2 Minutes to Midnight (25 page)

The Poseidon
. As it hovered motionlessly above the hangar floor, he
reveled in knowing that very soon he and his crew would leave Earth
for the last time.

... Find out what happens next in
the trilogy,
In The Company of
Wolves
.

no rest for the wicked

Two men, soldiers of the new era,
are pinned down in a city gone mad. Getting back to base will prove
challenging.

Mid-summer heat bore down on the destroyed
metropolis, the buildings trapping in heat like a brick oven,
sweltering all living creatures trapped within the concrete jungle.
Miles from home, two soldiers had broken down on their way back
from a routine food supply grab in the middle of a war
zone.

"How'd we get like this, Vic?" Tommy
asked.

Vic sat quietly with his back against the
broken brick wall; both of them were exhausted from the day's
earlier skirmish with the loyalist army, what was left of it. He
closed his tired eyes as sweat ran in rivulets down a dirt-streaked
face while he attempted to think of anything but Tommy's question,
and the hard day behind them.

"I don't want to talk about it." Vic
answered.

Tommy had been a part of Vic's crew for two
months and was a child of the new age, born underground in a
network of subterranean cities designed to ensure humanity’s
survival after cataclysm. Exiled from his people for theft and
vandalism, Tommy was sent to the surface with a few sticks of
freeze-dried meat, a forty-caliber handgun and fifty rounds of
ammunition. Never having had to survive above ground, the kid would
have been killed in a matter of days if Skoal Dietrich, one of
Vic’s lieutenants, hadn’t rescued him. Tommy had been picking
through a pile of trash for food at dusk one evening when a few
wandering mutant scavengers picked up his scent. Dietrich happened
to be driving back to headquarters from a food scout mission when
he saw the boy and took pity on him. When the mutants attacked
there were hundreds hiding in wait for someone to stop and help the
boy. It was a trap, and Dietrich rolled right into it. As a result,
Dietrich and Tommy had barely made it out alive. As Tommy and Vic
sat in silence Tommy admired the phoenix patch on Vic's shoulder
and tried to make out the phrase embroidered within it.

"What's on the patch? I mean, I know it's a
phoenix, but what's the lettering? Looks like Latin." Tommy
asked.

Vic popped an eye open and sighed.

"Renascuntur per ignem. It means born again by
fire, and you'll get one once you've earned it. Maybe."

A mortar shell whistled loudly in the distance
careening through the air like a degenerate bird, and slammed into
a building several blocks away. The explosion rained chunks of
brick and mortar all over the street littered with burned out hulks
of long ago destroyed cars, and busses.

"I get that, I was just making conversation,
that’s all. So, what do I have to do to get one?" Tommy
asked.

"Look kid, you..." Vic began just as a sniper
round struck Tommy in the abdomen.

Tommy rolled over holding his side, howling in
pain. Vic scrambled to his feet moving his injured partner to a
more secure location just inside the building behind them. The
structures in this part of town were so badly destroyed that the
sniper's location was obscured. Vic dragged Tommy around the
corner, and radioed for the rest of their squad. He was kicking
himself for having taken such a long break before the remaining
walk back to headquarters. The two would have to walk a little over
a mile to get home, and Vic hated having the team use fuel if there
was no urgent reason, but now it looked like they were going to
need the wrecker to come get them.

"Red Robin, this is Blue Bird, over." Vic said
into his walkie-talkie.

"Roger that, what's your twenty?" came a
scratchy voice.

"We're a little over a click from home, check
the beacon. The kid’s taken a hit, and I'm in the process of
dispatching a sniper. Requesting immediate evac."

