Cry For Tomorrow (13 page)

“That’s kind of a relief,” I sighed. “It’s going to be difficult enough to tell Carl what happened without them having to hear it all over again.”

We hurried up the steps and through the series of big glass doors. Inside, the air was cold and slightly musty, wrapping us and the other people scattered about the big, tomb-like room in a soft blanket of muffled silence.

“You take the west side and I’ll take the east,” I said softly. I moved away from Jennie and started making my way across the main room in the direction of the row of study areas. Carl was one of the few people I knew who deliberately refused to follow a set pattern. He rarely used the same study area twice in a row, but I also knew he would seek out one that allowed him to put a solid wall behind his back, giving him a clear view of anyone approaching, and from which he could get to an exit quickly.

Ducking past a pair of teenage girls intently searching through the titles of the books on a shelf, I quietly made my way down a row of book shelves and around a cluster of tables toward one of the few places that met Carl’s criteria.

I caught a flash of golden hair when a tall, wide-shouldered man in a red flannel shirt stepped to one side, giving me a glimpse of the room beyond. “Aw, you are not so unpredictable after all, now are you, my love?” Before I could get a good look at the face of the golden-haired man, my line of sight was blocked by a pair of young women.

“Excuse me,” I mumbled to the hand-holding couple as I pushed past them and started toward the quiet alcove at the back of the room. I looked up expectantly, hoping to catch Carl’s eye, and got a clear view of the man and woman cuddled together in the alcove, whispering over the pages of an open book. The man leaned close and kissed the pretty young woman on her neck, in that sensitive place just behind the ear that I knew would make her tingle with excitement. I should know, because Carl had kissed my own neck in just that way so many times before.

Giggling, the young woman shook her soft curls into Carl’s face and frowned up at me. “Excuse me, we don’t wish to be interrupted. You’ll have to find somewhere else to sit,” the blonde informed me curtly.

“I guess that’s just too bad now, because I’m not about to leave until I talk to Carl,” I did manage to keep my voice from shaking, but I had to hold tight to the table top when I leaned toward them to keep from striking the little witch’s smirking face.

Carl’s head snapped up and he started to get to his feet. “Hey, Halie, I-I can explain,” he stuttered in surprise. His eyes stayed locked on mine but the hand sliding from under the blonde’s skirt snatched at a thick envelope lying on the table.

“Please don’t bother. I have eyes in my head and I’m not a fool,” I snapped. I did manage to keep my voice low, but I couldn’t keep the tell-tale tears from running down my cheeks. “As much as I’d like to just leave you here with your new
friend
, I can’t do that. Rosa and Jack have been murdered and there’s an emergency situation that requires the immediate attention of all of our room-mates. You need to return—
alone
—to the apartment right away.” I took a deep breath and started to turn away.

“Halie, wait! You don’t understand! She-she’s just an old friend. She means nothing to me!” Stuffing the envelope into his shirt front, he jerked to his feet and tried to grab me by an arm.

I shrugged him off and stumbled across the room. Behind me, I could hear the blonde’s indignant response.

“Hey! What’s going on here? You told me you were unattached, and I’m
no
body’s
old friend
!” A loud smack told me of the slap and the sodden stomp of heels on the carpet heading in the opposite direction said that Carl wouldn’t be seeing much of this other woman again.

I heard Carl’s heavy tread on the carpet behind me but I refused to turn around. If I could just make it across the main reading room to the lounge where I knew Jennie had gone I would be okay. I jammed my shoulder against the heavy glass door and hurried toward my friend who had her back to me, watching the giant television screen at the far end of the room.

“Again, warnings have now been issued by the military,” rumbled the flat voice of an aging newscaster, “and reports have been confirmed of federal troops patrolling the streets of the Old City. Claiming the power granted to them under the Homeland Security Act, they are in the process of gathering and securing, in an undisclosed location, the scores of homeless street people commonly referred to as
freaks
that live in the subways and abandoned buildings of this portion of the city. It is believed by the authorities that these people may be able to provide information that will lead to the source of the eruptions and explosions that have rocked the capital city and several other large cities across the country in the last two hours.”

