Linkage: The Narrows of Time (11 page)

Drew finally opened his eyes and looked at
him. “What happened?” he asked, in a scraggily, half-awake
voice.

“You passed out. Are you all right?”

Drew rubbed his forehead. “My head’s spinning
and I have a wicked headache. Where’s Abby?”

Lucas turned around and looked at the Student
Union. He couldn’t believe his eyes. “Fuck me!”

The entire front section of the Student Union
and most of the theatre’s façade had vanished. Most of the
building’s entrance stairs were missing, too.

Drew raced past him with breakneck speed,
using his callused hands to grip and release in unison, quickly
propelling himself forward one thrust at a time. He screamed Abby’s
name repeatedly along the way.

Traumatized and a bit unsteady, Lucas
followed behind his brother, though at a much slower pace.

Chapter
9

Causatum

Lucas initially thought the blinding white
light-flash might have been some type of terrorist attack, possibly
a suicide bomber hell-bent on payback. But that prospect seemed
unlikely since he didn’t see or hear an explosion, nor had there
been any type of shockwave following the event. And there wasn’t
any building rubble.

Lucas stopped running to take a look at the
damage. The glowing edges of the building’s unstable framework were
holding together, at least for now, but he wondered when they might
surrender to gravity or burst into flames. Many of the theatre’s
second-floor patrons huddled together, close to the exposed edge,
seemingly ignoring the trails of smoke invading their space.

“Careful. The edges are hot,” he yelled out
to them, but didn’t receive a response.

A scruffy young man was standing next to a
metal desk that had been sliced in half inside the projectionist’s
booth on the third level. Lucas was amazed the man’s scrawny neck
could hold up the weight of his head, given the bushel of hair
hanging from his scalp and the medley of jewelry decorating his
face. His right hand was holding the waistband of his saggy blue
jeans while the piercings covering his earlobes, eyebrows, nose,
and lips twinkled in the moonlight.

The projectionist walked to about a foot away
from the ledge and looked around with a glazed-over look on his
face. He stood there motionless for a good thirty seconds. Then, he
stepped back, pulled up his shirtsleeve to peel off a white patch
on his left bicep, got a cigarette from one of the few remaining
drawers, and lit it, using the smoldering edge of the desk. He sat
back in the rolling desk chair and inhaled a long drag, which
fueled the reefer’s glow. He then puckered his lips to puff out
wriggling smoke rings, one after another.

With the exception of an untouched strip of
stairs on the right, most of the Student Union’s steps had
vanished, along with the front of the theatre, as if someone had
reached down with a giant ice cream scoop to carve out a hollow
sphere. Even though the proof was right in front of him, Lucas
still found it hard to accept what he was seeing.

* * *

When Drew arrived at the steps, he flung
himself out of his chair, landing chest-first on the cold cement,
which nearly knocked the wind out of him. He grimaced when his
right elbow landed directly on the edge of a step, sending numbing
pain up his arm and into his shoulder. Even though he only had
partial feeling in his legs, the cement stairs still hurt his
kneecaps.

Scattered along the stairway was a trail of
diverse body parts, as if a tree shredder had shot them out from
its chute. When he didn’t see any blood, he tried to convince
himself the fragments were only manikin parts, but that ruse failed
when his nasal passages caught a whiff—seared meat and scorched
hair—and he almost gagged. He worried that the smell might become
permanently etched into his sinus cavities.

He searched the steps on his hands and knees,
inspecting each body fragment to see if it belonged to Abby. None
did. He scoured the open pit in front of the theatre, but again, he
found no sign of her. She was gone.

* * *

Lucas arrived at the lower edge of the crater
and looked inside. “Aw, shit,” he said, seeing a black film
covering the bottom of the depression. He bent down to sample it,
rubbing the powdery substance between his fingers. Then he smelled
it. “Oranges, again,” he said, confirming it was the same substance
he’d found inside the reactor core.

