Winter's Fury - Volume Two of The Saga of the Twelves (39 page)

He was slipping, with each
passing blink of his eyes. He was edging his way further into this
fiery hole of death, ever closer to the carnage. He was sliding
toward more pain and what had to be his own demise. He tried to
grasp onto something, anything, it arrest his lethargic descent.
His fingers sank into mud, made moist and gooey with the most
gruesome of liquids. Still, he skidded down the decline, making
long furrows in the gook.

He flipped onto his
stomach, spread his limbs as far as they would go. He hoped,
entreated any sort of being mightier than him to bless him, to help
him. He did not want to fall into the roiling mass of murder that
churned at the bottom. He had to live. He had to survive. He had
to!

He had to find
Kimberly!

“
Oh God, please don’t fall
down there,” he cried, daring a glance downward, disturbed by what
he saw. “KIMBERLY!!!”

There was no answer. Only
wails and moans of torture reached his ears.

“
KIMBERLY!!!”

Something lodged against
his foot. At once, he shifted his sneaker so the ball of his foot
rested square against whatever it was that had stopped his
sliding.

From below, something
exploded.

A gas tank?
he wondered.

A second later, all
thought left him as tremendous heat washed over him. Again, he was
blind, bright orange and yellow flames were all over the place,
obscuring everything. He buried his face in the mud. He felt his
scalp burn, the hair on his head withered, crackled, and filled his
nostrils with an unholy scent. As wild as an animal, he rubbed the
viscous dirt on his head, trying to cool it, ignoring the gore and
blood that dripped through his fingers.

He shifted onto his side,
putting more weight onto the obstruction that had saved his life,
chancing a quick glance about. Every flammable object around him
was aflame, scorched by the explosion. Some of the mud nearby
appeared glazed, as if placed within a potter’s kiln and fired,
with pure malcontent in mind.

He twisted this way and
that in an attempt to find anything he could use to pull himself
up, maybe even out of the hole…

He stopped moving, a jolt
of optimism arching through him. He told himself what he was seeing
was not real. It couldn’t be. It was implausible -. No! It was
unbelievable. He knuckled his eyes. This could not be reality. This
was not the truth. He shook his head from side-to-side, struggling
to banish the sight.

It would not go away. No
matter what he tried, the vista before him remained.

The entire mall was… gone!
All the Eagle Rock Plaza had vanished! All that remained was an
asteroid-sized crater.

And, all the people. And,
their cars.

“
Oh my…,” he tried to say,
but could not finish before the gigantic sobs consumed him and he
became a sodden heap of weeping flesh.

There had to be hundreds
of people pulverized in the rubble. The depression in the earth was
so big.

He wiped his brow with the
back of his hand, his eyes fluttering down to what lay beneath his
shoe, to what had saved him from certain death.

It was a head – the head
of a man decapitated below the Adam’s apple.

Unable to control it,
Shawn Moore screamed like he was stuck in some sort of vile device
of the Inquisition. Out of pure revulsion, he jerked his foot from
the offending body part, his shouts unending.

That was all it
took.

Before his mind registered
what was occurring. He fell.

He fell into the gaping
maw of the Devil himself and was no more.

*****

Shawn slammed onto the
floor of his bedroom with jolting force. He was awake in an
instant, squealing like a stuck pig. His blankets and bed sheet
twisted and tangled about his person. He could not move his legs.
They were bound too tight about his chest he could only just
breathe.

He glanced down at
himself, frowning, the blood pounding at his temples. “Sonofabitch,
I’m wound up tighter than a chimichanga!” he said aloud, but to no
one in particular. As was usual when he slept in on a Sunday, he
was alone.

He lay there for a few
moments longer. He let the terror leave him completely, inhaling
and exhaling in long, slow rhythms so he could slow his racing
heart. He rubbed the sides of his head, knowing it would be yet
another day of throbbing headaches. It was a persistent condition
that had been with him going on four days now.

Four days…

The two words echoed in
his mind like the tolling of bell, a constant vibration that
lessened with each passing second.

Four days.

He sat up. He unwound his
torso from his bedding, intent on losing himself in the mundane
task. He did not want to think about what had happened four days in
the past. He could not. He dared not. As was the norm, also since
then, he could not keep those thoughts at bay for long.

Kimberly…

His lungs shuddered within
his ribcage, his sigh so thick with emotion he almost groaned. She
had been gone for four days now - ninety-six hours and counting.
That was five thousand seven hundred and sixty minutes, and still
there was no word of what had happened to her. Three thousand nine
hundred and thirty-two people had been inside the Eagle Rock Plaza
at the moment of the Event. It was the beginning of the holiday
season; so, of course, the place had been jammed to the gills. Of
those people, only two hundred eighty-seven had survived. Everyone
present, whether living or dead, had been identified. This of
course did not account for three individuals – all teenagers, all
missing. They had unearthed nothing, not even a single tooth
belonging to any of them. Seeing the site scoured with such
scrutiny, he knew it was cleaner than the dinner plate he had eaten
off the night before.

Three teens. Three lost
souls.

Derek Benson.

Hyun Kwon.

And, Kimberly
Madison.

His
Kimberly Madison.

If it had not been for the
disappearance of the Von's supermarket down the street, things
might have gone different. Simultaneous, two more teenagers – boys
– had gone missing there. Without their misfortune though, the
disappearances of the missing teens from the Eagle Rock Plaza might
not have been investigation further. Though they were abductions,
classification as such might have proved difficult. In this aspect,
there was some degree of a break, a baseline established. Because,
those terrible kidnappings had continued throughout the
northeastern communities of Los Angeles as the days
passed.

