Hazard Station - some time back...

  “What the actual…” Norton huffed. He’d only brought a mop to deal with the mess before him, a single stick with a bundle of yarn on top to clean up… what in the ever-loving Federation of America was this?

  The bar was thrashed – tables tossed everywhere, rotting puddles of alcohol and millions of glass shards around an exploded countertop, clumps of ash, bullet casings, splotches of blood everywhere, a severed arm, a separated leg, a headless corpse – oh, and a mass of twisting vines that had ripped apart the back wall of the room. Norton had seen worse. But geeze, what happened here?

  He sighed. He knew what happened. A big ol’ purifier sweeping the floor with a raggedy crew of rebels over what was probably nothing important. Killing was the only way people knew how to get anything done in this country.

  Now it was Norton’s job to clean it all up. Clean it all up? With his mop? If his supervisor had told him it was this bad, he’d have at least brought the cleaning drones with him. And why clean it up anyway!? The owner was that headless dude on the floor. Just burn the place down and it’d all be over with. But that wasn’t how the Federation dealt with these things, was it? They never did things the practical way. Even when there was a bush of two corpses down the road one way, and a crashed helicopter and two armored cars the other way, the Federation believed there was such a thing as… mopping up the evidence. That was Norton’s job. Clean up the mess so people could pretend nothing happened, and they couldn’t bother to tell him the severity ahead of time and didn’t have the brains to just burn the stuff up and leave it at that.

  He knew he shouldn’t complain though – he signed up for this job, after all.

  “Get a job being a janitor,” his mom said, “it’ll be a great way to pay for tuition!”

  Sure, it’d help him afford college after several years, maybe more. But being that he’d seen the aftermath of rebels and enforcers killing each other a dozen times, the corp in charge of the cleaning detail never accepted his resignation. Or maybe Norton was just too good at his job. Head of the freaking Federation Affliction Clean-up detail – that was him. An incidental promotion at that.

  Man, he wished he had those cleaning drones, but they were off dealing with the crashed helicopter and cars down the road. He’d normally borrow some local ones, but they’d encountered some processing malfunction or whatever, and were off getting maintenance. So, his gaggle of cleaning drones – did he just think gaggle? Ah, screw it, yeah his gaggle of drones were busy and the local ones out of commission. So, with his mop, he’d have to get to work – because that was his job – and he needed that tuition money.

  His lamenting was snapped away by the buzz of his radio.

  “Unit J-1112, update?” his supervisor asked.

  Where to begin? Norton leaned on the edge of a sideways patron table and pressed the button of a radio strapped to his shoulder – yes, a small old police walkie, because there was once another janitor who’s head got blown off because there was an Afflicted with some sort of Bluetooth connection powers, or something freaking weird. Guy wasn’t fully dead when the janitor came in, connected to his earpods, and detonated his cranium. That’s right, a near-corpse Afflicted connected to an earpod like he was a wireless device, and turned that janitor into a firework display. Norton shivered at the memory. So, no radios for him from then on – and because he was the head of the detail, he could do whatever he wanted – short of quit or be informed to bring more than a mop.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Well,” Norton sighed, “it’s more than a puddle… Is burning down the place and pretending it was an accident not an option?”

  “Norton…”

  “Seriously, there’s a foot dangling out from the wall – I don’t know how else to describe this to you – I don’t get paid enough, you know that.”

  “Norton.”

  It never worked to complain to the supervisor. The corps that paid them wouldn’t ever hear it, but Norton doubted they realized what was going on either. After the news got enough pictures and footage to run on the air, no one cared about the details – they just wanted things to be detailed by the Federation Affliction Clean-Up Detail because that’s what the detail was supposed to do. Not because they needed him to do it – any amount of fire would suffice. No, they needed it cleaned up and rearranged – even though the bartender was dead – because… there was little use asking questions. He was stalling, he knew it.

  So, he stopped asking questions and mentally complaining and got to work. Time to get cleaning and start getting paid. Work on that college fund. Find the courage to ask his boss to let him go (or give him a raise). Find a girl and marry her. Kiss the East goodbye and hitch an airship to the West where all the artsy rich people lived. He’d heard there were barely any Afflicted or rebels out there, or so that’s what the news always said. Who knew when the FND was telling the truth.

  Anyway, Norton took his mop and decided the bar would be a good place to start. Yep, that brown bottle of liquor needed to be cleaned, and he would shine the heck out of it. The rich, memory dulling nectar, of, “get me through the next couple hours before I lose my mind.”

  *****

  It was daylight when Norton had finished. Thankfully he’d found some more tools in the back of the bar to help deal with the mess – he just had to crawl through a bunch of thick vines to get there. The drones finally came back to help incinerate the vines and cart off the human bits scattered around the bar. That was that. Bar detailed. All evidence of what happened expunged. Tidy little display that the Federation could spin into whatever they wanted, and none could say different (except for the injured enforcers and escaped rebels who had been here, but that was beside the point).

  Norton cracked his neck and massaged his stiff shoulders. The drink had started to kick in, and he wobbled his way out into the street looking for his motorcycle. Hmm, maybe drinking and driving wasn’t the play. Should have thought about that… Oh well, not like there was much to go home to.

  His radio buzzed again. “Norton, did you clear out the mess up town by the white houses?”

  “Oh, crap!” Norton had not, indeed. Two more corpses and another mess of vines awaited. He called over the radio, “look, I’ll take care of it. But you gotta hire more people to help me in the future, ok?”

  “Norton, I told you already–“

  “I know, I know – we need every new recruit to enforce and shoot guns, not waste time cleaning up. I get it. I mean, I guess the seven or so ex-soldiers here do need to be replaced.”

  “I can’t believe you’re talking about them so casually.”

  “It’s just how I cope, ma’am. It’s just how I cope.”

  So, the work continued. But to Norton’s luck, there was a house that had been left unlocked – so he gladly took the bed to sleep off the liquor. Seeing as the family that lived there had been taken away as traitors, it was all to himself. Not to say he was glad what happened to them – that was freaking terrible, he’d hate anyone to be taken away as traitors. They’d probably be interrogated by those VR investigators – odd folk. But he was certain they were probably the next line of recruits, anyway. The Federation was very forgiving to people who decided to enlist as a form of penance. Shortage of soldiers indeed.

  Oh well, it was time for sleep. Tomorrow was a day of much potential… potentially more bizarre things to clean up. As far as jobs went though, there were far worse.