One Minute to Midnight (24 page)

"Look, someone laid out a walkway.
This can't be more than a few years old." Alexander
said.

"Yeah. Do you think whoever did this
found the treasure?" Peri asked.

"Only one way to find out. Let's
go."

As they passed through a grove of
trees, they came upon a partially clothed human skeleton. The body
was facing the ocean, its hands clawing sand, and there were two
small bullet holes in the skull. Tattered cargo pants covered the
hip and leg bones.

"That's strange. What do you think
this guy was running from?" Peri asked.

"Not sure, but he dropped a machine
gun." Beside the corpse was an AR15 in good condition despite the
corrosiveness of the ocean air.

"Look, there's a backpack a few feet
away with some kind of metal rods sticking out of it." Peri
said.

He walked over to the
sand-covered bag and opened the flap. Inside were six rockets and a
foot away from the backpack lay a rocket launcher. Peri picked up
one of the rounds and squinted as he read a white label.
"
RPG-7 rocket round
. Awesome!"

Alexander found a small case of rifle
ammunition for the machine gun lying next to another decomposing
corpse. This body was almost obscured by brush, and it smelled like
a sewer. Alexander picked up the AR-15 and checked to see if it was
loaded.

"Well, there's a round chambered, and
it looks like they may have been using these before they were
killed." Alexander fired a test shot at the ocean. The report was
deafening to both him and Peri.

"Ouch, man! Warn me before you do
something like that!"

"Hey, I wasn't sure it would even
fire. Look at all this gear; it's laying in wet sand. The powder
could have been soaked for all I know." Alexander said. Peri was
watching the corpse as Alexander spoke.

"That thing’s starting to move." Peri
said.

"The dead guy? Impossible."

"Impossible or not, its happening,
right now. Maybe you should tell him it’s impossible." The corpse
began to groan and inch forward. Its head rose, glaring at them
with a spectral gaze from the crypt.

"Shoot it!" Peri yelled. The corpse
pulled forward and grabbed his leg.

Alexander fired a round into its head,
and the monster dropped still and lifeless to the gray
sand.

"That's it! I'm out of here. Grandpa
would probably have left too, had he come." Alexander
said.

"Um, we can't do that, bro. I kind of
promised Spitz a share of the treasure, and he's expecting a cut."
Peri shrugged.

"Are you serious? How can you promise
something like that when we don't know if it’s there? I'm leaving.
Forget it; I don't want to run into anything else like that
again."

"We kind of can't. Look man, I'm real
sorry, but I'm into some bad guys for a lot of money I lost in a
card game, and Spitz is one of the bad guys I owe money to. If we
don't come out of here with something, he's going to shoot me and
leave you here to die." Peri said. He looked at Alexander with
apologetic eyes.

"When we get out of here I'm going to
have to consider the value of our friendship. You
idiot."

"I'm sorry, bro. I had no
choice."

Alexander looked with fearful eyes
into the forest beyond and wondered if they would make it back
alive. Together, they walked into the jungle and entered Zombie
Island. The air was thick and humid, and it was much darker under
the jungle canopy than out on the beach. The trees seemed to move,
creating a wall around them as each footstep along the bamboo path
creaked and groaned. Moans could be heard from within jungle,
guttural and spooky like stirring cattle. Fog rolled down the
cliffs and into the jungle, making it even more difficult to
see.

"Where's this cave supposed to be? We
need to get in and get out."

"Just ahead, from what little I could
understand from that map."

A white windowless building, two
stories tall, began to appear in the fog.

"I think that's where X marks the
spot. Right there, where that building is. Crap!"

Something behind them moved. Alexander
turned to see a group of shambling ghouls plodding toward them at
the speed of a turtle. Then more appeared from the left and
right.

"This isn't good..." Peri said. There
were too many of them.

"Run!"

Peri attached a rocket to the front of
his launcher. As Alexander began to run, he fired a round into the
ground in front of the closest group, which was about twenty feet
behind them. Dirt and body parts hurtled through the air in a large
blast of fire, causing the other zombies to pause for a moment. Two
zombies jumped out of the brush nearest Alexander, but he turned
and fired two rounds, dropping them to the ground.

"That was close." Alexander
said.

"There's a door over there, at the
front of the building. Run to it!" Peri yelled.

A man appeared in the doorway, holding
it open for them with terrified eyes.

"Get over here, quick! It's safe
inside." The man yelled.

Alexander squeezed off two more shots,
dropping another zombie, while Peri loaded a second RPG. To the
left of the building Alexander saw what remained of the cave
opening, but it appeared to have been covered by a rockslide some
time ago. Only a sliver of the entrance remained, no more than a
foot wide. Impassable.

"Come on, I don't have all day!" The
stranger said.

They made it to the doorway where a
scruffy man in a filthy lab coat awaited them. He had a long
tangled beard, wild eyes, and overpowering body odor. "Quick!
Before more of them come."

A shambling mob of the undead
approached the entrance but the stranger closed the door behind
them and locked it with a keycard.

"Who are you two and what are you
doing on this island? Are you here to get me out? Who sent
you?"

"I'm Alexander, and that's Peri. We're
here to get some pirate treasure off this island." Alexander
immediately regretted telling this stranger their mission without
knowing who he was.

"My name’s Tailor, I was a lab
technician here before this place fell apart."

"How many of you are left?" Peri
asked.

