FREE PREVIEW "THE LAST DRUG ADDICT"

8:15 A.M. MONDAY, MAY 10

They came from all walks of life.

Factory workers, car salesmen, theater projectionists, sous chefs, television producers, phlebotomists, telemarketers, librarians, sanitation workers, electricians, hotel managers, website creators, exotic dancers, photographers, marriage counselors, elementary school teachers, clergyman, cab drivers, supermarket clerks, meter maids, candy stripers.

Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Roman Catholics, Jehovah Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Scientologists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Mormons, Buddhists, Mennonites, Pagans, Atheists.

Male or female, six or sixty, blonde or redhead, right-handed or left-handed, college educated or uneducated, implants or no implants, intelligent or stupid, black, white, or brown, homosexual or heterosexual, short or tall, skinny or fat.

They came from places named Peoria, Illinois, Daytona Beach, Florida, Bend, Oregon, Winnemucca, Nevada, Athens, Georgia, Marshall, North Carolina, Grand Junction, Colorado, Wenatchee, Washington, Sitka, Alaska, Monroe, Louisiana, Provo, Utah, Homer City, Pennsylvania, Chickasha, Oklahoma, Corpus Christie, Texas, among a legion of others.

They shuttled to ships named The Niña, The Pinta, The Santa Maria, The Don Juan, The Charles Darwin, The Mark Twain, The Mayflower, The Bounty, The Enterprise and The Millennium Falcon.

Every country had at least one ship – more if they had a high enough population to justify it and the resources to pay for it - and if some countries couldn’t afford it, other countries helped out. They all tried to work together. The United States had ten ships, India fifteen, China twenty-two. Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan shared one ship. So did Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia. They had room to spare so they invited Thailand to join them. Russia could have built thirty but they only built twenty. The requirement rules for entry were different for each country. Apparently Russia intended to leave some people behind.

The Americans had picked We’ve Only Just Begun by The Carpenters as their voyage’s official theme song, just to help boost moral. The Americans didn’t know if any other country had also chosen an anthem for their voyage.

The journey to the ships, parked just outside the Earth’s orbit would take just short of two hours, however the trip to the final destination would take three hundred and fifty years. That was a long, long time to listen to any Carpenters song.

Of course several people were illegally and informally muscled out of going due to one political purpose or another, some people missed their scheduled shuttle take off flight for a myriad of reasons, and a few people elected to remain behind of their own volition.

8:15 A.M. WEDNESDAY, MAY 12

Big Mike, aka, Medicine Mike, aka, Mike the Man, aka, Mister Video stared at the security camera that stealthily watched over the Shop-n-Save prescription department then laughed and easily vaulted over the customer counter.

“I’m here to pick up a prescription,” he called in a cheery sing-song voice but nobody was behind the counter to hear him. “If you don’t mind I’m just going to grab a few things here and there.”

He walked down the first aisle of shelves in the room, marveling at all the different sized white bottles that filled the shelves like cans of soup and vegetables stocking the metal racks at the local Bi-Lo. Or books at a Books-a-Million, ordered alphabetically or by popularity. Bestsellers up front. Always.

His eyes wandered as he walked; top to bottom, side to side. He had no idea how these things were stored and unfortunately for him there was no one to help him find what he was looking for. But that was a good thing. If someone had been there to show him around then there would be no Video Mike Drug Shopping Spree today.

So he walked slowly, taking the time to read the label and dosages. If the label said something that he didn’t understand, fuck it. He’d take it anyway. He’d sort things out later.

No time to waste. He intended to capture a myriad of drugs on this morning’s safari:

Oxycodone, thirty milligram minimum. He wasn’t going to waste his time on fives or tens. He didn’t have to and damned if he was going to. He was Video Mike, king of this fucking pharmacy, and every other pharmacy in town, and as far as he knew, king of every fucking pharmacy in this entire country.

His eyes scanned the shelves. Morphine sulfate, Valiums, Fentanyl, Codeine, Klonopin, Xanax – yeah, he was going to need a shitload of those. But wait! What was he going to put them all in? He had forgotten a basket.

He leaped back over the counter and ran to the front of the store where he found a stack of baskets next to a checkout stand. He started to grab one but then realized with incredible foresight that he was going to need a buggy to get all this shit out of here. So he snatched the first cart he saw and haphazardly rammed it back down the isle toward “prescriptions” like a 747 taxiing in for a rough landing. He lifted it up, practically threw it over the counter, and then immediately followed it, head over heels. He hit the floor hard but he didn’t give a shit. Nothing was going to put a damper on Mike the Man’s drug blowout sale!

He steered the buggy back to where all the sterile white containers lined the shelves and dumped his previous inventory of valiums and such in a clamber, including the five 1000 COUNT BOTTLES OF OXYCONTIN that he found almost immediately in the front of the first shelf. Bestsellers up front. Always. Now he didn’t have to mess around with Percocet, Hydrocodone or Oxycodone, all total lightweights in comparison.

Then he thought: Okay, amphetamines. Ritalin, Metadate – oh yeah, a lot of Black Beauties for sure. Some crosses and hearts, Vitamin-R. The wheels of the cart squeaked as he inched his way down the aisle. He reached up and corralled several bottles at once with his entire arm and swept them into the cart.

When he was satisfied that he had at least enough to last him a few days, he began looking for depressives for when he was having that not so fresh feeling. And there they were, so medical looking with their clean, white bottles and precisely printed labels. Barbiturates like Phenobarbital, Ambien, and Lunesta. And then there were always the prescription strength cold medicines that weren’t sold over the counter without a prescription like cough syrup and decongestants containing dextromethorphan.

By 10:45, Video Mike’s prescription extravaganza was just about winding down.

