Presumption of Guilt (37 page)
People came out of the insurance office next to them, and a woman came toward her. “What's going on with the cars?”
“They're all dead. No reason. They just stopped running at the same time.”
“And all our power went out.”
“Really?”
“Has to be an electromagnetic pulse.” The man from in front of her seemed to be thinking aloud. “That would knock out everything electronic.” “But what would cause something like that?”
“An e-bomb, maybe.”
“A bomb?” Kay caught her breath and looked out over the sky. “Then we could be under attack?” She searched for a sign of smoke indicating a bomb had hit somewhere. The sky was a radiant blue, and there was no sign that anything catastrophic had happened. She looked back at her Expedition, saw Beth walking up the street to talk to a friend three cars up.
“Beth, come back!”
Her daughter turned around.
“Don't go anywhere. Stay right here with me.”
“Why?”
She couldn't tell her that she feared something worse might be about to happen, that there could be radiation in the air, or toxins, or bombs about to drop. . . . “Just do what I tell you.”
Logan picked that moment to come out of the car. She grabbed his arm and shoved him back in. “Get back in the car!”
“But you said to get out! It's hot in there!”
“Do it!” she shouted. “Now!”
Both kids muttered as they got back in. Kay stood there a moment, trying to get a grip on herself. Why was she yelling at them? It didn't make any sense.
None of this did. All she knew was that she was scared. She just didn't know of what.
Chapter 4
S
weat trickled down Doug's neck and soaked into the collar of his button-down shirt as he sat with Deni inside the airport. They'd gone back inside after realizing the car wasn't taking them anywhere. As they'd come in, they'd seen firefighters running to the scene on foot. Through the glass, Doug saw the planes still on fire, caught the smell of burning metal and fuel working its way into the building. The firefighters worked at the wreckage with handheld fire extinguishers in a desperate attempt to quench the flames and pull survivors from the planes.
Deni erupted out of her seat and rushed to the window. “Dad, look!
Someone's alive.”
Doug joined her, watching as they carried out a man in uniform. “It's one of the pilots.”
They placed the man on a gurney, but where would they take him? They couldn't put him in an ambulance and whisk him to the hospital. Doug watched, breath held, as a few others came out of the wreckage, some walking, others carried.
Deni reached for his hand as she kept her gaze glued to the site. He didn't know when she had last done that before today. Ten years? Twelve? At twenty-two, Deni was fiercely independent. He closed his hand around hers, offering shallow reassurance. The crew started bringing the survivors in the door near where Doug and Deni stood, and the cluster of people at the window moved to get a look.
They waited until the pilot was carried in, and Doug tried to see if he was awake. A man ran alongside the gurney, keeping pressure on the pilot's bleeding head wound. He saw the pilot bring a bloody hand to his face. The man was conscious.
A passenger walked in behind him, smudges from smoke marring the skin around her nose and mouth. Coughing, she limped through the crowd.
Deni let go of Doug's hand and threw herself at the woman. “Ma'am, did your plane get shot down?”
Doug grabbed Deni's arm, wishing she had waited for someone who wasn't injured.
The woman coughed, then answered in a raspy voice. “I don't know what happened. All I know is that the lights shut off in the plane, and we started dropping. No announcement, no nothing. Next thing we know we're rolling across the runway.”
Deni turned back to Doug. “That pilot is awake, Dad. I bet
he
knows what happened.”
Doug nodded. “Let's follow and see if we can find anybody who spoke to him.”
They followed the gurney up the concourse and to the small Crown Room. Doug caught up with one of the disheveled crew members who'd helped get the pilot out.
“Excuse me, did the pilot say what happened?”
The man's eyes darted from the victims to the window. “He's as much in the dark as we are. Said his power just shut off, and nothing worked. Not even the radio. All four engines died. He had to glide the plane to the nearest airport and land it manually. If it had been a bigger, newer plane, they'd have fallen like a lawn dartâjust like the first plane. It's a miracle there were any survivors.”
Doug stared after the man as he disappeared into the Crown Room, running the words through his mind. Plane engines dying midair, cars stalling, electricity failing . . .
“Dad, I'm scared. Planes don't just fall out of the sky.”
He swallowed and rubbed his jaw. It was war. Had to be. Someone had attacked them, just like on 9/11. Maybe it was a nuclear attack in the atmosphere, powerful enough to knock out everything electronic, but not to destroy the buildings and cities . . . or people.
“Dad, I want to go home.” Panic rippled in Deni's voice.
The same panic lodged itself in his throat. He took a deep breath, and tried to draw his thoughts back.
Get a grip
,
man. Deni needs strength from you
,
not paranoia.
He didn't have enough information to form any solid conclusions . It wasn't necessarily a nuclear or atomic attack. It could be just a weird weather front, like all those hurricanes in Florida last year, or the Tsunami that hit Sri Lanka. Some kind of unexpected electrical force that flashed through the sky. Or something else none of them had even thought of.
He had to stay calm. “Yeah, I think we need to go home. Doesn't look like the power's coming back on in the next few hours.”
Her lips quivered. “But how will we get there?”
