Apocalypse Crucible (5 page)

“Must have been something to see,” Delroy said. He knew his father had gone down to the domino hall in town where the old men gathered, but he’d never gone along. Now he wished he had.

“Yes, siree,” George said enthusiastically. “It were something to see. You favor him some, Delroy. You kin?”

“Josiah was my father.”

George smiled. “I remember you now. The roundball player.”

Delroy nodded. “That’s right.” He’d gone to college on a basketball scholarship and had been headed straight to the NBA. Then his father had … died. Even with Glenda at his side, it had taken a year and more to figure out what he was going to do with his life.

A somber look painted George’s withered features. “He was a good man, Delroy. An’ he was a hard man to lose, him bein’ so young an’ the way he died an’ all.”

Delroy couldn’t speak. He still remembered the night he’d been told of his father’s death. He’d been at college, at basketball practice, with thoughts only of slipping over to see Glenda afterwards. Delroy’s mother had made the call, strong and broken all at the same time.

“They never did find the man what killed him, did they, boy?”

George asked.

“No, sir,” Delroy replied in a quiet voice. “They said they looked, but they never found him.”

“A sad thing,” George said. “A sad, sad thing.”

Delroy nodded.

“So you comin’ back home, Delroy?” George’s cigarette flared bright orange in the windshield reflection as he took a draw on it.

“Aye, sir.”

“Heard you’s off in the military.”

“The navy.”

“Made a career of it, I’ve heard tell. Me an’ Luther, why, we’s glad to be shut of it after the war. Got tired of bein’ told when to get up, what to do all day long, when to go to bed.”

“It’s not a life for everybody.”

“No, sir, it ain’t,” George agreed wholeheartedly. “You got a wife back here, don’t you?”

Shame flushed through Delroy as he wondered just how much the old man knew about him. Marbury was a relatively small community despite the racetracks there. “I do.”

“Comin’ back to see her?”

“Maybe,” Delroy said. He supposed there was no way around that encounter. Unless she chose not to see him. And he had to admit that was possible. But he hadn’t come back to see Glenda.

George was silent for a moment. Blues music continued to spin through the radio. “I hate to ask this, boy, but you been in touch with your wife?”

More guilt assailed Delroy. He hadn’t called Glenda to let her know he’d gotten emergency leave from
Wasp.
With everything that was going on in Turkey, she’d have asked why he was leaving now. He couldn’t have lied to her; he never could. At least, he’d never knowingly lied to her.

You told her you had faith, Delroy. You told her you believed as she believed. If that’s not a lie, then what is?
Delroy stared at his own reflection. His blue-black skin almost made him a shadow inside the pickup. Only his eyes, bloodshot and haunted, stood out in the soft darkness.
But maybe you aren’t so guilty there. Those are also lies you told yourself.

“No,” Delroy said. “I haven’t called her.”

“Them phones. A lotta them are still outta whack. People gets so they depend on them so much it’s terrible. Onliest reason I brought that up, you see, is ’cause a lotta folks—” he hesitated—“well … sir, … lotta folks done up and left Marbury.”

“I know.”

“They’s left places all around the world. Seen that on the TV.”

Delroy said nothing.

“One thing I been noticin’,” George continued cautiously, “an’ I might be wrong ‘cause I been wrong about a lot of things, but I taken a good look at all them what’s missing from Marbury.”

“All the children,” Delroy said. That fact still hurt him. If Terry had lived, if he’d gotten married as he’d intended, there might have been grandchildren by now. And if there had been, those grandchildren would have been taken.

“All the children,” George agreed. “An’ them growed-up folks what’s missing, far as I can see, was all good folks, Godfearin’ folk.”

“Good folk, indeed.” Delroy thought back to Master Chief Dwight Mellencamp, his best and closest friend aboard
Wasp.
Even though he had died hours before the Rapture, the chief’s body had disappeared, too. Researching news stories, Delroy had discovered that bodies had disappeared from hospitals, morgues, and funeral homes. “That they were,” Delroy said.

“An’ Miz Glenda, she’s a good ’un, too.” George carefully looked at Delroy. “What I’m sayin’ is that with her bein’ one of the best Godfearin’ women I know, could be she ain’t home when you go there knockin’.”

“I know.” Delroy had already accepted that. In fact, he hoped Glenda
had
disappeared. He really couldn’t see anything other than that happening.

“Just want you to be prepared is all,” George said softly.

“I am.” Delroy stared out at the misty rain still falling from the dark sky. “I don’t plan on going into town just yet. If you could drop me at Henderson Road outside of Marbury, I’d be much obliged.”

“Henderson Road?”

“Aye.”

“Why, boy, there ain’t nothing at the end of Henderson Road ’cept Sunshine Hills Cemetery.”

“I know.”

George took a final drag off his cigarette, then ground it out in the ashtray. “Goin’ to pay your final respects?”

“Aye,” Delroy answered, but he knew what he had planned—what he
had
to do—wasn’t respectful at all. “And if I can, I’d like to buy one of those shovels you have.”

3

United States 75th Army Rangers Temporary Post
Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 0422 Hours

Keeping one hand on the Kevlar-lined helmet she wore, Danielle Vinchenzo hunkered down at the base of the only remaining wall of the small building where the OneWorld NewsNet team had been grudgingly allowed to set up headquarters inside Sanliurfa. Neither they nor the other media teams on-site were welcomed by the military, since the soldiers’ first objective had been to move the civilians to safety. But they were tolerated. The power of the electronic media had become a recognized force in military warfare since the second war with Iraq.

But being a journalist doesn’t make you invulnerable,
Danielle reminded herself. The concussive
booms
from a string of explosions a split second ago had rolled across the battle-torn city streets around her. Then a round of ammunition impacted against the building ahead of her. A shower of brick fragments peppered her back and shoulders, drumming against her Kevlar helmet.

