203 Whats Changed (2/2)

”No problem. Is your granddaughter free? I figured she might want to come out for a ride with us?”

”She's busy helping the kids get cleaned up. Maybe come back later. My grand nephew is visiting so we are spending some family time today.”

”Nephew eh? Didn't think your brother had any kids, much less grandkids?”

”And you wouldn't since he moved away almost forty years ago now.”

”Oh. Right right. Alright, We will do a once over and then leave you to your family time.” The group of young men walked back to their truck and ended up driving towards the barn and took off towards the back fields, each of them armed with a shotgun or a rifle.

As Onacona went back into the house, he saw Laz just sitting there, drinking his beer as though in quiet thought.

”God damn kids...”

”Hmm?”

”Nothing. But do me a favor. If those guys come around and I'm not here, don't leave Kamama alone with them.”

”Uh... ok?”

Onacona didn't say anything else. he just sat down at the table and drank his beer. After a while though, it was like a light suddenly went on in his head and he remembered he had meant to talk to Laz about a few things.

”Right. So you don't know anything that happened in the last year, right?”

”Has it... has it really been a year?”

”Well, you were the one who escaped the envoy heading north. And it has been a year since then.”

”Damn...”

”Hard to wrap your mind around huh?”

”How do you deal with losing a year of your life?”

”Boy. When you get to my age, a year is nothing except maybe the time I got left. Besides, I spent quite a few years of my life doing things that just wasted time. I would say that maybe you will too, but somehow I doubt that.”

”Ah.”

”You're still young. Don't bother with details just yet boy. Anyway, guess I should probably get you caught up. You see, things started changing pretty quickly after that whole incident. They weren't related, it just seemed like an event to mark when things happened.

Onacona went on to tell Laz everything that had developed in the short amount of time. Packs of demon beasts were on the loose all over the world. The hard part about fighting them was that the moved quickly and disappeared just as fast. In fact, entire towns have been destroyed from some of the larger, faster packs. Even with the government sending out troops to hunt down these packs, there were just too many showing up all over the place. And many of them had special abilities that caused casualties among the hunters.

With the larger, more dangerous packs being handled by government troops, the smaller packs were left for individual hunters to take care of. As such, most towns and villages ended up organizing hunting parties to do checks around towns to make sure that there were no traces of demon beasts. Squads such as the young ones in the pick up truck that had visited Onacona's land were a normal sight outside of cities. As far as cities went, they had their own problems.

Cites have been referred to as concrete jungles and rightly so. Although normal kinds of demon beasts would stay away from areas with a large human population, there were always exceptions. Sometimes, a random beast would appear in a city and cause a massive amount of damage before they were taken down. At other times, they would hunt and kill silently, not even letting people know they were around and disappearing just as fast. A large snake had managed to hide in central park for over two months before it was finally noticed and put down. The thing was almost 40 feet long and over 35 deaths had been linked to it.

These days, when people started talking about alligators living in the sewers, others listened.

The problem came from more than just demon beasts however. Fights between infected and law enforcement were becoming more and more common. There had even been a gang rounded up of more that six people who where all infected. As they escorted their drugged bodies away, the average person was treated to another round of brainwashing as 'specialists' explained how the mutations of the body had led to their various abilities. All of this, of course, was caused by the disease.

And they had a point, in a way. Those who tested positive to having the blood infection all ended up showing physical signs of the infection. Sometimes, it was little things like a bit more body hair or gain weird patches of color on their skin. But for some, the change was far more intense, causing them to no longer even appear human. Because of these radical changes and the bouts of violence that, although rare, were pushed to the national media, support for these infected started to taper off.

This was also the biggest difference as compared to those who were considered blessed by the heavens. They were pushed forward as a leap in evolution for all mankind, showing no outward symptoms other than some flattering war paint like marks that would appear and vanish depending on their power usage.

The world had found it's angels... and it's demons.

Listening to all this, Laz started to get a clear picture as to what was happening. And none of it sounded good.