Half Past Midnight Read online

  Half Past Midnight

  Jeff Brackett

  Jeff Brackett

  Half Past Midnight

  Chapter 1

  June 13 / 10:14 a.m.

  Les fleurs passes diminue le monde,

  Long temps la paix terres inhabitees:

  Seur marchera par ciel, serre, mer amp; onde:

  Puis de nouveau les guerres suscitees.

  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.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do?” I screamed at the ceiling. The world had gone mad, and I didn’t know how to react. The sky, Dad’s heart, a second sun-suddenly I knew what had happened. All the pieces abruptly fell into place, and I knew what the fireball outside was-what had killed my father. Worst of all, I knew he had died just a few minutes before, while I was stumbling around in the darkness of the shop and cursing at boxes. The last thing my father had heard had been me cursing. The shame and sorrow of that knowledge freed the tears I didn’t know I’d been holding back.

  Somehow I felt that I had betrayed him by not comprehending what had happened until after I realized he was dead. It was as if he had died so I would know what had occurred and, if I had caught on sooner, before I turned to look at him, he would have been alive to respond when I spoke.

  I knew that was nonsense, just as I knew there was nothing that I, or anyone, could have done even if I had been right there when it happened. The electromagnetic pulse created by an orbital nuclear explosion would short out any unshielded delicate electrical circuitry, the microminiature circuits of an artificial heart, for example.

  Dad’s Jarvik had simply burned out at the same time the lights went out. I realized that intellectually, but emotionally, I still felt guilty.

  Sobbing, I dragged my father out of the middle of the floor and into my mother’s adjoining office, where I laid him out on t
he carpet. Knowing I would probably never return made what I was doing that much harder. This man had given me my life, taught me the fundamental values for day-to-day living. Now I was going to repay him by leaving him to lie on the floor of a darkened office without so much as a decent burial.

  My next actions did nothing to alleviate my remorse, but now that I knew what had happened, I knew they were necessary. Turning away from my father, from my father’s corpse, I went about gathering things to help me through all that I knew was to come. I tried to remember what I’d read.

  A search through the desks yielded matches, a personal sewing kit, and a small first-aid kit. In the lunchroom, I found a coffee can full of packets of salt, pepper, sugar, and non-dairy creamer, as well as some instant coffee.

  I found other odds and ends, and everything went into a growing pile in the middle of the floor near the front door.

  Then, I went back out to the shop, leaving the connecting door open so the twin lights of the sun and its new companion would help push back the darkness a bit. Even with that, it became necessary to light a match as I made my way deeper into the darkness to my workbench. My hobby was knife making, a natural fusion of my career in machining and my love of martial arts.

  My most recent creation was in a drawer under the bench. Fumbling a bit in the dark, I found the custom Bowie knife I’d recently finished and grabbed the unstained leather sheath I was still working on. Thrusting the treasure through my belt, I hurried back to the pile of items I’d left at the office front door.

  After I’d gathered everything into a bucket, I took a deep breath and went back into my mother’s office. This was the part I dreaded.

  Kneeling at my father’s side I whispered, “I’m sorry, Dad.” Tears formed once more. “But you and I both know I love you… and you’re already gone. A burial won’t do you any good now, and it’d just take up too much time. And I have a feeling time’s getting really short.” I was torn between the need to do something-anything-to properly observe my father’s passing, and the need to get to my wife and children. But, as difficult as it might be, I knew which choice had priority. Sobbing now in earnest, I closed his staring eyes. “I love you, Dad. Please understand.” I bent and kissed his forehead, my final farewell.

  Wiping my eyes, I stumbled to my feet and exited, closing the office door behind me. I picked up my bucket and walked out into a world completely changed. I glanced at my watch through blurred eyes. It was ten forty-one a.m., twenty-seven minutes after the lights had gone out.

  Knowing it was useless, I tried the ignition on my car. I figured if I didn’t at least try it, I would always wonder, “What if, by some wild chance, it had worked?”

  It didn’t.

  I was willing to bet that very few cars in the nation ran at this point. Very few, indeed. EMP again. The semiconductors of an electronic ignition system were just too delicate. My little Toyota was now nothing more than half a ton of artistically-shaped scrap metal. I had expected it, but it was still disappointing.

  At least I was better off than most people at this stage. I knew I had a few alternatives at home. One consisted of a fairly tired, but theoretically EMP-proofed minivan. Long ago, I’d had a mechanic replace the old electronic ignition system with an even older standard ignition, and had stocked up on extra parts. The mechanic was a fellow survivalist and had known exactly what I had in mind. Hopefully, my better half would be organizing the kids and converting the van into our survival vehicle.

  We had long ago discussed this scenario and agreed that under these circumstances-me at work, her at home with the kids-she would begin preparations for our little evacuation and wait no more than four hours before pulling out. I would follow as soon as possible… if possible.

  My parents’ house was on my way home, and I wasn’t looking forward to telling Mom about Dad’s death. Nor was I looking forward to having to convince her to come with me and leave Houston.

