Apocalypse Dawn

by Mel Odom

  17

  United States of America

  Fort Benning, Georgia

  Local Time 1:21 A.M.

  Time slowed as Megan watched Gerry Fletcher fall. Time slowed but never stopped, moving inexorably on in horrifying tiny ticks rather than in a brain-numbing rush.

  Gerry dropped like a rock, tumbling over backward, his arms stretched out and reaching helplessly for a handhold, his legs bicycling. A scream stretched the boy’s mouth wide, but Megan couldn’t hear it over her own yell of anguish. She’d had him … and she’d lost him.

  Why, God? Why did You let both of us come up on this roof tonight? If everything happens for a reason, if I’m supposed to believe that, what good was it for Gerry to be up here? Why did I have to be up here? The last bit was selfish. She knew that and regretted the thought in the same moment she had it.

  Gerry tumbled, turning to face away from her.

  Tears blurred Megan’s vision. She blinked them away unconsciously, and when she opened her eyes again, she saw Gerry hit the ground. At least, she thought the boy had hit the ground. But looking down now, she knew that something was wrong.

  The pile of clothes at the bottom of the building didn’t look big enough to be a boy. They only looked big enough to be—to be a pile of clothes.

  That’s denial, Megan told herself, knowing that had to be true because nothing else made sense. My mind is shutting out the real sight of Gerry down there, shutting out the true image of blood and broken pavement. He fell. He hit. O God, what have I done? Why did You forsake us? He was just a baby.

  The two MPs on the rooftop grabbed Megan’s legs. She hadn’t even noticed she’d still been falling, skidding slowly but surely over the side of the roof. Gerry’s certain death had paralyzed even the lizard’s instinct for survival in the back of her brain.

  “Mrs. Gander,” one of the MPs said. “Mrs. Gander, relax. We’ve got you. It’s over.”

  Stubbornly, Megan clung to the roof’s edge. One of the MPs guarding Boyd Fletcher ran toward the impact area. Impact area? Is that what you call it? She didn’t know how she could be so callous. The MP reached the pile of clothes and stared down. His head swiveled around, looking for something.

  “Where is he?” Boyd Fletcher yelled. “Where is Gerry? I saw him up there. She hid him. Check the rooftop. He can’t have gone far.” He struggled to get to his feet, but the MP holding him down never moved, grinding him down on his face.

  In the end, Megan couldn’t hold on to the roof’s edge. The MPs proved too strong. They talked softly to her, like she was a child or a trauma victim. Shaking and shivering, not certain that she was strong enough to walk on her own two feet, Megan allowed the men to hold her from either side.

  “Mrs. Gander.”

  Megan tracked the voice, turning to the man on the right when she wanted to go look over the roof’s edge again. It’s only clothes. Only clothes. And that made no sense at all.

  “Yes?” Her voice came out as a croak.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  She tried to speak, found she couldn’t, then tried again. “I think so.”

  “Do you feel strong enough to take the stairs, ma’am? If not, we can probably get a rescue unit to come take you off the roof. It would be a lot easier if you could make it under your own steam.” The MP was in his fifties, a black man gone gray at the temples, with a seamed face that offered strength and support.

  Megan nodded.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I need you to audibly answer me. I need to know that you understand what I’m asking.” The MP’s grip on her arm was gentle but firm.

  “Yes,” Megan said. “I can walk.”

  “Then—when you’re ready, ma’am.”

  Megan started forward, aiming for the fire escape.

  “Have you got her, Dave?” the other, younger MP asked. “I gotta look for that kid.”

  “Yeah,” the big MP answered. “I can make it. If not, we’ll stop partway down and you can catch up, or one of the others can come up here.”

  Megan stopped and turned to the younger MP. “What did you say you were going to do?” She couldn’t believe she stopped, but what the man had said had jarred her.

  The man stared at her. “I’m gonna look for that kid, Mrs. Gander. Do you know where he got off to?”

