Nineteen Minutes Novels & Stories

Before Christmas, the zombie apocalypse came. My husband threw me, his wife who had just given birth, to a horde of zombies because of his lover. I was eaten alive. My eyes snapped open and shot to the clock on the wall. December 24th. 11:47 PM. I was back. Christmas Eve. The final blizzard was closing in. The horde would be here in thirteen minutes. No time. I shoved through the crowd, sprinted to the control room, and slammed the emergency broadcast button.

The camera caught the inside front cover for four seconds. Her handwriting. Round and careful. The same handwriting from every letter she sent me. Two lines written in blue ink directly on the inside cover. He came back. He always comes back. Four seconds. Then the notebook was closed and bagged and the camera moved on. I sat on the shoulder of the road for nineteen minutes. I know it was nineteen minutes because I track time automatically. It is one of those things that happens after enough years of operations where timing is everything. I watched the feeds a second time.

"Don't come over here. There's nothing between us anymore. I don't know you, and even if we were mates in the past, it ended a long time ago. Stop annoying me." His expression changed, but he maintained a forced smile. "The Memory Lock Potion can only be maintained for 21 days at most. Three days have passed since then. Why haven't you recovered yet? It's alright. I'll make the laboratory work overtime to check the potion, and you'll remember very soon." Lira couldn't help butting in, "Forgetting you was the right thing! She doesn't love you anymore, and you betrayed her first!" "Of course she loves me. She's just forgotten temporarily."

The ceremony had started. Twelve minutes. The wave had fifteen. The math was close enough to feel.

The drive to the facility took nineteen minutes. Elena counted them without deciding to. Elena was not watching the clock—she had placed her phone face-down on her knee and was focused on the city moving past the window—but her body was counting the minutes independently of her mind, as humans do when they are managing multiple significant tasks simultaneously and have broken the experience into the smallest units to make it manageable. Nineteen minutes. Fifty-two minutes remaining in the hour she had promised Rosa.

And at the very center of the blueprint, inside the graphic representing Florence's silver basket, a small, digital countdown clock appeared. 00:00:90 The ninety days hadn't ended. The clock had just reset to seconds.

"We... we haven't located Mr. Adrian yet." A dangerous silence settled over the hallway. Killian slowly turned his head. "What did you say?" The guard visibly swallowed. "His room is empty." Aubrey felt the air leave her lungs. Empty? Killian's jaw tightened. "When was he last seen?" "Approximately thirty-seven minutes ago." Thirty-seven minutes. The precision of the answer somehow made everything worse. "Search every floor." "Already underway." "The underground garage." "Checked." "The wine cellar." "Checked."

Then stopped. Then nothing. Day eleven of thirty. Nineteen to go.

The twenty minutes was nineteen. Lennon knew because he was watching the time on his phone, which was something he told himself he was not doing and then kept doing anyway. Archer had finished his food over a period of deliberate calm that Lennon recognized as performance—Archer ate fast when he was relaxed, and he had taken twenty-two minutes on the pad see ew, which was a record. He had then declared himself spiritually fulfilled by the evening, hugged Lennon at the door with the warmth of someone who had witnessed history, and left.

Didn’t say goodbye. He ran. Past me. Past Bear. Out the door. _Thump. Thump. Thump._ Hallway. Elevator. I followed. Bear followed. *3:11 PM. [SFX: CAR. THEN CURB. THEN BACKPACK.]* PCH. 90 MPH. Adrian driving. 128 BPM. Hands shaking. On wheel. “9 minutes,” Adrian said. To no one. To himself. To me. “9 minutes late.” “Adrian—” I started.