Then the helicopter came back. It hovered over the house. The people inside did not appear. It came lower, and when it did, he thought for a moment that it was not a helicopter at all, that it had another configuration entirely. It also made a strange sound, he noticed, hissing like escaping gas rather than chuffing like helicopters usually do.
He watched the helicopter circle the house, then fly off fast in the direction of Harrow.
They hadn’t even landed. But surely they weren’t in radio contact with the people in the house, not with townspeople. So what were they really doing?
The destruction inside his house went on and on. At least he was fairly sure they wouldn’t set it on fire. It was the dry season, and a fire would spread up and down the ridge. The volunteer fire department would be in a shambles, if it even still existed, so no, they wouldn’t do that.
He saw books coming out of Winnie’s bedroom window, her old treasures, The Winter Noisy Book and Cat in the Hat and Jennifer and Josephine. He heard clanging as Trevor’s Yamaha keyboard was smashed.
The day wore on, the sun crossed the sky, and still Martin lingered, unable to leave the sacking of his home, in despair, in sorrow, and wondering—hoping—all the while that Trevor was hiding in the crawl space or the attic or the storm cellar.
Finally, at a quarter past three, the two trucks departed.
He waited. He scanned the sky methodically, all of it he could see. He was practiced at spotting tiny objects in sand, and the sky was not so different from a featureless wasteland in Tunisia or Libya.
He was just starting toward the house when he heard, from very far off, a sort of sighing sound. Immediately, he faded back into the stand of trees.
High in the afternoon sky, there was a black dot.
They were still up there.
He waited, listening to the faint sound of the thing, never moving from behind the tree where he hid.
By the time the sound had gone, the sun was setting. He stepped out to the edge of the yard he’d mowed a thousand times.
Maybe they had left somebody hiding in the house. He hadn’t really seen them, after all, just the trucks.
He moved across the grass, aware of its whisper beneath his feet. Dear God, but an abandoned home is a lonely place.
Martin searched the storm cellar. He pulled open the door and peered down inside. Then he climbed in. Things appeared unchanged—there was the lantern, there were the candles in their box, the two gallons of water, the box of PowerBars, all untouched.
Martin was surprised at how much sadness weighed on him to know that his son had not been here.
He crossed the yard to the front porch. The door stood open. He entered, careful to look first for wires across the entryway, and not to move the door at all.
He looked, amazed at what confronted him. “Trevor,” he whispered. Then shouted, “Trevor, it’s Dad! Are you here? Trevor!”
He bent down to the ruins of the dining room table. How could this be, wood destroyed like this? He ran his hand over the lumpy, twisted mess.
The wood had been melted, there was no other explanation.
This hadn’t been done by townspeople, or any people. People couldn’t do this, we couldn’t melt wood. And look at the books, all turned to powder, and the knives in the knife rack, drooping like melted candles.
“Trevor!” He opened the crawl space, looked inside. “Trevor?”
No sign of his boy.
He went upstairs and opened the hatch to the attic. “Trevor, are you up here? It’s Dad.” He pulled down the steps and went up. It was a complicated attic, and he was careful to look in every nook and cranny. A twelve-year-old could make himself very small if he wanted to, and Trev was expert at hiding.
When he understood for sure that he wasn’t there, Martin felt himself just run out of steam. He sat down on the floor. He was suffering now more deeply than he would have thought a human being could suffer. This was what they called anguish, this searing, agonized sense of helplessness. Every time he thought of Lindy walking and walking like that, and his precious little Winnie toddling and limping, his insides twisted against themselves. And Trevor—the sense of him being somewhere in the wind, scared and alone, made him feel more helpless than he’d felt in the jail.
He suppressed an urge to go up on the roof and scream his name, even though that might actually work.
Trevor knew these woods well. He could be hiding back in there somewhere close enough to hear.
Martin headed downstairs, and as he passed their little office, he stopped. He stared in confusion. What was this? Increasingly confused and amazed, he went inside. His papers hadn’t been taken, they’d been methodically shredded, and not simply ripped up, but turned into masses of what looked like thread. Books turned to dust were strange enough, but this was just bizarre.
His laptop lay on his desk. He touched it—and snatched his hand back when the edge of the screen collapsed under his fingers. He touched the keyboard, and the whole laptop simply disintegrated. He was left with more dust.
He understood that he was seeing firsthand the work of the enemy. Whoever had been in those two pickups had not been human.
He raced downstairs, threw open the gun closet—but Lindy had taken their only gun, her little shotgun. It was still at Third Street Methodist.
He cursed bitterly, and as he did so heard something. At first, it sounded like that strange chuckling he’d heard when he was among the followers, and it came from the woods behind the house. But then that sound was covered by another, the rumble of a huge engine, the same sound he’d heard briefly in the streets of the town.
He ran into the hall and down to his and Lindy’s bedroom where he could look out into the driveway.
As he watched, three huge, black Humvees came trundling up to the house, and black-clad soldiers jumped out, their faces covered by dark plastic. It looked like a Ranger team right out of some military movie, but he knew that these were not Rangers.
