Linkage: The Narrows of Time

Chapter 9

Causatum





Lucas initially thoughtthe blinding white light-flash might have been some type of terroristattack, possibly a suicide bomber hell-bent on payback. But thatprospect seemed unlikely since he didn’t see or hear an explosion,nor had there been any type of shockwave following the event. Andthere wasn’t any building rubble.

Lucas stopped runningto take a look at the damage. The glowing edges of the building’sunstable framework were holding together, at least for now, but hewondered when they might surrender to gravity or burst into flames.Many of the theatre’s second-floor patrons huddled together, closeto the exposed edge, seemingly ignoring the trails of smoke invadingtheir space.

“Careful. The edgesare hot,” he yelled out to them, but didn’t receive a response.

A scruffy young man wasstanding next to a metal desk that had been sliced in half inside theprojectionist’s booth on the third level. Lucas was amazed theman’s scrawny neck could hold up the weight of his head, given thebushel of hair hanging from his scalp and the medley of jewelrydecorating his face. His right hand was holding the waistband of hissaggy blue jeans while the piercings covering his earlobes, eyebrows,nose, and lips twinkled in the moonlight.

The projectionistwalked to about a foot away from the ledge and looked around with aglazed-over look on his face. He stood there motionless for a goodthirty seconds. Then, he stepped back, pulled up his shirtsleeve topeel off a white patch on his left bicep, got a cigarette from one ofthe few remaining drawers, and lit it, using the smoldering edge ofthe desk. He sat back in the rolling desk chair and inhaled a longdrag, which fueled the reefer’s glow. He then puckered his lips topuff out wriggling smoke rings, one after another.

With the exception ofan untouched strip of stairs on the right, most of the Studentunion  ’s steps had vanished, along with the front of the theatre, asif someone had reached down with a giant ice cream scoop to carve outa hollow sphere. Even though the proof was right in front of him,Lucas still found it hard to accept what he was seeing.

* * *

WhenDrew arrived at the steps, he flung himself out of his chair, landingchest-first on the cold cement, which nearly knocked the wind out ofhim. He grimaced when his right elbow landed directly on the edge ofa step, sending numbing pain up his arm and into his shoulder. Eventhough he only had partial feeling in his legs, the cement stairsstill hurt his kneecaps.

Scattered along thestairway was a trail of diverse body parts, as if a tree shredder hadshot them out from its chute. When he didn’t see any blood, hetried to convince himself the fragments were only manikin parts, butthat ruse failed when his nasal passages caught a whiff—seared meatand scorched hair—and he almost gagged. He worried that the smellmight become permanently etched into his sinus cavities.

He searched the stepson his hands and knees, inspecting each body fragment to see if itbelonged to Abby. None did. He scoured the open pit in front of thetheatre, but again, he found no sign of her. She was gone.

* * *

Lucas arrived at thelower edge of the crater and looked inside. “Aw, shit,” he said,seeing a black film covering the bottom of the depression. He bentdown to sample it, rubbing the powdery substance between his fingers.Then he smelled it. “Oranges, again,” he said, confirming it wasthe same substance he’d found inside the reactor core.

He walked over to Drewand knelt down beside him. He wanted to console his brother, but hecouldn’t find the proper words. They were all jumbled up andbackward, flailing out of control just beyond the tip of his tongue.The same thing happened when he tried to comfort Drew after theiradoptive father passed away. He sucked at this—good thing he wasn’ta priest.

He rubbed his brother’sneck, hoping that Drew would know that he was there for him—that heloved him. When his normally effervescent brother looked up at himwith tearful eyes, Lucas almost broke down against a flood ofemotions pushing up from his chest. He gave Drew a one-armed hug,fighting to remain strong and steadfast; it wasn’t easy. He lookedaway, trying to find something else to focus on.

A few yards to hisleft, a lifeless body wrapped in a bloodless Denver Bronco’sfootball jersey sat slumped over in a twisted heap. The mound ofunresponsive flesh was leaning to one side, resting against the upperstep, with only its right leg and arm still intact. The corpsebelonged to Abby’s roommate, Jasmine. The left side of her skulland neck were missing.

Lucas left Drew on thestep and moved closer to Jasmine’s body. She had been sliced inhalf, as if by a molten hot guillotine; there was not an ounce ofblood anywhere. Her head was tilted back and pushed to one side,exposing a cross-section of brain matter clinging to the innermembrane lining her skull. Her right eye was open and dilated,looking directly at Lucas as if she somehow knew he was there.

