No hospitals, couldn’t give my name as it was too likely BIMPT had connections and could find me.
No friends, don’t have any. Not real ones. Can’t get anyone mixed up in this anyway.
No family, all gone.
Could I go to the press? Would anyone believe me?
I imagined the phone call. “Yes hi, I am a local criminal and drug addict. I am in the midst of serious withdrawal and just murdered several people at a highly respected multi-national corporation. My reasoning is sound though as I am immune to some sort of super chemical and I think they want to use me as a science experiment? Or something? I’m not sure. I didn’t ask before I started stabbing people, and fuck me, did I ever stab a lot of people. Also I melted a guy. Yes, that’s correct, melted. With a black super chemical actually. Please help me convey my story to the public.”
Doubt they use that one as the lede.
Do I just leave the country? I don’t speak Spanish and I can’t imagine Canada would want me. I doubt I’d make it past customs anyway.
I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket to try and find some answers. This isn’t the kind of shit you can search for a local pharmacy to cure though. Before I began trying to figure out where to go and what to do, I had a number of voicemail messages pop up. I couldn’t help myself so I listened to them.
Number one was a hang up from a telemarketing company.
Number two was an Asian guy speaking a different language that clearly had the wrong number.
Number three was BIMPT. “Dear Mr. Brunsen, this message is to confirm the release of $200,000 dollars cash to the bank account you listed on your intake form. Please be aware this money is subject to return at our discretion pending results from tests and your time at BIMPT. Thank you for participating in the BIMPT clinical trial system.” I have to admit, even with all the shit I’d seen, I was pretty excited to have 200K in the bank. I didn’t figure I would live til the end of the day, but all the same… you never know.
Number four was Pearl. “John, I was accepted into the trial! Thanks again for your help. By the way have you seen Sheryl? She was right behind you.” Did that mean Pearl was alive? If she hadn’t used her phone inside the building, it meant she got out, which meant she wasn’t with me. Maybe that’s why I didn’t see her? I made a mental note to return to the Pearl problem later.
Number five was some lady. “John Brunsen, this is Megan Connors with BIMPT. You need to call me now. Don’t use this phone.” No fucking way lady. Had about enough of your group today.
Number six was BIMPT again. “Dear Mr. Brunsen, this is to inform you that due to non-compliance, your monetary reward from BIMPT is being revoked. Per the signed contract, you have 48 hours to return the money after which we will immediately refer this to court. On account of our signed contract, your institution is legally bound to return your money. Any money not returned will be charged a 50% APR rate until our account is back to whole.” Seems more realistic. So I had 200K but only for two days. Hardly mattered. I guess it was enough to try and get the fuck out of Dodge. I wonder how that non-compliance form read. Was it the drugs? The liver damage? Murdering their employees? Who knew? I didn’t feel bad about it. Killing those people. I know you’re supposed to feel bad, but it was me or them.
The first step was putting my ill-gotten gains to use. I called a taxi, immediately realized that would get me sent to prison as even the most unscrupulous of cab drivers would realize something was amiss with a man in a blood soaked guard pants and a medical gown. Instead, I flipped the gown inside out, covered the pants in mud, and walked a very long ways to a gas station, while pulling the max amount out of a few local ATMs in the area. I bought three burner phones, transferred all my contacts, and then threw my old phone to the first homeless guy I saw. I gave him a $50 and told him not to hold on to it for too long or science assassins hired to recover me for a multi-national pharmaceutical firm would show up and off him in the most terrible fashion possible. He nodded knowingly and confirmed that he understood. At least one person believed me. For all I know, he was going through the same thing.
I walked to a local Sporting Goods store, keeping my head down. I bought a bunch of random shit I thought would help. Most of it I probably wouldn’t use, but some of it I needed. Clothes. I got a new backpack. I got a bunch of protein bars and nutrient bars. A big canvas bag. Shit that I thought would keep me alive. I got a GPS because I could and a sleeping bag. I got everything I thought I would need to try and hitchhike my way out of this fucking shithole and away from whatever the hell just happened. Finally, I went to the gun counter.
“I need to buy a gun.”
“What are you looking to hunt?” asked the store clerk. He was young, maybe 20, and looked like he hated his job. I was hoping for more of the conservative gun nut type, but I guessed I was in the wrong gun store for that.
“Uhh…I just need a handgun. Something I can take with me. And bullets.”
“A lot of people use 9mm. Do you like this one?”
