"We’re just the extraction team. They call us The Squad. We show up, pick up the bodies – or pieces of the bodies in some cases – and haul ass from the scene before the cleaners show up."
The Squad
The first time you see a dead body, it’s shocking. I mean, when I saw my first one, I got sick all over myself. And I’m not talking about that time you went to your great-aunt Tillie’s funeral and saw a woman painted in makeup, doused in perfume, and surrounded by damn begonias. I mean a real, dead fucking body. Like the ones you see in the movies, you know? Except worse.
That first dead guy was all bloated and grey, his eyes bulging and red. They said the blood in his eyes was from all the vessels that popped, you know, ‘cause he was strangled. Whoever did it, beat the living shit out of him first, then finished him off with a cord to the neck. They got out of there in a hurry, too. I know, because the body was still warm when we got there.
And ya know how I know that? ‘Cause I had to fucking touch it! It didn’t matter that I had what looked like chunky oatmeal all over my vest. No, sir. Sarge said it would be good experience to handle it myself. So, I bent down and moved towards it real slow. You ever touch a dead body? It’s all squishy when it’s fresh like that. Before the rigor sets in. At least, that’s how this guys’ belly felt. I poked at it from where I was squatting. Held my breath the whole time, too. The smell of all that fucking blood is enough to make anyone lose it, I tell ya.
I nearly fell face first into his giant gut, though, when Sarge barked at me to move my “fucking pansy-ass.” He’s a real dick, but he knows the job better than anyone. You either fall in line or you take your chances elsewhere. For guys like us, this is the best living we’ll ever get. We are all misfits, ya know. No real families to go home to, no trade skills, college dropouts, you get the picture. But we make a sort of ragtag family, the bunch of us.
I’ve been at it for eight years now. No college for me. I barely made it to my high school graduation. And my family’s all dead, far as I know. Or care to know. You can’t afford to have family in our line of work. Too much collateral. Tommy Doyle joined up same as me, ‘cept he had his old man living with him.
Tommy swore the old coot was senile, was basically a vegetable in his old age. But he was a drunk, too. That’s how They found out Tommy’s pop wasn’t so senile after all. He’d been telling his bar mates about the owners of those bodies we picked up. Said the wrong name to the wrong person, I guess.
We cleaned up his pop’s body a week later. Fell, they said, from the balcony of their apartment. Tommy near lost it that day. Ain’t been quite right since.
It’s a steady job, though, keeps us busy. We aren’t supposed to be there long. At the sites, I mean. We’re just the extraction team. They call us The Squad. We show up, pick up the bodies – or pieces of the bodies in some cases – and haul ass from the scene before the cleaners show up. The whole operation is supposed to be taken care of faster than a viper catching dinner.
Problem is, these days there’s more damn dead bodies piling up than ever. And they’re heavy as hell, too. It took three of us to haul my first guy up the alley to the truck. All that soft, squishy skin was like fucking whale blubber. By the time we loaded him up, I was soaked in sweat, blood, and more of my sickness.
It could have been worse, I guess. This one guy, Danny, started about a month after me. His first body was burnt to hell. I mean, this guy was just a pile of black tar when we got there. And, ya know, Sarge made Danny go in there and do it himself. I don’t know how he kept his sickness down ‘cause between peeling this guy off the asphalt and the smell of burnt flesh, I almost lost it myself.
But the real prize of that body came when we tried to haul it back to the truck. Danny had that guy by the wrists and before one of us could grab the ankles, he pulled, and off came his arms. Well, off came the skin anyway. I mean, that shit slid off him easier than the dress of a beautiful woman. Danny just stood there with those black, crusted skin sleeves in his hands. I guess he was in shock or something ‘cause he didn’t let them go. He watched us take this guy off to the truck, shuffling along behind us like a hobo, and just held onto that damn skin. Fucking creepy, I tell ya.
But that’s usually the worst of it. Once we get them in the truck it’s easy as pie. We haul their lifeless forms back to the command station, log them into the loading dock, and send them on their way to the incinerator.
It’s been a damn good system. We get there and clean up the scene before any of you regulars can see it. We spare you the sight of these bodies and the trouble that the truth would bring about. Least, that’s what we’re told anyhow. And it really is a damn good system. Well, it was until lately.
