Catch and Release

$18,000 per catch. Less if they're incomplete. Nothing if the head comes off, for obvious reasons. $18,000. More money than most people earn in a year, and all being well, we can earn it in a single day. Of course it never goes well, but all the dollar-eyed applicants queuing up for the snatch detail don't seem to notice. They hear a number, they start dreaming of the perimeter-view penthouse, salivating at the prospect of thick-cut slabs of real beef, visualising a transfer out of the city and into one of the rural settlements, all wheat fields and big, open skies.

Dreamers them all, even though one look at me should dispel their ambitions. Eight years on the snatch detail, longer than anyone, and nothing but scars and sarcasm to show for it.

I try to weed the dreamers out, but I don't always get my say, and sometimes I get it wrong. Sometimes people die. And sometimes... well, sometimes worse things happen. Sometimes we don't get paid.

The gate slams shut with a hideous chiming sound, but this close to the perimeter, there's no-one around to hear it. Half a mile down the main road and the first stragglers appear, and within ten minutes driving we're into no man's land, a maze of burnt out cars and ransacked shopfronts, spilling their contents into the road like pus from a wound. If a tyre blows out or we run out of gas, we are entirely on our own.

We slow as the van enters the suburbs. We're close. I have a scribbled address in one hand and a faded paper map in the other. I leave the driving to Col. Even at this slow speed we've acquired an entourage, maybe thirty of them shuffling alongside the van. They bang on the bodywork, drag their nails across the paint, moan and howl. I watch Col's face. He is not a fan. I like Col. After all these trips, he still has the decency to be scared.

On the map I've circled a plaza next to the target's apartment. You need big, open spaces for this to work, at least the way I do it. Other snatch crews prefer methods that are more direct, hitting the creepers harder and faster, bursting from their armoured trucks like hell's own task force, pouring rounds and rounds of expensive ammunition into crowd, bagging their target like some hunted insurgent. Most of the other snatch crews are dead.

I read the street signs, rusted and covered in grime. I guide Col from street to street, thinking ahead, watching for roadblocks and chokepoints, remembering the clearest routes from previous excursions. I know there's an overturned lorry two blocks over, some forgotten envoy from one of the huge breweries this area was once famous for, in the distant and bleary past. I remember it clearly, the bright blue cans of beer cascading from the open cargo doors of the freight truck, filling the street like some amateur commercial of the 1990s. It's easy to imagine a parallel universe where soft-rock begins to play from some undisclosed source and the street fills with young, sexy passersby intent on a good time. Instead, there's the broken body of a young snatch detailer, half buried beneath the blue cans. His third outing, and his last. He succumbed to visions of the past and saw those cans of beer as a relic of happier times instead of the snare trap they really are. I can't remember his name.

The van begins to circle the plaza. A quick burst of speed from Col loses our entourage for a moment and I slide open a panel in the side of the van and drop out the shrieker. Forty seconds later, a second. Forty seconds later, a third. There's a big bounty on this one and I'm feeling extra cautious, so as the van finishes the slow loop of the plaza, I drop a fourth shrieker. They're expensive to make, and we can't retrieve them, but caution is my M.O. This is why I'm still alive.

As the first shrieker begins to sound we pull the van into the centre of the plaza. Our entourage soon abandons their pursuit, drawn to the shrill alarm, turning and shambling away and forgetting that we exist. Soon the second shrieker sounds, and then the third, and the fourth, and then the four corners of the plaza are a writhing mass of the living dead, pouring forth from every broken shopfront, every apartment lobby, every bus shelter and delicatessen and alcove. A noise grows, a great indistinct rumble of footfall and clawing hands.

We sit in the eye of the storm, the van's engine still running. I scan the crowd with my binoculars, focusing on the square of tarmac directly in front of the target's apartment tower. In the back, I hope the newblood is doing the same, peering from an armored porthole with her loaned binoculars.

The real skill of a snatcher lies in their ability to screen opportunities. There is unlimited demand for our services. Money is the first filter, but there are still plenty of wealthy survivors with impossible requests, loved ones who barricaded themselves into cellars or attics, or set out into those first dark days with a backpack of supplies and visions of safety in some remote campground or military base. We will never find those people, and the few we can find are usually impossible to retrieve.

But occasionally it works out. Occasionally a survivor can direct us to a town that isn't totally overrun, to an apartment building that still stands, can account for their loved one's last few hours, even their final moment. And after the inevitable happens, they don't tend to wander far. Most are retrieved within a hundred feet of where they died. If you can call it dying. "They lack ambition", as Col dryly remarked. And occasionally, when we take the van out on a recce and crawl discretely down streets that throng with the living dead, we catch a glimpse of the target shuffling through the crowd. Occasionally, it works out.

