Chapter 34

Approaching the End

As Leo entered the cafeteria, Brick, of course, noticed him immediately. “So this stupid loser kid puts on an implant,” Brick said, staring at Leo, “goes crazy and starts telling everybody the world's going to end on October 16th. And that person is Leo Edwards!”

Uh, oh.

It didn't help that after the previous, stressful meeting, Leo was on his last nerve.

He had been planning to pass by and join Jason for lunch. Instead, he stopped, turned around, walked up to Brick, and stood in front of the larger kid.

“What person am I, exactly?”

“You offered to pay me a thousand dollars, the day after the so-called end of the world. Coincidence? I don't think so,” Brick responded. “Are you sure you don't have an implant?”

Leo grabbed his wallet, pulled out Mr. Osmond's $1000 debit card, and slapped it down on the table next to them. Then he stepped forward so his face was inches from Brick's.

“This is a $1000 debit card, Brick. I will fight you for it right now. If you win, you take the money and you fuck off. If I win, I take the money and you fuck off. As long as it involves you—fucking—off, I'm fine with either outcome!”

Brick stepped back and let out a forced chuckle. “You're not getting out of it that easy, Leo. On the 17th, after school, we're meeting you in the abandoned storage room next to the gym, and if you don't come up with the money, I mean cash, not card bullshit, we will beat the living fuck out of you. You understand, Leo?”

“I'll be there. I'm looking forward to kicking your ass,” Leo said. He grabbed the debit card from the table and put it back in his wallet.

Brick laughed. “Good luck beating all of us. We're charging admission too, for everyone who wants to come in and watch the show. Won't be any cellphones or drones to save you this time. If you run, or you don't show, we will hunt you down, and it will be the end of the world. Not for us, but definitely for you.”

“Hey. We're supposed to be arm wrestling,” someone said.

“Yeah. Let's see you arm wrestle Convict Man, Brick,” said an older kid Leo didn't know.

“I arm wrestle for money,” Brick responded. “Five dollars a match.”

“I'll cover Convict Man,” the older kid responded, pulling out a five-dollar bill.

“Fuck you. I'm not arm wrestling him.” Brick turned and walked away, his cronies following.

***

“Did Brick just back down?” Jason asked later, when Leo joined him for lunch.

“I think maybe he did,” Leo responded.

Leo had joined Jason for lunch after arm wrestling several kids who'd challenged him after Brick left. Leo wasn't the strongest, but he was by far the strongest for his age and size. “You're stronger than you look, Convict Man,” the older kid said. “Must be that summer camp training.”

***

Home after school, he found out that Lydia had gone off somewhere and Mom was sleeping after working a night shift. Remembering how many times Lydia had gone poking through his room, he couldn't resist going into hers and looking around.

“I thought girls were supposed to be neat,” Leo said to himself, picking a blanket up off the floor and tossing it onto her bed. Her room was only slightly less messy than his before he'd cleaned it after returning from the future.

Teach: I made a few alterations to your order, for better quality and, in some cases, better prices, and paid extra for rush delivery, which wasn't easy. Thanks to the end of the world rumors going around, a lot of survival supplies are in demand. You're welcome, by the way. The items you wanted should be arriving tomorrow.

Future Man 10/16: Thank you, Mr. Osmond.

Teach: Not sure why you wanted body armor. If the Change does what you say it will, your character class comes with a force-field that should provide better protection than the body armor, in addition to being weightless. It's just the rest of us who need the stuff. I wish my character had a tenth of the protection yours does.

Future Man 10/16: A lot of those special skills come with limits and cooldown times. A bit of conventional armor and weapons can make the difference between life and death, especially in the beginning. I hope you got the good, armor-piercing bullets I asked for. The things I'll be hunting shrug off regular bullets like raindrops.

Teach: The aliens have assured us, again, that there will be no end of the world. Do you believe them?

Future Man 10/16: No. And I'm scared.

Too mentally exhausted to do anything else, Leo cleaned his sister's room. It kept his mind off of how frightened he was and gave him a chance to look through Lydia's stuff for a change. He found where she stashed her money, deep inside a ceiling vent, in a wooden box. Fishing line near the vent entrance served to pull the box out.

Lydia came in the front door while he was counting her money.

“You creep!” she shouted, kicking his leg. She grabbed the wooden box and tried to rescue her money. Leo held onto the cash, laughing and holding it over his head as she bumped into her desk, knocking a bunch of coins onto the floor, where they rolled away.

“That's the thanks I get for cleaning your room and counting your money for you?” Leo said with a grin. “You have two hundred and fifty-three dollars and sixty-seven cents. I noticed six hundred dollars is missing.”

Her response was to try to bash Leo with the wooden box. He fended her off smoothly with his non-cash-holding hand, blocking the box and pushing her away.

