Vanished (15 page)

              My stomach lurches and I taste pre-vomit in my mouth. The nausea from the smell is almost more crippling than the fear.  Almost.

I take ten steps to my parent’s bedroom door and see Logan staring down at the bed.  My step-dad’s bloated body lies, stiff as a board, in the early stages of decomposition in the middle of the bed.  I can’t see his face so I take another step and try to process how there could possibly be a large round purple hole in his head. 
Someone murdered Judge.  Who? My mother? Not possible. Who then? I have to know.

              I feel nothing except for intense curiosity, a queasy stomach and there’s an odd feeling of lightness in my shoulders.  Logan looks over at me. “He must have been dead before the event.”

              “Why do you say that?”

              “He’s here, right?” Logan says, gesturing toward the body. “So I guess we know now that the cemeteries still have the bodies in them…” He turns his back on me and paces back and forth, his hand on the back of his neck, his eyes occasionally flashing up to look at the dead, bloated monster. Suddenly he stops pacing and bends down, looking under the bed, then walks around to the other side and bends down over there as well.

              “What are you looking for?”

              “The gun... I don’t see any gun here.”

              “So...”
              “So, that rules out suicide.”

             
Oh yeah
, I think,
duh.

              Suddenly my stomach lurches and at the same time I notice something sitting on top of Judge’s chest. “What’s that?” I ask, pointing with my left hand and covering my nose with my right.

              Logan reaches over, holds his breath, grabs the object off the monster’s chest and hands it over to me.  It’s a sealed envelope.  Logan comes around the side of the bed to my side, “Come on,” he says pushing me out of the room.

              He shuts the door behind us and makes across the hall for my bedroom door. He’s going to the wrong door, I know, but after what we just discovered, I don’t want to open
their
door.  “Logan,” I say and he stops with his hand on my door-knob, and looks back at me. “That’s the twin’s door.” I point at it.

              I see from the way his eyebrows tilt up that he understands what I’m asking him to do.  He nods and takes two steps across the hall, opening the door.  I try to read his expression from his profile, but it’s blank. He vanishes inside the room and returns thirty seconds later holding Isaac’s blue-dog in his hands.   “It’s empty.”

              Sighing, my knees go weak and I have to lean against the wall.  I feel a thousand years old when he hands me the stuffed animal. I squeeze it to my chest.

He shuts the door and opens mine gesturing for me to follow then he shuts out the dead-Judge-smell which isn’t as bad in here as it was in the hallway or downstairs.

I sit Isaac’s blue-dog on the bed and open the envelope.  Inside is a yellow post-it note with familiar chicken scratch handwriting on it and I fish it out of the pile of envelopes. 

                          
 
Trinity,

If you’re reading this you know
I killed Judge
.  I hope you’ll accept his rotting corpse as my apology. 

I had no idea until Richard called me. 

It is not safe on the surface. 

For sanctuary and answers, go to the place I always wanted you to go.   Check the broom closet on the first floor. 

Stay there.

I love you, sweetheart.

                            Dad.

              I flip the envelope over, looking inside for anything else and a tiny piece of wipe paper falls out.  There’s a random thirteen digit number written in ink.  So many things about the note confuse me. I try to filter through them. He killed Judge because Madison’s dad – “Richard” – clued him in that something wasn’t right at my house? Madison told me our dads discovered the cave together and that corroborates the connection between Mr. Delaney and my absent father. 

I killed Judge.

I killed Judge.

Judge is dead...

“Trin?”

              I jump. “Sorry,” I say, and turn around to look at Logan.  His beautiful eyes widen in alarm. “What is it?”

              “Wow,” Logan says, handing me back the note. “When he says ‘Richard,’ he’s not talking about Maddie’s dad, Richard Delaney, is he?”

              I nod, “Actually, I think he is.”

              He looks as surprised to learn this as I was.  “Did you know they knew each other?”

              “No. Not until Madison told me this morning. I guess our dads were friends when they went to St. Raphael’s. She
did
make it seem like he was pressuring her to befriend me right before this happened though.  She said he talks about my dad a lot.”  I leave out the part where she told me she lied to all of us about who actually discovered the cave. It’s not really relevant and it’s not my
truth
to tell.

              “What does your dad do for a living…or what
did
he do?”

              “He works for the government in D.C. I’m not sure what his specific job is though.”

              Logan frowns, crosses one arm over his chest and starts to twist his go-tee with his free hand looking down at the pile of letters on my bed.

