One Minute to Midnight (40 page)

“
I guess it’s a good thing
we left tonight.” Tammy said. She was depressed over the whole
affair, and there was little Josh could do to console her, so he
concentrated on keeping his family safe as the highway became
busier than usual.

"I’ll say. If the President announced
a state of emergency, then these roads are going to become a
walking trail as people try to flee the coastal areas." Josh
replied. Timmy was asleep in the back, and Josh could not help but
envy his son’s ignorance about the dire situation they all
faced.

Six hours later, they were
granted access to the Norfolk Naval Station and directed to
where
The Legend
was docked
.
Josh met Donald Ricks at the dock as he was directing the
loading of equipment onboard. Tammy was holding their sleeping son
as they approached the captain, and her watch read four a.m.
"Good morning. You must be Josh Henderson. I’m Don Rick’s, pleased
to meet you." Don stuck out his hand and Josh took it.

"Permission to come aboard, captain?"
Josh said with a weary smile.

"Granted. Ma’am, you can take your
little boy below deck and get some sleep. You’re welcome to sleep
as well, Josh, unless you want to stay up and help out. Your call.
We should be ready to ship out in a few hours." Don beckoned one of
his men, and a burly, bearded man wearing a flannel shirt and blue
jeans put down a heavy box and sauntered over. "Fred, can you
please show…" Don began.

"Tammy." She said.

"My apologies, please show Tammy
Henderson and her son to their quarters below deck." Don
finished.
"Sure, my pleasure. Mrs. Henderson, right this way." Fred
said.

The water level was above
the dock now, and they were all ankle deep in the rising tide. Josh
jumped in and helped load the last few crates and boxes before they
set out to sea, and then he went below deck to sleep with his wife
and son, who were both unconscious when he entered. His head was
buzzing from the long drive, and when he laid down, he could hear
ringing in his head as the gentle rolling of
The Legend
lulled him to sleep. When
Josh awoke, Tammy was lying next to him, smiling with their little
boy in between the two.

"Thank you for getting us out of
there. The captain came down a few minutes ago and said that a
tsunami had washed out Norfolk and most of the eastern seaboard a
few hours after we left. He said Charlotte’s now ocean front
property. The highways are pandemonium and most of the airports are
shut down. They weren’t prepared." She said.

"It makes my stomach knot up just
thinking about how close we were to being there when it happened. I
should have taken the telescope with us, that thing might have
saved our lives."

The voyage to Antarctica was lengthy,
but they had plenty of food, and as Josh and his family grew to
know the research scientists and crew, it seemed less like they
were escaping a cataclysm, and felt more like an exciting cruise.
Eventually, they began to see walls of ice floating by as they
melted in the rising ocean temperatures. Although they were in the
southernmost part of the globe, where it should have been freezing,
Josh felt a tropic breeze blow by as he stood on deck, staring out
at an ocean of blue.
One morning, as Josh was waking up, the family was suddenly thrown
to the floor of the cabin. Timmy caught himself on his bunk frame
before being dropped on top of his mom. They could hear people
frantically climbing the stairs as the crew rushed to understand
the threat, and when Josh and his family came topside, they could
do nothing but stand in shock with the captain, the researchers,
and crew. They had run aground on dry land.

Pyramids rose high into the morning
sky, surrounded by city buildings in an ancient city that was once
lost to the eyes of man for an untold amount of time. To Josh, it
looked as if New York City had been constructed beside the great
pyramids in Cairo. Streets lined with gold, copper, and marble
crisscrossed through the structures.

"I believe we’ve found what we were
looking for." Josh said.

"If this ain’t Atlantis, I’d sure as
hell like to know what just rose out of the ocean." Don said. His
ship was locked on a jagged outcropping of rocks, and when he had a
talk with the helmsman, it was not going to be a pretty
conversation. "Well, let’s go see what we came all this way for."
Don finished. He lowered a rope ladder over the side and his crew
climbed down.

