Speedfitters: The Rise and Fall of Wineston Cupp

By Scott Sweer

     

       

     SpeedFitters arrives at an accident scene before an ambulance, deciding if your limbs will be re-attached. No insurance? No problem. Can't pay your deductible? No problem. Your limbs are sold off, but you get shiny-new SpeedFitters prosthetic at a 10% discount!

A parts reclamation agent for SpeedFitters, Steven Kelly, works shootings and car accidents, slopping up limbs to keep a roof over his head. He wants the American dream, ridding himself of his divorced, one-room apartment existence.

     With an abundance of limbs, the mean streets of Chicago have been good to Steven. And when he meets Lisa, true love has found him for the first time… The American dream is within his grasp.

     Chicago's windy city politics derail everything. A new government institutes sweeping laws, reducing speed limits on expressways below 100 mph and increasing police presence to reduce shootings.

     It won't be long before the bank takes Steven's house once the parts pool dries up. And the back luck keeps coming--SpeedFitters cuts his health insurance, putting his new baby's kidney transplant on hold. Only a criminal boss--who's decided to process his competition--can save Steven's American dream. Is it an offer he can't refuse?

  

   

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Sweer
• Release date: Jan 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201785567

Book preview

Chapter 1

Ishove a one-fingered greeting at some lawyer-looking asshole in a green convertible, cutting across my van in downtown traffic.

Pulling up to the red light at my favorite intersection in all of Chicago, Superior Street & Michigan Avenue, he ducks down as I glare at him and races off through the green... I was right—he’s an asshole.

Checking my mirrors as I back, I put my passenger-side tires on the sidewalk next to Mont Claire, another snobby store I can’t afford.

I take a swig of whiskey from a tarnished silver flask and glance down at my clean baby blue coveralls—If this uniform isn't painted with dried blood by the end of the day, I starve.

I came across this fishin' hole by dumb luck, driving south on Michigan Avenue, when a doorman outside this place waved me down.

A rich woman, escorted to her limo by security, had someone try to snatch her shopping bags.

The security guard stepped between, getting his arm shot off at the elbow.

I kept him from bleeding to death, but the woman was pissed that no one found her shopping bags.

Since then, Mont Clavire lets me park on their sidewalk for fifteen minutes at a time until they shoo me away.

No one ever wants me around and having SpeedFitters in black letters plastered along the side of a white van doesn't help. 

Shoppers have their faces glued to phones, trying to drink coffee, clinging to their bags. ­Half of them acknowledge Don't Walk, while the other half become my bread and butter. For the shoppers who never give a shit about looking both ways before crossing Michigan Avenue... I wait.

Most vehicles don't race up and down Michigan Avenue fast enough to rip off body parts.

When a shopper tries to cross and gets hit, they usually tumble up into the engine compartment. I end up untangling a limb, doing a patch job or deciding to sever the limb completely, freeing it from the engine.

I get an hourly rate for patch jobs—involving a stitch gun and gauze, but a complete sever gets me full pay, then the rest of the day's gravy as I've met my daily quota of an arm or leg.

I've always liked the idea of paying my bills in a timely fashion. But never enjoyed watching an arm ripped off by some asshole that's decided they need to beat a stale green.

Oh Christ, some blind guy's trying to cross Michigan Avenue during a green.

With SUVs racing around him, I turn the van on, tapping the touch screen on my dash, engaging the parts containment unit—It won't be long now.

Part of me is rooting for this blind guy to make it across the street. My other part, the money-hungry one, knows that if nothing happens, I'll be stuck out here all day.

Maybe I should help him.

Shit, there are way too many vehicles racing through this intersection right now.

My luck, I'd get my ass killed, then someone else would be cashing in on my parts.

Jesus, this guy's holding his arm out in the middle of the intersection, waiting for someone to help him across as SUVs continue to veer around him.

Traffic stops, leaving him frozen with fear in the middle of the intersection.

I roll my window down, Hey, you can cross now! Hurry before you get treads on your face!

An older, well-dressed, African American woman runs into the intersection, grabbing his outstretched arm, and leading him across seconds before traffic continues.

She's stomping toward my van.

Wow is she giving me the stink-eye! I was gonna help, but I'm not risking my life to jump into that traffic. She taps on my window with her ring hand, and I roll it down.

