Shit went truly haywire after my little video. Kansas City was a lot busier now, bustling with activity compared to how things were. People were streaming in any way they could. The border was nearly a warzone. People wanted to see, wanted to be a part of things. I knew it was the Samskara, compelling them to come, to fight, to kill. I guess that was my goal? Was global genocide better than global apathy?
There weren’t a lot of people, don’t get me wrong, but there was a whole lot more than there used to be. The media called them Brunsenites, but I never met, knew, or even interacted with most of them. Frankly, I didn’t have much interest in playing the role of cult savior or even cult leader. What was once a small group of people angrily called conspiracy theorists on the ass end of the dark web became a movement though. The first few weeks there were organized groups of people storming the area, only to get mowed down by drone fire. It was legal and the government had made it clear this would happen, but human rights groups went crazy. Thousands of lawsuits were filed, protests were held all over the country. The government finally posted the National Guard as a perimeter and anyone attempting to get in was arrested. People are smarter than they get credit for when they really want something. Guard recruitment went up 500% the first month. Half of those people were just there to shoot anyone that got close, and the other half ripped their badges off and walked the other direction in the middle of the night. Probably all of them were tilted on Samskara. Eventually the government did what they always do though, and sold security to the lowest bidder. Now it’s not a matter of how, just “how much?”
It all went completely to shit shortly after that. Mass violence in the streets of Kansas City. I didn’t have to encourage any violence or insanity; it became a constant. Open warfare in the streets. There weren’t a lot of people, but it waffled between several dozen and several hundred and the interest nationally was intense. There was a constant barrage of drones, people trying to livestream the streets of Kansas City. Hobbyists with 30 followers on social media became overnight sensations with channels with 50,000,000 views. All of it stirring the pot. All of it amping the Samskara psychosis. All of it ready to pop.
BIMPT had been pushing Protectall for months, and a huge swathe of the population had at least one dose. You could see it all the time if you knew what to look for: crime was up, employment was down, local news reports were full of stories about suicides and homicides and every other -cide. On the other side of things, depression was sky high. Thousands upon thousands of new cases of people who just felt listless, unmotivated. Like they were ready to quit. The mainstream media had inoculated society with the idea that it was because of impending war, that everyone was on edge. They were almost right.
The government blew up the Western Auto building about two months in because it had become a symbol of the violence. It was on fire for one reason or another most of the time anyway. The Anus Tower was gone in an instant. I don’t know how many people were in it, but I was long gone by that time. That’s how I knew it was working though. That’s why I kept going. Would I have stopped if they didn’t? No. But that was all the reason I needed to keep it going.
I never stayed there in all actuality. They called it a strategic attack on my position, but it was probably just demolition. The tire fire on the roof wasn’t enough to burn the building down quickly, but it was certainly enough to damage it and I am sure it would’ve fell down eventually. Throwing some F15s at it was a show from the government, gotta let ‘em know who was still the big dick in town.
I didn’t really participate in the violence, I mean, you know, other than video I made where I killed those guys. And all the people I killed when they came for me. And the few times I lost it and found myself in life-or-death situations. Mostly, I didn’t need it. Sure, without any way to control my situation, I would’ve been right out there bashing heads with the rest of them on a non-stop 24-hour basis, but I had other plans, other places to be. I had hidey-holes, places that people wouldn’t expect someone to be, and Robert had given me enough “medication” to control my problems for a while. It wouldn’t last forever, but if I could keep it below an eightball a day then I had enough to keep going (note: tough). I spent weeks upon weeks trying to figure out what to do next. It’s hard to plan the future when your skin is vibrating though. I needed to quit the coke, it was starting to maul my brain, but I knew if I stopped the whole thing was over. I needed to keep the heat up, keep eyes on the situation, keep people from falling asleep, keep the world from falling into a stupor. Keep us all out of Shamblerland.
