James Wetzel awoke to the sudden blare of his alarm clock. 

 

            “Another wonderful morning in the wasteland.” He grumbled as he sat up in bed and looked at his digital clock: 4:45 a.m., Tuesday, February 21^st, 2025. Daylight was not to begin its daily course for another hour, yet the northern aurora cast an ethereal glow on the early morning landscape as James pulled out of his driveway, ready to begin another day on The Rig. “The Rig”, as it was called, was The North American Union’s answer to the growing energy crisis – a nuclear energy facility of biblical proportions, nestled deep within the artic sub terrain. The energy produced by the nuclear goliath was enough to provide clean energy for the entirety of Northern America. The Rig was in itself a thriving town, home to more than 100,000 laborers, engineers, and architects – a modern marvel by any means. 

            James worked as an overseer at The Rig’s drilling station. Day in and day out he would keep watch over the drillers as they created an ever growing series of vents to allow pressure to escape The Rig’s massive energy core. If one could take an x-ray of the land around the facility, it would look like a spider-web of tunnels, weaving in and out in no discernable pattern. These ventilation shafts ran miles into the earth’s crust, allowing steam and pressure a path out of the plant’s highly volatile core. The drillers had an important job, and it was James’s responsibility to see the job through. He didn’t exactly enjoy watching grown men drill holes through the arctic like a child in a never-ending sandbox, but the pay kept him.

            The sun was creeping over the frozen wastes when James scanned himself in at the clock-in station. Still wiping the sleep from his eyes, James entered his office on the main drilling platform and received the faxed orders for the day.

            “Southwest section C, 12.3 miles. Southwest section D, 8.3 miles. Central section B, 6.2 miles.”

            James took a drink of his coffee before hitting the intercom.

            “Alright boys, looks like we’re drilling deep today.”

 

            *          *          *          *          *          *

           

            The clock said 7:30 a.m. when James Wetzel began his first morning rounds on the platform. Sweat trickled down his face as he walked through the drilling station’s hellish interior. The inside of The Rig proved to be a stark contrast to the sub-zero degree temperatures outside. Hot winds fanned upwards out of the abyssal vents like a furnace as James walked through the drilling stations, checking off the platforms as he went. The inspection of the drilling facility was generally eventless, maybe a gear slip here, or a malfunction in one of the drills’ magnetic timers there, but generally speaking, James usually found himself brainlessly checking off the list while his mind wandered elsewhere. However, halfway through his rounds, the intercom sounded off across the platforms.

            “James Wetzel, report to platform three, we’ve got a problem.”

            As he moved across the platforms, back to number three, James felt a fleeting since of refreshment: Anything to break the monotony of the daily inspections was welcome to him. However, before he even reached the platform, a violent tremor shook the facility. The platforms buckled and swayed as a searing updraft blasted worker and machine alike, throwing loose material, rock, and bodies everywhere. The limestone canopy of the facility faded in and out of sight as the pulse of intense heat threw James off of his feet. Dull silver and black swirled around as the heat slammed him onto the platform floor like a steak onto a hot grill. The last thing James felt before losing consciousness was his breath being ripped from his lungs by the overbearing pressure of the violent updraft.

           

            *          *          *          *          *          *

           

            James groaned as the darkness began to slowly fade from his eyes. The blast had lasted maybe a few seconds, but it felt to him as though the infernal wind had pummeled the station for an eternity. All around him, the images of sheered metal and flashing red began to come into focus. The sounds of the station sirens echoed throughout the cavern as people slowly pulled themselves off the ground. The dust from the falling rocks and the heat from the abyss below made it nearly impossible to breathe, as James held his shirt sleeve to his face and staggered back towards the main platform. The intercom was now repeating in a dire chorus:

             “Everybody off of the platforms, this is not a drill. I repeat, everybody off of the platforms, this is not a drill.”

