Search For Reason (State Of Reason Mystery, Book 2)

by Miles A. Maxwell

  He climbed aboard his Hummer and drove away.

  Twelve Tired Refugees

  Del carried Melissa back to the house. Her great-grandmother’s presence seemed to soothe and settle the child — easily as well as Harry’s had. Del pulled the blanket away from Melissa’s face. “She’s so beautiful!” Del cried, not to anyone in particular, Del’s face still dark. “At least she’s okay. And you two boys.”

  Franklin could see she was fighting a total breakdown.

  “I suppose I can rustle up something for these people to eat,” Del told him as they reached the back door. “Sandwiches or something.”

  Voices drifted from the kitchen:

  “A blast from outer space!”

  “I see,” someone answered.

  “White supremacists did it. The second one was supposed to be Washington — but the capital’s too well guarded. They still took out all the Jews in New York.”

  “Uh-huh. Thank you, sir.”

  “Technically it’s a miss. Except for a few power outages, Washington is pretty much undamaged.”

  “A miss? You call it a miss? Over half a million more dead? Norfolk and Virginia Beach completely destroyed?”

  “People, there’s never been anything like this in the U.S. The government estimates three million dead in the greater New York City and Norfolk areas. Black rain in New Jersey. Radiation poisoning, starvation, freezing temperatures — medicine shortages will easily double that number.”

  The voice of the radio host vacillated between outrage and sadness. “What are you listening to?” Franklin asked.

  “Nothing —” Del looked at the radio. “Oh that —” She turned it down. “He’s that local nutcase. National broadcast from over in Pahrump out of his house.” Her voice was hoarse. “You know — that slogan, The Strange and the Unusual. Takes calls from all over the U.S. I listen to him in the evenings sometimes.” She wiped her right eye.

  Del frowned, her eyes dropping to Melissa. “I can’t stand the things those TV news people say. He doesn’t know what’s going on either but at least he admits it. Real story gets out just as soon anyway.” She shook her head. “You have to give him credit though. He balances out what they say with his own comments. Some of them that call in make him sound sane.”

  “And us sane for listening to it,” Franklin muttered.

  People from the jet drifted in cautiously through the kitchen’s back door. A slim, dark-haired man had his arm around a middle-aged woman with auburn hair. They introduced themselves to Del. “Thanks for having us here.” He nodded toward the wall phone mounted above the counter. “Mind if I call our relatives in Henderson? They should be able pick us up.”

  “Go ahead, but it’s been cutting out since yesterday,” Del said as she carried Melissa from the room.“

  Franklin opened a door on the far side of the kitchen. “One bathroom through here. Another that way,” he pointed.

  “Thank you,” the first woman said and closed the bathroom door behind her. Another woman hurried down the hall.

  Del returned with Melissa and a large shiny maroon pillow. She pushed it back on the counter, then set Melissa on top.

  The shrill voice of a radio caller said:

  “The Martian guy wasn’t too far off, except it’s a hoax, like that radio show back in the fifties about the Martians landing — all for ratings! That’s —”

  “Thank you for the call, sir.”

  The host took a series of bizarre callers rapid-fire, one after another:

  “It was done by the Chinese.”

  “Afghans.”

  “Could be some disgruntled nuclear employees, couldn’t it?”

  “The Russians did it. Who else has nuclear bombs?”

  “Armageddon begins! The ultimate act of Jehovah!”

  “I’m telling you, it’s the Israelis — they just want to make us hate the Arabs more.”

  A voice warbled nervously compared to some of the others; one of the talk host’s few female callers:

  “What about that new short-term disaster tax they’re talking about, to pay for cleaning up New York? This whole thing might have been caused by the government — just to get more money out of us!”

  The host disconnected her.

  “All right. Thank you for your call, madam, but that sort of thing is really not appropriate. We’ll be right back after we pay a few bills and check in with the national news update.”

  Franklin reached for the OFF switch.

