Eight Minutes, Thirty-Two Seconds Read online

  Advanced Praise

  “EIGHT MINUTES, THIRTY-TWO SECONDS is a twisty and unnerving horror thriller for teens! Scary, mind-bending and fast-paced! Brace yourself…!” – Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of ROT & RUIN and V-WARS.

  “Lightning-fast, riveting, and smart. Just try to put this book down!” – Jeanne Ryan, author of NERVE.

  “A fascinating, mind-bending, and heartbreaking tale!” – Jeff Strand, author of I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS and COLD DEAD HANDS.

  “A taut sci-fi thriller fusion of pure adrenaline and fear that will leave you trembling to the very last page.” – Rena Mason, Bram Stoker Award® winning author of THE EVOLUTIONIST and EAST END GIRLS.

  “EIGHT MINUTES, THIRTY-TWO SECONDS is one helluva psychological ride. A combination of FLATLINERS, WOOL, and 12 MONKEYS, Salomon's post-apocalyptic novel moves at a breakneck pace that has the reader turning pages, trying to figure out just how the hell our two protagonists ended up alone at the end of the world. Sprinkled with scientific details that are far-too scarily realistic, 8:32 is a book you don't want to miss.” – Joshua McCune, author of TALKER 25.

  “EIGHT MINUTES, THIRTY-TWO SECONDS is a fascinating and gripping jigsaw puzzle, one that Peter Adam Salomon deftly assembles to reveal the hows and whys of the end of the world.” – New York Times bestselling author Alethea Kontis.

  “Peter Adam Salomon sets the stakes high in his mind-bending novel, EIGHT MINUTES, THIRTY-TWO SECONDS, placing two characters with amnesia in a post-apocalyptic world where they must die to survive. Equally thought provoking and emotionally poignant, this high velocity thriller pits the destructive forces of hate against the redeeming powers of love with the winner deciding the fate of the world. Prepare to burn through the pages as the mystery is revealed one death at a time.” – Brian Kirk, author of WE ARE MONSTERS and WILL HAUNT YOU.

  "Brilliantly original. Gripping from start to finish. One of my favorite reads of the year. Seriously." – Jake Bible, author of the Bram Stoker Award® nominated INTENTIONAL HAUNTING.

  “With EIGHT MINUTES, THIRTY-TWO SECONDS, Peter Adam Salomon delivers an intriguingly different kind of science fiction tale, a futuristic mystery-thriller that will leave readers hanging until the very last page. The twists and turns are as imaginative and surprising as the setting of the story itself. A must read!” – JG Faherty, award-nominated author of THE CURE, THE BURNING TIME, and CEMETERY CLUB.

  “With pitch perfect sense for the isolation of youth and the struggle of misfits to find their place in the world, Salomon weaves a frighteningly plausible vision of the end of the world birthed by heartbreak and the desperate wish for renewal.” – James Chambers, Bram Stoker award® winning author of KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STAKLER: THE FORGOTTEN LORE OF EDGAR ALLAN POE.

  “Fresh, fast-paced, and heart-poundingly cinematic.” – C.G. Watson, author of THE ABSOLUTENESS OF NOTHING.

  “A riveting mystery that explores the dangerous, heady, horrifying mix of altruism, teen angst, and the self-important ego of would-be saviors. EIGHT MINUTES, THIRTY-TWO SECONDS is a page-turner with stark prose that nonetheless vividly imbues the tale with a deep well of feeling and urgency. And, unlike so many science-fiction stories, the actual science of the tale was believable and never bogged down the progression of plot or character. Like all the best horror stories, the monster in this book is in the mind of the protagonists, in their addictions and desperations, in their arrogance and misery, and the truth that humans are at the same time the cruelest creature and the kindest hero. EIGHT MINUTES, THIRTY-TWO SECONDS is highly thoughtful, highly intelligent, highly engaging, and highly recommended.” – J.M. Frey, author of TRIPTYCH.

  "Peter Adam Salomon's EIGHT MINUTES, THIRTY-TWO SECONDS is a harrowing near future tale of life, death, and what it means to be a part of humanity. Highly recommended." – Chris Marrs, author of WILD WOMAN.

  “An intense, terrifying foray into a dark future where two survivors must piece together the end of the world through the jumbled memories of six abused teens. A wonderful read that I couldn’t put down by a writer who understands the biological, technological, and research worlds, this is one science fiction thrill ride you won’t want to miss! If you enjoy exploring cognitive science, AI technology, biological weapons, and a mystery of global proportions, this is definitely the book for you!” – Marlena Frank, author of SHE-WOLF OF KANTA.

