I chased out the door after Evil Bob (the name I finally decided on) with the intention of either killing him or curing him, although I only had the means to do one of the two and I didn’t have the gumption for either in all likelihood. “If I was Evil Bob, where would I go?” I muttered aloud as I emerged from the arcade. It wasn’t like it was hard to hide in the bombed-out ruins of a former Metropolis that was currently doubling as an urban warzone. Maybe there was a way I could save him? We had contingency plans for situations like this, reservoirs of hardcore stimulants designed to flood the brain with dopamine. I could always just string him up and start executing people in front of him until he snapped out of it, but that seemed a bit like overkill, no pun intended.

Was I even helping him though? Was he ever my friend? I didn’t actually know where the line was between when Evil Bob showed up and when I was kicking it doing drugs with an old man in a burnt-out gas station. Was he ever just Bob?

Unfortunately, my potential Bob-hunt was cut short by newfound issues. Low flying jets streaked overhead. Streaked isn’t really the right word which was bad news. They were going slow enough to where I knew what was coming. Jets don’t fly low unless they are there to drop something in a very specific fashion.

The bombs fell along a line, if I had to guess it was probably a line of people who had come because they thought I was going to help them. The next line of bombs was quite a bit more distant, if I had to guess, it would be the other side of the BIMPT complex, maybe a second entrance or something, but more people who showed up believing I was going to help them. I saw a few more bomb lines trace the sky. Giant whomping explosions. The government doing the same thing it had before, bombing its own citizens before the secrets get out. Didn’t matter who the administration was, didn’t matter what they platformed on, the whole fucking thing was bought and paid for.

I was sick. The bombs continued. I couldn’t hear it, but I knew between the explosions were the sounds of thousands of lives being squashed out of existence. They’d play it on the news, and it would do the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do. That much death? That much violence? They probably just did my job for me. Worldwide riots were on the brink. The Samskara would win. Humanity would tear itself apart.

I have to say, the part of me that wasn’t horrified was exhilarated. My own personal bout with my Samskara poisoning. It was a Fourth of July Show exploding at the same time. Lights, colors, smoke, and sound. I stopped a minute to admire it. Would anyone be left? Would BIMPT be left? The second part was a stupid question, of course they would. How much though? I don’t know. It hardly mattered because clearly the goal was to make sure that whoever was still around wasn’t going anywhere ever again. The radio reports indicated people had made it in and out of BIMPT during the raids with documents about the nature of the company, real secret type shit, but that would all be discredited by a thousand paid trolls the second it hit the internet. I am sure it was a bloodbath inside, there is no way BIMPT would’ve let anyone leave alive.

Those were my people. Gone.

Were they my people? Was I anything more than the ne’er-do-well fuck-up anointed champion of a bunch of hapless greasy, fat, goofballs hellbent on self-destruction due to a mixture of alien parasites and internet paranoia? If I was, was I something better or worse and how the fuck would I ever even tell the difference?

In an instant, far less time than it took for all those thoughts to ring through my head, the shockwave hit me and knocked me on my ass. As I stood up, simultaneously utterly disoriented and imminently lucid, I asked myself, did I owe those people something? The ones dying right now. The ones smoldering in a heap because they thought I knew shit when I so clearly don’t. Did I owe them solidarity? Attendance? Who had really set all this off anyway? Bob had a point about one thing, there wasn’t a way to do this without bloodshed. Evil Bob might’ve even made the same point. Was there ever really a difference? Would I have been better off to just let the world slip? Most of the time it felt like it was going that way one way or another, and the only thing I was doing was causing problems along the way.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I’d called them all here and now most of them were dead. Hell, I killed some of them myself. Does it still count if they came to kill me and not support me? I don’t think I should be held responsible for those, at least not in the same way. I want those stripped off my record. Charge them to someone else. I want a clean accounting for Saint Peter at the gate. He probably isn't gonna be too interested in letting me in regardless, but I at least want a full and fair shake.

