The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves

by Richard Heredia

  I don’t have much time, she told herself sternly still peering about. She had only a few hours before she had to report back to work, back to the large conference room her team had commandeered for the duration of investigation. Her and her supervisor both had been released for this part of the early morning. They’d been told to go home, freshen-up, change clothes, get something in their stomachs and then report back, ready to go by the time the all-important TelePresence video conference with Washington D.C. began at nine-thirty. They would be meeting with the President’s National Security Advisor.

  Video conference, she reiterated in her mind. Who would’ve thought that just a little less than twelve hours ago, the Event had begun? Her life had changed forever now.

  She shook her head at the sudden shift in her life. After twenty years of the same monotony, the same routines, it was nerve-wracking to experience. This was all unexplored territory. Denise didn’t like change all that much. Having turned forty-three over the summer, she was fairly set in her ways.

  She didn’t have any children of her own, though she was a loving aunt to the eight babies born to her sisters. They were sprinkled between her three younger siblings, an equal peppering of boys and girls she’d grown to adore over the years. Yet, she hadn’t pushed out any of her own. This was mostly due to the fact she’d divorced her High School sweetheart at twenty-seven. She’d been married to the man for six years before he had finally got the courage to tell her, he was gay and he’d fallen in love with someone else. It was possible the very idea this other person was a man might’ve turned off Denise to the whole “family thing”. Or, maybe, it had just confused the crap out of her to the point where she now sort of meandered through her life, content to bounce from boyfriend to boyfriend, from late night booty-call to long-lunch liaisons, birth control at the ready. She had a hard time trusting the opposite sex nowadays.

  It wasn’t as though she’d lost her appeal to the opposite sex. She was still pretty at forty-three with shoulder length wavy, caramel-colored hair – her own. She abhorred hair dye. It framed her narrow face in long locks. She was Caucasian, had washed-out, emerald eyes, surrounded by just a smattering of Crow’s Feet. She bore a prominent forehead, chiseled cheekbones and a pointed chin.

  None of it though was her most becoming feature. It was her height that usually caught the attention of the men she walked past. Denise Miller was an impressive five foot eleven inches tall, though not overly tall and gangly looking as some women who as tall as her. Her height had always garnered genuine interest. It was her long, lean legs and narrow waist (no more than an inch or two thicker since she’d been in her teens) and her narrow hips rounding into what was a cute butt that made men turn and stare.

  However, the uniform she was currently wearing hid most of that.

  Still, below her work clothes, the truth remained “the truth”. Take off what she was wearing; put her in some heels and a little black number and she’d look like a model, ready for the runway in Milan or New York City, or maybe even Paris.

  That made her grin in spite of herself. Well, maybe if I were fifteen years younger or so…

  No, it wasn’t her looks or her body keeping a serious relationship at bay. It was she, herself. She just didn’t allow her boyfriends to develop into something else, something more serious. She never entertained the eventuality her relationships could lead her down the road to marriage and quite possibly children. Kurt was the only man she ever really loved and he… well, though he did care for her, it was merely in a fashion she hadn’t foreseen. It was a possibility she’d never gotten over it completely.

  Yes, I am scarred for life, she mused, stopping abruptly when she saw her car parked under the only cherry tree growing in parking lot. Every other tree was a magnolia or an oak. She had parked there so she would remember. Park where you can easily find your car, she had figured. Instead, it appeared as though she had outsmarted herself in the process.

  She stepped down the five wide steps at the front of the building and onto the concrete walkway in between the line of very large, very heavy steel reinforced planters circumventing the parameter of the Communications Center. They’d been put there to deter the odd terrorist truck-bomber.

  She stepped off the curb and onto the black-top of the lot itself, her rubber soled, “cop” shoes making very little noise as she made her way through the small patches of snow and ice blanketing to ground. Snow, here in Los Angeles! Of all things, who would have ever thought of that? She sure as hell wouldn’t have. She had lived in Southern California her whole life and not once had she ever seen it snow in the city until a system of extremely low pressure had settled in overnight and brought with it a million, million little miracles – snowflakes.

  She crossed through a few lines of parked cars, fishing her keys from her purse. As expected, she found them in the small inner pocket where she always kept them. Absently, she began to finger for the small remote that would disable her alarm as she walked the final few steps, looking left then right to make certain the way was clear of traffic as she did so. She approached the driver’s side, disengaged the tampering system and unlocked the vehicle with two quick pushes on the “unlock” icon on the remote. She swiftly rushed her way inside her bright red Dodge Nitro, slamming the door without intending to, in an attempt to get out of the cold as quickly as possible. She put the key in the ignition and started the medium-sized SUV, deftly turning on the heat. She gripped the steering wheel, waiting for the inside of the car to warm before she drove off. She hated driving when she was chilled. It distracted her too much, so she believed.

  Man, what a night, she thought as she squirmed in her seat, shivering again when she realized how cold the seat was upon her rear end. Crap, it’s really freaking cold out here! She wrung her hands before her lips and blew on them, staring at the temperature gauge before her. It depicted how hot the engine of her car was at the moment. It was hard over on the wrong side of the letter “C”. This is gonna take a while and here I am already freezing off my tits!

