Super Meals: Part Thirty-Six

He couldn’t do it here.

He wasn’t sure if he could do it at all, but if he could do it, it couldn’t be done here.

He needed his laboratory. The big one under the corporate offices, which he’d modeled after the research and test labs at MIT. It had samples of nearly every known chemical compound on the planet, including quite a few that he’d discovered and patented himself (he’d registered the patents under one of his false identities because, legally speaking, anything and everything discovered while working there belonged to the company).

There was also an attached medical facility that had half a zoo’s worth of animals for testing purposes. Not just for testing the “foods” they produced in the lab, but also for production of assorted compounds. Doctor Ralph was particularly proud of the moment he discovered the attractive properties of sloth pheromones and how, when mixed with a particular strain of “ground beef,” the smell was irresistible to 12% of all human beings on the planet.

That was the same month they installed vent chimneys on all of their restaurants. Since another fast food restaurant had thought of it first as a way of attracting customers through the smell of their grilled beef, nobody suspected that they were gassing their communities with sloth genital juice.

The hit they took to their public image for copying another restaurant was quickly overcome by a massive surge in sales.

In addition to his extensive facilities, Doctor Ralph knew that he would need more hands on with the testing and experiments. It wasn’t the most complicated process in the world to add a single hydrogen atom to a chemical compound, but he appreciated an extra set of eyes, when available, as well as an extra set of hands from someone he trusted.

Doctor Ralph’s laboratory was staffed entirely with people he trusted.

The simple solution, of course, was to take his findings and go home. He’d already blown one cover in this tiny little town, and there were so few branches of his restaurant here that he knew it wouldn’t take long for a halfway smart cop to start asking around – possibly even figure out who he really is. It would be smart of him to pack up now and just get out of town. Don’t go back to the hotel, don’t get his things (he had his computer and cell phone with him anyway), just get a ride to the airport, buy a plane ticket, and fly back to Chicago.

The smart thing…

But he couldn’t shake the fact that there was a successful, live subject right here. He’d seen him, touched him, talked to him, even (sort of); he didn’t know if he could just let it go, not when he was so close to finally finding…what? The chosen one?

No, that was too cliché.

The man with the iron stomach?

No, that was too much Alexander Dumas.

“Subject 189” was all he could commit to, it would have to do.

So what was to be done with Subject 189? Doctor Ralph had destroyed all of his biological samples during testing, so even though he’d formed his hypothesis and confirmed it through testing, the results couldn’t be replicated without more from Subject 189 himself. And even if he could find him, what was he supposed to do? Follow him around and slip him some ipecac like the world’s worst date rapist? Maybe he could mug him, jumping out of the shadows again and try kneeing him in the groin this time to make him throw up?

None of these ideas were sounding good, and each one was sounding worse than the previous. Besides, he thought, even if he could get another sample of stomach fluid from the poor guy, that would only give him enough material to run a handful of more tests.

Doctor Ralph shut his eyes tight and pinched the bridge of his nose, hating himself for the thought that kept elbowing its way to the front of his mind.

He sighed, finally accepting it.

He was just going to have to kidnap Subject 189 and take him back to the lab in person.

Preferably alive, so he could continue to provide genetic material for testing.

Dead would be acceptable, though. There was plenty of bodily fluid in a corpse, after all.  

Super Meals: Part Thirty Five

It had been twenty minutes since Walter had polished off the Suicidal Rodeo Clown and nothing was happening. He was getting flustered, and Mimi was getting pissed.

“Well, what do you want me to do?” he asked her.

“I don’t know, what happened the last couple of times?”

“Well,” he said, then paused to think. “I mean, the first time, I just ate my lunch and felt this heavy feeling in my stomach, like I’d swallowed a brick or something. The next thing I knew, I was ripping the door off my piece of shit car and sprinting down the highway.”

“How about this morning?”

“That one was different, I needed…I dunno, a jump start or something.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember? I had to get pissed off before something would happen – and even then I couldn’t really control it. It just sort of…slipped out.”

“So it’s like a mutation,” said Mimi.

Walter took a step back from her, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you ever read X-Men comics?”

He kicked at the dirt and mumbled, “No, not really.”

“Jesus Christ, what kind of shit childhood did you have that you never read X-Men comics? How about the movies?”

“Never really got around to seeing them,” he admitted.

“The first one redefined the very genre of comic book movies! It was, like, the number one movie of the year back in 2000.”

“Yeah, great,” said Walter. “I’ll rent it tonight, Jesus.”

“Look, this is just wrong,” Mimi continued. “I mean, this is practically criminal,” she said, stepping back around him.

“Well what the fuck do you want me to do about it? We’re in the woods on the back-end of a college campus. I don’t see a RedBox around here anywhere, and unless you happen to have a copy on your phone, I don’t really see how this conversation is going to get us anywhere!”

“Don’t yell at me!” shouted Mimi.

“I wasn’t yelling!” screamed Walter.

“Will both of you please shut the fuck up!” shouted Adam.

Mimi really did scream, then, and fell off of the rock she was standing on because Adam had climbed up the bank of the stream and was leaning on it. The following events played out in slow motion:

Mimi drew her service pistol from the hide-a-holster in the small of her back and fired in Adam’s general direction as she fell. Walter jumped to catch her, holding his arms out and lunging forward. The force of the gunshot spun Adam around and he clutched at the side of his head as he fell. Mimi landed in Walter’s arms and her weight buckled his legs, sending them both sprawling to the ground to the side of the boulder. Adam pulled his hand away from his head and saw it covered in blood, dropping him to his knees.

