R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 02 - L O S T (12 page)

Part II

L O S T

PEOPLE BECOME lost in many different ways. I have discovered this reality over half a lifetime. Each of us figures it out eventually. It happens differently for every person, but there are similarities.

Sometimes, after having once been certain of our path and making progress toward what we believed to be our future, something happens. A life-changing event. This unthinkable happening then acts as a detour, sending us down an unfamiliar path. Once we’ve walked far enough down into the realm of the unknown, our ability to find the way back to the main route is forever lost.

We can also experience a much more subtle sense of loss. It is possible to simply wake up one morning like a man or woman with amnesia. Our life looks differently than when we drifted off to sleep. Unrecognizable. Unfathomable. How did we get to this place in our lives? Some call this mid-life crisis. Others, an epiphany or an awakening.

Another way we lose our bearings is by having too much taken away. An avalanche of tragedy can leave us bewildered, disoriented, trepid toward a step in any direction. We feel as if the immediate area is filled with landmines, tripwires, pitfalls—no way seems safe to traverse.

And it is then we stay frozen. The only action that feels safe is no action at all. We crawl within ourselves, sometimes for years. By refusing to make any choices—by ceasing to act—we believe we are ridding ourselves of all risk.

For me, it was none of the above. Or all of them, combined as one. For me, it was like finding yourself in a nightmare and not being able to coax the mind awake. No matter what you do, you can’t wake up—but neither can you shake the surreal feeling that this is
not your life
. Eventually you realize you are not asleep, but that you’d rather you were. Instead, you are faced with a living nightmare.

The scene at the staging ground was beyond what I could have possibly imagined. When we could not reach Amanda, Noon, or any other agents, we of course knew something was wrong. It was far worse than that. I have seen war. As a Marine, I served in Iraq during Desert Storm, just at the end of my enlistment. And although we did not encounter a large resistance, I saw firsthand what a monster does to his own people. Mass graves, the aftermath of death squads. But I was wrong. That was what a dictator did to his people. Spread before us, there at the staging ground, was the aftermath of true monsters.

It could not be said that we found bodies;
bodies
implies a measure of continuity or of noticeable form. There was no continuity or form in the total devastation before our eyes. It would take months—perhaps
years
—to identify what body parts were intact enough for a forensic team to
attempt
an examination.

I was not there at Ground Zero in New York. I have friends in the Denver Fire Department who were called out. I have read many of the accounts. I can only imagine it resembled the carnage that Rule’s demons had inflicted upon the poor souls who were here.

And I knew what this all meant to me, on a personal level.

It was hard to even think her name.

Amanda.

And our child.

“My God,” Jax said, his face pallid and bereft of emotion.

I couldn’t speak. There were no words. The wellspring of pain was pressing on my sternum, begging release. It felt as if I might crumble inward. Cease to exist.

“She’s gone,” I finally managed.

“We don’t know that.”

“Look at this carnage. Look at what they did. Nothing survived. This was meant as an extermination.”

More like a
holocaust
.

“I need to call in the State Police,” he managed.

“Call them,” I said and walked away.

In the trees, I searched for solitude. I needed to separate from the awful silence resounding from my own soul. Never had I felt so empty; so without purpose. What was left? What could I possibly find now worth going on toward?

“You have your son,” a voice from behind me said.

I spun around.

It was Tilson Wayne, sitting on a broken tree, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. The coal glowed orange-red in the damp darkness.

“Where the fuck did you come from?” I hissed. “Were you are part of this?”

“Of course not,” he said.

“Why are you here now?”

“You know why.”

“No riddles. Not now. Just talk to me. I need to hear
something
.”

“It’s not over,” he said.

I was once again entranced by his rough, leathery features. So much history in those lines and scarred skin—too much for a man who died as a child.

“It doesn’t get much more ‘over’ than this.”

“There’s more to come.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“Giving up is not in your nature,” he said.

“How the hell do you know anything about my nature?”

“You know the answer to that one, too,” he said, and drew smoke deep into his lungs.

 “You aren’t even real. Go away. I’ll suffer the silence.”

“You know how the game is played. There isn’t an end, Bobby. There never will be.”

“Like I said, no riddles, ghost. Evaporate. Fly off. Whatever the fuck it is you do.”

“Every act is a part of the grand plan. Even one as heinous as this.”