But what to do now? What was even left to be done? It didn’t seem like there was a way to win or even to survive. I had been fighting, aimlessly, for as long as I could remember at this point. Fighting dickhead bosses. Fighting shitty weed dealers and asshole cops and asteroid plagues and fuck off crazy assassins and used car dealership owners and all sorts of shit. Fighting for fighting’s sake. So BIMPT didn’t win. So the Samskara didn’t win. People had been telling me the war was over for a long time, that I’d already lost. I hadn’t even ever bothered to check the scoreboard. I spent most of my time high as fuck and when I wasn’t it was basically just some sort of masturbatory fantasy where I played Johnny Badass against a backdrop of utter fucking insanity, surviving through a mixture of outright luck and the fact that the people most interested in killing me needed me more than they hated me. Even in those brief periods when I stopped to think, “What the fuck am I even doing here?” I never actually found an answer. From the first minute, from the first time they injected me with this black shit in my veins, it’s basically been alternating waves of hiding in a hole and abusing drugs to keep from completely losing my mind and then getting bored and going on murderous thrill rides. Hell, maybe Bob and the Samskara were right? If this is really where we were heading, then what’s the point. It’s not like I would ever be qualified to lead anything. I’d just end up making things worse than they already were.

I could overdose. I had enough left to go either direction, blow my heart out on coke and amphetamine or zonk off well past zombieland and straight into non-breathing and shitting yourself by snorting a boatload of the smorgasboard of anti-psychotics and other agents designed to melt the human brain into submission. Both directions had their appeal, and in fact, I had often thought of doing it just to get out of the nightmarish existence to which I had mostly become accustomed.

I could just sort of fade into the background? People were looking for me still, undoubtedly, but it would be possible to grow a beard and fade into nothingness in some open pasture underneath some logs or in some cave. Live off the land, or just steal what I needed. I could make it for a while. Pretty soon things were going to be so bad that many would be doing the same. Maybe I’d meet a girl and she could join in me in my log/cave-based domicile, and we could start a family together. Make apocalypse babies. Raise an apocalypse dog. Who knows, maybe we’d actually find some sort of happiness in that sort of life. Maybe in the absence of a normal world, a guy like me suddenly becomes a catch? All the skills to pay the bills as long as the bills don’t actually involve any sort of typical societal shit and instead just mean “willing to kill to stay alive.”

I retreated back into the arcade. My sanctum. I decided it was time to pack up and leave. It was one thing to blow the Western Auto building as a sign, it was another thing to just slaughter people at random. The next step would be shocktroopers and other hellacious badass folks. I could hold my own nowadays, but they were getting ready to bring in the types of guys that I wouldn’t stand a chance against. Real soldiers with real training, and not the kind that don’t know to make sure you aren’t going to drive a knife into their neck when you turn around. There wasn’t anywhere to go, but I couldn’t stay here. I saw Bob’s old radio in the corner and flipped it on. At least ought to know what the hell was out there.

The National News was completely quiet on the bombing. Not a word. No bombs, no violence, no riots. Shit. Very smart. No news coverage means no outrage means no more problem. It wouldn’t last though. Eventually people would find out. Then I heard an even bigger problem.

“…of course our top story this hour is the death of John Brunsen, confirmed during the Kansas City demonstrations that occurred at a facility alleged to be a BIMPT scientific site, but was later confirmed to be a government depot for handling hazardous waste including Grey Plague contaminated materials. Just confirming this story, we have visual confirmation that the terrorist John Brunsen was killed during tonight’s demonstrations which were ended peacefully by US National Guard forces after the demise of Mr. Brunsen. It should be noted that arrests have been made and it is expected that those who were involved will be processed for judicial proceedings and eventual incarceration at Grey Plague appropriate facilities such as Guantanomo Bay...”

Well that really fucks the whole plan, doesn’t it?