by Jon Land
The next morning Osborne Vandal awoke to find that he could use the hand again; not totally, but at least squeeze his fingers enough to perform everyday tasks. Even the wrongly healed bones looked straighter to him. His hand seemed to have re-formed itself overnight. Osborne Vandal dropped to his knees and prayed.
Then he went looking for the Reverend Harlan Frye.
Frye was waiting for him, expecting him. He said nothing about the arm and refused the credit Vandal was convinced was due him, but asked the major if he wanted a commission in the most wondrous army of all.
God’s army.
The Reverend started moving for the spiral staircase that led to the level above. “And now you must accompany me in a needed task. I wish to thank those truly responsible for what has been achieved here this morning.”
Major Vandal turned his gaze fearfully up the staircase. “There, sir?”
“A great debt is owed them, more than we could ever repay even if time and opportunity availed itself. I must do this much, Major.”
“Sir—”
“Join me, Major,” Frye said, waving him forward. “It shouldn’t take long.”
The man holding the cane looked at Sister Barbara as if she were crazy.
“Are you sure, Sister?” he asked again. “Are you quite sure?”
“Was there something vague about my instructions, Roland?”
“No, Sister, not at all,” he said apologetically. “It’s just that, that …”
“Go on.”
“Canceling a group on such short notice will cause disappointment to so many people.” Roland Bagnell, manager of the sprawling Oasis grounds that held her famed amusement park, shifted the cane from his right hand to his left. The cane had been a gift from Sister Barbara herself on the day he finally abandoned the crutches that had been necessary since a factory accident had almost taken his life. He had come to the Oasis broken and beaten. He was less broken now and not at all beaten.
Thanks to Sister Barbara.
He stood with her in the midst of the park he had been managing for the past three years, in the center of what was aptly named Hope Avenue. “Children, Sister, we are talking about children.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“Well, of course …”
“Then you know I must have my reasons.”
“Forgive me, Sister, but—”
“It is for their own good. Let’s leave it there.”
Bagnell wasn’t ready to do that. “Sister, is there something you’re not telling me, something I can help you with?”
“You are helping, Roland: with this. And there’s something else. I want all residents cleared from the Oasis by eight o’clock tonight.”
The manager’s mouth dropped in shock. “But maintenance, security …”
“We can do without them.”
“A skeleton staff at least, please.”
“There is no need. And, Roland?”
“Yes, Sister.”
“That includes you.”
Sister Barbara turned and walked away before Bagnell could protest further. It took all the will she could muster not to look back at him, to meet his bufuddled gaze with the fearful one she had managed to hide until now. She so loved this place, loved strolling amidst its playing fields and courts, amusement rides, sidewalk concession stands, and water park. The favorable climate of North Carolina had allowed her to make that water park the Oasis’s most dominant attraction. Six swirling slides wound down steep, slithering courses toward a lagoon-shaped pool below. The water was crystal blue, refreshing just to look at. Behind the expanse of slides was a second, much larger pool capable of generating its own pounding waves to mimic the actions of the ocean. Beyond that was a man-made pond holding the bumper boats on one side and the pedal boats on the other.
Sister Barbara walked along the waist-high chain-link fence that enclosed the water park, smelling the chlorine and imagining the happy screams and shouts of children. The last group had left only yesterday just before her return, and another had been scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Roland Bagnell was right about the tremendous disappointment the last-minute cancellation would cause. But there was no choice.
The wind shifted and ruffled the streamers lining the sidewalk concession stands that never charged Oasis patrons a single penny for their wares. The Ferris wheel shifted slightly. She passed the merry-go-round, and the animal-shaped seating seemed to smile her way. She imagined them bobbing up and down to the rhythm of the music, while happy children laughed and grinned their way through a wonderful day. Children who were sick, abused, or poor. Children who might never have known a place like the Oasis or, if they did, could never have sampled all of its wares. For a day, or two or three, Sister Barbara lifted them out of their pain and heartache and gave them paradise. Footing the bill for the operation and upkeep of the Oasis was made possible by the millions of dollars she still had put away from the days when fund-raising was a key element of her ministry. It warmed her spirit to see so many made happy by that money, so many benefit.
She would miss them so much. This was her Oasis, too, and that made it the fitting place to plot her strategy for bringing down Harlan Frye. But if his soldiers arrived before she could be successful, she could accept no loss of innocent life. There was enough blood already threatening her hands; she had, after all, been party to the Seven’s formation, having succumbed, however briefly, to the same lust for power and self-importance the Reverend had.
Sister Barbara headed back to the stately mansion situated on the eastern rim of the property, built up slightly on a hill just beyond a huge flower garden. On the way she passed the three-story complex of hotel-like buildings that had been home to both her visiting children and, on a more permament basis, her most avid devotees. A hundred or so of the latter were here now, earning their keep by performing odd jobs around the park and recharging their spirits in the process. Roland Bagnell would see to their safe departure. Sister Barbara took great solace in the fact that they would leave here much better people than they had come in, content and at peace, which at the moment was far more than she could say for herself.