A herd of dead humpback whales lay
stinking in the hot sun as they were picked apart by flocks of
birds.
"When this continent came up it was fast. These poor guys couldn’t
get out of the way." Don hooked a thumb to the whales.

The sight of silent, drying city
streets lined by skyscrapers went on for miles. Their windows had
long ago been blow out from either water pressure, or a disaster
that caused the continent to sink under a mile of ice. Otherwise,
the buildings were immaculate, preserved as if the citizens would
be filling the streets at any minute. They headed toward a pyramid
in the center of the city that towered over all other buildings. It
had a gleaming capstone that radiated with energy from the sun.
Josh and Tammy walked with Timmy in awe of the magnificence of such
a construction. When they finally reached the long staircase, they
could see a closed door about half way up. Lining the stairs were
majestic golden statues of bulls covered in dried, browning
seaweed, still standing vigil after all this time under the
surface.
"This is so cool." Josh said. He ran ahead of the researchers and
their captain, and was the first one up the stairs, running to the
door.

The door was starting to open as he
reached the top step, and when he looked back, Josh almost stumbled
down the stairs. He was eye level with the tallest building in the
city, and without warning he was stricken with a nasty case of
vertigo. Don was right behind him and caught Josh before he nearly
became a casualty in the new world.

“
Easy man, I got you.” Don
said. After balancing, they both walked into the pyramid together.
Minutes later, the rest of the party caught up, and after winding
through a surprisingly well-lit tunnel, they entered an open room
in the center of the pyramid. On the far side of the room was a
giant golden sun hanging on the wall, and a pedestal in the center
with a blue dome-shaped button.

"OK, who wants to press the shiny
button?" Josh asked.
"If it weren’t for your radio telescope we would never have been
able to get this trip together so fast. You do the honors, Josh."
Don said.

Josh looked around at everyone in the
room, and they all nodded with a smile.

"Now, if the ceiling falls in, we’ll
blame you for it, just so you know." Tammy said. Josh could see she
was serious.

He walked up to the pedestal with
caution, and looked back at the crowd huddled together like a bomb
may go off any minute. The floor was white marble tile, and as he
walked, Josh's footsteps echoed through the vast chamber. His heart
beat faster, and as a result the blue button began to change color
from cobalt to pink, and then bright red. Josh could feel sweat on
his palms as he reached out to touch the button. He took a deep
breath, let it out, and pushed it down with his palm. His mind was
instantly flooded with images of green valleys, dinosaurs, winged
creatures in the sky, and people congregating with each other in
the city streets they had just walked through. A female voice began
to softly speak to all of them from the direction of the giant gold
sun. Josh removed his hand from the pedestal and stood still as a
statue, afraid to move.

"Welcome humans." She said. "I am
Gaia, Mother Earth, and you stand on the edge of a new day for your
species. War in your time is obsolete, and your technology has been
rendered useless."

"Why has this happened?" Josh asked.
He opened his mouth before thinking, and the thought just popped
out. The entire group received mental images of grounded planes,
entire cities without light at night, and electrical grids being
dismantled for parts.
"My prayers have been answered, and the shepherds are back." Gaia
said.

"What do you mean, shepherds?" Tammy
asked from across the room.

Josh turned around and ran
back out the way they had come in. As he stood above the city, he
watched with terror as thousands of interstellar ships landed. One
of the images projected into his mind as he held his hand on the
pedestal, was a golden-winged planet alternative that
archaeologists referred to as Nibiru. He finally understood the
meaning of the last word his radio telescope had captured. The
Anunnaki gods from ancient Sumeria had returned again to reclaim
their planet, and as the ten-foot giants emerged from their craft,
Josh had the feeling that this was going to be one of
those
days.

gretel

George has an unexplained
emptiness in his soul, but adventure will soon fill the blank space
when he takes the wildest ride of his life.