His pretty, dark-haired associate raised sad eyes to the camera and shook her head in disbelief. “Yes, Ronald, this is sad news indeed. We are all, of course, devastated by what appears to have been some kind of concerted attack on most of the large cities across our own country, in Europe and the Middle East, but there are also fears that in our grief,” she glared meaningfully at her associate, “that in our grief, we are allowing the military to seize too much power. Are we going to regret allowing them to disregard the constitutional rights of the individuals being detained without proper warrants? If so, then who will be next? Will it be you, Ronald, or even me?”

His objectivity obviously lost to the passion of the moment, the newscaster glared at her angrily. “Well, Caroline, all I can say to bleeding hearts like you is, take a look at these pictures!” He waved a hand at someone off-camera, and the outer edges of the screen blinked with the addition of photos of collapsed buildings and the arm of a child lying limp at the edge of a bloody blanket. “And if you are still feeling that this may be an unfair persecution of seemingly innocent people, then let me repeat those figures again. There are now counted, five thousand dead and more still buried in the rubble of collapsed buildings in the capital alone. Fortunately, the president and most of the congress immediately took heed of warnings that sounded only a short time before the eruptions, and were safely evacuated to a secure location.”

“Well, Ronald, let’s hope, for the sake of your conscience and that of the rest of the people supporting this decision, that something is gained by this radical action and they are able to learn who or what is causing these eruptions.”
The female newscaster pushed back her chair and got to her feet and the camera quickly refocused on the scowling patriarch’s face.

“Oh, my God,” Jennie gasped as we embraced, shaking and sobbing. “What Rainor told us is true and it’s already started.”

As if to accentuate the newscast, there was a loud rumble like that of thunder, except it came from the earth beneath the building. The whole building quivered as if in fear of the giant hand that was shaking our universe. Books and pictures fell from shelves and walls and the floor under us shifted. Chaos erupted as the people around us began screaming and running in all directions in total panic.

Someone grabbed us by our arms and jerked us around. “Halie, Jen! We’ve got to get out of here!” shouted Carl.

I shook his hand off my arm and scowled up at him before letting Jennie drag me toward the emergency door hidden in a nearby alcove. Surrendering to our usual paranoia, we had located all possible exits from this building long ago, just in case we ever needed to leave in a hurry.

“Hey, where are you going? Oh, right,” gasped Carl when he realized that we were leading him to a better exit than the main one, which was already jammed full of panic-stricken people.

As we neared the alcove a young woman with a small girl in tow staggered into our path and stopped, staring indecisively at the mob of screaming people at the far-end of the room. I reached a hand out and grabbed her arm. “Come with us, there’s another way out,” I shouted to be heard over the ruckus.

The woman focused large brown eyes on me and nodded her head. Pulling the child into her arms, she hurried after us as we crashed through the heavy door and down a narrow staircase. At the bottom of the stairs Jennie and I slammed our bodies against the lock-bar of a second door that reluctantly gave us access to the outside world.

Carl followed and held the door opened until everyone had escaped, the woman and her child as well.

“Thank you,” she called as she ran off in the opposite direction.

As I had expected, we’d emerged on the side lawn of the library building and the small playground was in sight and only a short run away. Dodging a small chunk of concrete thrown from the shaking wall of the building, we ran out onto the green lawn to escape the other debris smashing into the sidewalk.

“
Halie!”
Kelly’s head popped out from under the cover of a concrete picnic table at the edge of the playground.

Relieved, I immediately began running toward my sister. From the corner of my eye, I saw the look of confusion clouding Carl’s face. Throwing his hands up in resignation, he followed Jennie when she ran after me.

“Hey! What’s going on here, girls? Where did you pick up the little kids?” Carl demanded when the three young children erupted from the dubious cover of the picnic table. Breathless, he dropped to the bench. “Did you know this was going to happen,” he gasped. “Is this the emergency you came to tell me about?”

