A

ARTICLE FROM THE WASHOE COUNTY INFORMER:

===============================================================

“Hey Doct’r, check out this article! This is amazeballs! You got your name in the paper! They even call you the chief exam’ner! That’s got a nice ring to it… ain’t you special?” Chloe smiled while walking up to Dr. Murphy at the spur track, “Why they sending all of tha bodies here on these skeleton trains anyway, Chief?”

“Chloe, this place is now known as the ‘Biggest little Morgue in the World.’” Dr. Liam responded doing that airquote thing with his fingers and with a chuckle.

“But this ain’t trash,” the doctor’s assistant said, “These aah human bodies and they sendin’ ‘em here by tha container loads in cheap wooden boxes.”

“Reno’s just a graveyard now… ever since the Great Cataclysms. Nobody lives here now.”

“This place was never nothin’ special to begin with.”

“Trust me, I know. I grew up here,” said the doctor, “but ever since the river dried up, the government decided it was worthless land. They decided it could now be used as a mass grave.” Dr. Murphy gestured, pointing to the former riverbed with his thumb. “I mean this place was awesome when Truckee still had water. Back in the eighties, me and some friends used to raft down the Truckee. That was breath-taking. But that was before the Great Cataclysms. Who would ever want to live out here now? The Truckee is bone-dry.”

“Dr. Murphy, there’s something I, um… want to tell you,” said Chloe. Her comment and her desire to be vulnerable was interrupted by the honking of a forklift driver, asking where to set down some pallets with dead bodies.

Dr. Murphy ignored Chloe’s comment and got to work. He pointed out the first victims to Chloe. “See these dead girls here? They were twins. See how skinny and malnourished they are? They still have handcuffs on. I can tell just by looking that they were starved to death. So tragic.” Dr. Murphy entered some information on his tablet. The doctor asked for assistance. “Chloe, let’s roll these girls over to check for any violent bruising.”

Chloe lent her hand to the doctor. “This is jus’ terrible,” she said, “poor girls.”

The doctor moved down the line, scrutinizing the next victim as he was unloaded from the train. “Bathtub” he stated while tapping some necessary information into his tablet.

“What kind of bathtub?” Chloe asked. “Water or acid?”

“Water.”

“Good. I mean drownin’ in a bathtub’s bad, but those acid killin’s are disgusting.”

“Yes, the most unnerving Cosmic murders are the ones he drowns in acid.”

“Fortunately, those are rare” said Chloe, “but not rare enough.”

“Yeah. Well, they’re rarer,” said the doctor, “just one of those killings is too many… Oh, turn away, Chloe. Close your eyes. This is a tough one to watch and I know you don’t handle these very well. I’ll just tell you what happened.”

“I don’t like to see or hear about them heinous ones.”

“I hate to describe it, but this guy was torn limb from limb. It’s a Ravaged Body. Total mutilation. There’s one limb there and another one there oh, and another one there. Wow, that is one graphic scene.”

“Oh, why did you have to describe it so graphic’ly? Why do we do this job? Do you ever wonder why the Cosmic Killer thug don’t just kill people the good ol’ way, like stranglin’ or shootin’?

“Every serial killer has his M.O. You read the article in the Informer? It’s just the way this guy operates. He’s powerful and he’s cruel. He’s got five basic techniques.”

“Well, I hate this guy. A lot. Why do we live here, Dr. Murphy? Aaaagh! Well, I know why I still live here, but what brought you here to Reno, Dr. Liam?” asked Chloe.

“Well, I actually never left! I grew up over on Bonneville and then got my degree from Reno University, back when Reno was still part of Nevada… this was back when the United States still had fifty states… It’s funny, as a kid, I always wanted to go to Reno U. I actually grew up closer to my university than my high school, just four blocks away. After I finished my forensic pathology classes, I was planning to go to Washington D.C., but then after the attacks, everything moved to Philadelphia. I was offered this job and was able to stay in Reno through some negotiations. I decided to stay for the government money. This was the best paying Medical Examiner job I could find. I don’t love Reno, but the job pays well!

