Apocalypse Burning (34 page)

“Why?”

“Nothing back there for me.”

“What about your dad?”

“No way. At least my mom was nice to me, but I didn’t really need her that much either. She was always working at the hospital, going in on her days off. Stuff like that. As long as I stayed out of trouble, she let me do what I wanted to do.”

Joey knew that wasn’t exactly how things had happened. Derrick’s mom had doted on him and had cared about him deeply. Everyone could see that, but Derrick had taken that relationship for granted and never given his mom anything back.

Realizing that he could see that in his friend’s relationship with his mother made Joey feel guilty. While he hadn’t treated his own mom as badly, Joey knew he hadn’t treated her well either. His guilt continued to swell within him, dragging him down. He hadn’t been a good son.

“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep… . C’mon, Joey, say it.”

He hadn’t been a good brother either.

“Hey,” Derrick said, pointing his light at the shop to their left. “I thought I saw a light in there.”

Adrenaline buzzed through Joey’s body as he looked at the shop. “Turn the flashlight off.” He turned off his own.

When Derrick switched off his flashlight, it became immediately apparent there was a light inside at the back of the shop. The soft blue glow was incredibly out of place.

The shop was called Eastern Treasures. Shelves filled with knick-knacks covered most of the available floor space. Dolls, paper fans, and bowls of beads shared space with Japanese swords and knives and fake jade dragons and other mythological creatures. Decorative calendar scrolls on rice paper hung on the walls with tapestries depicting epic battles between warriors and demonic creatures. Headbands with rising suns, Japanese kanji, and Chinese characters covered the checkout counter. Packages of Japanese and Chinese candies filled bowls.

“You know what that looks like?” Derrick asked, whispering now.

“No.” Joey instinctively whispered back.

“A television, man. I swear it looks like a television screen.”

“Can’t be. There’s no power.”

“It’s a small set. Maybe a battery-powered portable. Gotta be something. Let’s take a look.”

Joey’s natural curiosity pushed at him to take a look too, but he shook his head. “Let’s leave it.”

“No way. If that set’s in there and is on, maybe there’s somebody in this mall with us.”

“That’s just another reason to leave right now.” Paranoid and starting to get really creeped out, Joey glanced around. His imagination immediately rewarded him with imaginary creatures that seemed to lunge out of the shadows at him.

“Without telling Zero?” Derrick shook his head. “No way. If he gets surprised by a security guard and finds out we didn’t take a look, he’ll probably kill us.” He sipped in a quick breath. “I say we take a look and find out what’s what. Then find Zero and beat feet.”

Joey wanted to argue, but before he could say anything more Derrick was dropping and slithering under the steel chain-link security wall that had dropped down to shut the shop off from the rest of the mall. The wall was a couple feet off the ground, offering proof again that someone might be in the shop.

Unwilling to leave Derrick alone and not knowing what else to do, Joey slithered under as well.

Derrick wasted no time getting to the back of the shop. He stood poised at the door with his crowbar in both hands as he gazed at the television screen.

Joey looked around the small office. The television sat on a desk built into the wall. Papers, neatly stacked, occupied the wall space above the desk. A coffee cup and ashtray sat beside the inert computer. A man’s gray sweater hung from the back of the office chair in front of the desk.

“C’mon,” Joey whispered. “We need to get out of here.”

“Hey, man,” Derrick said, “look. Your mom’s on TV.”

The statement, so inane and unbelievable, especially under the frightening circumstances he was now part of, almost paralyzed Joey’s brain. Then he stared at the screen and saw that his mom
was
on television.

Megan Gander’s picture was inset into the upper two-thirds of the screen. The main feed showed a platinum-haired lady reporter standing in front of Fort Benning’s main gates. The slug line under the picture read PENNY GILLESPIE. FORT BENNING, GEORGIA. LIVE.

Oh, God, please,
Joey prayed,
please don’t let anything have happened to my mother.
He moved into the room and found the volume control on the TV. He turned the sound up.

“—Mrs. Megan Gander’s military trial begins in the morning, friends and viewers,” Penny Gillespie said. “Mrs. Gander stands accused of dereliction of duty, a serious offense under any circumstances when dealing with a military body, and possibly even more serious in light of everything that has happened since the disappearances.”

Joey couldn’t believe it. His mom, derelect? She was the most duty-driven person breathing. But at least she wasn’t, like, dead, or anything.
Thank You, God,
he thought when he realized that his mother wasn’t some kind of casualty.

“Mrs. Gander was taking care of a young boy in her charge the night of the disappearances,” the reporter went on. “That boy fled from the hospital and from his father. The father, Private Boyd Fletcher, arrived in what I have confirmed through the testimony of witnesses was a totally inebriated state, and attacked two military police officers in the hospital hallway.”

“Hey, man,” Derrick said, “sounds like your mom is in some serious—”

“Shhhh,” Joey ordered, turning the TV volume up again.

“The young boy, Gerry Fletcher,” the reporter went on, “climbed to the top of an adjacent building.”

The picture behind the reporter changed from Megan Gander to a blocklike building that Joey immediately recognized as one of the base’s residence complexes.

“Witnesses from that night,” the reporter said, “told me that young Gerry Fletcher was poised to hurl himself to his death over the side of that building. Only Mrs. Gander’s efforts—first through counseling, then through striving physically to hang on to the boy after he fell over the side—prevented him from plummeting four stories to his certain death.”

Joey stood amazed. He hadn’t heard anything about that. He’d known his mom was in trouble over Gerry Fletcher’s disappearance, which he thought was stupid given that all of the other kids in the world had disappeared, but he hadn’t known she’d done stuff like that. Joey felt ashamed at the way he’d left the house the next morning, not even talking to his mom about anything, just upset that so many of the post’s kids had come knocking on her door for help. He’d resented them, and he’d resented her. All he’d thought about was how he felt. Now he realized that maybe his mom had felt pretty ragged too.

