Apocalypse Dawn (18 page)

From the slightly unsteady way Fletcher was walking, Megan felt certain the man had been drinking. Whatever limited control the man had on his emotions when he was sober would have been partially lifted by the alcohol. Keeping her hands on Gerry’s shoulders to hold him in place, she stepped in front of the boy and pushed him behind her.

“Private Fletcher,” Megan said sternly.

Obscenities littered the hallway as Fletcher kept coming.

The language didn’t bother Megan. She didn’t approve of it, but on an army base she’d developed a certain familiarity with it. And her work with teens had been occasionally rife with it. Of course, it wasn’t a universal problem. Many soldiers, including Goose, never cursed. Or at least never cursed around her.

“Private Fletcher,” Megan tried again. She kept Gerry behind her, making it apparent that he would have to go through her to get to her son.

“Get out of my way,” Fletcher ordered as he closed on them. “What has he been telling you?”

Megan knew the man wasn’t going to stop.

“Whatever it was,” Fletcher declared, “it doesn’t matter. He’s a little liar anyway. You can’t believe a word he says. I told you that when you first started seeing him.”

Gerry tore free of Megan’s restraining hand and darted forward. “Dad! Stop! Please, stop!”

Stepping forward again, Megan once more placed herself in front of the boy.

“Mrs. Gander, don’t!” Gerry pleaded. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing when he gets like this! Please!”

Before Megan could think of anything to say, the two uniformed Rangers from the security desk arrived at a full run. Helen yelled to them and pointed at Boyd Fletcher, loosing them like hounds on a fox. Their footsteps, closing at a drumming double beat, alerted Fletcher that he wasn’t the only big guy in the hallway.

The bleary-eyed private turned around, snarling curses.

“Soldier,” Corporal Grady barked in a loud voice, “stand down now or we’ll stand you down.”

Fletcher grinned drunkenly. “My lucky day, boys. Unless I’m seeing double, I’m getting a two-for-one tonight if you decide to open the ball on this one. You pups had better back off if you know what’s good for you. “

Grady and Malone hesitated.

“I came here to get my son,” Fletcher said. “He’s mine. Nobody can keep him from me. He’s not supposed to be here. He’s not supposed to be talking. I’m taking him home.”

“No,” Grady said. His voice cracked slightly, and there was a tense edge in it. “You’re going to leave the boy here, and you’re going to come with us.”

Fletcher cursed again, then turned and advanced toward Megan and Gerry. Grady and Malone launched themselves at the drunken private. They tried to restrain him, but Fletcher closed his hands into fists and viciously hammered both of the younger men, driving them down to the ground in seconds. The meaty smacks of flesh against flesh rocketed through the hallway.

When he’d shaken free of his would-be captors, Fletcher aimed himself at Megan again. He cursed Gerry and in his diatribe blamed everything wrong in his life on the boy.

Megan stood her ground, fear rattling inside her like an insane beast. She felt Gerry cowering behind her and heard his whimpering sobs. I will not falter, she told herself. I will not step away from him. She thought of Goose somewhere out there on the Turkish border, dealing with God only knew what. Surely she, too, could hold her ground in a hostile situation.

Before Fletcher could reach Megan, though, Malone and Gradybleeding and bruised-rose from the floor and threw themselves at him. Malone went low, wrapping his arms around Fletcher’s ankles while Grady hit the man waist-high.

Driven off-balance, Fletcher fell forward, slamming into the floor at Megan’s feet. He screamed and raged, shouted curses, and struggled to get to his feet. His face, when he looked up, was covered in blood.

Megan stepped back and turned around. Gerry was no longer standing behind her. She watched helplessly as the boy ran to the other end of the hallway and crashed through the emergency exit. A warning Klaxon shrilled in his wake, but he was gone out into the night before the door closed.

United States of America

Columbus, Georgia

Local Time 12:55 A.M.

“Hey, Joey, what are you doing? I thought you came here to dance.”