  “It's almost physically impossible to stop reading at the end of each chapter. This story DOESN'T LET UP – It'll leave you breathless.” – Jillian Boehme, author of STORMRISE

  Eight Minutes, Thirty-Two Seconds

  by Peter Adam Salomon

  Also by Peter Adam Salomon

  Novels

  Henry Franks

  All Those Broken Angels

  Poetry

  PseudoPsalms: Prophets

  PseudoPsalms: Saints v. Sinners

  PseudoPsalms: Sodom

  Coming Soon

  Morsus: A Novel

  PseudoPsalms: Revelations

  PseudoPsalms: Resurrection (Collected Short Stories)

  Copyright © 2019 Peter Adam Salomon

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locations or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, with the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Cover design by Matthew Revert

  Formatting and ebook design by Geek Girl Author Services.

  Contents

  Advanced Praise

  Also by Peter Adam Salomon

  Copyright

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  This book is dedicated to Sarah

  L had forgotten how many times she’d died.

  Once more. Her repeated promise to M: just one more death.

  L’s fingers shook where they rested on his arm, trying to pull the injector closer to the port in her forearm, waiting for her fix.

  M pressed the plunger.

  For a moment, she wanted to curse him for injecting her, for reminding her that, after she died, she’d forget her empty promises of never dying again.

  He’d heard it all before. He’d hear it the next time he killed her. And the next.

  But that moment was fatally brief as the heat reached her heart and fire tore through her with the finality of flatlining.

  The first seconds after dying were a vertigo death spiral, when the brain shuts down amid the inescapable sound of the last beat of her heart.

  Then, memory returns. She’d died before. She’d die again. On purpose.

  Death had a reason.

  After the pain, she’d wake to see through someone else’s eyes, trying to
answer one simple question: Who am I?

  Only six options: Devid. Levi. Billy. Stephanie. Yasmeen. Amy.

  Neither L nor M knew what made them special. Why six? Why not more? Or fewer?

  Devid, this time. He was an odd one. Well, all six had their oddities. Loners. Angry. Brilliant, but lonely.

  L liked being Devid a little more than the others. He was curious, always tinkering. L liked that.

  She recognized Devid’s messy room. Clutter on the desk threatened to bury him if he moved too much: random computer parts and wires, dozens of books with hundreds of bookmarks sticking out of them. Piles of clean, folded laundry on the floor next to dirty towels and yesterday’s clothes.

  Charts and other scientific diagrams covered the walls with equations and research. Shelves of tools and electronics she didn’t recognize. M might have known their uses, but he wasn’t here. This was her death.

  Devid cradled his phone, scrolled through a dozen messages too quickly for L to follow. Stopped on one.

  >>December 28, 2064 14:37:08

  >>USAMRMC material request denied.

  A few brushes against the screen forwarded the message to Amy.

  The phone rang within seconds.

  “Surprised?” she asked.

  “No, but I had to try.”

  Amy laughed.

  L cringed, hating the sound of Amy’s grating laughter. This deepening relationship between Devid and Amy was relatively new. Anything new was important, if she could remember it.

  At first, the six hadn’t known each other; strangers living their own lives, little more than children. Then, they’d found each other and grown up.

  “Can you get it?” Amy asked, her voice dropping.

  Devid turned to one of his computers and loaded the website for the United States Army Medical Research and Material Command at Fort Detrick. In the upper-right-hand corner, a small black and white photograph showed ‘Major General Nisha L. Mukhopadhyay, Commanding General,’ in front of an American flag.

  Devid raised his middle finger to the picture, then flicked the screen. “I can get it. I have a plan.”

  “Clear.” The word echoed within L, loud enough to drown out Amy’s response but Devid never heard it. No one ever did.

  The computer told them that saying ‘clear’ warned people of the potential danger of electric shock from the defibrillator but there was no one but M to warn.

  L tried to grasp on to something, anything. The computer, the phone, Devid himself, but it never worked.

  They’d no way to know how long each visit might last. Moments, sometimes hours, before resurrecting exactly eight minutes, thirty-two seconds after dying.

  L and M spent far too long debating: visions, memories, nightmares, or hallucinations? Perhaps something else they didn’t know the word for?

  “Visions would be more informative, right?” M said once when the withdrawal pains got to him too much. That was the week of worrying how many vials remained in storage and trying to conserve.

  Didn’t matter, visions or memories or flashbacks or dreams. Nothing mattered other than what happened between dying and resurrection. Those few precious moments when L lived someone else’s life and she could almost forget the reality of her own.

  Replacing the truth of the barren world on the other side of air locks and fake windows with blue skies and eight billion people over-crowding the Earth. Not just her and M, the last surviving members of the human race.

  The end of the world sucked.

  For the first few seconds, Devid lingered in her mind. The memories always faded eventually. Remembering hurt as much as forgetting. L kept her eyes closed, trying to hold onto the slice of Devid’s life she’d just visited, where other people lived on the other end of a phone call. Where she could look outside the window and see real grass. Hell, where the glass opened at all, allowing her to breathe un-recycled air that didn’t need to be processed and sterilized.