  “Leave it, boy!” Del grabbed his wrist. “I need to hear.” She sighed and let go of him. “Turn it down a little if you want.”

  With a forefinger, Franklin rolled the knob backward until the voices were barely audible, watching his grandmother’s face until he saw a twinge of pain, then increased it just a little.

  Knowing Cynthia is gone, hearing about the place she used to live is maintaining a kind of connection for her. Odd, she hasn’t expressed any desire to hear about it from us. He didn’t understand. She hasn’t even asked to see their bodies.

  The Mormon Plates

  What a crazy couple of days, Neil Bandish thought as he locked the door behind him. The property was closed and he had the run of the place. Who’d’ve thought? He’d actually felt the ground shake yesterday at the time the gift shop radio said the bomb went off down in New York City. Thank God I don’t know anybody in that modern-day Gomorrah!

  The power was still out. He hoped the shop would reopen in the morning. He gazed upward. Clear night sky. Bright stars. A full moon had risen over his shoulder.

  The several-mile trip home began on a concrete walkway, up a long set of white concrete stairs, past the golden statue of Angel Moroni. Neil usually worked late Mondays, doing weekly inventory for the Palmyra, New York, gift shop. Because of the bomb, they’d told him he could go home early. So he came in today to catch up. Just as well. He’d had nothing better to do. No wife, no girlfriend — his time walking at night was the high point of his week. The welcome rest allowed time to be by himself, just to think, maybe pray a little.

  Neil yawned comfortably as he crested the top of Hill Cumorah and started down to his favorite spot on the back side. He liked to stand there a few moments before continuing on home. It should be particularly beautiful in the snow and moonlight —

  He froze, teetering on the edge of a cliff that hadn’t been there last night.

  Neil pulled out the tiny pocket flashlight on his key ring and examined the earth around the drop-off. It was a clean cut that appeared to go down quite a ways, as if the earth had been split from within.

  What would cause the ground to do this? he wondered. Shock waves? That explosion — all the way over in New York City?

  Neil swept his light around the edge. He wished it were brighter. He realized he was looking at an optical illusion partly created by darkness and shadow. The rip began only about five feet deep, but at the end he thought he could make out the opening of a tunnel, descending into Hill Cumorah.

  He tried to see farther inside. The moonlight didn’t penetrate. His pocket light wasn’t strong enough.

  He looked down at his overcoat, his blue suit, white shirt, his polished shoes. I can take a look tomorrow when I can see better. Then Neil noticed three small indentations descending like handholds along the dirt wall.

  He put the light in his mouth, crouched down on the side of the cliff and swung his left leg over. The snow-covered grass was slippery, tougher to grip than he expected. He felt a foot around the wall until he found the first indentation, then the next.

  As he reached out his toe for the third, his forearms leaned across the edge, frozen dry grass against his fingertips. He was slipping. His foot found a flat surface. He played the faint beam around his feet. Stairs?

  He peered into the gloom. The bottom was difficult to make out. A musty smell permeated the air. He took the steps slowly downward, counting each one without meaning to . . . nineteen . . . twenty . . .

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sp; They stopped at a smooth dirt floor. The flat hardpacked earth moved off into what looked like a tunnel framed by square wood head and side beams. He put his left hand on one and shined the light along the rough surface, nervously frowning in concentration. These look really old! His heart was racing.

  He had to duck to get his six-foot frame beneath the first one. He edged farther inside and turned his light toward the tunnel’s end, suddenly realizing he was in a long room.

  Neil knew the history of this hill. It was the reason he worked here, the reason he had gone on a mission to Argentina three years earlier. The reason for the existence of his entire faith. The Book of Mormon was translated from plates loaned to the Prophet Joseph Smith by Angel Moroni in 1827, those same ancient plates secreted somewhere on the property.

  Forty yards farther on, his beam froze on what looked like a squared-off pile of loose stones. He played his dim light around its sides, slapped the penlight against his palm, trying to get more out of it.

