2 Minutes to Midnight (3 page)

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 three 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
inside 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.