Vanished (13 page)

No one coming to help. Jae Sun had tried...

Like thinking through mush. Logan couldn't sort it out.

"You OK?" Pappas said. "You were yelling at someone."

"Yeah. What're you doing here?"

"Hal got Jamie spooked about this fog or whatever it is.
Finally, I said I'd come check up on you. You OK?"

Logan bent at the waist, hands on his knees. "Give me a
minute."

It had to have been a hallucination. Maybe the mist was
some sort of a biological weapon, spawning madness that
mocked reality.

"Did you get down to the fire station?" Pappas said.

"No. I guess ...I got lost." Had to get it together. He couldn't
show vulnerability in front of this guy. Logan picked up the
bike and headed with Pappas back toward the Circle. "Is this
mist some sort of new weapon?"

"A psychotropic bomb? Maybe," Pappas said. "But that
doesn't explain the effect on engines"

Jae Sun. Hilary called him that, but his biological mother
was the one who had named him. The delusion was a product
of his own longing, yet it felt real.

"Did you hear me?" Pappas said. "What I said about pulse
bombs?"

"Yeah. I'm just trying to process. I thought those were an
urban myth."

Pappas's smile was tight-lipped. "They exist."

"Pulse-what did you call it?"

"Electromagnetic Pulse Bomb. It's the only thing that-"

"There they are!" someone yelled out. People rushed to them,
voices edged with anxiety as they demanded answers.

Logan held up his hands, took a deep breath to compose
himself. "Help will come soon. Until then, we need to help
each other out. We're Americans-we see someone in need,
we do what needs to be done."

Like a wave ebbing from the shore, the panic subsided, but it
would be back unless he gave these folks something to hold onto.

"There will be an informational meeting at..." Logan's watch
read 10:56. Less than an hour since the blast. It seemed like an
eternity.

Pappas nudged him. "They want to know when the
meeting is."

"Two o'clock. At Grace Community Church on East
University."

"What can we do to help?" Hal Monroe asked, playing
straight man.

"Go door to door, check up on the elderly. Look for kids
who might be home without an adult. Pair up. Better yet, go in
threes so you have someone to act as gofer."
"

People nodded, relieved for something to do.

I need someone to organize this effort," Logan said.

A woman in a navy business suit and silk blouse raised her
hand. "I'll do it."

"Thanks. See if you can find me more people with medical
training. A retired doctor, a nurse, EMT. Anyone. Have them
report to Patrolman Walsh. She's the woman with the curly
hair over there. If she asks for help, you all do what she says."

Logan gave Jamie some last-minute instructions, then
checked up on Natasha. It broke his heart to see her so still,
and so trusting that someone would make her OK.

Then he grabbed Hal Monroe to come with him and Pappas.
Pressed back into service as a cop, Hal suddenly seemed twenty years younger. But when they headed into the Circle, the old
man cursed a blue streak at the mist, the terrorists, and the
weenie staties and feds who were keeping his friends at the fire
station from coming in to help them.

Logan breathed with relief when they came out on West
University. This end of the street was mostly residential. Fewer
vehicles had been involved in crashes. Injuries were mostly
cuts and bruises. They left Hal to forage supplies from nearby
homes so he could patch up the injured.

He and Pappas went back up to the Circle. Logan held his
breath, worried about even brushing the mist. He had to focus.
If he could figure out what the mist was, maybe he'd understand what he saw when he was in there.

"Strange how the mist groups here," Logan said.

"The bomb," Pappas said.

"But it's weird how the only openings in the mist are on the
bike paths themselves. What could do that?"

"Maybe the magnetic fields from the high-speeds are
attracting or repelling the haze."

"The trains are a hundred feet underground."

Pappas shrugged his good shoulder. "That's as far as I can
take it. Let the scientists do the postmortem."

They left the Circle at North Spire where they found only one
injury-a woman who had fallen from her bike and broken her
wrist. When she heard the ambulances had been delayed, she
said she'd hike home to Walden. Logan used her fanny pack to
splint her arm and locked up her bike for her.

It took everything in him not to walk the woman up to the
Estates himself, and then keep walking to the palatial estate
that Hilary now called home-where, Logan prayed, Kimmie
waited in safety.

LEXIS COULDN'T WORRY ABOUT WHAT HAD
happened-some bomb-or who had done it-some
terrorist-or what the worst of it might be-the end
of the United States as we know it.

Now that the baby was sleeping, she had work to do.

How many times had she planned for this? Sitting up in
the manager's office, her orders placed, her schedules made,
her checkouts fully manned. A free five minutes, once or
twice a day, to feed that pit in her stomach. The dread that
some other shoe would drop.

Today her planning had paid off, though she still couldn't
figure out one thing: why Barcester?

People passed through this city on their way to Providence
or Boston or Hartford, but seldom few regarded it as a destination. It proclaimed itself a college town, but who was Barcester
kidding? Barcester State was the safety school for UMASS and
Barcester Tech the safety for Worcester Polytech.

People outside Massachusetts couldn't even say Barcester
properly, injecting syllables and consonants that might exist
but should never be voiced. Spoken by the locals, it became
Bahstah, a second-class imitation of Boston.

