Between Dark Latitudes

by Daniel Costello

Now, looking down on him from the elevation, as he stepped down into the declining driveway, she felt something for him. Not just for him, but for what he must do. Poor man, that Dennis Freelander, she had thought to herself. I pity the man. Still, she couldn't help but worry for her good friend and the little girl who accompanied him. She saw into the little girl's mind, into her memories, and she saw what was awaiting them and Dennis had not. Something was looming over this whole place. There was a darkness on the horizon that was moving in and encompassing all that it came in contact with. Moira had a special sense, a third eye, that allowed her to see things that others couldn't. It was almost like seeing into the future, but it was more like just seeing the way events would unfold which would lead to the future. She tried to use her third eye, now sitting on the front porch watching her friends leave. She tried to look off to see what the future held for them all, but all she could see was shadows and darkness. Her third eye had become blinded by the future itself. Moira wondered if for some reason it was because she just simply could no longer see or if it was because there was simply nothing to see.

Meritopia is a society built on the remnants that remain of what once was North America. Now, a small, radiated wasteland called Betacong, is all that remains of what used to be a flourished section of the Meritopian Empire. Dennis Freelander is a detective, otherwise known as a Booster Agent, assigned to monitor the border between this toxic desert and the rest of society. His job is to keep the atrocities that dwell in this wasteland, such as a radiated man with neon skin, away from civilization.
One fateful night, an unknown ship, carrying a human payload, crash lands on a communications tower along the Betacong border. The incident kills two security guards and is the start of an unraveling conspiracy that will lead Dennis, accompanied by his partner, Nyko, and a handful of other misfits, on a perilous journey. A journey that will lead them down a descending spire and suck them into a world of both human and drug trafficking, as well as bring them face to face with both ghosts of their pasts, as well as otherworldly beings that will illuminate their future.

It was as if he was staring off into the cold hollow void of space. A void so deep, dark, and murky that one would not be able to see one's own hand in the depth. He was not excited to descend any further, not at all, but in order to condemn evil, one must first see it. He was watching the Apocalypse unfold in real time, right before his very eyes, and it was like no movie he had ever seen. Techno Hell, he had thought to himself, that's what they would call this. All of the media smut peddlers, the fashionable clowns, the geeks and the weirdos, the semi-intellectual, and the self-proclaimed titans of commercialism. They would all attempt to find ways to market and capitalize off of it. How they could save people that were already doomed! How they had been to the void and seen it and returned to talk about it. But these people knew nothing of the real world. They were all fake, plastic celluloid. Dennis, his dreams were more real than these people's lives. Dennis had seen the beast in all of its heads. He had confronted it knowing so, any head that was removed would be replaced with two more. There's a sucker being born every day and two to take him. For the real crater, the real darkness lies in the hearts of men, and that was a depth and measurement that no vessel, no swimming suit, and absolutely no seafaring craft, no matter how sturdy, could be made to traverse.

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419 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 21, 2021