One Minute to Midnight

by Steve Lang

  "You're gonna' get us busted by the cops if you keep speeding man." Doug said. He was about five foot eleven with long shaggy hair, and often wore John Lennon glasses even when it was dark outside. These, he hoped, would cover his blood shot pot smoke-filled eyes.

  "Dude, I'm driving fifty-five miles an hour, in a fifty-five with the cruise set. How much acid have you taken?" Rob asked.

  "I'm not quite sure. I accidentally held the blotter sheet for a few minutes while I was cutting one off and I think it soaked through my skin."

  "You're a dumb ass, you know that?" Jackie said. She was pretty, with long brown hair, and had smooth brown skin. Her family had emigrated from Mexico when she was three and Jackie had grown up in Concord, NC.

  "Yeah, I think I had too much, the back of the chair in front of me is breathing." Doug began giggling in the uncontrollable manner that only hardcore drugs can invoke.

  "Wonderful, now Doug's going to be wasted for eight hours. Pass me a jay, Jackie." Susie asked. Jackie lit one up, took a hit and then passed it to Susie.

  With the windows rolled down, they could smell the dankness of the swamp as their SUV cruised alone through the darkness of what felt to Rob like a never-ending night. Two more hours went by, and Rob's caffeine was wearing off and the cigarettes he had smoked were becoming less effective. Rob was falling asleep at the wheel, and after hearing Mr. Jones and Me by The Counting Crows for the fifth time on the MP4 rotation, their music had become like white noise in a crowded room. He was dozing. Jackie was snoring in the back and Doug had taken to staring at a Baxter Stockman Fly toy from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon and was catatonic on his LSD journey. Susie put her head back on the seat and had been sleeping for an hour with her face tilted toward the roof.

  "That's gonna' suck in the morning." Rob mumbled. He had trouble feeling sorry for her in his current state of road exhaustion. Not one of them had volunteered to drive and chose got high instead, leaving him to do all the heavy lifting, which was at this hour, his eyelids. "Tis' the season." He said to himself.

  The dashboard clock read two-thirty and they were miles from anywhere, according to the GPS. Suddenly, a young girl covered in blood darted in front of his car. Her arms at her sides and standing like a mannequin, she stared straight at Rob as if she were waiting for the vehicle to hit her. Before he could react her body slammed into the windshield like a rag doll with a loud thud. Up and over the car she went, hitting the ground behind them and rolling along the asphalt, her long blood-soaked hair flying about her head like tassels on a child's bicycle handlebars. Rob could no longer see the road due to the streaks of black blood smeared across his field of vision and slammed on the brakes.

  All passengers inside the vehicle were thrown forward and violently awakened as Rob gripped the wheel of his SUV.

  "Jesus Christ! What the hell was that about!?" He screamed.

  Jackie was prying her face off the back of the drivers set and Susie was massaging her sore neck while Doug looked out the back window at the body lying in the road. This type of trauma could send the average LSD user into a bad trip, but Doug was experienced and had been doing it so long and with such frequency that nothing fazed him once he was into the ride.

  "Holy shit, Rob? Why'd you do that?!" Susie said and saw the windshield. "Did you hit a deer?"

  "No, some chick ran out in front of the car and just stood there waiting for me to hit her!" Rob was breathing heavily.

  "Dude, that was crazy! There's a girl dead on the road, wow!" Doug said with a Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted's tone in his voice.

  "I think I busted my forehead!" Jackie said. She had a large bump on her head, and a trickle of blood ran down her nose from a cut above her eye, but she was otherwise unharmed. "Shit, dude!"

  "Oh my god, I hit someone. We gotta' call the cops or something." Rob said.

  "Are you crazy?" Doug asked. "You know we're all high as balls, right? There are also enough drugs in this vehicle to send us all to jail for more than a few days. Think about it, dude!" He shook his head and actually began to feel himself slipping into the negative zone of a bad time. Doug stared at the fly toy again, trying to rescue his good mood, but the mention of cops and conversation about jail time was enough to kill anyone's buzz. Doug looked back and the body was gone.

