Super Meals: Part Forty Three

            To be fair, the fast food place was only six blocks away.

            So, really, the fact that Adam made it five blocks before exploding shouldn’t be held against him.

            He held it together for the four blocks between the ruins of the morgue to the main street that ran north-to-south through town, and kept his cool as the parade of emergency vehicles screamed down the street in the opposite direction, but, it had to be said, in the end it was Doctor Ralph’s fault.

            Once they had pulled away from the morgue (or rather, the crater where it once stood), he lowered the weapon and stuffed the barrel into Adam’s ribs to keep it unseen. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to drive carefully, do I?” he asked.

            Adam was afraid to take his eyes off the road, so he said, “Sure thing, boss. Whatever you say,” and kept his hands on the wheel. He wanted a smoke, but didn’t dare speak or reach for them, so as he drove, his anxiety mounted.

            And his temperature rose.

            His heart rate shot up when the emergency vehicles passed him, and he began to smell the vinyl of the seat melting underneath him again. Doctor Ralph must have smelled it, too, because he sniffed the air and asked, “What’s burning?”

            “Nothing, man. I don’t know.”

            “Look, I’m typically very calm, but having just survived an explosion, I’m a bit rattled at the moment,” said Doctor Ralph, digging the shotgun barrel further into Adam’s side. “So, seriously, where’s the burning smell coming from? I can see the oil and temperature gauges, so don’t tell me it’s the car.”

            “I don’t know, dude. Seriously. Why would I lie? If something’s burning or gonna blow up, I’m fucked just as much as you are.”

            That caught Doctor Ralph’s attention. “Blow up?” he asked. He raised the shotgun to where Adam could see it again and continued, “Why would something blow up?”

            It wasn’t that Adam was particularly scared of guns; he’d shot with friends and family at local ranges and had taken hunter safety classes before trekking through the woods with his grandfather, but he’d never had one pointed at him before.

            He was nervous.

            In all seriousness, he was scared.

            Steam started rising off of his body, and the steering wheel was molding itself to his fingers as he gripped the wheel.

            He turned and looked at Doctor Ralph, his jaw set and his eyes hard. Leaving one hand on the wheel, he reached out with the other and grabbed the end of the shotgun barrel, which melted closed in his hand. Doctor Ralph looked at the ruined shotgun, then back up at Adam, who said, “Why shouldn’t I?”

            Back at the bombed out morgue the sounds of sirens almost covered the sound of shifting rubble.

            Bricks and drywall and assorted materials gave way to Walter, who was hunched over and coughing up dust. As he shoved things aside, two pairs of legs became visible and started kicking things aside. “Well I certainly wasn’t expecting that,” said Walter.

            “Really? What were you expecting?” said Mimi.

            “I dunno,” said Walter. “But, really, who ever expects to get blown up?”

            “I expect to get shot every day,” said Mimi.

            “You do?”

            “Yeah. I just set my mind to it when I get up in the morning. That way, if I do get shot, it’s not really a surprise. If I don’t, then it’s a happy accident and my day is that much better.”

            “You are fucking crazy!” said Jane. “Do you know what you’ve done!?”

            “I think we saved your life,” said Walter. “You are alive, right?”

            “Yes!” said Jane. “No thanks to you two!”

            “Really?” asked Mimi. “You think Doctor Quinlan there was going to let you go once he got ahold of Walter here?”

            “You know who he is?” asked Jane.

            “Yeah, I’m a detective, remember? And I’m good at my job,” said Mimi, smiling. “Come on, let’s get you up.”

            Mimi and Walter stood, but had to help Jane stand up because her legs had gone numb from being trapped in the chair for so long without moving. The ambulances and fire trucks and police cruisers had arrived, and emergency personnel swarmed them as they clambered towards the street. Everybody was shouting and racing around and calling out questions, but neither Walter, nor Mimi, nor Jane were saying anything.

            Five blocks away, a fireball arose over the rooftops, and a second later everybody heard the boom.

            Mimi and Walter looked at each other and they both said, “Adam.”

            Adam was actually proud of himself for sounding cool with that line, but also a little bummed that nobody else had heard it (he knew that it never sounded as good in the retelling). Still gripping the shotgun, he concentrated, hard, and tensed, thinking to explode but only growing hotter.

            Doctor Ralph had released the shotgun and was scrambling with the door handle, but the car had auto-locked while they were driving.

            Adam, growing frustrated, tightened up further; clenching every muscle he could think of. He felt the seat ignite into flame underneath and around him, and the felt in the ceiling above his head was smoldering, dripping onto him. His clothes were either burning or melting off already, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to hurt this man who had shoved a gun on him.

            Doctor Ralph finally got the door unlocked and yanked on the handle, but the sight of the ground going by gave him pause.

            The fact that his seatbelt was still buckled gave him further pause.

            He and Adam both reached for the belt buckle at the same time, and Adam got there first. Doctor Ralph’s hands closed on top of Adam’s, hoping to somehow push the button through them, but he hissed in pain and immediately pulled them away from the burn.

