The Prompt: "Hello, I'm from the IRS"

Genre: Horror

Rating: T

TWs: blood, violence, gore, implied violence to animals

Our black car cruised down the suburban street. Children played in front yards, firing water from their squirt guns at each other. Our destination was coming up and I tried, and failed, to keep my leg from bouncing nervously.
      "First time in the field?" My superior, agent Daniels asked.
     "That obvious?" I asked.
     "Well, the leg attempting to dig through the floor was a pretty good indicator." Daniel's chuckled.
     "Sorry." I said. "I've never had to deal with a real case. Training is one thing, but dealing with one out in the wild is something else entirely."
     "You're not wrong." Daniel's said, suddenly serious. "On site pickups are unpredictable. You never know how people are going to react. It's a good thing the higher ups teamed you up with me, I've been on too many calls to count. Alright, saddle up rookie, we're here."
     Daniels stopped the car in front of a modest looking house. The yard was a little overgrown, compared to the immaculately maintained lawns around it, but there were no major outward appearances of anything being wrong. The house belonged to a history professor named Alan Swenson. I swallowed and took a deep breath before nodding to my partner. We exited the vehicle, grabbed our briefcases from the trunk and walked up the path to the front door.
     Daniels knocked on the door. We waited a few moments before he tried again, a little more forcefully this time. A moment later a man opened the door a crack, the chain not allowing it to open much more. When he did so, a sickly sweet smell wafted out to greet us. From little bit I could see, the man's eyes were sunken, presumably from a lack of sleep, his receding hair was sticking up at wild and legs and he had a patchy beard attempting to grow on his jaw.
     "Can I help you?" He rasped at us.
     "Alan Swenson, my name is agent Daniels, this is my partner agent Cutter. We're from the IRS." Daniels replied.
     "The... IRS? I don't understand, I'm squared away on my taxes. At least I paid good money to make sure if it." Mr Swenson said.
     "Not that IRS." Daniels chuckled. "The organization we work for deals with something different all together. The Irresponsible Resurrection Sector investigates claims of people bringing someone, or as the case may be, multiple someone's back from the dead."
     Mr. Swenson's back stiffened. "I've never heard of you."
     "No, you wouldn't have." I told him. "We make it a point to fly under the radar. We don't exactly want the public knowing resurrection is a possibility."
     "She's right." Daniels agreed. "Now, the reason we're here is a call was made to your local PD by a neighbor. The details sounded up our alley, so here we are."
     "I don't know why anyone called about my house. I have t done anything like that." The man told us.
     "Then you won't mind if we come take a look around right?" My partner said with a jovial smirk.
     He hesitated. "Do you have a warrant or something?"
     "See, we don't actually need one." Daniels informed him. "This is really more of a courtesy. It saves you the repairs on a new door. Now, are you going to let us in?"
     "Sure, um give me a minute." Alan said. The chain slid and the door reopened. "Pardon the mess, I have t had the energy to clean up lately."
     That was an understatement. Fast food bags and plates with old food seemingly fused to their ceramic surfaces littered the living room. A small cloud of flies congregated over a weeks old plate of steak and potatoes, their drone audible in the space. I had to suppress a gag when I walked through the threshold.
     "Any particular reason for your lack of energy?" Daniels asked as he scanned the room.
     "I'm uh, not sure. I might be coming down with something." He said, and I picked up a hint of nervousness. "Can I ask what the caller said exactly?"
     "No, but I can give you rough details." Daniels informed him. "Along with some details I'm not at liberty to divulge, your concerned neighbor claimed to have seen you bringing home some out of the ordinary purchases from the hardware store."
     "That's it? I had some renovations around the house I wanted to do." He told us.
     "Sure, rebar poles and a sledge hammer make sense for that, but heavy chains?" Daniels raised an eyebrow. "That's not something you'd use for renovation."
     "You're right, the real answer is I was installing a... special swing in my bedroom." He said. "You know, to spice things up between my wife and I. I had to pop down to the hardware store to grab the few things I didn't have."
     "I can understand that." I told him. "You wouldn't mind showing us, would you? You know, just so we can verify."
     "We're also going to need to check the rest of the house. If we don't find anything the sector will write you a check for the inconvenience and we'll be out of your hair." My parter smiled.
     "Oh, of course." Mr. Swenson wrung his hands nervously.
     We began our investigation by shifting around piles of refuse and moving the couch away from the wall. An adhoc trap door or hole in the wall were typical first choices for hiding the newly resurrected in these cases. We had a pretty good idea where they were being hidden, but it was always better to clear all your options before going for the most obvious. I continued in the living room while Daniels moved on to the kitchen.
     "While I have you here, do you mind if we ask a few more questions?" I asked the nervous man.
     "I suppose not." He replied.
     "Do you know anything about the disappearances of neighborhood pets that's been happening?" I asked.
     "N-no, why would I?" He stammered.
     "We tend to find that in cases of improper resurrection, the resurrected tend to have a particular... appetite." I said slowly.
     "I uh, wouldn't know anything about that."
     I looked over the bookshelf for signs of occult books, but nothing immediately stood out. Mostly a lot of spy thrillers. As I continued though, I noticed a thick hard cover book. 'The collective works of H.P. Lovecraft caught my attention.
     "You a big fan of horror Mr. Swenson?" I asked.
     "Horror? No, can't say that I am." He said. "The world's scary enough as it is. Why would I bring more into it?"
     "An excellent question." I smiled at him as I pulled the book from the shelf. "Lovecraft huh?" I said. "I like his works, the unknowable horrors of the cosmos, eldritch beings. It's interesting stuff. One story that I find particularly interesting is Herbert West- Reanimator."