Cezar Prodan, the young cameraman who had been assigned to her when she had accepted the job with OneWorld NewsNet three days ago, threw himself down beside her. He cursed in English and in his native Romanian tongue. His triangular goatee, coupled with his broad forehead, made him look a bit like a wide-eyed goat.

Curled up in a fetal position against the cracked and leaning wall, Gorca Bogasieru covered his head with his arms. Pale and overweight, he looked like a turtle that had pulled in its limbs to wait out certain disaster. His eyes were squeezed shut behind his round glasses. He spoke in Romanian, but Cezar quickly shouted him down. Gorca shifted his attention to Danielle. “What happened?”

Before Danielle could reply, a corpse plopped to the ground only a few feet from her.

Startled by the sudden movement and panicked by the grotesque sight, Danielle jerked back. Her head slammed into the wall behind her with enough force to blur her vision despite the helmet. When she drew in a breath, the stink of the dead soldier fallen from the sky filled her nostrils.

Hold it together,
she told herself.
You’re a professional reporter. An award winner. You saw worse than this when the SCUD attack hit Glitter City. More than that, Dani, you’ve got the inside track on the story here. Nobody else is capable of getting the kind of footage out of Turkey that you are. You’ve got OneWorld NewsNet backing you. Biggest communications net presently standing after all the disappearances. Get up. Get moving and do your job.

She forced herself to look at the dead man. At first, she was chilled by the fact that only half the torso lay there. One of the dead man’s arms was missing, as was half his face.

But something was wrong. Even more wrong than such a sight should be.

Then she noticed the blood. Rather, the lack of it.

If the man had died in the blast, his massive injuries should have been scarlet with freely running blood. It wouldn’t even have had time to coagulate. But all she saw across his tattered uniform—and now she saw that it was a U.S. Army Ranger day camo BDU—were the dark black stains of blood from old injuries, long since clotted and dried. Dying orange embers in the uniform, leftovers from the explosion that had blasted him into their path, glowed briefly then faded.

Despite the embers, the explosion hadn’t killed him. This man had already been dead when he’d been blown up. The realization almost sickened her.

A fresh wave of artillery fire lit up the night, punching holes in the dreadful silence that had fallen across the city after the series of explosions. Warning Klaxons screamed immediately after. Around her, all across the street, and up on the rooftops soldiers launched into motion. In a heartbeat, their uneasy battleground became a full-fledged war zone again.

Danielle adjusted her borrowed helmet and stood. Her knees quaked, but she kept her legs steady under her. She pushed her fear aside, telling herself again and again that she’d chosen to be here, that standing up now and reporting was all she needed to do to rocket her career into the stratosphere. That was what she had always wanted. All she had to do now was do her job and live through the fight.

She checked her satellite phone, patting the reinforced shell that protected the device from harm. According to Gorca, who worked as her technician and outfitter, that shell was proof against everything but a direct hit. After being in the field with her since the retreat from the Turkish-Syrian border and seeing the chances she took, Gorca had also felt compelled to remind her that she was not as impervious as her gear, despite the body armor the U.N. Peacekeepers had loaned her.

Cezar glanced up at her.

“Is that camera all right?” Danielle demanded.

“Yes.” The young man nodded and held the camcorder protectively. “I think so.”

“Get up. We’ve got work to do.”

Looking past her, Cezar nodded at the torn corpses and body parts that lay strewn across the street. “Maybe now, maybe time not so good. Plenty time to film after attack.”

Frustrated and furious, worn down from trying to get the story of the Sanliurfa’s military occupation on the air in the middle of a raging battle and from controlling her own fears, Danielle reached for the young man. She knotted her fist in the bright Hawaiian shirt he wore under the Kevlar vest. He looked at her in shocked surprise. She got her balance, set her feet, and pulled him upright.

Danielle stood five feet nine inches tall in her stocking feet. She’d spent years working out at the gym to keep fit so she’d look good on camera, not to mention so she’d have the energy and stamina to keep pace with her high-pressure job. She was stronger than most men expected her to be. A lot stronger.

Cezar almost flew to his feet. A few inches shorter than Danielle, the young man was skin and bone, more emaciated than lanky. He wore his hair in dreadlocks, fastened by multicolored rubber bands. A bout with chicken pox had left his face pitted. She loosened her grip on his shirt and surveyed him critically. He hardly looked worth her effort. Still, he had a great eye when he was looking through a camera lens.

“Get that camera up and running,” Danielle ordered. “I want footage shot here and now, bits that we can cycle into the live broadcast we’re going to be doing in a few minutes.”

“All right, all right.” Cezar stripped the lens cover off and powered up the camera. A belt of batteries hung around his narrow hips. Light spewed from the camera as he started shooting. A bright oval of it fell across the soldier’s corpse. With the disappearances of so many people around the world, the gloves were off when it came to broadcasting the harsh reality of the violence in Turkey. And OneWorld NewsNet had never been a media empire that felt the need to stint on the gory drama of any situation.

Empty brass cartridges suddenly rained down over Danielle and rattled against the pavement under her feet. She flattened herself against the wall and looked up, spotting the Ranger standing at the edge of the building cradling a Squad Automatic Weapon in his arms.

That’s a SAW, she reminded herself, not a Squad Automatic Weapon.

Only a newbie calls them that.
Getting the military nomenclature right was important. After years of war coverage on CNN and FOX News, the world audience had become familiar with military aircraft, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and hardware. She knew a lot, but she was also aware that she was continuing to learn. She didn’t want to make a mistake now.

She tapped the speed-dial function on the satphone and snaked the earpiece up to her ear. The phone rang once before it was answered.