“Mr. Franks,” Jem said, shaking the boy’s hand.
“Why aren’t you teaching this year? You were my favorite teacher,” the young man said.
“Because I didn’t have enough students like you,” Jem said.
“Do you know what’s going on?” John David asked.
“Not a clue,” Jem said. “But it looks like whatever is going on affected the whole town.”
“Yeah man,” John David said. “I woke up this morning and my moms and sisters were all gone. I called my gramma, but she ain’t answer either. So, I walked down to her house, and she ain’t there.”
“You’re not alone,” Jem said. “Mr. Jones here and I had the same thing happen at our houses. Both our wives are gone.”
“This is cray,” one of the other boys said.
“I agree,” Jem said. “Cray indeed.”
“There was cars crashed into each other down on Lexington Street,” John David said. “Still running, but nobody in them. Clothes, though. Their clothes was all still there.”
Jem had noticed the same thing, the vehicles, some small, others large SUVs, crunched into one another at intersections and crashed into curbs. At one of the red lights, several cars idled empty, the occupants assumedly vanished just as his wife did, as all the other women did.
“Yeah, my dog is gone too,” one of the boys said. He was shorter than John David, but still had the same long, athletic build. He wore an Air Jordan tank top and red baseball cap turned backwards.
“Maybe it ran away,” Jem proposed.
“Nah, man. She stays inside. She sleeps with my mom. But this morning, when I was looking for her, I found the collar in the bed,” the boy said.
This made Jem perk up. “Female dog?”
“Yeah. My mom’s had her for years. Dresses her up in those little dog sweaters and shit,” the teenager said.
The crow outside his window that morning, cawing and squawking, came to Jem’s mind. Had the little bird lost its mate? Had it been just as confused? Surely that couldn’t be, he reasoned. Surely the animals were spared from this vanishing.
As Jem stood there thinking about the implications of what he’d just been told, the police chief took the makeshift podium in front of the steps of the building, the large granite columns framing the hulking man.
Chief Howard McMillan was a large, imposing man, barrel-chested and thick-necked. His jaw seemed to be cut from the same granite that made up the building behind him. He’d been chief of police for as long as Jem and Susan had lived in Decker. Though cordial, he also never spared to make his disliking of outsiders be known. Decker was a tight-knit community and, according to Chief McMillan, outsiders never ceased to enforce their own politics and will on the town that had long existed before and without them. Today he was dressed in his all-black uniform, but he had his sleeves rolled up. In his hand was a bullhorn, and he tapped it a couple of times to ensure it was powered on.
“Gentlemen, citizens of Decker, give me your attention,” he said over the crowd, his voice staticky from the electronic bullhorn. The deep voice echoed through the parking lot and the crowd slowly quietened to hear the police chief’s address. “There seems to be some kind of disaster in our city.” The men in the crowd mumbled and shook their heads. Chief McMillan continued, “Now I don’t want to alarm you, but as you are most likely aware, the women of our city have been snatched from us in the night. We don’t know the cause. We don’t know who is responsible. But there are some serious implications here.”
A man in the crowd shouted out and Jem looked back to see the source of the commotion. A man in a white oxford shirt tucked into his jeans held a Bible high above his head, the gold embossing on the black leather cover glinting in the noon sun. Jem groaned. Decker had its share of the religious contingent, and this man in particular stood out as one of the more aggressive. He was Pastor Gary Knox, and he never shied from espousing his beliefs on those who would hear. If you didn’t hear the pastor’s sermon on Sunday mornings, never fear—he could be found, more often than not, on the corner of Main and Juniper, speaking through a bullhorn with a Bible held high in the air. The church he preached at was small, but his followers were just as fanatical as their leader, and they’d often join him on that street corner. He was zealous, Knox would call it. “Don’t you see what’s going on?” the pastor shouted above the gathered crowd. “Hear me, for the Word of God defines what is happening here today, my brothers!”