He walked over to Drew and knelt down beside
him. He wanted to console his brother, but he couldn’t find the
proper words. They were all jumbled up and backward, flailing out
of control just beyond the tip of his tongue. The same thing
happened when he tried to comfort Drew after their adoptive father
passed away. He sucked at this—good thing he wasn’t a priest.

He rubbed his brother’s neck, hoping that
Drew would know that he was there for him—that he loved him. When
his normally effervescent brother looked up at him with tearful
eyes, Lucas almost broke down against a flood of emotions pushing
up from his chest. He gave Drew a one-armed hug, fighting to remain
strong and steadfast; it wasn’t easy. He looked away, trying to
find something else to focus on.

A few yards to his left, a lifeless body
wrapped in a bloodless Denver Bronco’s football jersey sat slumped
over in a twisted heap. The mound of unresponsive flesh was leaning
to one side, resting against the upper step, with only its right
leg and arm still intact. The corpse belonged to Abby’s roommate,
Jasmine. The left side of her skull and neck were missing.

Lucas left Drew on the step and moved closer
to Jasmine’s body. She had been sliced in half, as if by a molten
hot guillotine; there was not an ounce of blood anywhere. Her head
was tilted back and pushed to one side, exposing a cross-section of
brain matter clinging to the inner membrane lining her skull. Her
right eye was open and dilated, looking directly at Lucas as if she
somehow knew he was there.

He turned away and covered his mouth with his
hand, trying to ignore the nausea swelling in his throat. But his
body had its own idea. A small amount of stomach bile erupted,
slinking its way up his esophagus and into his mouth, leaving a
rancid taste that sickened his tongue. Even though only half of her
face remained, he could see she’d been a gorgeous young Hispanic
woman. He wondered if she had family somewhere. They needed to
know. Someone needed to call them.

He looked for the Mohawk player and his two
friends, but found no sign of them on the steps where they had been
standing. He went down to the base of the stairs, stepping over a
string of cell phones and designer purses. There was a red-and-blue
backpack still attached to a slender arm and shoulder, which had a
heart-shaped, pink tattoo that said “Billy.” On the second to last
step, he found a pair of half-full water bottles, each with a
severed hand wrapped tightly around it.

To his right was a pair of unattached legs
sitting at an odd angle, as if they were propped up by something.
Lucas moved closer and found that they were resting on top of a
severed head. The head was mostly bald except for a streak of
yellow hair down the middle. It belonged to the Mohawk rugby
player. Lucas figured the head must have rolled down the steps
after it was decapitated. Yet, he couldn’t reconcile how the legs
ended up on top of it. Perhaps they tumbled down the stairs, too.
But in the end, what did it matter? All he knew for sure was that
Drew got his wish—the man was gone forever. Unfortunately, so were
many others.

The visual evidence told him what happened:
When the flash obliterated the theatre’s entrance, it encompassed
nearly the entire movie line, taking with it anyone unlucky enough
to be standing inside its perimeter. Those persons straddling its
leading edge were cut in half, vertically, like a lamb shank being
chopped by a cleaver on a butcher’s block. He wondered if any of
them were aware of what was happening to them at the time.

He found an expensive-looking,
high-resolution video camera on the bottom step. Its black safety
strap was cut four inches from the digital camera’s padded
handgrip. Two fingers and a thumb were lying on the ground next to
the unit, probably the owner’s.

Lucas flipped the unit over to examine it.
Everything appeared to be in one piece. Its red REC light was on
with display numbers steadily increasing. The thing was still
recording despite being dropped several feet onto the cement
stairs.

He slid his right hand into the narrow safety
grip and aimed the camera at the demolition zone. He started by
slowly panning from left to right, across the exposed sections of
the theatre, making sure he stood back far enough on the mall’s
grass to record all the damage. He walked up to the crater, knelt
down, and filmed a close-up of the black powder. He filmed his
fingers scooping up a handful of the substance and letting it pour
through the palm of his hand. He finished by documenting the
precise location of each body fragment lying on the steps.

Lucas took off the camera’s flash drive and
slid it into his pocket, rearranging its contents so the drive was
below the keys to his apartment. Once he and his brother returned
home, he intended to review the evidence captured on the drive.
With any luck, the camera’s owner was facing the right way when the
flash appeared.

