“Not a word.”
“I guess you never really do know some people,” Renate said.
“Well, it doesn’t matter. He’s no longer with us.”
At that, Brian went back to the living room and turned on the television. Waiting for the picture to come in, his mind raced. Now this? After everything that’s already happened, my departed friend claims to know the only way to Heaven? If so, why was his life suddenly snuffed out at such a young age?
Life was just too strange. Where are you, Justin?
Mulrooney had no answer to this all-important question. All he knew was Justin’s letter had really stirred something deep inside him. It was full of hope, something Brian felt completely out of.
Yet, despite that his whole world had just been turned upside down, Brian felt this hungering, this yearning, this tugging at his heartstrings. It was beyond ironic.
Is God trying to get my attention?
Mulrooney did not know. All he knew was whatever was stirring inside, faint as it was, it was comforting.
24
TAMIKA MOSELEY’S PLAN FOR this day was simple: to find her family, regardless of what Charles what’s-his-name said on the phone.
Normally at this hour, the New York City taxi driver would encounter rush-hour traffic of nightmarish proportions. But with far less vehicles on the roads, there was little traffic to speak of.
Most who had miraculously survived the Phenomenon were too distraught and too shell-shocked to take to the streets. They chose instead to remain barricaded inside their homes.
Even though the roads were less crowded with moving vehicles, thousands of crashed cars, trucks, motorcycles, municipal trucks and buses still littered the streets. It would take many weeks before they were all removed.
Add to that the massive amounts of garbage and charred debris strewn about from the many fires, and street navigation was impossible in some places. It looked liked bombs had been dropped on parts of Manhattan. The city was in shambles!
Tamika heard on a talk radio station that more than half of the fires in New York City had to burn themselves out. There were simply too many fires and not enough firefighters and trucks to go around. Hundreds of buildings still smoldered.
Though the weather called for a partly sunny day in Manhattan, a thick haze of smoke hovered above much of the city, enveloping the tops of most of Manhattan’s skyscrapers.
It was eerie, to say the least.
The man on the radio said it was like this worldwide.
Tamika brushed aside the destruction all around her and shifted her attention onto her ex-husband, Isaac. In the back of her mind, she always had this premonition that he would one day kidnap Jamal and Dante. Then he could force them to embrace Allah like he’d tried doing on so many occasions when they still lived under one roof. Could this have happened?
Right now, nothing was outside the realm of possibility.
Tamika pounded the steering wheel, “If you did anything to harm my babies, Isaac, I’ll kill you!”
Tamika drove to the precinct on 67th Street. It was time to involve the police. She went inside to find the place crawling with people filing claims and reports of all sorts.
Many others were handcuffed for looting and committing various other crimes and were awaiting transfer to jail. Everyone looked tired and stressed, free citizen and criminal alike.
After waiting 45 minutes, Officer John Rietz approached her. “What’s your problem?” he barked.
“I’m here to fill out a missing persons’ report,” Tamika said.
“Lady, do you know how many people are missing?”
“No, I don’t!” she replied, with the same level of sarcasm she was just given.
Realizing he was out of line, Officer Rietz toned it down a little, “Okay, who’s missing?”
“My two sons and my mother.”
“Ages?”
“My boys are five and four. My mother is...”
Officer Rietz cut her off, “Ma’am, are you aware that every young child on the planet’s disappeared?”
Tamika was growing more frustrated. She looked at his badge. “Officer Rietz, did you lose anyone yesterday?”
“No. No one I was close to anyway,” he retorted, with an anguished sigh.
“I lost my two boys and my mother. I’m here to file a report and I expect your help!”
“Okay, relax. I’ll file the report. But with everything else going on, it won’t be considered a top priority. I’ll take your information, but I can’t make any promises. Sorry.”
Tamika was no longer able to restrain herself. “Not a top priority?! Millions of children are missing and that’s not a top priority? What can be more important than our kids!”
Tamika pointed her finger squarely at Officer Rietz and wanted to say something but remained silent. After a five-second stare down, Moseley stormed out of the building, slamming the precinct door behind her.
“Why is this happening to me?” she screamed, looking skyward. “What did I do to deserve this?”
“You ain’t the only one, lady!” replied an intoxicated passerby.
Tamika sat on the steps of the police building trying to collect herself. If the police can’t help me—not that they ever have anyway—who can?
Her mind raced back to her conversation with Charles Calloway. Frankly, the inner peace he displayed on the phone earlier, despite losing his wife and five children, amazed her.
Was it because he never really cared for his family and wouldn’t miss ’em now that they’re gone? What else would cause someone to appear so calm at a time like this? He appeared to be the only person on the planet with a trace of sanity left.
Tamika pulled her cell phone from her pants pocket and called Charles Calloway. She got a voice message. The bereaved woman Googled the number to the Waldorf-Astoria and called it.