Chief McMillan stopped his address as the man would continue. The police chief motioned to two of his officers that stood at the circumference of the assembly. “It was the same as in the days of Lot, for when Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down on the city. This is judgment! On the night of judgement, one is taken from the bed and the other remains! It’s all foretold in the great book of our Lord, Jehovah!”
“Oh, pipe down, you crazy bastard!” a gruff voice cried out over the pastor’s address. “This ain’t one of your damned Left Behind books!”
“Hear me! For the great Lord Jehovah speaks through me!” the pastor continued. As he did, two officers sifted through the crowd and grabbed the Bible-toting man by the arms and ushered him out of the midst. The pastor resisted for a moment, kicking and screaming. “I have rights! I have rights! You will all burn in hell for your sins! Adulterers! Idolaters will all burn!” he continued to scream as he was led to the side of the city hall building. The city jail and drunk tank occupied the lowest level of city hall, and Jem assumed that’s where they were leading Pastor Knox.
“Let me tell you all something right now,” Chief McMillan said in his bullhorn. “Inciting a riot will not be tolerated. Mayor Graham is missing. Judge Anne Wilson is missing. This city will not devolve into carnage and rioting on my watch. Any actions that defy this will be met with punishment according to the law.” He scanned the hundreds of men and adolescents gathered in front of him. “This is our city, and we will not see it be torn apart in fear.”
The men applauded. Jem and Steve Jones looked at each other with apprehension.
The police chief continued in his bullhorn, “This city will continue to operate as normal until we can properly assess the situation. The 911 call center will be back up within the hour, as phones are being routed locally. There will be no looting. The stores will remain open, with increased security.”
“Chief McMillan!” another voice, older and frail called out. The older man had his arm raised in the air. The police chief pointed and nodded to allow the man to speak. “Chief, we haven’t received our shipment this morning at the grocery!”
There was an audible murmur throughout the crowd.
“That’s right!” another man called out. “Nothing came in to the post office overnight from San Antonio!”
The audible murmur grew into more of a clamor.
“We have officers looking into the situation,” Chief McMillan said, motioning his free hand to lower the commotion. “We are going to stay calm as we assess exactly what is happening. In the meantime, as Chief of Police, and with the full support of the remaining members of the city council, I am enacting a curfew, effective immediately. All streets shall remain clear at dusk. The brave officers here will be patrolling throughout the night.” The chief paused and seemingly stared into the pupils of every man in the crowd, his face stern and unbending. “Order will be maintained. Order will be enforced. You are free to go.”
With that, Chief McMillan handed the electronic bullhorn to an older portly man standing at the side of the podium. He was one of the two remaining city council members, Harrold Harris. The other two, both women, were presumably gone, vanished in the night, just as all the other women in Decker. The man, his belly hanging out far below his waistline, his bald head with its few strands of hair hanging on for dear life swaying in the light breeze held the bullhorn to his lips and began to speak, but the crowd had already begun to disperse, back to their homes and offices. Instead, Harrold Harris dropped the bullhorn to his side
and left the concrete steps, his head hanging low like his gut.
Jem and Steve Jones were some of the last to leave, walking back to their vehicles parked at the shopping center where they’d met with the young owner of the cell phone repair shop. As they started, Brandon caught up with them, walking in step back to the shop. Instead of going home until the noon cattle call, the three men had stayed at TechMedix, mostly in silence.
As they walked, the elder man broke their silence. “I don’t like this,” he said. “If there’s ever been a power play in this town, you’re seeing it.”
“The chief just wants to keep everyone safe,” Brandon Owens said.
“Son,” Mr. Jones said, “I’ve lived in this town for a long time, and if I know anything it’s that Howard McMillan is having the time of his life.”
“You really think so?” Brandon asked.
“There’s never been a more power-hungry son of a bitch that ever lived,” Mr. Jones said.
The three men reached the shop, and Jem went to the door of his Jeep, unlocking the vehicle with the fob from his pocket. “Gentlemen, stay safe,” he said. “Steve, I’ll be at home if you need anything.”
