Owen went on. “After the asteroid hit, and the earth and human population slowly began to die, I was left without a home, without food, and without hope—just like a lot of others who, unfortunately, are now bones lining the sides of the road.
“Then, one day Mark Baker found me, sick and dying of starvation, lying on the side of the road. And he took me in. He promised to keep me fed and alive, as long as I helped him with some of the things he wanted me to do.”
In that moment, I felt for him, I did, but there are some things a person shouldn’t agree to, whether they are rotting from starvation or not. “Owen, do you know what you’re doing? If you’re as smart as you say you are, you’d see that whether he saved you or not, what you’re doing for him is wrong. It’s criminal!” Placing both of my hands on his shoulder blades, I looked him dead in the eye. “How many more people have to die for loyalty?”
He rolled his shoulders, pulling away from me. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
I furrowed my brow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you’re one of the lucky ones. You live trapped in this little bubble of a society, eating every day, two or three times a day. I’ve seen people bite off their own fingers to feed themselves. I’ve felt my organs shriveling up inside of me because of my lack of nourishment. I’ve felt my bones through my skin while my exterior wasted away.”
I glared at him incredulously. “Do you mean to tell me, that you think I haven’t witnessed or felt the devastation of The Great Famine?”
“You haven’t.”
“You don’t know anything,” I growled. My mind instantly reverted back to those two little boys, the ones who cried day and night for their mother. I gulped hard, trying to erase the thought. “I’ve seen a lot more than you think I have Owen Sanders, and I can tell you this, I’d rather starve to death with my dignity than live with a belly full of food doing someone else’s dirty work.”
Owen narrowed his eyes. “You say that now, but have you ever starved?”
“I’ve gone days without eating,” I shot back.
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Well, then,” I said sarcastically. “Enlighten me, genius.”He bit his upper lip and shook his head. “Starving to death is a slow, torturous, and agonizing process. First, every ounce of fat and muscle on your body melts away. You become someone different, someone you didn’t think you could be, snapping at people, resorting to violence, and losing your sanity. Then, your skin cracks from dehydration and you develop multiple diseases because your body is so weak that your immune system fails to fight them off.
“Finally, your organs begin to shut down. One. By. One. If you’re lucky you’ll die after the first one goes. If not, you’ll be forced to endure weeks of pain—like the intestines being ripped from your body whole.” My mouth dropped open and I gawked at him. Nobody had ever fully explained it to me that way. “I’ve been there,” he went on. “I’ve been on death’s doorstep. And I can name at least a hundred other people who have done exactly what I did. Hell, they would have done exactly what I did to lick the crumbs off someone’s plate. So forgive me for choosing life instead of an agonizing death.”
I shook my head. Even though I thought that maybe, he made the right decision time. There was no excuse for him still doing everything Mr. Baker commanded him to. “How long do you think Mr. Baker is going to keep you around, knowing that you’re letting the people he wants killed, go? Owen, that is something you really have to think about. Are you willing to murder another human being—an innocent human so that you can eat? And if you say yes that would be the most sad, pitiful, and selfish thing that I’ve ever heard.”
He looked down at his hands. “Well, technically, I’m not the one who’ll be doing the killing.”
“Owen,” I snapped.
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t. Mark controls all of the cannibals in this area.”
I couldn’t believe that he was still trying to….
Wait…. “What?”
“Mark controls all of the cannibals in this area,” he repeated.
“What do you mean ‘controls’ them?”
“He operates them. He put computer chips in their brains that allows him to c
ontrol them.”
This was startling news. And I couldn’t stomach it. I was starting to feel queasy. I didn’t want him to tell me anymore. Every time he revealed something new felt like a bomb going off inside of me. “Are you trying to say that the cannibals aren’t real?”
“Oh, no, don’t get me wrong, they are definitely real. I’ve seen the real ones up close. But the ones around here, yeah, they are like cyborgs. Mark used to operate them from the control panel upstairs.”
“He controls who they eat?”
“Well, most of the time. The chip in their brain can be turned on and off from the control panel, but Mark is the only one who knows the code. He would never tell me what it was.”
“The ones you were with?”
“Yes.”