And I’ll be honest, my initial plan was to break in guns blazing. Go straight at BIMPT. I was going to infiltrate and expose the whole thing from the inside. Crack the front door, walk in there, kill everyone and walk out with the info I needed. I viewed myself as a savvier John McClaine, or a stealthier James Bond. I was going to systematically scope the place out, determine access points, infiltrate under cover of night, execute my task with perfection and escape guns blazing, girl in tow should one happen to be found during the adventure. We’d fuck like crazy when we got out, and I’d be celebrated as an international hero. Pretty cool. Good plan.
In reality, I couldn’t find the place. Like I literally just didn’t know where it was. I tried. It’s not like there was a sign out front or directions to and from on the internet. I didn’t even know how people came and went. Was it underground? Above ground? I never really figured it out. I was basically a zombie the only time they let me out and they had taken me in unconscious. This left me in a bit of a pickle as you can’t ransack a place that you can’t find.
I knew someone that did though. Just had to find an old friend.
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Whereas getting into Kansas City had gotten nothing but easier, getting out had gotten nothing but harder, particularly if you were an internationally recognized and wanted criminal. Operation “Get John out of Kansas City” was going to be a tough one, and one that I needed help with. Fortunately, I had resources in the form of my newly recruited team of random Brunsenites. It’s not like I went out and recruited the best of the best. Some just found me and wouldn’t leave. They thought I knew something they didn’t and if they were just there at the right moment all of that carnal knowledge of the inner secrets of the world would just blossom in their brains overnight through some sort of osmosis. They thought I had plans, a way to lead men into the future, to create a new golden reality for all of humanity. I didn’t. Honest to fuck, every moment was just an impulse shoving me towards what’s next.
Hank was the first that joined us, but you already knew that. Ever since that first day he had sort of been lurking around wherever I was. I think he always expected he would need me, or I would need him. After the first video, he basically never let me leave his sight. Either way, when it came time to get shit done, he was game and that’s what I needed.
Hank was a nice person but stiff and boring and as everyone that ever met him could attest. No fun to be around. Hank got a dog so one thing on Earth might actually want to be around him. The dog loved him unconditionally and he repaid the animal by killing it in an uncontrolled fit, so he was essentially broken at this point as it confirmed his greatest fear – that even if someone did love him, he’d still let them down. I was worried Hank had transferred all that neediness onto me, but beggars can’t be choosers, so Hank was in. Hank had taken the Protectall because it was a chance to talk to someone, to maybe make a friend. Literally he just went and took it to have human contact. Pretty fucking sad honestly. The guy tried, I gave him that.
Fat Kyle was a plumber from Kansas. I didn’t have to recruit him either. He showed up and immediately let me know he was there because God had called him to serve me and bring about The End of the World so that his people could ascend to heaven. Kyle wasn’t fat, so I don’t know why he introduced himself that way, but the name stuck. He said his company forced him to take Protectall against his will and that now he was going to fight the evil corporations for Jesus. Later, while we were both extremely high, he told me he got fired for “poor customer service.” In reality, a lady told him he didn’t know what he was doing when he couldn’t fix her pipes and he smashed her toilet to pieces with a monkey wrench, took a dump in her kitchen sink, and told her that he’d be back to murder her whole family if she said anything. He managed to stay out of prison narrowly and fled to Kansas City. To be honest, Fat Kyle seemed like he had anger management issues before any of this started. He was belligerent, an alcoholic, a drug addict and blamed all his problems on someone else. He was extremely violent, completely unpredictable, and neither his friends nor family still kept contact with him. Kyle took drugs almost constantly, was irrational both on and off them, and almost never stopped talking. He was a walking paradox. Kyle was exactly what I needed. Kyle was perfect.
Kyle and Frank had a bit of a fractured relationship. Fat Kyle called him Hank the Dog Killer, or Hank DK, or just DK, or even Deke as an abbreviation a lot of the time because Fat Kyle was an interminable prick to people he viewed as weak, and Hank was sensitive to any sort of criticism and hated himself. Hank was suicidal on a good day but as long as you could keep him convinced it was the Grey Plague and not him that killed his dog Sadie, then he was the most loyal soldier possibly imaginable. Of course, because of this, Fat Kyle’s only goal was to convince him otherwise. The sad part was that Hank was so desperate for companionship, that Fat Kyle’s machinations to try and convince Hank to off himself actually became endearing to Hank. Fat Kyle was the first person who spoke to him more than a few times in years. They became fast frenemies. In contrast to Kyle, Hank refused all drugs and told me he, “Would leave us all before he put that poison in his body.” Normally that would mean more for me, but Kyle’s addiction surpassed my own, so a truce formed between them.
