Issue #139 : To Reveal In Others
Aaron turned up the water pressure, and swiveled back to continue spraying the side of the house. The stains would have to come out eventually. Something would have to do the trick. For once he was grateful for the heavy foliage around this side of the house, so that the neighbors couldn’t see what had happened here.
The walls were stained heaviest in three separate areas, with some kind of congealed matter still clinging to the surface. He detected an odor of rot in the air, and wondered how long it was going to be before more of these squads were sent out for him. He had been lucky enough to corner both of the things out here, behind the garage, but that probably wasn’t happening again.
This house was no good for him anymore. They wouldn’t stop coming after him, and next time they would likely send eight, instead of two. Better to just start fresh somewhere else. He would get this mess cleaned up, grab his bag and hit the road.
He turned the intensity of the hose up to the highest setting. It could have been his imagination, but it seemed like the matter was starting to break apart, and reveal the surface underneath. He picked up the brush and began scraping the rest off.
“Hey there!”
Aaron’s head snapped up at the sound of the man’s voice, now leaning against the gate and grinning down at him. Aaron squinted into the sun, and tried to get a better look at him. It wasn’t a neighbor, and he wasn’t wearing a uniform. No clipboard or promotional material, no bag of cleaning products that he wanted to demo. The guy reeked of bullshit.
The man started to step closer. Aaron stood up and waved to greet him. “Hey.”
“Sorry to intrude, I thought I would introduce myself. We just moved in up the street.”
Sure they did. In the entire time he had been renting this house, Aaron hadn’t seen a single For Sale sign, anywhere in the neighborhood.
“Yeah, so we missed you a few times and I saw you out here so I thought I’d come by and say hi.”
“Okay.” Aaron stared at the guy, waiting for him to wander off in the wake of his awkward greeting, but it soon became apparent that he wasn’t going anywhere. Red flag number one, those things hunting for him might look completely human, but they almost never picked up on the most obvious non-verbal messages.
“Do you want a beer?” he finally asked, feeling around his back for the revolver, pulling his shirt up and out so that the bulge would be less noticeable.
“Sure you bet,” the guy said it without pausing, as if it had been one long word. Red flag number two, unusual speech patterns. Aaron held out a hand.
“I’m Aaron, by the way,” he said
“Oh, geez Molly, I’m sorry. My name’s Rudy.” The two men took each others hands and Rudy pumped it up and down vigorously.
Red flag number three. The things had a hell of a time figuring out how to curse properly.
He nodded and gestured towards the lawn chair to take a seat. The skin on Rudy’s hand had felt cool, clammy to the touch. There could be nothing wrong there, or it could be because Rudy’s body was dead, with one of those monsters, burrowed into his brain and controlling the body like a scooter.
Aaron opened the back door to the garage, reached into the old Filco and took out two beers. He twisted both caps off as he walked back over to the chairs. Rudy’s eyes followed his every move, like he was being examined.
“Here you go.” Rudy took it and drink deeply. Aaron watched the man drink, trying to detect if it looked natural or contrived. He couldn’t tell for sure, one way or the other. All he could sense for sure, was the sense of mockery behind the man’s eyes, as if he was biding his time for something.
The problem was that there was very little that could be done at this point to try and weed the little fuckers out. There was always the risk that you could mis-read the red flags, and end up tapping some poor bastard who was just lacking in the social graces. You just had to wait them out and hope that at some point, they made a mistake. If you were lucky, that happened before you ended up dead. This thing could have taken over this poor bastard’s body and was just riding it, causing enough of a delay to allow the rest of them to show up and overwhelm Aaron with superior numbers.
The two men locked eyes over the beer. Rudy grinned as the frothy contents spilled from the lip of the bottle and dripped down his chin. It was like a bad joke that you knew was about to happen, but couldn’t do anything to stop. It was a scene from a bad movie, played out again and again. He was the sucker in one of the most pathetic, paper-thin cons ever invented. These things thought they could just take over the planet, push humans out of the way, and take everything for themselves.
Aaron was one of the few who recognized this, and was willing to do what was needed to stop it.
“Hey, do you want to see something?” he said. Rudy looked curious. “I’ve got a pretty interesting, vintage model train setup going on down in the basement. Want to check it out?”
“Sure, Molly’d like that!” he answered, further entrenching Aaron in his decision. It was like Rudy had all the words, but couldn’t figure out how to put them in the correct order, or how to use some of them. He nodded, and led him to the front door, and down the stairs. He stepped out of the way and let Rudy walk in first, waiting for him to stroll around to the center of the room before stepping in behind.
“You gonna turn on the lights?” Rudy asked. He was looking around, squinting into the darkness, so much that he didn’t see the barrel of the gun as it flashed up. Aaron fired once, behind the ear and Rudy collapsed to the floor, never making a sound or moving to defend himself. Keeping the gun trained on him, Aaron reached over and hit the switch, revealing the body, face first on the floor. The blood that trickled out of him looked like it was tainted, taking on an almost crimson purple color but again, it was hard to tell for sure.
No matter, he’d dispose of this one, the same he had done with the rest, and then he could see about making his way out of town. These were the sacrifices he had to make, in order to continue living this life. Every once in a while, he might end up killing an innocent by mistake, but weighed against the sheer magnitude of what a world would look like with those things taking over, he was willing to do what it took.
This was his job.
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