Taking a deep breath, sticking her bony finger in my face, unloading, You asshole! You saw the whole damn thing and could have helped him! You're all the same! A bunch of goddamn vultures waiting for a kill!

Aw, pipe down, would ya. I yelled at the guy when it was okay to cross.

She slaps my hood, You could have gotten off your dead ass and helped him!

The woman stomps away, flipping me off as I close my window.

Rusty breaks radio silence, Turtle Fuck, I've got a field call for you out in Schaumburg.

He loves to remind me that I'm the slowest driver in the whole company, saying I'm slower than two turtles fuckin' in January... I think he's worn out the whole turtle thing.

Yeah, go ahead, Rusty.

I've entered the coordinates into your van, so you can go on autopilot and jerk off if you want.

Where am I goin'?

Phone World outside Mill Road Mall. They've got that Black Friday sale going on, and someone just got their arm shot off.

I tap the autopilot button on my dash screen. The van starts on its own, easing forward until its tires drop off the curb.

Maybe I should start driving more instead of letting my van do it...extra free time always makes me contemplate my fucked-up life choices.

Chapter 2

Dad would always say , College is for rich kids, knowing he would have to sell everything for either my brother or me to go, and it wasn't fair for them to make that kind of sacrifice.

Besides, I always got shitty grades and never saw the value of education; it would've been money wasted.

After graduation, we had a career fair, and the usual recruiters were there: military, police, and corrections. These are all the jobs that people like me, the C students, are destined to fill. 

The first person I talked to was a military recruiter. He had videos showing the exotic places I'd be traveling to while on duty. But in 2030, when I graduated (just barely), the North African Freedom Sweep was in full swing. A thousand body bags coming home each month didn't make his option an attractive one.

The second table had law enforcement, who didn’t work too hard corralling students. They knew their job wasn't any better than a soldier’s: cops getting picked off in patrol cars became an epidemic in the late '20s.

A recruiter who worked for the prison system was my final option. She tried to explain how I would be helping people better themselves, re-introducing them into society. If it hadn't been for a prison riot that killed fifteen correctional officers only weeks before graduation, I would be a correctional officer today.

A late arrival at a once-empty card table gave me new hope.

My name's Russ Diedeck, he announced while I took a seat.

He had a buzz-cut with dyed-red hair and a weathered face. Holding a cigarette with one hand and sipping from a foam cup of coffee in the other is why Russ never offered to shake my hand.

Russ was a recruiter for reclamation officers and explained the details of this newly created occupation. I would be the first to arrive on an accident scene, administer first-aid, and collect separated limbs, rushing them to the nearest hospital.

Insisting that I call him Rusty. He went on forever about his twenty-something years as a medic...mostly about Afghanistan, patching people together after they'd been blown apart. Finally, he told me, Don't believe the bullshit from those assholes, pointing at the other tables, grinning.

He talked the whole time, but I was okay with listening, along as his burnt cigarette breath pointed east, and I took my breaths from the west.

Rusty never sugarcoated what the job was, which probably attracted me to it. I liked the idea of helping people and knowing I would have a guaranteed job after only six weeks of training was icing on the cake.

I enjoyed my first few years of the job, relocating to Chicago, and the pay was good. I was newly married with a baby on the way, able to build a house and buy a new car.

Everything changed. SpeedFitters decided to link people's limbs with their ability to pay: if you don't have the proper insurance to stitch your parts back on, they get sold off.

Half the time, people can afford to have their parts re-attached, and the other half become halved.

How many people can afford to pay ten thousand in deductible before insurance kicks in?

This changed everyone's perception of my job forever. No longer the knight in shining armor, I would be the vulture picking your bones.

People who can't afford the reattachment of their limbs create a need for arm and leg prosthetics.

Hospitals, insurance companies, gun manufacturers, and parts reclamation companies fought over this newly created market—SpeedFitters was quickest on the draw, capturing over fifty percent.

The more I drive around Chicago, the more I see SpeedFitters black, carbon-steel prosthetics... Somewhere, a kid is playing baseball with a SpeedFitters leg. Somewhere, a woman is carrying groceries to her car with two SpeedFitters arms. Somewhere a guy is walking dogs with SpeedFitters arms and legs.

Rusty loves to remind us how successful our company is when we see people walking around wearing our prosthetics. I think we've gone way beyond helping people.