A few moments of silence passed as Vic peered
around the corner to try and locate their sniper, but the sun was
going down and dusk obscured his view. He dreaded the thought of
being pinned down and trapped out here at night. That was when the
scavengers came out to hunt. Scavengers were mutants who had at one
time been human, but prolonged exposure to laboratory-constructed
viruses had changed their DNA in wild combinations from one
generation to the next. They were more like monsters now. If you
were unlucky enough to be outside as darkness descended, you could
hear them scream and chatter to one another. The clicks and pops
they uttered almost resembled language, but one only they could
understand. Tommy was sitting up again, his right hand covering a
rather large and spreading blossom of blood on his dirty brown
T-shirt.

"Well, crap!" Tommy barked. A crimson pool had
formed by his hip, spreading out like a toppled ink well."Hang in
there kid, we've got help coming." Vic said.

He popped his head around the corner once more
just in time to see a brick beside his head disintegrate in a
shower of rocks. "Shit!" Vic whispered.

Vic backed slow and low into the shadows. He
could now see their enemy through the broken wall across a parking
lot reloading in a window about five stories up. Vic was fairly
certain he could get a clean shot off if he propped himself on a
stack of wooden pallets sitting near the far wall. He got into
position and looked through the scope to get a better view of his
target, shaking his head in disgust. The sniper was a young kid no
more than fifteen or sixteen, and now there was someone else in the
window with him. A bigger, older man with a beard, wearing an olive
drab sleeveless t-shirt. The older man was yelling at the younger
one, and through his scope Vic could see the two arguing. The
younger one looked scared and he was fumbling around with something
out of view as the bearded man reached for him. Two for one, Vic
thought. He centered his crosshairs, eased the trigger, and held
his last breath just before...

The kid fell out of view, and a second later
the whole side of the building he and the bearded man had been in
became a puff of white smoke as a blast caused the building to
tumble to the ground. Grenade? C4? Vic wasn't sure what they had
been wrestling with, but it had worked.

"What was that sound?" Tommy asked, gritting
his teeth.

"That was the sound of our sniper removing
himself from the gene pool. He'll be missed." Vic
grimaced.

"Don't make me laugh," coughed Tommy. "This
thing burns like Hell."

"Well, at the very least, I saved a bullet."
Vic smiled.

It was getting darker now which was bad, but
Vic could hear the welcoming rumble of their wrecker coming toward
the locator beacon on his tactical vest. Vic heard a shrill scream
far away and felt the chill of raw terror snake up his spine, like
the hand of doom reaching out and touching him. Scavengers. Vic
picked Tommy up in his arms like a groom about to carry his bride
across the threshold, and ran outside to meet the approaching
rescue vehicle. Vic could now clearly see the pretty face of Kelly
Deschaine, and Rod Stevens through the windshield. The wrecker was
a large diesel troop transport that had been fitted on the front
with a triangular steel push about five feet long that sloped on
each side. It was designed to move cars out of the way and made the
truck look like a wingless bird.

"Hang on, Tommy. The cavalry's
coming."

"Shit!" Tommy yelled.

A mutant hiding behind a pile of rubble leapt
from the top, wielding a large sword, in an attempt to topple Vic
and Tommy. Tommy pulled his side arm and fired once between the
mutant’s eyes, dropping it in the dust and rubble. A moment later
he went limp in Vic's arms. The truck pulled up to them as Vic ran
with Tommy in his arms to the back of the vehicle where he placed
him on the bed and climbed in after. Kelly joined them, frowning as
she saw Tommy slipping in and out of consciousness. She had a small
medical kit with her and ripped his shirt open as Rod turned the
wrecker around to head back to HQ. Screams in the distance grew
louder.

"He needs a doctor, Vic," said Kelly, shaking
her head.

She removed a plastic wrapped tampon from her
kit after seeing the bullet wound, unwrapped it, and used some
surgical tape to secure it inside the gash. This elicited a scream
from Tommy who sat straight up in agony, sweating profusely. Vic
grabbed his shoulders to calm him and laid Tommy back onto the
floor of their vehicle.

"It was a clean shot at least. It just tore a
good chunk out of your side. The tampon ought to help contain some
of the bleeding, Tommy. Stay with us, and do not go to
sleep."

