What's Next

The Eighth Day (Excerpt)

As Collin slid the big truck into a narrow parking slot on Main Street they could both see that a large crowd was gathered inside the pub. The lights shone brightly through the upstairs windows of Brady’s banquet room as the afternoon sun sank farther on the western horizon. Before Maddie could unfasten her seat belt, Colin was out of the truck and around it to open her door. He gently lifted her down to the pavement and placed a hand protectively against the small of her back as he walked her across the street and into the Pub.

The noisy din that greeted them as they opened the front door suddenly hushed as they entered and every eye turned to Maddie in concern or sympathy or just morbid curiosity. As several people stepped toward her to offer help or words of encouragement the hushed spell was broken and the noisy din ensued again. There was a large knot of people gathered at the far end of the bar and there seemed to be some new tumult that their arrival had interrupted. Maddie and Colin made their way in that direction, so they could go upstairs to join the bevy of helpful citizens who had gathered to lend support. Steve McMillan, seated at the bar, was the focus of the excitement, and the tall, boxy Sheriff’s Deputy that Colin had talked to the day before was jotting something down on a small pad.

“And you’re saying that the harness was not loosened?” the Deputy said to McMillan, “that at –what did you say— 700 feet in the air? She was there and then she wasn’t?” he paused dramatically, “Just…zapped? Transported? Sucked into a blackhole?”

“Look,” McMillan replied earnestly, “I know it sounds…crazy, far-fetched, whatever. I’m a high school Science teacher, not a magician. We were cruising in the power-chute over the fields out by Simpson’s Pond, looking for Amy Wallace. We were flying in tandem. She was talking to me. I was talking to her.” He paused with a faraway look in his eyes, “Then I noticed a sudden…shift—in the craft, a change in the balance and handling. I called back to Susan, to ask her if she could feel it too. But she didn’t answer me. I turned around to get her attention but—she was just—just not there anymore. I don’t know where she went. It’s just—crazy!!“ He rested his head in his hands. “I know how it sounds, but she didn’t fall out. That’s just not possible.” He looked up and saw Maddie staring at him incredulously, so he rose and moved toward her, awkwardly embracing her. As he drew back he said, “Maddie, we were trying to help. We were looking for Amy. But we—I—I just don’t get it.” There was a pleading in his tone, a cry for affirmation or understanding or a plausible explanation.

“I know Steve. I heard,” she said in a comforting tone “I don’t get it either. It’s like some bad SciFi movie with people getting randomly swallowed up by some invisible monster.” She reached out and patted his hand, “It’ll be okay Steve. We are going to find them both. I’m sure we will,” she reassured him, but she wasn’t sure of anything. She was less sure with every minute that passed.

‘Colin is right,’ she thought ‘there really is something else going on. Something inexplicable.’

Susan Evans was the seventh person to disappear from Middleton in the last twenty-four hours. Colin tried to fill her in as they climbed the stairs at the back of the bar. Alvin Skinner had been the first, as far as anyone could tell. Amy had been second. Alice Partlowe never made it home from work. Ian Fisher got up from the dinner table, walked into the bathroom, shut and locked the door, and disappeared.  Emily Williams had settled her kids down to sleep and told her boyfriend that she was going to get a glass of water from the kitchen. When she wasn’t back in bed after fifteen minutes, J.R. went to find her. She was nowhere to be found. Todd Robbins was leaving with the High School football team from their away game. When the coach took a head count on the bus to be sure they had everyone, Todd was gone. And now Susan Evans, the Middleton High School Spanish teacher, had disappeared while soaring at 700 feet in a tandem power-chute. No broken or unfastened harnesses, everything was still completely intact. She could not have fallen out without Steve having seen it and yet she was gone.

As Maddie and Colin entered the bustling banquet room above the Pub, several people shouted greetings to them. Peggy Williams, with her sister Sue and her daughter Beth, who looked like three short, round clones, that varied only slightly in height and girth, and only slightly in height from girth, all waddle-ran to embrace Maddie. As they came together around her, like Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum plus one, she would have disappeared in the onslaught except that she stood more than a foot taller than the Williams’ women. As Maddie looked up and caught a glimpse of their reflection in the mirror, her head and shoulders looked like the topper on some mad, colorful ‘Alice in Wonderland’ cake. Colin could only smile as they brusquely shoved him aside to converge on Maddie.

“Thank you all so much,” Maddie said gratefully even as she tried to extricate herself from the knot of soft, pliable flesh, “everyone has been so thoughtful, so kind.”

Father Flannigan quickly moved to Maddie’s aide, knowing that his presence alone would send the gaggle of devout Pentecostals scurrying in another direction. “Thank you lovely ladies so much.” And then dangling the carrot of distraction that never failed, “would you ladies like to take charge of getting all of the food that was so kindly donated for the volunteers, organized and ready so we can feed them ?”

“Yes, of course Father,” Peggy chimed, flushing a deep crimson as she addressed the Catholic Priest by his designation. She scurried toward the kitchenette pulling Sue and Beth along with her, barking out high-pitched orders all the while.

“Thank you Uncle,” Colin stepped up and embraced the big, white-bearded, priest who was a bear of a man, a fact that his collar could not hide.

