora of unstamped paperwork and groaned. Sure, he had a stamp nearby—in hand, actually—but recent use had exposed a flaw, and whereas he could always use a cheap, red, ballpoint pen, a cheap stamp would never do. Not in a tax office and certainly not in his.
As such, Ryan decided, if his secretary did not appear by the time he counted to ten, he might just have to kill her.
* * *
Clarice, having heard the disturbing edge to her new employer’s tone, abandoned the yet-again-malfunctioning copier, dashed through the busy workplace on two-inch heels, and skidded into Ryan’s office. “Yes, Mr. Conner?” she asked.
“My stamp is deficient,” Ryan said, giving it a press with his hand and then wiggling it once for good measure. Slowly, he lifted the stamp and inspected the paper below. His spidery fingers traced the ink mark. “As you can plainly see, it’s not conveying the mood that I want.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Conner,” she said, leaning in for a better view. “Is there anything I can do about it?”
“Yes. Yes, you can,” Ryan replied, slowly backing away from the stamp and eyeing it from afar. “First, I’d like you to draft a notice.”
“A notice?” Clarice’s face scrunched. She wasn’t sure what sort of notice could attend to a non-mood conveying stamp, but she would try nonetheless. Hopefully, there was a form for it somewhere. The office seemed to have forms for everything.
“Yes, a notice,” he reiterated. He hunched in his leather chair, putting his eyes a hair above the level of the desk, and continued his inspection of paper and stamp. “I want you to draft a notice making an appeal.” He paused and straightened his posture before moving on. “I want this sent to Mr. Whittam in regards to his assertion that his company makes the best stamps.”
“Yes, Mr. Conner,” she said. Her voice hesitated as it tried to decide whether or not her brain should catch up. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Clarice added. “He’s my friend.”
“Your friend?” He raised an eyebrow at the thought. “Am I supposed to grant him some sort of leniency? Perhaps you should think about with whom you associate.”
“No, sir,” she quickly backtracked. “It’s just that I was thinking I could call him when he got back. Maybe that would be less, um, intimidating, and he might want to do more to rectify the situation?”
“Back? Back from where, exactly?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, chewing on her welcome to the team cheap, red, ballpoint pen. “Somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains, to fill a custom order or something like that.”
“Clarice,” he said as he folded his hands together. “Take that instrument out of your mouth at once. I don’t appreciate being distracted by your lack of manners.”
“Sorry, sir,” she said, snatching the pen and tucking it into one of her pockets.
“Now then, how long will this friend of yours be gone?”
Clarice shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
Ryan leaned back in his chair. The expression on his angular face made it clear he was contemplating how he wanted to handle the dilemma. Either that or she was about to get fired. Given that it had taken her three months to find this job—any job—the latter would be especially bad. Even more so with student loans now due.
Clarice sucked in a breath and held it. She wanted to appear as professional as she could and did her best not to fidget as she waited. Her hair was fine. The bun had been smartly made. Her skirt had been pressed that morning, and there was no need to smooth it out. Unless of course, she had wrinkled it when she sat down? Her hand drifted behind her back, and her eyes glanced over her shoulder.
“Do you have something more important to attend to?” Ryan asked, snapping her attention forward. “I thought I made it clear when I hired you that we are a disciplined group.”
“You did, Mr. Conner,” she replied. “I didn’t mean to be distracted.”
“Good. Then let me be a little frank with you, Ms. Clarice, and excuse the fact that I’m going to slip out of my usual charming character,” he finally said. “I’m now in a funk as I did like the prospects of this stamp. Your Mr. Whittam made a number of promises to me. Granted, most turned out to be true. In the end, however, this stamp hasn’t measured up to his claim. And getting it mostly right never works around here, now does it?”
“No, sir.”
“So now my day will suffer, and as my day will suffer, inevitably yours will as well. But more important, all of us as a whole will suffer. Do you know why that is?”
Clarice shook her head timidly. She wondered how much of this was standard secretarial knowledge. Maybe there was a Dummies book on the subject.
“Because if I can’t stamp well, I can’t collect well,” he replied gravely. “And then everybody loses. Imagine a world that might exist without taxes. Wha
t would we do with all those rules? They can’t just be slapped anywhere haphazardly, now, can they? And think of the bubbles that wouldn’t be bubbled! The pencils not sharpened! Think of the computer programmers who would weep for nights because they can no longer add in that last bit of code for the next tax year! A world without taxes, my dear, is a world that’s frightening indeed.”