He turned away andcovered his mouth with his hand, trying to ignore the nausea swellingin his throat. But his body had its own idea. A small amount ofstomach bile erupted, slinking its way up his esophagus and into hismouth, leaving a rancid taste that sickened his tongue. Even thoughonly half of her face remained, he could see she’d been a gorgeousyoung Hispanic woman. He wondered if she had family somewhere. Theyneeded to know. Someone needed to call them.

He looked for theMohawk player and his two friends, but found no sign of them on thesteps where they had been standing. He went down to the base of thestairs, stepping over a string of cell phones and designer purses.There was a red-and-blue backpack still attached to a slender arm andshoulder, which had a heart-shaped, pink tattoo that said “Billy.”On the second to last step, he found a pair of half-full waterbottles, each with a severed hand wrapped tightly around it.

To his right was a pairof unattached legs sitting at an odd angle, as if they were proppedup by something. Lucas moved closer and found that they were restingon top of a severed head. The head was mostly bald except for astreak of yellow hair down the middle. It belonged to the Mohawkrugby player. Lucas figured the head must have rolled down the stepsafter it was decapitated. Yet, he couldn’t reconcile how the legsended up on top of it. Perhaps they tumbled down the stairs, too. Butin the end, what did it matter? All he knew for sure was that Drewgot his wish—the man was gone forever. Unfortunately, so were manyothers.

The visual evidencetold him what happened: When the flash obliterated the theatre’sentrance, it encompassed nearly the entire movie line, taking with itanyone unlucky enough to be standing inside its perimeter. Thosepersons straddling its leading edge were cut in half, vertically,like a lamb shank being chopped by a cleaver on a butcher’s block.He wondered if any of them were aware of what was happening to themat the time.

He found anexpensive-looking, high-resolution video camera on the bottom step.Its black safety strap was cut four inches from the digital camera’spadded handgrip. Two fingers and a thumb were lying on the groundnext to the unit, probably the owner’s.

Lucas flipped the unitover to examine it. Everything appeared to be in one piece. Its redREC light was on with display numbers steadily increasing. The thingwas still recording despite being dropped several feet onto thecement stairs.

He slid his right handinto the narrow safety grip and aimed the camera at the demolitionzone. He started by slowly panning from left to right, across theexposed sections of the theatre, making sure he stood back far enoughon the mall’s grass to record all the damage. He walked up to thecrater, knelt down, and filmed a close-up of the black powder. Hefilmed his fingers scooping up a handful of the substance and lettingit pour through the palm of his hand. He finished by documenting theprecise location of each body fragment lying on the steps.

Lucas took off thecamera’s flash drive and slid it into his pocket, rearranging itscontents so the drive was below the keys to his apartment. Once heand his brother returned home, he intended to review the evidencecaptured on the drive. With any luck, the camera’s owner was facingthe right way when the flash appeared.

He heard the faintechoes of emergency sirens off in the distance as they wailed andwhooped through the heavy night air. Someone had already called9-1-1. He bent over to put the camera on the step, when he saw acrowd of onlookers taking refuge in the middle of the grass. Most ofthem were clustered together, arm in arm, trying to comfort eachother.

The emergency sirenshowled suddenly in his ears, no longer a faint echo. Reflections ofswirling red and blue lights danced off the building fa?adessurrounding the mall when police cars, fire trucks, and ambulancesflew over concrete curbs, cut across sidewalks, and ripped up grasswith their tires to reach the scene. It wouldn’t be long before theplace was crawling with news media, too. He wanted to collect Drewand get him back to the apartment.

He turned back towardthe theatre and saw Trevor sprinting toward him from the east end ofthe Student union  , wearing a red muscle shirt and weightlifting belt.His sweat-soaked physique bulged and glistened with each stride.

“You damaged?”Trevor asked, breathing heavily.

“No, I’m okay andso is Drew, but I’m pretty sure Abby Park is dead.”

Lucas quickly explainedwhat had transpired. He told his friend about the blinding flash oflight, where Abby and Jasmine had been standing, and the bloodlessbody parts. Even though Lucas suspected this incident was related totheir lab incident, he wasn’t going to tell Trevor about it, atleast not yet. He wanted to check out the video evidence in privatebefore drawing any conclusions.

“I’m going to waithere for the police to tell them what I saw. But Drew is in no shapeto deal with the cops right now. Can you do me a huge favor?” Lucasasked, pointing up the stairs. “Get him and take him home rightnow, before all hell breaks loose.”

Trevor agreed andturned to head up the steps. Lucas kept an eye on him as he ran upthe stairs, carefully tiptoeing through the sea of body parts untilhe reached the top. He knelt down next to Drew, picked him up, andthen carried him down the stairs to his wheelchair. Moments later, heand Drew slipped into the shadows along the west end of the Studentunion  .