“You got it easy Doctor. All yer doin’ is countin’ dead bodies that come in on these holocaust trains. You enter information into yer tablet. You don’t never do no embalming or nothin’. Plus, you got these workers doing all the heavy lifting with power equip’ment.”

Chloe was Dr. Murphy’s assistant. Despite being plain and simple, Dr. Murphy found her to be attractive. While only working together for four months, the physician had explained his job description and his role on several other occasions, but the doctor wondered if Chloe maybe wasn’t pulling a full train. He once again explained how he was not a mortician and why he didn’t embalm bodies.

“As a Medical Examiner, my job is simply to determine the cause of death for all Hyperdeath victims, Chloe.” And since they banned incinerators and since there’s no good burial grounds, the government just decided we could use the Truckee after the Cataclysms dried it up.”

“I can’t wait for the last train to roll into Reno with the last of the bodies. When this is over, I reckon to move back east. I grew up in South Carolina, you know.”

“Oh my God!” the doctor interrupted, “Look at this poor guy! His body parts are all in the wrong places. Another Ravaged Body. Oooohhhhh. That is messed up. I mean literally.” Several bodies began coming down a makeshift conveyor belt from the railcar platform.

Chloe began gagging and walking away toward the boulevard. “I think I’m going to puke, doctor. Dr. Murphy, how do you deal with all the horrible death?”

“I don’t deal with it real well, actually. School teaches you how to compartmentalize, but you can only go so far. It’s hard because there’s so many of them. I’m trying to figure out why so many bodies are being shipped here. What the heck is going on? The U.S. birth rate has essentially dropped to zero since the Cataclysms. Why is this scoundrel getting away with murder and why can’t we stop it?”

“Doct’r, I think I know something about the Cosmic Killer and why the Cosmic Killer’s killin’.”

“I’m not sure why you say that Chloe. The government isn’t telling us much. My personal opinion is that it’s a conspiracy and many sinister people are involved.”

“Yeah, but I….” then Chloe changed her mind and the direction of the dialogue, “Well who are the sinist’r people? And why they doin’ it?”

“I’m not sure, but some people believe in depopulating the earth as if humans are bad for the planet.” Just then, Dr. Murphy had to direct traffic around the corpse dump site. Some of the bodies were taken en masse right off the train cars and placed into the riverbed via cranes. Other bodies in cargo boxes had to be removed from the railcars with forklifts before being brought to the dump site. There was a continuous line of forklifts that seemingly never stopped unloading. With so many bodies coming in, it was always a challenge to keep things organized. Dr. Murphy didn’t want to miss a single death. Dr. Murphy’s team began pulling more cadavers off of the reefer unit as he began accounting for each body and certifying each cause of death. After the diagnostic information was entered in his tablet, the doctor directed the team to dispose of the bodies in their final resting spot. It was the dry river bed formerly known as the Truckee River. Backhoes were continually dumping dirt over new piles of dead bodies. Some of the bodies were in pine boxes, but most were completely exposed as the backhoe drivers did their work. It has now been two years since the Roaring 20s ended with the Great Cataclysms. The Great Cataclysms were top news stories just two years ago. Now, the Cosmic Killer was at the top of the news feed.

“It makes no sense” said Chloe, sifting through more carnage, “What do you have there?”

“Overt Bathtub Drowning in Water” said the doctor as he entered the information on the tablet.

“This killer is just so ruthless and col’-blooded” said Chloe.

Dr. Murphy looked at a graph of the statistical data on his tablet. “Woah, we just reached a milestone. We just exceeded our 999,000th Bathtub Drowning in Water since we started tracking the Cosmic Killer. It’s by far the biggest cause.”

“That’s staggerin’! I’m not so great at math, but I think that means we’re gettin’ close to a million!” said Chloe. “That’s a lot of dead people! What’s the next biggest cause?”

Dr. Murphy glanced down. “It’s the Tornado Beatings. We’ve got over 791,000 of ‘em.”

“I can’t believe how the Cosmic Killer beats those people senseless by slammin’ them into a wall or somethin’. He slams ‘em so hard, they never get up,” said Chloe, shaking her head in disgust, “what’s the next biggest cause?”