  "It's gone." Doug said. "The body in the road, it's gone."

  "What? No way she’s still alive after that. I must have hit her going seventy." Rob replied.

  "I thought you had the cruise set to fifty-five." Susie said.

  "I took it off to make some time along this stretch of only God knows where we are highway."

  They all looked back and saw that Doug was right. The evidence was gone, and for a moment the four of them began to breathe a sigh of relief. The sound of crickets chirping in the early morning hours serenaded their drama. There is a certain point in the night when your body knows you are up way past your bedtime and everything becomes a surreal experience. You begin to feel as if you have been transported to an alternate dimension where you and those who are with you are all sharing the same funky dream. Add hard drugs to that experience, and a major traumatic event like slamming into a human being on the highway, and everything takes a left turn toward crazy town.

  "We should call someone and let them know what happened anyway. Maybe a gator got her?" Susie said. She looked down at her phone, and saw that there was no connection. "Crap! I got nothing over here. Any of you guys have a signal?" None of their phones had cell reception this far out into the backcountry.

  "I say we keep going until we get to a town and then we can make an anonymous phone call from a diner or something. Sound good?" Rob asked.

  "Let's see. Call the cops from a pay phone and jet out safely, or lead them right to our briefcase full of drugs and confront them while high as kites after telling them we hit a girl on the road. That's a tough one, bro." Doug said.

  "You don't have to be a smartass about it." Rob said. They all voted to keep going, just as soon as Rob could clean the windshield.

  He asked Jackie to hand him an old shirt from the back of the vehicle and, against protest from Susie, Rob got out of the truck to clean their window. He felt eyes on him the second his feet touched the ground, and although it had seemed like a festive and celebratory gesture at the beginning of their trek, the Santa hat atop his head suddenly felt childish and immature in their present situation. A clump of hair had been caught in the wiper blades when the girl's body had flown over the 4Runner, and he had a large dent in his hood. As he wiped with his shirt, the blood smeared around in circles making a bigger mess.

  "Susie, hit the washer fluid." Rob said.

  "Hey boy, you look lost or sumpthin'." A man's voice said from behind. Rob felt ice in his veins as the cold hand of fear slid up his spine. He turned around to see a tall young man staring at him, no more than twenty with a nappy red beard and acne. He had a scowl on his face.

  "Uh, we just had some car trouble. We'll be on our way in a few minutes." Rob said. Susie was watching through the smeared windshield while Jackie slunk down behind the driver's seat.

  "Car trouble, huh? Looks more serious n' that." The man was grinning. Rob looked down and could see that the man was holding a long wooden axe handle.

  "Rob! Get back in the truck and let's go!" Susie yelled.

  Rob turned back around to see where the man was and that's when the business end of the axe handle connected with his temple. The last thing he heard while falling unconscious to the asphalt was Susie, Doug and Jackie screaming. When he woke up, he was in a dark, dank room that reeked of foul meat, and he had no idea where he was. The room was constructed from slat boards and looked like a nineteenth century cabin. His head was throbbing, and the Santa hat, covered in blood, was sitting in his lap. He saw a shape moving across the room as his vision returned, and realized it was Susie tied up with a gag in her mouth. After more time to focus he could make out the form of Jackie, and she was either asleep or knock
ed out.

  "What happened to us? Where's Doug? Damn, my head hurts like a bull kicked it."

  "Those crazy men took him. I think the one who knocked you out is their leader." Susie said. She had been crying and her voice was muffled.

  "What's up with Jackie? Are you hurt?" Rob asked.

  His hands were free and he could stand up. Through the gaps in the wall slats, Rob could see a single streetlight shining down on several dilapidated tin roof houses outside. There were oil barrels lined up next to each other and stacks of wooden pallets leaning against a building.

  "I don't know, but they beat her pretty bad with a bat. Jackie freaked out when she saw what they did to Doug and she wouldn't stop screaming. She hasn't moved since we were thrown in here. And I'm tied to the floor and a steel pipe behind me or I would have checked on her." Susie said. She had her head against the wall. Rob walked over and began to untie her with a racing heart and growing dread. He freed Susie's ankles and then went around to untie her wrists from a steel pipe behind her.