"It feels like someone jabbed a hot poker into
my side," he moaned.

"Solvey was telling me there's a doc being
held by the Everlasting Fire cult, and he's in a hospital a few
blocks from here," said Vic.

"We would have to break the guy out of there,
that's if he's even willing to go. Those guys are notorious brain
washers, and I don't think we have that kind of time. Tommy's lost
a lot of blood, and we need to get him fixed now!" Kelly
replied.

"You want to hear that story, kid?" Vic
asked.

Tommy had turned almost white with blood loss,
and he was listless as the truck bumped and jolted down the street,
mowing through obstacles like a hot knife through
butter.

"Sure, why not?" he replied. His voice was
faint.

Tommy felt like Vic's voice was coming over a
PA system from somewhere outside the darkening room of his mind. He
tried to keep his eyes open but it felt like there were fifty pound
weights attached to his lids.

"The deal is while I talk, you don't go to
sleep. Sound like a plan?" Vic asked.

"Sure, sounds good," Tommy
whispered.

Kelly shot Vic another concerned glance and
shook her head slowly from side to side.

"You wanted to know how this all started.
Well, in 2025, the world economy had collapsed due to a pandemic of
unemployment and lack of confidence in currency. People were
separated by technology, financial class, and there were a bunch of
other reasons," he began.

"So, one day the stock market crashes and
people go nuts, and then the riots began. They were mostly in the
cities first and worked their way into smaller communities. Soon,
there was a very temporary nationwide police state attempted, until
a group of eco-terrorists attacked the CDC in Atlanta, which
released every doomsday pathogen known to man into the public at
large. Before authorities had realized what was happening and shut
the airports down, viruses spread like a wildfire through air
travel. The sickness reduced our population by billions, and a lot
of people were genetically altered in the fracas."

Kelly had been rummaging around in the back of
the truck looking for something as Vic spoke.

"Ah ha!" She cried.

Kelly had located a propane blowtorch, and a
metal rod used to reinforce concrete.

"I don't want to interrupt this uplifting
tale, but in the absence of a doctor you need to have that wound
cauterized. Tommy's still going to need a blood transfusion, Vic,
but this should stop the bleeding," Kelly smiled.

Tommy winced at the thought, but said
nothing

"Kid, before she goes to work I think you
earned one of these today. Thanks for taking care of that
mutant."

blue skies

Subterranean inhabitants of earth wait for
the great unlocking of their door. An uncertain future lay’s ahead,
but a brave new world is upon them...It was time.