Alexis had been born, schooled, married, widowed, healed,
and successful in this city. And now some terrorist was trying
to take it away from her.

She scanned University Avenue, where people still roamed
about, stunned. Word had come from Sergeant Logan, somewhere up near the Circle where they said the blast had
taken place. Move the cars; clear the road.

Two toughs wearing hooded sweatshirts had pretended to
help, but she'd spotted them stealing stereos and cell phones.
They took off down a side street, but they wouldn't be the last,
not if power and phone didn't come on soon.

Alexis had planned for that, too. Her generators were
locked up in a cinderblock shed behind chain-link fencing,
and her oil tanks were underground. If need be, lights would
burn all night at Donnelly's, keeping the darkness-and the
evil roaming in it-at bay.

Most of the staff had gone home, some gearing up to walk
two miles or more. That was understandable, and it was good.
Fewer people to keep an eye on. Alexis had loaded them up
with juice drinks and kept an eye on the younger ones, making
sure they didn't pocket an item or two from the snack aisle.

Before sneaking out the back door, Kaya de los Santos had
helped Alexis wrap Ralph's body in a tarp and move it into the
meat cooler. It just didn't seem right to leave him out like that.
Mopping his blood from the floor was one of the most heartbreaking things Alexis had ever done.

Kate and jenny had asked to be allowed to stay. Too far to
walk, they said, and their homes were in opposite directions
from each other. And then there was Tripp Sheffield. The kid
had been in the store, buying macaroni and cheese for lunch,
when the bomb blew.

He had begged to be allowed to stay, offered to work. His
older brother was trouble, but Tripp was a good kid, still on the
fence between the straight way and the street way. Alexis and
he had had a meeting of the minds a few months back-she
wouldn't harass him if he would tuck in his shirt when he came
into the store. To him a loose shirt was cool; to her it was a
shield for shoplifting.

Job one was to pull down the grates. Alexis had had them
installed in anticipation of expanding the store to include a
pharmacy. With the windows out, the grates would be the only
thing securing the store. That, and Alexis's gun.

Though the store had power, the grates didn't respond to
their computerized controls. She'd have to pull them down
manually-a tough job, but she had just the guy for it.

Tripp was a fireplug of a kid, would have been an offensive
lineman on the football team if he had any meanness to him.

He gazed out at University Avenue. "Why're they doing
that?"

"Doing what? Moving the cars, you mean?" She held the stepladder steady while Tripp climbed up and grabbed the handle
on the first grate.

"Yeah"

"Someone said they're all stalled." Alexis hadn't thought it
through until this moment. She had done her reading-knew
all about EMP bombs. Best not to speculate aloud, however.

"Yeah, but why're they moving 'em?"

"To clear a path for emergency vehicles."

Tripp rode the grate to the ground, silly grin on his face. "So
why ain't they coming?"

The innocence and stupidity of youth, Alexis thought. "They
probably already did. The firehouse is down on South Spire.
They wouldn't pass this way to get to the Circle."

"Then why did Sergeant Logan want us to move the cars?"
Tripp said.

Maybe for the same reason she had asked jenny and Kate to
squeeze the air out of the beach balls and fold them into storage
boxes, Alexis thought. Something to do.

A scream came from the back of the store. Alexis went
running and found jenny in the bake shop, cupcakes at her feet.
"Whatever is wrong?"

"I ... came back here to get something to eat. Kate and me,
we're hungry. We're gonna pay for them, honest."

Right. "And you screamed because... ?"

She pointed at the safety shower in the corner. "I heard something in the drain. This clicking sound."

"Water dripping."

"It can't be. We don't have any water."
"

Wonderful, Alexis thought. First power and phones, now
water. "Jenny, I'm really busy up front. I'm sure it's nothing."

I think you ought to look. In case, like, there's another
bomb or something."

A bomb in the pipes would almost be fitting for Barcester.
No important buildings to blow up, so first they blow up dirt
and bushes, and then they blow up the sewers.

Jenny twisted her hands. "Please, could you just look?"

Alexis squatted down and shined her penlight into the drain.
And sat back hard when she actually saw something-

"What!" Jenny cried. "What's there?"

-something reptilian.

She had to get a grip. This was a weak moment, that's all.
Nothing was down there. To prove it, she put her face almost
flush with the grate and looked into the drain. The narrow
beam of light showed metal pipe, dull with age. Was that something gray and silky far below? Just a bit of vapor backwashing
into the pipes.

"There's nothing there, jenny."

"I heard something, Ms. Latham. I know I did."

"It's an old building. Things creak."

Jenny shivered, rubbed her arms. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. You don't have to worry, hon. You're here, and
you're safe." She smiled and handed jenny another box of
cupcakes. "Go ahead, you and Kate enjoy. Just save a couple for
Tripp"

After a last glance at the shower drain, jenny went back to
the front of the store.

Alexis picked up the spilled cupcakes and tossed them in
the trash. Three dollars and fifty cents wasted, but what could
you do?

Hysterical girls would be-well, hysterical girls.

HLOE PUMMELED JON WITH HER FISTS. "Don't you
ever"-whack-"do that"-slap-"again!"-shove.
"Hey, trust me. I have no intention of ever doing
that again." Jon pawed mud out of his eyes, trying not to lose
his contact lenses.