2 Minutes to Midnight

by Steve Lang

  “So, mass-market devices that take energy from the quantum vacuum freely and supply it to us? Sounds like a revolution.”

  “We need a revolution of ideas to save this planet, George. With fossil fuels dwindling and pollution on the rise we’re going to be dead if we don’t turn this around.”

  “You think they know you have the device attached to your house?” George asked.

  “Maybe, I’m not sure. I’ve it rigged so that it looks like the meter is still running, in case the meter guy scans it.”

  “You ever tell anyone about what you know, besides me, that is?”

  For the first time since he had opened his mouth to George, Edward had sobered up a bit. Who was this man, and why had he told him so much about a subject that could get him thrown in jail, or killed? How many people just walking around were using terms like quantum vacuum?

  “Who are you, George?”

  “I’m just a guy who came in for a drink to get out of the snow. How would you do it? I mean, build it so that the world could have a piece?”

  “Well, I’d film the entire process in a live internet stream twenty four by seven. That way everyone could tune in any time of day and see what we’re doing. I want full disclosure, because so many people have tried this in the past and lost their lives. They get killed mysteriously and their work disappears.” Edward replied.

  George nodded, considered Edward for a moment, and then got up from his bar stool.

  “Do you think you could do this?”

  “What, mass produce free electricity?” Edward asked.

  “Yeah, can you do all that shit you just said?”

  “With enough time and money, yes I can.”

  “Edward, it was a pleasure to meet you. Have a great night.” George said.

  George dropped a business card on the counter, shook Edward’s hand, laid down a twenty-dollar bill and then turned to walk out into the snow.

  “It was good speaking with you as well, George. Safe travels.”

  As George left, Edward got the feeling that he just had a conversation with the Devil. As Edward picked up the card, a thin bead of perspiration broke across his forehead. The card read:

  Tim Taylor

  Venture Capitalist

  1-904-321-1000

  “Did you know that guy?” Tia asked.

  “No clue who he is, but I think I’ll walk the rest of the way home tonight. I’ve got a lot to think about.”

  “Good luck.” Tia said.

  Edward paid his tab, pulled his coat tightly around himself and walked out into a night of magical falling flakes. Edward felt renewed, and alive.

  Dan Louis, (aka, George Smith) had been hired to kill Edward Sheck by the same people he had taken the quantum energy device from, and was warming his engine up as Edward walked outside. Dan rolled down his window and spoke candidly to a shocked Edward Sheck.

  “They know what you’ve got, Edward, and they sent me to kill you for it. You have a golden opportunity to do something special, man. You could undo a lot of what’s wrong in this world, and I can’t, in good conscience, snuff that out. I refuse to, anyway. I’ve seen too much of what war produces in Special Ops.”

  “You think we’re in a war?” Edward asked.

  “It’s bigger than you realize, and it’s all around us—in the shadows.”

  “I’ll do what I can. Thank you for not…killing me tonight?” Edward said.

  “The people who hired me may send another operator to kill you, so in return for sparing your life, make it public, like you said. Don’t try to profit off of this in any way, and you may be alright. Be seeing you.”

  Dan drove away through a blanket of white; his SUV’s tires left two black tracks through the snow that resembled a road to oblivion for Edward. Dan took the small dose of polonium meant for Edward’s drink out of his coat pocket, and placed it back inside the briefcase on his passenger seat as he drove away into the cold night.

  The basement

  During The Great Tumult, when once powerful nations fell to the heavy hand of total war, one man would embrace his inner demon.

  Two strangers sat on the loading dock of a rundown manufacturing plant staring at the twisted hulk of a blown up VW bug. Tall grass and weeds had grown through the frame like fingers of a hand pulling the vehicle’s corpse down into depths of the earth. Something moved inside, and before either man could react, an emaciated field rat that was close to a foot long in size skittered from beneath the Volkswagen and bolted beneath a large crack in the loading dock.