Everything now amounts to a big corporate circle-jerk. Manufacturers make guns that blast off parts; the hospitals sell or re-attach the parts while insurance companies sell expensive policies, so only the rich can keep their parts. And my company, SpeedFitters, is in the middle of the whole mess, scraping up what's left. I guess ­I shouldn't bitch about job security.

Chapter 3

Reaching past the pack of smokes on my dash, I snag my foil-wrapped breakfast burrito, which has been warming over the defrost vent. The van, pushing past 100 mph, weaves through westbound expressway traffic.

Unwrapping the foil and taking my first bite tells me I should have gotten the one without hot sauce. The burrito leads a trail of fire toward my stomach, which is still full of last night's gin and juice.

Most people are good at getting out of the way when my van flashes its overhead yellow lights, but there's always one asshole who won't move, like this son of a bitch.

My van lays on the horn for me, moving the dipshit and his boat-of-an-SUV to the right. Flashing yellow lights is such bullshit. I need red like ambulances. Hell, I save people too, don't I?

Before they shot up these speed limits, I couldn't imagine driving way out to Schaumburg from downtown for one call. Shit, back in the day, this run would have taken an hour each way. Now, while eating my breakfast burrito with the speedometer pushing past 110 mph—I'll be there in fifteen minutes.

I rewrap the remaining half of the burrito, tossing it onto the dash with enough time to take a drag off a cigarette.

Pulling off Mill Road into an unmarked mall entrance, an oversized security guard in a green Mill Road Mall golf cart waits in a parking spot. He flails his flabby arms toward the Phone World entrance. I yell at the fat man through the windshield, I'm not gonna get lost, dipshit! Everyone can see Phone World from the expressway!

Mill Road Mall, which looks like a cement X from the air, has been open for over seventy years. Most stores closed about twenty years ago, with HomeStyle being the last to leave. There are still a few restaurants in the food court, while offices have filled all the available space. This place isn't much of a mall anymore. They should drop that part of the name.

Phone World's the only store left standing, which doesn't surprise me. People have always been more obsessed with their phones than each other.

The golf cart leads me through the parking lot toward the front entrance of Phone World with its textured cement face and pillars every ten feet. A neon-lit, blue-rimmed globe with red Phone World lettering dangles above enormous glass double doors.

I pull two wheels onto the curb near the entrance, leaving the yellow flashers on. The golf cart continues, taking a left, disappearing between buildings.

A large crowd of teenagers surrounds my van as I jump out. I hate gawkers. Don't you damned kids have homes?

A young, brown-haired girl pushes through the crowd, frantically yanking at my arm, You gotta help Staci! They shot her arm off!

I place my hand on her shoulder, It's okay... I'm here. Go back and keep your friend calm for me.

The girl parts through the crowd, crouching to her friend near the entrance. The victim's wearing a white parka drenched with blood while someone's placed a large yellow Phone World blanket beneath her. Jesus, she looks the same age as my daughter.

I fling open the rear van doors, pressing one of the cartridge release buttons on the humming containment unit, detaching an arm cartridge with a puff of air. Made of plexiglass with steel framing, it slowly slides out. Four feet long and one foot squared, full of sloshing, blue preservative fluid, I grab it by the top handle with one hand, lugging it around to the open side door.

I reach for my first aid kit, which is nothing more than an oversized black duffle bag while gripping onto the sloshing arm cartridge. Shit, when I was younger, I could yank both of these around like nothing. I’m leaving this damned cartridge in the van until I need it.

Parting through the teen gawkers, I reach the victim and her kneeling friend. I crouch down, placing the first aid bag at the victim's feet.

Sitting next to the victim, I notice that the jackass shot her arm off—white coat and all—above the elbow. She's lost a ton of blood, but someone was smart enough to use a black leather belt, tightening it over the blood-drenched coat as a tourniquet, which saved her. A well-bloodied, yellow, Phone World towel covers whatever's left of her upper arm.

She strokes away blood from the victim's blond hair with paper towels as she slowly opens her eyes, It's okay, Staci. He's gonna help you.

Searching through the crowd of gawkers, I look for the hero with no belt holding up their pants, hoping they have the other half to this kid's arm because I don't see it anywhere. The gawkers blankly stare back as I reach into my first aid kit, looking for the pocket that holds fast-acting Oxycodone. My hand comes out with a dime-sized wafer of the stuff, and I pass it to the friend. I still can't believe this girl's conscious after all the blood she's lost.