The last guy was Lance. I found Lance outside the arcade. He was in bad shape. Lance was a farmer from Oklahoma. He went to college on a wrestling scholarship, failed out his first semester because he hated school, and then just went back to farming. His mom died from cancer, his dad died in a farming accident and his brother moved to Greece and they haven’t spoken in fifteen years. Lance’s farms fell apart almost instantly, and the bank bought him out for much less than he owed. The pain of destroying the family farm left him emotionally crippled and purposeless. He got stuck doing long-haul trucking, ended up on Protectall for work but only got one dose before he decided to figure out what was in it because he said it made him feel better. I think he’d just been emotionally dead for so long that the dopamine kick he got was the first time he felt anything in years. He was empty and couldn’t understand that nothing was going to fill him, so he came to me looking for something that was never going to happen. When I told him he was a dead man, he perked right up. I guess having nothing to lose made losing everything else not matter anymore. We were all in the same boat again.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
We were sitting in the basement of the arcade I once frequented with Bob. It was as good a place as any. The door to the basement was behind a fake wall which made it hard to find. I had provisioned it well but couldn’t risk running the genny, so it stayed off. No gas to be found nowadays anyway without substantial risk.
Hank’s least admirable trait was that he asked questions almost constantly. He was so desperate for someone to talk to him, that he was always trying to initiate conversation. “You said we needed four and Lance is the fourth right? So, are we ready John? Is this the team?”
Fat Kyle’s nose was dripping with powder, a near constant sight, but upon hearing Hank talk he left his drugs and ran over to where we were sitting. “FIRST RULE OF BRUNSEN CLUB IS THAT YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT BRUNSEN CLUB.” Kyle found this hilarious and immediately started laughing.
“Is that true John? Are we not supposed to talk about Brunsen club?” Hank said.
“Second rule of Brunsen club is that if it’s your first night, you have to fight. We let you skip it the first time Deke on account of the fact we didn’t have any Pitbulls around but hell, I think I saw a pooch upstairs last I went. You wanna take a run at him Hank or you like something smaller? We’ll getcha a Chihuahua or some little yapper if ya need.”
"John can you tell him to stop?”
Hank was whining at this point.
“You guys really fight dogs down here?” Lance said. He didn’t seem impressed.
“Lance, no. Kyle, shut the fuck up. Hank, stand up for yourself. And yes, with Lance here we’re ready to move. Tonight. There is no point in waiting around.”
“What’s the plan boss?” Kyle said.
“It’s pretty simple. We need to get me out of Kansas City so I can go see someone.”
There was a dumbfounded look from the crowd.
“What the fuck?” Kyle offered the consensus opinion from the crowd. It was clear this was not the expected answer.
“John why do you want to leave here? I thought the whole point was everyone being here?” Hank turned the last statement into a question with his voice inflection. He was interrogative even when he was trying to make a declaration. Impressive.
“Yea, it was. It still is. The whole point of this whole thing, is like…you guys know how sometimes everyone gets really pissed about something at the same time and then something happens? I thought that would happen here. I thought enough people would get pissed off at the same time that there would be some sort of mass-reaction and people would investigate BIMPT and then there would be hearings and we could halt this whole crazy train. Instead, it just became a freakshow and now everyone spends their days watching people show up and kill each other. So, so, so…this didn’t work. So, I am leaving. Don’t worry, I am coming back. I need help getting out though. You guys all got in, tell me how to get out.”
Dumbfounded silence. Fat Kyle went back to his table full of drugs unphased, but the others were visibly upset.
"John, I gotta tell ya, I am a bit mad about this. I thought we was gonna rob some shit or start a castle or brotherhood or something.” Lance said.