  "What happened to Doug?" Rob asked. She was quiet for a moment.

  "After that dude hit you in the head, three of his buddies came out of the woods and grabbed us. Doug tried to struggle, so one of them stuck him in the neck with a big knife. They killed him, Rob. Right in front of us, and I think they're going to do the same thing to the rest of us."

  "What the hell? Doug's dead?" Rob felt a sickening twisting lurch in his stomach.

  "We have to get out of here." Susie said.

  Rob walked over and shook Jackie gently, but she didn't move. In the dim light, it was hard to tell whether she was awake or not, so he knelt down to try and get a look at her eyes. Her head was a mass of contusions from the beating, and her long brown hair clung like a wet mop to her face. Rob reached out, and with the caution of a kid who knows he is one spin away from launching the jack-in-the-box, Rob moved her hair. At first it was hard to tell her condition, but when his eyes focused he could see that she was staring straight ahead and her eyes were glassed over.

  "She's dead." Rob said and began to cry. Susie was crying as well, but she stood up and put a hand on his shoulder.

  "Rob, those assholes are coming back here any minute and are going to put an end to the two of us, especially if they find out I'm untied and you're not dead like they thought." Susie said.

  Rob looked down at Jackie's body for another second, remembering how beautiful she was and thinking about how her mother was going to take the news that her daughter was slaughtered by back woods red necks. Then he got mad.

  "Let's move. Do you remember which way they brought you in?" Rob asked. He bumped into a table behind him and looked to see there were three long fish filet knives.

  "I think so, they hit me on the head and thought I was out cold, but I played possum and they left me alone after tying me up." She said. They walked out into a small corridor that led to a ramshackle door hanging off its hinges. The floorboards creaked beneath their feet, making it difficult to sneak out. Muffled voices could be heard outside as the two held their breath and put their backs against the wall. Two men were talking outside the building and they could smell cigarette smoke through the building slats.

  "Jedidiah said wec’n eat tha girl layin’ in thar n’ then come on back fer tha rest o’ them bitches!" One of them laughed. Rob looked at Susie with growing anger.

  He tiptoed back into the room they had been held captive in, and picked up one of the knives, and gave another one to Susie. He cut his eyes at her and then to the lifeless body of their friend lying on the floor. Footsteps could be heard coming across the wood plank porch, and a moment later one of the men opened the door. Rob motioned for Susie to stand on one side of the doorway, and made a swiping motion with his knife, telling her to attack when ready. Rob could feel his heart beating in his ears as he stilled his fear. Susie was just as scared, and she had never killed anything larger than a cockroach, but now she was fighting for her life and preparing to do what she had seen in over-torqued war movies.

  "Bobby, you gotta’ be more effective when we carjackin’ people. I mean, dude, we gotta eat, an’ these folks ain’t always easy to catch." Said one.

  "Well, I stuck that one in tha neck! Bled out like a pig. He’s gonna’ be good eatin’, too."

  The one in front came around the corner and it was still too dark for him to see that there were two captives missing. Rob put up a finger to Susie to wait, and then once the other man entered he nodded. With silent and quick movements, Rob rammed his knife blade down in between the man's collarbone and neck, and with the instinct of a killer he grabbed the man’s head, pulling him backward while slicing his neck. Susie was quick on her feet and as the man in front turned she moved forward sticking her knife up through the bottom of his chin. The blade got stuck as she attempted to pull it out, and as blood gushed from his wound, the man walked forward like a zombie trying to grab her. He reeked like stale urine and body odor. Rob dropped his guy to the floor and with a violent haymaker swing, and rammed his knife into the other man’s temple dropping him with a thud.

  "We have to drag these guys out of sight. The others may come looking for them any minute." Rob whispered.

  Susie helped him drag the two lifeless corpses into a small door-less closet area and stacked them on top of each other. One of the dead men had a revolver on him, so Susie grabbed it and put it in the waistband of her jeans. Rob picked his Santa hat up off the floor and placed it back on his head.

