His father had died while his mother had been overseas. Kyle had been staying with another family on base at the time and had experienced a lot of trouble coping with the loss of his father. His mother had struggled with her husband’s death a long time before finding peace within herself. Kyle had actually come to terms with the loss before his mother had because she’d been carrying the double whammy of survivor’s guilt as well as having been away while her husband had lingered for nearly two days in ICU before finally succumbing. Even Red Cross assistance with the air connections hadn’t gotten her home in time to see him alive. Kyle had continued family counseling sessions for a while, more to keep his mom together than for any personal needs.
“Okay,” Kyle said, then took a deep breath, “my definition of faith. And this is just a baseline, a starting place to give us something to look at. Evidently going to church every Sunday and giving thanks for every meal isn’t exactly what faith is all about. We’ve got people in this room who do that now.” He nodded toward Susan. “But that wasn’t enough.”
Susan looked miserable and her lower lip trembled.
“Yeah,” Geri Krauser said. “But when you think about all the kids our age and the adults who vanished, those are the people who are missing.”
Kyle spread his hands. “So more often than not, those people we perceived as good Christians are gone. We can only make one assumption from that: those people’s faith was true.”
“But those aren’t the only people missing,” Marcus Raintree said. He was a full-blooded Seminole Indian and new to the post. He was fifteen and totally into music, having put together two bands that reflected his interest in rock and roll and jazz. “Private Jurgens, one of the new privates who’s been playing in my rock band, is gone. He didn’t go to church every Sunday. I know because a lot of Sundays we jammed when he wasn’t at post.”
“How old was he?” Shawn asked.
“Twenty.”
“More important,” Kyle said, “what kind of person was he?”
“He was a good guy,” Marcus said. Unconsciously, his hands drummed an almost silent beat on the desktop. “He was a great bass guitarist. Had an ear, you know? He liked comic books and fantasy novels. We traded a lot of stuff back and forth. If you needed help with something, Private Jurgens was one of the guys you went to first.”
“Did he talk about his faith much?”
“No.” Marcus hesitated. “I knew he was a Christian from the books he had on his shelves, but he never pushed anything at me. But we were talking one time when he was getting ready to ship out to Iraq for a peacekeeping tour. I asked him if he ever got afraid while he was out there, knowing he might get shot at any time. He told me he didn’t, that he’d made his peace with God a long time ago and knew that he was going to heaven.”
“And he’s gone?” Geri asked.
Marcus nodded. “After all this craziness went down, I went over to his base apartment. Had to break in, but I had to know because he was my friend. He came to our house last Christmas ‘cause he doesn’t have any family of his own. My mom and dad liked him a lot.” His dark eyes teared up and he couldn’t go on for a moment. “I found Marcus’s clothes on the couch where he must have been watching television when he … when he left.”
Megan let the quiet stay in the room for a time before continuing. “So you don’t have to go to Sunday school or pray before every meal or witness to others.”
“Faith is an internal thing,” Kyle said. “It’s not based on outward behavior. My dad used to tell me that all the time. Even when he was in ICU fighting for his life. He told me he wasn’t afraid of dying, but he didn’t want to leave me behind.” His voice hung just for a moment but he quickly mastered the emotion that tugged at him. “He told me God loved everyone and wanted a personal relationship with us. Sometimes God expects more from some people than He does from others.”
“Because they’ve got more to give,” Geri said.
The other teens looked at her in surprise.
“My aunt,” Geri said. “She told me that the Bible says, ‘To whom much is given, from him much will be required.’” She shrugged. “Aunt Lil was an EMT. I asked her one day how she could stand to look at everything she saw every day and not go crazy. You know—dead people, hurt people, decapitated people. Some of the stories her friends would tell totally creeped me out. I told her I couldn’t have done her job. She said that God had given her a gift and that she was meant to help others. So He made her strong enough to do that.”
“The stats I looked at involving the disappearances,” Shawn said, “show that a bigger percentage of EMTs, hospital workers, and firefighters disappeared than other professions.”
“People whose careers are to help others,” Megan said, thinking of Helen Cordell and how she had disappeared from the post hospital that night. “Have you talked with your aunt lately?”
Geri shook her head and tears glinted in her eyes. Stubbornly, holding true to her independent nature, she crossed her arms and shook her head. “She disappeared. I talked to my uncle Bob. He’s pretty upset.” She paused. “I think I’ll call him after we get out of here and let him know what we’re finding out.” She nodded toward the book in front of her. “Maybe he can get a copy of this book. Maybe it’ll hurt.”
“What about your aunt?” Kyle
