One Minute to Midnight (10 page)

"Here we go, Devon. Toward the back of
this stone garden is a big mausoleum with a lock on the gate. We’ll
break into that one." He produced a set of bolt cutters from his
bag.

The skull imprint of his mask grinned
at me every time he turned my way and I got the impression that I
had befriended the grim reaper. Our only guide was faint moonlight,
so we quickly hopped the fence and sidestepped the ocean of
tombstones in the darkness. I saw a large black object rising out
of the blackness and realized that it was our target. The mausoleum
looked like an ancient Grecian structure with high granite walls,
ornate columns, and decorative stone gargoyles on each corner of
the roof.
"Gargoyles are supposed to keep out evil spirits, you know." I
mentioned.

Dan didn't seem to hear me, and cut
the padlock. The large steel gate swung open on creaking, ancient
hinges. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears as we crept inside.
Inside the tomb was a large concrete crypt with a heavy granite
lid. Dan pried the top with the crowbar until he could push it
aside with his feet on the lid and his back against the
wall.

"You could help, you know?" Dan
muttered.
I had been standing there like a statue, still not sure whether I
wanted to be there. His words snapped me out of my hypnosis and
helped him push the lid over.

"Push it the whole way off, onto the
floor. We probably won't be noticed this far back, but sometimes
the cemetery has a night watchman drive through here just to check
on things. We’ll need to move faster." Dan said.

With another good kick,
the lid hit the floor with a loud
thunk
and we were staring at an
extremely old coffin.
"The guy in here has been dead since before the Civil War. Let's
let him out to breath shall we?" Dan said.
He opened the lid and the horrible odor of something old and rotten
rose from the corpse. I turned my head out of revulsion.

"Man up and grab that head!" Dan
laughed.
He had a cloth sack open in his hands, and as I took hold of the
corpse's head I lifted, cringing as a ripping sound, almost like
cloth tearing, was uttered from the body, making my stomach turn.
What was I doing? I put the skull in his bag and we ran out. I
looked back over my shoulder once more, and noticed that the
gargoyles were gone. Had the gargoyles ever been there? I didn’t
know. We dashed back to his car, and before I closed the door Dan
was hitting the gas, and laughing like he had just heard the best
joke of the year. He spun his wheels, kicked up a cloud of dirt and
rocks, and we flew off into the night.
"You did it, brother! I thought you were going to bitch out, but
you did it!" Dan yelled.

His eyes gleamed a red glow when he
turned to face me, but I was probably just imagining that, I
thought.
"We got the skuuuuuull!" Dan sang.

Something hit the roof of his car and
he stopped singing.
"Uh oh, we may have been noticed." Dan said, the demeanor of his
voice changing dramatically.

For the first time since we met, he
seemed nervous. There came another strike onto his roof and this
time a large hole was torn into the metal. One more after that, and
his roof peeled back like a tin can. Dan was screaming and swerving
all over the road now. I looked over at him and realized that I was
screaming, too, as a stone gargoyle landed on the edge of his
windshield. Another one landed on my side, and then there were two
more hovering above us. How they could move, I had no
idea.

"Damien, you're up to your old tricks
again, I see." A gargoyle growled.

"We were just passing through man, no
need to get bent out of shape. Take the skull. Hey, we don't even
need it. Devon, give them the bag." Dan said.
"We will be returning the skull, and you're going back to Hell
where you came from!"

Two of the gargoyles snatched Dan out
of his seat and flew away into the darkness.

"You've been a bad boy, Devon. You'll
have to pay for this desecration." The gargoyle said.

I was terrified beyond the ability to
respond and blacked out. When I woke up, I discovered that I had
been tied up and bound to the top of the coffin inside the crypt we
had just robbed. I look up and saw that there were blue lights
flashing outside. A police officer was shining his beam in my eyes
and telling me not to move. I almost began laughing hysterically at
this. I never saw Dan again, and had to stand trial for grave
robbing without an accomplice, but for the first time in my life I
felt alive and noticed.

SOmewhere in time

Richard Price is an average test pilot for
experimental aircraft, but he is about
experience the mission of a lifetime.

Richard Price had been a pilot for ten
years in the United States Air Force, and had an exemplary career
as a flyer. Occasionally, aircraft manufacturers would ask
experienced pilots to test their prototypes before production began
on the real thing. Richard had only bailed out once during a test,
due to problems with the right engine on an aircraft that was so
new it didn’t have an official name. Not a name he was told about,
anyway.

Richard had been testing the altitude
limits of his latest project when an engine compressor bolt snapped
and pieces of it were sucked into the turbine. This resulted in
catastrophic engine failure at fifty-five thousand feet, and a
dangerous fire. He cut the engine and began to spin out of control.
Before high G’s knocked him unconscious, Richard pulled back on the
stick and turned into the rotation. Flames grew larger outside his
window, and after he regained control of his craft, there was no
other option than to eject.
The fuel tanks burst into explosive flames just an instant after
ejecting. With baited breath, he watched his aircraft plummet into
a lake. Richard had just survived one of the worst accidents in the
history of his base, and after a forensic investigation it was
determined that the mechanic working on the failed engine had been
up for over twenty-four hours and forgot to safely wire the
compressor bolt in place.
With the confidence of his superiors, Richard tested more aircraft,
so it was no surprise when he was called into General Franklin
Pierce’s office for a briefing pertaining to an upcoming
assignment.
"General, you wanted to see me?" Richard said, saluting.
"Come on in, Colonel Price. Have a seat." Pierce said.
Richard walked into his office as the General finished typing a few
sentences on his computer. The room smelled like coffee, mixed with
an aroma of expensive office furniture. Books on military history
and aircraft filled a bookshelf behind the General’s desk. Richard
took a seat opposite of the desk.
"Colonel Price, we have an assignment I think you might be very
interested in. Forgive me for being personal, but you are still
single? And no children, right?" Pierce asked.