            As he looked around the platforms, James saw through the dust and heat that off in the distance, laborers were hurrying to the main platform, some carrying others, some limping. Still disoriented, James joined in the exodus, following the laborers in front of him, hoping that they might know where they were going. In all of his 37 years of life, James Wetzel had never been in war zone. By chance, he had not been selected during the draft’s reinstatement through the American-Iranian conflict, nor had he been involved in the army reserve program at his college. In fact, prior to landing the supervisor job at The Rig, James had never been outside of the North American Union. But James knew that the chaos he was now staggering amidst was ten times worse than any war or disaster film he had ever seen in his life. All around James, the now constant sound of injured workers screaming in pain was enclosing around him like a noose and the heat and dust from the crumbling chamber choked him and making it difficult to see through the ever-growing haze. But there was something worse; something that he could not comprehend had set upon him, obscuring his senses and muddling his thoughts. Somewhere beyond the screams of the hurt, beyond the wailing sirens and flashing light, somewhere beyond the trampling of thousands of footsteps on metal casing…somewhere in the abyss below was a dead silence, slowly festering and consuming the platform, and with it, James’s senses. 

            A sudden primal fear gripped James, stopping him in his tracks. The infernal heat of the abyss died out as the world around James Wetzel froze. Icy chills crawled down James’s spine as he listened in horror to the growing silence around him, but even through the deafening silence, he could hear a faint, indiscernible sound of what seemed to be static from an old television coming from the depths. The static grew slowly, swelling out of the blackness below. More and more, the sound materialized slowly around the platform, as the air grew more chilled. James strained to discern the static as it became clearer. The scream that erupted from the bowels of his soul was as nothing compared to the swarm of noise that encompassed the platform at that moment. The static molded into the sounds of millions upon millions of teeth chattering. The skeletal drumline echoed through the chamber as the agonized screams ten thousand young women shot from the abyss above like a siren in the night.

            James broke from the paralysis his fear had created and bolted towards the main platform with the very sounds of damnation chasing at his heels. He leaped over the twisted metal around, paying no heed to the crippled workers around him. Screams of agony from the workers erupted as the chattering teeth encompassed every echo of chamber. Any essence of heat or light had long since vanished, except for the blinking emergency lights, as James sprinted on blindly, knocking over others as the evacuation turned into a stampede. The flashing red of the sirens created brief illuminations of the horror unfolding. As James entered the long hallway leading out of the chamber, he saw entire crews of men twitching on the floor, as if at the mercy of some horrible pain. In the flash of the emergency light, one man sat tearing at his own face, screaming as his fingernails gouged and cut deeper. Others lie dead with eyes wide open, empty windows to what once were souls. James tore through the crowded hallway, not caring about anything but his own escape from the nightmare unfolding around him. His blood mixed with blood of those in front of him as he clawed through the mass of equally terrified workers. No matter how hard James pushed, or how fast he ran, the chattering and the screaming was everywhere, pushing into his very soul. Liquid and bodily matter flowed freely as James pushed harder, letting go of every ounce of civility he once had. The endless stream of bodies pushed back, holding him towards the advancing hell. In one final burst, James slammed through the final door and out into the bright Arctic morning, before his world went black again.

 

            *          *          *          *          *          *

 

            James awoke to the sounds of the Arctic morning. The chattering of teeth were no more, and the screaming had ceased completely. Rising to his feet from his own excretion, James turned to look towards The Rig. The monstrous facility loomed over him, staring into his eyes. 

            “I’m alive,” James gasped “I made it out, I’m alive.”

            The blue sky shined down upon him as he stood alone in the tundra. He was indeed alive, and the only person to make it out. His proof of his hard fought victory lie in the blood stained snow around him. He had clawed his way through the others trying to escape; he had torn through friends and colleagues to save his self. James Wetzel had survived.

            The ground under James began to shake uncontrollably as a high pitched hiss erupted from The Rig’s deep interior. The hiss grew louder and more uncontrollable as James made a horrible revelation. Without the ventilation shafts to release steam, the nuclear energy core had become unstable. James had ripped through waves his fellow human beings in the tunnels to escape, just to be standing outside of the world’s most powerful nuclear reactor moments before implosion. 

            James shielded his eyes as the bright blast overtook him, wiping out everything he knew. No arctic, no cold, no factory – just blinding light, and then darkness. And then the chattering of millions upon millions of teeth…..