by Tim LaHaye
Rayford punched a few buttons to check for messages. He ran through three or four mundane ones, then was startled to hear Chloe’s voice. “Mom? Dad? Are you there? Have you seen what’s going on? Call me as soon as you can. I’ve lost at least ten students and two profs, and all the married students’ kids disappeared. Is Raymie all right? Call me!” Well, at least he knew Chloe was still around. All he wanted was to hold her.
Rayford redialed and left a message on his own machine. “Irene? Ray? If you’re there, pick up. If you get this message, I’m at O’Hare and trying to get home. It may take a while if I don’t get a copter ride. I sure hope you’re there.”
“Let’s go, Cap,” someone said. “Everybody’s got a call to make.”
Rayford nodded and quickly dialed his daughter’s dorm room at Stanford. He got the irritating message that his call could not be completed as dialed.
Rayford gathered his belongings and checked his mail slot. Besides a pile of the usual junk, he found a padded manila envelope from his home address. Irene had taken to mailing him little surprises lately, the result of a marriage book she had been urging him to read. He slipped the envelope into his case and went looking for Hattie Durham. Funny, he had no emotional attraction whatever to Hattie just now. But he felt obligated to be sure she got home.
As he stood in a crowd by the elevator, he heard the announcement that a helicopter was available for no more than eight pilots and would make a run to Mount Prospect, Arlington Heights, and Des Plaines. Rayford hurried to the pad. “Got room for one to Mount Prospect?”
“Yup.”
“How about another to Des Plaines?”
“Maybe, if he gets here in about two minutes.”
“It’s not a he. She’s a flight attendant.”
“Pilots only. Sorry.”
“What if you have room?”
“Well, maybe, but I don’t see her.”
“I’ll have her paged.”
“They’re not paging anyone.”
“Give me a second. Don’t leave without me.”
The chopper pilot looked at his watch. “Three minutes,” he said. “I’m leavin’ at one.”
Rayford left his bag on the ground, hoping it would hold the helicopter pilot in case he was a little late. He charged up the stairs and into the corridor. Finding Hattie would be impossible. He grabbed a courtesy phone. “I’m sorry, we’re unable to page anyone just now.”
“This is an emergency and I am a Pan-Continental captain.”
“What is it?”
“Have Hattie Durham meet her party at K-17.”
“I’ll try.”
“Do it!”
Rayford stood on tiptoe to see Hattie coming, yet still somehow she surprised him. “I was fourth in line for a computer in the lounge,” she said, appearing at his side. “Got a better deal?”
“Got us a helicopter ride if we hurry,” he said.
As they skipped down the stairs she said, “Wasn’t it awful about Chris?”
“What about him?”
“You really don’t know?”
Rayford wanted to stop and tell her to quit making him work so hard. That frustrated him about people her age. They enjoyed a volleying conversation game. He liked to get to the point. “Just tell me!” he said, sounding more exasperated than he intended.
As they burst through the door and onto the tarmac, the chopper blades whipped their hair and deafened them. Rayford’s bag had already been put on board, and only one seat remained. The pilot pointed at Hattie and shook his head. Rayford grabbed her elbow and pulled her aboard as he climbed in. “Only way she’s not coming is if you can’t handle the weight!”
“What do you weigh, doll?” the pilot said.
“One-fifteen!”
“I can handle the weight!” he told Rayford. “But if she’s not buckled in, I’m not responsible!”
“Let’s go!” Rayford shouted.
He buckled himself in and Hattie sat in his lap. He wrapped his arms around her waist and clasped his wrists together. He thought how ironic it was that he had been dreaming of this for weeks, and now there was no joy, no excitement in it, nothing sensual whatever. He was miserable. Glad to be able to help her out, but miserable.
Hattie looked embarrassed and uncomfortable, and Rayford noticed she took a sheepish peek at the other seven pilots in the copter. None seemed to return her gaze. This disaster was still too fresh and there were too many unknowns. Rayford thought he heard or lip-read one of them saying, “Christopher Smith,” but there was no way he could hear inside the raucous craft. He put his mouth next to Hattie’s ear.
“Now what about Chris?” he said.
She turned and spoke into his ear. “They wheeled him past us while I was going into the lounge. Blood all over!”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, but, Rayford, he didn’t look good!”
“How bad?”
“I think he was dead! I mean, they were working on him, but I’d be surprised if he made it.”
Rayford shook his head. What next? “Did he get hit or something? Did that bus crash?” Wouldn’t that be ironic!
“I don’t know,” she said. “The blood seemed like it was coming from his hand or his waist or both.”
Rayford tapped the pilot on the shoulder. “Do you know anything about First Officer Christopher Smith?”
“He with Pan-Con?” the pilot said.
“Yes!”
“Was he the suicide?”
Rayford recoiled. “I don’t think so! Was there a suicide?”
“Lots of ’em, I guess, but mostly passengers. Only crew member I heard about was a Smith from Pan. Slit his wrists.”
Rayford quickly scanned the others in the chopper to see if he recognized anyone. He didn’t, but one was nodding sadly, having overheard the pilot’s shouting. He leaned forward. “Chris Smith! You know him?”
“My first officer!”
“Sorry.”
“What’d you hear?”
“Don’t know how reliable this is, but the rumor is he found out his boys had disappeared and his wife was killed in a wreck!”
For the first time the enormity of the situation became personal for Rayford. He didn’t know Smith well. He vaguely remembered Chris had two sons. Seemed they were young teenagers, very close in age. He had never met the wife. But suicide! Was that an option for Rayford? No, not with Chloe still there. But what if he had discovered that Irene and young Ray were gone and Chloe had been killed? What would he have to live for?
He hadn’t been living for them anyway, certainly not the last several months. He had been playing around on the edges of his mind with the girl in his lap, though he had never gone so far as touching her, even when she often touched him. Would he want to live if Hattie Durham were the only person he cared about? And why did he care about her? She was beautiful and sexy and smart, but only for her age. They had little in common. Was it only because he was convinced Irene was gone that he now longed to hold his own wife?
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?