“All in the course of duty son,” he smiled, and returned his nephew’s strong embrace. Turning to Maddie, he could plainly see the wild mix of emotions playing out across her porcelain face. He put his big arm around her shoulder and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “This will all work out in the end, darling,” he said. “God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have a plan at work here, and in the end all we can really do is leave it with Him.”

The flash of anger in her wide green eyes belied her softly spoken words. “I think I’d be a lot more apt to do that if we weren’t talking about the disappearance of my six year old child, Father.”

Father Flannigan’s reply was cut short by the bark of Joe Jamison’s irritating voice shouting above the noisy room. “Listen up! They’re making another announcement on the tube!”

The room quieted quickly as the volume on the huge, old, big screen projection television in the corner was turned up so they could all hear the latest proclamation. The news anchor had no time to speculate, with just enough time to say, “We take you now to the White House for a Presidential News Conference.”

The picture immediately cut to the White House Press Room as the Press Secretary entered from stage right and took her place behind the podium with the Presidential Seal.  The reporters shuffled in their seats in anticipation as she spoke. “Ladies and Gentlemen, the President will be making an important announcement; however, he will not be taking questions when he has finished.” A loud murmur reverberated through the Press Corp as she concluded, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States.”

The President entered and took the podium with a look of grim resolve. “I am here to address two major issues and to inform the country how the United States Government intends to proceed in light of the developments in the past forty-eight hours. Foremost among them is that at 3 o’clock Eastern Time, this afternoon, Iran in an act of continued aggression, cemented our active participation in this Middle Eastern conflict by attacking the U.S. Military base in Saudi Arabia.” He paused until the wave of chatter from the crowd of reporters subsided. “This unwarranted attack has negated our resolve to avoid military action in support of our Israeli allies. Since this attack was sanctioned by the Iranian government it is an act of war and the United States will respond to this aggression with the full force of our military.” He held up his hands to signal for quiet at the loud murmur of voices. “The Secretary of State and General Westinghouse will follow me with a statement outlining our troop realignment and pending military response, but rest assured our response has been swift and deadly. It will be our response to any nation or group who takes aggressive action against the U.S. or to any who offers aid or support to our enemies.”

At this statement the low murmur that continued to roll through the Press Corp pitched into a chaotic shouting match.

“Have we declared war on Iran?”

“How many casualties were sustained at the Saudi base?”

“Has a strike against them already been ordered?”

“Was the attack against the U.S. nuclear too?”

“Is this recent rash of disappearances somehow connected?”

“Are they behind the five hundred plus children who have gone missing in the last 24 hours?”

The President stood with his hand raised to call for quiet, as the barrage of questions continued. Suddenly his hand descended to thwack the podium with his open palm, “QUIET!”

The murmur hushed immediately and the President continued, meanwhile the crowd gathered around the big screen television, sat and watched in stunned silence, except for the soft hiccoughing sobs that Peggy Williams emitted to the rhythmic cadence of her sister’s repeated pleas “Oh Lord Jesus, oh my Lord.” Father Flannigan patted the back of Maddie’s hand with one big, bear paw and made the sign of the cross with his other hand.

“You can ask your questions to General Westinghouse. Please listen, because I also have another issue to address which some of you have just asked about.” He paused, and drank from a black mug that he put back under the podium as he continued, “We seem to have another crisis at hand which needs to be addressed; the recent inexplicable disappearances that have resulted in over four-hundred nationwide Amber Alerts in less than 24 hours. As far as we are able to determine at this point, the disappearances are not connected to this attack, however I have dedicated significant Federal resources to investigating these disappearances. At this time, in addition to those missing children, we can add at least eleven hundred instances of persons whose whereabouts are unknown and are still pending official Missing Person status.” He shifted uncomfortably, clearly more reticent and indecisive about the disappearances than he was about the military strike. This was obviously unknown territory and a phenomenon that he was uncomfortable defining since there were no plausible answers to the disappearances. “Obviously we are dealing with some as yet undefined threat with this many random people vanishing at once.” He stopped and swiped a white silk handkerchief across his forehead, stowing it in his jacket he continued. “The thing is, whatever the cause, this phenomenon is global.”

Commotion erupted again in the Press Corp, but the President continued, raising his voice to be heard above the din. “We have spoken with authorities in Europe, Africa, South America, and India, all confirming similar disappearances. We have had no response from the Chinese on the subject, but initial indications are that they too are experiencing this phenomenon.” He stopped and waited for them to quiet down before he said, “and at this time, that is all we know. I cannot tell you what is behind this, I can only say that we are working in conjunction with our foreign allies to unravel this mystery and every effort will be made to find these missing people and bring them home.” With that he turned and marched off the platform and through the curtained exit. As his Press Secretary stepped up to the microphone and began rattling off press conference itinerary for the FBI and military briefings.

The room above Brady’s Pub was now in as much turmoil as the Press Corp had been. Women were crying, men were making arrangements to gather arms, others were making immediate plans to batten down and hold on for whatever might be coming, but not one person in the room failed to see that in less than a day, every aspect of their life on Earth had been significantly altered. The world was tilting on its axis to such a degree that it threatened to unbalance the whole human race.