Wired (7 page)

“Of course.”

“Kids today see so much killing on television and at the movies that many of them seem to absorb violence better than your
boy has done, but…”

“We don't watch violence on television,” Graham interrupted him. “George is in no way prepared for what happened today. I'm
sure he's going to have a difficult time. You see…” Graham bit his lip and stopped talking for a moment.

“I understand,” the detective said. “Well, he's severely traumatized right now.” He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “It may take
a while before…well…before he's ready to talk with us.”

“Probably,” Graham said.

The detective stopped and looked out the window. “The ambulance is here now. They will remove your mother and then we'll probably
be on our way. We checked the grounds thoroughly before you arrived. We don't have much left to do.”

A policeman walked up. “Detective, we're sure the man went over the back fence and ran down the other side of the street.
We've got a couple of eyewitnesses over there.”

“Good!” Smith nodded his head enthusiastically. “We need to make sure we've got police chasing anyone running down that side
of the street.”

“Already got it covered, sir.”

“Excellent! Good!” Smith said. “I'll be out there in a few minutes to join the chase.” He turned back to Peck. “Anything you
want to ask me?”

Graham shook his head.

“We know who you are, Mr. Peck. You're an important person downtown. Don't worry. We pay attention to the people working with
Mayor Bridges.”

Graham blinked several times. The detective's words startled him. “Don't you take care of everybody?” he snapped.

“Sure,” Smith said. “But there's so much crime these days we can't keep up with it all. Since those millions of people disappeared
the world's gone crazy. Frankly, some of these cases slip between the cracks. Don't worry. We won't let that happen in this
situation.”

Graham thought the police were on top of everything in Chicago, but this man had told him quite the opposite. The admission
was staggering. It was wrong, but this wasn't the time or place to take up that problem.

The detective walked away and Graham took a look a long, deep breath and walked back into the living room where the police
were starting to thin out. Jackie still lay huddled over the children.

Graham sat down on the floor to be on eye level with George. “Son? Can you talk to me?” He looked straight into George's eyes.

George didn't answer. His eyes looked empty and he didn't move his head.

Graham stared. His son was acting more like a patient coming out of a post-trauma stress crisis. The boy seemed to be completely
detached. George couldn't speak and looked like a person in a dissociative state.

“Son…” Graham reached out for him, but George didn't move. Graham took his son in his arms and hugged him close. The boy didn't
resist, but neither did he respond. George's body felt like it was hanging in suspended animation, limp like a worn-out inner
tube. “Oh George,” Graham whispered in his ear, “I'm so, so sorry.”

George could faintly hear his father's voice, but it sounded like it was coming from the other end of a long tunnel. George
felt locked in a soundproof room where a straightjacket bound him tight and secure. Voices buzzed around his head like gnats
circling in the summertime. He tried to understand even though nothing made any sense.

A terrible, roaring noise returned over and over again. Like two blasts from a car backfiring, the sounds came in rapid succession.
The explosion would occur and then die down sometimes for as long as a minute. After the blasts had almost faded away, suddenly
the cracking and popping would happen again. Two short staccato bangs repeated in the same time sequence. Over and over, over
and over, the sounds ricocheted around in his mind.

Everything happening around George moved in slow motion as if all the clocks in the world had geared down to a slow ticking
where every second lasted a minute. People walked in long extended strides like giants taking slow steps. George watched the
men in blue uniforms who came went through his house but he didn't know who they were. Most of the time he didn't understand
anything they said. Their voices slurred together in a long blur of sound.

And then there was
something
out there in the garage…he couldn't…grasp. Some strange…event had unfolded out there, but George couldn't…quite… remember
what it was at that moment. He let his mind wander in that direction, but he could only go so far…and then a horrible noise
exploded in his ears again. The sound turned into a ringing roar that drowned out every other intonation. The crashing blurred
into a frightening racket that made it impossible for him to think.