  No, they aren’t random at all, he realized. The stones make up a crudely constructed chest of sorts. Irregular, slightly larger than house bricks, held together by crumbling mortar, all topped by this large, flat, slightly curved stone. It looks heavy — four inches thick, maybe. A foot and half back by two feet wide. The body of the chest seemed to spring from the earth floor that was tightly sealed around its base.

  There was nothing else, just dry earthen walls, an earth floor, the beamed ceiling. And this crude chest.

  He knelt down and ran his hands across the rough, curved top, around the sides of its sharp lip. Perhaps he should wait. Find one of the museum’s proctors — the local stake president? But his thumbs ignored his inner voice and he pushed against the front sides of the top-stone.

  Stuck! Heavier than he expected.

  He tried his palms against it. The stone’s cold sharp edge dug into his skin. He pushed harder. With a faint grinding, the right side slid backward about an inch.

  He still couldn’t see in!

  This time, ignoring the fierce cutting pressure in his hands, Neil put his shoulders into it. And the stone reluctantly gave way. Another inch, another . . . heart thumping in his ears, he played the tiny light down inside.

  Eyes large, the glint of gold shined back at him. The corner of a flat, gold plate, engraved with symbols in a language he’d never seen before.

  The Feeling

  More of the refugees drifted in and introduced themselves. A grizzled old Mexican followed them through the back door wearing a happy smile. He was maybe ten years junior to Del. He had short white hair and a stocky build.

  “Good to see you here, Señor Franklin. Y tú hermano y hermana? Everon? Cynthía? They are at the factory?”

  “Hi, Mano. Everon is outside. He’ll be in, in a few minutes.”

  “And Cynthía?”

  Franklin looked at Mano uncomfortably. “Cynthia died in New York.”

  “No!” The old man’s face crumpled. “Not Cynthi?”

  “We brought her body home to be buried,” Franklin said.

  Mano’s fierce eyes began to water. His gaze dropped. “Y Estéban?”

  “Yes, Steve too. We’ll go into town tomorrow and purchase something to bury them in —”

  “No!” Mano said. “I do it. I make two —”

  “One coffin,” Franklin interrupted softly.

  “One, Meester Frank? One?”

  “You’ll see.” Franklin whispered, moving closer to Mano. “Physically separating them would not be the best idea. They’re out in the jet. Everon could use your help bringing them in.”

  In Franklin’s peripheral vision Del’s nostrils flared, mouth open as she spread mayonnaise on a piece of bread. Through the back windows he let his eyes follow Mano’s hunched shoulders.

  Everon and the Mexican loaded the fat black body bag onto a makeshift stretcher — poles wrapped with a blanket, it looked like. Taking Cynthia and Steve out of that rubberized bag wouldn’t be wise after so long on the jet. They have to bring their bodies somewhere cool for the night and safe from coyotes.

  A minute later he knew where they were going. They’re taking Cynthia and Steve to the workshop.

  Franklin kept one eye on his grandmother. Del looked seconds from bolting out the door. Yet she remained focused on the same piece of bread she coated three times before moving to another.

  Franklin knew his grandmother. She’s going to wait ’til we’re all asleep. Then go look at them.

  Everon carried Harry’s soup box into the house.

  “Hello, boy,” Del said darkly, throwing an arm around his shoulder. She jerked back. “What the hell’s that?” she nodded into the box.

  “It’s your great-granddaughter’s pet bird, I guess. Whenever she’s away from it she goes into a kind of frenzy.”

  Del looked down at Melissa who smiled back. “Haven’t seen any frenzy out of her so far, boy.” There were tears in Del’s eyes.

  “There was a second bomb,” Franklin said. “Virginia Beach. And Norfolk. That had to be what hit the plane. The shock wave.”

  Everon nodded, “Not Washington?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “They’re calling it a miss,” Del shook her head. “Radio said five hundred thousand more are dead in Virginia Beach, Norfolk and such. Those people paid quite a price for that second bomb missing Washington.”

