Whelp, this seems to be my life now. It’s not like I am completely unaccustomed to waking up in strange places. If you spend enough time getting high and drinking and trying to fuck as many people as possible it’s bound to happen occasionally. It’s definitely gotten a bit out of control though.
I woke up in a field, somewhere in what appeared to be Hell, watching two groups of men in robotic biohazard suits who I felt I knew alternately point guns at each other, and then a family of what I could only describe as mentally castrated zombies, and then back at each other, then the zombies, then each other and so forth. Then one dude fell down and started bleeding all over everything, and then the bad guy, the one that made me sick to look at, he shot the pseudo-zombies in the head and then everyone freaked out. Where the fuck had I been? What the fuck was happening? Was I in some sort of simulation or something?
Have you ever blacked out, and then had someone tell you about your actions? Midway through that experience, you often start filling in the holes. Bits and pieces come back to you. Your clothes are wet because you did a cartwheel and fell in the swimming pool. That burn on your hands is because you lit off a Roman Candle holding it backwards. Your tire is flat because you stabbed it with a knife to prove that tires can’t be stabbed with a knife, failing both yourself and your tire at the same time. This was almost like that. I hadn’t been in control, that was true. It was like watching someone else control you. I was a puppet. I was someone else’s machine. I got to be a part of it, but in the same way that the little dudes on my tv screen must’ve felt when I played Contra on my Nintendo as a kid. I forced them to jump into those bullets. I forced them to fall to their doom down infinite holes. My skills were failing them. But it’s not like they had a choice.
I had watched the whole thing like evening news. I had watched the family climb down from atop the pile of rubble. I can’t say ‘I know Samskara sickness when I see it’ but I can say I know when something is wrong. These folks were sick. Crazy. Likely depraved and violent at some point, but now just burnt out. Whatever was in there was gone. They wanted to fight, wanted to kill. Would do their best to see it happen. There was something broken though. They couldn’t. They couldn’t do much of anything.
The visual calculus of the situation was difficult. All the information was already there, despite having not really participated in any of it, I knew exactly what was happening. Like someone had grafted information onto my brain. Eight guys standing in two group, one of them dead, two guys sitting in hummers, two guys watching from afar on opposite sides. The brainless family of pseudo-zombies laying on the ground in front of them, each with a well-positioned and sizable hole in their head.
The bigger problem for me is that I was shaking like a god damn tree in a hurricane and my mouth felt like I had contracted lockjaw. I was gritting my teeth so hard I thought they were going to shatter. Walking was tougher, my toes burned like they were on fire and I hardly even cared because the rest of my body went completely numb.
This all sounds awful, but honestly, it was probably the best ten seconds of my life.
Imagine your best Christmas, your best blowjob, your favorite drug and the best day of your life all rolled into one. I was higher than a fucking kite. I was so fucking high I can’t even explain it. More importantly, I was hard as a fucking rock. My dick felt like it was etched from granite. Melt that down and throw some sprinkles of pure joy on it and it wouldn’t even begin to describe how high I was and how fucking amazing it felt. I’d later learn that when the dopamine kick hits, your brain basically floods your neurons at maximum volume and velocity. It was pure reward. Someone was milking my Id’s prostate with a vibrating dildo and I was forced into an orgasmic spasm where I perpetually shot effervescent waves of rainbow colored cum all over the universe infinitely and forever in a crystalline moment of perpetual bliss that transcended space, time, dimensionality, and consciousness.
To say I was happy, would be putting it mildly.
That wasn’t even the important part though. I had a purpose. I had a mission. I had something to do. All those memories were seared into my brain. Hearing Grady talking about killing me. Watching him shoot those people. Why did I care so much? I’d done worse. I felt compelled to stop him. I needed to stop him.
Why am I doing this? What’s happening? Where am I? Fuck I’m jittering so bad now. Fuck I can barely see.
I shouldn’t have let them die. Too many dead.
I picked up my flamethrower. White hot flashes of light. Can’t give in. Have to focus. The flamethrower falls to the ground and I follow it shortly thereafter. I retch over and over again as the pain shoots through me, vaulting me out of perfection and back into reality.
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The old man watched.
He lived inside the broken remains of a gas station. It had a walk-in freezer, long since completely non-functional, that he found fairly secure. For whatever reason, it’s very nature dissuaded visitors. There was a large hole in the roof, but this was very useful. From this hole, he had set up a periscope. He was now using said periscope to observe a most interesting situation.