Place that under her tongue. It'll melt, killing the pain.

Open your mouth, Staci.

Staci slowly complies, and her friend places the wafer under her tongue.

I slowly peel away the bloodied towel, exposing what's left of her upper arm. It's crazy how body blasters can shear off a limb so clean as if surgeons designed the bullets.

Seeing a circle of bone surrounded by torn flesh doesn't bother me much. I'm a butcher constantly working with meat. But the age of my victims, who seem to be growing younger by the day, tears me up.

While wearing surgical gloves, I apply an antiseptic gel to the exposed area and search through my bag for an arm cap, retrieving the one I want. Because it looks like a six-inch diameter black condom in a square wrapper, its packaging brings snickers from the teenage gawkers.

Tearing the wrapper, I roll the cap over the exposed area and upper arm. Taking a small rubber hose from the first aid kit, I insert it in the arm cap inlet, running the other end to the rear of the cartridge—which I forgot in the van.

Returning with the arm cartridge, I install the other end into its rear compressor unit and press the inflate button. It hums to life, expanding the arm cap, and stops once it's finished. It looks like a go-cart inner tube wrapped around her upper arm. I release the leather belt.

There, that shouldn't come off, I say, doing a final tug on the cap, checking its seal.

A skinny African American teenage girl, wearing a turquoise Phone World polo, struggling to hold up her tan khakis with her left hand, is grasping a large red and white Phone World cooler with her right. She rests the cooler next to the first aid bag.

I put the arm in here, she says.

Good thinkin', kid.

Smiling at her, I nod at the hero that saved the day with her quick thinking. She deserves the Employee of the Month parking spot forever. I return the black leather belt to its rightful owner.

Reaching into the cooler, I pull out a plastic-wrapped pale gray arm, unraveling the plastic.

Open sesame, I say, as this simple command unseals the arm cartridge with a wisp of air, lifting the cover slowly. I love these new voice-activated cartridges, especially when my arms are loaded with blood-drenched parts.

Carefully placing the arm in the cartridge, I watch it sink slowly into the clear blue preservative. Once my hands are free, the cartridge’s lid swings closed, sealing automatically. Its compressor motor engages, pumping and circulating the blue fluid as I watch through the plexiglass.

A small screen on the side of the victim's arm cap flashes O+ followed by the number 3.

Pushing through the teen gawkers to the van, I grab three one-pint bags of O+ blood from a small refrigerator next to the containment unit.

Returning through the teen gawkers—which is starting to piss me off!—to the victim's side, I retrieve three tubes from my first aid bag, attaching one end of each to the blood and the other to the arm cap. A pump in the arm cap switches on as I hold the bags above the victim. The tubes fill with life-giving blood, saving this girl, one of the few rewarding things left in this shitty job.

I clutch my spinning head, Shit, I don't feel so good.

Leaning against the double door entrance, I clutch the near-empty pints of blood. I puke—The overly spicy breakfast burrito and last night's gin & juice stream down the lower half of the double doors, residing in a pool. The crowd lets out a collective groan. Some cover their mouths and flee. A bloody arm stump doesn't bother them, but breakfast burrito puke does?

Still clutching the nearly empty blood bags, I wipe my chin on my coverall sleeve and return to the victim's side. The friend continues stroking Staci's blond hair. The heroic teen manager already has a yellow mop bucket at the entrance.

Your friend's gonna be fine now. The ambulance will be here in about ten minutes to take her to the hospital.

The friend asks me, Are you okay?

I should'a had cereal instead of a breakfast burrito this morning.

Staci whispers to her friend, who leans in and shakes her head.

Don't worry about that, Staci.

Is she still in pain?

No, she wants to know who stole her new holographic phone.

I slowly slide the full arm cartridge into the containment unit. It engages, locking it in place with a click. 

A zit-faced, blond-headed kid pokes his head around the rear doors, That's pretty fuckin' cool! You must get paid a shitload!

I shake my head while slamming the rear doors, Kid, I've got advice for you. If your parents have the dough to send you to college, go and finish. You don't have to deal with bullshit like this in an office.

Pushing past the snoopy kid, I hop back into my van. He walks past my window, sneering, flipping me off. Fine, he thinks I'm the asshole-of-the-day. Maybe, I am. Or maybe, I've just saved one kid from fucking his life up.

I tap the call button on the dash screen, Locked and loaded, Rusty. Goin' auto-pilot for BestSelf.