            But the buckle had melted in Adam’s hand, along with the ends of the webbing, separating them and flapping loose, which was all the freedom Doctor Ralph needed to tuck and roll out of the car.

            Disappointed in himself for letting Doctor Ralph get away, Adam both sighed and groaned while releasing all the tension in his body like a deflated balloon.

            That’s when he exploded.

            Mimi and Walter helped Jane to an ambulance as quickly as they could and sat her on the bumper. One pair of EMTs set to work on her while another pair each took to Walter and Mimi, who tried to wave them off.

            “I’m fine,” said Walter. “Take care of this lady, she’s the one who’s hurt.”        “Same goes for me,” said Mimi. “Just get her checked out, will you?” When their paramedics stepped away, Mimi squatted down to be eye level with Jane. “Jane, we have to go.”

            “Wait, what? You… I mean… Where?”

            “We have to stop him.”

            “Why?”

            “Because we know, Jane. And we’re the only ones who do. If he is who we think he is, if he gets out of town he’ll hide behind so many lawyers we’ll never reach him again.”

            “So what are you gonna do? Kill him?”

            “What? God no, I’m a cop, remember? I don’t do that sort of thing.”

            “Then what?”

            “Darling, I’m going to arrest him.”

            “But how?”

            “With his help,” said Mimi, motioning to Walter.

            Jane looked up at Walter, who smiled. She said, “You protect her, got it?”

            Walter’s smile faded. “What do you mean, me protect her?”

            “Yeah,” said Mimi. “What’s with that bullshit? I’ve been watching his ass for two days now.”

            Jane said, “Yeah, but I don’t care if he never comes back to me.”

            Mimi and Jane shared a look that certainly felt much longer than the handful of seconds it really was, then Mimi said, “All right.”

            “We’ll talk,” said Jane.

            “All right,” said Mimi, standing up. She looked at Walter and punched him in the shoulder, saying, “You ready to do this?”

            “I have no idea,” said Walter.

            “Great,” said Mimi. “Let’s go.”

            She grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him away from the ambulance towards one of the police cruisers. They climbed in and Mimi floored it.

            Doctor Ralph had hit the ground rolling. As per his instructions, Adam was driving carefully, so he was only going about thirty miles an hour, but the impact still hurt, and the roll provided some bumps, bruises, and scrapes.

            The car exploding, however, hurt much worse.

            Doctor Ralph was blasted aside and up onto the sidewalk. He’d thought to cover his head with his hands, and the rain of glass made him thankful for having done so. He stood up, slowly, and he ached all over.

            But there, a block away, like a beacon through a fog, was his restaurant.

            He still had his AR-7, it had rolled with him when he fell out of the car, and while his clothes were tattered, he still had enough of a lab coat left to hide the gun as he started limping forwards. Every branch was required, by corporate policy, to maintain a stock of uniforms on hand, so while he wouldn’t be stylish (or even necessarily comfortable), he would be in fresh, clean clothes. He could also use their computer to access his cloud drive, transfer his files, and wipe his tablet computer remotely. He hated to do it, but he could get another tablet when he was safely home and ensconced in his laboratory once again. The information was more important, and he couldn’t risk anybody else finding his…recipes.

            He paused.

            For an instant, the thought crossed his mind of maybe trying one of them out on himself, but he shook the thought out of his head almost immediately. Nobody had ever survived, except subject 187, of course.

            But who was the man who just exploded?

            And that was when Doctor Ralph remembered Adam’s face from the day before.

            The man who’d delivered Doctor Ralph’s rental car.

            The man he’d sent the special meal to.

            The man who’d just blown up a second time, apparently, and was, as far as he could tell, burning to death in a molten heap of metal and rubber in the middle of the street a block behind him.

            So maybe his meals didn’t kill quite everyone, he thought, as he pushed open the glass doors to the restaurant and immediately went to the back.

            Mimi and Walter roared through the intersections. They’d turned on the lights of the police cruiser, but not the siren.

            They didn’t want to let Doctor Ralph know they were coming for him.

            They reached the remains of Mimi’s car and she whipped the car sideways, screeching to a stop. “You think he –” she started to ask.

            “Look!” shouted Walter.

            He was pointing forward, through the windshield, and Mimi’s eyes tracked his finger to see movement within the still-flaming frame of a car. They both leaped from their seats and ran over to it as close as they could stand the heat, and watched as Adam muscled the car door (or rather, what was left of it) open, and climbed out.

            Mimi ran back to the squad car and popped the trunk, finding a police coat and woolen blanket and grabbing them. She returned to the wreckage and handed the goods over to Adam, who wrapped the blanket around his waist like a towel before putting the coat on. Finally, he said, “Ah, fuck me.”

            “What?” asked Walter.

            “My smokes were in there,” said Adam.

            Mimi slapped her face into her palm and Walter groaned. Mimi recovered, though, and asked, “It was him, wasn’t it?”

            “Well I fuckin’ hope so,” said Adam. “Or this town is way fucking weirder than I thought it was to have multiple psychos running around.”

            “Did you see where he went to?”

            Adam pointed to the restaurant on the corner and said, “Where the fuck do you think he went?”