Literature / Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse

"We might not be very good soldiers, but we're sanitation techs. We know how to clean up someone else's mess."

— Marion "Mops" Adamopoulos

Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse is a science fiction series by Jim C. Hines.

Over a hundred years ago, the alien Krakau came to Earth to invite humanity into an interstellar alliance. Instead, they found that humanity had suffered a Zombie Apocalypse, destroying their own civilization and leaving behind a planet filled with half a billion hungry Technically Living Zombies. Rather than immediately fleeing and finding something better to do with their time, the Krakau set about trying to cure the mindless savages.

Now, cured humans make up the Earth Mercenary Corp, an army of nigh-unstoppable killing machines eager to serve the Krakau Alliance in gratitude for their rescue. Cured humans might not be all that bright, but they're strong, tough, feel no pain and know no fear. Human soldiers are the most feared in the galaxy.

Marion "Mops" Adamopoulos is not a fearsome soldier. She is, in fact, a janitor — but a very good janitor. She is a Lieutenant on the EMCS Puffership in charge of the Shipboard Hygiene and Sanitation team. When a bioweapon attack reverts all the humans to their feral state, she and her team are the only ones who survive with their minds intact. She has to fly a ship she was never trained on, fight aliens, and find a cure for her people, preferably all while keeping everything clean and shiny. Along the way, she and her team begin to uncover secrets best left buried, about the nature of their species.

Novels

• Terminal Alliance (2017)
• Terminal Uprising (2019)
• Terminal Peace (2022)

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This series features the following tropes:

• Advanced Ancient Humans: Human civilization entirely collapsed with only a tiny remnant of naturally immune people remaining thanks to The Plague. Visiting Earth and looking at the remnants of space technology, Mops is awed and amazed even though what there was wasn't nearly as advanced as Krakau technology. Cured humans are so completely dependent on the Krakau that the idea of real human achievement moves her.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Krakau's names are half song, half skin-changes. Humans can maybe approximate the song part but it's rough going overall. Recognizing this and wanting to make things a bit easier on their Servant Race, Krakau who have much to do with humans choose "human names" by going through an archive of human music and pick songs whose titles humans can use as their names. In the second book Mops works with a Krakau janitor who doesn't have a human name; Doc shows Mops a list of song titles and she picks the first one, Greensleeves, just so she has something to call her; it doesn't really matter to the Krakau, they're communicating through Translator Microbes anyway. In the third book Admiral Pachelbel has to face off against another Krakau who hasn't had anything to do with humans. For the readers' convenience, this other Krakau's name is first rendered as "orange" followed by several dots and dashes, and then "Orange" from there on out.
• Alien Abduction: Feral humans are essentially abducted to be cured.
• Alien Arts Are Appreciated: Glacidae video games are played and enjoyed by several humans and a Rokkau.
• Alien Autopsy: In the first book Kumar is delighted to get to indulge in his hobby and dissect a deceased Krakau officer and retains this interest later, often to the frustration of his crewmates.
• Aliens Never Invented the Wheel: In the third book, the Pufferfish's crew is bewildered by how the Jynx, whose weaponry is on the level of primitive firearms and who still use animals to get around, also seem to have tailor-made personality-altering viruses at their disposal. While discussing this it's mentioned that technology doesn't come in discreet predictable "levels" all going up at once, and that Nusurans invented birth control before the wheel.
• Aliens Steal Cable: Most of the Krakau's understanding of pre-plague humans comes from human media, especially music.
• Almighty Janitor: Mops was assigned to be a sanitation worker because the Krakau overseeing her uplift marked her for being unusually intelligent and independent and wanted to limit the disruption she caused. However, not being a soldier meant she lived a lot longer than most cured humans and in this time accrued a lot of experience, enough so that she could give tactical advice to other humans and was able to take control of the situation after the bioweapon was unleashed. She and her team still struggled, to be sure.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Prodryans. An attempt at diplomacy between them and other species had one of their representatives responding to the question, "There's plenty of space in the galaxy, why do you attack us?" with "Because we are assholes." Prodryans see anyone else as food or threats and are convinced of their own cultural superiority, but they are, also, individuals and people and their own sense of self-preservation is strong. Strong enough to lead to peace in the end, though if it will last is an open question.
• Apocalypse How: Earth was hit with something between Class 2 and Class 3. Half a billion unintelligent ferals survive on Earth a hundred and fifty years after the plague hit. Individuals are abducted and cured, making them into people, but they go on to serve the Krakau military instead of making their own society. Roughly a thousand people naturally immune to the plague survived societal collapse and feral attacks to band together into the Librarians of Humanity, but after that century and a half their numbers are much lower and they are unsustainable as a population.
• Artificial Limbs: Monroe has a white prosthetic arm replacing the one he lost in combat. It can detach and still function to a degree, but then the primitive AI controlling it - this prosthetic isn't the even-better-replacement common to the trope - tends to get screwy and punch him in the face.
• Berserk Button: Mops has impressive emotional control and 'berserk' is overstating it, but she easily slips into Tranquil Fury whenever someone suggests killing her crew, and then in the second book when she finds out about Admiral Sage's experiments in turning other species feral deliberately.
• Bizarre Human Biology: The plague that swept Earth rendered surviving humans into 'ferals', zombielike and almost unkillable. Humans cured by the Krakau still have feral physiology, including syrupy black blood, extreme durability, and an inability to feel pain. The Krakau also install feeding ports into the abdomens of cured humans instead of having them eat by mouth.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The Krakau tried to make First Contact having made enough of a study of human language broadcasts that their Translator Microbes could get something across each way, but the translation is very imperfect and sometimes nonsensical. A century later and humans are their Servant Race speaking a conlang the Krakau invented for them just called "Human". A number of idioms are translated into it but make no sense without the proper context and usually confuse the characters.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Wolfgang Mozart, aka Wolf, is very impulsive and really just loves to brawl and tends to lose sight of objectives and common sense. She's the character most inclined to boast that Humans Are Warriors. Naturally, she was assigned to Shipboard Hygiene and Sanitation instead of infantry, because she doesn't like to follow orders.
• Call a Human a "Meatbag": "Monkeys" or "mammals", usually.
