Footprints of Thunder (27 page)

Immediately, Bill employed their plan.

“I’m Bill Conrad and this is Terry Roberts. And you’re on your way to Washington, D.C. The President wants to meet you and shake your hand.”

Kenny now looked confused and pleased, but disbelieving.

“That’s right, Kenny. You warned people. You did your best to save people. How did you manage to figure it out like that?”

Suddenly Kenny lunged at the window, trying to see the ground below. Then he unbuckled his seat belt and ran from window to window, finally settling in a seat toward the rear of the plane, his nose pressed against the window. Terry sat beside him and Bill leaned over from the seat in front. Suddenly Kenny’s head snapped around to look at Terry.

“My sister?”

“She’s fine. She’ll be waiting for you when you return to Oregon.”

Kenny looked relieved, and then an emotion Terry couldn’t identify reshaped his expression. After a minute, Terry pressed ahead with his questioning.

“How did you figure it out, Kenny? You must be a genius.” Terry tried to say it with conviction.

Kenny pushed his nose against the window again and began to talk.

“I’m not a genius, I just notice things other people don’t. Like the corn.”

“The corn?” Terry probed.

“Yeah, the corn. Me, Jack, and Robbie went hunting and on the way it started to rain corn. Just poured out of the sky.”

Kenny paused and twisted his head, like he had spotted something on the ground behind the plane. Terry was worried about the next question, but Kenny needed to start talking again soon.

“You were the only one who noticed it?”

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you!” Kenny’s voice was filled with venom. “Of course the other guys noticed it. You think it could rain corn and not be noticed? You’re the crazy man, not me.”

“What did you mean when you said you notice things other people don’t?”

“Jack and Robbie thought it was strange, but I knew it was more than that. I knew it meant something.”

“A sign?”

“What do you take me for? Some kind of New Age guru? I just knew that corn doesn’t fall from the sky for no reason.”

Terry realized he had the wrong point of view. He assumed Kenny would have a mystical interpretation, like most people who prophesied the end of the world. Terry started over. “It must have been more than the corn. You must have had more clues than that.”

“Oh sure. I used to read these books when I was a kid. You know, books about strange things, UFO sightings, dinosaurs in Africa, stuff like that. There were even stories about stuff falling out of the sky. Mostly ice, but some animals, frogs, fish, even seeds. It was fun to read about this stuff but I never thought it was true. I always just figured a tornado, or an airplane, or something dropped this stuff. After the corn fell on me I began thinking about these things differently. I started checking. These things really did happen. But I couldn’t put it together. Not by myself. Not until I met Dr. Piltcher. He and Dr. Coombs knew there was something to it … and the others. It was Dr. Coombs that found the Zorastrus manuscript. He knew it was coming, he just didn’t know when … not exactly when.”

Kenny paused, lost in thought. His face was still facing the window but Terry could see his reflection and his eyes were unfocused and glassy.

“You finally figured out why it was happening, didn’t you? You and the others.”

“Not for a long time. We just kept researching all the strange incidents we could find. The regular papers don’t report most of this stuff anymore. Used to, though. I found stuff going back over a hundred years, but Dr. Piltcher and Dr. Coombs showed me it had been going on longer than that. Zorastrus knew something was coming and predicted it, but we still couldn’t make the model work. Then it came together … started to come … Phat and me … it was the flowers that did it.”

Kenny’s voice faded out after he said “flowers.”

“The flowers …” Terry probed gently.

“Flowers—just fell from the sky—” Kenny’s tongue began running back and forth over his lips. The seat belt sign came on before Terry could ask another question, but it didn’t matter. Kenny was gone. His eyes were fixed and glassy. They maneuvered him away from the window and then lifted his arms to buckle him in. Like a wax model, they remained suspended until Terry put them down onto the armrests.

They were still there when the EMTs came to load him onto a stretcher and wheel him off the plane.

Bill and Terry climbed into a waiting van. When Bill finally spoke, he was clearly disappointed.