The drive southeast from Tucson International Airport was approaching ninety minutes when a sign indicated the proper access road for the town of Beaver Falls. Blaine was driving, Johnny Wareagle taking in everything from the passenger seat while Karen Raymond fought against sleep in the back.
“Slow down, Blainey,” Wareagle said all of a sudden.
McCracken worked the brakes. “What is it, Indian?”
“Something on the side of the road, over there on the right.”
“Christ,” Blaine followed, seeing the dust-shrouded shape on the shoulder, lying halfway on the embankment.
He pulled the car over and climbed out an instant after Johnny. The big Indian knelt down next to what Blaine now recognized as a man, at least what was left of him. Beneath the blanket of dust, he made out a wrinkled, sweat-soaked highway patrol uniform.
“Seems like he’s a little off his beat. Hit by a car, you figure?” McCracken raised. “Maybe dumped here by somebody?”
Wareagle enveloped the man’s wrist in his hand to check for a pulse. “He’s still alive, Blainey. And look.”
Blaine followed Johnny’s eyes to the man’s feet: He was wearing socks, but no shoes, and the socks had worn through, leaving his flesh blistered and raw.
“He walked a long way.”
“Many hours,” Johnny acknowledged. “Many miles.”
“I’ll get the canteen.”
Karen Raymond stepped forward and handed it to Blaine when he was halfway back to the car. She accompanied him in silence over to the thin strip of shade cast by their car into which Johnny had dragged the highway patrolman. McCracken crouched down on the other side of the man and touched the canteen’s spout to his lips. After balking initially, those lips parted and accepted some of the water. Then the patrolman’s eyes fluttered open and he seized the canteen fr
om Blaine’s grasp, gulping its contents.
“Easy,” McCracken cautioned, holding the canteen back by the strap.
The patrolman’s mouth opened. His lips quivered, gaped, and then closed again.
“He’s trying to say something, Blainey,” said Wareagle, and he lowered his ear to the patrolman’s mouth.
Blaine heard a muffled rasp, the shadow of a word lost before it reached him. Johnny moved his ear away and gazed upward.
“What’d he say, Indian?”
“‘Gone,’ Blainey. He said ‘gone.’”
Neither Johnny nor Blaine paid the dazed highway patrolman much heed until the next words slid out more audibly between his freshly moistened lips:
“Beaver Falls.”
“Indian, did he say—”
“Yes!” Karen Raymond blared. “I heard him!”
The patrolman rasped out something else.
“What?” McCracken prodded.
The man swallowed and tried again. “There … I was there.”
“You came from Beaver Falls?”
His eyes were turning wild, mad. “Must get back there … Must stop them.”
Blaine and Johnny gazed at each other, then back at the figure at their feet, who was gathering his wits.
“Maybe we can help,” offered McCracken.
They got the patrolman into the car and turned the air conditioning on high to help him cool down. His breathing steadied quickly, but the furtive madness continued to skirt through his eyes, making all of them wary. McCracken had traded places with Karen in the backseat.
“What’s your name?” Blaine asked him.
“Denbo. Wayne Denbo.”
“Well, Wayne, what was it you saw, exactly?”
The story of what Denbo and his partner found when they drove into Beaver Falls the previous Monday emerged in fits and starts between grateful gulps of water. Ultimately he clutched the canteen to his chest, where it trembled and throbbed to mirror his own agitation. It shook as he sketchily detailed finding that all the inhabitants of Beaver Falls had suddenly vanished in the midst of whatever tasks they were performing. But the water did not begin to jump out until he got to the part about exiting the school after his partner’s disappearance.
“I was talking on the mike. That’s when I saw them.”
“Saw who?” McCracken quizzed.
“The figures from the dust. Whiter than the sun. They came for me and I jumped in the car. Must not have known I was in the school, too. Musta missed me.” He swallowed hard and the canteen settled against his chest. “Didn’t miss anyone else, though. Whole town was gone, I tell ya, the whole town!”
“Describe them,” Karen Raymond urged.
“I did already.”
“Again.”
“All white, that’s what I remember most.” Wayne Denbo stopped and seemed to be thinking. The canteen went still in his grasp. “Holding things and … driving things.”
“What kind of things?” she pushed. “What kind of things were they holding?”
“Machines I never saw the likes of before. They came out of the dust everywhere. In their suits.”
“White suits,” Karen said for him. “Almost like what astronauts wear.”
Denbo leaned forward. “Yes! Yes! And they were coming after me!”
She looked at McCracken. “Decontamination suits to keep the wearers safe from all possible toxins. Standard procedure when entering a potentially contaminated setting.”
“Contaminated as in …”
“Diseased, usually. The machines he’s describing are used to take samples of the air or, in the event you know what you’re looking for, they can be programmed to tell you instantly if the toxin is still active.”
Denbo looked confused. The canteen began to throb again. “What about the vehicles? Like campers, with spindly things twirling on their tops.”
“Tracking devices?” Blaine raised to Johnny.
“Or motion sensors to track down the positions of all residents, Blainey.”
“To make sure they didn’t miss any.”
“One of them could have been a mobile lab,” Karen pointed out. “It would have probably been in the rear, the largest.”
“What about the people?” asked Wayne Denbo.