Mesmerized by the action on the television screen behind the bar at the heavy metal club, Joey didn’t recognize Jenny McGrath’s voice at first. The news anchor was saying that the current footage had been taped, that the live transmissions had been lost, and that the station hoped to re-establish a live transmission within the next few minutes.

Goose is over there in that! The thought screamed through Joey’s mind like a banshee wail.

“Joey?” Jenny’s voice took on a plaintive note. “I didn’t come here with you to be ignored.”

A television anchor hunkered down behind a wall of sandbags. He held a microphone in one hand and squinted against the dust and smoke that eddied across the screen. “-what we understand is that there’s been a full-scale assault upon the Turkish army and U.N. peacekeeping forces.”

“Do you know what precipitated the attack?” an offscreen anchorwoman asked.

A tremendous explosion sounded nearby before the reporter could reply. The man in the field dropped prone and covered his head with both arms. Sand and earthen chunks rained down, pelting the newsman mercilessly. The cameraman took cover a moment later, dragging the camera behind him. The view from the field tumbled along the desert floor. The scene shifted immediately, showing footage of SCUDs streaking through the sky, then a line of explosions leaping up from the distant horizon.

“Joey,” Jenny called again.

Aggravated with the girl for interrupting him, still smarting over the way she had deserted him to dance with the band, Joey said, “I’m trying to listen to the television.”

Jenny’s voice turned cold. “Catching up on the Lakers game?”

Aware that Jenny wasn’t at all happy with him, Joey said, “No. It’s a special bulletin. The Syrians just attacked Turkey.”

Crossing her arms, jenny didn’t appear mollified by that explanation in the least. “So instead of a guy who’s a sports fan, I’m trading up to one who’s totally a political science nerd? And what, exactly, is so fascinating about that?”

Memory of the way Jenny had danced on stage only moments ago rattled around inside Joey’s skull. Looking at her, he realized that he wasn’t as happy to be out with her as he’d thought he would be when she first asked him.

“I told you my dad was a soldier,” Joey said, biting back his retort. “Lie’s stationed over in Turkey.” He pointed at the television. “He’s one of the guys over there in the middle of that right now. His unit, the 75th Rangers, was assigned there. He could be hurt right now, or maybe worse.” He couldn’t bring himself to say that Goose might have died in the initial assault.

“Oh.” Her features softening somewhat, jenny glanced at the television. “There’s nothing you can do about what’s going on over there. I mean, whatever’s going to happen is going to happen.”

Joey looked at her in disbelief.

A frown creased jenny’s forehead and lips. ‘Don’t give me that look. I work five nights a week at Kettle 0’ Fish, which is a dead-end job no matter how much you seem to like it. Do the math. I work five nights. That leaves two nights off. On those nights, I like to dance.” She paused. “This is one of those nights, Joey, and we’re not exactly dancing here.”

Overwhelmed in the face of such an uncaring attitude, Joey didn’t know what to say.

“Besides,” Jenny said, “I thought you said your dad was in California.”

Tony Holder had lived in California for the last half dozen years. He had been a small-time filmmaker in L.A. since divorcing Joey’s Mom and leaving Columbus.

“It’s Goose,” Joey said. “My stepdad.”

Jenny frowned again and shrugged. “So what? You said yourself that the guy hardly has any time for you these days. Why should you worry about him?”

Because I care about what happens to him, Joey thought immediately, but he didn’t say it. Maybe he’s forgotten about me, but I still don’t want anything to happen to him. Mom would go crazy. And Chris would lose his father. Joey knew all about that and didn’t want his little brother to experience something as bad as that. He glanced back at the television screen and took his cell phone from his pocket.

When he’d left the family house that evening, he’d turned the device off, knowing his mom would call to check on him after he stayed out past his curfew. He intended to tell his mom that he had forgotten to charge the phone and had left the power cord adapter for his car’s cigarette lighter on his desk. The car was his mom’s, so his stuff wasn’t always in the vehicle. It was a fib he’d used in the past, and taking the battery out and discharging the power before he arrived home was no problem.