  Megan made herself breathe out. “His name is Gerry.” That was important. He wasn’t just some chattel of Boyd’s, a possession; he wasn’t just his abusive father’s property.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the MP answered politely. “I’ve gotta look for Gerry.”

  “He fell,” Megan said. God, he slipped right through my fingers. How could You allow something like that to happen? “He’s down there on the pavement.”

  “No, ma’am,” the young MP insisted. “All that’s down there are his clothes.”

  Megan stared at the man. “His clothes?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The MP nodded and shined his flashlight around the rooftop. Nothing came into view. “Can you tell me where the kid—where Gerry is, Mrs. Gander? Things will probably go easier if we can bring him in.”

  “We won’t let his father at him,” Dave, the older MP, promised. He obviously mistook Megan’s shocked silence as trepidation. “Private Fletcher is going to be in lockdown tonight. He won’t touch that boy.”

  The young MP grimaced and glanced at his partner. “Is there another way down off of this roof?”

  Dave shook his head. “This is it.”

  “The kid couldn’t have flown down from the roof, Dave. He’s either up here or he’s down there.”

  “Pete.” The older MP licked his lips. “Maybe the boy was never up here.”

  “I saw him,” Pete said. “I saw him.” He glanced at the roof’s edge, trailing the flashlight beam along it. “And I swear, Dave, I swear I saw that kid fall from the building.”

  “If you did, he’d be down there,” Dave said. “All that hit the ground was clothes. You heard Mitchell and Rick the same as I did. You only saw clothes hit the ground. Nothing else.”

  “Then we’re looking for a naked kid?”

  “Maybe he was never up here. Maybe Mrs. Gander only had his clothes.”

  Megan couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Why would anyone think she’d only been up on the building with clothing? Why did they think only clothing had hit the ground?

  “That sounds kind of weird, don’t you think?” Pete asked.

  Dave shrugged. “You look. I’ll get Mrs. Gander to the ground, then I’ll come back up and help you look some more.”

  “You saw the kid, didn’t you, Dave?” Pete looked desperate. “You saw him up on this rooftop, didn’t you?”

  Dave let out a long breath and Megan saw the fear in the man’s eyes. “It was dark,” the older MP said. “I don’t know what I saw.”

  Dazed, not comprehending what was going on, Megan allowed herself to be led away. She descended the metal stairs mechanically, barely noticing the bright light of the camcorder trained on her from one of the building’s windows.

  “Get that camera out of here,” Dave growled.

  Reluctantly, the young soldier filling the third-floor window did as he was ordered. He was shirtless, and his dog tags gleamed in the reflected illumination. The camcorder light died. “Did you see that boy disappear, Sarge?” the young soldier asked.

  “Be quiet, soldier,” the MP snapped. “You look like you’ve been drinking tonight. You sure don’t want someone prowling around inside your apartment if you’ve got a shift in the morning. You’d get a referral in no time flat.”

  The guy stood his ground but didn’t say anything.

  As she descended the stairs, Megan kept staring at the pile of clothing that Gerry Fletcher had been wearing only moments ago. She tried to comprehend what she was seeing, trying to make some sense of it. How could there only be a few clothes left from a young boy that had fallen from a four-story rooftop?

  But when she reached the ground level, those
clothes were all that was left of Gerry Fletcher. The memory of the boy’s screams as he fell haunted Megan.

  “What did you do with my son?” Boyd Fletcher yelled. He arched his back and turned to look at the man holding him down. “Make her tell you. Make her tell you what she’s done with my son. That’s your job.”

  “I didn’t do anything with him,” Megan said, staring at the clothing. She remembered the garments from when she’d first seen them in the hospital, then again when Gerry had slipped from her grip and twisted through the intervening distance. God help her, she thought that was one memory she’d never forget.

  “She’s lying!” Boyd Fletcher screamed. “You all know my son was up there. He’s still up there. Find him!”