“They must have been evacuated before you got there,” Karen told him, “before the decontamination team got there.”
“And my partner?”
“He’s probably with the others they brought out.”
Denbo’s face grew determined. “That’s why I was going back. I’ve got to find him.”
McCracken looked at Karen Raymond. “How does all this tie in with Van Dyne’s AIDS vaccine?”
“Well, it explains why Freddy Levinger and I found the project center empty last night: Van Dyne had already covered their tracks, making sure no one else learned that something went wrong.”
“How much of the town was part of the test group?”
“Only about a fifth. They may have evacuated everybody else for precautionary reasons, or because they witnessed something no one could know about.”
“And if we drive into town now?”
Karen swallowed hard and drew her field bag closer to her in the front seat. “I may be able to learn something, I may not. It’s been four days.”
“Then we’d better not waste any more time.”
They stopped a half mile out of Beaver Falls and parked their car near a slight rise beneath a larger overhanging hillside that overlooked the center of town. Wareagle had brought binoculars with him and fished them from his pack. He handed them to McCracken as they approached the small ridge. But Blaine did not need the binoculars to see what Beaver Falls had to show him. The primary structures along the main avenue, as well as the homes that dotted the perimeter and outskirts with greening lawns, were a study in the mundane. Like something out of a painting; Rockwell working in a desert southwestern motif of beige, cream, and terra-cotta stucco, with adobe finishes adorning a town that could have been sliced from a century back, if not for its tar black roadways.
And something else.
McCracken looked at Wareagle. Karen Raymond squinted and cupped a hand upon her brow. Wayne Denbo sank to his knees, shaking his head.
“No,” he muttered, casting his eyes fervidly about the scene beneath him. “No! …”
A few cars inched their way along the town’s central road. Women walked with handbags dangling from their arms. A man emerged from a shop holding an ice cream cone. At the far end of town, children spent the last of the afternoon on a playground adjacent to the school building on the outskirts of town.
Beaver Falls, it seemed, wasn’t gone at all.
CHAPTER 27
Wayne Denbo took the binoculars from McCracken and pressed them to his eyes. Blaine and Johnny could see his face tighten as he took in a closer view of Beaver Falls. They watched him move the binoculars in an arc from left to right, stopping a few times en route.
“Are you sure this is the place? Are you sure this is where you were?” Blaine asked him.
Wayne Denbo’s hand edged slightly toward his empty holster the way an amputee reaches for a missing limb. “Oh, yeah. Beaver Falls. Gone no more.”
Johnny and Blaine looked at each other, trying to make sense of it. Maybe Denbo was crazy. Maybe he had made the whole business up; but neither thought so.
“Right people can get an awful lot done in four days, Indian.”
“Replacements, Blainey?”
“It won’t hold up long, but maybe it doesn’t have to. If it works in the short term, that’s good enough. You can’t keep a disappearing town secret. But now …”
“I’ve still got to go down there,” Karen Raymond insisted.
“Doesn’t the fact that people are alive tell you what you need to know?” Blaine asked her.
“It tells me things are safe now. It doesn’t tell me what led to the evacuation. But the town itself might be able to.” She touched the handle
of her field bag, which looked like a large black makeup case. “There’s still the soil, the roadbed, the storm drains or sewers, where I can get samples of water that’s been standing since Monday.”
Blaine didn’t look convinced. “And if anyone sees you …”
“Who said anyone had to? I can get my samples from the outlying homes and streets as easily as the town center. And don’t tell me you can do it,” Karen said, anticipating Blaine’s next proposal. “It would take me a month to teach you how to use the equipment in this bag.”
“Guess we don’t have quite that long,” McCracken agreed.
Taking a roundabout route to be safe, Karen reached the outskirts of Beaver Falls in half an hour. She had to work fast, but not at the expense of thoroughness. Her priorities were air, soil, vegetation, and standing water, especially the latter three. Long after a potential toxin or contaminant had disappeared from the air, its residue remained on leaves, in dirt, or water pooled for some time.
She approached a house that had all of its windows closed and most of its blinds drawn, figuring that indicated no one was home. To be at least partially accurate, Karen knew she would need to duplicate the sample-gathering process in at least two other locations in Beaver Falls, preferably as far away as possible from this one.
She started with the air, employing a small vacuum pump to fill a thermally sealed container with a sample. The soil came next, five separate samples taken and cataloged from five different depths along the house’s backyard. She then clipped a hefty section of grass and vacuum-bagged it. She took tree leaf samples, a section of a cypress tree branch, and sliced off the outgrowth from some sort of fern growing in the garden in front of the house. Karen imagined she would look like a gardener to anyone who happened by.
On the side of the house she found a moderate hole in the ground that seemed to be waiting for a tree or shrub to fill it. The hole was half-filled with murky, thickening water coated with a light film on top. Muttering a silent prayer of thanks, she reached into her field bag for three small vials. She used an eyedropper to fill the first two vials with the standing water before her and then skimmed some contents from the very top to fill the third. She stowed the vials in the tailored slots within her padded field bag and set out writing labels for all three. She was halfway through the third when a shadow suddenly blocked the sun.