  She sat back, breathing on her hands a few more times, admonishing herself for not bringing any gloves, still staring at that gauge. Her thoughts invariably shifting to what she’d gone through the night before.

  The Event…

  *****

  It had started like most incidents during the course of her 6 pm to 6 am graveyard shift – with a phone call. The time had been automatically stamped into the streamed recording, logged into the vast database the moment she had spoken into her headset with the ubiquitous, “911 Operator, what is your emergency?”

  She would never forget what the digital display on one of the three monitors before her had indicated: 6:47 pm.

  It was burned into her brain.

  It had been a woman on the other end of the phone call. She was a frantic, older sounding, who’d been screaming and yelling that all of her grandchildren had been kidnapped from her backyard. Denise had kept asking questions as per protocol, but the woman wouldn’t let her get in a complete sentence in edgewise. She had kept screaming through the phone about a gang of men had stolen her beloved grandbabies. She explained through ragged gasps of breath that the assailants had smashed through the fences surrounding her backyard and had taken the children while she was in the house. Denise continued to try and get a description of some of the men from the woman, but the woman was hysterical. She was beyond the ability to coherently answer any query Denise might’ve asked. So, seeing the woman’s address blinking on the screen to her right, she immediately opened a line to the Los Angeles Police Department and had units rolling toward the woman’s home within seconds. She’d done the same with the LAFD as a precaution, because at that point she really couldn’t afford to be anything but thorough.

  She kept on repeated herself to the woman that help was one the way and continued to try and garner as much detail from the lady. It was almost seven minutes into the call when the woman actually answered one her questions directly. “Ma’am,
ma’am!” she had spoken forcefully, trying to get her attention. “What are the names of the children so we can issue an Amber Alert! Ma’am, please calm down! This is for the sake of the children. Can you please give me their names!”

  The woman had stopped hollering and was sobbing into the receiver. Her nose was so plugged with mucus; it was hard to comprehend what she was saying at first. Denise had to ask her to repeat herself, so she could pass on the information correctly.

  The woman had breathed deeply, steadying herself, focusing her mind. Then, “…Anthony Herrera, he is the oldest. He is sixteen. Elena Herrera, she is nine and…” She had been unable to continue.

  Denise didn’t waste any time. “Ma’am, what is the name of the third child?”

  “Mikalah Herrera – Oh my god, she is only eight years old! Please don’t let anything happen to my babies!” Then she was wailing in despair, unable to continue.

  “Don’t worry, ma’am. Help is on the way. I am forwarding the information for a nationwide Amber Alert as we speak. We will do what we can to get your grandchildren back to you safe and sound.”

  She had remembered saying it, attempting to put herself on “automatic”. Keep the emotion at bay, Denise. It’ll only clog your ability to work efficiently. Still, she could taste the ashes in her mouth at how completely inadequate her response had been. She knew, full well, she herself would’ve gone completely out of her mind if one of her nieces or nephews had been abducted. Being a 911 dispatcher, she knew a lot about what really goes in the world behind closed doors, in basements, in abandoned buildings and in the middle of parks. She had come to know a lot in the past twenty years. She knew if they didn’t find those children fast, there was very little hope any of them would survive the night. The world was no more than a meat-grinder of the young and the innocent.

  She had stayed on with the woman until the police arrived, trying to get as much additional information from her as possible. Then, she heard the police in the background and confirmed help had indeed arrived with both the police dispatcher and the officers on site. She succinctly exchanged all she knew with the officers and promptly terminated the call, saying another “comforting” line from the manual. It had fallen flat, even in her ears.

  She realized the dispatcher sitting at the station next to her was dealing with a similar case only this one was a little different, which immediately peeked her interest. It involved a kidnapping, a child abduction and a terrorist bomb together. She had leaned back in her chair craning her neck to see the location, thinking it was just a random coincidence. Her eye widened when she saw on her colleague’s LCD screen the second phone call was coming, not only from the same area of Los Angeles, but from the same goddamned neighborhood.

  The two incidents were less than a mile apart!

  She had listened in for a few minutes, a one-way tap allowing her to hear only.

  To her astonishment, it was yet another grandmother calling in to report her son and grandson had both been taken. What was strange was the terrorists had left a bomb on the front porch, subsequently destroying the entire front portion of the house to hide their getaway.

  This woman sounded even older and spoke with a heavy Mexican accent, so it was harder to make out what she was saying. A third of the time she was speaking Spanish, then a third in English and the last third in some sort of bastardization of the two languages neither she nor the dispatcher handling her call could understand. She seemed just about as scared as she was angry. She was able to give detailed descriptions of both her son and her grandson, but unfortunately, she hadn’t seen their abductors. She had been at the back of the house sewing and watching Jeopardy! on “her new flat chingatheda TV” her son had bought for her birthday back in August.

