Chapter 52
The Interview
Wednesday, September 24, 2059
22 days to Armageddon
Leo awoke and forced his aching body to sit up in bed. His stomach gurgled, objecting to the five veggie burgers he'd eaten last night.
“Mom. He's going to eat compost next,” Lydia had complained the night before as he stuffed his face.
He checked his phone.
Mr. Osmond had sent him a text at 4:30 that morning. Meet me this morning as soon as you can. Along with an address.
It was 7:00.
After looking up the address online--it was half a mile away--he threw on some clothes and left a note for Mom.
Going to school early.
Then he headed out.
***
He wasn't sure what to expect from Mr. Osmond's residence, it was a nondescript brown house with a well-maintained lawn and a couple of shade trees. One of those stupid billboards stood nearby, with the boy jumping in the air.
“THE ONE WITH THE MOST WINS”
What the hell did that billboard mean? The most what?
He knocked on the door to Mr. Osmond's house.
The door opened immediately, and Leo was dragged inside.
“Electronics,” Mr. Osmond mouthed.
Knowing the drill from yesterday, Leo handed him his watch and cellphone. These in hand, Mr. Osmond led him into a small study. From his wrinkled shirt and tie, bags under the man's eyes, empty mug of coffee at his desk, and the numerous handwritten notes on a large corkboard, it was clear he'd been up all night.
There were footsteps. “Ollie,” a voice called. “Are you up already?”
Mr. Osmond stuck Leo's electronics in a metal box next to his desk. “Go back to bed, Mom. I've been up for a while,” he said, looking tired and exasperated. “And please call me Mr. Osmond in front of my students.”
An old woman in a green nightgown poked her head inside the study. She looked worried. “Would you and your guest like some coffee or breakfast?”
“I could use some,” Leo said, trying not to laugh. “As long as it's not soybean based.”
“Eggs and bacon, okay?”
“Yes. Please,” Leo answered.
“I'm doing some very important and time-sensitive research, Mom. I would appreciate some privacy.”
“Okay, Ollie,” she said, entering the study. “But first one thing.” She grabbed Mr. Osmond by his tie and yanked him into the hallway. Leo listened to the two from his seat in the study.
“Did you mortgage the house?” she hissed. “Why didn't you say anything? It's all your dad left us.”
“Yes, Mom. I mortgaged the house,” Mr. Osmond responded. “I didn't tell you because I knew you'd be upset. But I have a very good reason for doing so, and we are not going to lose the house. You need to trust me, and for god's sake quit taking Bio-Blessed.”
“Don't you change the subject on me,” she snapped. “I really hope you know what you're doing, Ollie. Your father had a gambling problem and I hope that's not what this is.”
“It's not!” Mr. Osmond responded. “I know what I'm doing. You need to leave me alone and give us some privacy!” He pulled away from her, reentered the study, and slammed the door in her face.
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“Whew,” Mr. Osmond sat down in front of Leo. “I'd tell Mom the world is ending, but I don't think she'd take it well. I've called in sick to work,” he faked a cough, “and I may have mentioned that you caught the same illness. Now, Leo, I've been going over your tapes and I have a lot of questions.,”
“Okay, Ollie,” Leo said, suppressing a grin.
“Let's keep things formal, Leo,” Mr. Osmond responded. “And Ollie is short for Oliver.”
“By the way, do you have any idea what those stupid 'The One With the Most Wins' billboards mean? I see them everywhere, but nobody knows what they're for.”
Mr. Osmond sighed and shook his head. “I have no idea what those generic inspirational billboards mean, or why they showed up around the time we think the aliens arrived two years ago. But I recently learned something very interesting. The boy on the billboard jumping in the air is wearing a digital watch. It's hard to tell without getting up close or by using a telescope, but through some gimmick, every ten hours the watch on that boy's wrist moves forward a minute. That watch is currently at 23:14, which is military time for 11:14 pm. You'll never guess when it reaches midnight.”
“October 16th?” Leo responded.
“Bingo. At exactly 5:00 that morning.”
“Shit,” Leo said.
“Now, let's go back to your recordings. At the beginning of the Change, October 16th, you went to school. Afflicted monsters attacked. You escaped and went home. Your home was empty. And then?”