He was face to face with his enemy.
TEN
DECEMBER 11 INNOCENT
WILEY CAME HOME TO A very subdued household. “What gives?” he asked Kelsey as he carried his new laptop into the kitchen.
She called out, “Mommy, he’s back.”
Nick appeared, his eyes scared. “Why did you chop up your computer, Dad?” There were tears in his voice.
“It had to die. Its life was over.”
“Children, go upstairs.”
As they hurried off, Kelsey said, “Daddy is insane.”
Brooke lifted a box onto the kitchen table. In it were the remains of his old laptop.
“What’s the big deal?” he asked.
“The big deal is, you went after this thing with a hatchet, and I want an explanation for that behavior, because it’s too far from the norm and I’m considering getting my children out of here. That is the big deal.”
He tried to sound reasonable. He even smiled. “The hard disk was fried. Nothing would erase.”
“So you went after it with a hatchet?”
“I did that to make sure the files could never be recovered. You can’t put a computer loaded with files you can’t erase in the landfill. Next thing you know, your life is gonna be on the Internet. So, my love, I have acted rationally, and I do not think I’ve given you reason to take my kids away from me.”
She shook her head. “Oh, Wiley, it’s so hard. It is so hard, honey, and I’m getting tired in my soul.”
“Now, hey, this is us! Me and my girl!”
“Goddamnit, go upstairs and set up your computer!”
He went to her instead, and took her in his arms. She felt pliant and indifferent, but did not try to pull away. “Please, Brooke, bear me. You’re all I have. Bear me.”
She shuddered all over, then buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed bitterly.
“Don’t start yelling,” he whispered, “remember the kids…remember the kids.”
And slowly, there in his arms, s
he composed herself. She drew back from him. They met each other’s eyes. They kissed.
From halfway up the back stairs came Kelsey’s excited whisper, “We have a kiss!”
So the troubled ship of the Dale family sailed on, tossed on a dark ocean, lost to navigation, but still afloat.
He’d bought a top-of-the-line laptop, fast processor, huge memory, massive hard disk, every bell and whistle known to man.
“It’s nice,” Brooke said as he put it on his desk and plugged it in.
“It was actually somewhat inexpensive. Ish. But it has room to grow.”
She sat down at the desk as he crawled around hooking it up to their home network. He had an Ethernet. Out here, wireless was unstable because of all the electrical storms.
“What’s this?”
“What?” He came up from behind the desk.
“2012,” she said.
“Died under the hatchet, I’m afraid.”
She stood up, gestured. He looked at the screen and saw words there, neatly typed: 2012, The War for Souls. It was his title page.
He reached out, ran his fingers down the screen.
“But you—you—oh, Wiley, this is weird, this is scaring me!”
“It’s scaring you? I went at that hard disk with a hatchet, and this computer has never been near this house before. It’s brand new, look at it, I just took it out of the box.”
“Now listen, because I am going to believe you. I am about to believe you. And if you are lying, and you did this to impress me or make me crazy or for whatever convoluted Wylie reason, then we are over, no matter how much we love each other, because I can’t—I can’t—I don’t like things that are weird like this, Wylie, I do not handle this stuff well. As you know.”
“Brooke, on my honor, on my soul, on all that I hold sacred, I brought this machine in here clean and clear and empty. I made no effort whatsoever to put those words on it, and I really and literally cannot imagine how they got there.”
She nodded. Then she kissed his cheek. “Wylie, I choose to believe you. Because I saw you hack that computer up and the hard disk is still in it, and you are telling me—assuring me—that you didn’t first put 2012 on an external drive—”
“Absolutely not. What external drive? I don’t even own one.”
“I know that. So I think we have to now escalate this whole thing. This is genuinely strange, it isn’t just Wylie weirdness. And my instinct is this. It is to protect my kids. Very, very carefully.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
She sighed. “I want to show you something that I wasn’t planning to let you see. But I think you need to see it and I’m sorry I hid it from you.”
She passed him the second section of the Lautner County Recorder, and there, on the first local news page was a fantastic and disturbing story. A man who lived about thirty miles south of there had disappeared while riding a four-wheeler near Coombes Lake. “Local residents who wish to remain anonymous claim that he was seen ascending in a shaft of extremely bright light. A search thus far has turned up no sign of William Nunnally. Dogs have been unable to gain a scent except from the abandoned vehicle itself.”
He read it. Read it a second time. Then he grabbed his phone. “I gotta make a call.”
Matt was off his cell, so he called him on the official line.
“Police emergency.”
“It’s me.”
“Not on this damn line!”
“Then turn on your cell, damnit!”
“I don’t want to turn on my cell, you’ll call me and call me and bother me with trivia while I’m trying to work.”
“This isn’t trivia.”
“I’m out there gettin’ that drunken shit Joe Wright to stop going after his sainted wife with a cheese grater of all the damn things, and you call. Happens every time. Or I’m trying to eat. Then, for certain, it’s gonna be you.”
“Speech over?”
“I’m hanging up.”
“I have a police report.”
