Midnight Is My Time

by Mike Dellosso

  He knew who she was. Who she really was. That should scare him but it didn’t. He could handle her.

  The idiot glanced at him, then at the girl. “What’re you gonna do with her?”

  Trevor smiled. “You’ll see.” He motioned to the road ahead. “A couple miles farther, you’ll turn left onto a gravel road. Take it to the end. There’s a house. We’ll spend the night there.”

  As he predicted, there was a house. Surprisingly, all the windows were still intact. When Jordan stopped the truck, Missy stirred.

  Trevor stroked her hair. “Hey, we’re here.”

  Missy righted herself. “Where?”

  “A house. We’re going to spend the night here.”

  Missy trembled slightly, more like a gentle vibration. “Where are we?”

  Jordan said, “Somewhere in northern PA.”

  “We’re still headed north?”

  “We are,” Trevor said. “All the way to Maine. Isn’t that where you want to go?”

  Missy didn’t answer him.

  “C’mon.” Trevor took her hand and helped her out of the truck. “Careful. Lots of fallen branches around here.”

  He led her through a maze of forest debris to the front door of the house.

  “Where are we exactly?” Missy asked.

  “In the woods,” Trevor said. “An abandoned home. It’s not the Hilton but it’s shelter. It’ll do for tonight.” He knew that by bringing her here, to an unfamiliar place littered with obstacles and pitfalls, she wouldn’t try to escape. Far too dangerous for her.

  The front door of the home was still locked. Nobody came this way. Nobody cared.

  “Stand back.” Trevor launched himself at the door and planted his foot just to the right of the doorknob. The brittle wood splintered and broke. The door swung open.

  “Awesome,” Jordan said. He entered first. “Hey, there’s still furniture. It stinks in here.”

  It did stink. People may not have cared enough about the house to occupy or destroy it, but rodents had taken a liking to it.

  Trevor walked Missy to the sofa, but it was covered in mouse droppings. He reached in his bag and pulled out a folded blanket. Next to the sofa was a chair. “Jordan, clean that off, will you?”

  “Sure, man.” Jordan lifted the chair’s cushion and brushed it off. Dust rose in a cloud. Missy coughed. “Sorry, dude,” Jordan said. He replaced the cushion.

  Trevor spread the blanket over the chair. “Here.” He took Missy’s hand and led her to the chair. “Sit.”

  Missy sat and kept her arms crossed over her chest. She was trying to make herself as small as possible. He’d seen frightened people do it a million times.

  “What are you going to do with me, Trevor?”

  Trevor didn’t answer.

  “Why are you keeping me against my will? I trusted you. I befriended you. I talked Andy into letting you come with us.”

  “Andy.” Trevor hated that guy and would eventually destroy him as well. “Andy doesn’t care about you. He never did. Andy’s a loner. And a loser.”

  “He came after me.”

  Trevor leaned close to Missy’s face. “And he lost you.”

  “He cares about me.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Trevor hollered. “He couldn’t care less about you.”

  Missy pulled back in the chair and wrapped herself tighter in her own embrace. “I want you to let me go.”

  Trevor stood up straight and laughed. “Really? Go where? We’re in the middle of the forest. Where would you go, Missy? Huh? You gonna hike miles in the woods at night to get to the next house or town?”

  “I’ve done it before.”

  “Not like this.”

  “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

  Trevor leaned in again, so close their noses almost touched. “Oh, I know exactly what you’re capable of.” He backed up, reached into his bag, and pulled out a roll of duct tape. Tearing off a length of nine inches he slapped it across Missy’s mouth, then grabbed her arms. “Jordan, hold her.”

  Jordan stepped forward and held Missy’s hands together behind her back as she squirmed and writhed. “Hurry, man,” Jordan said. “She’s stronger than she looks.”

  “Hold her!” Trevor tore off another length of tape and wrapped it around Missy’s wrists. Then he tore off another and bound her ankles.

