One Minute to Midnight (44 page)

"How come
you
didn't take off, or
even scream when you saw me?" Tony asked.

"I guess nothing surprises me
anymore." Falcon answered. "I've seen people do the most horrendous
things in the past four years. You'd think that surviving the war
would make people think about rebuilding society, or loving their
brothers, or whatever, but I've only seen them become more
dangerous… and weird." He paused for a moment, thinking. "Also, I
figured, you had a shot at killing me while I was sleeping and you
didn't, so you must be an OK guy."

"Huh." Tony chuffed. "Well, I think I
might be able to get you to California faster than the old shoe
leather express. Can you fly a plane?" Tony asked.
"Uh, no. I was twelve when the war ended, and before that, the
closest I got to flying a plane was playing online shooter games
with my friends."
"Well, I overheard some people who were passing through here the
other day, and they were saying there's an airport like thirty
miles to the west. They were talking about taking one of the
planes, if they were still in working order, and flying to the
Bahamas." Tony explained.

"It's worth a shot. I'll try anything
not to have to walk the rest of the way to Cali. I do know how to
ride a horse, but there's nothing larger than a dog or cat left
alive after the crops and grass died from all the chemicals and
radiation." Falcon said. He was feeling around on top of a cabinet.
"Gotcha!" He pulled down a semi-automatic pistol.

"Nice gun, Falcon. You know how to use
one of those, right?" Tony asked.

"I haven't had one in a year, but yeah
I do. These things are like pennies from heaven." Falcon released
the magazine and checked for rounds. "Fully loaded, excellent!" He
placed his hand back up on the cabinet and brought down a rattling
little box of ammunition. "Fifty rounds of 9mm. I love it. Thank
you, people who used to live here." Falcon hopped down from the
counter, sliding the pistol in his waistband at the eight o'clock
position.

He often saw gangsters in movies put
the barrel of a loaded gun down the front of their pants, right
next to their crotch, and wondered if that happened in real life,
and if so, how many people shot their balls off accidentally when
drawing on an attacker. After Falcon ate some beans, the two of
them walked out into the bright sunlight where Falcon and Tony were
immediately confronted by three mutants scavenging the dead body of
a dog in the street.

"Shhh, they haven't seen us yet. Let's
just walk around the back of the house." Tony said, and slowly
backed up into the doorway.

It mattered little what Tony did,
since he was already dead and they could not smell him coming, but
when Falcon walked out, the mutants could smell his live flesh, and
hungered for it so much that they left the rotting dog carcass
behind and began to shuffle toward the duo. Falcon stepped in front
of Tony and drew his pistol.

"You're going to draw more of them
when that thing goes off." Tony warned.

"Yeah, but we need to get moving, and
once it gets dark this place will be crawling with them anyway."
Falcon pointed at the sun overhead. "We're closer to the end of the
day than the beginning, and I don't want to spend another night in
there." Falcon fired three shots at the mutants, striking each of
them in the spaces between their eyes and dropped them to the
ground.

"Nice shootin'!" Tony said.

"Now, time to get the hell out of
here. The other mutants will have plenty to eat, now." Falcon
smiled.
Tony cocked his head, and the two walked out of town toward the
airport. Two hours later, they came to another town that looked
much like the one they had just left, only this one had a working
streetlight.
"You don't see that every day." Falcon said.
"The power grid went down years ago." Tony said. "Be careful in
here, kid. Someone else is living in this place, and they may not
be friendlies." Tony said.
"You have done nothing but worry ever since I met you." Falcon
looked at Tony in frustration. "You've got to loosen up,
bro!"