He sighed and crossed the floor to the other side of the building, looking out the window to the parking lot. People were hiking up the road that circled the terminals. “We'll have to walk.” He looked down at the four-inch heels on his daughter's feet. “Don't you have some tennis shoes in your bag?”
“No, I didn't anticipate having to hoof it for forty miles.”
He ignored the petulance in her tone. “It's not forty. It's more like sixteen. But you still won't make it in heels.”
“So what do we do? Just stay here?”
No, that wasn't an option. They had to get home. He wanted to be with his family, make sure everything was all right.
“Tell you what,” he said. “There's a Wal-Mart a few miles away. Let's walk there and buy a bicycle and some more comfortable shoes.”
She liked that idea. “Okay, let's hurry before other people get the same idea.”
They were both drenched with sweat by the time they reached the Wal-Mart parking lot. The parking lot was full of cars. They were clearly stalled, too, and their owners stood around them, some with their heads under the hoods, trying to make sense of things. As Doug and Deni reached the front door, they saw it was only partially opened. When the power had gone out, the door had apparently frozen.
Deni turned sideways to slip through the opening, and Doug followed.
The power was out inside, too, but hundreds of people milled about.The ceiling had skylights every few feet, which allowed some natural light into the otherwise dark building. Lines of thirty or more people waited at the cash registers, and the clerks looked frazzled and stressed as they tried to take money with no registers working.
“Cash or checks only!” a worker yelled over the people. “Our credit card machines don't work! Cash or checks, please!”
Doug pulled his wallet out and checked his cash. Twenty bucksânot nearly enough to pay for a bicycle. He looked toward the ATM machine. A crowd gathered around it, and a man was kicking it and cursing. Clearly, it was dead, too.
“Deni, we've got a problem. I don't have enough money.”
She grunted. “Don't you have checks?”
“No, your mother has the checkbook. All I carry is my debit card.”
Deni dug through her purse. “I have checks for the account I just opened in Washington, if they'll take an out-of-state check. There's not
much in my account, but we can transfer some money into it before the check clears.”
“Great. Somehow we'll convince them to take it. Come on.”
Deni ran behind her father, her bare feet slapping on the tile floor. “I'm going to the shoe section.”
“Okay, I'm in the bikes.”
Most of the bikes had already been taken. Doug grabbed the first one he came to, a red ten-speed woman's bike.
Deni came running up with a box of tennis shoes in one hand, and her high heels in the other.
“I can only get one,” Doug said. “We'll both have to ride this one.”
She huffed out a sigh. “I can't believe this hick town can't do better than this in an emergency.”
There she went again, putting her hometown down. “I doubt they ever imagined this happening. And Birmingham's not a hick town. You're a product of it and you're no hick.”
“I had it educated out of me.”
Her typical response. He never should have agreed to send her to Georgetown University to study broadcast journalism. She'd developed such arrogance there that she was sometimes difficult to endure.
He blamed it on the boyfriend.
After waiting forty-five minutes in the check-out line and bribing the clerk with a Rolex, they finally rolled the bike out into sunlight. He assembled the backseat and put it on, using a dime as a screwdriver. Tightening the screws the best he could, he got the seat on and shook it to make sure it would support Deni.
Something rammed him from behind, knocking him over with the bike. As the bike clattered to the ground, his knee skidded on the pavement, shredding his skin. The attacker scrambled to get the bike out from under Doug, but Doug held on and grabbed the man by the collar. Slinging his assailant back, he became eight years old again, reeling with the sense of righteous indignation over the school bully's unwarranted attack, vicious with the need to right a wrong.
He got his footing as the man came at him, trying to mount the bike. Doug swung and hit the man in the chin with the heel of his hand, knocking the bike out from under him.
The man fought to keep the bike, but suddenly Deni was there, swinging the bag with her bottled water, knocking him in the head.
It stunned him enough that he lost his grip.
“Get on, Deni!”
She jumped on back.
“Hold on!” Doug took off, rolling slowly at first, then, not looking back, he managed to pull away from the would-be thief and across the parking lot.
“Way to go, Dad!” Deni slapped him on the back. “Wooo-hooo!”
“Hush, Deni.” He was not in the mood for gloating or theatrics. This was serious. He had fought like a barroom brawler over a stupid bicycle he wouldn't have paid a quarter for two hours ago. He wasn't proud of that fact.
But worst of all, he feared this was only the beginning. He couldn't shake the sense nagging at him that things were going to get worse.
A lot worse.
Founded in 1931, Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins
Publishers
, is the leading international Christian communications company, producing best-selling Bibles, books, new media products, a growing line of gift products and award-winning children's products. The world's largest Bible publisher, Zondervan (www.zondervan.com) holds exclusive publishing rights to the
New International Version of the Bible
and has distributed more than 150 million copies worldwide. It is also one of the top Christian publishers in the world, selling its award-winning books through Christian retailers, general market bookstores, mass merchandisers, specialty retailers, and the Internet. Zondervan has received a total of 68 Gold Medallion awards for its books, more than any other publisher.
With the Author:
Your comments will be forwarded to
the author when you send them to
[email protected].
With Zondervan:
Submit your review of this book
by writing to
[email protected].
Free Online Resources at
www.zondervan.com/hello