  Missy squirmed in the chair until she fell off and landed on the floor. She began to cry.

  “Fine,” Trevor said. “Have it your way. If you’d rather sleep on the floor, that’s okay with me. But it’s gonna be a long night, and, by the looks of it, lots of four-legged critters roam this floor.”

  Chapter 13

  Andy continued driving even after the sun had dipped behind the tree line, leaving the sky streaked with shades of orange, pink, and purple. The barren trees, silhouetted against the evening sky, looked like bony hands breaking from the earth and reaching heavenward. If he was on the right track, he could not be that far behind. And now, he doubted it mattered. Trevor would most likely find somewhere to stop for the night. Andy had hours to find them. No need to rush.

  There had been several more turns, and with each one, Belle had instructed him which way to go, and his inner nudges had confirmed her choice. As if he had some internal compass that had shifted its course. Rather than pulling him north and east, Missy was now his north star. He felt pulled to her by that same unseen magnetic force. He would not stop until he found her.

  “Are you getting tired?” he asked Belle.

  “Nope. Just bored.”

  They’d said little to each other since recovering from the accident. Andy had been lost in thought about the dreams he’d been having. They were dreams, he was sure of that, but there was more to them than a random conglomeration of memories and images. There was a purpose to them. His subconscious was trying to tell him something.

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “The Event.”

  “Oh. You don’t know about it?

  “I was three when it happened.”

  “And no one ever told you about it?”

  Belle shrugged. “Sure. Bits and pieces. I get fragments from one person, then another. But no one has ever told me the whole story. How it all started. How it ended. How it happened.” She paused and glanced out the window. “Why it happened.”

  Andy remembered. He was fifteen when it happened. He and his mom lived in Boone, North Carolina. They’d done a good job of making it on their own. Until The Event. Then everything fell apart.

  “You mind telling me about it?” Belle looked at Andy with rounded, hopeful eyes.

  The girl had lost her parents during that awful time as well. She deserved to know what had happened. But Andy wouldn’t have all the answers she sought. No one had all the answers.

  “Sure.” He drew in a deep breath. “It started with The Taking.”

  “Millions disappeared.”

  “Yeah, millions, all over the world.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. Gone. Chaos. Plane crashes. Cars running off the road and into each other. People in an all-out panic. It hit America the hardest, paralyzed us. So much of our military and law enforcement was suddenly gone. Government workers. Congressmen. Mayors. Governors. The Vice President. All gone in an instant.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “No one knows. Some thought it was only Christians at first, but plenty of Christians were left behind. Like my mom. She was a good woman. If only Christians were taken, she deserved to go. But she was left.”

  “My parents were good people,” Belle said. “Christians, I guess. They took me to Sunday school and all. Told me Bible stories. Even at three, I didn’t want to hear it. I wasn’t interested. What do you think happened to them?”

  Andy shrugged. “Many thought aliens took them. Scientists went on and on about proof of extraterrestrials. No other plausible explanation. Some thought it was some sort of grand-scale evolutionary jump, a cleansing, they calle
d it.”

  “But what do you think?”

  She was pressing him for an answer, but he didn’t have one. He’d thought often about it, especially right after The Taking, but he couldn’t come up with a rational explanation. He didn’t know. It made some sense but . . . didn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to believe aliens were responsible for the abduction of millions, and he had an even harder time believing the cleansing theory. “Honestly? I don’t know. I’ve stopped thinking about it, stopped trying to figure it out.”

  That seemed to satisfy her. They sat in silence for a few more minutes.

  “What about the animals?” she finally asked.

  “Yeah, the animals. My mom said once that God gave man dominion over the earth, over the animals, but when The Event happened, and all those people disappeared, it was as if a switch was flipped in the universe and man no longer ruled. The animals rebelled. Millions of people across the world were killed.”

  “I heard the animals took sides, that it was divided between predator and prey.”

