Chapter 56

Belly of the Beast

As soon as Leo stepped into the cafeteria, Brick and his cronies surrounded him.

Leo sighed. Now what?

“Hey Leo,” Brick said, “there's a rumor going around that the world's going to end on October 16th.”

“Who told you that?” Leo asked, curious.

“Word is going around,” Brick continued, “that on October 16th, those implant wearers are going to turn into monsters and eat everybody.”

“Like that bitch we met last Monday,” Left Crony said.

“Yeah,” Brick said. “If I'd known that bitch was an implant wearer, I wouldn't have held back. I'd have pounded her ass.”

“We got her in that video at least,” Right Crony said with a chuckle.

“Do you believe the world's going to end?” Leo asked.

“No. But it occurred to me that somebody might be thinking if the world ends on the 16th, they won't have to pay me anything on the 17th.”

“I can see how it might look that way,” Leo said. “I promise I'll pay you the money, even if the world ends the day before.”

“You'd better. Because if you don't, we'll hunt you down.”

“Hey, somebody left cupcakes,” Left Crony said.

Leo saw Charlotte walking away.

“Grab them,” Brick said. “They're ours now and I'm hungry.”

“We got four cupcakes, you want one, Leo?” Brick asked.

Leo nodded. It was all he could do not to laugh. “Sure.”

“Well, fuck you. You're not getting shit until we get our money. Now go away.” Brick extended his middle finger in Leo's face.

“Fine,” Leo said. He turned and walked away, joining Jason and his new friends, ignoring the chatter as they argued about something in their DUD game.

Brick and his cronies ate the cupcakes, Brick, in particular, making a big show of stuffing one cupcake into his mouth after the other, chewing with his mouth open, smirking to make sure Leo knew what he was missing.

As soon as they'd finished, the three ran from the cafeteria. Leo suppressed a chuckle, imagining the bullies in the bathroom with Charlotte's ex-lax cupcakes going through their systems. Considering Brick had eaten two of the four cupcakes, Leo imagined it would be particularly bad for him.

But Brick was by far the least of his problems. If an early bloomer Afflicted was eating children, it needed to be dealt with. The question was how? He knew what he should do. See if Trent's police friends could look into it. File an anonymous report telling them he saw someone make their wrist glow violet or something. That would get them to investigate and hopefully find something. That was the safe option. But there was a good chance the police wouldn't kill the monster, and he needed the experience and Demon Tears to gain a better character class.

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Unfortunately, before The Change, you couldn't go around killing people just because they were child-eating monsters. And though Imp told him there was a child-eating monster in that area, he had no idea who. Killing the wrong person would be bad for obvious reasons. Then there was the question of could he kill an Afflicted with his current stats? Fifty years from now in the previous future, he could have killed this thing in his sleep, but he was currently a twelve-year-old boy, and Afflicted were fast and dangerous. He needed to investigate.

When school ended, he went home and got supplies. He also changed into old clothes and shoes. Mom was sleeping, so it was easy enough to grab some stuff and leave again. He'd wondered how best to investigate this monster until he realized that since he was a kid, he could use himself as bait and the monster should come to him.

He wandered around the neighborhood where he'd received the quest. A drone followed him. This presented yet another problem. If he got caught on drone camera killing this monster, he suspected the authorities would be unsympathetic to his “but it was a child-eating monster” defense.

He sighed. This situation was far from ideal. But he wasn't about to back out either. All he could do was complete Imp's quest and hope for the best.

He knocked on the door of the house where he thought he'd seen an Afflicted's shadow. Nothing happened. He rang the bell a couple of times and knocked again.

A curtain moved. Several seconds later, the door opened.

Leo forced himself to smile, though it was all he could do to not turn and run.

Anyone who hadn't spent fifty years in a post-apocalyptic hellhole would see a lady, albeit an older lady who'd spent a lot of money on Bio-Blessed and looked far younger than she should. A woman who could have passed for her thirties, but who wore a thick baggy red sweater over a long baggy skirt. Old lady clothes. There were the vestiges of an old-woman smell, and he saw a walker in the corner of the darkened room behind her.

But the monster's blue-gray eyes had a slight red tinge. She wore black gloves, no doubt to conceal thick, sharp fingernails at the ends of long fingers. Her shoes were too large for someone her size, again to conceal longer feet with thick sharp toenails. Her arms and legs were longer than they should be, and she moved with the fluid grace of a predator.

“Uh, I'm collecting donations for our school's marching band,” Leo said. He was pretty sure his school didn't have a marching band, but she didn't need to know that.

The monster's lips pulled upward further than they should have been able to in a facsimile of a smile, lips covering her teeth, to conceal their length and sharpness.

“Oh you poor boy,” she said. “You look cold. Would you like to come in? I'm making hot chocolate, and I'd love to donate to your marching band.”

“Okay,” he said.

He followed her inside.

What really gave the Afflicted away was the smell. A sick, sour smell most people wouldn't notice, but sensitized as he was to the Afflicted, the scent was overpowering and made him feel sick.

The monster led Leo through a darkened room and equally dark hallway. He kept a smile plastered on his face as she brought him to her kitchen and sat him at the table. Grabbing a red teakettle from the stove, she poured hot water into a mug that had pictures of cats on it and the words “Cat Lover.” He saw no sign of any cats, however, and suspected she had eaten them first.

She fumbled with her long gloved fingers, opening a cupboard and pulling out a packet of hot chocolate mix. She tore the top off the packet and emptied the contents into the mug, then stirred the mixture with a white plastic spoon, and handed the mug to Leo.

“Thank you,” Leo said with a fake smile. He sat at the table, holding the mug with a shaking hand, and pretended to take a sip, knowing the hot chocolate might be poisoned. He wore gloves of his own so he wouldn't leave fingerprints. If she noticed his gloves, she didn't say anything.

The monster let out a high-pitched giggle. “You just enjoy that while I get my checkbook.” She left the kitchen.

What was he doing, going into this creature's lair? Was he trying to commit suicide? Was it possible for him to be any dumber?

Unfortunately, he wasn't coming up with any better plans. If he left for help, there was no guarantee the thing would still be here when they came back, or that he'd get another chance.

He'd been assigned a quest. He'd complete it or die trying.

Feeling/smelling something behind him, he turned in time to see the monster creeping up on him, holding a small syringe containing a colorless liquid. Her hands were bare, revealing the filed-down claws at the end of her too-long fingers.

He threw the hot chocolate into the monster's face and dove to the side as she tried to grab him. Her non-syringe-holding hand brushed his head as he went down.

Her mouth opened wide as she screamed. He'd been right about the teeth. They were long and sharp.