“Joey,” Jenny said.

Ignoring her, Joey watched the television, noticing that Leonard and Ace were both keeping track of the conversation between him and Jenny. Punching in his number, Joey quickly cycled through the menu options and opened his mailbox.

There were two messages, both of them from his mom. The caller ID indicated that five other messages had been missed between the first and last message. The first three had been from the Gander home phone number. The last four had been from his mom’s cell phone.

“Joey,” his mom said calmly, “you’re out past your curfew. You are going to be so grounded when you get back home.”

In a way, his mom’s promise of punishment was reassuring. If she was only thinking of grounding him, then things couldn’t be that bad. But the call had been logged in before the time when the news channel said the hostilities had started.

“Are you listening to me?” Jenny demanded.

“Give me a minute,” Joey said, looking at the television. The news footage cycled through again. Evidently the reporters had been caught pretty much flat-footed and hadn’t been able to send much in the way of footage before the communications lines had been cut. He punched up the second message.

“Joey,” his mom said. Her voice sounded tight and controlled, the way it did some days when things got really hectic at the counseling center. “I don’t know where you are, and I don’t know what you might have seen on the television. All I can tell you is that I haven’t received any information about Goose.”

Some of the tightness inside Joey’s chest relaxed. Thank You, God. The sentiment flooded through him, but at the same time he felt like a hypocrite, one of those people who reached for God in times of need but never simply gave thanks to Him all along the way. But there hadn’t been a lot to be thankful for lately, had there?

“I know Goose’s unit was involved in the action along the border,” his mom went on. “I’ve been called in to the base hospital. An emergency has come up regarding one of my patients.”

That, Joey knew, wasn’t a good thing. The last time his mom had gotten called in to the base hospital had been when one of the teens she was counseling had tried to commit suicide. Even as he thought that, he remembered Chris.

“I had to drop Chris off at the emergency child-care center,” his mom said. “I don’t know how long I’ll be at the hospital. If you get this message, please go by and pick Chris up. He wasn’t happy about being left there.” There was a pause. “I’m really ticked at you for not being here and for causing me extra worry, Joey, but I want you to know I love you. Get home and we’ll get this sorted out.”

The message clicked off. Before the automated message could prompt him to replay, delete, or save the message, Joey punched the asterisk to end the session. He dialed his mom’s cell phone number but got only her message box. Fear crept through him, swamping him with thoughts of what might have happened to his mom or Goose or Chris. He was worried to the point that getting yelled at for blowing off his curfew actually sounded good to him.

“Joey.” Jenny sounded totally miffed.

Looking at her, Joey said, “[ gotta go.”

“What?” she asked sarcastically. “Did you hear your mom calling?”

“As a matter of fact,” Joey said, “I did. There’s been an emergency. I brought you here. I can drop you back by your house. Or do you think you can find a way home from here? I’ll pay for a cab.”

“You’re leaving me here?” A look of disbelief covered her beautiful face.

“I’m trying not to.”

“Do you care?”

“Actually,” Joey said, “I do. Goose-my stepdad-taught me that you don’t just ditch someone you brought with you. And I don’t want to just leave things like this between us. I want to see you again. If that’s okay.” And, boy, doesn’t that sound lame. But the thought didn’t linger in his mind. He was thinking totally of his family.

jenny stayed silent for a moment. “I can find a way home.”

Her answer slashed through Joey’s knotted guts. His anger coiled inside him, and he wanted to stand there and argue with her, to tell her how much her actions had hurt him. But he thought of Chris in the child-care center with some stranger, and he knew how wigged out his mom would be with Goose in the thick of things over in Turkey.

“Fine.” Joey shelved his anger and hurt for the moment. Sorting them out with all the confusion spinning through his head at the same time was almost impossible. That was another thing Goose had helped him work on when he was just a kid. He’d been confused over his dad’s abandonment and his mother’s remarriage. As a result, some of his anger had been targeted at Goose, who had taken everything in stride. They had worked through most of that one step at a time-until Chris had been born.