“The next biggest? It’s the Ravaged Bodies with Lacerations and Dismemberment with just under 479,000. After that it’s the Starvations with about 288,000. And finally it’s the Bathtub Drownings in Acid with just under 94,000.”

“Those bathtub drownin’s in acid is the most chillin’. You can tell the poor person suffered greatly.”

“You know they did. Even though I deal in death, it’s hard to stomach those acid killings.”

“Dr. Murphy, how do you know how these people all died? It looks like you never do no autopsy.”

“Well, I could do a full autopsy, but for purposes of Hyperdeath, I’m just expected to do an external examination and make an educated determination. The government calls them ‘estimated autopsies.’”

“You make it look easy. You just put information in your tablet and then tell the forklift drivers to dump all the bodies into the river. Well, it ain’t a river no more. It’s just a valley of dead bodies ’n’ dry bones. Dr. Liam, you said you and some friends rafted down this river when you was young? Now it ain’t even a river. Can you believe it’s even the same place?”

“Not really. It’s so weird how the river dried up just because of the Cataclysms. Not only that, but this river used to have some major rapids! That’s a lot of water to just disappear.”

“What made the river dry up anyway?” Chloe wondered, “Do you think it was the quake or the meteor or the eruption? …Or the attack?”

“Who knows? Maybe a combination? No one really knows. It’s eerie how the Great Cataclysms affected the entire western coast of the Americas. What happened in San Francisco is the craziest. I used to hang out at the wharf and view the Golden Gate. Never again…. I used to hang out at Lake Tahoe too. I can’t believe how small that lake is now… and how shallow it is! Bizarre.”

“It’s so weird… and all in a matter of a few weeks. I wonder if God is trying to tell us something?”

“Makes you wonder, huh? I know you believe in that stuff. I’m not so sure.”

“At the time, everyone was saying all the events was predicted in Revelations.”

“I don’t know about that, but it was an unprecedented time, way stranger than the chinavirus.”

Chloe assisted as the team pulled another corpse off the forklift. “Oh my God, doctor! Look at that poor guy. He looks just like a human, only he’s flat as a pancake! Oh my God! Sorry, I can’t even look at that one.” Chloe turned her head away and closed her eyes. She began to gasp.

Chloe turned her face away as the doctor answered: “Yep, Tornado Beatings are tough to stomach. Wow. The Cosmic Killer is committing horrifying crimes.”

With her face still turned away and still breathing heavily, she questioned the doctor: “Why did the gover’mint want all the Cosmic Killer corpses sent here to Reno anyway?”

“I suppose that any large and remote ravine would have worked for a mass grave site. I actually recommended this place since I was from here and didn’t want to uproot my life. Philly approved the Truckee location.”

“Why we doin’ this Dr. Liam?”

“It’s for the accurate record. The government says they want this all documented. I guess we’re doing this to record it for posterity. Knowing what I know now, I wish I had become an investigator or a cop instead of a doctor. I would be going up to every home to investigate how these people died. If I were investigating, I would be going door-to-door. I wouldn’t sleep at night. I wouldn’t stop until I brought the Cosmic Killer to justice. How does the killer get into these bathrooms to perform the drownings so easily? How does the killer get into these homes so easily? I would be investigating the acid and the bathwater and searching for the metal knife blades. Why can’t they stop this villain?”

“I know, it’s jus’ crazy… Um, Dr. Liam, there’s something I been needin’ to tell you…”

“What’s that?”

Chloe hesitated. “Maybe I can’t say it right now. Continue what you were saying about documentin’ this stuff.”

Dr. Murphy hesitated. “Feel free to tell me anything, Chloe. What I was saying is I don’t want to be doing these autopsies. I want to be stopping ‘em. My brother is actually an agent in the Federal Department of Investigation. I guess they’re trying to create a psychological profile for the Cosmic Killer.”

“Your brother’s in the F.D.I.?”