“Why?” I ask him.

              “It’s probably nothing but Madison’s dad’s work is kind of…shady...if you know what I mean.”

              “Shady? Like he works for the mob or something?”

              “Something like that,” he says and rubs the back of his neck, “I’m just saying, he’s a powerful man in the city.”

              I sit down on the edge of the bed trying to ignore the smell coming from the leather pouch.  “I think he’s telling me to go to St. Raphael’s.”

              “I was going to ask you what he meant by
go to the place I always wanted you to go
.”

            
 
“I’m sure it’s the school. He
loved
that school.” 

              Logan’s eyes score over to the window.  “It’s getting late.  We better head back.”

              I take his hand and let him pull me to my feet.  I place the note and the paper with the number on it back in the envelope.  Grabbing a back-pack from the closet, I stuff Isaac’s blue-dog  and the envelope inside.

              Suddenly, I can’t get out of the house fast enough.  I run out of the door, down the stairs and I’m almost to the front door when I hear a dog barking outside. Logan pulls to a stop behind me, “We should get something out of the fridge to distract the dogs with,” I suggest.

              “Good idea.” He disappears and returns a minute later with a plate stacked high with smelly hot-dogs.

              We step out the front door and we’re greeted by a snarl.  I can’t see the small dogs but the big black one is pacing on the other side of the fence.  We veer off the path and cross the yard instead, getting as close to the bike as we can without jumping the fence.  The dog follows us, sniffing and snarling.  “Fetch,” Logan yells and starts heaving hotdogs way out into the street away from us.  The two small dogs materialize out of thin air reaching the exploding hotdogs at the same time as the larger one.  He lunges at them.  “Come on,” Logan says dropping the plate in the grass and we jump the fence again. 

            
 
He straddles the bike and starts it up while I climb on. “Helmet,” he yells.  I put the helmet on and wrap my arms around his waist.  We pass the dogs fighting over the remnants of the obliterated hotdogs on the street.  For a split second I worry they might chase us, but they don’t even look up.  I can’t help feeling sorry for them.  For all the dogs and cats slowly starving to death on the streets or, even worse, imprisoned inside the houses.

              The sun is setting as Logan speeds down the abandoned streets occasionally reducing his speed to avoid all the cars in the road. 

The wind feels warm and cleansing and I imagine it blowing away the stench of death clinging to my skin like a layer of oil. 

              We pass Loose Park, go over the next hill and the plaza spreads out before us. In the background I see the skyline of Kansas City.  There is a single thought repeating itself over and over again in my head.

I’m free.

Chapter Twelve

Logan

              “Look,” Trin says pointing up at Madison’s building.

              I peel off my gloves and glance up to where she’s looking. At first I don’t register anything abnormal about the building, then it hits me; it’s completely dark.

I’m in radio range now, so I pull the radio off my belt, push the button and speak into it, “Collin. You there?”

There’s static then I hear Collin’s voice. “I’m here, bro, where are you?”

“Downstairs. The powers out, isn’t it?”

              “Yeah,” he says, “last night for cold beers.”  

              “OTrin, we’re coming up,” I say.

              We get the gun bag off the back of the bike and head up the stairs.  Inside the lobby, we head toward the stairs. Now power means no elevator.  We’re going to get our exercise. As we start climbing the first flight of stairs, I tell Trin what I’m thinking.  “We should pack everyone up and head over to the school first thing in the morning.”

              “So you believe him about this sanctuary thing?”

              “Don’t you?”

              “I’m not sure. Why should we trust him?”

              From the bitterness in her tone I gather she hasn’t forgiven her dad. She probably never will. I know I won’t.  Even my dad stayed around as much as he could and he certainly never left me with someone who used me as their own personal punching bag. “We don’t have to trust him. So far this is our best lead. We should at least check it out, don’t you think?”

              She stops at the landing for the fourth floor to catch her breath.  Even my lungs are starting to feel tight.  “Yeah,” she nods, “I’m too curious now to ignore it.”

              “If he was honest about it being sanctuary, we owe it to the group to have a look.” I try to remember if there are any underground areas at St. Raphael’s but I’ve never been lower than the first floor.  I wish Mr. Snow had told her more like what we need sanctuary from and why the surface isn’t safe.  Will we have to stay underground and, if so, to hide from what?

              She bites her lip, “Does that mean we have to show them the note?”