We don’t get our orders from the Regulators anymore, like we always have before. The Commissioner alerts our team directly now. He tells us which sector of the city the body is in and we go retrieve it. As far as the public is concerned, there isn’t any crime in this city. Sure, the occasional old person keels over in front of their family, but that’s about the only death they hear about. That’s why guys like us are perfect for this job. No families to talk to about this shit to. No one to tell everyone what’s really going on – what really happens to the ones who disappear. But the Commissioner has never been so interested in keeping it all under wraps before now.
It’s not really said out loud, but we all know that most of the bodies we take care of are victims of the Moth Initiative. I mean, sure there are guys like Tommy’s pop who get dealt with, and the occasional accident or natural death. And we do clean up some Moth guys every so often, but I’ve only ever seen a handful in my entire time here. The Moths have been picking off members of high society for a few months. A chairman here. A tycoon there. Nothin’ real exceptional, just your average hit. Not that we really care who the bodies are. They’re just a paycheck to us. But you can tell when it’s a Moth attack.
Like my first body. That fucker was rich. I mean, I don’t know an Armani suit from a thrift shop one, so that didn’t give it away. But if you can’t tell from their clothes, their pockets never lie. That bastard had four thousand dollars cash in a gold money clip inside his jacket pocket. And all that shit we gotta turn into the Sarge. Sometimes he gives us monthly bonuses with the loot from the bodies. Those are the good times. Almost makes the bad days worth it.
But lately he hands it over to the Commissioner and we don’t see a shred of it. “What you got before was a bonus, not a right!” Sarge spat, when one of the guys asked about where our cut of the loot was. That boy was still green – didn’t know you don’t ask questions in this business. Gets you in trouble.
But most of these bodies are turning up rich now. I guess even that wouldn’t be strange, except that as suddenly as the change started, the bodies then stopped. We went three days without a single call. Not even a routine pickup. Not one in this whole, huge fucking city.
Then a week ago they started up again. Bodies everywhere. Dozens of jobs a day. Like they were just dropped. We barely slept.
But these bodies weren’t rich. Oh, no. Most of them don’t even have a damn thing on them at all. No ID, no phone, no money. Not even a damn stick of gum.
“Somethin’ ain’t right,” Tommy muttered one afternoon as we dragged a stinking corpse out of a dumpster. “Ain’t make no sense that not one of these bodies has anything on it.” I mean, sure, I was thinkin’ the same thing. Had been for a while. But could I trust Tommy? Or any of them?
But he kept blatherin’ on like he does, “They go from average bodies with average wallets to millionaires with fancy pocket watches. Then nothing. And now all these bodies with no ID? Somethin’ smells. And it sure as fuck ain’t this sonofabitch.”
So, I looked that day, just a few weeks ago, up and down the alley we were in, for a camera. I mean, this city is littered with surveillance. Somebody’s gotta be watching what happens before we get to the scenes. And Sarge wasn’t payin’ no attention to us down in the alley. He and three other men from our unit were just out there leanin’ against the truck, shootin’ the shit, waitin’ for us to haul the body back down to them.
So I looked. I scanned that whole fucking brick hole we were in but not a single damn camera.
Sarge noticed. Of course he fuckin’ noticed. He cussed me out good and spat in my face for a few minutes about keeping my nose to the job and leaving the investigation to higher authority. I must have looked like a damn mule with my mouth hanging open like it was. He scared the piss right out of me, I couldn’t say shit. And Tommy wouldn’t even look in our direction. He was fumbling around with the body, his stupid cigarette hanging like a limp worm out of his mouth.
Since then Sarge has kept a close eye on me. Makes me fuckin’ uncomfortable.
But that’s why I need your help. I can’t snoop around these pickups without being noticed and I can’t risk asking around on my off hours. Someone out there has contact with the leader of the Moths. I need to set up a meeting. I need to know what they’re not telling us – what the hell the Commissioner and Sarge and the whole damn operation is hiding. If this letter reaches you and you can help, follow the map drawn inside the envelope and I’ll be waiting there on the 23rd of August.
Do whatever it takes. These bodies won’t stop piling up and I want to be on the other side of it when shit hits the fan.
-Jimmy