Chapter 83
The Resistance
Blinking away tears, Leo stared at the group of unknown people staring back at him in their storage room. “And can you give me something for the tear gas? My eyes are burning.”
The biker went to the storage room's makeshift kitchen and wet down a couple of towels, added soap, and tossed one of the towels to Leo.
“We're part of the same loose network of anti-Bio-Blessed organizations that the church is,” the large bearded man responded. “I'm Flynn. The guy who brought you here is Rory.” He motioned towards the other five. “That's Hewie, Lewie, Mary, Ronald, and Betty. And no, in case you're wondering, those aren't our real names.”
Leo looked up from his towel and nodded towards the five people. “I'm Leo. End-of-the-world guy. Nice to meet you.”
They all nodded back.
“What anti-Bio-Blessed organizations?” Leo asked, not aware there was such a thing.
Flynn walked over to the refrigerator. “There were quite a few of us initially. Most of the organizations weren't even that militant. I belonged to a perfectly legit consumer advocate group that just wanted the Department of Health to investigate Bio-Blessed for side effects, make sure the product came with a warning label, and restrict it from children. That sort of thing. At the moment, it's not 'advisable' for children to take it, but it's completely legal, and a lot of children do.”
Leo nodded, thinking of all the kids he knew who ate it like candy.
“Do you want a beer?” Flynn asked, grabbing one for himself. “Something stronger? Since you're sixty-two years old.”
“I didn't drink much in my previous life,” Leo responded. “Coffee?”
Flynn grabbed a Thermos, poured coffee into a Styrofoam cup, and handed it to Leo, then popped the cap off his beer bottle, sat down on an armchair, took a sip of beer, and motioned for Leo to sit down on the threadbare couch facing him. “First, we were ignored and told to go away. When we persisted, they shut down our organization and declared us illegal. When we got together with a bunch of other groups to demonstrate, police met us using live ammo.”
Lewie's face twisted in disgust. “Twenty-one people dead and not a word from a single news agency.” Lewie was a skinny man in his twenties with thick glasses and a mild case of acne.
“I'm sorry.” Leo took a sip of his coffee. It was lukewarm, but he decided not to make a fuss about it.
Flynn took another drink of his beer. “So. When we heard the end-of-the-world boy would be visiting a church group, myself and a lot of others really wanted to see if you were for real.”
“I see,” said Leo, not sure how to respond. “I wish I had real evidence to show you, but I don't. One of my contacts convinced The Professor. If that means anything.”
“We know The Professor,” Lewie said. “If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be here. I'd write off this end-of-the-world shit as crazy talk.”
“It's entirely possible we've prevented the end of the world,” Leo said. “I don't believe we have, but it's possible.”
“If it does happen,” Lewie responded, “the first thing I'm doing is busting my friends out of prison.”
“Good luck,” Leo said, and meant it. Too many decent people were in prisons. Hell, he knew this from experience.
“I was thinking we'd interview you, Leo,” Flynn said, lifting up a large, older model video camera from beside his sofa. “We will post it on the dark web and let people decide for themselves.”
“I have no problem with this,” Leo said, “but my family does not know who I am, and I'd rather they, and a lot of other people, not learn of my secret identity.”
“We'll use a voice-and-face-modulation program on your recording before we upload it to the dark web,” Flynn said, extending a retractable tripod and mounting the camera on it. “We don't really want to get caught either.”
“I appreciate that,” Leo said.
Lewie raised his fist in the air. “Viva the resistance,” before dropping his arm and taking another drink of beer.
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Flynn fiddled with the camera until a red light came on. “Let's begin.”
Lewie tossed Leo a bunch of papers held together with a large paperclip. “What's this?”
Leo looked over the first few pages. Then looked at the camera. “It appears to be what I transcribed onto a tape recorder a couple of weeks ago.”
“Found it on the dark web. Does it look authentic?” Lewie asked.
Leo paged through it and nodded.
“Okay,” Lewie responded. “I get the Bio-Blessed-turning-people-into-monsters part. Some of that's happening already, but then you talk about implant wearers flying around and shooting fireballs? How dumb do you think we are?”
Leo shrugged. “I am aware of how unbelievable this sounds. The Change turns them into monsters and gives us powers. To be honest, I wouldn't believe me either.”
“Let's talk about the last shelter you were in," Flynn said. "You describe a military-type shelter. Do you know where it was?”