It was an odd scene by any means. A group of men, all dressed in hazmat material, some sort of impermeable plastic. They had on face shields that were incorporated into their suits. They looked a bit like robots, a bit like a cleaning crew and a bit like scientists in the movie Outbreak. All of them had very large assault rifles and they were pointing them at one another gesturing wildly. Their communication was more or less psionic as no words were exchanged but actions clearly had a logical basis behind them. Certainly, he knew they possessed no psionic capacities, but it was an amusing thought so he let it occur. This man watched from afar and was bemused by the prospect of things. “Perhaps my old friend Mr. Grady,” he thought.
Maybe 30 meters away, an addict, obviously in the throes of either overdose or withdrawal attempted to arm what could only be described as a contained mechanism for spreading white-hot liquid flames onto its opposition. A flamethrower in the conventional parlance. The addict creaked and twisted. His fingers nearly incapable of handling the minutia of the device, he spoke to himself in alternating volumes as he helplessly tried to manipulate the machine. Then he retched and the flamethrower fell helplessly to the ground. The addict began punching himself and then unfurled his pants and stared at his own penis, seemingly awestruck by its engorgement, almost delirious that a simple act of nature had not only occurred but had occurred to him. After putting himself back in his pants, he creaked and jittered his way back over to the flamethrower and tried to convince his body to pick it up, a task most mighty for him certainly.
The man watching the chaos knew what this was. Most of it had happened to him too.
Beside them, the man noticed the three recently dead. He had been watching them, maybe for weeks, maybe for less. He was treating them as he could, they could be difficult to work with. One had made progress. The others less so. None of the progress was particularly meaningful.
Oh well. A new subject. Something more promising perhaps. The man thought he should probably assist his new enterprise before it’s untimely doom though.
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“Schuyler I am giving him to the count of three, and if Hernandez here hasn’t dropped his rifle I want you to waste him.” Grady’s voice hesitated but he knew Schuyler wouldn’t.
“Jones, this is Hernandez, feel free to shoot Grady right fucking now.”
Schuyler came in over the comms. “Mexican standoff boys, what’s it gonna be?”
Hernandez said, “Dominican Stand-off, bitch.”
Everyone couldn’t help but laugh. It broke the tension.
Grady lowered his weapon. The first to do so, he hoped it wasn’t going to get him killed. “This is real easy team. I can explain. Those fucking things over there. They aren’t people. That black shit, it ruins your mind. It leaves you like a caveman. Those people were already dead, they just didn’t know it. I know this feels wrong, but it’s almost over and trust me, it’s no different than putting down a lame mule or a dog that can’t make it outside anymore. I don’t get anything from doing that. I was trying to show mercy.”
Guns started to fall. Grady continued. “I’ve been out here in this shit. You think this is empty? You think everyone in Kansas City died at the exact same moment? Why do you think they let us in here? Why do you think the government keeps everyone else out? This black poison shit is concentrated fucking evil, and the only people that it doesn’t kill outright are like Brunsen over there. They come in two flavors, insane killer, or mindless caveman. That’s it. Brunsen went nuts and fucked up Atlanta. That was one guy. What do you think happens if China gets this shit and starts making a bunch of Brunsens. Starts sending them over on airplanes? How do you think those three corpses over there turned out like that? You think some happy go-lucky intrepid family wanted a vacation in Kansas City? That shit right there only happens one of two ways, human experimentation, or psycho-killer bullshit. Either way, I don’t want any part of it gents.” Grady pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He threw open his face mask so he could take a drag. It was breaking his own rules, but maybe at a time like this a little leniency can break the mood.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"That’s right, call me a fucking pussy. You know why I am out here? So I can get enough money and influence that whenever that shit becomes a problem, I am on a desert island sipping Mai-Tais getting my dick sucked by a flock of beautiful ladies and not here. And certainly not out there.” Grady pointed towards the rest of the world.
"Those fucking things,” Grady pointed at the bullet riddled corpses. “Those fucking things are probably tagged and traced and God knows what else and if I had to guess, we got three minutes to get the fuck out of this place before somebody else shows up and unlike our friend Mr. Harrison over there, they will not hesitate to shoot us for damaging their property.” Grady spat on the ground. “Now, we are damn near done here. If we can all be cool about shit, Mr. Harrison stays where he lays and we all just move on with our lives. I know some of you might have issues with leaving a brother unburied, but let me tell you, we do not have time for that shit. The story is Harrison went off on his own, we encountered fire, Harrison did not return and is presumed dead. Simple as that. No one asks questions here folks, they hire guys like us because they don’t want answers. We can stay and die, or we can go and live. My hummer’s leaving in three minutes and Brunsen and the shit are coming with me. Any complaints?”
The team was clearly unhappy but no one was going to make a big enough fuss to keep it from happening at this point.