Still, the odds are terrible. Clothes are all we have to go on. Think about it. After this long, there aren't many defining facial features left to guide the extraction, so if your loved one passed wearing the same cheap nylon trousers and shirt as his eight hundred corporate colleagues, you are shit out of luck.

But occasionally, it works out. Scribbled on my notepad is a crude drawing of a bright red varsity jacket and, the real kicker, neon yellow board shorts. "Maybe they deserved to die," Col had remarked. I try to refrain from similar judgement. And as I grow cross-eyed through my binoculars, I see a grime-stained varsity jacket and faded yellow board shorts shuffle through the crowd.

I should probably talk to the newblood, offer words of reassurance. I'm sure they're terrified, and mine and Col's stoic silence is doing nothing to help. Maybe if they survive today they'll earn some conversation. After all, they have an easy job, at least relatively speaking: hold the fucking door.

I punch Col on the arm. He revs the engine, just slightly, an unconscious tic in acknowledgement. And then I'm out of the van.

I can hear the sliding door open as I walk briskly across the plaza. The newblood is paying attention. A good start. The horde is intent upon the shriekers. The smell is indescribable, a thick miasma of pungent death that seems to smother everything. There is no breeze. I feel the sweat inside my mask, runnels down my skin. I pass the first shuffling corpse without incident, and the second. I'm into the crowd now. I feel attention begin to fall upon me, a living interloper in this world of the dead. No time for doubt. I push through a knot of corpses, shouldering past frayed fabric and dried flesh. He stands in front of me, this freshman out of time. I force the wire netting over his head in a single movement. I put gloved hands under his arms and kick his legs from under him. He is light, as they all are after these many years, and I begin to half-carry, half-drag him towards the van. I am halfway across the plaza when I see a tangle of limbs emerge from a drainage culvert to the right of the van. The newblood has eyes only for me. Col should have seen them, but they are in his blindspot. In moments they are upon the newblood, pulling and clawing at her clothes. To my surprise, she is swift and competent. She bludgeons the nearest with her club and kicks free from the others. She calls to Col. He revs and pulls the van forward, slowly and quietly but enough to keep the shamblers from hopping aboard. He drives towards me and I meet the newblood at the sidedoor, bundling the target inside and climbing in. The horde is none the wiser. We close the door and Col accelerates, pulling away from the plaza as the first shrieker dies, muffled by a mountain of desperate corpses.

The newblood has earned her conversation. We talk on the drive back to the gate. Col cracks a few jokes, I punch the newblood on the arm. The target is buckled into a seat at the rear of the van and sits motionless, save for a few twitches and jerks. I don't look. I knew his type, once. Some varsity freshman, built like a brick shithouse, away from his family, drinking and partying, when everything went to shit.

Most of them end up like inmates, or pets, secured in some loved one's basement apartment and watched remotely through a viewing window. Sometimes, the family want to bury them or cremate them, put an end to their ceaseless wandering. It always felt stupid to risk life and limb to extract the walking dead only for some distant relative of the deceased to kill them a second time, but I take the money all the same. Worst of all are the sick, broken bastards who dress them in clothes and treat them like nothing has happened. They usually end up maimed, killed, or turned. The other survivors got tired of this pretty quickly, so today, it's only the very rich families who are indulged in this fantasy.

The gate lowers as the van nears and soon we are through the security gates and into the courtyard. Masked soldiers inspect the van through the windows, ask us questions and shine lights into our eyes. They can see the target is still, contained, so they withdraw behind their plexiglass shields and allow us to park in our usual bay and disembark. I lead the target through a concrete tunnel into a handover pen ringed with floodlights and armed security. I let the newblood accompany us, a rare privilege, but she has earned the accolade. The recipient is already waiting for us, and I can see a look of apprehension turn to relief, joy even, as we approach. But then her face changes. Confusion. Disbelief. Anger.

In the bright light I begin to see my errors. The jacket is oversized and the figure's frame narrow. What I mistook for short-hair is long, greasy hair tucked into the jacket's collar. I lift a corner of the varsity jacket and see shrivelled breasts beneath.

As I said, the odds are terrible. A girlfriend, maybe, borrowing his clothes to buy snacks from a vending machine in then lobby. It doesn't matter. The recipient is screaming and railing. The newblood is talking, trying to salvage the situation, making excuses and plans to soothe the screaming woman. She is not satisfied that the creature is "completely intact" and "wearing your son's clothes".

The newblood is doing great, really, but it's better she learns this lesson early. She'll be a better snatcher for it. Maybe we'll work together for the next few years, me, her and Col. Best she learns the lesson early. Sometimes, things go wrong. Sometimes, we don't get paid.