One Minute to Midnight (15 page)

Henry
stopped talking and sulked upon his mount, while Adriel climbed
with the nimble dexterity of an acrobat up the bag and hid beneath
Selk's saddle. What did Selk mean by
not yet
? She thought.
Were the cyclopes planning an attack?
She had to get home and tell the elders.
But how?
Selk dipped
below the clouds and Adriel could see the mountain home of the
cyclopes with their log cabins dotting the mountainside. Sitting on
top of the closest mountain range was a gigantic stone
castle.

"Whatever you're going to
do, you'd better do it, because if anyone finds her, especially
after that less-than-graceful getaway, you're done." Selk
said.
"I'm working on it." Henry said.

The cyclopes could never
be referred to as intellectuals, being hunters and gatherers, and
they were a warlike society beyond that, but Henry was even less
brilliant. Kidnapping Adriel was a knee jerk reaction, likened to
how a child who spots a fun toy can't resist tossing it in the cart
while his mom's back is turned. He had a lifetime habit of
performing stunts he thought seemed smart at the time, but always
ended in disaster and humiliation. A lot of times his shame would
fall on the people of his town, and if they found out what he had
done over at the human city it would mean banishment, or worse. A
trial before the serpent would be certain death, and the humans
would probably be coming for the girl. Selk landed beside the
Henry’s log cabin, and when Henry opened up his side bag he
discovered the gash on the side, and realized that Adriel was
gone.

"This situation may have
resolved itself." Henry said.
"Not in there?" Selk asked.

"Nothings in there. Looks
like one o' them lasers cut the bag open. She must have fallen
out." Henry said.
Adriel, still underneath the saddle, held her breath and waited for
the cyclops to leave so that she could run for the woods. Henry
turned the bag inside out and a few chunks of rotten meat dropped
to the ground.
"Good riddance!" Henry said.

He dismounted Selk and
went inside while Adriel remained hidden under Selk’s saddle. The
dragon began to walk toward a large, dark, cavernous opening in the
side of the mountain.

"Little girl. You should
run while you can. Henry will be punished by the council if they
find you, but the cyclops will never allow you to leave. They’ll
either eat you or feed you to their serpent god." Selk said in
common tongue.

Adriel was
terrified.

"I can
hear your heartbeat, and your odor is so strong I could track you
from a mile high in the sky, even if you were ten miles away on the
ground."
Could the dragon
read her mind?

"Yes."
Selk replied.

Adriel came out of hiding,
scaled the large saddle, and walked up Selk’s scales toward his
long neck.
"Can you give me a ride back, please?" Adriel asked.
"You could make it back to your people on foot in about three
weeks. Serves you right for being outside your walls before the
gates were open." Selk said.
"Look, you could fly me back home and the cyclopes will never know
the difference. You’re so fast, Selk." Adriel said.

"Ha ha
ha, flattery will get you
almost
everywhere. I’d be banished
if my dragonkin found out and there are not many dragons left in
this world. I need all the friends I can get these days. I’m
sorry." Selk said.
"OK, which way do I walk?" Adriel asked.
"Walk east, and then you will find a road leading back to your…"
Selk paused.

"Return the girl, and
we'll let you all live!" A voice boomed.
"We ain’t got no girl. Get out o’ ‘ere!" A cyclops woman
screamed.

"Very well." The voice
answered.

A vimana darted through a
clearing in the trees, firing a white-hot bolt of light into
Henry’s house, setting it ablaze. The cyclops began screaming from
inside, and ran out through the gaping hole created in his wall.
One arm had been blown off, and he was dancing around, covered in
flames. Another shot ripped through his neck and he fell to the
dark root and boulder-covered earth, dead.

"Your parents are coming
for you. The war has begun… a little too early." Selk
said.

Selk trotted off with
Adriel on his back into the cavern.
"Let’s get you out of the line of fire, shall we?" Selk
said.