“Thank you for calling the Waldorf-Astoria. This is Betty, how can I be of service to you?”
“Room nine-seventeen, please.”
“Name of guest?”
“Charles Calloway.”
“One moment, please.”
After four rings, she heard, “The guest you are trying to reach is not in at the moment. At the tone, please leave a message.”
“Mister Calloway, this is Tamika Moseley. Please get back to me at your earliest convenience. Thank you.”
Tamika ended the call and left for home. She was so tired she could hardly think straight. If anyone needed rest, she did.
25
JACQUELYN SWINDELL WAS GROWING increasingly concerned for her parents. To see your own flesh and blood die—or, in this case, vanish right before your eyes—was a devastating thing to encounter, especially when it involved your own child.
Parents were always expected to cease from functioning before their children did, regardless of final outcome. Happening the other way was infinitely more traumatic.
As it was, George and Sheila Legler were barely hanging on...
Jacquelyn was sort of in the same situation herself. Though she’d never be able to put a face on the child that was plucked from her womb the day before, she nevertheless felt incredibly attached to it. It was like part of her was suddenly missing.
She still hadn’t mentioned the loss of her child to her parents. Judging by the looks on their faces, she didn’t have to.
Brian Mulrooney was right. They already knew.
Jacquelyn didn’t know how much more she could take. Not only was she coping with her grieving parents and the physical pain and emotional stress of losing a husband and unborn child on the same day, she was also grieving the loss of her brother, Dennis, sister-in-law, Michele, and a niece and two nephews. The
entire family vanished.
The youngest two, Samuel and Joshua, were four and two and, therefore, were still unaccountable for their actions. Rebecca was only eight, but she was wise beyond her years, which she attributed to reading the Word of God and her deep love for Jesus.
Jacquelyn recalled when her niece was baptized roughly a year ago. Before being dunked under the water, Rebecca thanked her favorite aunt for being there to witness it.
A tear rode down Jacquelyn’s right cheek. It was the only church service she’d attended all last year. Dennis and Michele constantly invited her to come worship with them. They promised that if only she would seek the Lord with all her heart, mind and soul, she would be completely transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit, and her life would never be the same.
Jacquelyn politely refused each invite. If being transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit meant buying into what their pastor often taught about the world being on a collision course with mass destruction, she wanted nothing to do with it.
Recently married with a child on the way—at least before the tragedy struck—it was the very last thing she wanted to hear.
Jacquelyn wasn’t the only one. Everyone in the family hated when Dennis and Michele spoke that way, especially her father.
George Legler was always grumbling that his son and daughter-in-law had acquired the wrong reading materials. “You’ve already brainwashed Rebecca,” he often barked, “it’s only a matter of time before you get to Samuel and Joshua, too!”
Yet, for harboring such fatalistic viewpoints, Dennis and Michele seemed so at peace about the future, optimistic really.
George Legler could never figure that one out...
Jacquelyn tried to avoid thinking such morbid thoughts, but considering how her husband had died, this seemed rather mild compared to that. No one could have survived what hit him. Tom’s body was so mangled he looked almost unrecognizable.
Had Jacquelyn not witnessed it with her own two eyes, she’d be hard pressed to believe it was actually her husband. The 29-year-old widow knew she would take that horrifying nightmare to her grave. It was an unspeakable way for anyone to die.
Jacquelyn’s heart was broken into too many pieces to count. She was certain more bad news was coming. It just hadn’t surfaced yet. To avoid going insane, she needed to compartmentalize these unhealthy thoughts to the best of her ability and focus on her folks for now. But it was much easier said than done.
Sitting in a reclining chair in the living room, Jacquelyn tussled her hair and shot a glance at her father laying on the couch. He stared at the ceiling completely motionless, as if in a trance, unwilling to accept his great loss.
Thankfully, his chest pains had subsided. Jacquelyn silently prayed he would survive this tragedy. She wasn’t so sure he would.
At least her mother was trying.
While she wouldn’t force her parents to speak, the silence was consuming her from within. It left her alone with her thoughts, the very last place she wanted to be right now—inside her head.
She tossed and turned all last night on the bed she slept on as a teenager, her mind flooded with two questions. Why did Dennis vanish while Tom was killed? Where did my baby go?
Jacquelyn decided to make it her life’s mission to find solid answers to these two most-pressing questions. Hopefully in time she would be able to make sense of it all. With her husband dead and the child inside her gone, if she didn’t keep herself busy day and night searching for the truth, she would have little desire to want to continue living on this crazy planet.
As tempting as suicide sounded, it wasn’t an option. No matter how desperately hopeless she felt, she needed to press on despite her feelings. At least that’s how she felt now. Who knew what thoughts would ensnare her in the coming days and weeks?
Three days ago, she was looking for baby furniture with Tom. Now, not only did Jacquelyn no longer have a husband; she no longer had a baby on the way either. What kind of force could be powerful enough to suck a life out of my body without my permission?