Adam screamed.

His skin caught fire.

A bubble of flame erupted around him, expanding outward.

Walter, seeing this, rolled himself on top of Mimi.

The wave of heat and fire washed over them both, and though the force of the blast skidded them across the ground, neither of them were burned.

At this point, time began to move at normal speed again.

Mimi and Walter were panting and Walter’s shirt was smoking, but he felt like he had just put on a shirt fresh from the dryer. Mimi elbowed him off of her.

“Fuck off,” she said. “I’m alright.”

Walter backed away from her a bit and propped himself up on an elbow. “What just happened?”

“That guy exploded.”

“You shot him!”

“He shouldn’t have snuck up on me like that!”

“So you shot him!?”

“I’m a cop! What do you think would happen?”

Walter narrowed his eyes at her and said, “You know, it’s cops like you that are the reason people protest cops…like…you.” His voice trailed off.

Adam moaned from down in the creek bed, startling them out of their argument. “Holy fuck, he’s alive?” said Walter.

“Good,” said Mimi, picking herself up. “I don’t need the paperwork.” She held her hand out to Walter, who took it, and she hauled him up. “Come on, let’s go have a look.”

“You want to go down there?” asked Walter.

“Yeah, moron, I’m a cop, remember? The kind that people protest?”

“Yeah, sorry ‘bout that. I was…angry.”

“Yeah, I picked up on that, dick. Now come on.”

She eased her way down the embankment, moving in a zigzag pattern to avoid slipping on the burned and blackened grass. Walter moved up behind her and gazed down into the little gully.

Adam was laying facedown in the mud, which was dry and cracked. He was the epicenter of the blast, and the ground closest to him rippled out in waves from the force of the explosion. He was naked again (the ashes of the lab coat were somewhere on the ground around him, but indistinguishable from the rest of the destruction. His skin was still dirty from the mud bath he had taken earlier, but it had dried into dust. “He looks kind of like PigPen from the Charlie Brown comics,” said Mimi as she walked up to him.

“Is he okay?” asked Walter from the top of the embankment.

Mimi didn’t answer at first. She watched, and saw Adam’s back rise and fall as he breathed. There was blood oozing from his head still. “He’s still breathing,” she called up to Walter.

“That looks like a fuckload of blood, though. Is he gonna be okay?”

Mimi poked at the wound and rolled Adam’s head to the side. “Yeah,” she said. “Head wounds always bleed like crazy, but it’s just a scratch. Must have just grazed him.”

“Well, that’s good to hear!” said Walter. “What now?”

“Come on down, we gotta get him out of here.”

Walter began making his way down to where Mimi was hunched over Adam’s body. “You sure that’s a good idea?” he asked.

“Yeah. Besides, I need you to check something out for me.”

Walter, about halfway down the hill, said, “Me? What do you need from me?”

Mimi drew her gun again. “Confirmation,” she said, and shot him.

The bullet hit Walter and knocked him off his feet, causing him to tumble the rest of the way down the hill and roll to a stop at Mimi’s feet. He lay there, groaning, and clutching at his stomach, which woke up Adam, who also started groaning and rolling in the dirt.

“The fuck did you do to my head, bitch?” he asked. “Did you fucking shoot me?”

Mimi pulled her badge from her pocket and squatted down, holding it in Adam’s face. “Yes, I did.”

This shut Adam up.

“You fucking shot me, too!” said Walter, behind her.

“Oh, quit complaining, you’re fine,” said Mimi over her shoulder at him. “You’re not bleeding, and now we know what the Suicidal Rodeo Clown does to you…sort of.”

Walter stopped rolling long enough to lift his hands away from his stomach and while his shirt was torn, there was, indeed, not even a scratch on his belly underneath. “So I’m bulletproof?”

“Apparently. But I think it’s more than that – you absorbed the entire blast when this guy went nuclear, too. So maybe…I dunno. It was called the Suicidal Rodeo Clown burger. Maybe you can just take a lot of punishment?”

“Excuse me,” asked Adam. “But can I please get some help here? I have had a really shitty twenty-four hours.”

Super Meals: Part Thirty Four

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There was a cool running stream that wound through campus. It started two blocks away in a runoff channel that kept the city flood-free, but splintered off into decorative streams that cut through people’s yards and, in this case, the college campus.

It was also roughly 40% duck feces.

As Adam lay in the water, cooling his skin, it dried up around him until he was caked in mud and shit.

It smelled terrible, but felt glorious. The mud coating protected him from the little sunlight that was trickling through the trees surrounding him and he rolled around in it until he was well and truly coated.

He pulled the now-filthy lab coat up over his head and curled up underneath it to sleep.

A little ways away, on a dirt path between buildings, Walter and Mimi approached a large, flat rock and sat down. The grease from the Suicidal Rodeo Clown burger had soaked through its wrapper and was weakening the bag it was being carried in. Walter pulled it out and half-unwrapped it, trying to keep it from dripping or leaking sauce and juice onto his clothing, but once he took a bit it all fell apart anyway, oozing Technicolor goo onto his hands.

He waited.

Mimi waited.

Walter finished eating.

Doctor Ralph finished analyzing.

He was now certain of his findings and typing them into his computer; the spreadsheet was open on his cloud drive and he had scrolled all the way down to line 189, then over to the “results” box.

After extensive research of biological sample forcibly obtained from subject 189, it has been determined that the bismuth subsalicylate found in his stomach is organic, and naturally occurring. Somehow, this guy’s stomach produces it, which seems to be what protects him from the negative side-effects of our foodstuffs…