  Andy nodded. “Mostly. Predators turned against man; the prey joined us. Domestic animals went either way. It happened so fast and was so unexpected . . . there was so much confusion about why so many disappeared and why the animals suddenly revolted . . . so many died before we even figured out what was going on. I . . .” A memory long buried suddenly surfaced. “An hour or so after it happened, right after they announced it on the news, I went next door to our neighbors’, Joan and Ed. They had a Sheltie named Molly. Joan and Ed were gone. Taken. And Molly . . . she came after me with such fury and hatred. Like she had some kind of personal vendetta against me, like she blamed me for the disappearance of her owners.” He looked at Belle; tears streamed down her cheeks and glistened in the muted light of late evening.

  “You okay?” he said.

  She nodded and wiped at the tears with the back of her hand.

  “You want me to stop?”

  Belle shook her head. “No. I’m okay. Keep going.”

  “The whole thing escalated to crisis level within a few days. The National Guard, what was left of them, was dispatched, but even they were no match for the onslaught of animals and the confusion and terror that reigned everywhere. The animals outnumbered us. Some thought it was the end of the world. The apocalypse. The end of mankind. We took to hiding. Some fled to the mountains, but they didn’t last long. The animals were everywhere. Most people barricaded themselves in homes or buildings. But even then, so many were killed. The animals still got to them. It seemed all was lost.”

  “Where did you hide?”

  Another memory bobbed to the surface. “In the basement of our home with my mom. We hid down there a full month before they found us.”

  “Who?”

  Ahead lay a fork in the road. Andy felt the pull to go left. He turned to look at Belle. “Left,” she said.

  “The rats,” Andy said. “They chewed through the basement door. I fought them off, but there were too many of them. There was only one way to get rid of them.”

  He paused as his mind went back to that time.

  “How?” Belle asked. She’d turned in her seat and now faced Andy.

  “Fire.”

  His dreams. His mom. “I lit the place up. I thought my mom and I could get out, and the rats would be stuck in there, that they’d burn with the house.” Tears filled his eyes and blurred the road ahead. A lump settled in his throat.

  “You don’t have to say anymore if you don’t want to.” Belle was a sensitive kid.

  Andy smeared tears across his cheek. “It’s okay.” He swallowed hard. “Before we could get out, they got my mom. Swarmed her. I tried to free her, to get them off her, but there were too many, and the flames spread so quickly.”

  “That’s how you got the scars.”

  “That’s how I became a freak.”

  Belle reached across the seat and touched Andy’s arm. “You’re not a freak.”

  Andy ran a hand across his eyes. “The animals would have exterminated everyone if they’d had more time. But as quickly as their rampage started, it stopped, and everything went back to normal. Or at least what normal could be.”

  “Humans were once again in charge.”

  “It seemed . . . minus millions.”

  By now, the sun had fully set, and the sky had faded to charcoal gray. The SUV’s headlights lit up the road with a wide swath of light. Ahead lay a gravel road to the right. Andy felt the pull again.

  “This is it,” he said as he slowed the vehicle.

  Belle nodded. “Go right and you’ll find Missy.”

  Chapter 14

  Trevor sensed the arrival of Andy. He stood at the front window of the house and looked out into the dark woods. The nerves running along the length of his body tingled with the anticipation of a confrontation. The freak was near.

  He crossed the house to the kitchen where Jordan fiddled with a wood stove. “Hey,” Trevor said.

  Jordan looked up. He had soot smeared across his forehead.

  “I have something I need you to do.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “Come outside with me.”

  Trevor led the way out the back of the house and into the clearing. He needed Jordan to deliver a message to the freak, a warning of sorts.

  When they were both outside, Trevor turned and smiled at Jordan.

  “What’s up?” Jordan said. “What’s with the goofy grin?”

  Trevor launched himself at Jordan.

  .......

  Andy parked the SUV in the middle of the gravel road. He didn’t want to give Trevor and Jordan an easy escape route. He shut off the engine and killed the lights. “We hike it from here.”