  Denise had figured she was talking about an HDTV or something along those lines and let it pass, still intent on getting more details of the call when her line rang. A dull, low-pitched tone sounded in her ear. She had quickly killed the “piggyback” tap of the other conversation and answered the incoming line.

  “911 Operator, what is your emergency?”

  Her mouth nearly hit the top of her desk when yet another frantic woman spoke in a rush, “You have to send help someone just took my son!”

  For the first time in nearly twenty years, Denise actually stammered. Her mind was struck numb with shock as her eyes darted over to the time stamp attached to the call.

  6:59 pm.

  Had it really only been twelve minutes? Was it true, really, that they had three separate kidnappings incidents in only twelve minutes?!? Had that ever happened before? Her mind was racing. She was vaguely aware of the woman on the other side of the line, now screeching at her to answer. She saw the address next – 6342 Tipton Way, Los Angeles, California 90042 – and her eyes nearly popped completely out of their sockets. She couldn’t believe it. Could it be possible? Could it?

  All three of the incidents were all within a square mile of one another.

  Was it true? Was their some type of terror group stealing children in Highland Park? Really?

  “ANSWER ME, YOU BITCH, OR I WILL HAVE YOUR FUCKING JOB FOR THIS!!!” screamed the woman through the phone, snapping Denise from her stupor.

  “Ah, uh…I’m sorry, ma’am, we seem to have a bit of a problem here -,” she had begun.

  “Well, I have a pretty BIG fucking problem over here, god damn it! Someone just took my little boy!” howled the woman.

  “Yes, yes, ma’am, I’m sorry. Please, explain in detail what happened. Again, I apologize,” replied Denise trying to restore her phone etiquette. Her brain was still more than a little scrambled.

  The woman huffed noisily in her ear and then began answering her questions and giving her information. Denise typed frantically, sending a request for a police unit and prepared to send out yet another “tag” for the issuance of a nationwide Amber Alert, summarizing what the woman was saying so she could adequately debrief the police officers when they arrived on site.

  She was just about finished and had restored a degree of order between her and the woman when the first call came in from the intersection of Colorado Boulevard and Eagle Rock Boulevard – North. She heard one of her fellow dispatchers exclaim with a question - even now, hours later - was seared into her brain.

  “Wait a minute, are you telling me the entire mall is gone?” He had even stood as he spoke, the incredulity written in his body language, with every move he made. Then he paused, listening. “The parking lot, too…! Jesus Christ, Lady, don’t you know there’s a hefty fine for calling into the 911 Emergency Center making jokes?”

  What in the hell? was all Denise had time to think.

  The second call came in, a third and that was when the night really began to turn for the worse.

  *****

  Within ten minutes, the call volume hitting their super-fast telephonic router had quadrupled. Calls went out for those dispatchers who were on-call to report to work due to an ever-growing set of circumstances out of the Northeast Area of Los Angeles, particularly centered in the neighborhoods of Highland Park and Eagle Rock. The overall workload of the team had dramatically increased.

  About four minutes after the initial call that the Eagle Rock Plaza had completely vanished, another myriad of calls came flooding around the area of Colorado Boulevard and Figueroa Street. All of the callers were saying the same thing. The local Vons supermarket had vanished as well. As with the mall, the sudden disappearance of the grocery store had apparently left a scene of pure horror in its wake. If what the people who lived near-by were in fact telling the truth, it sounded like a scene straight out of hell.

  Over the course of the next hour, additional calls came in with frantic parents on the line, their voices made wild and clipped as they described a pool house missing or an entire garage scooped out of the ground as if a giant with a humungous spoon had eaten it for dinner. In both cases, though, the heartsick parents had explained to the dispatch team that one of their children had be
en within the structure when it disappeared. They had told them through tears of panic and desperation their precious little ones, their most prized possessions, were gone.

  The TV’s began to pop on in the call center a little while after as the reports came flooding in. The first news teams began to arrive on scene to depict with morbid detail precisely what had happened. Again, Denise was slack-jawed at what she saw on the flat screens. She couldn’t believe it. It looked so bizarre and otherworldly. It seemed more like a movie than the real thing.

  Everything the local citizens had reported, turned out to be one hundred percent accurate – every detail, every nuance, and every aspect of what occurred was correct. What was visible on the high definition images flashing across the TV was sheer madness and mayhem.

  Where the mall had once stood, there was nothing more than a gigantic bowl-shaped hole, a perfectly symmetrical hemisphere, descending more than fifty feet into the ground at its center. Only now, this steeply sided hole wasn’t empty. Toward the middle, it was jam packed. It was piled high with everything that had been resting atop the upper and lower decks of the mall and parking lot. This included, of course, all of the clerks, salespeople, managers, janitors, and shoppers who had been in the mall before it had vanished as if it had never been. All of it was a jumbled mess. The debris had slid downward, into the furthest reaches of the hole. At its’ middle, metal and concrete had met flesh and bone.

  To Denise this would have been bad enough, seeing the tangle of cars and huge decorative planters, big enough to hold tree, mushed and mashed against the bodies of men, women and children, if it hadn’t been for other mitigating circumstances making the situation even worse.