Vanish (6 page)

No answer. No screams. Nothing.

MITCH ROLLED INTO the garage and shut off his bike. The double bay doors were still open, exactly as he had left them last night. His tools were still out on the workbench, and the radio was still on, though only static hissed through the speaker now.

And there was no sign of Stan. Not that Mitch was surprised. He hadn’t seen a single car or pedestrian the entire way back to the garage. It was as if the northern suburbs had been evacuated. Mitch adjusted the radio on the workbench, scanning all the frequencies, AM and FM. Static hissed back at him. He shut it off.

This all had to have something to do with that storm last night. If it
was
last night. Who knew how long he might have been lying in that ditch. It might’ve been days.

His heart pounded and his mouth was dry. He shuddered as he recalled the creatures he had seen—or thought he had seen—at the gas station. Were they even human? That had been no storm and no lightning in the clouds. There had been something inside. Was this some kind of invasion? Had everyone been evacuated? Or had something worse happened to them? More to the point, why had
he
been left behind?

“This can’t be happening.” The sound of his voice seemed odd in the eerie stillness of the garage.

Mitch shook his head. The whole thing was surreal. He closed his eyes and tried to think. What to do next?

He went into the office and dialed Linda’s number again. Again he got her answering machine. This time he hung up.

He stared at the phone, biting his lip. After a moment, he picked up the receiver and dialed another number. It rang four times before an answering machine clicked in.

“You’ve reached Walter Kent. I’m sorry I’m not able to take your call right now, but if you leave a message, I’ll get back to you.”

“Dad…” Mitch’s voice broke. How long had it been since he had addressed his father? He was at a loss. “Dad, I don’t know if you’re going to get this message, but I… I’m just a little sc—”

Scared
? He wasn’t about to admit that to his father.

“…a little… I mean, things are a little weird here. I don’t know where everybody is. I don’t know what happened, and…” He paused again and swallowed. His throat was dry. “I… I’m going to head down to the city to see if I can find anyone. I don’t know what else to do. If you get this… I just wanted to let you know that I… uh, where I went.”

Mitch hung up and returned to the garage, sitting down to gather his thoughts.

First of all, he had to see if Linda was home, though deep down he knew she most likely wasn’t. Still, he felt obligated to make sure. Maybe there would be some clue as to where she had gone. Whatever had happened to her, she hadn’t called or left a message. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had seen her. Or the last thing he had said to her.

Next, he would stop by his father’s house. After that he would continue south into the city. There had to be people there. There’s no way they could have evacuated all of Chicago.

He went up to his apartment to pack a few things. Then he retrieved Rizzo’s .45 and a box of bullets from the drawer under the register. He tucked the gun into his belt, started up his bike, and pulled out of the garage, heading south. Linda lived just a few miles from the garage.

Mitch shook his head. Last night, he was going to propose to her. He was making plans to buy the garage. Today, he was just hoping to find someone—
anyone
—still alive.

He cast a glance in his rearview mirror. Well, someone human at least.

He pulled up in front of Linda’s house and looked around. She still lived with her parents. She had just turned twenty and was working her way through technical college. He had wanted her to move in with him, but she refused. She was old-fashioned that way—or at least her folks were. But she had said it’d be smarter for her to live at home while she was in school than to move out and just add to her expenses. Mitch liked that about her. She had her head screwed on straight.

The front door was unlocked. Mitch went inside.

“Linda?”

The only sound was the grandfather clock ticking in the corner. Mitch checked upstairs and then in the basement. Nothing. Two sets of car keys hung on a small key rack on the kitchen wall. They hadn’t taken their car. Clothes were still in the closets. No sign they had left in a hurry or tried to pack anything. The whole house was tidy and undisturbed.

He went back onto the porch and surveyed the street. Everything looked normal, except for the fact that there were no people anywhere.

Mitch got back on his bike. His father lived in Lake Bluff, several miles south. Mitch cruised through town before getting on the highway. His stomach was knotted, but his head felt clouded and numb.

The four lanes of Highway 41 were completely empty. Normally it was crowded with traffic, one of the main arteries from the northern suburbs down to Chicago. Mitch cruised along, scanning the businesses and parking lots on the way. Straining to see any sign of life.

He turned off to Lake Bluff, where he had grown up. He hadn’t been home in six years. Not since… not since the argument.

He’d left home right out of high school, fleeing his father’s tyranny. His father had gotten into politics when Mitch was only five, having made a successful bid for Congress. And so he was rarely home during Mitch’s childhood. And when he was, his father spent most of the time in his study. The only family time Mitch recalled growing up was going to church—and then it seemed like a facade to Mitch. An attempt to appear pious and conservative for his constituents. His father was open and affable in church or while campaigning. But at home, he was stern and brooding.

Mitch had always resented the hypocrisy. The dual personality. He had been forced to conform to a set of rules and religious beliefs not for pursuit of virtue but solely to appease his father. He had always promised himself that as soon as he was old enough, he would leave. And at eighteen, after he’d gotten the job at Rizzo’s and secured the apartment over the garage, he let his old man have it. Both barrels. All the frustration and rage that had been building for years.

Then he left and never looked back.

Mitch pulled up his father’s long, tree-lined driveway and shut off the bike. The majestic house was big and brooding—much like his old man—and the spacious yard was still perfectly manicured. The trees were larger than he remembered, but otherwise, it was all the same. He felt sick, in a way. As though everything he had wanted to escape from had suddenly drawn him back.

The big front door was locked, but Mitch went to a side entrance, surrounded by ivy. That door was never very secure, and with a few slams of his shoulder, it snapped open.

He stood just inside the entrance and listened. The house was silent.

“Dad?” His voice echoed though the rooms.

Nothing. He went into the dining room and looked around.