  “Shit, that’s the first thing I saw in days worth eating and we let it go!”

  “Dude, there’s not enough meat on that thing to feed an infant, and if the rats are starving, what’s that say for our chances?”

  “I’m Günter, pleased to meet you.” He put out a hand.

  “Dave, likewise.” Dave accepted the friendly gesture.

  “It’s like a canary in the mine kind of thing. I ain’t eaten in a week, man.” Günter said.

  “You said it, brother. We’re screwed.”

  Both men stopped talking then, darting glances back and forth to one another in a silence that was as loud as thunder. A cricket chirped in the weeds. This was the only sound in the vacant lot, as quiet contemplation railed against their rational minds, each of them knowing how this would end. Günter tightened his hand around the blade he carried in his coat pocket, and Dave did the same with his own.

  “I gotta be going soon, but hey man; it was nice meeting you…uh, Dave?”

  “Same here, brother. Keep safe out there.” Günter said.

  A few moments of tense silence held them there; each man gathered his resolve for what he must do to survive. Like a snake, Dave struck first with his blade, landing a powerful blow against Günter. Günter, a knife stuck deep in his throat, used his own blade to stab Dave in the chest. Günter gurgled on his own blood with helpless frustration as he struggled to breathe, while Dave’s heart stopped beating, and every ounce of remaining strength was spent on ensuring the other’s demise. The two men dropped to the ground, one atop the other in a death embrace that, to any passerby, would have appeared to be a hug between friends. As a large pool of blood fanned out across the concrete, the rat, which had been watching the men, crept out from her hiding place. On tiny fleet feet she skittered over to her first meal in days and started to nibble on Dave’s face as she heard footfalls on the gravel lot approach.

  Scott Wilkins, the owner of those footfalls, had been taking a shortcut through the back lot of McMillan Brothers Manufacturing on his trek west, when to his surprise he saw two scruffy men lying dead in each other’s arms. He stood watching fresh blood pool around them as a scrawny rat took what she could get from one of their heads. Scott was loner from North Carolina who stood six feet tall, and wore a black leather duster. With calloused fingers he stroked week-old stubble while looking around to see if anyone else was nearby, as he stood a few feet from the dead strangers. The odor of death wafted to his nostrils like the smell of a sweet summer rain. Scott grinned as the rat gorged herself on human flesh. He would eat tonight, too.

  Scott chased the rat away, dragged the two men inside, found some wood that had not been pressure treated, and started a campfire inside the old manufacturing plant. Darkness was coming, and the night was owned by mutant looters and scavengers. Scott could already hear their whoops and hollers as they ran through the streets searching for living subjects to torment, rend, and devour with filed needle teeth. In one of the men’s pockets Scott found a small diary, and as the man’s leg roasted over a crude spit, Scott read.

  It’s been five years since the bombs stopped falling from the sky like a death rain, and our society is in shambles. Bombed out buildings are what remain of previously thriving metropolitan areas, with towns and cities reduced to rubble. We’re a world full of refugees with nowhere to turn. I was managing a small convenience store in Concord, North Carolina when the final gas truck arrived to find thr
ee hundred cars lined up for a five-gallon limit per customer. A pervasive dread spread over our communities as fear turned into anger, and eventually evolved into fighting in the streets.

  My family was killed by looters after the electrical grid was attacked by a terrorist group using an electromagnetic pulse weapon. I, and others, think it was to stop the planes from bombing us, and it occurred a short time after some newsman mentioned the possible use of nuclear weapons to stop a global pandemic of chaos. Soon after the lights went out for good, humanity plunged back into the eighteen hundreds. With no electricity, our world ground to a halt, as all means of communication through electronic devices had gone dead. Our ground is so burned and scarred from fighting that it may be a generation before we can farm again. Cities are now dangerous desperate places I dare not tread. Damn, I miss my wife and baby boy.

