Half Past Midnight
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Authors: Jeff Brackett
Half Past Midnight
by
Jeff Brackett
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Half Past Midnight
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Copyright © 2011 Jeff Brackett
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
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Cover Designed by Telemachus Press, LLC
Cover Art:
Copyright © Hemera/Urban Doom # 93957998/Thinkstock; Hemera/Bright Nuclear Explosion # 99653107/Thinkstock
Published by Telemachus Press, LLC
http://www.telemachuspress.com
Visit the author website:
http://www.jlbrackett.com
ISBN: 978-1-937698-13-3 (eBook)
Version 2011.12.28
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
* * June 13 / 10:14 a.m. * *
Chapter 2
* * June 13 / 2:23 p.m. * *
Chapter 3
* * June 13 / 3:15 p.m. * *
Chapter 4
* * June 13 / 6:03 p.m. * *
Chapter 5
* * June 13 / 7:02 p.m. * *
Chapter 6
* * June 13 / 11:34 p.m. * *
Chapter 9
* * July 4 / Evening * *
Chapter 10
* * April / Year 3 * *
Chapter 11
* * August 14 / Year 3 * *
Chapter 12
* * August 16 / Year 3 * *
Chapter 13
* * August 17 / Midnight * *
Chapter 14
* * August 17 / 2:18 a.m. * *
Chapter 15
* * August 18 / Sunset * *
Chapter 16
* * August 19 / Morning * *
Chapter 17
* * August 21 / Noon * *
Chapter 18
* * August 21 / After the Battle * *
This novel has been such a long time in the making, and there have been so many people who have helped me with it, that I just know I’m going to miss some of you here. Please forgive me if I do.
First, thanks to Megan, Zach, and Amber, for not laughing at your crazy old dad’s dream.
And to my parents, who inspired me to begin this project so many years ago.
Half Past Midnight
is the result of a discussion with them wherein my mother jokingly made the comment, “If there ever is a nuclear war here, I hope I’m standing directly under the first blast.” That single comment started my twisted mind wondering, “but what happens if you aren’t?”
Thanks to Linda, for encouraging a much younger me to take my writing seriously.
And to James Husum, my “brother from another mother” who has read and critiqued various incarnations of this novel in an attempt to keep me honest.
Thanks to Lynn O’Dell and Jim Chambers of Red Adept Publishing. They are the best editing team I could ever hope for. You guys took a rough manuscript and helped polish it until it was actually a presentable story.
And to Dave, for sharing his intimate knowledge of the Abram’s battle tank, and Edwin for sharing his expertise in military Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear warfare training.
Thanks to everyone in the Dead Robots’ Society, for inspiring me to get back into writing after a too-long hiatus. Special thanks to Terry Mixon, for helping to educate me on the way the biz works these days, and Justin Macumber, the head “Dead Robot”, for helping me come up with the name
Half Past Midnight
, when my working title showed up on someone else’s book. (See Justin, I didn’t forget you!)
Last, but far from least, I would like to thank all of the men and women who serve in our military, who lay their lives on the line for all of us every day, so that the Doomsday War remains fictitious.
Any mistakes in this novel are mine. Anything I got right, is due to all the people who helped me out with this endeavor.
Thank you all.
Half Past Midnight
is dedicated to the best wife in the world. There is absolutely no way this novel would have ever been completed without her support and encouragement. She helped me bring what was only a half-baked idea into reality.
I love you, Meloney.
Half Past Midnight
Chapter 1
* * June 13 / 10:14 a.m. * *
Les fleurs passés diminue le monde,
Long temps la paix terres inhabitées:
Seur marchera par ciel, serre, mer & onde:
Puis de nouveau les guerres suscitées.
Pestilences extinguished, the world becomes smaller,
for a long time the lands will be inhabited peacefully.
People will travel safely through the sky, (over) land and seas:
then wars will start up again.
Nostradamus –
Century 1, Quatrain 63
Doomsday fell on a Saturday.
I was at work. But then, I was always at work, or at least that was how it seemed. I didn’t know at the time just how easy I had it.
In those days, I was a CNC machinist and programmer. I worked in a small, family-owned, high-volume, high-precision machine shop. Quite a mouthful, isn’t it? The key words there are “family owned,” and the family that owned this particular business was the Dawcett family. It was, not so coincidentally,
my
family.
I was the only son of Raymond and Elizabeth Dawcett, owner and office manager, respectively. That effectively gave me the unofficial title of S.O.B., supposedly standing for “Son of the Boss,” but some of the employees used it a bit too gleefully.