“As you can imagine, I was in shock at that point,” Leo said. “The first thing I did was eat my parents' Bio-Blessed stash.”
“A large stash?”
“Very,” Leo answered. “Someone told my parents there would be a price increase days before, so they bought a bunch. And I ate it all in one sitting. Didn't get sick or anything. I had no idea what I was doing or what was going on. Things went downhill from there. Over the next day, I could feel my body change. It wasn't painful, but creepy as hell.”
“So you became a monster with a soul? Like one of those lame TV shows.”
“Not a monster,” Leo responded. “Damaged. Stronger and faster than a human. But damaged.”
“Physical deformations that made your life more difficult, but ultimately allowed you to survive fifty years, to see humans go extinct.”
“Pretty much,” Leo said, feeling very tired.
“Interesting,” Mr. Osmond responded. “Moving forward. Three days after the change, you arrive at the makeshift shelter at the city stadium, where you lived for a short time. What happened to the shelter?”
“I'm not sure,” Leo said. “I spent two and a half weeks in that stadium. My only friend, Trent, killed himself in the first week, so I spent most of that time alone, fighting to survive. There were thirty implant-wearers in the shelter that I knew of. Real implant-wearers. Not failures like me. Some of the Bosses--there were maybe one hundred Low-Level Bosses and three High-Level in the city back then--wanted to meet with these implant-wearers. To form some kind of truce or alliance. The implant-wearers left the shelter for the meeting. I don't know what happened: If they were stupid, or maybe tricked and out-smarted. All I know is they didn't come back. The next day, someone said Bosses were using piles of cars and rubble to block the city exits, to keep people inside. I figured it was time to get the hell out of the city.”
There was a quiet knock on the study door. Mr. Osmond opened the door enough to take a tray of food from his mother and closed it again.
Mr. Osmond helped himself to the thermos of hot coffee and took a sip. “On the subject of food. Why do they have to eat humans? What do they have against pork?” He grabbed a piece of bacon from his plate and started chewing.
“They do eat pork,” Leo said. “They eat anything. But human protein is the only thing that satisfies some basic need. Like crack cocaine for an addict. The longer they go without human protein, the worse the need becomes. I've seen Afflicted jump off cliffs because they saw a human at the bottom. They would kill themselves to get at their next meal.” Leo took a large bite of his scrambled eggs.
“You talk about how the powerful Bosses tended to settle in cities. Tell me about that. How does that work?”
“If there's a hell, I imagine it would be like one of those Boss-run cities,” Leo said. “I was never in one, for which I'm extremely thankful, but I spoke to people who'd escaped.” Leo sipped some coffee and kept eating the eggs. Mr. Osmond's mom was a great cook. He wondered if he could get seconds? “On one hand, the Bosses kept the cities free of other Afflicted, so there was some safety, but every few days a certain number of humans would be selected based on a system determining their worth to the city. Dead humans were eaten first, but after that, old people, the sick, cripples. The number of people selected to be eaten kept going up. Sometimes it would take years, but the Bosses would eat all the old and sick, and then move on to young men, women, kids, and pregnant women. Bosses really couldn't help themselves. They must have realized what eating up their food supply would mean, but they couldn't stop.” Leo shivered, no longer hungry.
“So what did their eating up their food supply mean? Would they die?”
“I don't know for sure. One of the shelters I lived in captured some Afflicted, trying to work on a cure. What they concluded is the Afflicted can survive on normal food, but without human protein, Afflicted go completely insane. They had to keep the Afflicted in padded cells because they would bash their own brains in by beating their heads against the cell walls. They would eventually reach the point where they'd tear chunks of flesh from their own bodies, eating themselves alive.”
“That's grim,” Mr. Osmond said. “So you think the lack of humans to eat would drive them all insane?”
“I saw it happen,” Leo said. “Huge High-Level Bosses fighting each other to the death over scraps of human remains. My guess is once humans were gone, the surviving Bosses would all go completely insane from their need for human protein. And good riddance.”
The questions continued, going on and on. Leo's voice became hoarse from talking. Mr. Osmond's mom brought them lunch and, later on, dinner.