One Minute to Midnight by Steve Lang Page B

barrel. As far as
I’m concerned, there is no deadlier aroma than gunpowder, and the
personal relationship I developed with my rifle was almost
spiritual. There was a kind of solitary peace being out in the
fresh air with just my spotter, on our own stalking the enemy. At
times, when I needed to clear my head, I would go by myself.
Sometimes targets were foot soldiers, or computer hackers, and one
time there had been a chemist, but to me it was a game of cat and
mouse. Their identities were irrelevant, and my commanders labeled
every one of them a terrorist or insurgent rebel.
After my honorable discharge, I felt it was a natural next step to
become a gun for hire, and besides, the pay was better. I worked
for a private security firm for a few years until the economic
collapse of 2032, and then the bottom fell out of normalcy. People
began to loot, burn, and tear their cities apart once the lights
went out, and I found myself working for Martin Breswell as his
personal bodyguard, and shortly I fell in love with his son, Peter.
We became very good friends as I watched over his father, and in my
off hours we began to date. I was against it at first, because I
knew it would be a conflict of interest, but Peter was wonderful to
me, and we had been close friends ever since we were children. I
loved his dark hair, and hypnotic blue eyes. I guess they were my
downfall.
    Peter and I began to spend weekends
together when his father and I were in town. The economy, having
been propped up by fiat currency, finally collapsed in the fall of
2052 and it was a worldwide pandemic. Life became more drastic and
dangerous after that, so my services were in ever greater demand.
Money became worthless, but I continued to do my job to protect the
father of my love, who was working to stabilize the economic
disaster we were all living under. Martin only needed my watchful
eye when he conducted business in other cities due to the high rise
in muggings and murders in metropolitan areas across the country.
Travel was very dangerous now. There were highwaymen laying in wait
to hijack cars and looking to kill the unsuspecting for food.
When the grocery stores ran out of food, and industrial meat
farming ground to a halt, desperate people turned to cannibalism
for survival. There were also reports of raiders storming homes
where doomsday preppers had been squirreling away food for years
only to have it stolen by gangs with more guns and ammunition. A
lot of the people who had saved food for their families ended up
getting shot trying to protect it. Functional hospitals were
non-existent anymore, because there was no money to pay the power
bills, or to hire doctors. We were living in a real Mad Max world,
and the only difference between his desert wasteland world and us
was that our homes were still standing and we had not begun to drop
bombs on each other. That would come later.
Martin stopped travelling about four months after the collapse when
the people in power realized that unlike the Great Depression of
the 1930's, this one was not going to bounce back. There would be
no road programs, no social outreach, and people would keep their
homes this time because the banks had all folded up and left town.
The fiat currency we had all been using since 1971 lost its
confidence, and when marks were called in, debtor countries didn't
have the capital to pay back what they owed.
    We were left out in the cold, on our
own, and totally screwed worldwide. For their protection, I began
to train Peter and Cynthia—his sister—how to shoot and fight. Our
love continued to grow despite increasingly difficult
circumstances. I can still smell Peter's skin and hear him call my
name on the wind. So, gangs got bigger, religious hysteria grew
louder, and the cauldron boiled as a world spoiled on instant
gratification turned from uneasy to hostile. Soon, human life
became very cheap and bodies piled up in the streets from the
starving dead, left to rot if there was not