Rusty pipes in with only audio, I've scheduled Ken Barac's before BestSelf. They don't need that girl's arm for reattachment surgery, so you'll have time for another stop. I've entered the new coordinates into your van.

Sounds good. Ten-four.

The van starts, easing off the curb, and coasts through the parking lot. I'll let the van handle driving while I hold my churning stomach, wishing I had something to calm it. I have a van full of drugs that’ll knock you out, but nothing for a hangover.

I lit up, raising my cigarette hand, acknowledging the driver of an ambulance racing past. That fucking asshole didn't even wave back, or nod, or anything. Don't we have some kind of brotherhood like cops?

Cruising past Ken Barac’s endless rainbow rows of glimmering new German SUVs, I drool. Stopping next to one of these SUVs would get me roundly dismissed by every salesperson on the lot. When I started this account, they hounded me but gave up once they found out I finalized my divorce. They all know my credit is shit.

A lot guy power washes a sweet-lookin’ red SUV as I cruise past. It’s always the German ones that cut me off in traffic, carrying around assholes that can afford it... I’d love to have one.

With his black tailored suit, colorful tie flipping in the wind, well-groomed salt & pepper hair, and brightened teeth, Jerry Reader, the sales manager, waits at the side entrance of Ken Barac's enormous glass and steel showroom. He's the perfect salesman because his smile never gets ruffled, even when people tell him, Fuck off, we're just looking.

I put the van in park, and before I can even shut the engine off, Jerry flings open my driver's door, We had a huge week, Steven! I think all the cartridges are full!

Ahh, I think you're full of shit, Jerry. We might have to check this out.

Jerry races to the entrance, leading me inside between the scurry of customers and salespeople.

Ken Barac's is the largest dealership in all of Chicago, an enormous, all-glass showroom that’s a palace of prosperity. It's a never-ending series of mahogany cubicles with crazy artwork hanging from the ceiling and Greek-looking marble statues resting on a multi-colored carpet that seems to match everything perfectly. 

Skylights accent six assorted, sticker-new exotics surrounded by a lounge of overly plush maroon furniture. A screen hangs from the ceiling, playing an endless loop of SUV commercials next to a stand-alone, brass, voice-activated coffee machine that can make any fancy-ass drink you tell it.

As I continue to follow Jerry, all these elegant things remind me to use the service entrance next time. But, in this brightly lit showroom, everyone seems too busy to notice my blood-stained baby blue coveralls, except for a smartly dressed woman and her toddler son.

I'm still surprised, glancing around at all the richer-than-shit people, why Jerry would want one of our X-25s. Then I remember why I'm here: Ken Barac's used lot stretches across two football fields.

I love our X-25 because it can process arms and legs into cartridges without an ounce of spilled blood. These guys love them because they help people who aren't richer-than-shit make a down payment on something used.

I caress the lines of a midnight blue Vesperm SUV, following Jerry into a smaller maze of mahogany-walled cubicles. I've always hated walking through offices wearing these blood-stained coveralls. These people don't give a shit that I just saved some girl's life. I'm a garbage man coming to pick up their trash.

A jackass here asked me to take a look at a backed-up toilet until I told him my coverall stains were from dried blood, not shit.

Jerry leads me through the last of the mahogany cubicles, past smartly dressed people who acknowledge him with all their special greetings and winks, turning toward their screens as I pass. We reach the rear, stopping in front of a set of mahogany doors.

We had to put your equipment in the supply room because of some complaints.

I swing open the doors as LED-ceiling lights flip on, illuminating mahogany shelves of office supplies and the polished steel shine from the X-25, our best parts reclamation model.

Hiding in this dark supply room, it's a beautiful piece of modern engineering, which processes arms and legs in minutes, replacing them with SpeedFitters black carbon-steel prosthetics. Women sometimes prefer glitter-pink prosthetics if we have them in stock.

Its height reaches my chest as I caress the steel top, looking for dents and then examining the six-foot squared side panels by hand. I run my fingers around the inside of the circular arm and leg inlets, all eight of them, checking the rubber seals further inside. Any damage anywhere can disrupt the settings of the internal blades—not a scratch. 

The eight-foot-wide front of the machine has four circular arm inlets, all one foot in diameter, evenly spaced along the top row, allowing a person to sit in front of the machine sticking their arm inside up