Vanished (23 page)

He volunteered to hike the three miles east to the next
access stairway. Hansen had the bad ankle and, though Chloe
wanted to, no way would he let her do it. They both swore they'd
keep far away from the fire.

He had been trudging now for half an hour. Sweat poured
down his back, as much a product of anxiety as exertion. How
had all this happened?

It was supposed to be the best day of their lives-other than
the day Chloe told him she loved him, of course. He had been
too shy to say the words first, so she passed him a note in their
advanced quantum mechanics course. He turned so red, Dr.
Hagstrom thought he was having a stroke.

So many best days to choose from ...

The day they eloped, Chloe looking amazing in a peach
sundress, her cheeks ruddy with excitement. Though it was
mid-July, Jon wore the only jacket he owned, a heavy tweed.
He matched it with a turtleneck because it was the only shirt
he had that wasn't a T-shirt. As they walked into the town hall,
she carried the orange day lilies he had picked outside their
dorm as if they were prizewinning roses.

The day the pregnancy test showed positive, Jon had already
practiced the words We'll do whatever you want. Two grad
students with a hundred thousand dollars in loans had no right to have a baby. Words he never had to utter, because Chloe
wrapped her arms around his neck and called him Papa.

They had begun this day with every intention of having
many more "best days." What had they brought down upon
themselves with their stupid, idiotic little experiment? And if
they had killed or even just injured someone in the train, how
could they forgive themselves?

There would be an investigation, of course. If Hansen hadn't
been with them, they could have torn up their pipe and wiring
and thrown it into that fire. Even then, the hack job might
be tracked back to them. At the very least, their careers were
over. The worst-case scenario was that they'd be in jail for
manslaughter.

Wrong. At the very worst, they'd die down here.

What was that up ahead? The mouth of the tunnel looked as
though someone had hung a glittering curtain over it. He took
off at a run, his diaphragm cramping mercilessly. Perhaps what
he saw was light reflecting from another train moving towards
him. A rescue, oh please. Or maybe the rescue had already
begun, and this was some sort of barrier hung over the tunnel.

Jon stopped, bent at the waist, and gagged. Should have
gone out for cross-country instead of the chess team in high
school. He breathed deeply, allowed his gut to relax, and
straightened up.

Oh no. This couldn't be.

The tunnel was blocked by a wall of rocks.

The rocks were sheared off so impossibly flat that they
appeared, against all reason, to be machine-carved. Even the
margins where the rock walls intersected with the walls were
absolutely flush with the tunnel. There was no breakage or
fissures in the concrete; it was as if the tunnel had simply ceased
being where the rocks began. Even where stones and dirt filled
in around the boulders, the surface was smooth.

How could anything spawned by a catastrophe be so perfect?
And where in blazes did these rocks even come from?

Think. Think!

In areas closer to Boston and New York City, the tunnels
were reinforced because of marshy areas, rivers, or the Atlantic
Ocean. Barcester sat on a solid ledge of granite-another
reason why Quanta had chosen this area for the crossing of
the train lines.

No way these rocks were any form of granite. They were
translucent, glittering with veins of crystal, like mica or muscovite. Meteoric rock, perhaps. A meteor strike would explain
the blast-and get Jon and Chloe off the hook. But anything
large enough to penetrate the earth's atmosphere and plunge a
hundred feet underground would have been visible for weeks
before its strike. Nothing had been reported ... unless, by some
vast government conspiracy, the existence of a massive meteor
had been kept secret.

"Don't go there, idiot." Jon's voice echoed off the walls, a
lonely sound. He shivered, suddenly feeling like someone-or
something-was watching him.

He needed to stave off panic by exerting reason. Observe,
measure, deduce, decide.

Mustering his courage, he walked up the wall of rocks. As
he ran his hand over the surface he marveled at its flatness, as
if it were the very definition of that concept. He rubbed, and
tiny pebbles trickled out of the hard-packed mass. Turning
them over with his finger, he imagined that even these grains
were leveled on one side.

Yet as flat as it was to the touch, visually the surface seemed
to shimmer. A trick of light, he had assumed, but something
spoke from inside his head or maybe from the tunnel walls:
Can't make your own reality, lad.

"Crazy," he whispered.

Jon poked his fingers into the dirt, touching the edge of
the tunnel. So flawless that he imagined even under electron
microscopy he'd see no bumps or cleavage. He dug deeper,
hooking his fingers around the edge of the tunnel.

It ended right here.

He resolved not to even think the word impossible. He dug
more dirt and rocks out at the margin, reached in to try to
find where the tunnel had gone. But even six inches in, all he
felt was more dirt and stone.

Pop!

Jon hit the walkway, instinct from living down in the Flats.
You heard gunfire, you hit the floor. A stone had popped out
where he had dug. Sand flowed now, destroying the perfection
of the rockslide, and then-bang-a rock the size of a melon
popped out.

Shot as if from a cannon, a second rock smacked the walkway,
followed by a cloud of dirt.

Jon jumped back just in time to avoid getting hit by a spray
of water. The pressure was incredible, the kind of flow that was
used to etch glass or metal. Hard enough to have taken off his
face had he not been looking the other way.

It was only a matter of time before the entire wall of rocks
and sand let go.

Jon ran, trying not to think about burst dams or flash
floods. How far would he have to go to be able to withstand a
collapse?

Rocks popped out of the slide with regularity, clattering
on the floor of the tunnel. Jon glanced back, saw one boulder
smash the magnetic track, followed by a blast of water. It shot
straight down the guideway like a high-pressure hose wielded
by a giant.

