Story code: ST-001649
Part 3: The Quota
Elias’s knees hit the submerged concrete of the street gutter with a bone-jarring crack. The massive block of dead weight slammed into his forearms, driving his torso downward into the icy, flooded asphalt. He tried frantically to cradle the payload against his chest, desperate to keep the contents out of the oily sludge, but the momentum was violently heavy. His chin struck the pavement, splashing a wave of freezing water into his eyes. The ruined cardboard completely disintegrated over his shoulders, falling away like wet paper mache.
The clear inner shipping plastic, stretched far beyond its breaking point, snapped with a sharp, audible pop.
Heavy, matte-black rolls spilled out from Elias’s desperate grip. They tumbled into the rushing rainwater of the street gutter, splashing heavy arcs of brown water into the air. The sharp, metallic clatter of heavy-duty industrial zippers striking the pavement rang out sharply over the drumming storm.
Above him, the homeowner flinched back. The rifle’s barrel wavered, dipping slightly as the man’s defensive stance faltered. “What… what is that?” he stammed, his terrified bravado instantly evaporating as he stared at the dark, dense shapes unrolling in the harsh glare of the floodlights.
Elias remained on his knees. His burning, bleeding hands hovered uselessly over the spilled vinyl. For a long, agonizing second, his frantic, manic need to protect the boxes-to keep the delivery pristine for the demonstration at the statehouse tomorrow-shattered. He had treated the shipment like it was sacred, terrified of disrespecting the memory of what they represented. Now, they were in the mud. The desecration felt complete.
But as the freezing rain beaded and rolled harmlessly off the thick, waterproof vinyl, a terrifying, absolute calm washed over him. The bags weren’t ruined. They were built for far worse than rain. They were built for the darkest reality imaginable.
Elias grabbed the loose edge of the nearest roll. With a sudden, violent yank, he ripped the remaining plastic wrapping away entirely.
The heavy black material unfurls with a loud snap, laying flat across the flooded gutter.
It was a cadaver pouch. Pitch black, double-stitched vinyl, with a heavy silver zipper running straight down the center.
And it was small. Barely four feet long.
The homeowner took a shaky step backward, the AR-15 drooping toward the asphalt. The red laser dot slid off Elias’s jacket and disappeared into a puddle. “Are those… are those body bags?”
Elias didn’t answer immediately. He tore into the ruined remnants of the box, throwing handfuls of wet cardboard aside to expose the other tightly wound bundles. Fifty in total, divided across the three misdelivered shipments. He had bought every single one of them.
Elias looked up. For the first time, he looked past the blinding halogen lights and the weapon, truly looking at the terrified man’s face. He took in the graying hair, the shape of the jaw, the manicured presentation of the man standing on the curb of the 404 address.
Elias’s breath caught in his throat. The cosmic, sickening irony of the misdelivery hit him like a physical blow. He hadn’t just come to the wrong house. The universe had dragged him exactly where he needed to be.
“Gary,” Elias whispered, the name tasting like ash on his tongue. He climbed slowly to his feet, entirely indifferent to the rifle. Water poured from his dark jacket. “Your wife called you Gary on the phone.”
“Don’t move,” the man warned, trying to raise the gun again, but his hands were shaking uncontrollably now.
“Is that what you go by in this neighborhood?” Elias took a heavy, splashing step toward the curb, closing the distance. “Is that your middle name? Does going by Gary help you forget what Derek Vance does at the office?”
The man froze. All the remaining color drained from his face in the stark white light. The rifle sagged in his grip, his defensive posture crumbling into sudden, naked shock. “How… who are you?”
“We both know your name is Derek,” Elias roared, his voice tearing out of his throat, drowning out the thunder. “Derek Vance! Regional Director of Distribution for Kinsley Pharmaceuticals!”
Derek backed up onto the curb, stumbling slightly over the concrete lip.
Elias kicked the unfurled, child-sized body bag at Derek’s feet. The heavy vinyl splashed muddy water violently against Derek’s rubber boots.
“This is what fifty looks like, Derek!” Elias screamed, the raw, suffocating agony of the last year finally exploding out of him. He pointed a trembling, bleeding finger at the black rolls scattered in the flooded street. “Look at them! You wanted to know what I was taking? I ordered these! To dump in your corporate lobby tomorrow morning! I didn’t know the delivery driver was going to drop them right on your front porch, but God, it makes sense now!”
Derek took another step back, looking down at the small black pouch, his breathing shallow and rapid. “I… I don’t…”
“Fifty!” Elias screamed, taking another step up onto the curb, forcing Derek to backpedal onto his meticulously manicured lawn. “Fifty kids in this county alone, Derek! Just this year! And you pushed the distribution quotas up another twelve percent last quarter! Four hundred thousand pills pumped into a town of twelve thousand people!”
“I don’t set the medical guidelines,” Derek stammed, his voice weak and reedy, the AR-15 now hanging completely useless at his side like a dead weight. “I just… we just supply the pharmacies. It’s the doctors-”
“You incentivized the clinics!” Elias tore his jacket open, his chest heaving, the icy rain washing the blood from his raw knuckles. “You signed the bonus structures! My son was sixteen! Sixteen years old with a torn rotator cuff from baseball, and your reps pushed the doctors to prescribe a fatal dose as a baseline!”
The wail of approaching sirens grew deafeningly loud, echoing off the brick facades of the wealthy neighborhood, but Elias didn’t care. He reached down into the gutter, grabbed another heavy bundle of child-sized bags, and violently hurled it onto Derek’s porch.
“Pick it up!” Elias screamed, tears mixing with the freezing rain on his face. “Pick it up and feel how heavy it is, Derek! Open it up and see how small it is! Look at what your bonuses paid for!”
Derek didn’t move, entirely trapped in the harsh glare of his own security lights, staring down at the heavy black rolls littering his flooded driveway, utterly unable to look Elias in the eye.