“I was hoping for more.”

“He caught us by surprise. We weren’t quite ready. Still, he gave us something. You ever heard of a Dr. Piltcher or Dr. Coombs?”

“No,” Bill said. “Who was that other one? Phat? I’ll put some people on it. If they were like Kenny they might be holed up in a cave somewhere, maybe with their relatives. I’ll have someone research that name. The prophet. What was his name?”

“Zorastrus.”

“Yeah, ever hear of him? Me neither. What was it he said about things falling from the sky? Flowers and corn from the sky? You think Portland and New York were buried by something from the sky? That’s not what the reports say. They say gone, and gone is a lot different from buried.”

“No, but I remember something about flowers falling from the sky.in one of those books of his … no, one of those articles. He said the flowers were the clue.”

The bags of articles from Kenny’s room were in the back of the van, and Bill and Terry opened them, searching for the file folder. They found it in the bundle they’d made from the bedspread.

Terry read the article aloud, but nothing in the article gave them a clue to what had happened. A mother and her five-year-old daughter were sitting in a park in Hiroshima, Japan, when it began to rain flowers—the flowers were wildflowers, with grasses, mostly white flowers, but some of other colors too. Although the shower lasted less than a minute it was enough to nearly bury the little girl. No one could explain where the flowers came from. When Terry finished, he felt the same tickle he felt before in Kenny’s room.

Bill shook his head. “I get nothing, Terry. How about you? Read it again.”

The van kept starting and stopping in traffic. Reading in a car always made Terry sick to his stomach, but now he felt particularly ill. He ignored the creeping nausea; still, the second reading added nothing; the tickle was still there.

“Bill, let’s try brainstorming. We’ll take turns saying whatever comes to mind. Don’t try to judge your ideas. Let any idea our. I’ll start. Flowers from the sky.”

“You mean like word association? Tulips?”

“Anything. Park, people, picnic.”

“Mother, daughter, family, apple pie … make that sushi.”

“Japan, Hiroshima …”

“World War II, Nagasaki.”

The tickle turned to an itch and then into an idea.

“The bomb? You think the bomb did this?”

“That’s the first thing I thought of, Terry, but fission bombs don’t drop flowers on people. These bombs fry people, not decorate them. If there is a connection then maybe there’s an article about something falling on Nagasaki. I wonder—where did that com fall on Kenny?”

They split up the articles looking for something from Nagasaki but found nothing. They then looked for articles from cities near the now closed Nevada nuclear test site, but to no avail. They were still searching the books when the van stopped.

Terry helped bring Kenny’s things into a brick town house indistinguishable from many other such D.C. structures. There was no sign on the front of the building, and no guards stood in the lobby, but Bill had to use an elevator key to get to the floor he wanted. There the doors slid open to two armed airmen who questioned them thoroughly. Bill was given a badge, but Terry had to have his photo ID made on the spot.

Bill knew his way around and led Terry to a conference room. He had the guards spill the bags onto the oversize table and then began sifting through the contents. He found the computer disks, and the hard drive, then led Terry down the hall through another security check and into a room filled with computer terminals and work stations. One station was occupied by a pretty black woman who didn’t look much older than Terry’s daughter, Carolyn. She smiled when Bill headed directly for her. She wasn’t wearing a uniform but Bill called her Lieutenant Gillespie.

“I thought you were on vacation, sir.”

“I was, but something brought me back.”

“It wouldn’t be a few missing cities, three air bases, an aircraft carrier group, not to mention the loss of the ELF system?”

Terry had a sudden urge to run to the nearest airport and catch a flight home. One missing city had become two, and now a “few.” Bill must have been equally shocked but merely said calmly, “I need an analysis of these as soon as possible.” As always, he was the consummate professional.

“Colonel, I’ll give if highest priority, but it will take at least several hours.”

Bill and Terry waited while Lieutenant Gillespie copied the disks and the files from the hard drive. When she returned them Bill asked her if she had ever heard of an ancient prophet called Zorastrus.

