Left Behind: A Novel Of Earth's Last Days (11 page)

Nothing could have been scripted like this, Buck thought, blinking slowly. If somebody tried to sell a screenplay about millions of people disappearing, leaving everything but their bodies behind, it would be laughed off.

Buck was not aware that he was asleep until the cheap phone jangled so loudly it sounded as if it would rattle itself off the table. He groped for it.

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Williams, but I just noticed you was off the phone there. While you was talkin’, you got a call. Guy name of Ritz. Says you can call him or you can just be waitin’ for him outside at six in the mornin’.”

“OK. Thanks.”

“What’re you gonna do? Call him or meet him?”

“Why do you need to know?”

“Oh, I ain’t bein’ nosy or nothin’. It’s just that if you’re leavin’ here at six, I gotta get payment in advance. You got the long-distance call and all. And I don’t get up till seven.”

“I’ll tell you what, uh, what was your name?”

“Mack.”

“I’ll tell you what, Mack. I left you my charge card number, so you know I’m not going to sneak out on you. But in the morning I’m going to leave a traveler’s check in the room for you, covering the price of the room and a lot more than enough for the phone call. You get my meaning?”

“A tip?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That would be nice.”

“What I need for you to do for me is slip a bandage under my door.”

“I got one. You need it right now? You all right?”

“I’m fine. Not now. When you turn in. Nice and quiet like. And turn off my phone, OK, just in case? If I have to get up that early, I’ve got to do some serious sleeping right now. Can you handle that for me, Mack?”

“I sure can. I’ll turn it off right now. You want a wakeup call?”

“No, thanks,” Buck said, and he smiled when he realized the phone was dead in his hand. Mack was as good as his word. If he found that bandage in the morning, he would leave Mack a good tip. Buck forced himself to get up and shut off the TV set and the light. He was the type who could look at his watch before retiring and wake up precisely when he told himself to. It was nearly midnight. He would be up at five-thirty.

By the time he hit the mattress, he was out. When he awoke five and a half hours later, he had not moved a muscle.

Rayford felt as if he were sleepwalking as he padded through the kitchen to head upstairs. He couldn’t believe how tired he still was after his long nap and his fitful dozing on the couch. The newspaper was still rolled up and rubber banded on a chair where he had tossed it. If he had any trouble sleeping upstairs, maybe he would glance at the paper. It should be interesting to read the meaningless news of a world that didn’t realize it was going to suffer the worst trauma in its history just after the paper had been set in type.

Rayford punched the redial button on the phone and walked slowly toward the stairs, only half listening. What was that? The dial tone had been interrupted, and the phone in Chloe’s dorm room was ringing. He hurried to the phone as a girl answered.

“Chloe?”

“No. Mr. Steele?”

“Yes!”

“This is Amy. Chloe’s trying to find a way back there. She’ll try to call you along the way, sometime tomorrow. If she can’t get through, she’ll call you when she gets there or she’ll get a cab home.”

“She’s on her way?”

“Yeah. She didn’t want to wait. She tried calling and calling, but—”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks, Amy. Are you all right?”

“Scared to death, like everybody else.”

“I can imagine. Did you lose anyone?”

“No, and I feel kinda guilty about that. Seems like everyone I know lost somebody. I mean I lost a few friends, but nobody close, no family.”

Rayford didn’t know whether to express congratulations or remorse. If this was what he now believed it had been, this poor child hardly knew anyone who’d been taken to heaven.

“Well,” he said, “I’m glad you’re all right.”

“How about you?” she said. “Chloe’s mom and brother?”

“I’m afraid they’re gone, Amy.”

“Oh, no!”

“But I would appreciate your letting me tell Chloe, just in case she reaches you before she reaches me.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I don’t think I could tell her even if you wanted me to.”

Rayford lay in bed several minutes, then idly thumbed through the first section of the paper. Hmm. A surprise move in Romania.

Democratic elections became passé when, with the seeming unanimous consensus of the people and both the upper and lower houses of government, a popular young businessman/politician assumed the role of president of the country. Nicolae Carpathia, a 33-year-old born in Cluj, had in recent months taken the nation by storm with his popular, persuasive speaking, charming the populace, friend and foe alike. Reforms he proposed for the country saw him swept to prominence and power.