• Career-Ending Injury: The injuries Monroe took ended his infantry career, though he really only misses the companionship of other soldiers - he doesn't seem to have enjoyed the fighting mindset and refuses to take a gun when offered in the first book.
• Character Development: Wolf goes from agitated, impulsive, and constantly trying to cause trouble and pick fights to being relaxed and happy to take care of and try to train and teach feral humans on Earth with the Librarians. She retains a bit of her trademark belligerence, but it's actually in proportion and used at appropriate times now.
• Easy Sex Change: Referenced, when Mops is talking to an alien whose species changes sexes over time she says it's quite simple to change humans' biological sexes or mix and match aspects using Krakau-standard medical technology.
• Extremophile Lifeforms: Nusurans, being giant tardigrades, are the only sentient species more unkilleable than cured humans. They take naked spacewalks for fun.
• Fearless Undead: Part of the stereotype other species put on humans, downplayed with ferals. Ferals feel no pain and will risk and take debilitating injuries in pursuit of food, but very loud noises spook them and may drive them into hiding or a frenzy.
• First Contact Faux Pas:
  • The first Krakau diplomats to visit Earth were killed and eaten by feral humans. In fact this was second contact. First contact involved a Rokkau accidentally envenomating a human diplomat and putting her in a coma. Human efforts to revive her included a virus that at least got her moving and eating again, but, well...
  • Nusurans as a species expect first contact — and a lot of other occasions — to include an exchange of pornography, if not outright interspecies sex.
• "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome: Feral humans are not people. When well fed, they're animals that can recognize friendly individuals and show traces of personality, at best. "Curing" them doesn't make most of them as smart or flexible as unmodified humans but they are still sentient and much more capable than ferals. Sometimes a human "reverts" to a feral state as their body rejects the cure, which is rare and sometimes associated with severe injury or eating a large amount. Age may also have something to do with it. Mops starts to revert in the third book, and having lived twelve or thirteen years since she was cured, she's older than most cured humans get. At the end of the book she has reverted fully and is released into Wolf's care in a safe compound on Earth... cue a three-year Time Skip where her various allies have developed a more complete cure.
• Formerly Sapient Species: Humans, again. Uplifting them enough to be useful while retaining their feral toughness has given the Krakau Alliance a very useful fighting force. The second book concerns an Admiral with an interest in making similar uses of other species.
• Friendly Zombie: Cured humans, technically, since they're still physiologically very similar to ferals. Ferals themselves, when fed well and under limited stress, are more like animals than monsters. Ones that have been well-fed and habituated to human contact are almost tame when calm and will take food that humans hand over, rather than trying to eat them.
• Future Imperfect: Mops probably has a skewed idea of history, as given to her by the Krakau, but she finds Wolf's concept of Earth military history appalling.
  "A bunch of primitive humans running around with gunpowder projectiles and swords, riding elephants against giant wooden horses and tanks? No thanks."
• Gender-Blender Name: Cured humans select their names from records of famous humans and don't seem to have the slightest idea that those historical figures' names were often gendered.
  "I reviewed the human name database. I can’t decide if I’d rather be called Nelson Mandela, Rosalind Franklin, or Beyoncé..."
• The Genie Knows Jack Nicholson: Gabe, in the third book, is from the Library of Humanity and has a lot more familiarity with human pop culture than the rest of the cast, who at best have had exposure to non-speculative fiction. Gabe loves to relate current events to ancient shows and movies, sometimes to the frustration of the others.
• Good Is Not Soft: Mops is empathic and can tolerate a great deal of random nonsense. She will give out plenty of second chances. She will also make direct and honest threats to people under her command for disobeying orders or otherwise causing trouble, to random people who think pushing a human around will make them seem tough, and to enemies. Mops prefers not to kill when she can help it, but if there's no other option she doesn't think twice.
• Handicapped Badass: Monroe was in the infantry before he suffered a serious injury and joined Hygiene and Sanitation. He's very capable with weapons and his rebellious prosthetic arm doesn't give him trouble on that front, but his balance is somewhat off, especially after a crash landing in the second book.
• Humans Are Special: In this setting, faster-than-light travel is extremely hard on people, most of whom have to medically render themselves unconscious in special fluid and are out of action for hours after each jump. Cured humans are tough enough that some survive even unsecured jumps and the only equipment one needs to survive unharmed is a pod with gelatinous padding. They're knocked out by the acceleration itself and come to a mere hour after deceleration, which is a lot of why they're so useful as soldiers. A note late in the first book suggests that even with the padding, undergoing too many jumps results in brain damage.
• Humanity Is Insane: Expressed repeatedly by Grom and various Krakau regarding Mops, but most humans aren't as... creatively independent as she is.
• Humans Are Morons: Cured humans are repeatedly stated to be less intelligent across the board than pre-plague. This intelligence deficit is widely known and somewhat exaggerated by other species. It seems like humans who've been cured for longer gather enough experience to be smarter, but since most are shock troops they don't tend to live long enough to get there.