              She doesn’t want the others to know about the abuse but they must be suspicions already, especially Madison, if her dad was aware of it.  “I think so. Can you do that?”

              My question seems to make her angry. I see her features turn stern, her eyes harden.  I don’t want to ask this of her.  “Yes” she says, and her features soften, “but...”

              “But?”

              Her face turns pink, a glorious deep pink that makes me want to groan. I cough instead. “But, will you stay with me? While they read it, I mean.”

              “I promise,” I say, “I’m not going anywhere.”

              “I know,” she says and steps closer to me so that she’s standing inches away.  I feel heat between us.  She puts her hands on my chest and they look so small. She raises her face and pushes up on her tippy toes.  The kiss is soft, lingering and full of promise. I put my hands on her waist and pull her body closer, sealing the gap between us, so I can wrap my arms all the way around her. This feels as natural to me as driving a motorcycle or shooting a gun, like its second-nature, like I was born to do it.

              She pulls back and looks up at me, “I never thought my first kiss would be in a dark stairwell
with you
.”

              “How was it?”

              She tilts her head back a little and wraps her arms around my neck, “pretty nice actually.”

I’m about to ask her if she wants to go for round two when she releases me and turns to look up the stairs.  “We should go up. They’re waiting for us.”

              Now that she’s gone, I feel cold and tired. I’d rather sit down on the stairs and kiss some more.              Reluctantly, I nod in agreement and we climb the stairs in silence, except for the sound of our feet hitting the cement, for a few minutes. The dark stairwell makes me think of a basement which leads me to wondering why we survived, why the six of us are here and everyone else is not. “If other people survived they were probably underground, like us, when it happened.”

              She doesn’t answer right away.  Her breathing is a little labored. “I think they would have had to be really deep like us,” she says, “but there aren’t a lot of places that deep for ordinary people to go.  If basements protected people from…whatever happened…we would see a lot more people around, wouldn’t we? We haven’t seen anyone. It’s like we’re the only ones left.”

              “Maybe we should try yelling from the balcony or something. It’s a big city and we haven’t really been looking.”

              “Do we want to draw that kind of attention to ourselves?”

              “Good point,” I say.  “Do you smell that?”

              She sniffs and looks up the last two flights of stairs, “Someone’s cooking.”

              “Hopefully, it’s not Maddie.”

              “Why?”

              “Because she’ll burn the building down.”  

              She laughs and I like the sound of it. 

__#__

              When we walk in Jasmine is standing at the stove and the room is lit by candlelight stirring whatever smells so good in the big silver stock pot. 

Zayn is sitting at the bar with a book and a glass of wine, surrounded by a tower of candles.  He’s wearing his glasses, which means he’s reading something and, sure enough, I see one of the books Trin picked up from the library propped against a container of dry noodles in front of him.  He scoops his bangs out of his eyes and gives us a weary smile. “What’s for dinner?” I ask, ignoring Zayn and going to stand by Jasmine. She jumps at the sound of my voice.

“Logan, you ass, I didn’t hear you come in.” The first thing I notice is that she looks better.  She has some color back in her cheeks, she’s showered, wearing clean clothes and there’s actually a flicker of life in her eyes instead of that glazed, fathomless stare.  She’s wearing a lime green apron. She pushes a caramel corkscrew curl out of her eyes and turns back to the stove.

I bend around her to see what’s in the pot and she swats at me with a wooden spoon. “What are you stirring there?”

“Spaghetti sauce. The power’s out, as you can see by the candles, but fortunately this is a gas stove.” 

“It smells really good.”  I realize I’m on the verge of drooling so I pull up a bar-stool by Zayn and Trin.  “We opened a bottle of wine,” Zayn says, showing me his glass, “I’ve never had wine before but Jaz says we’re supposed to drink it with Italian food.”

“I like wine,” Trin says, surprising both of us.

“I’ll pour you a glass,” Zayn stands up and walks over to the buffet, “Logan?” He calls over his shoulder.

“I’m good.” I don’t feel like drinking tonight for some reason.

Zayn brings Trin her glass and they tell us about their day.  They didn’t have time to drive to Zayn’s house because he commutes in from Lawrence where his dad teaches at K.U.  Jasmine tells us a sad story about her mom’s coffee mug sitting half-empty on the table.  On the way back they stopped at the Sunfresh Market in Wesport and stocked up on groceries.  They didn’t see a single soul.  She tells me she made a list of the food supplies they picked up and hands me a piece of paper. I stick it in my jacket pocket and watch Trin sip her wine noticing another small blush forming in her cheeks.  She’s smiling and discussing something with Zayn about the book he borrowed.