     "I've never read it." He said with a nervous grin. "That must have been my wife's. She always loved the horror genre, but I never really had the stomach for it."
     "What's in the basement, Mr. Swenson?" Daniels called from the kitchen.
     "What's that?" He responded.
     "The basement's locked. What's down there?" Daniels repeated.
     "Oh uh, nothing, just an unfinished basement." He said.
     "Get the key, please. I need to verify that there's nothing down there." Daniels told him.
     "Umm, sure thing." He pulled his key ring out of his pocket and shakily unlocked the door. “Feel free to go down.”
     “Lead the way.” Daniels said, gently pushing the man forward.
     We descended the stairs and were shortly hit by that same underlying sickly sweet scent as we we deeper into the basement. Daniels had his hand on his firearm on his belt while I had my taser trained on Mr. Swenson’s back in case he tried anything fishy. In my other hand I still held the book I’d grabbed from the shelf. We hit the basement floor and heard a commotion. In a darkened corner the sound of chains rattling and muffled moans could be heard. I quickly swapped the taser for my own firearm.
     “Get the light Mr. Swenson.” Daniels commanded gruffly.
     “Please, you don’t understand.” He pleaded, dropping all pretense. “I was lost without them. They haven’t hurt anyone.”
     “Get. The. Light.” My partner annunciated before giving him a shove.
     He sobbed as he pulled the light string. Our eyes adjusted quickly, though I wish they hadn’t. Before us were three people, an adolescent boy and girl and a woman who appeared to be about Mr. Swenson’s age. These were only guesses, since it was hard to tell exactly how old they had been through the sallow skin, sunken eyes and caked on gore. Piled around them were bones and half-eaten carcasses of small animals.
     The two younger living corpses were fighting over one of the fresher canine corpses. Their cracked, broken nails tearing into the flesh. The girl lunged forward and swiped at her brother, causing him to relinquish the body to her. She dove into stomach of the dog while her brother grabbed an older body with some flesh still on it.
     My hand went to my mouth involuntarily while Mr. Swenson rushed forward to his children.
     “Abigail, be nice to your brother. You have to share, I don’t know when I’ll be able to get you more.” He said before trying to wrestle the meat from her as she nipped and swatted at him.
     All three of them had makeshift collars fashioned from rebar around their necks, secured to the walls by chains. Their clothes were tattered and covered in blood and viscera. The woman seemed more lethargic than the other two, as evidenced by the fact he was able to plant a kiss on her lips while the children were distracted.
     “How are you sweetheart? Have the kids been behaving?”
     “Sah hiss.” She moaned. “Ih urss.”
     “I know sweetheart, I know, but we’re together again.” He stroked his wife’s hair, causing a clump to slough away.
     The woman ‘s right cheek was peeled away from her face, revealing the blackened teeth beneath. She opened her mouth to release a breathy moan. When she did this I saw that her tongue was nothing but a lump in her mouth. Whether from biting it off or it rotting away was a mystery I didn’t care to dwell on. Her milky eyes wandered around the room before locking on me and my partner. I looked into those glazed over eyes and saw… pleading? It was like she was asking me to put a bullet in her head.
     “You know this isn’t natural, don’t you?” Daniels said to the clearly insane man.
     “Isn’t it?” He snapped. “They were taken before their time by a goddam drunk! I gave them their time back!”
     “They’re suffering!” I shouted. “Do you truly believe this is what they’d want?”
     “It doesn’t matter, I brought them back!” He yelled. “Something went wrong though, I just need a little more time to get the ceremony right.”
     “What ceremony? Where did you find this ceremony?” Daniels asked.
     “I think I can shed some light on that.” I opened the book to reveal a smaller leather bound notebook inside.
     Daniels opened the notebook and flipped through it. “Mesopotamian necromancy. I don’t know how you got your hands on this, but this is incredibly dangerous. If you had bothered to fully translate the whole book you would have known that this form of necromancy was used to raise fallen soldiers so they could keep fighting, not resurrect loved ones!”
     “What are you going to do?” Alan asked.
     “The right thing.” Without another word, he raised his weapon and fired a round into the undead woman’s head.
     Her body stiffened and she slumped forward. “Haake hooo.” She exhaled, and stopped moving for the second time.
     “Noooo!” Alan screamed and lunged at Daniels with a piece of rebar, striking him in the head.
     I froze, goddammit, I froze in that moment. My inaction gave Alan the time he needed to unshackle the other two. The boy leapt on top of my dazed partner, while the girl rushed her father and ripped his throat out in a geyser of blood. She raised her head with her father’s trachea clamped firmly between her teeth, before diving in for more. I turned my weapon on the boy to help my partner who was fighting for his life. I fired two rounds into the boy’s skull, dropping him for good.
     I rushed to Daniels’ side. “Are you okay? Did he bite you?”
     “I don’t think so.” Daniels said, checking his arms and chest.
     Just then a clatter drew our attention toward the stairs, the girl was sprinting toward them on all fours. Daniels cursed and ran after her. I stayed out and called in the situation to HQ.
     “We’ve got a runner, Daniels is in pursuit.” I told them. “Subject got ahold of a notebook with an ancient Mesopotamian ritual to raise fallen soldiers and used it on his family.”
     A gurgling breath caused me to stop my report. Alan Swenson was somehow still alive. I approached slowly as his limbs twitched and blood splattered to the floor with each ragged breath. Slowly, he bent at the waist to sit upright. In that moment I understood the breadth of how fucked we could be. Alan’s clouded eyes locked on me and he let out a growling moan and prepared to pounce. I unloaded my clip into his head and chest.
     Over the radio, Daniels voice. “I lost her. The bitch is fast.”
     “It can spread.” I said into my radio, my voice shaking. “It can spread, Daniels.”
     “Fuck.” He groaned.