"Just me. The others have turned. This
place was a genetics and engineering laboratory. We were making the
humans of tomorrow, when a batch of gene therapy solution got
corrupted and ended up in our drinking water. In about two days
this place turned into what you see out there. Two of my partners,
Don Stratford, and Reggie Hassan, escaped to go find help, but they
haven't returned."

"I think we found them on the way in.
They didn't make it. Look, we don't have much time before our boat
leaves us here. Do you know how to get into the cave we saw
outside?" Alexander asked.

"There's a door in the basement that
leads to a deeper part of the case. We built this place into the
side of the cliff and we've been using the cave as a storage
facility. The caves in there wind around in a maze, and no one has
explored the system. You say there's a treasure in
there?"

"According to this map, yes. If you
help us find it we'll get you out of here with us. It's not
specific about where the treasure is hidden, so we may have to
search around, but like I said, we only have a short time. Can we
go?" Alexander said.

"Right this way! I've been waiting for
a month for someone to come rescue me. I figured you guys must have
heard the distress beacon." Tailor led them down a flight of stairs
to an iron door, swiped his card, and opened it.

A dank odor drifted out, tingling
their nostrils with the smell of fungal rot and stale cave water.
They passed by several stacked airtight crates that had been piled
to the ceiling. Tailor grabbed a flashlight from a shelf and
motioned for the others to do the same. Peri and Alexander chose a
couple of mag lights, clicked them on and followed
Tailor.

"Up here, around this bend is the
farthest we've explored." Tailor said as they walked.

They followed him into the tunnels,
and after about a minute Alexander saw daylight through a crack in
the cave wall. "There's the cave entrance!"

"Winding through the tunnel, they came
to a wall of solid volcanic rock, a dead end. But to the right was
a medium-sized cavity, covered in cobwebs. It was big enough for a
small child to fit through.

"Look, there's a hole," said
Peri.

Alexander moved closer, his rifle
pointed forward as the other two watched with curiosity. He wiped
the cobwebs away and shone his light inside. To his amazement,
there was a box.

"I think I found it!" The box was
constructed of cedar and as he reached in it was dry to the touch.
He dragged it out.

"Open it!" Tailor yelled. He was
grinning with excitement.

Alexander flipped up the latch, and
opened the box to see it was filled with gorgeous pirate jewels and
pure gold.

"Okay, now let's get it out of here
and back to the boat. Come on boys!" Peri said.

Tailor reached into his pockets and
pulled out two tasers. Before the other two could register what was
happening, they were each struck with fifty thousand volts of pure
electricity. Peri slammed his head into the wall and passed out
while Alexander fell to the floor, shaking and wetting his
pants.

"I'm real sorry about this guys, but I
don't work or play well with others. I'm not sure why I put the
serum into the water supply, but I guess it was the devil that made
me do it." Tailor laughed. He started to drag the treasure away as
Alexander watched helplessly on the ground.

By the time he could move again, he
heard the iron door slam shut, locking them in.

"Peri, we have to go! Wake up."
Alexander mumbled. Peri's eyes popped open, and he held his sore
head. "Tailor's got the treasure and he locked us in
here."

"Ungh, my head feels like a bomb went
off inside it." Peri replied.

"We have to get out of here before he
gets to the boat. He told me that he poisoned the people he worked
with. He's a madman!"

"Dude, did you wet your
pants?"

"Can we please just move? I saw the
cave entrance back there when we came in. It may be our only way
out. Tailor locked us in here from the other side of that large
door." Alexander said.

They found their way back to the tiny
cave entrance.

"It's a rock slide. How are we
supposed to get through that?" Peri asked.

"Fire a rocket from your new toy there
and blast the wall."

"That could drop the ceiling in on us.
You know that, right?"

Alexander shrugged and stood behind
the wall, nodding for Peri to fire. Peri shook his head in
disbelief, raised the rocket launcher, fired, and stepped aside as
an ear-shattering explosion rocked the tunnels. Tinnitus deafened
their ears, but as they peered around the corner, they saw a new
three-foot opening in the mud and rocks, giving them easy access to
the outside. Alexander ran forward with Peri in tow as they scaled
the dirt wall and slithered through. Tailor was nowhere in sight,
but there was a trail of fallen zombie bodies leading through the
jungle.

"He left us a path to follow."
Alexander said. Peri could hear sound again, but it was distant, as
if his friend were speaking to him through a tube.

They jumped down and headed up the
path. They found a decrepit zombie walking out of the trees, and
Alexander fired a round into its head. One more down. They heard
screaming up ahead and followed the sound. Two hundred feet through
the jungle they saw the chest lying on the beach, and Tailor being
carried off into the trees by a herd of zombies.

"He did half the work for us. Let's
get the chest and go!" Alexander and Peri ran forward.

They dragged the chest another two
hundred feet until the jungle exit appeared, and three minutes
later they were on the beach. The undead inhabitants of the island
followed them out of the jungle as Alexander loaded the chest onto
their small boat. Peri fired another rocket into the sand, knocking
the undead back and turning several of them into a cloud of smoke
and sand.

Alexander pushed the boat into the
tide, turned it around, and Peri jumped in after, tossing the chest
onto the floor as he fired up the engine. They were safe, and
thanks to the treasure, Peri paid off his debt, and the two friends
had a story to tell for the rest of their lives. Alexander wrote a
children's book, while his best friend Peri drafted a movie script
that was optioned by Hollywood and became box office gold. The two
friends never forgot their adventure, nor the treasure of Don
Diego. Although most of it now resides in the Smithsonian Museum,
the most attractive pieces remained with them. They had, after all,
risked their lives to bring it back.