He ducked under the counter, dragging the buggy behind him, and pushed his load to the front of the store. He sat at a checkout stand to rest for a moment. He thumbed through the checkout tabloids while he munched on a Slim Jim. The National Star said that meth and heroin were making a strong comeback. The cover of the tabloid had a big picture of some generic-looking loser shooting up. Next to it was a picture of a shuttle. There was a big red ‘X’ slashed across the addict. The message was clear to Big Mike: none of that shit allowed on board. It didn’t bother Big Mike because he wasn’t going on any shuttle and he had never touched meth, heroin, or crack before and had no desire to do the drugs now.

But no matter. If you didn’t like pears, there were still plenty of apples in the orchard.

Which reminded Mike. He had to start going through all the houses – probably the ones closest to his street first – to see what everyone had left behind. How many stashes of cocaine and ecstasy mollies were just lying around, ready for the taking? How many barrels of Marijuana bud – bud so sticky and supercharged with 25% or more THC content stuffed into Hefty garbage bags and hiding in people’s closets, under their beds, or behind their couches?

All good questions. All good questions Video Mike said to himself and he was absolutely certain as he wheeled his cart out the smashed front door that he would have all the answers he wanted in due course.

11:10 A.M. WEDNESDAY, MAY 12

Big Mike, Ballbuster Mike rammed his drug-filled shopping cart through the asphalt parking lot. He had swallowed a handful of Vicodins just before leaving the store and they were already starting to kick in in a big way. Going way too fast for his declining condition, he smashed his cart into a parking berm and almost careened into the rusted underbelly of a city bus but managed to check himself at the last second. As it was, he still half-skipped twice on one foot and swung his arms wildly trying to regain his balance. It all happened in slow motion to Video Mike and he heard himself yell as gravity slapped him to the ground like a soggy prune.

This is what Mike shouted: “NO CRACK ALLOWED! and then he was skidding on the blacktop on one knee in a kind of half-assed rock and roll power slide, ripping a patch of blue jeans away and tearing a chunk of skin and flesh away from his knee as well.

After that he just laid back in the parking lot. He heard the shopping cart bump into something and come to an abrupt stop. He reached down and touched his knee and his hand came away with some blood and dirt. After resting for a few minutes he sat up so he could get a better look at his knee. It wasn’t too bad, he thought. Not anything he couldn’t handle with a few Band-Aids and another handful of Vicodins.

Then he got dizzy and threw up.

He laid back down on the blacktop and promptly passed out. Soon he was snoring.

By the time he woke up and was ready to give it another try, three hours had passed and half the afternoon was gone. The sun hung raggedly as it slowly began to steal behind the Shop-n-Save.

Gingerly, Mike got to his feet, gagged at the smell of the vomit covering most of his shirt, then limped over to where his shopping cart had come to a rest against a car.

This hadn’t been the first time he had gotten sick and Video Mike knew that it certainly wouldn’t be the last, but he also knew the sickness of withdrawal was a nefarious beast like no other and he sure as hell wasn’t ever going to go through that again.

And this time he wouldn’t have to.

2:00 P.M. WEDNESDAY, MAY 12

Back before everyone had left, Mike had worked in a video store, renting out Disney classics to twelve year olds and porn to all the old guys who would hobble in around seven. Apparently seven was the masturbation hour for these guys and while all the little kiddies were at home, snuggled with their fluffy pillows on the rug, watching flying dragons or talking ants on wide-screen televisions with their brothers and sisters, all these old guys were pounding one out in front of their old CRT 19” Zeniths to women with ridiculous names and sagging, worn-out bodies.

Occasionally, on some days, Video Mike would get a visit from a film aficionado or at least someone who fancied himself or herself as one, and they would get in some decent discussions about direction and cinematography. Mike adored days like that.

Mike knew a lot about movies. They didn’t call him Mister Video for nothing.

Mike had gone to the Full Sail Film School in Orlando, Florida to learn how to be a film director. He had wanted to attend the American Film Institute in Los Angeles but since he already lived in Florida, Full Sail it was. He would have finished too and gotten a degree and made contacts within the industry and had been told by his instructors that if he got in with the right people, he could ride that ticket all the way to heaven. But then there were the drugs and alcohol that followed, even more heavily than they had before. He blew his chances. Everyone of them.

But then some say Jesus came to them in a dream, or Buddha, or Mohammad, or their God of understanding, each different for each person, squawking louder than Chicken Little himself, saying that the Mark Twain or the Charles Darwin or the Mayflower were our only saviors and how the Earth was going to burn in a fiery hell storm and no one would be spared. Mike never once had this Jesus dream but he went to bed so heavily sedated every night that he doubted that he even had one R.E.M. cycle while he slept. It didn’t surprise him that he didn’t dream. Soon it became a kind of mass hysteria and then not long after, NASA scientists actually backed them up and confirmed this. They never quite said whether it would be a asteroid collision or not. They just said that it was true and that we all needed to leave now and that was all we needed to know. And there was room, they said. There was more than enough room. For everyone. Every country had built generation ships, some more than others, and the Mark Twain was one of theirs.

Then they all left. Just like that. Preparations had been made far in advance, Big Mike suspected for it appeared that the powers that be had known for quite some time about this future incident. Years. Maybe decades. They had been prepared.

Video Mike decided to stay. He knew that he couldn’t get high where they were going and he didn’t want to go anywhere that he couldn’t get high and besides if everyone else was going anyway, that left an awful lot of cheddar lying around for him to pluck like a Thanksgiving day turkey. He supposed some others had made the same decision, maybe even for the same reasons, or had missed the boat because they had been too fucked up to make it, but so far he had seen no one else.

At least not in his town.