“I believe it was in a mountain range, hundreds of miles north of here,” Leo said. “Afflicted didn't like the cold. They could tolerate it, but it made them sluggish. The shelter could have been in one of several mountain ranges.”
“Don't ask me how I know this because it's top secret,” Rory spoke up for the first time, “but the place you describe sounds like Red Mountain Facility.”
Leo shrugged. “Possibly.”
“Then I don't get it,” Hewie said. “Red Mountain Facility is set up as a last-ditch end-of-the-world shelter, so if we get hit by an asteroid, people could live there for the next hundred years while the world recovered.”
Leo shrugged again. “That sounds right. It was pretty deep underground. A geothermal vent provides electricity. There was an underground farm that produced most of our food.”
“So why the fuck would you leave the shelter to fight these aliens, when you could have blocked off the exits, stayed in the shelter, and waited for them to starve to death? That shelter is located under half a mile of granite and built to survive a nuclear blast.”
“I believe Rory is referring to your last stand at the end,” Flynn said. “Care to explain?”
Leo chuckled. “Yeah. About that. I don't know how they found us, but somehow one of them did. Some Afflicted runner showed up near our shelter and sounded an alert to summon its comrades. I guess it smelled or sensed something. We killed that Afflicted and made the body vanish, but by then it was too late. Soon there were thousands of them in the area running around our mountain range, searching.” Leo finished his by-now-cold coffee. “We ignored them for the first couple of weeks. Sometimes an Afflicted would smell something and sound an alert, and then others show up to investigate, not find anything, and leave. Only these guys weren't leaving. There must not have been too many people left to eat by then, because those bastards wouldn't go away. We ignored them, but crowds of weak runners attracted smarter, larger, stronger Afflicted, who only grew more persistent. Finally, we spotted one of the big guys floating around overhead, curious. It left, but we knew it would be back. That's when we knew we were fucked. It was a matter of time until they figured out where we were and started digging.”
“Even so, it should have taken years to dig you guys out, and that's if they had proper equipment, and it didn't sound like they did.”
“That's where you're wrong,” Leo said. “A Demigod-level Boss-Afflicted could dig through half a mile of granite in a few hours. Days at the most. That's why we came out for a last stand. Figured it was better to die fighting.”
Rory snorted. “I don't believe you.”
“Believe what you want,” Leo said. “I'm the one who died through it, and I do not want to die through it again.”
“On to the next question,” Flynn said. “Did you have sex?”
“What?” Leo looked over at the two women.
“Don't look at me,” Betty said, suppressing a smirk. “I want to hear the answer, too.”
“And I thought the last question was depressing,” Leo said. “Are you sure I couldn't make something up? That might be better.”
“Come on, Leo,” Flynn responded. “Truth.”
“If that's what it takes to convince you I'm not a twelve-year-old boy.” Leo sighed. “Since you read my transcript, you know I was a mutant freak guy and women weren't exactly pounding on my door. The few times I had sex involved financial transactions.”
“As in how?”
“Well. When I was in my twenties, I lived in a small community and scavenged for a living. I was good at it by then. I could get to places others couldn't, not without a lot of firepower anyway, and Afflicted runners didn't seem to understand canned food. They'd eat everything else in the vicinity, even the leather furniture, but I could always find canned food. Anyway, a few guys told me about this woman who was willing to do 'you-know-what' for the right price. The next day I went over to her place with the right price--three cans of food.”
“Was she pretty?” Lewie asked.
“Hell no,” Leo answered. “She was what was available. Anyway, she threw her five kids out the door of her tiny smelly hut. She didn't bother taking my clothes off. She pulled down my pants, and we did it. I lasted maybe thirty seconds. She threw me out the door maybe thirty seconds after that.”
There was some laughter from the group.
“That was my first time,” Leo continued. “I remember being disappointed. Like, that was it? That was the sex I'd heard so much about? Of course, I met with the guys after that and there were high-fives all around. One of the guys broke out some of the worst moonshine I've ever tasted. If I wasn't a nondrinker before, I definitely was after that. And what was even more messed up was that the next day I was ready to do her again. I became one of her better customers for a short time.”
“I see,” Flynn said. “Okay. On page twenty, you say...” The questions went on and on. It was like the day he'd spent with Mr. Osmond a couple of weeks ago, only worse. By the time they'd finished, the eight of them had gone through three pots of coffee and the morning sun was in the sky.