“Yep. He’s in the Cincinnati location. He called the other night and told me there’s dozens of detectives going door-to-door in his city, investigating Hyperdeath. Just the other night, they found a deceased male in a bathtub drowning at some apartment complex. Then in that same complex, they found a tornado killing. This poor girl apparently just had the crap beat out of her when she got slammed against a wall. They found her body, but never found her brain. It was missing. This whole thing is just insane.”

“So, if you’d rather try and stop the problem, why don’tcha do that instead? Why you here countin’ dead bodies?”

“I’m a namby-pamby. I admit it. I guess I’ve just accepted this as my calling. But someone has to record the data.”

“Well, doctor, I origin’ly moved here after the chinavirus when they offered me a job. That job ended up lastin’ for ‘bout eight years. Then I was gonna move back home to South Carolina. Then they offered me more money to stay and work with you for the Cosmic Killer job. They told me it should jus’ be a two year assignment, but then they tol’ me I need to stay until the last train arrived. Now, I just can’t wait for the last of these death trains to roll in, ‘cause I’m really tired of this and I want to move back home pretty soon. I hope I’ll be leavin’ soon, but it don’t seem like the killin’s slowin’ down any.” An empty train car was rolled down the spur track and looped away as another fully loaded refrigerated car came in right behind it. The unloading team got right to work unloading more dead bodies with the forklifts.

After fumbling with his tablet for a moment, Dr. Murphy confirmed: “Your new contract says you need to stay until the last death train rolls in…”

“Well, I don’t know, at first I told ‘em I would stay until the end, but I don’t want to no more. Now, because of the new law, I don’t think they would let me jus’ leave. That’s why I hope they catch this guy. I’m waiting for the last death train. As soon as that last train rolls in, I’m outta here. I’ll be moving back east. I could maybe be outta Reno the end of the year, don’t you think?”

“Oh my God, Chloe, turn away now! You won’t want to see this. It’s a Bathtub Drowning in Acid! Oh my God.”

“I can’t even look. Them killin’s give me the willies.”

Doctor Murphy finished entering some information into his tablet.

“Doctor, I can’t take this no more. I been holding a secret. I gotta tell you and I gotta tell you right now! I never told no one this before, but my oldest son was murder’d by the Cosmic Killer!”

“Awwww. Oh God, Chloe! I’m so sorry. We’ve been working together for several months now. Why didn’t you ever tell me before?”

“I been so scared and freaked out about it that I jus’ wanted to block it out of my memory. Turns out I can’t never block it out no matter how hard I try.”

“How did you know it was the Cosmic Killer?”

“It was his sig’nature. The most heinous crime, a Bathtub Drowning in Acid. The worst kinda death.”

“Where did it happen?”

“It happen’d right here in Reno. And I seen him. I stood face-to-face with evil. He saw me, but he didn’t even come after me. He jus’ wanted my son. He grabbed my son and killed him in a most horrible way!” Chloe was bawling.

“At least he didn’t get you.”

“He didn’t kill me, but he got me. I been in torment ever since.” Chloe continued bawling.

“Chloe, could you describe the killer?”

“Yes.”

“Chloe, I think you should go to the authorities with this.”

“Doctor, I’m ‘fraid to. I jus’ wanna know when can I leave this abom’nable place and this abom’nable job? Can you get me outta here?”

“You probably can’t quit because of the ridiculous new law. I can try to get you out of here, but I don’t think I’ll be able to pull any strings on that.”

“Why? What a wrongful, unjus’ law!” said Chloe.

“It is pretty severe. I even wrote a letter to Philly complaining to the Attorney General about the law. For now, I think you’re stuck here.”

“So much for the land of the free and the home of the brave,” cried Chloe.

“Yeah, I used to love that song,” said the doctor, “but that song was so long ago now. I don’t know what to tell you Chloe. Things are different now. We’re living in a post-Cataclysm world with the Hyperdeath all around us. It’s a sad time. What can you tell me about the Cosmic Killer? Who was he? What did he look like?” Dr. Murphy’s curiosity was now in overdrive.

“I don’t want to think about him or talk about him at all! I just want to leave this God-forsaken place!”