History class was about to begin as twenty-five
twelfth grade students filtered into the room and took their seats.
Today would be their last in this classroom if all went as
projected by the Ministry of Knowledge, and humanity would be free
once again to explore the world above ground. Ms. Cheryl Purnam
stood before them as the last child, Tom Padilla, took his
chair.
"Good morning, class. We haven’t talked much about the years
leading up to how and why we came to live underground. For many of
us, the topic is too uncomfortable, but today is an historic event,
and it will be remembered for generations. We can finally return to
the light." She paced before the black board. "Three hundred and
seventy-five years ago, the elaborate tunnel system, our home for
the last three hundred years, was constructed by our ancestors for
refuge against a coming storm. This tunnel system, as you all may
know, networks across the entire continent." She drew a crude map
of the continent mentioned on her board, and lines crossing each
other like an elaborate river system.
"What happened to drive us down here though? No one's ever
explained it. Not even my parents; they just tell us you’ll find
out when you’re older. Was it space aliens, or monsters from the
sea? Because that’s what we figure it was…something big and fast
that caused some kind of mass destruction." Sheila Cromwell
said.
"No, it wasn’t aliens from outer space or monsters from the sea.
From the history handed down to us from previous generations there
seems to have been a global war, brought on by famine, pestilence,
and poor environmental conditions worldwide."
"I’ve seen some of their movies, the action films, and they always
seem to be launching a nuclear bomb at one another. What did we do,
blow ourselves up?" Simone Treyel asked.
"No, but at first, the food supply began to run low, store shelves
would empty and not be restocked for days, and then the price of
food skyrocketed so that only the wealthy could afford to buy from
what were called grocery stores. Those who could not afford to buy
food farmed or looted properties with stored food. The food storage
people were called preppers, and they were killed first for their
supplies. That was before the riots began."
"That sounds like a nightmare. I'd choose the tunnels, too." Tim
Fisk said.
I agree, not a great place to be stuck in the middle of, for sure.
It was a preventable side effect of geopolitical quarreling, and
from what we are able to determine, humanity could have turned the
tide by working toward increased cooperation with each
other."
"So, what was it that brought us all the way down here? Why
are
we living in
tunnels?" Fred Talbert asked.
"The final straw was when the power stations failed and began to
leak radiation and then, the power grid collapsed leaving everyone
in the dark. After that it became dangerous to travel at night, or
be above ground in the homes. Raiders would come to steal and kill
while people slept."
"So, why are we going back up there again?" Sheila asked.
"Yeah, we've got everything we need right here. Our food grows just
fine down here, we have endless power, and it's safe because we
don't quarrel among ourselves."
"The answer is, and I know this is going to sound trite, but, it’s
because it's time." Ms. Purnam smiled, and shrugged.
Twenty minutes later she dismissed class so that everyone could get
ready for the door opening. Secure from the outside by thick metal
walls, and fed by self-maintained machines, the humans who had
escaped the rioting and wars above ground had survived for hundreds
of years without ever needing to go outside. Extensive food
production laboratories and farms with artificial environments had
been programmed to reproduce chickens, cows, pigs, and ducks for
consumption, all without human intervention. Refuse was recycled
for use as fertilizer in the subterranean microcosm, and nothing
went to waste. A central brain computer in the maximum security
data center, powered by magnetic field energy generators,
controlled all technology.
After three hundred years, today was the day the door was scheduled
to open. Sandra and Tom had been waiting eagerly for this day their
entire life, and now it was finally here. In thirty minutes the
ancient lock would slide back and let them all out. Fear had been
spreading through some of the colonies for weeks regarding what lay
beyond their underground fortress. Was the air still poisoned?
Would the wars still be raging this far into the future? Were
viruses in the water? Sandra and Tom paid no attention and waited
patiently for their time in the sun.
"It's almost time!" Sandra smiled. Tom smiled back, his heart
racing.
Sandra was a pretty girl who stood seven feet tall, with long, red,
wavy hair, and soft alabaster skin. Tom thought she was the most
beautiful person he had ever met, and the two had been instant
friends as toddlers. As he looked at her he imagined her embrace,
the strength of her love when she held him, and each time it was
like coming home. Tom was also tall, almost gangly at seven feet
five inches, with blond hair, and a masculine presence even at
