Vanished (7 page)

Logan tipped the boy's head back, squeezed the boy's nose,
and gave him a breath. The boy smelled like Doritos. The rise of
his chest meant his airway was clear.

Logan began the chest compressions, remembering not to
press too hard.

One two three four five. Breathe.

"Come on, josh."

One two three four five. Breathe. One two three four five.

"I tried to call 911," the mother said. She was a thin woman
with spiked brown hair. "The phones are dead."

One two three four five. Breathe. One two three four five.

Time passed-one minute, maybe another. Where were the
paramedics?

The blue in josh's lips faded. A guy in UPS brown tried to
put a shipping blanket under his head.

"No. I need his airway open," Logan said. "But you could
cover his legs for me."

He looked around, saw Pappas bending over a woman in a
yellow sundress. The cheerful color of her dress against cracked
pavement was an affront to America, where a woman had the
right to stroll on a sidewalk, sun splashing on her shouldersnot broken by a bomb no one saw coming.

One two three four five. Breathe. One two three four five.
Breathe.

The mother pressed her face to the sidewalk. "Please, God,"
she whispered.

Logan pressed his ear to the boy's chest. A sickly thub
rewarded him. No spontaneous respiration yet.

A dark-haired man stared out of the crowd that had gathered, his eyes eager. Drawn by accidents and violence, his kind
were the worst.

Josh gasped.

"Thank God," the mother cried.

"Amen," Logan said. "Keep him warm and comfortable. I'll
send the EMTs down here as soon as they arrive."

He got up and went to help Pappas.

TONE SPRAWLED ON THE FLOOR, UNCONSCIOUS UNDER
boxes of baby formula.

Kaya cradled Angelina and tried to get her bearings. Had a plane crashed nearby? Or perhaps it had been an
earthquake. That wouldn't account for that strange instantthat instant that seemed to last forever-in which the world
stretched out of shape.

Sarah leaned against the wall, dazed. "What happened?"

"I'm not sure." Kaya punched in 911, but her cell was dead.
That didn't make sense. She had charged it this morning, had
made only a couple of calls.

Stone groaned, his fingers twitching as if looking for the gun.
It wasn't anywhere in sight-maybe he had fallen on it.

"We've got to get out of here." Kaya steered Sarah out the
front door. In her haste, the girl almost pitched headfirst off the
front porch-the bottom step had cracked in the blast.

The scene out on the street was surreal. It was the same
old neighborhood Kaya saw every day-huge oaks and pines
lining the street, old Victorian houses that had been broken
up into multiple apartments, driveways crammed with cars
from so many tenants, bikes and riding toys, basketball hoops
and baseball pitch-backs, Fenway Variety Store on one corner,
the Starlight Diner on another.

But the crash or explosion or whatever it was had changed
everything.

The lack of engine sounds was unnerving. In this neighborhood, the background noise of cars, trucks, and factories was
a constant reality. People were out but not going about their
business. Instead they grouped on the sidewalk, a teen in gang
colors talking to a man in a sport coat, an anxious mother with
a toddler being consoled by a woman with a walker.

The sky was so overcast that Kaya couldn't see the sun, but
the air was strangely clean, as if whatever had caused the booms
had purged it.

She unlocked her car, motioned for Sarah to get in. She slid
Angelina onto the girl's lap-no time to hunt down a car seat.

The front door of the clinic banged open. Stone stood there,
gun in hand, eyes searching them out. Kaya desperately turned
the ignition but only got click-click-click. She glanced around,
realized no cars were moving.

"We've got to run for it. Hurry up." She grabbed Angelina
from Sarah and dashed down the driveway.

"Get back here," Stone bellowed.

Kaya stumbled and fell to her knees, clutching the baby
to keep from dropping her. Something pop-pop-popped over
her head, a dreaded noise she knew too well from growing
up here.

"Get down," she cried, but Sarah froze, and before Kaya
could yank her down, more shots rang out.

Sarah crumpled, a crimson splotch blossoming on her throat.
Only enough breath left to gasp, "Don't let ... him... " before the
light in her eyes died.

Kaya crept into the street, found cover behind a car. Angelina dug little fingers into her neck but could only muster a
whimper.

"Give me that baby," Stone shouted, "or you're next."

Lord, save us, she prayed because she couldn't give this baby
to a madman.

Stone stormed off the porch and lunged forward, bashing
into the sidewalk as he tripped on the same cracked step.

Kaya ran down University Avenue for her life, and for
Angelina's.

ON HELPED CHLOE TO HER FEET, RUNNING HIS HANDS
over her face and shoulders, cupping her belly.

"What happened?" Chloe's voice cracked, as if she hadn't
spoken in a hundred years.

"I don't know. Are you OK?"

"Sweetie, I'm fine. We were just trying to push one particle,"
Chloe said. "Just harnessing a natural anomaly. How could
we-

"We didn't. The booms came from high above us. It was an
external event."

A series of muffled blasts had come from above just as the
Boston-New York flew by, a silent missile speeding through the
explosions.

"That just happened to occur at the same time we were
running our experiment?"