“I don’t know what ‘start a castle’ means man. You mean like you thought we were going to be Knights or something?” I said.
“Yea, you know, like we were gonna like… be a team and have our own house and shit and like…fuckin’ like… ya know?”
“I don’t.” A downright pregnant silence followed while everyone stared at me. Probably time to shift gears on this conversation. “Lance, let me ask you a question. How did you get into Kansas City?”
“Oh, yea so I just sort of walked across the line in the middle of the night. The guards were piss drunk and hardly noticed a thing. It was pretty easy.”
Mental note – find weaknesses in the border.
“Any tips? Anything?”
Lance pondered a bit. “Yea, you should find a spot like the one I did? We can try mine if you want.”
I didn’t want. Lance seemed like the kind of person who Life forgot to Purge somewhere along the way, and he had been narrowly and obliviously avoiding death consistently since then.
“Hank, what about you?”
“I crossed back when it was still drone surveillance, I rode in the back of one of the caravans.” Hank said.
No caravans leaving. Wasn’t going to help.
"Kyle?”
"What?” Kyle said.
“How did you get into Kansas City in the first place?” I asked.
“Busted a nut in a cup and swapped it.”
"Excuse me?” I asked.
Kyle was tapping out a line of mixed drugs, a passion of his, one that would likely have killed a lesser man. “Yea, my old lady is a er…. she’s a lesbian. I can call her that one right? Don’t want to offend nobody. Either way, her and her new lady friend was both in the Guard and was trying to have a baby, and it turns out getting artificial cum is expensive as hell. She figured I wasn’t worth a damn which is why she left me in the first place.” Kyle stopped to insufflate his creation. “But seeing as how I was the only one she had that could still help and seeing as how her and I had been together a bunch of times before, she said that if I could get her pregnant she’d look the other way.” Kyle started jabbing his finger against his nostril repeatedly and then shaking his head.
I was befuddled. “Are you telling me that you traded sex with your ex-wife, a member of the National Guard, so that she would look the other way and you could slip past?”
"Yea, almost. Her lady friend was real pissed when I said I was gonna give it to her, and insisted we come up with a different solution, so I showed up to they camp and did my business with a porno in the backroom and then handed off in a little cup. Then I just sort of high-tailed it out of there while they was shooting it into each other with they legs in the air.” Kyle began crushing amphetamine pills with the back of his hand and a credit card. “They never agreed to the plan if I am being honest and in fact, weren’t truly aware of my intention to cum and run. Seeing as how I’m here now though and they got what they wanted I figure we just call it square. Plus if I ever see that bitch again, she’ll probably try and stick me.” Kyle lifted his shirt to show a raised gash wound about 12” long on his side. “She got me good right here with the potato peeler, but it wasn’t sharp enough to do me in.” Kyle now raised his pant leg to demonstrate the remnants of a small caliber bullet wound. “This was a .22 round when she shot me in the leg when she found me slingin’ dick to one of the fat girls down the way in the trailer park. I was running like a som’bitch but you can’t outrun a bullet. Either way, we’re good now I guess. Or we was. I ain’t worried about it.”
I was deeply perplexed. “Kyle there…”
Kyle interrupted. “It’s Fat Kyle.” He said it very plainly and without looking up.
“Fat Kyle, there was a lot a confusing parts to that story, and I have to tell you, I didn’t really figure out where we landed. Is your ex-wife happy with you or angry with you?” I asked.
“Bud I tell you what, if I knew the answer to that one, I’d still be fuckin’ fat girls back at the park. That there is the sixty four thousand dollar question. The duality of man.”
I looked at him quizzically. “That’s definitely not what that phrase means.”