Clarice nodded politely as she was growing accustomed to doing. “What might I do to help move things along?” she dared ask again.
“Yes, yes,” he said, sinking back into his chair. “You can do something. I’d like you to do two things. First, I’d like you to get me a number where I might reach this friend of yours. And second, I’d like to know exactly where he went.”
“Yes, Mr. Conner. Is there anything else?”
“No,” he replied. “But time is of the essence, Ms. Clarice, especially regarding your employment status.”
“Yes, Mr. Conner,” she said again and slipped out the door.
While Clarice thought that Ryan’s objection and obsession with the stamp was a little borderline, she, like most of the world, failed to appreciate precisely how important a good stamp was. It went far beyond the simple clarity in the impression that seemed to satisfy everyone else. A stamp needed solid, well-defined lines that were neither too fat, which implied laziness and wanton use of resources, or too thin, which implied weakness and a lack of character. It needed the perfect handle, one that was comfortable to fend off metacarpal-phalange fatigue, yet it also needed to be strong enough to absorb the shock of repeated slamming. Nothing quite says, “I’m not kidding,” as a slammed stamp.
Then, of course, it needed to be able to convey whatever mood the stamper was in. Decent stamps were able to do one or two moods, sometimes even three. But to craft a stamp that could articulate precisely what the stamper wanted, in the exact tone and voice intended, was indeed a work of art. And that was what Mr. Whittam had promised when he had filled the order placed by Ryan Conner, Tax Collector.
Ryan leaned back in his chair and continued to examine the wares sold to him, occasionally glancing up at the wall clock and wondering what was taking Clarice so long. After about ten minutes, or an approximate 8.3 lost stamps given his current rate, he had dire concerns as to the abilities of his new hire and shuffled through last week’s list of job applicants.
* * *
Once out of Ryan’s office, Clarice zipped over to her cluttered desk, found the number to Whittam’s Stamp Emporium, and spent several agonizing minutes trying to figure out how to dial out of the building. Her first attempt called the desk next to her, which was forgiven and remedied easily enough. Her second attempt reached the county’s emergency services, which took a bit of coaxing on Clarice’s part for them not to send a squad car as a precautionary measure. Finally, her third try yielded Whittam’s, or rather Whittam’s automated phone system. After pressing the proper combination of buttons on her touch-tone phone, she reached a live person and obtained the information she so desperately sought.
Clarice darted through Ryan’s door once more. “I have the number and address here for you, Mr. Conner,” she said, handing him a note.
Ryan took the paper in one hand and picked up and dialed the phone in the other. After a few rings, someone picked up. “Hello, this is Ryan Conner,” he said. He then added for additional effect, “Tax Collector.”
Clarice waited patiently, trying to put together what was being said on the other end of the conversation.
“I’m glad to hear you’re up to date with your filings,” Ryan replied, annoyance crossing his face. “I’m looking for someone, a Mr. Whittam to be precise. He was reported to me as staying at your fine establishment.”
There was a pause in the exchange, and Clarice picked up on someone yelling to a third party. Finally, the conversation resumed. “No, I’m not mistaken about this,” Ryan replied. “He drives a...” He stopped, looked up at Clarice who mouthed the answer, and then continued, “a black and brown Blazer. From Kentucky.”
Ryan rolled his eyes and doodled as he was put on the impromptu hold button. More yelling. When the person came back to the conversation a second time, Ryan became attentive once more. “Look, I appreciate your help in this matter, but this is costing me stamps,” he interjected. The Tax Collector’s grip tightened on the phone. “I’m aware that the phone company doesn’t charge postage.” He took a deep breath and continued, “I mean rubber stamps. Mr. Whittam traveled to your area to sell some of his wares, and I need new rubber stamps from him.”
That seemed to spark the memory of the other person. A bunch of chatter ensued. Ryan smiled, frowned, looked puzzled, smiled again, and ended with frustration. “What do you mean he didn’t stay there long? And why won’t he be returning if his car is still there?”
There was more chatter. Ryan rattled off a few more questions, answers being given in between. “Where exactly is he? Well, how did he get there? He walked? What county is this in? What do you mean, there is no county? Who collects the property taxes?” Ryan jumped out of his chair at the end of the final question.