• Humans Need Aliens: Manifestly the position of the Krakau alliance. Without its efforts there would be no humans with higher brain functioning, and even the cured humans are somewhat simpleminded and need guidance. The end of the second book sees that questioned.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: Many chapter introductions are from non-human perspectives. Representatives of various species are also not shy in sharing their opinions on humans.
• Insectoid Aliens: The Prodryans definitely. The Merriban more vaguely.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: All the tech Mops and other members of the EMC use was developed by aliens, some of whom revised it for human hands.
• Indy Ploy: The last third of the first book is largely Mops' crew and Azure each frantically trying to get ahead of the other, each increasingly convinced that the other's desperate moves are actually part of a grand, advanced strategy.
• Intelligent Gerbil: Krakau are somewhat like amphibious squid. Prodryans are like butterfly-locusts. Nusurans are very much like giant tardigrades.
• Intrigued by Humanity: Those aliens who aren't indifferent and don't see humans as barely-controlled monsters lean this way. Admiral Pachabel just likes humans, when they aren't frustrating the hell out of her. Nusurans, of course, are curious about sex.
• In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves: A common position on pre-plague humans, who for all their advancement and culture warred with each other and created the plague that destroyed them.
• Killer Gorilla: The plague that turned humans feral also affected the other great apes, which comes up in the second book where the Pufferfish crew goes to Earth. Feral chimpanzees are much more mobile than feral humans, and even more dangerous despite their smaller size.
• Meaningful Rename: At the end of the third book the Pufferfish is renamed the Adamopoulos. The new alliance wanted to keep to the EMC tradition of naming ships after dangerous creatures of Earth.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: There have been a handful of Prodryans willing to work with other species, and who are regarded as "extremists". Too bad those were also working with other species against the Krakau Alliance. The third book has Starfallen, once a fierce warrior, now chemically 'neutered' to remove her aggression. While she doesn't rail against her people, she clearly has some regrets and will sometimes work against them.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Semi averted. Most different species can breathe the same air, though many require slightly different atmospheric composition and have to carry a PRA, a device around the neck which emits oxygen or whatever else to compensate locally. Rokkau venom has little effect on most offworld species, but due to some odd chance it has disastrous effects on humans. Similarly, while humans can eat pretty much anything and suffer nothing worse than stomach noises and a bad time in the bathroom, for most species eating alien animals means a painful death. A good chef can tailor a meal to a different species, neutralizing anything that would do them harm, and serve up something that might not have much nutritious value but will pass without issue. Unmodified humans don't enjoy this same immunity. In the third book, while the cured crew get to taste a Prodryan food, Azure and the single red-blooded human present have to sit it out.
• Nonhuman Non Binary: When the Krakau compiled a language for their cured subjects, just called "Human", they had to wrangle with human pronouns. Some species accept being classed as male and female. Nusurans insisted on a third gender and set of pronouns for some of their people. Glacidae opted for 'they'. Tjikko found the whole thing hilarious and insisted on being referred to as "he" and "she" alternately, as in "I saw her today, he said hello". Unusually for this trope, there are also non-binary humans, and awareness of non-binary aliens makes it easier for Mops to grasp how to address one when she meets them for the first time.
• Not Using the Zed Word: Feral humans are similar in many ways to non-rotting zombies, staggering around, moaning, and trying to hunt down and eat people. In the second book, a non-feral human starts to call ferals zombies but is cut off by her commander.
• Not Quite Human: Cured humans are just kinda weird.
• No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture: Mentioned in passing. Prodryans come up with new forms of poetry, Nusurans write and perform operas, war-romances, and a whole lot of pornography, and Glacidae have a lot of videogames and sporting events. Humans, on the other hand, don't have much new going.
• No Zombie Cannibals: Averted. Feral humans associate in packs and prefer to eat other animals and plants but if nothing else is available they'll eat each other.
• Octopoid Aliens: Krakau are tube-shaped with nine limbs. Three snakelike upper tentacles end in diamond-shaped pads covered in dexterous suckers, while the other six are more for locomotion. They have beaklike mouths and a series of dark indentations around the upper parts of their bodies serve as an equivalent to eyes, though they're more focused on hearing and touch than sight. Their cousin species the Rokkau are similar, but with more limbs and a form of venom.
• One-Gender Race: Krakau, being all capable of producing eggs, consent to all being referred to as female by humans.
• Operator Incompatibility: EMC ships like the Pufferfish are designed so that human crews can take over in the first few hours after leaving FTL, so the controls are fine, but they're also set up to be piloted by Krakau officers at all other times. Krakau being amphibious squid, their equivalents to captain's chairs are basically several rungs they can wrap some tentacles around and wildly uncomfortable for humans.
• Plant Aliens: Tjikko are groves of trees sharing a mind.