"We need more information before drawing any conclusions." Jon tuned his walkie-talkie to the command frequency.
Static burst from the speaker.

"Maybe it's broken," Chloe said.

"No, it looks OK. Something's happened up there."

"Could we have triggered a gas explosion?"

"You know the topography. There aren't any gas lines
anywhere near the tunnels."

"An earthquake or a plane crash? Maybe even some weird
sonic anomaly?"

"Or the obvious-someone trying to blow up the trains." Jon
looked east and west, the tunnels empty as far as he could see.
The walls were intact and the lights burned bright. He had been
trained to spot any flaw in the guideways or tunnel. None was
apparent.

"We're OK," Chloe said. "These tunnels are built to withstand anything."

Jon pulled her close. "You really all right? You took a good fall."

"No bleeding or cramping. We're both fine, sweetie."

"OK. Good. Listen-this place will be crawling with Quanta
security in a little while. Before anything else, we'd better
retrieve the particle collector."

"Jon. What if the trains ... ?"

"They're fine. Besides, they weren't carrying passengers. A
few engineers, maybe a cheap politician who wants a photo op.
Stupid terrorists were two months early with their bomb."

"If it was terrorists that caused this," Chloe said, "it happened
at Moment Zero-our moment zero."

"We did nothing more than run a small cable and tweak the
trains so they'd cross in Barcester. They've done that before and
will do that many times a day when they're in operation. It was
our bad luck that the bomb went off at the same instant."

"Scientific reasoning doesn't allow for coincidences, nasty or
otherwise."

"Common sense does," Jon said. "For now, that's the hypothesis under which we should operate. We'll go to the stairway,
get the detector, and make a quiet exit."

Chloe slipped her arm through his, and together they walked
toward the access stairway.

"Maybe it was ... some sort of sonic blast?" Jon said. "Why
are we thinking the worst just because of a few loud bangs?"

"Dread"

"Don't get all poetic on me."

"I can't help it. Dread is the only appropriate concept for the
sinking feeling in my belly."

Jon stopped. "You said you were all right."

"I am. Individually. But as for corporately, for Barcester or
even the United States or..." She stopped, panting.

"You're hyperventilating. Honey, it's going to be OK."

"Not an anxiety attack, idiot. Look-the fans aren't going."

Sure enough, the blades that were visible through the grate
were not moving. "The vents must be closed. That's one of the
antiterrorism controls, right?"

"I thought the fans were supposed to go double-speed. In
case of, like, sarin gas or something."

"I don't know, Chloe. Some close, others vent. I just don't
know."

She tightened her grip on his arm. "You're panting, too."

"There's too much volume to diminish the air supply yet.
We'll be OK. You, me, the baby."

"Promise?"

"Absolute promise." He slipped into their little mantra. "As
in zero or space or vacuum

"Oh, Jon. Vacuum. The train must have created some sort
of vacuum that ordinarily is back-filled by the vents and fans.
The air is depressurizing to fill that vacuum. Getting thinner
and thinner-"

"No, we don't know that. Besides, vacuum requires a limited
space. The tunnels stretch too far to be..."

She nodded, hardly in need of a lecture on Quanta architecture or basic physics. They walked the few hundred feet to the
access stairway in silence.

The door was open.

"It shouldn't be," Chloe said.

"Emergency measures," Jon said, making it up as he went
along. "The locks must release automatically."

"It's bright. Too bright for the lights." Chloe stepped back,
her eyes wide. "The stairwell is on fire."

"It can't be," Jon said, no scientist now as he tried to pretend
that what he saw was not what was. A steady flame filled the stairwell, casting tremendous light but little heat. "There's no smoke."

"Too hot for smoke. Pure combustion."

"It's not hot at all. Do you feel any heat? And precisely what is
burning? The stairs are cast in concrete and the railing is steel."

"We go by facts, Jon. We see fire. Therefore, there is fuel for
it to burn."

Jon looked at his feet, expecting to see the walkway shift
under him as reason slipped sideways. His stomach roiled, and
he had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting. He bent over,
taking deep breaths.

"Are you OK?" Chloe patted his back. Always cool in crisis,
though the worst crisis they had faced up to now was telling her
traditional parents that they had eloped.

Nothing like this-whatever this was. "The numbers don't
add up," Jon muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing, just thinking." He couldn't figure out this atypical
fire simply because he didn't have all the facts. There was no
mystery-no impossibility. Just a calculation still waiting for its
variables to be plugged in before he could solve it.

"Come on. We have to get away from this until we know
what it is."

"Yeah. OK."

"We should follow the train west. To the next access stairway.
That's what-four kilometers?"

"Yeah." Jon turned with her, heading in the direction of
the New York line. "Just for something to do. While we wait
for someone to come."

"Will someone come?"

"I promise they will," Jon said, not daring to make it absolute.

EN RACED AWAY AS FAST AS HIS BATTERED BODY WOULD
allow. He could outrun the cops but not the scent of
Jasmine's perfume on his shirt, the feel of her touch on
his skin.