“I’ve heard of Zorro,” she said with a smile.

Bill thanked her and then led Terry through another door. At the end of a hall Bill turned into a room that was filled with computer parts and repair equipment. He exchanged a few words with the counter man and then led Terry to the back, past shelves filled with parts. In a small room filled with more bits and pieces of computers was an Asian man of about thirty, with thick black hair and rumpled clothes. His nose was six inches away from a computer screen. Several Styrofoam cups of old coffee surrounded him. Monitors, computers, and keyboards were lying everywhere. The beeps of a computer game filled the room.

“Phil, I need a favor.”

Phil punched the tab button with his little finger and the game froze on the screen.

“Official or unofficial?”

“An unofficial favor but official business.”

“Classified, top secret stuff?” Phil asked eagerly.

“Tip top secret. I shouldn’t even be showing it to you.”

“All right! Let me see.”

Bill handed him two boxes of disks and the hard drive. Phil soon had a screen full of icons.

“What gives? You promised me something secret. This isn’t even access protected. No challenge, no deal.”

“The challenge is figuring out what it all means. No one else has been able to figure it out.”

“No one?” Phil asked hopefully.

“Two CIA cryptographers got canned because they couldn’t figure it out,” Bill lied.

“Hot damn. I’m on it. What should I look for? A message? Diagrams? Plans?”

“I wouldn’t want to send you down the wrong path. I’ll check back with you. Call me if you get something.”

They started to leave, but then Bill turned back.

“Hey, Phil. You ever hear of Zorastrus?”

“Yeah, the prophet of Babylon,” Phil said without taking his eyes from the computer screen. “Pretty astute guy. Not as well known as Nostradamus. Probably because his career got cut short. Some of his short-sighted contemporaries thought he was a little too smart. They put him in a pit and stoned him.” Phil looked up at Bill and Terry with a serious face. “Does he have anything to do with what’s happened? He made some pretty scary predictions.”

“Don’t know, Phil. Honestly.”

As they left, Bill directed Terry to a phone so he could call his daughter, Carolyn, who was full of questions Terry couldn’t or wouldn’t answer, but otherwise she was fine. After assuring Carolyn he would call as soon as he found out about John, Terry caught up with Bill.

“You really think that Phil will turn up anything?”

“Terry, there’s two ways to pick a lock. One is to work through it systematically. Start with zero right, zero left, zero right, and then try zero right, zero left, one right. Eventually you will open that lock. Lieutenant Gillespie’s people will do it that way. Phil—well, he’s an unguided missile with an uncanny record of hitting targets, targets he wasn’t aiming for. He knew about Zorastrus, didn’t he?”

“So why is he fixing computers?”

“Partly by choice, but mostly because he’s the biggest blabbermouth in the service. He couldn’t keep a secret if his life depended on it, but in this case it doesn’t matter. Even God couldn’t cover this up.”

28. The Brood

The lost age of Man will be the great transfiguration and society, and the world, will never be the same, I can see no further ages, not because they will not come, but because the future is confused.

—
The Prophecies of Melchi-Zedek

Warm Springs Indian Reservation, Oregon

PostQuilt: Monday, 6:50
A.M.
PST

C
olter was the first out of the RV in the morning, looking for a place to relieve himself. But as soon as he stepped out he started cussing. Sid and three of his friends were waiting under the RV and darted out when Colter stepped down, nearly making him wet his pants. Still cussing over the scare, he placed his bare foot in psittacosaurus droppings. Colter loosed another barrage of profanity while wiping his foot on the grass. When he finally got far enough away to urinate, Sid and friends ran around harassing him. Colter pissed at them as they ran by but missed them and sprinkled his foot by mistake. He cussed some more and began wiping his foot again. His cussing was so loud and long, the others were up when he got back. Colter intended to climb back into his sleeping bag, but someone had rolled it up while he was gone.