I felt the gun that he thrust at me in my hands. It felt impersonal. I didn’t like it.
“What’s the difference in all these?”
“Honestly mister, I don’t really know that much. A lot of people buy that one.” This wasn’t someone who worked on commission.
Consigned to the fact I needed a gun more than I needed a gun lesson, I relented and said, “Fine, I will take two of these and three boxes of bullets.”
The kid smiled. “Great sir, just fill out this paperwork and give me your ID and I will call it in to the ATF for verification.”
That seemed like a problem.
“Uhh…yea. Is there a way I can just buy them and get that information to you later.”
The kid pulled the guns back off the counter. “We’re not that kind of store sir.” He looked obviously suspicious. Like…call the cops suspicious.
“I’ll be back with my info then.” I lied and he knew it. We both knew it.
As I rushed to the front of the store to pay for the things I could actually purchase, and more importantly, purchase those things before the cops showed up, when a gleam caught the corner of my eye. The girl at the counter was checking me out when I pointed behind the counter at a most wonderful object.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“That’s a survival axe. It’s made by a little company called American Machete and Steel. It’s got a super sharp blade and some things that poke out of it as tools. We sell a few. They are like 80 bucks. It’s like a machete but more multi-purpose.” She said.
“Can I see it?” I asked.
She grabbed it off the display and handed it to me. It was very nice. I liked it. I liked it way more than I had liked anything in a long time. It was a first bicycle. It was a doughnut on a Sunday morning. It was maple syrup. It was fresh cream for your coffee. It was your favorite song on the radio. If someone had asked me what I would name my firstborn, I would hold it aloft and say, ‘he shall share the name of this wonderful device’. If I had a Facebook profile I would go update my interests to ‘this weird machete-axe thing I’m holding’. It was perfect. I held it lovingly, admiring the sharp edges, the simple design. It called to me and I answered. “Do I have to sign paperwork for this?” I asked.
“No.”
“How many of these do you have?”
“Three,” she said after a short look at her computer inventory.
“I will take all of them.” I really, really liked it actually.
I left the store. The large canvas bag I bought sagged under the weight of my haul. I realized as a recent hundred thousand-aire I could probably afford something to lug all this around. I needed one last purchase. I marched across the parking lot with nothing more than a subtle nod towards a man trying to stick a new tent in a car. I needed a car of my own I realized.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Hey there young fella, I’m Big Dale himself. What can I do you for this afternoon?” Big Dale laughed and stuck out his hand. Big Dale was in fact big, and shaking his hand felt more like grabbing an overfull water balloon or maybe like you were trying to squeeze frosting out of one those things the fancy French guys use for cakes. He was cartoonishly aggressive about being a used car salesman, somehow assuming that anyone who came here must be expecting the worst, and it was his duty to give it to them.
Stolen novel; please report.
“I need something low profile that is cheap and efficient. I can do a debit today. Just point me towards something simple.” I was tired. I had lugged this giant bag about 5 miles down obscure routes to the closest lot. I really didn’t want to get on a bus with a giant bag of God knows what and forty people staring at me. I had searched for anything about the disaster at BIMPT and googled my own name for the first time ever, but nothing had came up on my burner. That hardly meant no one was looking for me. I had taken side streets, back alleys, and anything else I could to end up at Big Dale’s One Stop Auto Plaza and Credit Emporium. I was exhausted and just wanted something to drive so I could start getting the fuck out of the city and somewhere I could likely be captured and die in peace.
“Son, you married?” Big Dale asked me.
"No, look man, I have been walking a long ways. You got any trucks? Or a small SUV? I got money.”
“First of all, put that checkbook away son. Here at Big Dale’s we will get anyone the credit they need. Save you money. Put it towards something you want. As long as you can make payments, we got you covered.” Big Dale showed me his Big Smile. It made me want to Big Punch him in his Big Face.
“That’s ok. Just show me a truck or something. Low mileage. Whichever one runs good. I don’t care about color.” I was desperate to leave, but couldn’t bear the thought of more walking.
Dale showed me a few trucks, I decided on the one with the fewest miles. I figured everything on Big Dale’s lot was fucked up somehow, but at least this one he was willing to show me an auto report on. Assuming he hadn’t scratched the VIN or something else, it hadn’t been wrecked and the last guy at least changed the oil.
“Alright son, it’s test drive time.”
“Nah, man, I got a debit card right here. No haggling, just take the money. I’ll pay the fees. I don’t need to test drive it.”