  “People are already dying from radiation poisoning. There was black rain at Teterboro,” Everon said. “Nowhere’s a miss. Wherever the radiation goes, even if it gets blown out to sea fast enough not to bother anybody here, it’ll end up in Europe.”

  “Vegas may be next,” said one of the women, holding onto her two children, a boy and a girl.

  “I doubt it,” her husband said. “Whoever’s doing it, they seem to be targeting the East Coast.”

  “We don’t know that!” she shot back.

  “It’s a gamble anywhere,” another man said. “Might as well gamble on Vegas.”

  Five hours of shell-shocked plane ride had pretty much cried them all out. The growing horror was penetrating. People were pushing buttons on cellphones. None of them were working. The man on Del’s kitchen wall phone was talking to relatives in Henderson.

  He turned to Everon. “Is there any way to get into Las Vegas?”

  Everon squinted, looked around, counting. “Well, we’ve got an old school bus we take some of our crew down to Phoenix in from time to time.” Everon looked at Del. “Think Jack could drive them?”

  Del nodded.

  The others made calls.

  There were a lot of tears, and mutual relief with those contacted. Finally everyone’s transportation was arranged. Some staying in Vegas, others traveling onward by bus, car or train. The comfort they’d taken for granted for so long was gone. It wasn’t safe anywhere.

  Del set out a big stack of chicken sandwiches on a white porcelain platter. Pitchers of milk, lemonade, green bottles of Moosehead beer. She fed Melissa from an old-looking baby bottle.

  One little blond girl walked shyly over from the kitchen table carrying two sandwiches. “Who’s Katelynn?” she asked.

  “Me,” a dark-haired girl replied dully. She looked to be inches away from catalepsy.

  The blond girl offered her a sandwich. “My name’s Kate. Our names are almost the same. I bet we’re almost the same age too. How old are you?”

  Taking the sandwich, Katelynn took a bite and answered, “Sometimes my muvver calls me Kate.”

  Little girls who must know some of their friends are dead, Franklin thought as he poured a glass of lemonade. Trying to find anything to draw themselves together. Anything to get away from the fear and death, the terror of their neighborhood in New York.

  “Did you hear that?” one woman pointed at the radio.

  “The President’s going to be on television,” one of the little boys said.

  Franklin turned up the volume. The host’s voice came up, “ — what the President has to
say in about ten minutes. Let’s go quickly to commercial.”

  “Isn’t it too soon for him to know anything?” said one of the Vegas-bound gamblers.

  “We can watch in the living room,” Everon said.

  “Should we let the children come?” one woman asked her husband.

  “It would be worse to leave them wondering.”

  Fifteen people followed Everon through the kitchen door.

  NORAD

  The short blue curtain parted. A voting booth. A young girl stood prettily, smiling before him, all dimples and cuteness.

  “We are all you!” she said.

  “You might think you are me,” Chris told her. “We politicians get that a lot.”

  Christopher Wall began to turn away but the girl grabbed his left elbow, the hand not that of a child but big and strong and hairy — holding his arm with such force that he could not rotate. With the power of unstoppable will, the hand began to turn him back. Her mouth widened. Huge white shark’s teeth.

  Another hand clamped above his right elbow. A third shot forward, grabbed his balls, gradually increasing pressure — a fourth behind his head, gripping his neck, forcing his face to see, to look at — at WHAT? He could no longer see the female child — only the big rough hairy hands — the HANDS! — squeezing his kneecaps, pressure on his temples — he began to scream, high, piercing, not of a full-grown man but of a young girl — the HANDS! “Yeeeeaaaaaaah . . .”

  Hands gripping his shoulders, shaking him gently. “Chris! Chris!”

  “Wha — Jack?”

  “It’s me, Marc! Marc Praeger, your Chief of Staff.”

  What is a staff? Wall looked around the dim compartment, “Marc?” Shook his head, trying to snap himself out of it. Windows. Dark metal. Soft sandalwood calf-leather seats. Whump-whump overhead.