There was no affection in his embrace of Hattie Durham just now, nor in hers. Both were scared to death, and flirting was the last thing on their minds. The irony was not lost on him. He recalled that the last thing he daydreamed about—before Hattie’s announcement—was finally making a move on her. How could he have known she would be in his lap hours later and that he would have no more interest in her than in a stranger?
The first stop was the Des Plaines Police Department, where Hattie disembarked. Rayford advised her to ask for a ride home with the police if a squad car was available. Most had been pressed into service in more congested areas, so that was unlikely. “I’m only about a mile from here anyway!” Hattie shouted above the roar as Rayford helped her from the chopper. “I can walk!” She wrapped her arms around his neck in a fierce embrace, and he felt her quiver in fear. “I hope everyone’s OK at your place!” she said. “Call me and let me know, OK?”
He nodded.
“OK?” she insisted.
“OK!”
As they lifted off he watched her survey the parking lot. Spotting no squad cars, she turned and hurried off, pulling her suitcase on wheels. By the time the helicopter began to swing toward Mount Prospect, Hattie was trotting toward her condominium.
Buck Williams had been the first passenger from his flight to reach the terminal at O’Hare. He found a mess. No one waiting for a hard line computer connection would put up with his trying to jump the line, and he couldn’t get his cell phone to work, so he made his way to the exclusive Pan-Con Club. It, too, was jammed, but despite a loss of personnel, including the disappearance of several employees while on the job, some semblance of order prevailed. Even here people waited in line for land and satellite phones and computers, but as each became available, it was understood that some might try faxing or connecting directly by modem. While Buck waited, he went to work again on his computer, reattaching the inside modem cord to the female connector. Then he called up the messages that he had quickly downloaded before landing.
The first was from Steve Plank, his executive editor, addressed to all field personnel:
Stay put. Do not try to come to New York. Impossible here. Call when you can. Check your voice mail and your e-mail regularly. Keep in touch as possible. We have enough staff to remain on schedule, and we want personal accounts, on-the-scene stuff, as much as you can transmit. Not sure of transportation and communications lines between us and our printers, nor their employee levels. If possible, we’ll print on time.
Just a note: Begin thinking about the causes. Military? Cosmic? Scientific? Spiritual? But so far we’re dealing mainly with what happened.
Take care, and keep in touch.
The second message was also from Steve and was for Buck’s eyes only.
Buck, ignore general staff memo. Get to New York as soon as you can at any expense. Take care of family matters, of course, and file any personal experience or reflections, just like everyone else. But you’re going to head up this effort to get at what’s behind the phenomenon. Ideas are like egos—everybody’s got one.
Whether we’ll come to any conclusions, I don’t know, but at the very least we’ll catalog the reasonable possibilities. You may wonder why we need you here to do this; I do have an ulterior motive. Sometimes I think because of the position I’m in, I’m the only one who knows these things; but three different department editors have turned in story ideas on various international groups meeting in New York this month. Political editor wants to cover a Jewish Nationalist conference in Manhattan that has something to do with a new world order government. Why they care about that, I don’t know and the political editor doesn’t either. Religion editor has something in my in-box about a conference of Orthodox Jews also coming for a meeting. These are not just from Israel but apparently all over, and they are no longer haggling over the Dead Sea Scrolls. They’re still giddy over the destruction of Russia and her allies—which I know you still think was supernatural, but hey, I love you anyway. Religion editor thinks they’re looking for help in rebuilding the temple. That may be no big deal or have anything to do with anything other than the religion department, but I was struck by the timing—with the other Jewish group meeting at pretty much the same time and at the same place about something entirely political. The other religious conference in town is among leaders of all the major religions, from the standard ones to the New Agers, also talking about a one-world religious order. They ought to get together with the Jewish Nationalists, huh? Need your brain on this. Don’t know what to make of it, if anything.
I know all anybody cares about is the disappearances. But we need to keep an eye on the rest of the world. You know the United Nations has that international monetarist confab coming up, trying to gauge how we’re all doing with the three-currency thing. Personally I like it, but I’m a little skittish about going to one currency unless it’s dollars. Can you imagine trading in yen or Euros here? Guess I’m still provincial.
Everybody’s pretty enamored with this Carpathia guy from Romania who so impressed your friend Rosenzweig. He’s got everybody in a bind in the upper house in his own country because he’s been invited to speak at the U.N. in a couple of weeks. Nobody knows how he wangled an invitation, but his international popularity reminds me a lot of Walesa or even Gorbachev. Remember them? Ha!
Hey, friend, get word to me you didn’t disappear. As far as I know right now, I lost a niece and two nephews, a sister-in-law I didn’t like, and possibly a couple of other distant relatives. You think they’ll be back? Well, save that till we get rolling on what’s behind this. If I had to guess, I’m anticipating some god-awful ransom demand. I mean, it’s not like these people who disappeared are dead. What in the world is going to happen to the life insurance industry? I’m not ready to start believing the tabloids. You just know they’re going to be saying the space aliens finally got us.
Get in here, Buck.