seventeen. Tom was beginning to grow a full beard, and Sandra found
she liked it, so it stayed. He cared for Sandra, and she knew that,
and could feel it in his touch. As Sandra looked at him, so close
to freedom from the tunnels, she felt like the two of them were
like electricity, and could handle whatever this new world had to
throw at them.
"The first time anyone has been beyond this mountain in... so
long," replied Tom.
"What do you think is out there? Paradise?" She asked.
"Whatever it is, I'm ready for it. Thirty seconds, and we'll
know."
A loud groaning rang out through the tunnels as the three hundred
year timer reached zero, and the gears began to turn once more.
Masses of uncertain people huddled together, following the sound as
the fifty feet tall six feet thick, concrete reinforced steel door
began to slide inward.
"Here we go!" Sandra yelled.
The two led a pack of people just as excited through a long cave to
blinding light beyond. Artificial daylight in the colonies had not
prepared them for the eventual return to terra, and it would take
some time before their eyes adjusted. A forest of fragrant pine
trees greeted them at the exit, bearing an aroma so refreshing that
they stopped in their tracks. When some time had passed Sandra and
Tom realized they were sitting atop a mountain. Down below them
were the remains of cities in the distance long ago abandoned, and
reclaimed by forest.
"Tom, it's just like they said it would be, and the air smells
sweet, like sugar!" Sandra said.
The rock outcropping on which they stood overlooked a forest of
pine, spruce, and cedar trees that extended into the ruined city to
their north. A squawking flock of pterodactyls buzzed by them,
looked their way for a moment, circled overhead once, and then
continued flying east.
"What do you want to do? This light hurts my eyes." Sandra
said.
"I think we need to go explore those ruins down there." Tom
replied.
"That could be dangerous, maybe I should ask my parents. Maybe they
should come along."
As if hearing Sandra's doubt about what lay ahead, Shem and
Talliya, her father and mother, emerged from the cave, shielding
their eyes from the bright sunlight. Shem was a burly figure with a
muscular frame and a long beard, and wore blue jeans, and a flannel
shirt. Many ages from now, had he been able to see a picture, Shem
would have thought he bore a striking resemblance to the Brawny
paper towels man. Talliya, dressed in jeans, leather boots, and a
beautiful shirt made of sheepskin, winced at the sun and gave her
daughter a hug.
"We're out! This is truly a miracle that we are able to see the
outside world in our lifetime." Talliya said.
"It's amazing to see real trees and animals." Shem said. "Look at
that thing!"
A brontosaurus was snacking on tall trees in the forest below. He
looked up at the strange figures emerging on the rocks above, and
snorted before going back to his vegetarian delight. More people
began to exit the cave, and walk down the slope, hands shielding
their eyes as they grouped in packs. Most of them had some form of
hunting tool in their hands, but after so long underground, with so
few resources, what they carried were no more than long iron poles.
Twenty-six thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ,
humanity once again emerged from beneath the ground in what would
much later be known as the American Southwest.
"What is it?" Talliya asked.
"I think it's a brontosaurus. I remember learning about dinosaurs
in Biology, but the fact that they still exist out here is
amazing." Shem replied.
"Do you think there are any more people out there? Did they all
kill each other?" Tom asked.
"I don't know, but I'm sure we'll find out soon." Shem said.
"Right now, all I care about is how blue the sky is. Have you ever
seen anything so beautiful?" Sandra said.
Tom's parents, Ben and Apsu, walked over to where they all stood.
Tom turned and gave his mother a hug, and then Ben. Ben had
strength to his presence that garnered respect from his
contemporaries, and as such he was a decision maker on the council
along with Shem and Talliya.
"We're out! Of course we can always return here to the underground
cave system if we need to, but..." Ben began.
"There's no way I'm going back down there again after seeing all of
this," said Tom. "Dad, can we go check out those ruins to the
north?"
"What do you think Shem? I don't have a problem with it as long as
they're safe. I'm going, too. This could be fun."
The brontosaurus moved on as the wave of people began to descend
into the forest valley. Insects buzzed and whined by them, landing,
biting, and generally harassing the new world inductees.
"These bugs are everywhere!" Tom said. He was slapping squadrons of
mosquitos on his arms. A small raptor scuttled by through the thick
forest shrubbery.
The branches, though high above the ground, were forehead height to
the seven-foot tall people emerging from their tunnels, and they
banged their heads on more than one. After hours of walking through
the brush, and weeds, the explorers began to see stone walls half
submerged in mud.