The older man gave him a two-finger salute as he went to his own vehicle.
Jem didn’t know it, but it was the last time he’d see Steve Jones alive.
CHAPTER 9
CHIEF | 12:35PM
“SON OF A bitch!” The chief threw his feet up on his desk and leaned back in the leather chair, the thing squeaking and groaning under his weight and the weight of years. The black leather cracked and split under the man’s ass. He’d been offered a new chair nearly every year, but the chief vowed to keep the old thing around as long as he could, until the wheels on the bottom rusted off. Penny, the love of his life, had given him the chair, one of those ergonomic, posture-reinforcing units, as a gift many birthdays ago. Who would have ever guessed that the thing would have outlived her? That the cancer would spread so fast, and so relentlessly, leaving him with only memories and gifts. Marriage to Penny had been the best twenty-four years of his life. Now it was just he and his son, who had moved back home after failing out of Stephen F. Austin University. Friends and family told him the kid would need some time to cope with and process his mother’s death. The kid, however, mostly stayed in the basement of their home, playing on that damned PlayStation, yelling obscenities into the headpiece, coming out only to eat or shit.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me about the truck situation? We can’t even call out of this damn town, and now you’re telling me we’re cut off from the whole world?” he asked.
The man standing in front of the desk, a young junior officer named Brad Barnes, was still sweating, dark patches of wet fabric growing under the armpits of his black button-up shirt. A heavy twill fabric that didn’t breathe very well, coupled with the anxiety of being on the receiving end of a Chief McMillan tirade, was enough to make anyone in the building perspire. Add to that the unseasonably warm and humid weather and the sweat just poured.
“We don’t know that we’re cut off, sir,” the younger officer said, the words catching in his throat. “With your permission, I’d like to drive out to San Antonio to assess the situation at county. Radios aren’t working and neither are phones when we try to call county dispatch. We can’t reach the Governor’s office in Austin either. This may be a state of emergency.”
“I know that,” the chief said. “We need as many officers as possible out there,” the man pointed out the window of his office, which looked out from the ground floor of city hall and down to the parking lot where the chief had just given his announcement. “Until we can properly assess the situation and know exactly what’s going on, we are going to be spread thin, so I want everyone in this force on duty. We also need to go door-to-door to every house of unmarried or widowed women in town.”
“I agree. But I do think someone needs to drive to San Antonio, sir. It’s a possibility that this is happening all over the county, or even the entire state,” Barnes said.
Chief McMillan looked out the window and sighed. “Alright. Take a patrol car and go to San Antonio. See what’s going on there. Come back and report to me. Let me know what you find.”
Barnes said, “Yes, sir,” and started for the door.
“Hey, kid,” Chief McMillan called him back into the room. Barnes wheeled on his heels and stood at the front of the desk. The chief’s voice got quiet, almost pensive. “Did you see Chris out there?”
“You mean at the meeting sir?”
“Yeah.”
“No, sir. Your son was not in attendance,” Barnes said.
Of course he wasn’t. He’d told the boy that he needed to get up and get dressed, but his demands were met with a handwave from behind the armrest of the couch down in the basement. The chief sighed again, this time with a gruff, and pursed his lips. “Alright. Get out of here and come right back. I’m going to have to find my son.”
The young officer left and the chief sat up in his chair, unfolded his black-framed reading glasses and stared at the computer screen. He had a list of all the residential addresses in town, the ones with single women highlighted. He pushed the list to the printer.
CHAPTER 10
GRANT | 12:40PM
GRANT OLIVER DROVE home from the downtown meeting with Benjamin and the three Lester boys all crammed in the passenger seats of his Lexus. Tommy, the oldest, sat up front with him. All four boys were red from standing in the noon sun, and Grant hadn’t even thought about sunscreen for the fair-skinned kids. Even Benjamin’s face was red on his cheeks and nose. They had toughed it out though, out there on the hot pavement while Chief McMillan glared at all of them with his brows furrowed and jaw clenched. The message was positive—life will go on—but the tone was tough, totalitarian. They’d left the parking lot meeting, Grant carrying Benjamin and the Lester boys pulling up the rear like a momma duck and her ducklings. Except, there might not even be any momma ducks left, and the daddy ducks were nursing hangovers and trying to figure out what the hell to do.