Rayford glanced at the photo of the young Carpathia, a strikingly handsome blonde who looked not unlike a young Robert Redford. Wonder if he would’ve wanted the job had he known what was about to happen? Rayford thought. Whatever he has to offer won’t amount to a hill of beans now.

KEN
Ritz roared up to the Midpoint precisely at six, rolled down his window, and said, “You Williams?”

“I’m your man,” Buck said. He climbed into the late model four-wheel drive with his one bag. Fingering his freshly bandaged head, Buck smiled at the thought of Mack enjoying his extra twenty bucks.

Ritz was tall and lean with a weathered face and a shock of salt-and-pepper hair. “Let’s get down to business,” he said. “It’s 740 miles from O’Hare to
JFK
and 746 from Milwaukee to
JFK
. I’m gonna get you as close to
JFK
as I can, and we’re about equidistant between O’Hare and Milwaukee, so let’s call it 743 air miles. Multiply that by two bucks, you’re talkin’ fourteen hundred and eighty-six. Round it off to fifteen hundred for the taxi service, and we got us a deal.”

“Deal,” Buck said, pulling out his checks and starting to sign. “Pretty expensive taxi.”

Ritz laughed. “Especially for a guy coming out of the Midpoint.”

“It was lovely.”

Ritz parked in a metal Quonset hut at the Waukegan airport and chatted while running through preflight procedures. “No crashes here,” he said. “There were two at Palwaukee. They lost a couple of staff people here though. Weirder than weird, wasn’t it?”

Buck and Ritz shared stories of lost relatives, where they were when it happened, and exactly who they were. “Never flew a writer before,” Ken said. “Charter, I mean. Must’ve flown a bunch of your types when I was commercial.”

“Better money on your own”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know that when I switched. It wasn’t my choice.”

They were climbing into the Lear. Buck shot him a double take. “You were grounded?”

“Don’t worry, partner,” the pilot said. “I’ll get you there.”

“You owe it to me to tell me if you were grounded.”

“I was fired. There’s a difference.”

“Depends on what you were fired for, doesn’t it?”

“True enough. This ought to make you feel real good. I was fired for bein’ too careful. Beat that.”

“Talk to me,” Buck said.

“You remember a lot of years ago when there was all that flak about puddle jumpers goin’ down in icy weather?”

“Yeah, until they made some adjustments or something.”

“Right. Well, you remember that one pilot refused to fly even after he was told to and the public was assured everything up to that point was explainable or a fluke?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you remember that there was another crash right after that, which proved the pilot right?”

“Vaguely.”

“Well, I remember it plain as day, because you’re lookin’ at him.”

“I do feel better.”

“You know how many of those same model puddle jumpers are in the air today? Not a one. When you’re right, you’re right. But was I reinstated? No. Once a troublemaker, always a troublemaker. Lots of my colleagues were grateful though. And some pilots’ widows were pretty angry that I got ignored and then canned, too late for their husbands.”

“Ouch!”

As the jet screamed east, Ritz wanted to know what Buck thought of the disappearances. “Funny you should ask,” Buck said.

“I’ve got to start working on that in earnest today. What’s your read of it? And do you mind if I flip on a tape recorder?”

“Fine,” Ritz said. “Dangedest thing I’ve ever seen. ‘Course, that doesn’t make me unique. I have to say, though, I’ve always believed in UFOs.”

“You’re kidding! A levelheaded, safety-conscious pilot?”

Ritz nodded. “I’m not talking about little green men or space aliens who kidnap people. I’m talking about some of the more documentable stuff, like some astronauts have seen, and some pilots,”

“You ever see anything?”

“Nope. Well, a couple of unexplainable things. Some lights or mirages. Once I thought I was flying too close to a squad of helicopters. Not too far from here either. Glenview Naval Air Station. I radioed a warning, then lost sight of them. I suppose that’s explainable. I could have been going faster than I realized and not been as close as I thought. But I never got an answer, no acknowledgment that they were even airborne. Glenview wouldn’t confirm it. I shrugged it off, but a few weeks later, close to the same spot, my instruments went wacky on me. Dials spinning, meters sticking, that kind of thing.”