  In my mind, I went over various conversations. Mom, I need you to pack a few things, just what we can carry to my house… on foot. What? Oh, well, you see, there’s a nuclear war brewing, and we need to get out of Houston before the shit hits the fan. Dad? Uh, sorry, but Dad’s dead. So put on your tennis shoes, and let’s get going.

  I shook my head. There was no good way to do any of it.

  It was just over a twenty minute walk to Mom and Dad’s. As I trudged, I saw children playing in their yards, oblivious to the nervous huddles of adults glancing at the odd display in the northeastern sky, and speaking in low whispers. A family of three busily loaded a pickup truck, apparently unaware that it wouldn’t start.

  As soon as I came within sight of my parents’ house, my heart dropped. Mom’s car-her new hybrid electric car with the state of the art electronic ignition-was gone.

  I let myself into the house, just in case.

  “Mom? You here?”

  Silence confirmed her absence, and my heart dropped. Shit.

  I took a deep breath and turned to leave, but then remembered Dad’s gun cabinet. I went to the master bedroom and to the back wall of their walk-in closet. Sliding the clothes to one side, I opened the door to the hidden cabinet. Inside were three hunting rifles and a shotgun. Dad was an avid hunter.

  Or, he had been.

  My chest began to tighten as I thought about him again. Not now. No time for it now. I pulled out his Remington pump action.30–06, a scope, and two extra clips, then slid everything into a rifle case. I found three more boxes of ammo for the rifle and dropped them into my trusty bucket.

  I’d thought it over as I packed the gun and, though it seemed heartless, I couldn’t wait there on the off chance that Mom would somehow return. Nor could I afford to search all over Houston for her on foot.

  The best I could come up with was to leave a note and hope she made her way back to read it. It was awkward, putting pen to paper to explain what had happened with Dad-more so when I wrote what I had done, where I was going, and why I hadn’t waited for her. I could only hope that she would understand. I asked that she follow as soon as she could.

  Leaving the note on the kitchen table, I turned to leave. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was 11:13. On my way out, I locked the door on yet another part of my life.

  I must have been quite a sight as I trekked homeward-a big man with a scraggly beard toting a five-gallon bucket and a deer rifle along with a rather large knife tucked into his belt. People stared as I walked, but no one seemed to want to question me. Hell, if I’d seen me under those circumstances, I wouldn’t have spoken to me either.

  I used any shortcut I could think of to save time: hopped fences, cut across fields, and followed a small creek that ran between neighborhoods. Eventually, I came to the state highway that ran near our home.

  Traffic was light and slow as a mixture of diesel-powered and old pre-electronic-ignition autos wove through the maze of shiny, stalled hybrids and electronic cars. Luckily, there was enough clearance between stalls and on the shoulder to allow steady progress.

  The amount of traffic told me word had gotten out that there was a nuclear war in the making, and that was good. However, it also meant every road out of Houston would very soon be choked with traffic, and that was bad. Very bad.

  Despite the number of incapacitated vehicles, in a city of three-and-a-half million people, there would still be more than enough left functioning to clog the eight freeways leading out of town. I hurried home to join the chaos.

  Chapter 2

  June 13 / 2:23 p.m.

  Les dieux feront aux humains apparence,

  Ce qu’il seront auteurs de grand conflict:

  Avant ciel veu serein espee amp; lance

  Que vers main guache sera plus grand afflict.

  The gods will make it appear to mankind

  that they are the authors of a great war.

  Before the sky was seen to be free of weapons and rockets:

  the greatest damage will be inflicted on the left.

&
nbsp; Nostradamus — Century 1, Quatrain 91

  Nearly three hours later, I finally made it home. I was barely through the front door when I collided with my son in the darkened interior of the house. With the power out, the only light came through the open windows. Zach carried a paper sack nearly as big as he was. “Hi, Dad. Wow! Where’d you get the gun?” He grinned in childish delight.

  “Borrowed it from your Grandpa Ray.” I didn’t figure this was the time or place to tell an eight-year-old that his Grandpa was dead.

  “Oh.” His attention shifted in that sudden way that only a child’s could. “Well, whatcha got in the bucket then?”

  His energy and enthusiasm made me smile despite my fatigue. “Don’t worry about it right now. Where’s your mom?”

  “In the garage. She’s putting a whole bunch of stuff in the van. Guess what! The ’lectricity went out, so Mama said we’re gonna spend the weekend at Nanna’s. Is that why you got the gun? Are you gonna shoot a deer while we’re there?”

  I scowled and invoked the third unwritten Law of Parenting. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing something?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m taking this stuff out to the garage for Mom.”

  “Well, don’t you think you’d better get with it?”

  “Okay.” He paused for a second. “Dad?” He came closer and lowered his voice, his face suddenly serious. “Why is Mom so mad? She yelled at me and Megan and slammed the door and stuff. And we didn’t even do anything!”

  I set the bucket down and leaned the rifle against the wall. “Here, give me that.” I reached for the sack he held. “Your mom is really nervous right now, Zach.”

  He nodded as if he knew exactly what I meant. I knelt down next to him. “Did she tell you why?”

  “Huh, uh.”