ADAM

 

Tuesday January 14 - 2009 CST

One day until Turbocharger activates

 

The rumbling sound coming from the ground wasn't the usual tremor you expected when things went seismic. It was more like an enormous bowel movement and I made the mistake of looking towards the portal to see if I was right. That gigantic black eye was looking right back at me, only now it was a lot closer to breaking through. It actually bowed the surface of the mystical barrier holding it back and was a big, black dome poking halfway into our world. I had no idea how much longer the barrier could hold out but it looked weak and ready to snap at any moment. And I still didn't even know what to do to stop it.

A familiar voice shouted out from behind me. "Adam! Over here."

It was Doctor Johnson and he was inside the industrial truck that was partially blocking the street. That was the last place I expected to see him. Even more of a surprise were the dozen or so people I saw staring blankly at me from the inside of the truck's cargo space. It didn't take long to figure out why they weren't running for their lives like any sane person would do if they were looking out at the horror show playing out behind the truck. Every one of these people had a wrist shackled to the deck of the truck, and they all wore the defeated look of people resigned to death. They had been brought here against their will by the cultists behind all the madness and they knew they were just fuel for the ritual.

As I stepped into the truck and around the people sitting on the floor I noticed the fifty gallon drum in the middle wasn't empty. In fact it was packed full of plastic wrapped blocks of a substance I didn't recognize. All of it had the handmade look of something put together in someone's garage and my first thought was it might be smuggled drugs. Then I noticed all the wires plugged into detonators.

"Hey, Doctor Johnson, there's a bunch of—"

But before I could let the Doctor know of the bomb I found the guy he held at gun point lunged at him. There was a gunshot and everyone in back of the truck stared at the brawl that had started up in the truck's cab. I didn't see any blood but the guy was all over Johnson and scrambling for something in Johnson's hand. Not the gun he had but something else. If the thing he was after was more important than a gun then I knew I had to stop him from getting it.

The thing in Johnson's hand looked like a home made radio. It had some switches and a Radio Shack antenna. A couple brain cycles later it came together in my mind. There was a bomb in the back so this had to be the thing that set it off. And the guy Johnson was fighting was a cultist. And he had brought in all the people in the back as sacrifices.

It always bugged me that there were guys like him around who were smart enough to figure out transient magic, decipher alien languages in ancient books, and put together home made bombs but decided to put that talent to use in crime. If they put those big minds to work on something good they could have made a company or invented a longer lasting light bulb and gotten filthy rich. All without hurting a bunch of innocents in the process. Instead we got stuck with truck bombs and tentacle monsters trying to eat a city.

The guy fighting with Johnson was wrapping his fingers around the detonator's trigger. In an instant we would be be vaporized. My left hand latched onto his shoulder and I thought about electrical terminals. Each finger took on a different pole. Positive, negative, positive. Then I let the power flow. The guy's body went rigid and he growled through clenched teeth that were held shut against his will. After a couple seconds I relaxed the power and he fell limp on the seat.

The smell of burnt plastic tickled my nostrils as Johnson pulled the remote from the guy's hand. Smoke rose from the soft plastic of the remote. I had no idea I'd put enough power through my fingers to burn it so badly. It was toasted and would never set off anything again.

Johnson shook his head at it. "This isn't good. We needed that."

"Why did we need it? I thought explosives were bad for our health."

Johnson stared out the back of the truck as one of the tree trunk sized tentacles of the otherworldly horror slithered by. "They're the only way we're going to stop this. It's progressed too far for us to stop it any other way. Adam, I'm going to need your help for this."

And I didn't like the way he said that. Mostly because he was looking at my still smoking hand as he said it. I knew exactly what he was going to ask of me, and it was something no one in their right mind would want to do.