“No taxes!” he exclaimed, eyes wide with excitement. He took in several deep, deliberate breaths before sitting down.
Ryan asked a few more questions ending with, “And you’re positive it’s one private lot?” He ended the conversation after a few more minutes, saying, “I see. Thank you for the information and have a good day.”
Clarice stood still, her mind latching on to her voice to keep it from running out of her mouth. It soon became a daunting task as she wanted to know the cause behind her employer’s growing elation.
“It seems that Mr. Whittam has taken up a new residence, and the locals think he’s there to stay,” Ryan said. He stood, went over to a large bookshelf, and pulled out an atlas of the United States. Pages flipped by until the book yielded to his search.
“So you’ll be getting your stamps then,” Clarice guessed.
“Yes, yes I will,” he replied, putting up his atlas and grabbing another book. A big book. A big, heavy book filled with countless columns of numbers and counties and years. It was a book that no one would ever buy, except a tax collector such as Ryan Conner. His finger traced down through a few columns and finally stopped. “We’ll also be doing what we do best,” he said, grabbing his calculator.
“Come again?”
“Collecting taxes, of course!” His fingers punched the keys in rapid succession, making small pauses as he jotted down parts of his calculation on a Post-it note. Finally, both the punching and the jotting stopped. Ryan sat back, his eyes never leaving the little red marks. “Mr. Whittam has stumbled upon a small town that owes a bit of money.”
“It’s not even in our state, though, is it?”
“They don’t seem to want to collect,” Ryan said disapprovingly.
“That can’t be right,” she replied. “There must be some mistake.”
“No one lives there,” he explained. “No one has lived there since before the Civil War apparently.”
“Well, that makes sense then.”
“No, Ms. Clarice,” he said. “It doesn’t. But we will rectify the situation this very moment. If they don’t want to collect taxes, we will.”
“But you just said no one lives there.”
“Look, you can’t not pay taxes,” he said as he leaned back in his chair. “At best you can file for an extension, and I’m willing to wager no extension has been filed. Even if it has, it expired sometime in the last hundred and fifty years.”
Clarice knew her face was giving a blank stare, but her mind, unwilling to make sense of what he was saying, could offer no other response. She wondered if this marked a new low for government stupidity and then recoiled at the thought that this might be par for the course.
“Do you know what the taxes, fines, and interest come out to be after a hundred and fifty years?”
Clarice shook her head, “I have no idea, Mr. Conner.”
“Eight h
undred and thirty-two million, six hundred and nine thousand, four hundred fifty-nine dollars and twenty-one cents!” Ryan exclaimed. “Imagine that! Over eight hundred million in uncollected property taxes!” He then dove like a hawk into the drawer on the left side of his desk. “Blast it!” he said, coming up empty-handed. His eyes circled the desk twice before giving up with a sigh. “Well, you know what to do. Get a demand letter written up for this place, Colmera Springs, and have it on my desk so I can sign and stamp it with this inferior stamp. I suppose it will do for one last notice. I want this out on registered mail by this afternoon.”
“I don’t think anyone will be there to sign for the receipt, sir,” she pointed out. The moment the words passed her lips, her mind disciplined itself for relinquishing control of her voice.
“Fine thinking!” praised Ryan. “You have no idea how happy I am that you are already starting to look ahead in your work. Not like that last girl I had. We’ll deliver it ourselves then. It should make an exciting trip, not to mention justify a write off for what will be in essence a vacation.”
“Sir, I don’t think—” but that was as far as Clarice got.
“You disagree with my decision?” Ryan asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Confused is more like it,” she said after she took a moment to find a choice of words that wouldn’t commit her to revising her resume.
“I’ll make this simple for you,” he said. “Your Mr. Whittam obviously knows something about this Colmera Springs that the local municipality does not. Tax evaders can be quite clever when it comes to hiding assets. So after we tour this Colmera Springs, we’ll track down Mr. Whittam and see what he has to say on the matter—not to mention get some restitution for these mediocre wares he’s peddling.”
Clarice knew her facial expression hadn’t changed in the least, despite her attempt to appear less confrontational. In the end, she decided to go with her inner turmoil and hope for the best. “I can’t imagine there’s not an easier way.”
Death and Taxes Page 1