• Prone to Tears: Mops cries repeatedly on Earth, moved by the ruins of her species and the sight of a ruined library.
• Proud Warrior Race: Prodryans frame practically everything in terms of combat.
• Put on a Bus: At the end of the second book Wolf, who's been strongly affected by the events she's experienced, leaves the Pufferfish to stay on Earth with the Librarians.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: What you have to do to make sure a feral or cured human is dead, though spinal injuries may also do it. Thanks to a quirk of their altered biology, a beheaded cured human is still conscious and responsive for several minutes after losing their body.
• Running Gag: The disconnect between the Krakau, as well as Krakau-created cured humans, and old human culture, revealed many times through strange names. Several Krakau have chosen pop songs for names that make them sound remarkably silly. Cured humans, despite mostly being grunts, very often bear names that don't seem to fit and rarely share their genders, like Steve Irwin and Marilyn Monroe. EMC ships are traditionally named for the most dangerous animals of Earth but they were selected according to a non-human aesthetic and include the Mosquito, the Hippopotamus, the Cone Snail, and the Pufferfish.
• Servant Race: What cured humans functionally are to the Krakau. Within two months of rebirth they're drafted into the Earth Mercenary Corps as soldiers, medics, and custodians serving under Krakau officers. With their ability to recover quickly from faster-than-light travel they can temporarily assume command and fight when their officers are still unconscious, but the permanent ranks they can achieve are capped at Lieutenant. They are paid for their service and can save up enough to leave and work elsewhere, but they're looked down on across the galaxy as half-savage thugs. The surviving population of non-feral humans refers to cured humans as the "guns" of the Krakau.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: The third book, while it does still have some jokes and absurdity, is more serious than the other two, and the characters seem to be more competent and less prone to getting distracted and going on tangents. The Clippy-like personification of the Pufferfish's tutorial system, Puffy, barely appears and is not called by name.
• The Social Expert: Mops is exceedingly good at understanding people regardless of their species, though this doesn't mean she can always convince them to do what she wants.
• Solid Gold Poop: Nusurans' digestive systems are so efficient that they only excrete silica and only once a year, and that compressed into crystals that are extremely useful in computing and very popular. The largest, highest quality crystals require a strict high calorie diet and powerful laxatives.
• Space Whale: The Comaceans at the start of the second book are large enough that people have set up biorefineries in their organs.
• STD Immunity: Diseases are not as a rule compatible between species, but parasites may still cause trouble. Nusuran genital lice are such avid consumers of the silica crystals used in shipboard computers — see above for why something like that would colonize a Nusuran — that Alliance military vessels have strict protocols to lock down the whole ship the moment an infestation is detected.
• Technically-Living Zombie: Feral humans. They're most interested in consuming people, but they'll eat just about anything. Unlike many examples, if well fed, healthy, and in a stable environment they become much more like animals
• Theme Naming:
  • Krakau who have much to do with humans listen to a collection of human music and choose a song to use as their human names, since their own are very hard for humans to parse let alone find ways to repeat. Examples include Pachabel D Major, Belle-Bonne Sage, Scheherazade, and Final Countdown. Jim Hines wanted to avoid having too many Krakau with pop songs for names, but there absolutely are several.
  • Cured humans also choose their own names from human history or a database of renowned humans.
  • The surviving unmodified humans style themselves after famous librarians.
• Token Evil Teammate: Advocate of Violence, or "Cate", the Prodryan lawyer who ends up taken along with Mops and her crew in the second book. He's openly still hostile to the Krakau Alliance and baldly tells them that he's only cooperating with them in order to find a way to bring it down. The third book has him actually taking steps in that direction.
• Token Non-Human: Technician Grom, as the one non-human who managed to escape being eaten when the Pufferfish's crew went feral, is outnumbered by Mops' SHS crew. They're joined by Azure at the end of the book, Cate in the second one, and Johnny in the third.
• Tragic Monster: How some non-humans see humans. Wolf manages to exploit this to get help from a sympathetic Nusuran in the second book but finds it aggravating.
• Translator Microbes: Krakau involved in uplifting humans have translators that resemble pearls implanted in their throats. Similar translators are built into the tech in general, but it's not quite the "there are no language barriers" sort of thing that's usual for the trope. The translation of names is brought up repeatedly, and of pronouns as many alien species don't sort into male and female.
• Undead Barefooter: Since human civilization dissolved a hundred and fifty years ago, all ferals on Earth were born to feral parents and none of them wear clothing. Unless dressed by sympathetic unmodified humans.
• Undeathly Pallor: Their black blood leaves feral and cured humans with ashy skin tones.
• Younger Than They Look: Adult feral humans are captured to be cured, but they don't really remember their feral lives and count their ages from "rebirth" on. Wolf is physically twenty-six and tries to claim that age when asked, but as of the asking she has only been a person for eighteen months, which might help explain her poor impulse control.

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