He heard the faint echoes of emergency sirens
off in the distance as they wailed and whooped through the heavy
night air. Someone had already called 9-1-1. He bent over to put
the camera on the step, when he saw a crowd of onlookers taking
refuge in the middle of the grass. Most of them were clustered
together, arm in arm, trying to comfort each other.

The emergency sirens howled suddenly in his
ears, no longer a faint echo. Reflections of swirling red and blue
lights danced off the building façades surrounding the mall when
police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances flew over concrete curbs,
cut across sidewalks, and ripped up grass with their tires to reach
the scene. It wouldn’t be long before the place was crawling with
news media, too. He wanted to collect Drew and get him back to the
apartment.

He turned back toward the theatre and saw
Trevor sprinting toward him from the east end of the Student Union,
wearing a red muscle shirt and weightlifting belt. His sweat-soaked
physique bulged and glistened with each stride.

“You damaged?” Trevor asked, breathing
heavily.

“No, I’m okay and so is Drew, but I’m pretty
sure Abby Park is dead.”

Lucas quickly explained what had transpired.
He told his friend about the blinding flash of light, where Abby
and Jasmine had been standing, and the bloodless body parts. Even
though Lucas suspected this incident was related to their lab
incident, he wasn’t going to tell Trevor about it, at least not
yet. He wanted to check out the video evidence in private before
drawing any conclusions.

“I’m going to wait here for the police to
tell them what I saw. But Drew is in no shape to deal with the cops
right now. Can you do me a huge favor?” Lucas asked, pointing up
the stairs. “Get him and take him home
right
now
,
before all hell breaks loose.”

Trevor agreed and turned to head up the
steps. Lucas kept an eye on him as he ran up the stairs, carefully
tiptoeing through the sea of body parts until he reached the top.
He knelt down next to Drew, picked him up, and then carried him
down the stairs to his wheelchair. Moments later, he and Drew
slipped into the shadows along the west end of the Student
Union.

Lucas sprinted over to the first arriving
police car, waving his hands above his head. He approached the
driver’s side door just as the officer shoved the gearshift into
park and turned off his siren. The emergency lights were still
flashing, though, making it difficult for him to see inside the
driver’s window.

Lucas looked up a steep angle to make eye
contact with the officer getting out of the driver’s door. The cop
was a few inches shorter than Trevor, and not nearly as muscular.
The officer put on his police cap and repositioned his duty
belt.

“I’m Sergeant Cherekos. Can you tell me what
happened here?”

“Yes, I can.”

Dozens of other police and emergency vehicles
closed in on Lucas’ position. Several vehicles slid sideways,
nearly hitting each other, as the dew-laden grass lessened the tire
traction when they tried to stop. Lucas was being surrounded on
three sides with the Student Union behind him.

The officer took out a pad and pen and began
to write. “Let’s start with your name.”

“Lucas Ramsay.”

“Okay, what did you see?”

“I was walking across the mall when suddenly
a bright light exploded out of nowhere in front of the Union and
nearly blinded me.”

The officer glanced at theatre. “How long did
the light last?”

“Maybe two or three seconds.”

“Where were you at the time?”

“I’d guess about a hundred feet from the
Union’s steps. Close to where those women are standing over there,”
Lucas said, pointing to three older people, probably in their
thirties, standing twenty feet away from him on the grass.

“Where would you say the light originated
from?”

“I don’t know, but I’d guess somewhere near
the center of the crater. It all happened so fast.”

The Sergeant looked at the hallow crater for
a few seconds, before turning his eyes back to Lucas. “Did you hear
an explosion?”

“No, the only sound I heard was this
high-pitched squeal. It started right after the light
appeared.”

The officer scratched his head with his pen.
“A squeal?”

“It was like being trapped inside a room with
a thousand children screaming at the top of their lungs. The pain
was so intense I fell down. When I looked around, there was a bunch
of other people lying on the ground, too. I didn’t pass out, but
almost everyone else did.”