Kyle popped open his ever present bag of cocaine and did a line off his fingernail. He snorted a few times afterwards hard, before a bloody trail ran down his nostril. He quickly mopped it up with his shirt. “Sure it is. You see Mans got two side in him. Like the dog you feed and the dog you don’t? The good side, and the bad side. Now Carla was mostly the good side. She run off with that lesbian girlfriend o’ hers though, so she’s probably going to Hell now, but she’s a good woman. Me, I am mostly the bad side. I apologized to Jesus though, and got straight with the Lord, so Im’ma probably end up in Heaven. And that’s it dude. The duality of man. Carla gonna end up in Hell and me in Heaven despite all the things we done. All on account of the fact we both like eatin’ pussy so much.” Kyle winked at me.
“Shit who don’t love eatin’ pussy.” Lance said. Hank blushed. While the floor was clearly to him on the pussy eatin’ front, we had left Hank’s comfort zone. I can only assume he was formulating a question when I interjected to save him.
“Alright, just to bring this whole thing full circle, let’s say we contact your wife, is she going to try and kill you or do you think we can use her to get me out of Kansas City, so I can go see someone.” I said.
“Hmm…” Kyle thought for a half a minute or so. “Yea, I figure she’d help. She’s got a good heart. Real good girl.”
“I really need to get out of Kansas City Kyle…”
Immediate interjection. “Fat Kyle.”
“I really need to get out of Kansas City Fat Kyle. Can you go ask her if she can help?”
Kyle stood up. “Yep, you gotta give me Hank though.”
“I don’t follow.” I said.
Kyle said with complete and total sincerity. “It’s dark out there and I’m scared of dogs”
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Kyle and Hank returned less than 12 hours later. Hank was clearly upset although it wasn’t clear why. He walked into the basement section of the arcade and immediately retreated to what amounted to his room, he appeared to be sulking.
In direct contrast, Kyle sauntered in with the look of a man who was quite pleased with himself. What this could have possibly meant, I had no idea.
"Kyle, what’s the word? Did you meet up with them?” I asked.
Kyle slowly fell back into his old seat at his table. He seemed extremely happy to be home. He immediately began tapping out lines of drugs. “Johnny let me tell you bout the greatest night of my life. Me and Hank, we make it all the way there. Don’t see hardly nobody. No troubles, no problems. Not even a dog. Good thing too as I told Hank we ain’t got time for him to get his rocks off cause Johnny said we’re supposed to be quick about it. Anyways, I see where they got their camp setup. Hank and I mark our position based on this tree and I tell him to hang back and don’t kill no dogs. See I know ‘bout this hole in the fence, but it’s tiny. Big fella like him might not make it through. Fat Kyle’s like a greased-up rabbit though, I can squeeze through damn near anything. Anyway, I get squeezed into this camp and I know where they tent is, so I am tiptoeing around. There is guards and all sorts of shit around, but I know you gotta get out so I got a mission and I am gonna do it. Either way, I crawl my fat ass all the way to where they got this tent setup. It’s a big one cause there two of them in it. Well, there I am, and I see the light’s on and guess what the fuck I saw. They’s was kissin’ and touchin’. Hell, I knew what was getting ready to go on, so I did what anyone did. I waited til they was ready to go at each other and I slipped in and made my presence known. Well, they was pissed for sure at first. There was a lot of hoopin’ and hollerin’, but guess what? They took one of them piss stick tests the day before and neither was pregnant? So I says, I seen on the TV it works a lot better if you do the real thing. Now Carla, I had her a lot of times, but her friend I ain’t never had, so I’m a-really hopin’ they go to the same place as me, and by damn Johnny, they did. They fuckin did. We was all goin’ at it together. We was all lickin’ and fuckin’ and screwin’. Carla’s friend was married a long ways back too so she knew her way around a gentlemen like I ain’t never seen before. Whatever som’bitch left her must have fucking rocks for brains or a broken cock. Either way, they made me promise that I’d empty inside both of them, but honestly once it came Carla’s turn I couldn’t make muster again so I just let out a bunch of noises and rolled off her. Still the best god damn night of my life Johnny. I ain’t ever been this happy and I don’t know if I ever will be again.” Kyle snorted a large line of mixed powders and rolled his head back with a big smile.
"So, they are going to help me get out?” I asked.
Kyle suddenly looked sad and confused. “Ah shit Johnny, I plum forgot to ask.”