“Get Brunsen in the truck. Where the fuck is Brunsen anyway? This dumb motherfucker run off picking daisies too?”
Grady’s comms exploded with screams.
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I was never any good at science, even when I did it professionally, but I love a good World War II documentary at 2am. I didn’t know shit about Samskara, or neurochemistry, or any of this other stuff, but I know flamethrowers. You have to understand napalm is a liquid, so a flamethrower doesn’t actually throw heat or fire, it throws a spout of liquid 30-40 feet. That liquid is extremely hot, so much so, that to say it’s “on fire” like a 90s NBA Jam game is probably an underestimate at best. What the Samskara did to people, people not like me at least, it was awful, but it was honestly sort of like napalm too. Here is some crazy shit for ya – napalm is basically made of out of our own fat asses. It’s true. The reason why it burns so well is that it’s not a liquid like water, but it’s a liquid fat called palmitic acid. It’s all over your body, hell, most of us have a lot more palmitic acid than we ever wanted. Have you ever seen a grease fire? How they just go on for days? Palmitic acid gets mixed with an ignition source and napthenic acid, and it’s like a grease fire that goes on years. It’s a liquid burning tire, but 5 times hotter. It’s not quite enough to melt good steel but it’s certainly enough to melt soldiers. I can attest. When it’s that hot it barely even acts like fire. It’s actually so hot it sucks in all the oxygen around it and converts it to carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide so people can suffocate in the area who aren’t even hit by the flames. That would be a much better outcome than the napalm itself.
The flamethrower canister was heavy, very heavy. The apparatus didn’t fit well so I clanged along clumsily. This wasn’t a suit designed for warfare or stealth. You were supposed to stand still and fire. I wasn’t going to wage some full throttle attack, no matter how much I wanted to do so. I waddled as best I could to where I could see Grady and his men. They were arguing, which was good. I waddled into the nearest building, up the stairs and perched my nozzle out a window. Below me, the boys were now laughing. Apparently, whatever conflict existed was resolved. The last thing I heard was, “Where the fuck is Brunsen?”
I thought I’d let him know.
The next few seconds are difficult to explain. There were things that I hadn’t expected to occur that really threw off my plan. The first problem was that it was far more difficult to accurately aim a flamethrower than expected. My initial burst of flames ignited most of the group, but I found it incredibly difficult to accurately hit things and I failed to get everyone. The second problem was that I had failed to account for the position of the other members in the group, who rapidly started shooting the window out. I wasn’t hit but I was covered in glass and being sprayed endlessly with bullets that seemed ready to penetrate the rapidly depleting wall. The third problem was that I had caught almost everything in a 50 sq foot radius on fire. This included one of the hummers, the deuce and a half, all the Samskara muck that was nearby, multiple members of my opposition, and the building I was now trapped in, which was rapidly deteriorating. The fourth problem was that Grady was fast. They were all fast. Most of them were also on fire though. Two of them rolled away from the flames, their hazmat suits on fire. I watched Grady seamlessly shed a scorched suit. The others were running in circles burning to death or just plain cooked.
I could smell it. It smelled amazing.
I sprayed fire again, this time aiming for the bulk of the remaining pack. Honestly I had no idea where they were anymore since verything was on fire, so it was rote guesswork. I basically just sprayed and waved the end around hoping something good happened. I couldn’t afford stragglers. There were more screams, newer screams so I assume something went right. I was met with return fire from the side. I heard a bullet bounce off the ceiling and a ping sound echoed off my canister. I realized quickly they weren’t trying to hit me, as igniting my canister was a faster and more abrupt ending to John Brunsen. Around the same point I realized that carrying around an explosive device in the midst of a building fire was not my best bet either, so I ditched it and began running. What was I running for? I didn’t really know. I guess my goal was get out of the building but I hadn’t really thought past that. Between the muscle spasms, my blurring vision, the twitches getting worse, and every part of my body now hurting like shit, running was pretty hard. I was now without any sort of transportation or any weapon and was fighting multiple armed combatants. The Samskara had melted my sense of fear just as nicely as I had melted the fellas outside, so I guess I was running to the fight?
I burst forth from the back of the building to an even more Hell-like landscape than when I had went in, which honestly felt impossible, but was readily achieved by the rapidly spreading flames. We were in what amounted to the center of a small community. It was the typical urban shopping center, minus any people, plus a lot of bombing and tar-like death substances. Oh, and now it was also on fire.
I had cooked my opposition from atop a Captain Goodsubs, but unfortunately, that fire had spread to the whole area. I could hardly breathe through the smoke. Without much of a clue where to go or how to get there, I was basically just reacting to what happened next. This was made much harder by the fact that I definitely did not expect the next thing that happened.
