Hoarse screams shattered the steady undercurrent of whispering voices as a straitjacketed man was wheeled through the room on a gurney. Three orderlies and a nurse accompanied the screaming man. All of them looked worn-out.
General Amos Braddock, the base commander, had encouraged the staff to sleep in the hospital and have their families come visit them. The hospital staff shored up their diminished personnel with men and women on base, including the teens who were holding their own emotionally.
People sat in the waiting room to find out about friends and loved ones who had gotten injured when cars and trucks had gone out of control and airplanes had dropped from the sky. A number of casualties and losses had occurred at the post’s airfield. Thankfully the disappearances had happened late at night or more aircraft would have fallen.
The gurney slammed through the double doors on the other side of the room. The man’s screams faded as the doors closed and the orderlies wheeled him farther away.
“Man,” one of the MPs whispered to the other one, “wouldn’t want to be that guy.”
“Wouldn’t want to be one of the guys Kerby had with him tonight, either,” the other whispered back. “With that girl getting shot, they’re going to catch some serious—” He stopped speaking.
Megan felt their gazes on her as they realized they’d spoken without thinking. She didn’t look at them, didn’t give any indication she had heard the comments. There was no sense in all of them being uncomfortable.
Televisions hung from swivel mounts in two corners of the room. The blue-white ghostly reflections of FOX News on one set and CNN on the other hung in the windows in front of Megan. She didn’t want to watch because the stories that broke in the media seemed never to end.
Mostly the coverage consisted of canned footage of horrible crashes in huge metropolitan areas, passenger jets lying in flames in fields or across highways or buried in cities. The wreckage continued along major harbor areas in San Francisco, New York, New Orleans, Seattle, and other ports as suddenly unmanned ships crashed into bridges, docks, and other ships. The chaos and destruction never relented. Riots added fuel to the fire in several areas. Even Columbus, the city nearest the post, knew unrest and violence. Local television stations covered that, though few news teams ventured out into the hardest-hit areas.
The reporters sought out interviews with witnesses now. A steady parade of frightened people flashed across the screens, each with his or her own story of personal tragedy and loss. Even veteran politicians had trouble keeping their emotions together when they backed the president’s stance that everything was under control.
That was a lie, Megan knew, but it was a lie that a lot of people would want to believe. “No, it’s not going to hurt,” was the biggest lie of all, followed by “Everything’s going to be all right.” She wanted to scream. Lie to me. Make me feel better. Nothing was ever going to be the same again. She felt that. Everyone could. Not many were ready to deal with it, though. She’d thought she was prepared, even after losing Chris, until Leslie had shot herself.
On one of the television screens, CNN covered the press releases given by President Fitzhugh regarding the no-holds-barred investigation into the worldwide disappearances as well as Nicolae Carpathia’s junket to New York City to address the United Nations in a few days. No one, it seemed, yet knew why the Romanian president would make the trip now.
Despite the cold terror that she held locked up inside herself with iron control, Megan couldn’t help but pay attention to Carpathia. Over the past few days, the man had gained increased presence in the media, becoming linked more and more to the effort to recover from the disappearances. Nothing was said about what shape that recovery was going to take.
Carpathia was a youthful-looking man, appearing slightly younger than his early thirties. Cameras were generous to him. His blond hair looked like spun gold when it caught the light. No one knew exactly why Carpathia was coming to the U.S. to speak to the U.N., or why President Fitzhugh worked so hard to make the man feel invited.
Still, the few times that Megan had caught prerecorded interviews with the Romanian president, she had noticed the calm presence Carpathia seemed to exude. He seemed like a man who could get things done, a man who’d never known defeat, but she had no idea what his plans were. But whatever they were, they would have no impact on her life at the moment.
Somewhere in the hospital, Leslie Hollister fought for her life. The image of the young girl lying so slack and bloody on her bedroom floor never left Megan’s mind. After making certain that Megan wasn’t hurt, one of the hospital orderlies had given her a set of green scrubs and asked her to change clothes, telling her she couldn’t sit in the waiting room as bloody as she was. No one wanted the other occupants more upset than they already were.
Leslie’s blood had soaked into Megan’s underwear, her skin, and her hair. Clotted and dry now, the blood felt raspy against her skin. Even repeated washings in the bathroom hadn’t removed the stains. More blood etched her nails, dug in deep now where she wouldn’t be able to reach it without a cuticle brush. The smell of blood lingered on every breath she drew.
Megan blinked tears from her eyes and let out a long, low breath that attracted the attention of the MPs assigned to her. She