But the entire weight of
the United States government was behind the quest for truth. After
a time, trends became known, similarities unearthed. On the day
before Thanksgiving,
all
except four of the kidnapped children had gone to
Eagle Rock Junior/Senior High School. Two of the exceptions were
siblings of an attending student. Another, though he went to rival
school, had been the same boys’ best friend during grammar
school.

Only, Louis Willigan was
the odd man out. He went to Annandale Elementary and had no direct
ties to the others. Still, he was lumped into the group, because he
had disappeared at precisely the same time they had.

6:47pm.

The time, down to the
minute, stamped so far into the collective psyche of the human
race.

Shawn did not think it
would ever be forgotten.

6:47pm.

He had awakened at that
time, on that day, within the humongous hole left behind by the
absence of the mall. He came to consciousness hearing the yelps and
the squawks of the injured, much like the dream he had just
endured. It was a common theme now, with him. He relived those
horrifying minutes every time he went to sleep. The screams, the
fire – the head - those images were never far from his mind the
moment he closed his eyes for the night, or even for a nap. He
could not escape them, they hounded him, haunted him, at every
turn.

Within minutes the entire
area swarmed with First Responders. They were of all sorts –
policemen, firemen, good Samaritans, urban rescue, fire rescue,
even a few Forest Rangers. It seemed like all the trucks and
ambulances and helicopters in the whole city had descended upon the
scene. It was madness, pure chaos. But of the human sort, which was
one thousand percent easier to stomach than what had happened down
at the bottom of the crater. There he was certain, evil
dwelt.

Immobilized upon a hard,
plastic stretcher and hauled up the steep embankment, man after man
pulled him out. At last, he found himself in an EMS van and sent to
the hospital.

He had been asking for
Kimberly the entire time, but he had, time and again, been told to
calm down, to lay back and rest. He had been lectured. He had been
admonished because he had survived a traumatic incident and was
doing little to make his situation easier. He was assured she would
be found. He had been promised, patted, stroked to no end. And yet…
they had all been wrong.

Kimberly was never found.
She had disappeared as if she had never been.

With each passing day,
Shawn grew more and more depressed. Then plaguing headaches had
come, flirting with migraine status. He would have slept for hours
on end, if it had not been for the recurring nightmare. Sleep would
have been a method of choice, if he could get through an hour of it
without the past stalking him, frightening him out of his mind. So,
he ambled about his parent’s house, wearing the same pair of dirty
sweat pants, t-shirt and socks. He did not even bother with
underwear. What difference did it make?

His scalp ached where he
had been burnt. His shoulder barked whenever he turned the wrong
way or tried to lift something that was too heavy. His knees and
elbows were covered with bruises, his ribs were sore, his neck was
stiff… and his heart was broken.

After the multitude of
interviews with more government agencies than he knew existed,
there was little else to do but wait. After the constant influx of
new developments, after the true scope of the Event became clear,
he had more time on his hands than ever.

Kimberly was still
gone.

Shawn finally stood. He
came to his full six-foot-four height. He ran a not-so-clean hand
through his even dirtier carrot-colored hair now reduced to near
nubs. The motion put his arm pit closer to his nose. He wrinkled it
in disgust at his own smell.
Damn, I smell
like shit!

He unraveled his bedding
the rest of the way from his person, flinging it upon the bed when
he finished. Then he sauntered over toward it, sitting upon the
edge, his hand wringing before him.
What
could’ve happened to her? Where was she? Who could’ve done this to
her? Why?
He glanced around his messy
bedroom looking for answers that would not come.

How can life be so cruel?
How could it be so unfair? I was just getting to know her. I
was…
he could not finish. The tears burst
from his eyes too fast for him to stop. He sat upon his bed, his
back humped and his shoulders slumped, and he cried like he had so
many times over the course of the past four days. He ignored the
comfort offered by his mother and father. He paid little heed to
consoling texts and phone calls from his buddies on the basketball
team. He did not need any of that fucking shit. He was ok. He would
live. There were more important things to spend time on, to
investigate, discover. He was fine god damn it.

Kimberly was not. Kim was
missing. Kim was missing, along with the mall and everything else
in it.

Except the people and the
cars
, he recalled. They had been nothing
more than hamburger. Those who had fallen into the pit, they all
had seen the devil’s face. They all bore the mark upon their
souls.

Kimberl
y, he cried. He did not care if he sounded pathetic. He
covered his face with his hands, his throat raw and his mouth
dry.
Why were you taken from me!?! Why
would I finally find you, the girl of my dreams, only to have you
snatched out of it before I got the chance to tell you?

“
Why?” he asked the empty
bedroom.

Why would anyone do this?
Why? Why!?! I can’t stand this anymore!!! Please, come back…
He slammed a fist on the mattress, making the
pillows on the bed jump.
Why would anyone
do -?

The thought never
finished. A new one sprang up and took its’ place.

Somewhere in the
wellspring of Shawn Moore, something vile turned. This heretofore
unknown aspect of himself gazed upon its’ own reflection and
smiled.

Of a sudden, Shawn had a
purpose.

He made for the shower
intent on doing something about it.

~~~~~~~<<<
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~ 23 ~

Boy Troubles