Chapter 7
Home
Limping home, Leo found the potholed roads more or less functional and stop lights still working. People walked around as if Afflicted weren't trying to eat them. The fear and desolation he'd lived with for the past fifty years had vanished. He took a deep breath, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air.
A cold autumn breeze blew through the rundown city streets, sending a paper cup flying past his head, making him jump. Afflicted wouldn't exist for another month, but he still felt exposed.
He saw a man get mugged, and two small children going through a dumpster. Leo's dirty torn clothes, and shoes held together with duct tape, helped him blend in, showing the world he had nothing worth stealing.
Times were hard in the days before the change. The reason was simple. Everyone spent all of their money on Bio-Blessed.
The addicting power of crack cocaine, heroin, or even cigarettes was nothing compared to the chance to become biologically younger, stronger, healthier, or, if you consumed enough, superhuman and even immortal. Leo remembered hearing about ninety-year-old billionaires, who, thanks to Bio-Blessed, looked better today than they had when they were sixteen.
He nearly got run over by a bodybuilder, a big man who looked like he could bench press a truck. The man was with his girlfriend, a young woman who could be a model, another couple spending their money on Bio-Blessed.
Nobody knew who owned the shadowy company selling this so-called genetic enhancer, but whoever they were, they had to be trillionaires.
They'd vanished when the apocalypse hit. In fifty years of searching, he hadn't met a single person who knew who, or what, they were. Considering they had to be at least partly responsible for the change, this was a problem.
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When he finally made it home, he used his key and quietly entered a house that had somehow become smaller and shabbier than he remembered.
“It's a shame I had to lay off so many workers, but on a more positive note, I just bought a very nice yacht,” said a voice.
“That's excellent news, Ambrose,” a second voice said, positively gushing with the joy of speaking to such an important individual.
Leo tuned them out.
The large flat-screen TV in their living room was on most of the time for background noise, usually tuned to some news channel. Sometimes his sister would change the channel to “Lifestyles of the Rich and Powerful.”
He heard Mom in the kitchen working on dinner. His sister relaxed on the living room recliner, playing a video game with a pair of bulky VR glasses, one hand in the air, performing some unseen function while somehow talking and texting on her cell phone at the same time. He silently watched her for a long minute. It was like seeing a forgotten ghost. To his amusement, she was using his Gameplay-10,000 VR glasses without his permission. He remembered how this used to piss him off, but after all that had happened, he could care less.
He slipped past her, unnoticed, and went to his room.
He pushed the dirty clothes and books that decorated his floor to the side with his foot. He remembered his room as being larger and nicer. The faded wallpaper was peeling, and somebody had left their crap everywhere. On his wall was a poster of a teenager jumping high in the air with the words “The One with the Most, Wins!” He'd forgotten why he'd put it up. A shoe advertisement that looked cool, maybe?
He cleaned his room as fast as he could, stuffing the dirty clothes in a hamper, shelving his books and trying to find places for his belongings.
He made sure his window was securely closed and pulled the curtains over it. He knew he wouldn't be in any danger from Afflicted for another month, but he felt exposed.
Searching his room and closet for possible weapons, he found his aluminum baseball bat and a couple of knives he'd gotten as Christmas presents. Neither knife was good for much beyond sharpening pencils, but he put them and his baseball bat where he could get to them quickly.
At that point, reality hit like a freight train. He was twelve. The world was going to end in a month, and he had no idea how to prevent it. If he couldn't change the future, death would be infinitely preferable to the fifty years of hell he had to look forward to.
He sat down on his bed, put his hands around his knees, hugged himself as tightly as he could, and started crying.