“I think I should charge you,” Leo said. “Let's see. Being a little brat for ten years. That's a hundred dollars. Sneaking around my room, snitching on me to Mom and Dad, and messing with my stuff for ten years. That's at least another hundred. I should charge a lot more, but I'm giving you the annoying brat-sister discount. Very nice of me.”

“Well, I should charge you for twelve years of being a mean creep,” she responded. “That's at least ten thousand dollars.”

“Twelve years? You weren't even born for two of those years. You little brat.”

“I'm sure you were a mean creep to me in my before-life too,” she responded.

“There is no before-life, you idiot.”

Mom's bedroom door swished open as she came to investigate. Leo quickly put Lydia's money on the desk.

“What are you two doing?” Mom asked. “Oh wow, Lydia, you cleaned your room. It looks almost as nice as Leo's now.”

Lydia put on a fake smile as she stuffed her cash back into her box before Mom could see it. “Thank you, Mom.”

“I was helping Lydia pick up the coins she dropped,” Leo said, bending over, picking up a quarter, and putting it on Lydia's desk.

“I don't need any help, creep. Go away.”

“Please play more quietly,” Mom said. “Some of us are trying to sleep before working our night-shift.”

“Sorry, Mom,” the two siblings said at the same time.

***

“So what happened to the six hundred dollars Angie told me about?” Leo asked later, after Mom had left for work and they'd eaten dinner.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“A friend helped me invest the six hundred in the new Bio-Blessed-backed crypto coin,” Lydia said. “It's got the Ambrose seal of approval.”

“You idiot!” Leo put his head in his hands. “Have you heard the saying, 'A fool and her money are soon parted?'”

“Yeah. That's a poor person's saying,” Lydia responded. “Have you heard of the saying, 'Nothing ventured, nothing gained?' Anyway, you think the world's going to end, like that loser implant wearer they keep talking about on TV, so what do you care?”

“What makes you think I think the world is going to end?” Leo asked, curious.

“It's why you've been acting so weird lately. And you were going to tell me something on the 16th. Obviously something about the world ending. Loser.”

Leo sighed. “I'm going to go beat up the tree in the backyard again.”

Thursday, October 9th, 2059

7 days to the apocalypse

Late Afternoon

“Flashlight. Small camp stove. Spare batteries. Water filters. One thousand dollars cash. Some precious metals for trade. Bug repellent...” Mr. Osmond read down his list of Leo's supplies.

School had been uneventful. Leo and Brick had moved warily around each other, avoiding confrontations. After school, he'd texted Mom, telling her he'd be helping Mr. Osmond with physics research, which was essentially true. They were planning to test firearms, studying the effects of bullets on a variety of targets.

To Leo's amusement, he'd gotten several texts from his sister asking where he'd put her stuff.

“Hey, creep. Where did you hide my hairbrush? I searched your room, but I couldn't find it.” She'd texted.

He'd texted back:

“I sold it to a pawnshop with the rest of your stuff. Got a couple dollars for it.”

“Creep! You creep! I'm telling Mom!” was her response.

Leo chuckled. He'd put her brush in her upper right dresser drawer, along with her lucky silver dollar, hair dryer, and silver bracelet with the yin/yang symbol on it, all of which she'd been unable to find for some reason. It figured that her own stupid dresser was the one place she hadn't thought to look.

Later, Mom texted him:

“Leo Edwards! Quit making up stories! Lydia is very gullible. She came to me crying, and I had to help her find her things.”

Good riddance. The little brat deserved far worse for sneaking around his room all the time and messing with his stuff.

Standing in Mr. Osmond's dining room, Leo struggled to put on his new, slightly oversized body armor. “Thank you, Mr. Osmond. You don't know what this means to me.”

The size of his new armor should give his body a little leeway for growth. In his previous future, he'd seen people using the armor to good effect. Of course, he'd never gotten any himself. Until now. In addition to the body armor, he'd requested a pile of stuff to keep him alive, comfortable, and sane, along with a backpack to carry it all in.

“If you don't mind me asking, how are your finances?” Leo asked. “Between the supplies and your gaming pods, I wouldn't think you'd have much left.”

Mr. Osmond chuckled. “I made another half million dollars today. I invested in a military supply company with a huge stockpile of weapons and ordinance rapidly approaching their expiration dates.”

“Doesn't sound like a good investment,” Leo said.

“Au contraire, Leo,” Mr. Osmond responded. “You see, I knew as soon as Congress voted to declare war on yet another third-world country, that stock would go through the roof. And Congress did that first thing this morning.”

Mr. Osmond sent Leo the details over his implant.

Teach: I have an implant skill that helps me connect the dots and figure odds. Between what you and the Professor have told me, it was a 99.8% probability Congress would declare war, and that this stock would go through the roof when they did.

“Wait. Congress declared war?” Leo said. “I don't remember anything about a war in the previous history, and I'd think I'd remember that.”