That particular Saturday morning, I was tweaking the setup on a CNC lathe to run an extremely close-tolerance job. It was a tricky setup, requiring all of my concentration. On a weekday, there would be all the myriad distractions that come with Monday through Friday’s nine to five. So I had come in on Saturday.
My dad was also in, working in the office on a proposal for a new job. He’d been forced to cut back on his workload ever since his heart had gone bad and he’d gotten the latest model Jarvik. The doctors had restricted him to light workdays, warning that he would tire much easier for the next several months. So in his typical fashion, he’d decided if he had to work fewer hours per day, then he would do it seven days a week. We often joked about the limitations of his bionic heart, but we both knew he wasn’t getting any younger. And he wasn’t even close to being completely recovered.
Everything was going smoothly with my setup, and I was nearly finished when the power abruptly went out. Sudden darkness. Safety mechanisms on the lathe kicked in, immediately clamping the brakes onto the spindle, winding it down from fifteen hundred RPM to a full stop in less than two seconds.
Great! Just my luck. Try to get ahead and see what happens?
Then, in my best Dangerfield voice, I said, “I don’t get no respect.”
I stood there a moment and considered my options. There was a slight chance the power would come back on momentarily, but I didn’t think it very likely, since both the one-ten and the two-twenty had gone down together. The loss of power to either system wasn’t that unusual, but I could count the number of times we had lost power to both on the fingers of one hand. On each of those occasions, the electricity had stayed down for several hours.
Lucky me. I got to add another finger to the tally.
As my eyes began to adjust to the gloom, I saw the darkness was not as absolute as it had first seemed. Far across the large machine shop, I could make out the dim outline of the door to the office area. That was my beacon as I made my way through the otherwise pitch-blackness. Stumbling over pallets and tool chests, I cursed quietly with each bump. Soon the cursing wasn’t so quiet, but I finally made it into the adjoining office.
I entered the office through the door behind Dad’s desk, but he didn’t turn to greet me as he normally would. Instead, he remained facing forward, his attention apparently focused outside.
“What’s going on, Dad? We just lost all the power in…” I rounded the desk and saw that he wasn’t paying any attention to me. He just continued to stare outside with a puzzled expression on his face.
I followed his gaze and saw what held his attention. “What is…?”
For several seconds, my mind simply refused to accept what my eyes conveyed. The sky was one of life’s constants, one of those things one could always count on to remain within a specific set of parameters. On a clear summer day in June, I knew I could count on seeing the blinding yellow disk of the sun in a deep blue sky. What I saw instead took me aback.
“What the…”
The sun was indeed a blinding yellow but, past that point, I had trouble comprehending what I saw. The sky was
not
the normal crisp blue of a hot Texas summer morning. Instead, it dopplered into more of a shimmering violet, with the deepest of the color centered around a second glowing orb about fifty degrees to the north. It was almost as large as the sun, though not quite as bright. In fact, it seemed to be fading slightly even as I watched. The sky around it shimmered slightly, like an aurora borealis.
“What the hell is that?” Even as I said it, though thirty-seven years old, I realized I still wanted to flinch when I forgot myself enough to curse in front of my parents. But still, Dad didn’t comment and, when I looked back at him, I saw he still hadn’t moved. Not at all.
“Dad?”
Still nothing. Alarmed, I stepped toward him—and stopped. It wasn’t until then that I finally realized what else was wrong. Dad wasn’t just motionless—he wasn’t breathing.
“Dad!”
Knocking over his guest chair, I scrambled to my father’s side. I hesitated a second, irrationally afraid to touch him, knowing at the same time that I had to. My hand shook as I felt for a pulse.
“No, no, no, no, no,” I chanted over and over, as if willing it not to be so would bring him back. In desperation, I dragged him out of his chair to the floor. Laying him on his back, I grabbed the portable defibrillator from the wall and ripped open his shirt. The sight of his surgical scars stopped me.
Could I use the defib on him? Would it interfere with his Jarvik?
I considered CPR, but another glimpse of the healing incision on his chest halted me yet again.
“Shit!” I opened the Portafib and ripped open the adhesive electrodes. Reading through the instructions, I applied them to his chest as shown in a diagram and glanced at the indicator on the box. “God
damn
it!” The indicator was as dead as the lights in the shop—as dead as my father on the floor before me. I flung the Portafib across the office.