Collin and Madison join us at the bar. Collin looks happy, he’s got a half-empty Corona and he’s wearing a grey t-shirt that says “Neville would have done it in four books.” The lettering the same color as his hair.  Madison is in short sweat-shorts, striped red and white knee socks and a baggy t-shirt with the neck and shoulder cut out in a scoop for her wings to fit.  They look bigger and the candlelight gives them a depth I’ve never seen before. She’s holding a bottle of water and her eyes are red and swollen but she’s smiling. 

“Let’s eat,” I suggest, “Tell me it’s ready, Jaz.”

She laughs, “It’s ready. Someone come help me with this.”

Madison clears off the table in the dining room.  Trin carries out the pot of spaghetti sauce followed by Collin with a stack of bowls and Madison carrying the utensils and a baguette of French bread.  Jaz brings up the rear both arms encasing a large bowl of meatballs.  Once the tables arranged we pass around the food and fill up our plates. I can tell we aren’t the only ones who were hungry, because we all spend the first few minutes of the meal in silence except for an occasional moan or gulp. “This is amazing,” I tell Jaz between bites, “Best spaghetti ever and I didn’t even know you could cook.”

She tilts her head and smiles at me.  “Zayn taught me.”

“That makes sense,” I say, nodding. Zayn used to come spend the night at my house and make munchies while we stayed up all night playing video games.  He’s been perfecting his culinary arts skills since we met in the sixth grade.

I turn to Collin, “How’d it go?”

His green eyes animate instantly. He wipes his mouth on the napkin, takes a swig of beer, slams it down and throws up his arms, “I thought you were never going to ask. Two crazy things happened,” He holds up two fingers, leans forward and lowers his voice theatrically, “We saw a tiger and a person.”

My first thought is
he’s seen
someone
, my next thought is
he saw a
tiger?
The backwardness of this thought process disturbs me slightly. Ten days ago if he said he saw a tiger and a person, I wouldn’t have even heard the part about the person but today, it’s the most interesting subject in his sentence. “Start with the person.”

“OTrin,” he says running a hand through his hair and glancing at Madison, “Well you know how my dad lives across from Loose Park in the Walnuts?”

“Yeah.”  Flashbacks of all the times we goofed around as kids on the wall surrounding the private yard of the Walnut Towers, two giant condo-buildings rising up over the park, with a view of the plaza, run through my mind.

“Anyways,” Collin continues, “we checked out my dad’s apartment and everything was clear. We we’re leaving the building, walking out the front lobby and you know those little apartments, what did we used to call them?” He puts his knuckle up to his forehead.

The “peanuts” are little gable-style duplex apartments on the other side of the street from The Walnuts. The first girl I ever kissed lived in the peanuts. We were sitting on the rock wall around the big, green, shaded yard at the Walnut Towers. Weirdly, I can remember Celia smelled like coconut sun-tan lotion but I can’t remember her last name.  We broke up a week after the kiss, the day I met Maddie. “The Peanuts?”

“That’s it! See, I told you he’d remember,” Collin yells pointing at Madison.

She rolls her eyes at him and looks over at me, “Collin was also fuzzy on this; didn’t you used to go out with a girl who lived there?”

I can’t help glancing over at Trin who is sitting very still beside me, “Uh, yeah,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck. Then I lie, “I don’t even remember that chick’s name.”

“Celia Gerard. I knew it!” Maddie belts out.
Gerard, yes, that was her last name
.

Irritation washes over me. 
Is she just trying to get a rise out of me? Or Trin?
“Can we get back to the person you saw?”

“That’s just it,” Madison says, slapping the table, “That
is
who we saw.”

I stare at her. “You saw Celia…today?”

She nods and gestures over at Collin who is also nodding. “Explain” is all I can say. I prop my elbows on the table, fold my hands into fists and try to ignore Trin’s eyes drilling into my back.

I’m grateful when Collin starts talking, he has a softer, gentler effect, whereas Madison’s tone always seems to cut like daggers, even when she’s not trying, “It’s like she says, bro, we came out of the building and saw that Celia girl walking down the street in front of The Peanuts. She saw us too and got this scared look and ran off in the other direction.”