George knew that he needed to see what was out there in the garage, what was lying on the floor, and as if struggling through
a moss-filled swamp, he tried to get closer, but the explosion erupted again. Blackness fell over everything and a deafening
silence settled around him as if a thick blanket had been wrapped around his entire body and over his head. Then fear suddenly
gripped him like a vise, squeezing his life out.

And then world swirled out of control and George felt like he was falling, and falling, and falling into oblivion. The emptiness
drank him in like a catfish swallowing a minnow. Once the hollowness devoured him, George knew his voice was completely gone.
He couldn't talk or think. All that was possible in the silence was to stare into the blankness that held him captive.

S
EVERAL HOURS PASSED
before anyone ran Matt down, but he turned up studying in the university's library. Matt jumped in his small hydro-coupe
automobile and drove like a maniac to Arlington heights. The traffic was fierce and it took him longer than he anticipated.
Attempting to avoid the crowded freeways, Matt took several back roads that proved to be even worse. Bewildered, frightened,
confounded, angry, nothing seemed to be fitting together right and only increased his bitterness. The only message the student
gave him in the library was a handwritten note saying, “Your grandmother's been shot. You need to get home as quickly as you
can. She's gone.”

Gone
.

The word rattled around in Matt's head like a runaway cartoon figure in a video game.
Gone
. The word wounded and stung. His grandmother Maria had always been there. She loved him, cared for him, remembered him on
his birthdays. And now she was dismissed with a simple one-syllable word.
Gone
.

Matt beat on the dashboard while he whizzed down the narrow side roads. He had always loved Maria and never questioned the
fact she loved him. How could anyone have shot and killed his grandmother? She was the most wonderful person in the world.

Cars shot past him like little meteors, flashing through a dark sky. Overhead the moon had an extremely strange cast, giving
it a crimson glow in a totally black sky. Matt didn't want to think about why the night had taken on such a macabre look.
He tried to concentrate on driving, but he kept thinking about his grandmother and the good times they had shared back before
George and Jeff were born. He remembered that Mary had only been a small child when they went to see Maria in Peoria.

“Why, here's my little bundle of joy,” Maria said and Picked up little Matt. She had tickled him under the chin. “Have you
come to Grandmother's for a big turkey dinner?”

“It's Thanksgiving!” eight-year-old Matt said. “Yes and I'm hungry.”

“Well, it is indeed.” Maria carried him into the kitchen. “Unfortunately, we don't start the feast until this evening.” Maria
sat him down on the edge of the cabinet top. “But I think we need to make sure that the desserts are ready.” She stuck a fork
in one of the pies sitting a couple of feet from Matt, and cut off a fat piece filled with cherries. “Would you like a small
bite?”

“Oh, yes!” Little Matt grinned ear to ear.

“Open your mouth wide.” Maria put the pie into his mouth. “Now how does that taste?”

Matt chewed for a moment. “Oh, Grammy! That was wonderful.”

“Good!” Maria winked at him. “I would have had to throw the whole pie out if you didn't like it.”

“Really?”

“Of course!”

Matt remembered how Maria always made him feel special, exceptional, the king of the house. Of course, she wouldn't have thrown
the pie out, but Matt didn't know it when he was eight years old. She made Matt think everything he said was law.

He abruptly laughed at himself. Maybe the back roads journey home was worth the extra distance because he had more time to
remember the incidents that meant so much to him as a child and that seemed to comfort him.

Maria didn't let him get away with much and neither did his parents. Matt was raised with more discipline than most of his
friends. Maria's hand was unseen, but evident in how his parents reared Matthew. He didn't like the raps on the knuckles,
but the extra attention made a difference at school. He was soon known as an outstanding student and that made it possible
for him to enter an exceptional university like Northwestern. Probably the added attention was one of the reasons he stayed
with mathematics as his major at the university.

And now Maria was
gone.