CHAPTER 4
Buck kept pressing a handkerchief soaked with cold water onto the back of his head. His wound had stopped bleeding, but it stung. He found another message in his e-mail in-box and was about to access it when he was tapped on the shoulder.
“I’m a doctor. Let me dress your wound.”
“Oh, it’s all right, and I—”
“Just let me do this, pal. I’m going crazy here with nothing to do, and I have my bag. I’m workin’ free today. Call it a Rapture Special.”
“A what?”
“Well, what would you call what happened?” the doctor said, removing a bottle and gauze from his bag. “This is gonna be pretty rudimentary, but we will be sterile. AIDS?”
“I’m sorry?”
“C’mon, you know the routine.” He snapped on rubber gloves. “Have you got HIV or anything fun like that?”
“No. And, hey, I appreciate this.” At that instant the doctor splashed a heavy dose of disinfectant on the gauze and held it against Buck’s scraped head. “Yow! Take it easy!”
“Be a big boy there, stud. This’ll hurt less than the infection you’d get otherwise.” He roughly scraped the wound, cleansing it and causing it to ooze blood again. “Listen, I’m going to do a little shave job so I can get a bandage to hold. All right with you?”
Buck’s eyes were watering. “Yeah, sure, but what was that you said about rapture?”
“Is there any other explanation that makes sense?” the doctor said, using a scalpel to tear into Buck’s hair. A club attendant came by and asked if they could move the operation into one of the washrooms.
“I promise to clean up, hon,” the doctor said. “Almost done here.”
“Well, this can’t be sanitary, and we do have other members to think about.”
“Why don’t you just give them their drinks and nuts, all right? You’ll find this just isn’t going to upset them that much on a day like this.”
“I don’t appreciate being spoken to that way.”
The doctor sighed as he worked. “You’re right. What’s your
name?”
“Suzie.”
“Listen, Suzie, I’ve been rude and I apologize. OK? Now let me finish this, and I promise not to perform any more surgery right out here in public.” Suzie left, shaking her head.
“Doc,” Buck said, “leave me your card so I can properly thank you.”
“No need,” the doctor said, putting his stuff away.
“Now give me your take on this. What did you mean about the Rapture?”
“Another time. Your turn for the phone.”
Buck was torn, but he couldn’t pass up the chance to communicate with New York. He tried dialing direct but couldn’t get through. He set his computer to initiate a constant signal search while he looked at the message from Steve Plank’s secretary, the matronly Marge Potter.
Buck, you scoundrel! Like I don’t have enough to do and worry about today, I’ve got to check on your girlfriends’ families? Where’d you meet this Hattie Durham? You can tell her I reached her mother out west, but that was before a flood or storm or something knocked phone lines out again. She’s perfectly healthy but rattled, and she was very grateful to know her daughter hadn’t disappeared. The two sisters are OK, too, according to Mom.
You are a dear for helping people like this, Buck. Steve says you’re going to try to come in. It’ll be good to see you. This is so awful. So far we know of several staffers who disappeared, several more we haven’t heard from, including some in Chicago. Everybody from the senior staff is accounted for, now that we’ve heard from you. I hoped and prayed you’d be all right. Have you noticed it seems to have struck the innocents? Everyone we know who’s gone is either a child or a very nice person. On the other hand, some truly wonderful people are still here. I’m glad you’re one of them, and so is Steve. Call us.
No word whether she had been able to reach Buck’s widowed father or married brother. Buck wondered if that was on purpose or if she simply had no news yet. His niece and nephew had to be gone if it was true that no children had survived. Buck gave up trying to reach the office directly but finally connected with his on-line service. He uploaded his files and a few hastily batted out messages of his whereabouts. That way, by the time the telephone system once again took on some semblance of normalcy, Global Weekly would have already gotten a head start on his stuff.
He hung up and disconnected to the grateful look of the next in line, then went looking for that doctor. No luck. Marge had referred to the innocents. The doctor assumed it was the Rapture. Steve had pooh-poohed space aliens. But how could you rule out anything at this point? His mind was already whirring with ideas for the story behind the disappearances. Talk about the assignment of a lifetime!
Buck got in line at the service desk, knowing his odds of getting to New York by conventional means were slim. While he waited he tried to remember what it was Chaim Rosenzweig, the Newsmaker of the Year, had told him about the young Nicolae Carpathia of Romania. Buck had told only Steve Plank about it, and Steve agreed it wasn’t worth putting in the already tight story. Rosenzweig had been impressed with Carpathia, that was true. But why?
Buck sat on the floor in line and moved when he had to. He called up his archived files on the Rosenzweig interview and did a word search on Carpathia. He recalled having been embarrassed to admit to Rosenzweig that he had never heard of the man. As the interview transcripts scrolled past, he hit the pause button and read. When he noticed his low battery light flashing, he fished an extension cord out of his bag and plugged the computer into a socket along the wall. “Watch the cord,” he called out occasionally as people passed. One of the women behind the counter hollered at him that he’d have to unplug.
He smiled at her. “And if I don’t, are you going to have me thrown out? Arrested? Cut me some slack today, of all days!” Hardly anyone took note of the crazy man on the floor yelling at the counter woman. Such rarely happened in the Pan-Con Club, but nothing surprised anyone today.