Then again, perhaps losing the baby was a blessing in disguise. Who would want to raise a child in this chaotic environment?
Jacquelyn exploded into tears. It was enough to shake her mother, Sheila, from her own fog. The 58-year-old woman held her daughter like she did when she was a little girl having a nightmare.
Jacquelyn clung to her mother for dear life. This provided temporary comfort, but little else. Even her mother’s loving embrace couldn’t change the fact that life would never be the same for any of them, ever again. Like it or not, it was a fact they needed to accept and do their best to adjust to, if they ever wanted to overcome this crippling blow they’d all been dealt.
Jacquelyn knew time healed all wounds. But glancing at her bereaved parents, she knew several lifetimes would be needed before their wounds were fully healed, and they felt anything close to being whole again. That is, if they were lucky.
Even so, for now, she was faced with two choices: either she could crawl into a corner to die, or try to make sense of the madness. Jacquelyn reluctantly chose the latter...
26
TAMIKA MOSELEY FOUND AN open parking space a block away from her apartment. Just as she was guiding her vehicle into position, the cell phone that one of her customers had left inside the taxicab rang, once again startling her.
Should I answer it? Oh, why not! Will someone arrest me if I do? “Hello?”
“Who’s this?”
“Who’s this?! Who’s this?” Tamika yelled defensively.
“This is the man whose phone you have.”
“Could you please be more specific?”
“My name’s Craig Rubin. With whom am I speaking?” the man demanded to know. “How do we know each other?”
Tamika calmed down a bit. “You left your phone in my cab.”
“So that’s where I left it!” Rubin slapped his head with the palm of his hand. “Are you the driver who took me to the airport yesterday?”
Tamika wasn’t in the mood for guessing games. Her head was throbbing, and she was starved for sleep. “Mister, I made five trips to three different airports yesterday, not to mention train stations, bus terminals and many other stops along the way. Could you please give me a little more to go on?”
“You haven’t been using my phone, have you?” Craig barked, displeased with her tone of voice.
“No, I haven’t! It rang four or five times already. This is the first time I answered it, okay?” Her reply was more satisfactory this time.
“I apologize for being so harsh. I’m the man you picked up in front of Mitzi’s Deli. You took me to JFK shortly before the disappearances. Remember me now?”
“Yeah, you was running late for your flight.”
“That’s me,” Rubin said, finally getting somewhere.
“Your phone’s fine, mister. No one’s used it, including me.”
“When can I get it back? I’ll pay you fifty bucks for your time.” Rubin was well-aware of the power of bribery.
For Tamika Moseley, it felt good to engage in a normal conversation for a change, one that didn’t involve the newfound craziness of the world. It took her mind off everything else for a brief moment. She knew it wouldn’t last.
“Sure, I’ll bring it to you. Same place?”
“That would be great, thanks,” said Rubin.
“No problem. Be there in twenty minutes.” Tamika pushed END on Craig’s phone, put the car in drive and, bone tired as she was, left for Mitzi’s Deli.
Many pedestrians tried hailing her down for a ride, but Tamika Moseley was closed for business. She just wanted to get to where she was going. She received many unpleasant hand gestures from some she refused to pick up.
A large sign hung on the wall behind the cash register: CASH ONLY!
An older woman approached her. “How many in your party?”
“I’m not eating. Is, uh, Craig Rubin here?”
“Who wants to know?” the woman demanded skeptically, giving Tamika a good looking over.
“He’s expecting me. I have his cell phone,” Tamika replied.
“Hold on, I’ll see if I can find him for you.”
Tamika nodded. She was taken aback by this woman’s attitude. She acted like nothing happened yesterday. More power to her!
After a few minutes, Craig Rubin surfaced. “Ah, Tamika, thanks for coming. Can I get you a cup of coffee or something to eat?”
“No thanks. Gotta run.” Tamika pulled Craig Rubin’s cell phone out of her handbag and handed it to him. “Place sure is jumping. You’d never know we had a tragedy yesterday.”
“Yeah. My father decided to open at the last minute. He figured most places would be closed. But people still gotta eat. What was it…” Craig looked up at the ceiling and searched his memory. “…fifteen percent of the buildings in Manhattan were destroyed.” He sighed. “We even lost one of our restaurants.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Tamika said softly.
There was a moment of awkward silence. Rubin was on the verge of tears. “I also lost my mother,” he said, somberly. “She died shortly after the disappearances. Her heart gave out on her.”
Tamika lowered her head and did her best to compose herself. She was in no condition to console a total stranger. Not yet, anyway.
“It was probably for the best though. She was in the final stages of breast cancer. Battled it for many years. Her days were numbered. At least now she’s at peace.” Rubin’s voice trailed off. “Makes losing a restaurant seem like no big deal.”
The Aftermath Page 9