  In a daze, Megan approached the clothing. She knelt and touched the sweatpants with the tattered knee, the sweatshirt, the smudged socks and sneakers. Silver gleamed in the combined lights of the MPs and the curious onlookers that had gathered from the nearby apartments. She moved the socks and shoes, revealing the silver necklace Gerry’s mother had gotten him last year. Almost hypnotized, she lifted the necklace in her fingers. The small sterling silver cross hanging from the necklace spun and caught the light.

  “Get her away from those clothes!” Boyd Fletcher bellowed. “Get her away from them now! They aren’t hers! She has no business with them!”

  On her knees, Megan stared at the cross. She remembered how proud Gerry had been of his necklace. He wouldn’t have left it behind. She wrapped her hand around the cross, thinking that she could still feel the warmth of the boy’s body in it even at the same time knowing that had to be impossible.

  Gerry wouldn’t have left the necklace. He wouldn’t have left his clothes. He didn’t leave. He fell. The words thundered through Megan’s mind, overriding even Boyd Fletcher’s loud curses and demands that someone find his son.

  “Mrs. Gander.”

  Megan was suddenly aware of the big MP at her side. His hand was once more on her arm. This time his grip wasn’t just supportive; it constrained her as well, letting her know she wasn’t leaving unless he agreed to it.

  “Mrs. Gander,” the MP said, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with me.”

  “I can’t.” Megan rose, feeling the MP’s hand tighten around her arm. He’s afraid I’m going to try to run. The realization flooded through her like cold water, triggering an instinctive impulse to do precisely that.

  “Ma’am,” the MP said with polite determination. “There are going to be a lot of questions.”

  “I can’t,” Megan said. “I promised my son I’d come for him.”

  “Where’s your son?”

  “At the child-care facility.”

  “Then he’ll be fine,” the MP said.

  “I told him I’d be there. I told him I’d be there when he woke up.”

  Unexpectedly, new tears and a fresh wave of panic ripped through Megan. She felt sick and her knees buckled. If the MP hadn’t been holding on to her arm, she would have fallen.

  “Come with me, Mrs. Gander,” the MP suggested. “I’m sure we can sort this out in a little while.”

  “Cuff her,” Boyd Fletcher snarled. He called Megan several unkind words, struggling against the man who held him and against the handcuffs that held him. “Cuff her. She did something with my son. Find out what she did with him.”

  Megan opened her palm and gazed at the tiny silver cross. She prayed. She prayed harder than she had prayed in years. Without another word, the big MP guided her toward the security Jeep. The flashing lights whirled through Megan’s vision. She felt like she was in a terrible nightmare and she couldn’t get free.

  The Mediterranean Sea

  USS Wasp

  Local Time 0821 Hours

  Only minutes after the last of the aircraft had lifted from Wasp’s deck, Delroy Harte had returned to his private quarters to watch the unfolding development of the engagement along the Turkish-Syrian border. The combat information center had been reduced to using long-range satellite images because the carefully orchestrated Syrian attacks had taken out the primary communications lines with the first wave of SCUDs. Glitter City, with all its media personalities and support crews, had become a casualty less than three minutes after that.

  Captain Falkirk and his intelligence teams had been reduced to tapping into the video feeds being pumped out of Glitter City. Those hadn’t lasted long either. With the second wave of SCUDs, the feeds from Glitter City had been lost as well.

  Delroy had barely switched on the television in his private quarters and started flipping through the news channels before those services were lost, too. He had sat quietly for several minutes, trying to take solace in the growl and thunder that was Wasp twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The ship had been the major portion of his world for years.

  Sailors green to Wasp hated the constant barrage of noise. Old hands took comfort in the sounds, knowing them all individually.

  Within minutes, though, Delroy had known he couldn’t stay in his quarters. He had taken his portable television set and returned to the medical department to try and attack the letter once more. His prayers to God weren’t going very well either. Thinking about the young warriors in the field dying so far from home reminded the chaplain too much of Terrence.

  The loss of his son was never far from Delroy’s mind, nor was the fact that the loss and his own inability to deal with it had shattered his marriage after twenty-seven years. Actually, he was still married. He had never filed for divorce, and Glenda had never pressed him for one. He had simply stopped going home. He’d effectively cut off his ties to his family, though they still sent cards and letters.