  Belle climbed down from her seat and met Andy at the front of the vehicle. She carried a small flashlight in her hand. “It was in the glove box.” She flicked it on and aimed the beam at the ground. “Still works.”

  “No lights,” Andy said. “Keep it in your pocket, though. I’ll let you know when we need it.”

  Belle slipped the flashlight into her pocket. “I can do stealth. That’s cool.”

  Andy faced her until she looked up at him. “Listen, if things get rough, I want you out of the way, got it? I don’t expect them to hand Missy over without a fight.”

  “That is, if she’s even being held against her will.”

  Andy glanced down the gravel road. By the dusty light of the moon, he could see it stretched a little over a hundred yards before it disappeared around a bend. “She is. That stunt back there was Trevor’s doing, not hers.”

  “So this is a rescue mission.”

  “Something like that.” It would be much more than that, though. Andy felt the impending confrontation looming like a storm creeping over the horizon. He’d thought about leaving Belle in the SUV, but she’d be too vulnerable there. She was safest when she was with him, close by. But he’d make sure she stayed out of the fray when things got hot. “Just do as I say, okay?”

  She said nothing.

  “Okay?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Belle, I want you safe. You and Missy. That’s it. That’s my end game here. Get the two of you out of here safely.”

  She nodded. “I got it, Andy. I do.”

  “Good.”

  They turned and made their way down the lane, gravel crunching beneath their feet. Andy knew Trevor and Jordan would see them coming. The barren woods offered no place to hide or find cover. But he was okay with that. No use delaying the confrontation. And the element of surprise was not an option.

  About a hundred yards ahead, the lane curved to the right at almost a ninety-degree angle. Around the bend and another twenty yards away, Andy saw Jordan kneeling in the middle of the lane. His face was swollen and distorted and streaked with dark red blood. The front of his shirt was soaked the same color. Andy pushed Belle behind him and advanced cautiously. As he neared, he noticed Jordan’s left arm bent at an odd angle, the elbow flex
ed the wrong way. Blood ran in rivulets down his arm and dripped from his fingertips. Andy also noticed one eye was missing, and Jordan’s nose was ripped almost entirely from his face.

  When he was within fifteen feet, Jordan found him with his one eye and groaned.

  “Stay close to me,” Andy said to Belle. He inched closer. “Did Trevor do this?”

  Jordan’s voice was strained and hoarse. He wheezed when he inhaled. “Go away. He’s…” Jordan could hold himself up no longer and toppled forward. He lay face down on the gravel road.

  Andy stepped closer, making sure Belle stayed behind him.

  “Monster,” Jordan said. He tried to speak again, but all he could produce was a strained gurgling sound. Finally, he said, “Go back.”

  “Is Missy in there?”

  But Jordan was gone. The gurgling had ceased. His one eye stared blankly at the dry ground.

  “C’mon,” Andy said. “Stay right behind me.”

  Jordan had been a warning from Trevor. The violence Trevor had inflicted on Jordan, though, had surprised and sickened him.

  Another hundred yards, and the lane bent again to the right. Around the corner, a two-story German-style farmhouse with faded green asbestos siding came into view.

  “There,” Belle said.

  “Yup. Trevor.”

  “And Missy.”

  The house looked empty, abandoned. No lights, no signs of life or occupancy at all. But Andy knew Trevor was inside, and he hoped Missy was too. He made no effort to sneak to the house or approach under cover. The sky had darkened enough that he and Belle would not be visible until they were within twenty or thirty yards. He would like to know where Missy was, though.

  When they were twenty yards out, Andy stopped and raised his voice. “I got your message.”

  “Good.” Trevor’s voice floated to them from inside the house.

  Andy searched the windows but saw no sign of Trevor.

  “But I see you didn’t take it seriously,” Trevor said.

  “Send Missy out and we’ll leave.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”