Apocalypse Dawn (33 page)

Joey recognized the exchange as one that belonged to the military base even though he didn’t recognize the number.

Jenny punched another button and held the phone to her ear.

“What are you doing?” Joey asked.

“Returning the call,” Jenny said. “Maybe we can find out who called Sergeant Macintyre, Anthony.”

“What?” Joey absolutely could not believe it. “Do you know how much trouble we’ll be in?”

“Joey, look around. A lot of people are already in trouble. Do you think this many people just happened to wreck all at the same time?”

Disorientation rocketed through Joey as he surveyed the wrecked cars and the milling people. This can’t be real. It can’t.

“No answer,” Jenny said. “Just a recording that all circuits are busy.”

Joey fished his own cell phone from his jacket pocket. “Maybe it’s just that phone. Let me see the number.” When Jenny showed him the screen, he entered the number and pressed Send.

An automated message came on. “All circuits are busy. Your call cannot be completed. Please try again.”

Panic rose in Joey. He dialed his mom’s cell phone number.

“All circuits are busy. Your call cannot be completed. Please try-“

He broke the connection and tried again. The same message came on. Working quickly, he flipped through his speed-dial numbers, calling his friends.

“All circuits are busy. Your call cannot be-“

It was a nightmare.

When Joey looked up, Jenny was walking around the back of the Suburban. He caught up with her. “Where are you going?”

“To see if those people need help.”

“I’ve got to go, Jenny. Chris is still waiting-“

An anguished cry interrupted Joey. Startled, he looked over at the woman standing beside a minivan one lane over in the street about thirty feet away. A tow truck had collided with the van’s rear, collapsing the van inward and spinning it halfway around. The van’s front tires rested on the median and the nose was burrowed into a tree.

“My baby!” she shrilled. “Has anyone seen my baby? Help me!”

Jenny broke into a run. Joey was a half step behind her.

“Can we help?” Jenny asked the woman.

The woman looked like she was in her late twenties and was dressed in a fast-food restaurant’s uniform. Her hands shook.

“It’s my baby!” the woman cried. “I had the late shift tonight. I belted her in the backseat! I always belt her in the backseat! It’s the safest place for an infant!”

Jenny took the woman by the shoulders. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll find your baby.” She looked over her shoulder at Joey. “Find the baby.”

Joey hadn’t even noticed he’d frozen. He hadn’t been around that many adults who were losing it. Seeing such raw emotion from the woman was overwhelming. Anger was one thing. Most people had no problem expressing anger, but fear-

“Joey, find the baby.”

“Sure.” Joey stepped into the minivan, banging his head against the roof and starting a new crescendo of pain. He played the flashlight over the child safety seat belted into the middle of the van’s bench.

No kid.

Then Joey realized that during the impact the child might have gotten knocked out of the seat. That wasn’t supposed to happen, but the child wasn’t in the seat now. And how would a kid look after she’d been bounced around the interior of a van? The thought hit Joey with staggering ferocity. For a moment he was sure he was going to throw up.

“Joey.

He wanted to snap at Jenny, but he couldn’t. He didn’t trust his voice.

“Please find her,” the woman pleaded.

Reluctantly, desperately wanting to find the baby okay or not find her at all, Joey turned his attention back to the van. He shined the light under all the seats, checked the front to make sure she hadn’t been thrown in that direction, then climbed over the backseat to the rear compartment. He found baskets of laundry, a blanket, and a pair of collapsible lawn chairs. But no baby.

“She’s not here.” Joey turned around and stepped on a small baby rattle, crushing the toy underfoot. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see that.” The apology, coming at a time when a baby was missing, sounded inane but it was out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

“My baby!” the woman wailed.

The pain and panic in the woman’s voice almost broke Joey’s heart. He’d never heard his mom sound like that, and he was sure he never wanted to.

“Joey.” Jenny’s voice was choked and quiet but Joey somehow heard her even over the continuing blare of car horns and car alarms. “Look in the child seat again.”

Goose bumps suddenly erupted across the back of Joey’s neck, and it felt like an ice-cold fist closed around his heart. His breath locked in his lungs. He didn’t know what he was going to find in the child seat, but he was convinced that he didn’t want to find it. He suddenly realized the minivan’s front windshield was broken out.

Had the baby flown out the window? Was some body part still hanging in the seat? Which body part did he most not want it to be? God, not that! I would have seen that already, wouldn’t I? Babies are made of so many different parts. He knew because he had worked with Chris when Chris was learning to talk, touching toes and fingers and eyes and ears, teaching Chris the names of those parts.

The flashlight beam illuminated the safety seat.

There was no baby there, no baby parts.

Thank You, God. Joey felt tears bum the backs of his eyes.

Then he spotted the pink Winnie-the-Pooh jumper lying on the safety seat. It was strewn across the little chair, just as Sergeant Macintyre’s uniform had been in the Suburban. On the front of the little jumper, Pooh sat digging a paw into a honey pot as Eeyore, Piglet, Tigger, and Rabbit looked on. A disposable diaper, folded and creased as though it had just come from a package-a condition Joey remembered rarely seeing them in-lay inside the jumper. A pair of tiny socks spilled out of a pair of Blue’s Clues shoes.

“She’s gone,” Joey croaked. “She couldn’t have taken those clothes off.”

“No!” the woman screamed. She pushed free of jenny and pulled Joey from the minivan. “My baby can’t be gone! She can’t be!”

Dazed, Joey stepped back from the van beside jenny. She took his hand in hers, holding tight. As they stood there, other conversations drifted over them. More people were missing. More piles of clothes had been left behind.

Adults everywhere were losing it. Other people screamed for help, saying they couldn’t find their kids.

“What’s going on?” Jenny asked.