Three nights came and went as George Shopton
lay still and motionless, staring at his ceiling, praying that
tonight would be his release from endless nights of chronic
insomnia. He saw visions of sheep dancing through his weary mind as
he struggled to count them, but after night three, he was incapable
of keeping track. He rolled out of bed each morning to the
obnoxious sound of his alarm clock, dressed and headed out the door
for another day at work. After three nights of failing to sleep, he
accidentally dropped a pot of coffee on the break room floor,
thinking he was hitting his cup. The pot hit his foot with a
crashing blow, and then the hot liquid spilled all over his feet
like the pyroclastic flow of an angry volcano. It ruined his
leather shoes and caused his left big toe to swell like a balloon.
He cleaned up the mess with half a roll of paper towels, while
trying to look nonchalant as coworkers entered the break room
ignoring him.

Dennis Daniel entered the room with concern
written on his face.

"Jesus, man! Are you alright?" He asked.
Dennis had witnessed the incident through a small window in the
door.

"I'm fine, just a little clumsy. Ouch, my feet
are burning like hell!"

"Are you OK? You look like you haven't slept
in three weeks." Dennis said.

"It's been four nights, actually. I just can't
sleep, and it's literally making me crazy."

Dennis paused a moment as if he were
considering something. "Here, take some of these, they help me when
I get restless at night." Dennis handed him two little white
pills.

"What are they?"

"They'll help you kick the insomnia. Oh, and
you didn't get them from me."

"These will help me sleep? What kind of crazy
side effect do they have? I don't trust any of this shit."
Dennis rubbed his chin a moment. "The side effect is mild
hallucinations while you're awake. But, those pills are so strong
you'll be out in ten minutes."
Ginger Abby came in behind them to warm up her coffee in the
microwave, so they turned their conversation to fake work related
talk until she left.
"If these help me, can you get me a bunch of these? I'll pay you."
George said.

"Hey, I'm no dealer, alright?" Dennis
whispered.
"I never meant to sugg…"

"It's cool. Look, I have a bunch of these
left, and I'm meeting
my
dealer this week to get some more, so fifty bucks and I'll
give you twenty of those. The first two are on me." Dennis
smiled.

George paid the money, and that night, he lay
down once more with an excited sense that this would be the night.
George was so tired, that when the pills kicked in, he dozed off
and drifted on a white fluffy cloud. For hours he was far and away
in the in-between space we all journey to when our minds rest and
transcend time in the mystical path of our destiny. In this dream,
a pretty girl handed him flowers and was speaking to him, but her
words were whispers and he could not hear her with any clarity. The
pretty young girl was in her early twenties, with a fair complexion
and appeared to be human, but her eyes were more almond-shaped than
his, and her cheekbones were higher. He swore he knew her, like a
picture lost long ago found again in some ancient discarded box,
but George did not know how. His dream girl had long blond hair,
and brown eyes that looked into his soul and he knew they were in
love or had been long ago. He reached out for her, but as he did a
booming sound echoed inside the dream world. The girl faded. She
smiled at him as he began to cry for her and reach out, but it was
no good, and she was gone. George felt the pain in his chest from a
hard soul-cry, and tears streamed his cheeks as he woke up, still
alone. Who was she? Why was he crying for her?

The digital clock by his head read two-thirty.
"Who the hell is knocking on my door at this hour in the morning?"
He mumbled to himself.

Annoyed by the disturbance, George got up,
walked out of his bedroom and down the short hallway toward the
front door. Wiping his bleary eyes, he peered through the peephole.
There was a man on the other side, dressed in a black leather
jacket, and he was staring at the door. This stranger had a five
o'clock shadow and looked like someone the mob would send to break
your legs if you failed to pay up. George became afraid and felt
his heart race. After knocking once more, the man shot an annoyed
glare, flipped the bird at George's door, glanced left and right,
and vanished down the hallway. George did not sleep again for the
rest of the night, but lay there staring at the ceiling, listening
to the pendulum on his wall clock swing back and forth, ticking his
life away. Five days without sleep, and the pills had only
partially worked.