"You’re protecting me?
Why?" Adriel asked.
"Dragons are protectors, child. Our folly was to have formed a pact
with the cyclopes over a thousand years ago. They mine gold for us,
feeding our addiction to the yellow rock, and we defend them
against invaders. Your people will destroy everything here to get
to you, no matter what or who has to die in the process. The
cyclopes are great warriors as well, and will attempt to kill all
who invade their territory. This battle will be the end of
everything in this kingdom."
"If my people are looking for me, I could just run out there and
wave them down. That would stop this, right?" Adriel
said.

Swarms of dragons began to
take to the skies as an aerial battle was waged in the name of
vengeance.
"Like a dry field of wheat, all it takes is a tiny spark to ignite
the fire of war between the humans and cyclopes." Selk
said.

Fire and lasers
crisscrossed the sky like the wrath of a terrible god, igniting
trees and setting the entire mountainside ablaze as man and cyclops
fought with blind hatred. Large troop transports began to arrive
from the human city, and as they landed, centurions rushed forth,
wielding swords of flame, and rods that fired beams of light.
Screams, smoke, and flames erupted through the afternoon until
darkness descended upon the mountain fortress. Sometime in the
night, all went quiet.

"I just wanted an apple."
Adriel said in the darkness of the cavern.

"Did you get one?" Selk
asked.

"Henry grabbed me before I
could."

"An entire war started
over such a small thing. Hardly seems worth it." Selk
replied.

"You could be a little
nicer, you know?"

"I know."

She got
the point. Adriel leaving the city had set in motion a chain of
events that had been unexpected, and completely devastating to two
races that were already in a state of disease.

"All I
wanted to do was have an apple." Adriel said.
She sat next to the dragon in his cave and put her head in her
hands. Selk considered Adriel’s character for a moment, and
suspected that a part of her childhood was gone after experiencing
the misery war brings.
"All of this is an illusion, Adriel. Remember that we create our
world with our thoughts." Selk explained.
Adriel did not understand the dragon's cryptic message, but as time
wore on, and she grew older, it would begin to make sense. She
would come to live her life by those words. Smoke slowly drifted
through the trees, carrying the odor of charred bodies, destroyed
vimana's, and burning log cabins. The mixture was so strong, and
Adriel began to feel her stomach turn. The fighting was over and
the aftermath was more than she could bear. Adriel pushed her
thumbs into her eyes to stop the pressure.
"Can you please take me home? It’s dark now, and since Henry’s
probably dead maybe
they
won’t miss you." Adriel said.

The dragon looked down at
Adriel’s innocent face, charred with soot, and scraped from her
ordeal inside the storage bag.

"Let’s go. I’ll take you
back."

Selk dropped a wing and
allowed her to climb aboard his saddle, and in an instant they were
soaring through the sky. Stars poked through the darkness like the
lights of distant souls dancing in the vastness of space. Selk rose
above an ocean of clouds to give Adriel the best view, and Adriel,
who had had never seen the night sky so alive with magic was
speechless. She lay against the coarse scales of her new friend and
the horror of her day began to evaporate. She was a little girl
once more, and as tears fell from bloodshot, tired eyes, ready for
rest Adriel drifted off to sleep. Selk smiled, and when he reached
the human city he gently rolled her awake before
landing.

"You're home, Adriel."
Selk whispered.

"Oh, thank you!" Adriel
yawned.

"Do me a favor and
remember me when you're older." Selk said.

"Are you going back to the
cyclops kingdom?" Adriel asked.

"No, I think I'll move
north. I'm over four hundred years old, and a hundred of them were
spent in that kingdom of fools. It's time for a change of scenery."
Selk said.

"Will I see you
again?"