  The final straw, for us was when the CDC building in Atlanta was attacked and destroyed. Viruses, both natural and the manmade horrors cooked up far underground, spread from one town to another as the infected fled Atlanta, and the first mutants appeared.

  Scott put the book down, ate most of a thigh, and packed some meat for his long walk to California. The rats and mutants would eat what was left when he bugged out in the morning. Summer heat would spoil his food in about a day, and packs of wild dogs would track him if he carried more than a day’s ration. From one town to the next he walked on an endless road to a mythical place where he hoped life would still be somewhat normal. Before the EMP ended radio transmissions of any kind, he had intercepted a conversation between two Ham radio operators explaining that San Francisco was still unaffected by the economic turmoil, and people there were still helping each other out. Scott’s journey had become a pilgrimage that would eventually take him years to complete.

  Scott wandered for days through a deserted landscape of destroyed homes, burned out wrecks of cars, and decaying human corpses along I-40. The highway stretched from coast to coast and as long as Scott stayed on the highway he was sure to reach his destination. Skeletal remains lay strewn about like so much refuse, their bones picked clean by hungry buzzards in this new America. Dark approached and an evil wind was blowing around Scott, bringing a chill to the air, so he flipped up the collar of his leather duster, and pulled his cowboy hat a little further over his eyes as clouds of dirt swirled in the breeze.

  Scott kept to himself, and because of the high volume of infected, and virally mutated, it was safer that way. Strange folk abounded now, crazy, desperate, and meaner than in the old days. Scott never carried so much as a pocket knife before the war, but now his weapons were a long Bowie knife, and a .45 caliber pistol, which was a gift from his wife before she was taken by cholera in the first days of epidemic. She was gone now, and Scott missed her with an ache in his heart that would never quite heal.

  Degenerate thieves were usually attracted by campfires and would come out at night to hunt unsuspecting loners or small groups and take what they wanted. With no more law and order, raiders would do unspeakable things to the women, and sometimes men before stealing their victim’s belongings. One afternoon while walking through the Appalachian Mountains, Scott walked by a campsite where the people camping had been slaughtered, and pieces of the bodies removed.

  “Cannibals. No easy meal today.”

  He could smell the stench of decay ten feet away and knew the bodies were too rancid to take from. A wolf walked out of the brush looking from the corpses to Scott, and back again. It bared its teeth, and growled at Scott with territorial menace. The two were in a standoff that Scott wanted no part of.

  “Looks like my luck just changed. Sorry about this, brother.”

  Scott pulled his .45 and fired from the hip. A dark hole opened in the wolf’s forehead, and he dropped dead with a soft thump in the nettle-covered ground. Scott removed the rotting human bodies from his campsite and field stripped the wolf. After cooking his meat over a new fire he looked into the valley below and saw a house.

  Scott knew it was always better to be hidden when the sun went down, but tonight was a full moon, and he hid a dark secret. He felt the irresistible magnetic pull of the moon on his soul when she was full. When the power grid failed, and nuclear power stations went offline worldwide, there was no way to maintain them, so they became a nuclear nightmare. Scott was inspecting one of the reactors at McGuire Nuclear Station to understand the threat when he was exposed to an overdose of radiation, and came in contact with a woman infected with an unknown pathogen. She had been wandering around outside babbling incoherent ravings when he approached and tried to help her. She bit him on the neck, and that day changed his life forever. Scott became a child of the moon, a werewolf.

  He made his way toward the small house as the sun began to set. It was an older two story, with wooden siding painted white. It sat eerily still against an early evening backdrop of distant stars. There seemed to be no signs of life from within, but out of courtesy he knocked before entering.

  “Hello? Is anybody here?” Walking into houses without permission could still get you shot, even at the end of the world.

  The front door was dilapidated, and hung on hinges that had not been oiled in a hundred years. As Scott opened the door it creaked through the empty darkness with a long, low moan. He felt icy spectral fingertips caress his spine, but entered an empty foyer, fighting rising fear. Floorboards creaked beneath his feet as he crept slowly into the living room, feeling the house breathe around him. The house stank of old cigar smoke, dust, and dandruff, but otherwise appeared empty. Scott began to look for a rope or something similar to tie himself to a radiator by the window for the night, when he heard a scream down below. The hair on his neck stood up.