A man with long white hair in what appeared to be a scientist’s lab coat rounded a corner. Attached to him was an axe that he was attempting to pull out of the face of one of the commandos I had tried to set ablaze. The axe said “American Machete” on the handle. I had a brief moment of serendipitous joy at seeing an old friend, before I quickly remembered what was happening. I charged the man with the intent of procuring the axe for myself, silently thanking the Lord for returning my friend to me. The man spun and with a flourish, he performed some MMA-type shit and I found myself on my back staring up at the sky. I hopped up and attempted to gouge his eyes, but he caught my hand and pulled it behind my back. He grabbed my fingers and applied sufficient force to break at least one of them, and then rapidly pulled a syringe from his pocket and jabbed me in the palm of my hand and then flung me forward.
“You are making it very difficult to help you,” he said.
“I am not interested in help,” I said. “Especially the kind that involves jabbing needles in me. Had a lot of that time of help recently, getting pretty sick of it.”
The old man in white rounded the closest corner again, and I meant to follow him to exact my revenge. I heard two shots. “Nice knowing you old man.” I turned around, figuring whatever had just shot him would be rounding the corner for me any second. It was probably reasonable to say I was suicidal at this point, but there’s a difference between suicidal and walking into gun fire on purpose. Before I could head the opposite direction, I heard the old man say “Stop”. His axe was gone and he was now carrying one of the soldier’s assault rifles.
“We need to talk. My name is Robert Geist and I am the last remaining person on this Earth remotely interested in helping you.”
“Heard it all before. Pass.” I turned around and saw Grady walking down the middle of the street, rifle at his shoulder. The bullets whizzed passed me. He’d missed? No way. I turned and the old man in white, Geist, was now kneeling behind an old blue postal mailbox. Grady continued firing on the mailbox while I watched in disbelief. Geist leapt from behind the mailbox and sprayed some fire at Grady. It was aimless but enough to buy him some time to move from his position. I had taken this same moment to duck into the now burning building.
Grady continued to advance up the street behind car and after. He and Geist exchanged fire the whole way. I could see that Grady was burning severely. He was likely dying. I knew that sensation. He’d stop at nothing.
“Hi Ghost. Where’s Schuyler?” Grady yelled from behind a car.
“Slit his throat.” Geist said
“And Yannick?” Grady said
“The other one?”
“Yep,” Grady yelled. He followed with a flurry of bullets directed at the large tree where Geist was now sitting.
“Dead.” Geist yelled.
Grady ran towards us, was now five yards away. About this time the roof nearly collapsed in on the building I was sitting in. I shyed away at the thunder and flames, but It wasn’t all unfortunate, as before me now laid a heaping mass of black.
"Just you and me then?” Grady yelled.
"What about Brunsen?” Geist yelled back.
“Whoever wins gets him I guess,” Grady yelled. “He ain’t worth shit anyway. That got everything they want from him. I was gonna kill him before all this started.”
Geist peaked around the tree and fired a few rounds. I heard the click of an empty clip and saw Grady smile. “You’re out old man. It looks like it’s finally our time. Losing my whole team is a bit of a damper, but between reaping the rewards for the black death shit, and killing you, BIMPT is going to make me a very rich man today.”
I scooped up a blob of Samskara solution. The scientist guy had said he wanted to help, but honestly a lot of people had told me that and then most of them tried to kill me. I briefly thought about pinpointing Grady, but then said fuck it and just lobbed the giant blob at both of them, grabbed a few more handfuls and chucked those too.
Grady didn’t see it coming. He reflexively ducked the first bit, but the second bit hit him splashed across his face as he tried to block it. Had he not ditched his suit he would’ve been fine, but he broke his own rule. Sure, it was on fire at the time, but it still would’ve saved him. Either way, most of the ball of goo went sailing past him, but the small bit that landed on the burnt remnants of his nose did the job. He took two steps back and dropped his rifle. I saw his skin start to smolder, and then even the parts that were already burnt began cooking off. He rapidly reduced to a pile of human goop.
"Mr. Brunsen, I presume then,” said Geist.
“I don’t know what you stuck in me, or what you want, but I can promise you, that I am bad luck to be around mister. In fact, if you can’t tell from the involuntary twitching, I’m just outside of my right fucking mind, and I would recommend you get out of here, before I fully leave it again.”
“No Mr. Brunsen, I don’t think I will.” Robert Geist held up his bare hand. He was holding a large blob of Samskara solution. The same one I had just thrown. He let it slide through his bare fingers and smiled. “We should talk.”