“What did you make of that?”

“Magnetic field or some force like that. Could be explainable, too. You know there’s no sense reporting strange occurrences or sightings near a military base, because they just reject them out of hand. They don’t even take seriously anything strange within several miles of a commercial airport. That’s why you never hear stories of UFOs near O’Hare. Not even considered.”

“So, you don’t buy the kidnapping space aliens, but you connect the disappearances with UFOs?”

“I’m just sayin’ it’s not like E.T, with creatures and all that. I think our ideas of what space people would look like is way too simple and rudimentary. If there is intelligent life out there, and there has to be just because of the sheer odds—”

“What do you mean?”

“The vastness of space.”

“Oh, so many stars and so much area that something has to be out there somewhere.”

“Exactly. And I agree with people who think those beings are more intelligent than we are. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have made it here, if they are here. And if they are, I’m thinking they’re sophisticated and advanced enough that they can do things to us we’ve never dreamed of.”

“Like making people disappear right out of their clothes.”

“Sounded pretty silly until the other night, didn’t it?”

Buck nodded.

“I’ve always laughed about people assuming these beings could read our thoughts or get into our heads and stuff,” Ritz continued. “But look who’s missing. Everybody I’ve read about or heard about or knew who’s now gone was either under twelve years old or was an unusual personality.”

“With all the people who disappeared, you think they had something in common?”

“Well, they’ve got something in common now, wouldn’t you say?”

“But something set them apart, made them easier to snatch?” Buck asked.

“That’s what I think.”

“So we’re still here because we were strong enough to resist, or maybe we weren’t worth the trouble.”

Ritz nodded. “Something like that. It’s almost like some force or power was able to read the level of resistance or weakness, and once that force got sunk in, it was able to rip those people right off the earth. They disappeared in an instant, so they had to be dematerialized. The question is whether they were destroyed in the process or could be reassembled.”

“What do you think, Mr. Ritz?”

“At first I would have said no. But a week ago I would have told you that millions of people all over the world disappearing into thin air sounds like a B movie. When I allow for the fact that it actually happened, I have to allow for the next logical step. Maybe they’re somewhere specific in some form, and maybe they can return.”

“That’s a comforting thought,” Buck said. “But is it more than wishful thinking?”

“Hardly. That idea and fifty cents would be worth half a dollar. I fly planes for money. I haven’t got a clue. I’m still as much in shock as the next guy, and I don’t mind tellin’ you, I’m scared.”

“Of?”

“That it might happen again. If it was anything like I think it was, maybe all this force needs to do now is crank up the power somehow and they can get older people, smarter people, people with more resistance that they ignored the first time, around.”

Buck shrugged and sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally he said, “There’s a little hole in your argument. I know of some people who are missing who seem as strong as anyone.”

“I wasn’t talking physical strength.”

“Neither was I.” Buck thought about Lucinda Washington. “I lost a friend and coworker who was bright, healthy, happy, strong, and a forceful personality.”

“Well, I’m not saying I know everything or even anything. You wanted my theory, there it is.”

Rayford Steele lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Sleep had come hard and intermittently, and he hated the logy feeling. He didn’t want to watch the news. He didn’t want to read the paper, even knowing a new one had flopped up onto the porch before dawn. All he wanted was for Chloe to get home so they could grieve together. There was nothing, he decided, more lonely than grief.

He and his daughter would have work to do, too. He wanted to investigate, to learn, to know, to act. He started by searching for a Bible, not the family Bible that had collected dust on his shelf for years, but Irene’s. Hers would have notes in it, maybe something that would point him in the right direction.

It wasn’t hard to find. It was usually within arm’s reach of where she slept. He found it on the floor, next to the bed. Would there be some guide? An index? Something that referred to the Rapture or the judgment or something? If not, maybe he’d start at the end. If genesis meant “beginning,” maybe revelation had some thing to do with the end, even though it didn’t mean that. The only Bible verse Rayford could quote by heart was Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” He hoped there’d be some corresponding verse at the end of the Bible that said something like, “In the end God took all his people to heaven and gave everybody else one more chance.”