Falcon walked through one of the
yards, shaking his head at Tony. A moment later, his foot was
caught in a snare, and before he knew it he was being dragged
through the town on his back by a thick steel cable. His back ached
as he was hauled over rocks, a sidewalk, and finally dropped from a
curb. The trail ended when he was hoisted up the working street
light pole and left dangling, in extreme discomfort. Tony walked up
and the two of them were eye to eye.
"I definitely told you so." Tony shook his head. Something whooshed
past him and made his shirt flap.
"What the…?" Tony looked down and saw a hole in his shirt where his
ribs were. "Hey, stop shooting at me! We're not here to hurt
anyone. You wrecked my best shirt! Dammit!"

"Get me down from here, Tony. Shit!"
Falcon began squirming on the line as he felt the blood rushing to
his head.

A figure dressed in black jeans, a
black T-shirt, and a ski mask appeared from behind a building, and
approached the two companions with a crossbow leveled at
Tony.

"You can keep shooting, but it'll do
you no good. Worst thing that could happen to me is a chipped bone.
However, my friend here is very much alive." Tony said.

"Did you just invite this person to
shoot at me?"
"Please don't shoot at him, either." Tony said. "Better?" He
shrugged at Falcon.

"Who are you two, and what do you want
here?" Said a female voice.

"I'm Falcon, and the skeleton, er, my
friend here, is Tony. We're on our way to California. Can you
please get me down from here, and explain why you designed an
elaborate trap to catch people passing through this
town?"

"It's not for you, necessarily. I
catch mutants and dispatch them with that line. You're the first
people I've seen in months. I include you too, Mr. Bones, because I
imagine you were people at some point. I don't even want to know
what condition caused all of this." She said, gesturing with her
hand from Tony's head to knees.

Falcon's captor removed her ski mask
to reveal a beautiful girl’s face with shoulder length purple hair,
and a barcode tattoo on her neck. She reminded him of Jennifer
Anniston, if Jennifer had ever been a punk rocker. He estimated her
age to be eighteen or nineteen, but he was upside down and near
blacking out, so he could have been mistaken.

"I'm Danny." She said.

In her right hand was a remote control, and when she pressed the
button, Falcon began to descend until he was on his back. He
quickly removed the loop of wire from around his sore ankle. He
rubbed the bloody red ring that was formed when the cable dragged
his body.

"Nice welcome mat." Falcon
said.

"Sorry about that, but like I said,
those are for the mutants. Since I got here I've reduced their
numbers by twenty-five. I can almost sleep at night again without
those damned things whooping and hollering through the town." She
said.

"Are there any more of you here? Any
more people?" Tony asked.

"It depends on how you
define
any more
.
I've got a traveling companion named Baxter, and much like you,
Tony, he's sort of a mutant, but friendly enough, unless you cross
him." Danny said.

"Well, where is he?" Falcon asked. He
was getting to his feet.

"Right here, pleased to meet you, I
suppose."
"Where?" Falcon asked.

"Right here! Look down."

Falcon and Tony looked down and
realized the voice was coming from a talking beaver.

"Wow, that's amazing." Falcon said.
His face was frozen in wonder.

"You think so? I was building a dam
with my lady one afternoon, and then this purple fog came rolling
across the ground at us. I breathed some of it in, but I dove under
the water to get to our log dome, and I thought Maryann was right
behind me. The fog covered everything and I think the overexposure
killed her, and all of my family. The side effect of my limited
exposure was the ability to speak to you humans, and a terrible
case of the shits for three days."
"I'm sorry to hear that, truly." Falcon said.
"Well, it’s in the past. Welcome to Dannyville." Baxter
said.

"Yeah, I sort of named this place when
we showed up here and started killing mutants. I think this town
was originally named Toad, but my name is so much better." Danny
said.

"You know, you two are welcome to join
us on the road. We have reason to believe there are still people
alive in San Francisco, so that's where we're headed." Tony
said.

"My mom and dad are out there, and if
we can find someone who knows how to fly a plane, we might be able
to get to San Francisco before I'm an old man." Falcon
said.

"I do." Danny said.

"You what?" Tony asked.

"I know how to fly a plane. I'm an
amateur pilot. I got my license a few years before the war began."
Danny explained.