  L pulled herself out of the medpod before the memories faded completely. Already the images wavered, the white metal walls of the infirmary dirty in a different way than the mess of information taped to Devid’s walls. She fought to keep the one image of the computer screen fresh long enough to share the information.

  She struggled to focus on the memory of Devid’s computer, middle finger blocking the view of the woman in the photograph. “What is MRMC?”

  “That information is not in any accessible databases,” the computer said.

  “MRMC?” M asked.

  “Devid, I was Devid.”

  From the infirmary, they climbed three levels to reach the residences. M had gotten stuck in one of the elevators for almost an hour once and the computer couldn’t guarantee it would never happen again, the mechanicals in need of maintenance beyond their knowledge base. Not worth the risk of getting trapped when they could just climb the ladders.

  In exploring the habitat, they’d once discovered an entire storeroom of neatly packed tents, presumably waiting for camping trips to the outside. Only, going out without a suit meant death. Real death. Not the temporary death of the drug, but real, final death. With no resurrection.

  One entire cabinet in the infirmary held nothing but birth control medication. Despite all their entertainment options, both L and M figured it was the single funniest thing they’d ever seen.

  Birth control.

  According to the computer’s satellite scans, two humans survived on the planet. Repopulation seemed like a pretty good idea.

  They’d turned seven of the empty rooms into research centers. Dozens more remained empty, designed for additional survivors that hadn’t survived.

  Six doors had names printed in black marker. One for each person they visited. L entered Devid’s room, walls filled with notes and pins with tiny flags on them they’d found in a drawer in the operating room off the infirmary. Even a map of Frederick, Maryland the computer printed out when they finally figured out where Devid lived.

  “Nisha something or other,” L said.

  “That last name?” M pointed to the top of one of the walls where they’d written biographical information in big letters directly on the wall. Permanent, as opposed to the more transitory information they’d gathered, written on pieces of paper so they could remove, delete, and revise when needed.

  “Yes, that was it. Must have been his mother.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “I think she’s in charge of this MRMC.”

  M waited, ready to write down anything she said as he’d done for the entire climb.

  “I can’t remember.” L smacked her forehead, trying to focus. “It was on his computer, his mom’s picture. Something official, I think. I saw the whole thing.”

  “I know that feeling.” M rested trembling fingers on her shoulder.

  She shrugged out of his touch, walking around the room to study the notes written on the walls.

  “He was talking to Stephanie.” She slapped herself in the head again. “No, Amy. She laughed.” L shivered. “What an annoying laugh.”

  “I like her laugh.”

  L rolled her eyes. “You do not like her laugh. You just like her.”

  “She’s cute, I think.”

  “Focus.”

  “Why?” M said. “I can’t remember what they look like any more than you can remember seeing his computer monitor.”

  L walked to where M leaned against the door, then slapped him, gently.

  “What was that for?”

  “Slapping myself wasn’t helping, figured slapping you might,” she said.

  “Did it?”

  “No.”

  “Anything more?”

  “Yes.” L rubbed her temples. “No. I don’t know. You know what this is like. Something someone got denied. That made him emotional enough to remember, so maybe that’s important?”

  M wrote the word on a piece of paper and stapled it to the wall. ‘Denied’

  “And?”

  “Amy laughed.”
>
  “You said that already.”

  “I’m trying.” L ran fingers through her hair to brush it out of her eyes. “Just so tired.”

  “I know, being reborn is exhausting,” M said, once more resting his fingers on her shoulder. “It’s naptime.”

  “Need to eat first.”

  “I know that, too,” he said.

  “Need to remember.”

  “Too late.”

  L fought a yawn before losing the fight. “There was more.”

  “There’s always more,” M said. “More and more and more, that’s why we go.”

  “That’s part of why.”

  “Big part.”

  “It’s not like we have much of a choice.”

  M opened the door, but L didn’t move.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s something important.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” L said. “But I know I should know.”

  “Close your eyes.” M walked over and reached his fingers through the long strands of L’s black hair until he reached her temples. Rubbed in soft circles. “Deep breaths, okay?”

  She nodded.

  “You’re Devid, you’ve always been Devid. He’s you. You’re him. Dirty room. Never clean it, do you?”

  L shook her head.

  M kept rubbing, slow circles against her skin.

  “All those papers on the wall, experiments everywhere, trying to solve another scientific mystery,” M whispered. “There’s writing everywhere, see it?”

  “No,” she said, opening her eyes and twisting away. “Yes, I see it. I just can’t read it.”

  M grabbed on to her flailing arms, pulling her closer, until he reached his hands to her face, embracing her jawline and cheeks in his palms. “Close your eyes, tell me what you see.”