"No sir. I guess I just haven’t gotten
around to it yet." Richard said. The General favored him with a
stern gaze and nodded.

"We’re taking a drive over to hangar
twenty-one. There's something in there you need to see." Pierce
said.
Richard followed the General to his jeep where an airman was
waiting to drive them down to the flight line. When they arrived,
the hangar was closed and two Security Police were stationed out
front, armed with standard AR15's. Richard and General Pierce
exited the vehicle, had their line badges checked, and entered the
building. Hangar lights clicked on with a low buzz, and in the
center, hovering unaided was a large metallic disk.

"Want to see the stars?" General
Pierce asked.
Richard was breathless, and exhilarated at the thought of
traversing the stars in a space ship.
"What is this, sir? It's beautiful. I mean, am I going to get to
fly that?"

"More than fly it, you're going to go,
and I hate to quote Gene Rodenberry, where no man has gone before."
Pierce said.

"Are there coordinates of any kind
sir?" Richard asked.
"I've got the presentation set up over here in the briefing
room."

Richard followed General Pierce to a
small classified room on the far end of the hangar which held a
conference desk and chair, a sixty-inch flat screen, and a laptop
computer displaying images of outer space.

"This is it, Colonel. The reason why I
brought you here. Take a look at that TV and tell me what you
see."
Richard leaned closer to the screen, and after a moment he saw an
anomaly. The stars shimmered in a strange pattern, and their lights
wavered just enough to see that something very large was there,
disrupting the image.

"It looks like a massive cloudy donut
ring turned on its side."

"It's a rift in space-time, Richard.
We think it may be a doorway to another dimension. We don't know
for sure though, not right now anyway."

"How'd you find it, General?" Richard
asked.
"We lost some cell phone satellites a few weeks ago, and after
about ten thousand customers called in to complain, the phone
companies got their engineers in the satellites looking into it.
This anomaly, or rift, wasn't here only four months ago; we
cross-referenced our images with their older ones, and although we
tried tracking the satellite’s homing beacon we lost all
communication with it."
"And you want me to find out where they went." Richard
said.

"That's about the size of it. What do
you think? This could be one hell of an adventure." Pierce
said.
"Is that ship ready for this sort of thing? I mean, I've never seen
anything like it. Has it ever been outside the planet?"

"Yeah, she'll fly. We reengineered the
craft that crashed in Roswell about fifty years ago."
"That was real, huh?"

"You've heard all the myths. I know
you've seen them when you're flying around up there. Now, we have
them too. You'd be amazed at what we've accomplished in the last
fifty years if you had the security clearance to hear it. I'm not
even high enough to hear the really good stuff."

Richard nodded.

"OK General, when do I
leave?"

"Right now. Look, we have no idea how
long this rift is going to remain open, and there are some people
with a lot of money who are curious about where this white rabbit
trail leads. There's one other thing. We also lost a pilot three
weeks ago, Richard. Lt. Colonel Moira Suthers was assigned the task
of going through the rift, and was instructed to come back and tell
us what she found. As soon as she went through we lost radio
communication. Haven't heard a peep from her since."

"And you want me to go find her."
Richard said.
"You're one of the best pilots we have. You've seen combat, and I
believe you're the right man for the job." General Pierce
said.

"I also don't have anyone back here
who'll miss me if something should happen, right?" Richard
asked.
"I wasn't going to put it quite like that, but obviously that’s
something the United States Air Force considers when recommending
personnel for these types of missions, which is why I asked you
previously."
"Let's go. I'm ready now." Richard said.
His pulse quickened at the thought of going through the rift. He
felt like a sixteen year old kid who had just been handed the keys
to a Lamborghini, and told to hit the gas pedal.

"You'll be wearing one of these
protective suits." The General pointed to a rack holding a white
one-piece suit with the American flag stitched on the left
shoulder, but this suit was slender, not bulky like in previous
space missions. "I'm sure you'll never need it, but in the event
that something happens, it'll protect you from the zero temperature
of space. We're also providing you with enough emergency oxygen to
last for seven days."

Beside the suit was a white backpack
with a hose protruding from the side.

"Does the Air Force know I’m not an
astronaut?" Richard asked.

"Colonel, this thing handles like a
subcompact car. Maybe even better. Let's get you up
there."

Richard followed General Pierce to the
hovering metal disk. The General removed a remote control from his
pocket, pressed a small blue button, and a ramp lowered from the
ship, gently touching the floor of the hangar.

"I think it goes without saying, but
don't lose this remote. Inside, you'll find a captain’s chair, and
a single flight stick that when moved activates the craft. There's
no seat belt, because the machine creates its own gravitational
field inside and out, so there are no G's, and the physics of this
ship has allowed it to overcome the problem of inertia.
Essentially, when you make a 45 degree turn at mach ten you won't
get splattered against the wall. Upside down, sideways, doesn't
matter." General Pierce said.

"That's amazing! Well, sir, thank you
for this opportunity, and I'll see you when I get back. I guess."
Richard said.

"Good luck, have fun, and safe
travels, Colonel Price. Please, find Moira if you can."

Richard walked up the ramp and sat in
the comfortable leather chair. The aroma of new leather was sweet,
comforting, and he felt more like he was in his study at home than
in a reverse engineered mechanical wonder. His left hand took
control of the flight stick. As he did, the ramp closed and his
ship’s dome became translucent, and then clear as glass. The ship
moved forward gently, gliding across the hangar like a hockey puck
over ice.