Tears rolled down Matt's cheeks. The idea that Maria had disappeared was gut wrenching and intolerable. The pitch-black interior
of his car sealed him off from the rest of the world. No one could see him now. Matt sobbed while the car raced through the
night.

He resisted being known as a sensitive person, but in truth, Matt was extremely sensitive. Maria never quite understood that
side of his personality, but she respected the fact that little things could make tears swell up in eyes. A slight, someone's
personal pain, recognizing when people were lonely, issues that were small to someone else, all this affected him deeply.

And Matt's heart was touched when Grandfather Peck, Maria's husband, died, Matt was barely nine years old when Albert died
of a heat attack. Matthew didn't know him nearly as well as he knew his grandmother. People tended to call the white-haired
old man simply Al, and Matt knew his father respected Albert, even though there was some distance between them.

Matt went down to the funeral home in Peoria with his father. The house looked huge, towering over him like a medieval haunted
house where bats flew in and out of ironbarred windows. The interior of this terrifying Bastille was filled with dark shadows
hovering across hallways that looked endlessly long. He and his father went to one of the back rooms where the long, brown
box with brass handless lay on a metal gurney.

Matt's face reached only slightly above the edge of the casket, and when he peered over the side, his nose was only inches
from his grandfather's ear. He remembered how Al's eyes seemed to be sealed shut with glue. Grandpa Albert's cheeks were puffy,
and looked hard like a piece of sagging clay. His face had turned into a lifeless mannequin. Everything about the scene was
grotesque for a little boy. Matthew remembered shrinking back and wanting to run, but his father caught him by the arm.

“It's okay,” Graham said. “You don't need to be afraid.” He kept a firm hand on Matt's arm. “Grandfather's fine.”

But matt was afraid, and even to this day he dreaded a funeral. He didn't want to see his grandmother stretched out like Albert
had been and hoped the family would come up with something better than another trip to one of those awful funeral homes, but
they probably wouldn't.

Matt knew it was a problem. Since all of those people disappeared in a flash, almost every church was closed. Of course, the
peck family never attended a church anyway, but they didn't have many alternatives to a service in a place like where they
had kept Grandfather Albert. Matt didn't like those alternatives in any way, shape, or form.

Paying no attention to the television/radar speed monitors, he drove through town far too fast. Still, Matt pulled into the
outskirts of Arlington Heights later than he wished. his grandmother's death scrambled and changed everything in the world
of the peck family. Matthew knew big adjustments lay ahead for all of them.

Matt turned off his car and started to walk slowly toward the house. After only a few steps, he broke into a run. he grabbed
the front door and burst into the living room.

His mother sat on the couch with her eyes closed, holding George in her lap. He hadn't seen them in at least five weeks and
expected some sort of special welcome, but George didn't move. He didn't even blink his eyes. his mother slowly opened her
eyes and looked at him remorsefully.

“Mom?” said Matt, quietly.

“Come in Matt,” Jackie said. “Sit down.”

George still made no movement. He looked disconnected and mute.

Matt walked slowly across the room. “I heard…” He stopped. “I heard what happened,” he said more definitely.

“Yes. Your grandmother is gone.”

The word came back again to Matthew with the same hollow depressing sound he had felt earlier in the day. He couldn't answer.

All he could say was an affirmation. “
Gone.
”

Matt sat down across from her and looked at George, who seemed to be gone as well.

T
HE ROOF GROANED
and cracked under the force of a cold wind blowing over it, dead in the middle of the night. An eerie glow from the moon
cast long shadows across every bedroom in the Pecks' house. A red reflection bounced off the window. The night was long and
difficult. Matthew stayed in his old bedroom across the and hall from Mary while Jeff curled up in a pallet at the end of
Mary's bed. George slept between his mother and father. No one really fell asleep until well past midnight.

At 7:30 the next morning, Graham's bedside telephone rang. After the second ring, he stuck his arm out from under the blanket
and picked up the receiver from the nightstand. “Hello.” His voice sounded groggy.