Our story starts with a strange guy showing up in a small town. He mostly keeps to himself, just hanging out in diners or bars, reading books or the paper while he eats and sips. He occasionally checks his watch and then leaves, sometimes returning to the same diner afterwards and sometimes he’s gone for a while and sets up in another shop when he returns. People don’t like him because he’s an outsider and weird, but they just leave him alone. Until people in town suddenly start to die. The deaths eventually spread to the surrounding area and even the animals act oddly, so the people turn against him. Instead of just ignoring him, they start questioning him and getting aggressive. As more people die, people start to yell or take swings at him. But the man just hangs around, ignoring the shouting, moving to different places when it gets too bad, and he’s very skilled at sidestepping punches when people get really angry. One night, things get rather bad and a drunk pulls a gun on him. People in the bar could have sworn they saw the stranger get shot but he calmly just got up and left the bar on his own. All the mystery turns towards the guy and the town is ignoring that more and more of them keep dying and their numbers are getting smaller and smaller.
The town is eventually whittled down to almost nothing and the remaining people turn to pleading with the man to leave and treating him like a harbinger of doom. The town is finally down to only a handful of people, who are the only ones not sick. The man soon reveals that he’s not behind any of it and he’s a Plague Reaper here to collect. The town had its own plague/illness so the Reapers need somebody there full time to collect all the souls. By leaving him around town, known to the people and odd, it keeps the population in one area and focused on him rather panicking or trying to flee and thus spreading the illness even more. Reapers aren’t allowed to prevent the plague deaths but they can bend the rules to prevent the disease from spreading or the infected attacking those that are naturally immune. With the illness having run its course and the souls collected, the man walks out of the town and the few people left know to avoid wherever it is he’s going next.
***
It’s fun to do another spin off the Off World/Grim Reaper serieses! Not everybody gets to be as silly as Zip’s story, but there are enough Reapers to go around. The "Plague Reapers" would be a neat addition to the organization, the ones you call in when you need a lot of reaping in a small location so it doesn't make sense to keep sending people like Zip in and out every day.