“Do you boys have food at home?” Grant asked the boys as they drove back home.
They all nodded. “Yes sir,” Tommy said. “Mom went shopping the other day when she got paid. We’ve got ramen and hot dogs for a few days.”
“Okay, good.”
If you wanted to know the absolute truth of it, Grant didn’t want to be responsible for these three boys living next door, but he could empathize with the fear of not knowing where their mother had gone. Their entire support system, vanished in the middle of the night, leaving her nightgown in the bed.
At the meeting, Grant had realized just how serious the situation was. Every man in town stood in the parking lot of city hall, listening to the chief of police—and now acting Mayor—give his impassioned and stern speech.
The town, until further notice, was under Martial Law.
Grant pulled the Lexus into the driveway, and the three Lester boys poured out of the car and into the blistering heat. “If you need anything, come knock on the door,” Grant said.
“Yes sir,” Tommy said as he shut the door and led his brothers back to their motherless home.
Grant had a good feeling that the three boys would be okay for a day or two. As he unbuckled Benjamin from his car seat, he took one last look at the Lester boys walking back to their home. For a moment, Grant was about to say something, but stopped himself. He would pack their bags and leave silently; no goodbye, a clean break.
He carried his son inside and let him down in the doorway. “Go find some of your toys, Ben,” he said.
His son ran down the hall to his bedroom. The kid was obsessed with toys. Action fingers, he called them, the plastic heroes that he would smash together in fights. With his son occupied, Grant started packing their things into a duffel bag. He grabbed a few changes of clothes for both of them, as well as a few of Benjamin’s things. He’d pack them all up, throw them in the car and get the hell out of there.
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His brother lived in Houston. He could get there by four, maybe five o’clock. He had filled the Lexus’s gas tank just a few days ago, and he had more than enough fuel to get them there. The previous night’s memories were coming back to him in little spurts, small flashes. The bar. Craig’s house. The billiards table. The couch.
The woman in his arms.
And now Catherine was dead, and he needed to get out of here.
He’d seen her out at Mulligans, the sports bar on the west end of town. She’d danced around the billiards tables, knowing she had the eye of every man in the place. Flirty and young, she knew exactly what to do to be seen. She had that bohemian, don’t-give-a-fuck vibe that drove men wild. Grant doubted that the woman had ever actually purchased a drink for herself. Yes, he remembered seeing her at Mulligans, talking, the liquor flowing and the flirtations ramping up. They’d danced, her body rubbing against his, causing the blood to flow down below his belt.
But then the men had gone to Craig’s. They’d shut down the bar and gone to Craig’s house and he’d fallen asleep on the couch there, waking up this morning and coming home. Could he account for every hour? He’d had, what, four? Five beers? That’s not more than any other regular guys’ night out. His hangover this morning told him he’d had quite a bit, sure, but did he black out? As he reached up into the top of the closet for his black canvas duffle bag, his fingers finally wrapping around one of the handles, he thought about all these things. Christine’s sister. She was attractive, no doubt about that, with the slender yet curvy frame his wife once had, but the woman was his sister-in-law. Surely he had more self-control than to take advantage of her drunken state.
Grant shook his head to clear the thoughts, feeling his brain rattle against his temples. On his nightstand was a bottle of generic pain meds. He grabbed the bottle, tore the lid off and shook a half-dozen of the white pills into his hand and tossed them into his mouth. A plastic water bottle on the nightstand with what had to be three-day-old water washed them down, the stale tastelessness going down the man’s gullet. If anything, the caffeine in the pain relievers would keep him alert for the drive to Houston.
In the Fog Page 5