“Son, the test drive is part of the package here. You get the experience the thrill of your new truck and I can tell you about some of our maintenance and extended warranty packages.”
“Look Dale,” I started.
He interrupted me. “That’s Big Dale!” he laughed at he shook my arm.
“Look dude, I just want to buy the truck and leave,” I said.
Dale was already off. He came back in a few minutes with keys and a brochure. He jumped in the truck, started the engine, and pushed over to the passenger side. Clearly this was happening whether I liked it or not.
During the drive, I got to know Big Dale’ One Stop Auto Plaza and Credit Emporium a little better. Dale was clearly a fucking asshole of the highest order who bilked people with no credit into buying shitty cars. That’s not how he phrased it, but the whole process was so transparent it was painful. He tried to get me to sign a credit deal a number of times. The deal was pretty good, 0.5% APR. The catch was that if you were more than 3 days late more than once he repossessed the car and kept all your money. It really says a lot that sort of business model actually works, but it clearly did. He was adamant he would rather me do the credit thing than sell me the truck. Frankly, at one point, I thought he was going to refuse, but I told him I’d pay him today, full price and I bought the ridiculous god damn warranty he offered too. The extended warranty was the same value of the car over five years. He got cross with me when I asked if I could expect the car to break completely in five years or less which led me to believe it probably would. Oh yea, also he was an absolutely ruthlessly poor mathematician, either on purpose, or more like intentionally in order to fuck you. He seemed to lack any of the basic math skills that apply to interest. He also hated being called on it. By the end of the ride, we had both had enough of each other. He sent me in to his wife Rhonda to pay.
“Congratulations on your new truck son, but let me tell you, as your elder, you are making a big mistake here. You could’ve had this thing for nothing other than payments and put that money to real use. I just hope you know what you’re doing…” Big Dale walked away anxious. I am guessing he’d sold this same truck to at least half a dozen folks. I was taking a cash cow off the lot.
I was getting increasingly anxious at this point. This whole thing was supposed to take 15 minutes and it had been closer to an hour. I figured BIMPT was either in full on assassin mode or was currently contracting with any number of services for the job. I just needed to buy this fucking truck, and then get the hell out of town. I was getting fidgety. Antsy. I was shaking.
I arrived at Rhonda’s desk to find a woman larger than Dale himself and twice as surly. Whereas Big Dale had been adamant that he didn’t discriminate based on color or credo, it was pretty clear that Rhonda had a lot of opinions.
“Are you former military? We offer a 2% discount to all former LEO or military.” Rhonda said.
“No ma’am.”
“Well why the hell not?” Rhonda was genuinely offended. She put a hard emphasis on both “hell” and “not”. “This generation doesn’t know what it means to serve.” Rhonda was disappointed in me. Fuck you too Rhonda.
Rhonda marked a few more boxes on her desktop and muttered under her breath. Rhonda was also offended by my lack of religion and my disinterest is revealing my race. I didn’t figure either could benefit me and the last thing I wanted to do was make a friend.
"$13,425.”
I figured as much. Were I not living on borrowed time, fairly sure I could die any minute, I would’ve walked out.
“Price was $10,300 after the warranty and debit fee. I didn’t get anything else. Even with taxes that shouldn’t be more than $11,500.”
“We have fees for anyone that don’t use credit. I am sure Dale told you.” Rhonda said.
He hadn’t I explained but it hardly mattered. I had overplayed my hand and they were going to take any penny they could find. They knew I had money and clearly planned on extracting as much as possible. Since I knew they were getting stiffed in the long run regardless, I paid anyway, signed all the forms, and took the keys. I half expected 500 police cars to burst through the walls the minute I wrote my name down, but Dale burst into the room right on cue instead.
“I knew it. I could tell. Rhonda stop that payment. This son of a bitch is a thief. That ain’t his money.” Big Dale was sweating and hysterical. This is bad.
“Explain that to me boy.” Dale pointed aggressively at the TV.
Uh-oh. My face was on the TV. Apparently during a routine office visit I had stolen a large amount of money and prescription drugs. I was wanted. There was a reward. This was bad. This meant BIMPT had friends. This meant it wasn’t just me against them, it was me against a lot of things. Maybe everything. This was a death sentence, or more likely, worse. Like a few decades sitting in Guantanomo taking it up the ass from some Iranian terrorist network who got loose lipped with The Feds on the phone one day.