“I don’t know,” Joey said. “But I’ve got to get back to the base. I’ve got to find my mom and Chris.”

“How are you going to get there?”

“The car.” Joey looked at his mom’s car. The car was smashed, but nothing was leaking underneath. Maybe it was only body damage. He caught himself then, knowing that life had gotten strange, because he would never have thought that his mom’s car just having body damage was a thing to be hoped for. “Maybe I can get it free.” He looked at Jenny. “You going or staying?”

“I’m going. You don’t need to be alone.”

Joey led the way back to the car, running fast enough now that Jenny had to struggle to keep pace with him. He opened the passenger door and crawled inside, sliding across the seat to the driver’s side. He turned the key, punched the gas, and prayed to God that the engine would catch. Struggling, the engine turned over and started with a shudder just as Jenny pulled the door closed.

“Hang on,” Joey said. He put the car in reverse and pushed the accelerator. The front wheels spun, then caught, but the car couldn’t break free of the Suburban.

“Cut the wheels toward the SUV,” Jenny said, bracing herself. “Floor it.”

Joey turned the wheels toward the Suburban then mashed the accelerator to the floor. The engine screamed, sputtered, and then launched into a full-throated roar.

Metal ripped in banshee wails as the car surged again and again. Just as Joey was about to give up, the front left fender tore free and clattered to the ground as the car sped backward. He slammed the brakes on, dropped the transmission into drive, and whipped out around the Suburban. He ignored the stop sign. Everyone out on the street was stopped. New arrivals were getting out of their cars to see what the problem was.

Breathing rapidly, fighting hard not to lose it and start crying like a wimp even though he was more scared now than he could ever remember being in his whole life, Joey sped toward Fort Benning. He glanced at Jenny and saw that she was sitting with her arms folded and tears running down her face.

“Jenny,” Joey croaked.

She turned to him, losing part of the tough facade she’d had all evening. “Something’s wrong, Joey.” She covered her mouth with a hand as she sobbed and her voice cracked. “Something’s so wrong. Look at all those cars. Look at all those people.”

Glancing at the businesses and houses that lined the street, Joey knew what she said was true. Something was wrong. Big-time wrong.

He reached for her hand, folded it into his. “It’s going to be okay,” he told her. And he felt stupid for saying it because he knew things weren’t going to be okay. But he said it because he was a guy and that was something that guys were supposed to say at times like this.

She pulled her hand away. “You don’t know that.”

“No,” Joey admitted, “I don’t. I’m just scared and I want everything to be okay.”

She hesitated, then put her hand back in his, squeezing tightly. “Me, too.”

United States 75th Rangers 3rd Battalion

Field Command Post

“How much time elapsed between the two frames?” Remington asked. In the command field post, he concentrated on the pictures the computer tech had isolated of the helicopter pilot seat with and without Lieutenant Briggs of the Marine wing from iISS Wasp. The legend at the bottom of each picture marked the local time as 08:21:13. The event-the Ranger captain didn’t know what else to call it-had occurred ten minutes ago and they were only now finding out about the disappearance.

“At this speed,” Foster said, “you’re getting a frame about every four-tenths of a second.”

“Four-tenths of a second.” Remington repeated the information in an effort to make it more concrete.

“Yes, sir.”

Remington tried to wrap his brain around the idea of the impossible act balanced against the impossible time frame. “So every second there are two frames.”

“Maybe three,” Foster replied. “Depends on how the time broke down. You could get a frame one or two seconds into the cycle, that still leaves you enough time for two more frames.”

“Go through the footage from all the digital cameras we were able to access at this time.” Remington tapped the screen showing the two pictures, one with Lieutenant Briggs and the other without. “I want every frame you can pull from every camera.”

“Just the helicopters?’

“No. I want the frames from the wing provided by Wasp and I want the frames from our men on the ground that are equipped with digital cameras. Get that to me ASAP.”

“Yes, sir.” Foster bent to the task.

Remington stood and started pacing again, surveying the tech crew around him. None of them seemed to have had much luck with resecuring the computer feeds. He cursed, struggling to hold on to the calm exterior he wore. Everyone remained aware of the piles of clothing that remained of the people they had lost, and the captain knew the questions uppermost in their minds: Is it going to happen again? Will it take the rest of us?

“Captain Remington.”

Wheeling aboutface, Remington looked at the sergeant he’d assigned to cover the cinderblock building’s entrance.

Sergeant Tolliver entered the building in full battle dress, including his helmet and LCE. Sweat beaded his face, attracting a layer of dust. He was a lifer, just as Goose was. But where Goose had the leader’s capacity for free thinking and quick decision-making, Tolliver was a plodder. He could be counted on to do things by the book, within reason, and finish an assignment. But Tolliver seldom went beyond the book.

“What is it, Sergeant?” Remington asked. He ignored the fact that all the heads swiveled toward him from the monitors. Everyone in the command post was spooked.

“CIA Section Chief Cody would like a word with you.” Tolliver hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ve got him detained outside.”

“I thought Cody had gone.”

Tolliver nodded. “He had. He’s back.’

“When?”

Tolliver shrugged. “Just drove up. We halted him, IDed him, and walked him in from the perimeter.”

“Who is with him?” Remington’s mind wound around the news, kicking the fact over and looking at all the angles. He had ordered the CIA man out of the command post as soon as the SCUDs had been launched. Cody had wasted no time getting out of the area and heading north to Sanliurfa.

Now the man was back. Why?

“He’s alone, Captain.” Tolliver shifted his assault rifle in his arms.

“But he wasn’t earlier.”

.No, sir. Verified that through the perimeter guard’s notes. That’s how I checked his ID.”

“What does he want to talk to me about?”

Tolliver shook his head. “He wouldn’t say, sir.”