  But it was Glenda’s ability to believe that their son was taken from them for a reason approved of by God’s will that mocked his own belief. And yet, tattered and broken as that belief was, it was all Delroy had to cling to. He had put on a good face and made the best he could of his career and his life, but Glenda knew him as no one else ever had.

  Except for my father, Delroy thought. Josiah Harte would have known what I’m thinking at a glance.

  Glenda’s own belief had shamed Delroy. And her ability to deal with his own decision to effectively end the marriage three years ago, two years after Terrence’s death, had shamed him further. He still sent money home to help with the bills, but less than a year after he had stopped going home, Glenda had opened an account at the bank and put the money there. She rented the house out to make the mortgage payment and moved into a small apartment. She continued teaching and worked at Carl Bynum’s produce market during the summers.

  Seated again at the stainless steel table with the blank paper that was supposed to be the letter he was going to write to Dwight Mellencamp’s family, Delroy stared at the television. Wasp had satellite hookups for television throughout the ship. The crew traveled in relative comfort.

  Only moments ago, some of the news feeds in Turkey had come back on line. There had been a bit about a U.S. Army Ranger outfit that had helped evacuate Glitter City, then that feed had gone off-line when Syrian troops had arrived and started shooting. The cameraman had evidently been one of the first fatalities.

  Now the television channels were full of late-breaking stories. Some of those stories centered on first-person accounts by reporters concerning the evacuation of Glitter City, the horrifying convoy back to Sanliurfa, and the attacks that had gone on within Sanliurfa. Some came directly from the border where reporters were pinned down by enemy fire just as the domestic troops, the U.N. peacekeepers, and the U.S. Army Rangers were.

  Delroy glanced at the body bag that contained his dead friend. The chaplain couldn’t help feeling that in a way Dwight Mellencamp was lucky he hadn’t lived to see this day. It was certain that several of the Marines the chief had known and loved like sons wouldn’t be coming back. By the time what was left of their people got back, Wasp would feel like a ghost town.

  The body bag suddenly sagged, collapsing in on its
elf.

  Goose bumps prickled across the back of Delroy’s neck. His breath caught at the back of his throat. At first he thought he’d imagined the sagging, but as he looked at the body bag, he knew that he hadn’t. Dwight had been a big man. There was no way he could fit in the body bag in the shape it was in now.

  For a moment, Delroy was back in his grandfather’s house, listening to the old man tell stories to his grandchildren that triggered fussy arguments from his wife. Grandpa Smith, on Delroy’s mother’s side, had been a constant joker. One night when the grandkids had been visiting, he’d explained about sitting up with the dead, and how sometimes in the old days before mortuaries embalmed the bodies and prepared them for burial, that sometimes the dead would sit up as well.

  The first time Delroy had sat up with the dead with his father a few years later, he’d been frightened out of his mind, thinking the corpse of his great-uncle Darmon would sit up at any moment, maybe even come crawling out of the casket like a mummy in one of those old monster movies. His father had noticed Delroy’s discomfort at once.

  Reluctantly, Delroy had explained his fears. Quietly and patiently, as was his way except when frightening nonbelievers with visions of hell and eternal damnation in that roaring lion’s voice of his, Josiah Harte had explained how in the old days the unprepared body would sit up. He had described in detail how the reaction was caused by rigor mortis setting in and tightening muscles due to the dead body’s inability to process sugar. Sometimes, his father had said, trapped air was even expelled from the corpse’s lungs, but the person was not actually alive, as uneducated and superstitious people thought.

  Even though his father had been kind and understanding and informative, and even though Delroy was nearly fifty years older, he suddenly felt like that small eight-year-old boy sitting in near dark with only candles for light. He forced himself to breathe again.

  Using his remote control, he muted the television and pushed up from the chair. His heart beat frantically as he made himself approach the much flatter body bag. Hand shaking, he pressed his palm against the body bag.