“Not exactly, but I think it’s related,” I grumbled. Gathering the two younger children to me, I turned my back on him and began walking across the wide lawn in the direction of the bus stop.

When he did not receive any further explanation, Carl got to his feet and stomped silently after us.

Seeing that something was going on between us, Jennie decided it was time for her to intervene. “Hey, I don’t know what’s up with you two but the fact is that we came looking for you because we’re all in danger, especially now, Carl.” She gasped to get her breath as she tried to keep pace with us. “To sum it up, Rosa and Jack and all, or most of, the kids living with them were murdered this morning. We managed to rescue Kelly and these two little ones but an agent was killed in the process. We didn’t do, it but no one will believe it, so it won’t be long before they come looking for us.”

“You are kidding me, right?” Carl came to an abrupt halt and stared open-mouthed at us.

“No, we aren’t and that’s not the half of it,” I said when I could no longer keep my silence. “The agent was killed by another agent, or at least he looked like one, but he says he’s not—one of them, at least. He says he’s from another dimension and that if he doesn’t get the help he needs really soon, then there’s going to be a really big disaster. If even part of what he told us is true, then what happened earlier today is just the beginning. And we’ve got to get to Zack and Jake and warn them too.”

“I’ve already set off the alarm,” interjected Jennie as we started moving again. “They should be on their way back to the apartments and be there by the time we get home.”

Carl shook his head in total confusion, as if he could deny what he’d just heard. “Okay girls, how about if you start from the beginning and you tell me everything that’s happened?”

When I merely scowled at him he ducked his head in shame for a moment. “Hey, look, Halie, I’m really sorry about this. You deserved better, but I’ve been trying to get up the courage to talk to you and I guess now is just going to have to do. It’s nothing you’ve done or anything, it’s just that I’ve been feeling kind of restless lately and like I don’t really, well, you know, fit in.” He held up his hand when he saw I was going to protest. “I know you feel it doesn’t matter and all but it really
does
matter to me that I don’t have the kind of talents that the rest of you have.”

I stopped and just stared at Carl for a moment, blinked and looked away to regain my control. My heart felt like someone had driven a dagger through it and the whole world had gone completely nuts. I just plain could not deal with a cheating boyfriend right now.

When I looked into Carl’s face again, I had taken my broken heart and tucked it away to be dealt with at a better time. “Okay, I just plain cannot deal with this personal stuff right now. We’ve got some really serious things to discus and we need your input and—” I stopped in mid-sentence and stared at the place where the bus stop used to be.

The rest of the kids came to a stop at the edge of the big lawn beside me and stared, stunned, at the mass of twisted cables and the gaping hole breathing puffs of black dust. The street beyond was a bed of broken concrete.

“Wow, I guess we’re going to have plenty of time to fill you in, Carl,” groaned Jennie, “cause without the bus we’ll be walking home.”

“Maybe some of the auto-walks are still working?” Kelly suggested hopefully.

“Maybe. Home is that way,” I pointed in the direction of a narrow side street that I knew would take us in the right direction.

And as we walked, Jennie and I told Carl what had happened to us since we’d left home this morning.

There had been a lot of damage to the city streets, but there was still traffic of various sorts. Several small, privately owned flitters buzzed past us as well as an assortment of bicycles. All were accompanied by the usual escort of phantoms flitting between wheels or sliding along smooth fiberglass sides.

“Hey kids, try to stay close,” I called absently to the two youngsters as they skipped ahead. My mind had been on the conversation Jen and I had just had with Carl. I had the oddest feeling that he wasn’t surprised by Rosa and Jack’s deaths and Carl, the perpetual skeptic, had accepted what we’d told him about Rainor without question. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong, but this really wasn’t the reaction I’d expected from him.

“Okay,” little Jon called back as he and Merry clambered over the trunk of a small tree that had fallen across the sidewalk.

“Do you think we’re in any danger, crossing through this part of town on foot like this,” queried Kelly as she nervously shifted her backpack to her other shoulder.