  He reached for his pistol, but as he did the cold barrel of a shotgun touched the back of his neck.

  “That’s just about far enough. Put your hands where I can see em’,” said a man.

  “Whoa, everything’s cool, mister. I don’t want any trouble and whatever you got goin’ on here don’t concern me. I’ll be on my way, if you’ll lower that weapon.” Scott said.

  “You’ll be on your way to my basement. Now, drop that piece you were about to reach for real slow like, and get movin’.”

  Another figure appeared out of the darkness, a woman in her mid-fifties. She frisked him after he dropped his gun, removing the Bowie knife.

  “I’m real sorry about this, sir.” She whispered.

  “Woman, shut up!” The man screamed.

  Scott did as he was told, moving toward an open doorway leading down. An acrid odor of rotting flesh slammed into his nostrils like a punch to the nose, but he kept his mouth shut. The screaming was louder now, and distinctively female.

  “Get on down those steps, big boy. You’re our house guest now… til’ we eat you that is.” The man laughed, and slammed his rifle barrel on Scott’s head.

  “Please don’t do this,” Scott whispered.

  “You’d be amazed how many times we hear that same thing from other travelers. I sure feel bad about this, mister, and I may even shed a tear when you’re gone. Now move.” He commanded.

  Scott was marched down to a dimly lit basement where there was an old coal chamber with a metal gate bolted to the wall. A single swaying light bulb dangled from the ceiling. Scott saw dirt-covered hands reaching through the bars, and heard feeble pleading from within. On one of the tables lay the corpse of a woman who was currently being cut apart by someone wearing a splatter mask. Scott guessed that this had been the screamer.

  “Dylan, get that meat cut up and put it in the freezer. Winter’s comin’,” The man said.

  “Sure, Dad,” said the masked man.

  He went back to work with an antique bone saw. Scott’s anger began to grow.

  “You’re making a mistake, sir. Please, let me go. It’s a full moon tonight, and I need to be alone.” Scott pleaded.

  The woman unlocked the gate, avoiding eye contact with Scott, and without another word, he was thrust ins
ide by the man holding a shotgun. Inside were three partially naked, terrified people scattering to the corners. They did not talk, and sat with their heads between their knees rocking back and forth. It was a macabre and surreal scene for Scott, and by his watch it would be midnight in a few hours. Very soon, the curse would take effect and these people would be set free of their wretched lives.

  “Please, let me out! You don’t understand!” Scott screamed.

  The boy never turned around again and hummed a tuneless song as he finished dissecting the now deceased lady on his table.

  Time went by as the horror show continued outside his cell. Scott’s head began to ache as electricity surged through his body, while the virus answered to the call of a full moon. His feet grew first, long claws stretching through his shoes, splitting the leather. Scott was still in control of himself and began to disrobe to save his jeans, shirt and leather duster. The others with him gathered together holding each other in fear.

  “I’m sorry,” he groaned.

  Scott’s face formed the maw of a wolf as his bone structure grew three feet taller. His arms and legs transformed into tough, stringy, muscles that bulged like a champion weightlifter. Thick, matted fur covered Scott’s body. Scott howled in his rage, alerting the entire house that death had arrived. Once the transformation was complete he stood hunched inside the coal chamber, his nostrils inhaling the sweet smell of human flesh. The newly transformed Scott turned on his three cellmates and began slashing them violently apart, stopping only when a shotgun blast hit him in the back. Scott turned from the carnage, putting a paw across his back to feel the blood seeping out, his toothy face twisted in a horrifying grin. In this form he was immortal, a creature of the night, an immaculate abomination. The nameless man who had imprisoned him slid his shotgun back through the gate to reload.