Rayford Steele disembarked on the helipad at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, where the pilots had to get off and make room so a patient could be flown to Milwaukee. The other pilots hung around the entrance, hoping to share a cab, but Rayford had a better idea. He began walking.
He was about five miles from home, and he was betting he could hitch a ride easier than finding a cab. He hoped his captain’s uniform and his clean-cut appearance would set someone’s mind at ease about giving him a ride.
As he trudged along, his trenchcoat over his arm and his bag in his hand, he had an empty, despairing feeling. By now Hattie would be getting to her condo, checking her messages, trying to get calls through to her family. If he was right that Irene and Ray Jr. were gone, where would they have been when it happened? Would he find evidence that they had disappeared rather than being killed in some related accident?
Rayford calculated that the disappearances would have taken place late evening, perhaps around 11 p.m. central time. Would anything have taken them away from home at that hour? He couldn’t imagine what, and he doubted it.
A woman of about forty stopped for Rayford on Algonquin Road. When he thanked her and told her where he lived, she said she knew the area. “A friend of mine lives there. Well, lived there. Li Ng, the Asian girl on Channel 7 news?”
“I know her and her husband,” Rayford said. “They still live on our street.”
“Not anymore. They dedicated the noon newscast to her today. The whole family is gone.”
Rayford exhaled loudly. “This is unbelievable. Have you lost people?”
“’Fraid so,” she said, her voice quavery. “About a dozen nieces and nephews.”
“Wow.”
“You?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m just getting back from a flight, and I haven’t been able to reach anybody.”
“Do you want me to wait for you?”
“No. I have a car. If I need to go anywhere, I’ll be all right.”
“O’Hare’s closed, you know,” she said.
“Really? Since when?”
“They just announced it on the radio. Runways are full of planes, terminals full of people, roads full of cars.”
“Tell me about it.”
As the woman drove, sniffling, into Mount Prospect, Rayford felt fatigue he had never endured before. Every few houses had driveways jammed with cars, people milling about. It appeared everyone everywhere had lost someone. He knew he would soon be counted among them.
“Can I offer you anything?” he asked the woman as she pulled into his driveway.
She shook her head. “I’m just glad to have been able to help. You could pray for me, if you think of it. I don’t know if I can endure this.”
“I’m not much for praying,” Rayford admitted.
“You will be,” she said. “I never was before either, but I am now.”
“Then you can pray for me,” he said.
“I will. Count on it.”
Rayford stood in the driveway and waved to the woman till she was out of sight. The yard and the walk were spotless as usual, and the huge home, his trophy house, was sepulchral. He unlocked the front door. From the newspaper on the stoop to the closed drapes in the picture window to the bitter smell of burned coffee when he opened the door, everything pointed to what he dreaded.
Irene was a fastidious housekeeper. Her morning routine included the coffeepot on a timer kicking on at six, percolating her special blend of decaf with an egg. The radio was set to come on at 6:30, tuned to the local Christian station. The first thing Irene did when she came downstairs was open the drapes at the front and back of the house.
With a lump in his throat Rayford tossed the newspaper into the kitchen and took his time hanging up his coat and sliding his bag into the closet. He remembered the package Irene had mailed him at O’Hare and put it in his wide uniform pocket. He would carry it with him as he searched for evidence that she had disappeared. If she was gone, he sure hoped she had been right. He wanted above all else for her to have seen her dream r
ealized, for her to have been taken away by Jesus in the twinkling of an eye—a thrilling, painless journey to his side in heaven, as she always loved to say. She deserved that if anybody did.
And Raymie. Where would he be? With her? Of course. He went with her to church, even when Rayford didn’t go. He seemed to like it, to get into it. He even read his Bible and studied it.
Rayford unplugged the coffeepot that had been turning itself off and then back on for seven hours and had ruined the brew. He dumped the mess and left the pot in the sink. He flicked off the radio, which was piping the Christian station’s network news hookup into the air, droning on about the tragedy and mayhem that had resulted from the disappearances.
He looked about the living room, dining room, and kitchen, expecting to see nothing but the usual neatness of Irene’s home. His eyes filling with tears, he opened the drapes as she would have. Was it possible she had gone somewhere? Visited someone? Left him a message? But if she had and he did find her, what would that say about her own faith? Would that prove this was not the Rapture she believed in? Or would it mean she was lost, just like he was? For her sake, if this was the Rapture, he hoped she was gone. But the ache and the emptiness were already overwhelming.
He switched on the answering machine and heard all the same messages he had heard when he had gotten through from O’Hare, plus the message he had left. His own voice sounded strange to him. He detected in it a fatalism, as if he knew he was not leaving a message for his wife and son, but only pretending to.
He dreaded going upstairs. He moseyed through the family room to the garage exit. If only one of the cars was missing. And one was! Maybe she had gone somewhere! But as soon as he thought of it, Rayford slumped onto the step just inside the garage. It was his own BMW that was gone. The one he had driven to O’Hare the day before. It would be waiting for him when the traffic cleared.