Rhonda’s face went pale. Her hand slowly moved towards the phone, but I was faster. My bag was beneath me and partially unzipped. I reached down and grabbed my survival axe and cut her hand off at the wrist. She screamed. I had hit the hand with enough force that it sort of squirted out from underneath the blade across the floor spitting blood left and right. The spray colored Big Dale’s shirt as Rhonda waved her now hand-less arm around. I had swung too hard though and buried the axe in her desk. It was some sort of shitty plastic that grabbed the blade and wouldn’t let go. Two quick tugs and I still couldn’t get it out. I saw Big Dale start to run to his office. He seemed like the kind of guy that owned half a dozen pistols, so I chased after him. Rhonda had another hand, but she seemed predisposed to screaming and I felt her problem would resolve itself before I needed to intervene again, giving me some time to address the impending Dale situation. I had forgotten to grab another axe to handle Dale so I dove and grabbed his cankles instead. He wasn’t too agile and it was enough to throw him off. He tripped and smacked his head on the front of his desk. It had a large bull skull on the front because that’s what dipshits like Dale thought were cool. Dale’s fat head was unphased by headbutting the bull skull and he was now crawling towards the back of that desk for the pistol I am sure he had. I wasn’t strong and I wasn’t fast. I could beat on a fella like Dale for half an hour and with all that fat he’d hardly notice. I couldn’t make it back to my bag and I figured Rhonda was probably armed too. In an impromptu moment, I grabbed a glass statue off Dale’s desk and smacked him across the brow with it. It was flimsy and shitty, like everything in Dale’s life but his waistband. The cracked piece was firmly rooted in its wooden base and hard enough to do some damage though. I used it like a spike, driving the busted remnants into Dale’s eye before busting out his teeth and after my wallops reduced the broken stature to nothing more than a wooden base, one last shot to the head left Dale unconscious and bleeding profusely. Rhonda hadn’t made it too far and wasn’t much of a threat, but I couldn’t risk her pulling it together. I pulled my axe out of her desk while she blubbered in the corner about the eyes of Satan being upon me. I split her head open with a single shot and then pried the axe out using her face as a leverage point for my foot. She didn’t get to keep the axe, it was mine. I was generously coated with a third layer of human derived gore for the day as bits and pieces of Rhonda stained my new boots.
I had extra clothes in my bag (thankfully clean) and started to change as fast as possible. A customer walked in while I was changing and his face immediately switched to whatever the maximum amount of “stunned look on his face” could possibly be, as he saw a naked man next to two maimed and presumably dead bodies. I simply said, “We’re not open today.” I hoped that he understood that this was not the time to question our policies, and lo and behold he acquiesced and left quickly. Knowing he would be calling the cops any second, I expedited my change, but I heard Dale making some noises from the other room. I stalked off to investigate.
“Why you done this? Why you done this to me boy? I was good to you.”
“No Dale, you were a prick. I didn’t want thing to go this way, but honestly, I’m not really that broken up about the fact they did.”
I walked around behind Dale’s desk and rummaged around until I pulled out the pistol I assumed would be there. It was loaded, which was nice, and also solved my earlier problem about gun acquisition.
I stook over Dale, trying to figure out something cool to say.
“Repossess this motherfucker.”
Damn, that sucked. Gotta work on my tough guy shtick.
I put two .45 size holes in the top of Dale’s head and walked out of his office.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I drove away from Big Dale’s lot. I had felt nervous, anxious, almost sick for hours. That all stopped though. What the fuck was going on? I didn’t want to kill Dale or Rhonda. They were horrible people who preyed on the needy, but that wasn’t a death sentence? Was it? Was it all necessary? A small part of me hated myself in that moment and another part of me repainted my likeness in the trappings of a modern Robin Hood. I’d fell into that hole before though…
But also I felt pretty great. I wasn’t anxious now. Even thinking about the cameras that were certainly up with my face on them, murdering Dale. I was sure that if BIMPT had as much clout as I was afraid of, that would be all over the news cycle.
Do I go back? Do I try and find the cameras?
There just wasn’t time. There was too much risk. Risk of what though? How could this possibly end well at this point. I had just killed two people. Whatever the shit was at BIMPT, that wasn’t my fault. This was a one-way street though. I was a murderer now.
I really only had one option. I called the only person I thought could help. I just had to hope she hadn’t seen the news and would give me a chance to explain.
“Hi, this is Pearl.”
"Hi Pearl,” I said as politely as I could
“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?”
This was going to take some explaining.