"Did you see that?" Shem said. "Something just moved in the brush
over there. It was small."
Everyone shrugged.
"There's bound to be all kinds of creatures out here that we know
nothing about. Maybe even the people we descended from: the
survivors." Talliya said. Shem nodded.
More of the city had become apparent as they passed by brick homes
crawling with vines, their windows barren, staring out at the
passersby like eyeless sockets, the glass long ago shattered and
turned to dust. Wooden rooftops that had collapsed by neglect and
disrepair were now homes for legions of termites the size of a
human thumb.
"These ruins are spooky." Sandra said.
"Do you think the city's going to be any better?" Tom asked.
"Who knows what we'll find in there." Apsu said.
From out of the mud and overgrowth they saw a road leading off into
the unknown. It was constructed of large stones that were, at one
time, placed in a straight line about twenty feet wide.
"This must have been one of the roads they used for vehicles. It's
pretty wide." Ben said.
They climbed over a massive fallen tree, and there was the city.
Stone buildings had been abandoned and left for ruin, climbing
vines, empty windows, and packs of animals running through the
street, but it seemed to hold no people.
"Let's turn around and go back." Ben said. "I don't think we'll
find anything, and we have no weapons to defend ourselves from the
roaming dinosaurs.
As if the devil had been listening, they witnessed a tyrannosaurus
four blocks away dash around the corner of a toppled skyscraper,
its enormity leaning precariously into a building across the
street. She was chasing a much smaller lizard. The dinosaur caught
up to her prey, and as the humans watched in horror, she darted her
large head down and caught the other in between powerful jaws. They
all heard a victorious roar as the smaller screeched until the
tyrannosaurus broke her back, and then she trotted around the
corner of another tall ruin, meal in mouth, and vanished. They all
turned to go back through the thick forest and stopped in their
tracks. Behind and all around were two foot tall men and women
holding spears, knives, and sling shots. These pygmy people stared
at them in silence, and for a moment there seemed to be an unspoken
tension between Shem’s people and the pygmy warriors.
"What should we do?" Tom asked.
"Well, they're blocking our path back, and they have pointy
weapons, so we probably wouldn't get far if we began stomping on
them to get through." Ben said.
"We can't stand here forever." Talliya said.
The crowd parted and one of the pygmy men, dressed in a black robe,
walked forward, on his head rested a bandana with diamonds in the
shape of the planet Saturn. He furrowed his brow, and raised his
hands.
"I am Rohan, the shaman of our tribe, please come with me." He
said. The little man walked past them toward the ruined city. Shem
turned to Ben, who shrugged and shook his head.
"Where are you taking us?" Tom asked.
He did not respond, but led them through city streets filled with
the rusted hulks of cars in the street. After only three hundred
years they had almost all disintegrated into their base metals, and
were almost unrecognizable. Lampposts that had rusted through,
slumped to the side, trees had grown thick and strong through
building windows. The forest was reclaiming what had been taken
from her so long ago. Ahead of them was a large building with
polished granite steps that had been crumbling over the slow years.
Rohan led them up and into the building. The doorway was perfect
for the height of Shem and his people, with a foot of
clearance.
"There on the wall. This is what we want you to see." Rohan said.
He pointed to a painted mural.
Although age and environmental factors had weathered the image, it
was still quite clear to Ben and the rest that this was a mural of
tall men emerging from a cave in the mountains.
"You have returned to fulfill the prophecy." Rohan said. When the
humans turned around, Rohan and his people were bowing before the
six adventurers. With their high technology, knowledge of the
planet, and longevity as a species, Shem, Ben, Tom, Sandra,
Talliya, and Apsu were indistinguishable from gods to the little
people inhabiting their ruined cities. Humanity did rebuild, and
society flourished unencumbered by bigotry and violence in the new
era. It was a golden age of man, living in harmony with nature, as
scientific and spiritual knowledge of the heavens grew. The next
day, Sandra and Tom were sitting together on top of a derelict
building watching clouds filled with cotton roll by, holding hands.
A pteranadon flew by, diving to snatch a small
dog off the street below, narrowly missing a collision with a
passing triceratops.
"What do you think will happen to us now?" Sandra asked.
"I'm not sure, but I do know that I've fallen in love with you,
Sandra, and I would not trade those beautiful blue skies up there
for another day stuck in a tunnel."Sandra took Tom's hand in hers
as the two of them sat silently for a while longer, watching clouds
of cotton float by in a sea of blue above.