“There is a difference of opinion about Gerry Fletcher’s disappearance,” Penny Gillespie went on. “The boy’s father contends that Mrs. Gander hid the boy and made it look like he’d hurled himself from the building’s rooftop by pitching his clothes over the side. Mrs. Gander’s defense claims that God reached down in that moment and took Gerry to heaven when He raptured all the others who are now missing.”

The scene behind the reporter switched to the base provost marshal’s office. Joey fully expected to see his mom there in chains, escorted by MPs. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

“The dereliction of duty charges brought against Mrs. Gander by the military seem to be triggered by the grievance Private Boyd Fletcher has filed in civil court against Mrs. Gander regarding her failure to notify him or his wife that his son was in the hospital. The legal advisors I have interviewed all believe that Mrs. Gander’s case should have been dropped, especially in light of the disappearances of all the children in the world at the moment Gerry Fletcher dropped from that building. And, given that Private Fletcher was heavily inebriated during the time that he’s complaining about not getting to see his son, they feel that Fletcher’s charges are driven by something other than parental feeling.”

A picture of a hard-faced man smoking a cigarette while handcuffed and standing between two MPs took the place of the provost marshal’s office.

“Private Fletcher,” Penny said, “has hired a well-known attorney in this matter. Once the military court has finished with their case against Mrs. Gander, she will face Fletcher in the civil courts. Mr. Arthur Flynn of the Atlanta, Georgia–based law firm Flynn, Flynn, and Elliot has filed suit against Mrs. Gander for the loss of the time Private Fletcher would have gotten to spend with young Gerry.”

The television view changed to a well-dressed man speaking in court before a jury.

“Mr. Flynn is an accomplished attorney,” Ms. Gillespie said, “and is highly regarded in the field of civil litigation. He’s been successful in getting millions of dollars in judgments for previous clients. Experts I talked to in the legal profession say that it is Mr. Flynn’s expectation to secure a judgment against Mrs. Gander, and then leapfrog from that to judgment against the United States Army, and quite possibly the United States government itself.”

Joey tried to digest that, but it was too big, too strange. His mom had never been in any kind of trouble his whole life.

“Mrs. Gander ran afoul of the military again this morning,” Penny said, “by teaching a class on the Tribulation.”

The inset image this time showed footage of Megan Gander in a confrontation with a U.S. Army captain. Joey got mad instantly. He was protective of his mom. Joey knew that the man, captain or no captain, wouldn’t have stepped into his mom’s space like that if Goose had been around.

“During my interviews with Mrs. Gander,” Penny stated, “I have found her belief in God to be very strong, though she admits that her faith failed her as she dealt with Gerry Fletcher. However, she points out that we all have had quite an eye-opener recently regarding what God can do.”

Joey heard Chris’s voice in the back of his mind:
“Now I lay me down to sleep… .”

“Mrs. Gander tells me that she believes those among us who disappeared were taken in God’s rapture of His church,” Penny said. “She also said that she went to the head chaplain here at Fort Benning yesterday and discussed the possibility of teaching special classes about the Tribulation—about the biblically foretold seven hard and dangerous years that will pass before Jesus Christ returns to this world at the Second Coming—to the young people she is responsible for as a counselor for the post. She feels that these young people will need this knowledge to find the Lord so they may hope to be delivered into heaven when their time comes.”

The blonde woman’s image was replaced by footage of a heavyset officer waving off cameras as he walked to a military Hummer. MPs stepped forward and kept the cameras back.

The reporter’s voice-over continued, and her image reappeared in a corner of the TV screen. “Major Augustus Trimble is in charge of those post chaplains. According to Mrs. Gander, he not only declined the suggestion but went so far as to tell her that he did not believe the Rapture occurred.” The reporter shook her head. “Unfortunately, Major Trimble would not agree to an interview with me, nor did he agree to respond to this report by phone.” She looked at the camera. “Friends in faith, I do believe that Mrs. Megan Gander has been pushed into a position to stand for us all in this regard. Scared and alone, she has gone forth with her message: that the Rapture has occurred and that we are now beginning the tumultuous times of the Tribulation. Many of us, as the Bible bears witness, will not survive these troubled times ahead. Now I come to you, as I so often have since this show began airing, in the service of the Lord our God, and ask that you make time in your hectic and troubled days to pray for Mrs. Megan Gander.”

The news channel cut to commercial, an advertisement for a book and audio book on the end times.

For a moment, Joey couldn’t breathe. How had his mom gotten into so much trouble? What could the army do to her? He got hold of himself, blowing out a breath and taking another one in. He had to get home. He couldn’t stay away with something like this going on.

Chris’s singsong voice whispered in the back of his head:
“Now I lay me down to sleep… . C’mon, Joey, say it with me. Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”

“What are you doing here?” a man’s voice demanded.

Startled, Joey turned around, swinging so fast that the pry bar he carried slammed into the desk.

A slender Asian man stood in the doorway. He held a pistol in both hands, pointing it first at Derrick then at Joey and back again. The barrel looked huge.

In the back of Joey’s mind, Chris’s voice whispered,
“If I should die before I wake …”

12

United States 75th Army Rangers Temporary Post
Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 0521 Hours

Over the past few days, Danielle Vinchenzo had seen a lot of Sergeant Samuel Adams “Goose” Gander. She had seen him in command, confident and fighting fit, and she had seen him in his downtime when he didn’t realize she was watching, when his haggard face had shown her how much the death and destruction taking place around him had taken from him physically, emotionally, and—yes, even though it wasn’t something Danielle thought about much—spiritually.