“If this is about a skunk, possum, or coon, please call the FBI.”
“It’s about a possible UFO attack down in Melrose County.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Call down there and then call me back, can you do that?”
“ ’Course not. It’s not police business.”
“A man has disappeared. That’s police business.”
“The fact that this tragedy is of interest to you is what isn’t police business. Now, I’ve gotta go, seriously. I’ve got a call out on Mr. Leonard’s god-for-damned-big fuckin’ snake got away again.”
“Don’t hang up, damnit, do this! Hello? Shit!” He slammed down the phone. “He has to go catch a snake.”
“That thing. Who in the world would want a fifteen-foot python for a pet?”
“I thought about a python at one point.”
“And then I had children.”
The phone rang. Brooke picked up. She listened, handed it to Wiley. “Look, the truth is I got an assignment down there, and I’m leaving in a few minutes and I guess you can tag.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, and I’m not waiting, either. They want me to look over the dogs, the dogs are acting up and I’ve run a fair number of ’em. So I’ll pick you up in fifteen.”
“What about the snake?”
“Screw the snake. A man’s life is at stake here. I’ll pick you up in fifteen.”
He hung up the phone. Brooke looked at him. “And?”
“I’m going down there with Matt.”
For a moment, she returned to the paper. Then she looked up. “You know that I love you very much,” she said. “Never forget that.”
He reached out to her and took her hand. “I’ve thought—lately, you know…it’s been hard. I know I’ve been tough to live with.”
“You have yet another book that’s making you crazy and I’m a writer’s wife. My skill is to keep you from going around the bend until it’s finished and we’ve got our money. Then you can go around the bend until I miss my guy, then you have to come back.”
“Do I come back?”
She squeezed his hand. “You come back.”
He looked up, looked at Brooke. “Where are the kids?”
“The kids are in their rooms cowering.”
“Oh, yeah.”
She put her hand on his forehead. “You’re not going anywhere, you’re on fire.”
Matt honked.
“I’ll take a couple of aspirin, I’ll be fine.”
“You’ve been up working almost continuously for days, and a couple of aspirin aren’t gonna do it.”
Matt came in. “Hey, Wiley, I haven’t got all day!”
Brooke went between them. “He’s sick as a dog, he’s not coming.”
“Jeez, musta come on all of a sudden.”
“He’s exhausted, he won’t sleep!” She took him under the arm. “You’re taking a pill and going to bed, and that’s final.”
“Sorry, Wiley, feel better.”
He shook her off.
“Wiley, you can’t do this!”
“I have to! HAVE TO!”
“You don’t belong getting mixed up in this.”
He gestured toward the computer. “I need to look into it. It could be related.”
“YOU LEAVE IT THE FUCK ALONE!”
Silence. The faint sound of plaster falling from the ceiling. And a decision of stunning intensity. “I have to do this,” he said quietly, “or it will be my soul.”
She wept, shook away the tears, and nodded. “Good-bye,” she said in a whisper.
“Brooke—”
She shook her head, stepped back, then suddenly turned to the sink and started in on the dishes.
As they rolled out, he heard them clanking, and saw her in the window and thought to himself that something, indeed, was being lost between them. It was like a quicksand pit had appeared in the middle of the marriage. Everything you did to save yourself made
you sink a little deeper.
He rode in silence beside Matt, who also said nothing. They’d been friends a long time, and there are times when friends just don’t talk.
They drove through Harrow, then into the cropland to the south. “Storm’s comin’,” Wiley said, “look at that mutha.”
The western sky was choked with great towers of clouds, and Wiley knew that, if there was a storm in this universe, then in the other universe there would be one ten times worse, and he felt for them, he worried about the wanderers out there in the rain and the wind, he wondered about Martin on his desperate quest, a brilliant archaeologist who sensed that he could save his dying world if only he could connect a few more dots, who now wanted only to reconnect with his son, and somehow save them both.
The worst of it was that he couldn’t help them. He could know of their suffering, but could not lift a finger.
He could not warn Al North about Samson. He could not help Martin find Trevor. He could not give a single wanderer back his soul.
So why in the name of all that was holy was this happening to him?
They drove in silence. Matt followed the GPS onto more and more isolated back roads.
“Where is this place?”
“Middle of nowhere. I’ve got them figured for trailer trash.”
“Trailer people.”
“Still trash in my business, buddy, till I’ve actually pulled the knives outta the gizzards. Then they’re perps and vics.”
Wiley heard the voice, but only vaguely. He wasn’t interested in banter anymore. He was beyond banter. “The guy went up in a column of light?”
“And the dogs can’t catch a scent off anywhere except the seat of the four-by-four.”
“Which means it did happen.”
“Which means the dogs need checking out, which is what I am doing.”
They turned into a driveway.
“Here we are,” Matt said.
They pulled up in front of, not a trailer, but an exquisite, ultramodern house, an architectural gem. There were half a dozen police vehicles of various kinds parked in the yard, a couple with their light bars still flashing. Other than the clicking of their switches, the silence was profound.
2012 The War for Souls Page 14