  "We need to find a car, or my truck, and get the hell out of here." Rob said.

  "Are you serious? Those hicks would find us out there in the swamp and kill us, before either eating us themselves or feeding our bodies to the alligators." Susie said.

  "What do you propose we do?"

  "You didn't see how they killed Doug or how hard they beat Jackie with that bat. It was totally uncalled for, and there's no telling how many other people these degenerates have killed along the way." Susie said.

  "We kill em'." Rob said. Susie nodded back with fire in her eyes.

  Susie pulled the gun out of her waistband and checked it for rounds; she had five of six chambers full, so she handed her knife to Rob, increasing his count to two. With one in each hand, he centered the Santa hat on his head, making sure not to cut himself and the two peered around the corner.

  There were three houses outside the building they had been kept in, and the single streetlight in the center of them threw shadows like a vampire movie. There was a light coming from one of the houses, so on fleet feet they crossed the distance and hid under the window. Rob took a look inside and saw an old man sitting in a rocking chair watching television on a black and white TV, the rabbit ears hanging off the back, twisted and rusty with age.

  "How many of them did you see when they attacked us on the highway?" Rob whispered.

  "There was that guy, and the other two we just killed, but I have no idea how many more there are." Susie replied.

  Rob looked around to see if he could find better cover and got a closer look at the barrels he had seen earlier. The word PETROLEUM was written on the side.

  "We have to draw them out to see how many there are. Besides, I'd like to burn this place to the ground and everyone in it." Rob pointed toward the barrels.

  The scraggly bearded guy who had hit him with the axe handle came out of one of the houses across form where they were hiding. He was walking alone from the house across the dirt yard toward the one they were standing beside, and was drinking a beer. Rob and Susie ducked down further into the shadows and saw another man exit the house scraggly beard had come from. They were both sure he had seen them as he looked their way, but he kept on walking and entered the house with the old man. Rob made a rash decision after that and ran toward the house where scraggly beard had come from, both of his knives held at his sides as if he were a winged bird and not a running man. Rob threw caution to the wind and entered the front door, closing it behind him. To his left was a woman in
her mid-fifties watching TV as she cut pieces of meat and put them in freezer bags. The smell of rotting flesh was stronger in here, and heavy metal was playing on a small stereo. Rob recognized the song was To The Threshold by Hatebreed, and when he saw what the woman was cutting, he was enraged with the fury of a thousand jungle animals. His friend’s head had been dismantled like a junked car, and it was almost unrecognizable.

  Doug's head was on her TV tray table and what she was tossing into the bag were parts of his brain and eyes. Without a sound, he stuck a blade in her neck, and with the other he stabbed her in the sternum. The old woman lurched forward in her pain and surprise, further gouging herself on his weapons. He pulled one knife free and as he was preparing for another attack, a man in overalls ran from the darkness of an adjoining room with a shovel in his hands.

  "You som' bitch! You goan die!" He screamed. Rob froze in fear for a split second, and it would have been the end had Susie not come through the door at the exact time the man was passing by with the shovel over his head. She knocked him backward as the door thumped him in the face and knocked him onto the ground.

  "Shut the door!" Rob screamed. He ran toward the man and kicked him in the face. The pain in his foot from connecting with the man's skull exploded like a nerve bomb, and even his rage could not completely deaden the experience.

  "You're the one who's gonna' die. You people are monsters!" Rob stuck the man in his stomach, and then again in the right arm as the man brought his left fist up, slamming Rob in the face.

  Rob toppled over, bashing his skull against the wall and saw stars in his eyes as he struggled to maintain consciousness. The first hit to his head with the axe handle had given him a serious concussion. Rob got to his feet and stumbled around the room while Susie grabbed the shovel and thrust the pointed end into the man's neck, grimacing in her own world of horror as she did. His neck made an audible pop and he fell backward, clutching his throat like a drowning man. She followed through and hit him again, knowing that in horror movies the monster always got up one more time to come back at the dumb girl. Susie hit him in the bridge of his nose with all her force, and ended the fight.