"Oh, I'm sure. Goodbye for
now, Adriel." Selk said.
As Adriel walked toward the front gate, she looked back over her
shoulder. Selk hid out of sight, but she could still see the dark
profile of his body, just beside the apple trees. He remained there
until the gate was opened to ensure Adriel was safe, and then he
took flight.
"Until we meet again, my friend." Selk whispered and
vanished.

the hell razors

"May God have mercy on my enemies,
because I won’t."
~ General George S. Patton, JR.

The Great Dictator was dead. Hitler had taken his life when the
Allied forces invaded Berlin toward the end of World War II, but
Adolf’s high command and some of his best scientists escaped in a
submarine for parts unknown. Werner von Braun, Werner Dahm, and
other SS officers avoided the Nuremberg trials by escaping through
a Red Cross program code-named Operation Paperclip, and ultimately
helped the United States get to the moon. But those loyal to the
Fuhrer had no intention of surrendering to Western powers, so they
vanished. No trace was found of the war criminals until two weeks
ago when a weather satellite happened to catch images of a white
and grey painted building, with the Nazi Swastika painted on the
sides, sticking out of the ice in Antarctica. The office of General
Hank Ashby was busy with intelligence officers reporting the recent
discovery in the South Pole, and the CIA had already begun watching
the base to determine if a threat existed.

"What have we got, really? I want hard
facts. I’ve heard about these modern day skinheads and neo-Nazi
gangs and I think they’re all bullshit time-wasters. What’s
different about this facility than any other place in the world
where dipshits are still carrying the flag of a defeated
psychopath?" The General asked.

"Well sir, we believe this is a
super-secret airbase designed to harbor and create electrogravitic
spacecraft and hyper-dimensional portals." Colonel Ream
said.

"English, goddamnit." General Ashby
said.

Another officer named Wilkins entered
the room with a stack of photographs just as Colonel Ream was
finishing his last sentence.

"General, the Nazis are building
flying saucers and time travel machines. We’ve got some great
pictures of some of them." Wilkins placed the stack on General
Ashby’s desk.

"Interesting. What do the boys at
Langley have?" General Ashby asked.

"General, my name is Agent Tom
Braggart, and I think you’re going to be interested in what we’ve
found so far." Agent Braggart said.

Braggart pulled a miniature projector
from his bag and connected it to a laptop he had opened on the
coffee table and then directed the projector to a white space on
the wall.

"Could someone please dim the lights
and close the blinds?" Agent Braggart asked.

The room went dark a few moments later
and everyone was looking at black and white images of large metal
disks, some flying through the air, some sitting on the ground, and
others being boarded by men in jumpsuits. Braggart zoomed in on one
of the men.
"What am I looking at, agent?" General Ashby asked.
"The man on the right is Goel Fisk, a torsion physicist who used to
work for the Russian space and missile program; that is until the
USSR crumbled on 1991. He dropped off the map until we caught him
in this picture.

"Recruited by Nazis?" General Ashby
said.
"We think the Nazis have been working on this program for the last
seventy years and we now know they’ve created vehicles that can
travel without the use of petroleum-based fuel. What else they can
do, we don't know at this time." Agent Braggart said.
"But whatever it is, those machines pose a threat to national
security." General Ashby said.

"Yes General, that's what we think
anyway. We've only had a few weeks to gather information, but it
looks like the Nazi's have formed a Fourth Reich." Agent Braggart
said.

"I'll alert the President, if he
doesn't already know." General Ashby said.

General Ashby cleared the room and
notified President Yates that there had been an interesting
discovery in Antarctica. Once he understood the situation,
President Yates called a briefing with General Ashby, Franklin
Navarro Beans, secretary of defense, Dick Powers, national security
advisor, Sherry Cummings, his foreign policy advisor, and Doug
Knightly, director of the CIA. One hour after General Ashby made
the call; he was sitting in the Oval Office with some of the most
important people in the modern world, and feeling very
uncomfortable. The President entered and their conversation
began.
"If what the General says is true, and the intel your boys at the
CIA gathered is accurate, Doug, then we may have a serious problem
on our hands." President Yates said.