“Hey, Dad, it’s Mitch.”

Somewhere upstairs the floor creaked.

Mitch pulled the gun from his belt and flipped the safety off. He stood, listening, holding his breath. After several seconds, he exhaled. Maybe it had been his imagination.

Memories flooded his mind. Memories of a childhood that had been happy once. Very early on…

The floor creaked again.

Mitch slipped down the hall into the front foyer and peered up the winding staircase.

Upstairs, a door closed.

His heart pounding and hands trembling, Mitch paused to wipe the perspiration from his forehead. He shook his head. Something inside screamed for him to leave, but something else—something stronger—drew him on. He moved up the stairs.

The upstairs hallway was wide and carpeted. Four doors opened off the hall, two on each side. One of them was closed. The last one on the left. The door to his father’s bedroom.

He inched his way down the hall. Mitch’s old bedroom looked tidy and untouched. His father had converted the second bedroom into an office.

Mitch paused and listened at the door to his father’s bedroom. Then, with the gun held steady, he turned the knob and opened the door.

CONNER SAT ON THE front stoop of Marta’s house. His gaze was unfixed.

He had spent the last fifteen minutes searching the house from top to bottom but found nothing. No sign of his son. No sign of any explanation for his ghostly hallucination. He was at a loss for what to do next.

And as perplexing as everything else was the seizure he had experienced. The pain had been excruciating. It had most likely triggered the hallucination of Matthew. But what had caused the seizure? Was this some act of terrorism? Had there been some biological or chemical weapon released? Or was his convulsion merely a symptom of something worse yet to come?

Several minutes later, Conner stood up. He had to find some answers, though he had no idea where to look. He returned to his car and backed out of the driveway.

He decided he would return home. Maybe a solution would present itself. Maybe he would find someone else along the way. But before going home, he had to make a stop.

Fifteen minutes later, Conner pulled into the Forest Hills Cemetery. A narrow gravel road wound through the maze of granite monuments and headstones. After several turns, he came to a stop near a small mausoleum. A miniature statue of Jesus stood at the front. It was weathered and cracked. Above it, seven words were etched into the stone.

Conner sneered at the statue. It wasn’t what he had come here to see.

Beyond it, he spotted a small headstone, barely visible in the grass. Three rows back, second stone to the left. Under the shade of an old ash tree.

But Conner just sat in the car, his hand clutching the door handle. The last time he had actually stood at the grave was five years earlier, at the funeral.

Five years. One month. Thirteen days.

He had not seen it since. He couldn’t muster the courage to see Matthew’s name again, engraved in stone with two dates only four years apart.

At length, he forced himself out of the car. After his hallucination at the house, he needed to see it. If for no other reason than to be sure the grave was still there.

It was. Just as he remembered it. Small red flowers sprouted from fresh dirt on either side of the headstone. Probably Marta’s doing. Conner bent down and ran his hand over the smooth granite. His fingers traced the letters.

“Matthew.” Conner’s voice was barely a whisper. His eyes stung as tears welled up and dripped down his cheeks. He had worked so hard to forget. To detach himself from those memories. To sever all the strings, all the chains that bound him to it.

From the corner of his eye, Conner glimpsed something move. A dark shape slipped behind a tree. Conner gasped and lurched backward. He thought he could see the crest of someone’s arm and shoulder around the tree trunk.

“Who are you?”

Conner stood, frozen, chest pounding, not sure of what to do. Maybe it was someone who had answers. Or, more likely, it was someone out looking for them, just as he was.

Or… could it be Matthew?

After a moment, Conner’s curiosity won out and he took a few cautious steps. A diminutive shape darted out from the tree and dashed behind a row of gravestones.

Conner lunged after it, sprinting along a parallel course.

“Wait!”

He caught only fleeting glimpses of the figure as it raced behind the headstones. It was fairly small, more the size of a boy than an adult.

Conner pursued it to the end of the row, where it dove behind a mausoleum. He stopped at the front, gasping for air.

“Wait! I don’t want to hurt you. I just—”

He never finished the sentence.

Without warning, his back arched and his legs stiffened. A sharp bolt of pain sliced through his torso just as it had before, paralyzing him. He felt himself fall backward onto the grass. The pressure built inside his chest, neck, and jaw, growing so great that he felt he was going to burst. His muscles tightened, frozen up like steel. White light pressed in from the corners of his vision along with what felt like an ice-cold blast of air.

Then it was gone, passing over him like a wave. The light faded, and the cold, and his vision returned.

Groaning, he rubbed his eyes. He could just see the outline of someone’s face, silhouetted against the sky. Someone leaning over him. Slowly it came into focus. Eyes, nose, and a mouth.

Conner opened his mouth but couldn’t speak. All he could do was lie there, moaning and gasping for breath.

HELEN SAT IN HER CAR, staring ahead. Her eyes were red but her face was expressionless. She had searched the streets for nearly an hour, looking and listening for Kyle. Hoping for any sign of him. She had circled the block where he lived and continued in an outward spiral, widening her search.

The image of her son was seared into her memory. The blisters spreading across his body and his agony. It was as if he was burning alive. The encounter was no hallucination; that much she knew. She had touched him, thrown her arms around him. But what was happening to him? Who was responsible? Why were they torturing him?

Her mind culled through every possible explanation. Was it some government agency? The military? How had they evacuated the entire city? Was it some sort of bioweapon? A virus unleashed on the general populace? If so, was she infected as well?

Helen now found herself driving north on a deserted Michigan Avenue, her senses numb in disbelief. She crossed the river and finally stopped in the middle of the Ohio Street intersection. She got out of her car and leaned against it.

Buildings loomed around her, silent and empty, surrounding her with a canyon of concrete, steel, and glass. But not a soul in sight.