Was there enough water behind that wall of rocks to fill this
tunnel and drown them? Judging by the pressure-yes.

What hope was left?

Jon jogged on, the water roaring in his ears. Should he pray?
He'd never even been to church. His parents had been adamant
atheists, his father a graphic artist and his mother a chemist.
Bill Percy's faith was in the metaphysics of color and form, and
Nancy relied on equations balancing for her spiritual stability.

In chemistry they do balance, Jon thought. Even in elementary physics, they want to zero out. But not in quantum
physics, where the uncertainty principle was a certainty. It was
impossible to measure simultaneously and exactly two conjugate quantities, such as both the position and the momentum
of an electron.

Did that hold true for science and religion, too? Was it
impossible to measure one against the other because they were
related? Or would never the twain meet between the unknowing
and the all-knowing?

How could he ever know God when he hadn't even considered that God might exist? What was the last refuge of the
hopeless but a shedding of all rationality and a begging of the
unseen to reach down and rescue?

Oh, God, I don't even know how to doubt and how to believe.

Someone called his name.

"Chloe? Is that you?" Jon waited-it was difficult to hear with
the water blasting and his heart thundering.

Jonathan. My son.

OK, the delirium was official now. Because the fact was this:
his father had never called him son. His parents were on a firstname basis with him from the time Jon could say their names.
Never Mum and Dad. Always Nancy and Bill.

Jonathan David Percy. A son who wasn't a son.

Jon. My child.

Delirium was bad enough, but it should never be so tender.

"Chloe!" Jon screamed. "Help me!"

He almost belly-flopped with joy off the walkway when he
heard her call his name.

OGAN JOGGED WITH BEN, EVERY STEP AGONY. The burns
on his shoulders were blistered, and being blown out of
the cellar hadn't done his ruptured disk any good either.
It felt like a barracuda was chewing on his sciatic nerve.

Ben slapped at his wrist. "My watch isn't working. What
time is it?"

"Why? Got a date?" He tried to get the kid to smile and
maybe stop shaking.

"The buses that went to the beach were due back to Tapley at
two. If there's another bomb in that backpack..."

"Yeah, man. I gotcha on that." Logan wore the Timex his
father had given him when he went into the Marines. A good,
old-fashioned, self-winding watch with real hands and no
digital parts. "It's quarter after one. I don't think the buses will
come back to the school."

"But we can't take that chance."

"No. We won't take that chance."

"People won't care that I didn't know. They'll blame it all on
me.

"We won't let that happen, son. Let's just keep moving."

Left foot, right foot-agony-pretend the pain belongs to
someone else. Carlton Reynolds would be a great candidate.
His kind had plenty of money to wield the legal system to his
own advantage. Plenty of charm to wield a beautiful woman
like Hilary Logan to his own lust.

If God was the real deal, how could He let this go on? He had
to understand Logan's desire to protect his own daughter from
a man who only wanted her because his girlfriend-Hilary
Sousa Logan-wouldn't come without her.

Surely mercy didn't exist in a vacuum-it had to include justice.

Logan couldn't think about this now. He had to put aside Walden
Estates and pay attention to where he was at the moment.

Old maple trees lined Connor Street, cracking the sidewalks
with their roots. Logan could see the trellis in the backyard of
what used to be Frank's Market. Though it was now a computer
repair shop, it cheered him to see the grapevine still thriving.
Mr. Francolini had let him and his brother pluck those grapes
when they were kids. They'd suck down the juices and then
spit the seeds at each other.

His grandparents had grown up in a neighborhood like this
in South Boston, then moved out to Barcester to work in the
factories. His parents were the first in either family to go on to
college, his mother getting her RN while his father got an associate degree in machine technology.

Ma and Pop would be safe now, he knew, because they lived
four miles south of the Circle-beyond the mist. Pop would pace,
worrying himself silly, but Ma would bring coffee and cinnamon
rolls up to the fire station, then demand to know when someone
was going to University Avenue to help her son.

As they turned onto Townsend Street, Tapley came into view.
The bus roundabout circled a lush flower garden. The sight of
the Stars and Stripes on the flagpole gave Logan goose bumps.

Ben raced ahead and ripped through the marigolds, zinnias,
and geraniums. Logan bent down with him, pushing through
petals and foliage, searching for a glimpse of a blue bag with
pink straps.

Time ticked on. Eighteen minutes after one. They found
nothing but a candy wrapper and a soda can. Twenty minutes
after one. Rocks, dirt, and ruined flowers-but no backpack.

"Could Madeline Sheffield have made up the story?"

Ben shook his head. "She was straight up, Sergeant."

"Maybe she meant the bushes and not the garden."

"She was specific. At least...I thought she was."

"We need to make sure. Let's go." They moved to the school
and searched the bushes that lined the front walk and around
the entry. Time was passing, with no results.

A chill ran down Logan's spine. "Did you hear something?"

Eyes wide, Ben nodded.

A razor-edged voice called from the east side of the school.
The mist reached all the way to the ground there, a perfect veil
for anyone wanting to keep out of sight. "You want it, you're
going to have to come get it, Sergeant Logan."

Logan shoved Ben to the ground, then raised the M16. It
had to be Luther taunting them. He could spray the area with
bullets, hope to hit the guy. But with the senior center on that
side of the school plus a row of triple-deckers, he could take
down innocent people.

He lowered the gun.

Luther laughed. "Yet again, you prove yourself to be a
decent man. Tell you what-I'll give you an opportunity to
prove your courage. Come chat with me. I give you my word
that you'll not be harmed."

"And what is your word worth?"