"Bullshit! That seems a little too
good to be true." Falcon blurted.

"Suit yourself and go alone. Baxter
and I are getting along fine out here together."

"Wait, I'm sorry, OK? I believe you."
Falcon apologized.
"I wouldn't say we were doing fine. I mean, the two of us have been
getting lucky is all. In this new world, there's safety in numbers
and we ain't got em'." Baxter said.

"Well, it's getting dark, and the
mutants are worse at night, so you mind if we crash here and head
out in the morning? The airport should be about twenty-eight miles
or so from here." Falcon said.
"Sure, we can leave in the morning." Danny replied. She shrugged
her shoulders and turned to walk away. "Well, aren't you
coming?"

Falcon, Tony and Baxter followed her
to the biggest house in the neighborhood. The first floor was all
boarded up and a rope ladder hung from a second floor window. The
home had been constructed of brick, and had a wraparound porch that
was currently occupied by multiple rows of concertina wire, making
access to the downstairs deadly for the shambling mutants. Some of
their corpses were caught in the wire.

"I think you've got some
danglers in your security fence." Falcon said. The bodies smelled
awful.
"
That
sends a
message to the mutants. I leave them there and since I've started
doing that they’ve moved away from my house more every day. I'm too
much trouble, I guess." Danny said.

"WHHOOOOOOOP!!
WEEEEEEEEEP!"

"They're coming. Quick, we need to get
inside. There's a herd of about fifty half a mile outside of
Dannyville to the west. I spotted them the other day when I was out
looking for food, and I think that's the same group."

The four of them made it to the rope
ladder, and that was when Falcon noticed that Danny had a sling
over her shoulder. She knelt down to Baxter, moved the sling around
her front, and picked him up enough so he could climb in. Then she
slung her crossbow over her back and began to climb. Tony went next
while Falcon stood guard with his pistol. The whoops were getting
closer, and he could feel his nerves tingling as Tony cleared the
window. Falcon put his foot on the first rung when he felt a hand
on his shoulder. When he turned he was face to face with a hideous
abomination. The mutant had crept up on him, which was a rare
occasion, because normally the things were so loud you could hear
them coming from a mile away. This mutant's head was cocked to the
side with an enormous pustule of disease dangling off its neck. Its
face was almost indistinguishable from human, because of the
lesions and cancerous sores.
"WHHOOOOOOP!" It said. The mutant tried to tear Falcon from the
ladder as he began to climb, a pistol in one hand, a rope step in
the other.
"Go away, I don't want to shoot you, but I will." Falcon
said.

"WEEEEEPPP!"
A sharp cracking sound emanated from between the houses, and
suddenly the mutant had a crossbow bolt lodged in the top of its
head. It gave Falcon a questioning look, and then dropped to the
ground.
"You're welcome! Now get up here before you get killed." Danny
said. She disappeared back inside with her crossbow.

The four of them ate beans for dinner,
and slept in separate rooms of the large house, while they were
serenaded to sleep by the whoops, wheeps, and grunts of the mutants
outside. Falcon was so tired that he passed into dreamless sleep as
soon as his head hit the dust-covered pillow. In the morning, they
regrouped in the hallway outside the master bedroom where Danny
slept. She was inside, getting dressed when Falcon accidently
bumped the door, allowing it to swing open. Tony turned his head
out of respect, and walked down the hall with Baxter in tow.
"After we make sure there's no mutants outside I've got something
to show you guys." Danny told them.
She was braless, her back to him, wearing only her faded blue jeans
while Falcon stood mouth agape in her doorway. The mural of tattoos
on her back and arms mesmerized him as he stared at her, forgetting
for a moment that they had just met. Danny sported a purple and
blue dragon that began somewhere below the top of her jeans and
wound up her slender back. On the left and right scapula was the
wing of a dark angel. On her arms she had been inked with skulls,
demons, and robots from nineteen fifties movies. She turned toward
him with a smirk on her face.