“You wouldn't have. I'm sure Congress declared war last time around too, but officially, it's a 'police action,' and if the news does what I expect, they'll devote 30 seconds to this 'police action,' after spending an hour covering those idiot starlets Tomi and Maxine's drug rehab therapy.”

“Wow,” Leo said. Funny how different the pre-Change world looked this time around.

“I was expecting you to ask for far more expensive items than you did,” Mr. Osmond said. “I ordered the Duke Ultra 800 rifle for myself. It's a lot more powerful than the gun you requested, also faster to operate, and comes with a twenty-bullet magazine.”

“Nothing wrong with that gun, but it shoots a hard-to-find bullet, and when the gun gets dirty, it's prone to jamming,” Leo responded, fighting with his armor. It was heavier than he'd expected, not to mention making movement more difficult, and the visor of his helmet inhibited his vision. But it felt solid. “After the Change, everything gets dirty.”

Next, he took his gun out of its box and examined it carefully, pulling the bolt action, peering down the gun sights, and wishing he knew more about guns so he'd know more about what he was looking at.

“What happened to your mother?” Leo asked, curious.

“Sent her on an around-the-world cruise,” Mr. Osmond said, looking unhappy. “If all goes well, she'll be back by the end of the month.”

“You got armor for yourself and the others, didn't you?” Leo asked.

“Obviously,” Mr. Osmond answered. “The armor is heavy and awkward. I intend to get used to it slowly.”

In addition to the gun, armor, and camping equipment, Leo had requested a sword.

His new sword was a large khukri, built for strength and durability, made with some of the toughest steel known to man. The short sword would take a razor edge, and could cut down trees as easily as people, and he could swing with all his future superhuman strength and not have to worry about it breaking. In his previous future, he'd lost quite a few swords doing just that.

There was a knock at the door. It was Trent. “You guys about ready?” he asked.

“Coming,” Leo responded. “Where are we going?”

“We know a guy with property on the outskirts of the city. We've set up a shooting range there. Let's go. We're burning daylight.”

While helping them load their stuff in his truck, Trent made implant contact with Leo.

Pyro Mage 43:2: Do you still think it's going to happen, Leo? My gut's telling me it is.

Future Man 10/16: My gut's telling me it's going to happen, too, Trent, or something just as bad. I hope my gut's wrong.

Pyro Mage 43:2: My gut's seldom wrong.

They piled in the truck and drove off.

“That gun looks underpowered for monster hunting, Leo,” Trent said. “A good rifle for moose or bear. But from what you've been saying, I'd think you'd want an elephant gun or some military anti-tank weapon. Something like Mr. Osmond has.”

“I was thinking something similar,” Mr. Osmond said.

“Well, I gave my gun a lot of thought,” Leo responded. “The gun's meant to be a backup weapon, small and portable, but powerful enough to do a little damage. And in my previous future, I met several people with this gun and they all loved it. Easy to shoot, doesn't jam, and hits what you point it at.”

“You keep saying there will be 'powers,” Trent looked around nervously. They were, of course, being tailed by five drones. “I've got to admit that I find it a lot harder to believe that I'll be able to throw around fireballs than the world will end.”

Future Man 10/16: We'll know in 7 days, Trent. Between the two of us, the implant powers were great, but not worth the end of the human race.

“Have you done much shooting?” Trent asked Mr. Osmond.

“Guns have never been part of my skill set. I've always tried to avoid them.”

“Shooting isn't hard. We'll teach you the basics,” Trent responded, looking over at Mr. Osmond's huge gun. “You might want to start with something smaller, to get the feel for things. There's a larger turnout today because I told them Leo was coming. Hope that's okay, Leo. People will definitely want to talk to you.”

They left the city, turned off the freeway, and spent the next fifteen minutes on bumpy dirt roads. Then, without warning, Trent stopped the truck, took out his cellphone, and pretended to look at the blank screen, like he'd just received a text.

“Uh, guys. When I told a few of our people Leo would be coming, I expected twenty people, thirty at the most. But I'm guessing they told all their friends, because our pastor, Gretchen, just texted me that over two hundred people are waiting for Leo. If Leo shows up, someone will take pictures or videos of him that could get out online, which could mess up his life.”

Mr. Osmond nodded. “If your picture gets online, it's a matter of time before someone finds out where you live. Not to mention that your parents may find out.”

Leo laughed. “It's a church group. Have a little faith. The way I see it, every person I convince to prepare for the Change is a life I might save if the Change happens. On the downside, I have a feeling I won't get much shooting done.”

“Okay, if you're sure you want to do this,” Trent put the truck in gear. “I texted Gretchen to tell them no pictures or videos, but with this many people, someone's gonna ignore her.”

Soon they arrived at a large field covered with vehicles, next to a hill that was being used as a bullet stop; it was littered with targets, broken bottles, and other refuse. Trent parked next to the other vehicles. There was, however, no shooting. The pastor had climbed partway up the hill so she was looking down on her audience, and she was speaking.