“You’re not making sense,” I said.

“What have you learned about me?”

“About you?”

“My history.”

“That you died as a child.”

“I did.”

“Yet here you are.”

“I have no memory between then and now,” he said.

“That’s because you aren’t real. You are something I dreamed up. More evidence that I’m going crazy.”

“If you concocted me from your own imagination, how is it that I know you are about to make a discovery that will change everything?”

“What are you talking about?”

“If I were to predict your future, would that prove to you that I am who I say I am?”

“You can’t do that.”

“Your current search is about to be over. Only for a new search—a more important one—to begin.”

“Is it a rule—some kind of operating procedure? That you ghosts must speak in riddles, conundrums, and half-truths?”

Tilson Wayne—or whoever he was—laughed. Then he stood and simply walked away.

~ ~ ~

As I started back to find Jax, I heard someone crying in the forest.

“Who’s out there?” I said loudly, silently praying it was Amanda.

“Help,” was the reply. Distant. Somewhere in the inky blackness.

“Keep talking,” I said. “Make some noise.”

Nothing but silence. Whoever it was had too much fear that the murderous demons were still around, perhaps looking for them. This realization was as a spear pushed through my heart.

Amanda was incapable of such fear.

I kept walking toward the area I’d heard the voice, swinging my flashlight beam back and forth. Finally I heard another voice, different, even softer:

“I’m scared.”

It was almost a whisper. I was close.

“My name is Detective Bobby Mac,” I said. “I’m here with the good guys.”

“Over here,” the first voice said.

I moved the LED light toward the voice. There were three little girls, huddled together under two fallen trees. They were dirty, disheveled, and shivering. One of them was wearing a blood-stained, tattered dress—she had lost a shoe. The one that remained, though mangled and muddied, was clearly white.

~ ~ ~

We gathered the three girls together, fed them rations, and made them drink small amounts of water. They were clearly dehydrated and completely disoriented. All they seemed to remember was the mass attack that occurred at the staging area only hours before.

“What do we do?” Jax said.

His handful of deputies guarded the perimeter of the clearing, but it was a lackluster gesture. There were scores of FBI agents lying in pieces all around us. How much protection could half a dozen small town cops be? In fact, how much could anyone do?

I could not stop thinking about Amanda. She was dead. Before we really had a chance to grow together as one, she was out of my life forever. But I still needed to find her. What was left of her. It did not matter how long, or how much effort. I would stay there. After all, there was nothing left. Everything I cared about had been ripped from my life.

When we were kids, Paddy and Ma took us to mass every Saturday. We attended Wednesday night bible study. The story of Job had always troubled me. The man was a devoted servant of God and yet the Lord rained down so much tragedy on the poor soul that he all but renounced his faith—he
did
renounce the day he was born. All for what? A kind of wager with Satan? A way for God to prove to the fallen angel the mettle of a follower?

My own mettle too seemed to have been tested all these years. Far beyond what any reasonable person would consider a breaking point. But in my case, what faith could God be testing? I wasn’t sure I ever had any to begin with.

There certainly wasn’t any left now.

“I’m sorry,” Jax said, offering the girls some milk he’d warmed over the campfire.

I looked at him without answering. Hot tears ran down my cheeks. Tears of sorrow. Tears of mourning. Tears of anger and hate.

I had not cried since burying my wife on that wintry Denver morning. The realization made me even more resolute to never do it again. I wiped my eyes and walked away. I didn’t want anyone to see me, least of all the children. What had I been through compared to them? They were
eleven-years-
old. Who knew the horror they’d witnessed this past week and a half?

There was no need to traumatize them any more than they already were. We needed to be their heroes. I needed to be that for them, as ludicrous as my heart knew that idea to be.

~ ~ ~

“What are you doing?” Tilson Wayne said to me, just beyond the circle of light from the fire.

“Leave me alone, ghost. I don’t need your illusions anymore. I never did.”

“Those girls are not illusions.”

“Maybe not. But you are. You are an unwanted manifestation of my beleaguered mind.”

“How could I have known that you would find them?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“You asked before why I had come.”

“So?”

“I am no manifestation of your mind, Detective. I can’t tell you exactly what I am, but I know that I am real. Yes, I died when I was eleven years old. What you see before you is a man I cannot explain any more than you can.”