“I’ve always enjoyed working with you, Chloe. But the new emergency contract they forced on us states that we’re required to remain in Reno until the last death train rolls in. I think you’re stuck here. Not only that, but I’ve been talking to people at the Bureau of Homeland Safety in Philadelphia. The way it looks right now, this is going to be going on for a long time yet. I hate to tell you this Chloe. I’m so sorry.” With Chloe now sobbing, Dr. Murphy embraced her and attempted to comfort her. “I’m so sorry, Chloe, but there is no last train to Reno.”

AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD #1

As I finish typing this story, I now request that you, the reader, pause your reading of this story for an entire day to contemplate, process and reflect on its content. In 24 hours, please return to read my final afterword, which begins on the next page. Thank you.

AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD #2

If you are reading this, I hope you took the 24 hours to pause and conjecture what this story is about. While some aspects of this story are obviously fictitious, there is an element that is non-fiction. For example, in today’s world, Hyperdeath is one of the most common clinical procedures to take place in the United States. It is sometimes known as “elective” abortion since the woman makes the decision that a particular pregnancy may cause stress in her life or may not be convenient at this time. Cultural sensibilities regarding abortion have led to a staggering prevalence of the act in modern United States. Based on sonograms, neurological, functional and physiological indicators, we now know that unborn babies can experience pain when attacked in the womb. In some cases, depending on how far along in the pregnancy, it is believed that an unborn child is likely to feel pain more acutely than a fully grown adult since all of the fetal nerve sensors are in such a small and compacted space. Have you ever wondered what the pain leading up to an abortion must feel like to the unborn child?

The most common form of abortion is the abortion pill, sometimes called RU 486 or Mefiprex (generic name mefiprestone). Mefiprestone destroys progesterone which prevents a fetus from getting its necessary oxygen. Could depriving an unborn child of oxygen approximate the feeling of being forced under water in a bathtub and held there until drowning takes place? The abortion pill also blocks a fetus from receiving necessary nutrients such as food and water. Could such deprivation approximate the feeling of starving to death? Vacuum aspiration abortion occurs when a high-powered vacuum is used to extract a fetus from a womb. This tears the fetus into bits as it siphons the body through a suction tube and slams the body and body parts into a collecting jar. Could such a violent extraction approximate the feeling of a being caught up in a tornado before being slammed against a brick wall? Could this beating be so severe that it crushes and flattens an unborn baby like a bug, practically beyond all recognition? In some cases, the fetus is stabbed in the back of the head while its brain is extracted with a high powered vacuum. Dilation and Curettage abortion removes a fetus from the womb by cutting, scooping, and scraping it away from the uterine wall using a surgical curette (a long-handled sharp spoon blade). The dismembered fetus is then removed piece-by-piece using forceps. This process can be done “cleanly” with precise sharp cuts or it can be done as a “hack” job with a coat hanger. Could this kind of surgery approximate the feeling of an unborn child’s body being ravaged, crushed, lacerated, mutilated and sliced into multiple pieces with a razor-sharp scimitar blade? Finally hypertonic saline-induced abortion occurs when the mother’s amniotic sac is injected with a poisonous salt solution forcing the helpless unborn child to swallow the solution. The solution causes brain damage due to excessive sodium. The process normally burns the baby’s skin completely off. Being the most horrific and painful type of abortion, it is fortunately performed less frequently and has been banned in some states. Could such a cruel death approximate the horror of being forced into a bathtub of acid and held down in excruciating pain until the unborn child’s body begins to disintegrate?

Allowing just one elective abortion is a crime against humanity. Allowing a staggering 66 million abortions, as the United States has done throughout its history, is unimaginably brutal and inhumane. In comparison, the chinavirus only killed 1.1 million U.S. citizens. How can we allow this Cosmic Killer holocaust to continue? Shouldn’t the womb be a safeguarded biological system? How long will we be stacking heaps of dead bodies onto extermination trains? Barring a major cultural shift, there will never be a last train to Reno.

Did not he who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same one form us both within our mothers? Job 31:15