Lucas sprinted over tothe first arriving police car, waving his hands above his head. Heapproached the driver’s side door just as the officer shoved thegearshift into park and turned off his siren. The emergency lightswere still flashing, though, making it difficult for him to seeinside the driver’s window.

Lucas looked up a steepangle to make eye contact with the officer getting out of thedriver’s door. The cop was a few inches shorter than Trevor, andnot nearly as muscular. The officer put on his police cap andrepositioned his duty belt.

“I’m SergeantCherekos. Can you tell me what happened here?”

“Yes, I can.”

Dozens of other policeand emergency vehicles closed in on Lucas’ position. Severalvehicles slid sideways, nearly hitting each other, as the dew-ladengrass lessened the tire traction when they tried to stop. Lucas wasbeing surrounded on three sides with the Student union   behind him.

The officer took out apad and pen and began to write. “Let’s start with your name.”

“Lucas Ramsay.”

“Okay, what did yousee?”

“I was walking acrossthe mall when suddenly a bright light exploded out of nowhere infront of the union   and nearly blinded me.”

The officer glanced attheatre. “How long did the light last?”

“Maybe two or threeseconds.”

“Where were you atthe time?”

“I’d guess about ahundred feet from the union  ’s steps. Close to where those women arestanding over there,” Lucas said, pointing to three older people,probably in their thirties, standing twenty feet away from him on thegrass.

“Where would you saythe light originated from?”

“I don’t know, butI’d guess somewhere near the center of the crater. It all happenedso fast.”

The Sergeant looked atthe hallow crater for a few seconds, before turning his eyes back toLucas. “Did you hear an explosion?”

“No, the only sound Iheard was this high-pitched squeal. It started right after the lightappeared.”

The officer scratchedhis head with his pen. “A squeal?”

“It was like beingtrapped inside a room with a thousand children screaming at the topof their lungs. The pain was so intense I fell down. When I lookedaround, there was a bunch of other people lying on the ground, too. Ididn’t pass out, but almost everyone else did.”

Cherekos scribbled morenotes into his incident report.

Fire and rescuepersonnel ran past him carrying hoses, stretchers, ladders, andmedical equipment. News reporters came rushing up to the scene withtheir cameras in tow. Some were out of breath, which Lucas assumedwas due to them having to park several blocks away. The mall wasnormally a pedestrian only zone; vehicles didn’t have access.

“How large would youestimate the light to be?”

“I couldn’t look atit directly,” Lucas replied, looking back at the theatre whilethinking about it for a few moments. “I’d say about the same sizeas the area that’s missing. Maybe a bit smaller?”

“Did you see anythingunusual before the flash? Like someone who didn’t belong? Someoneacting suspicious, maybe?”

Lucas shook his head.“All I remember was the students lining up for the movie.”

Helicopters buzzedoverhead, flooding the scene with swirling spotlights. Lucas had adifficult time hearing the cop over the deafening rotors choppingthrough the cool desert air.

“How many studentswere in line?” Cherekos yelled.

Lucas shouted back.“Best guess? Maybe two hundred. The line was fairly long.”

Cherekos seemed to bemaking a visual count of the human remains along the steps. Then hesaid, “What happened to the rest of the students?”

“They vanished intothin air, just like the building.”

Cherekos shook his headslightly and mouthed the words “vanished into thin air” as hewrote a few more notes. Two additional officers joined the cop andstood to his left. Based on their body language, Lucas thought theywere waiting for instructions.

“What happened next?”Cherekos asked.

“I felt a breeze pullme toward the Student union  .”

“Pull you? Do youmean pushed, like in wind?”

“No, it was more likeI was being sucked into the crater. It pulled at me, from the front.”

The officer’s stoppedwriting and looked at Lucas with his left eyebrow raised. “Sir,have you been drinking tonight?”

“No, officer, I don’tdrink. Ever.”

Cherekos clicked hispen, put it into his shirt pocket, and closed his incident reportwith more force than necessary.

“I know this soundscrazy, Officer, but I’m telling you the truth.”

“Okay, sir, I thinkwe have all we need. Thank you for your time.”

Cherekos stepped awayand began a private discussion with his officers. Lucas saw him reachfor the radio transmitter clinging to his upper chest.

The police had erecteda series of sawhorse-style barricades around the scene, behind Lucas.They were in the process of linking them together with yellow DONOT CROSS police tape.

After a minute,Cherekos and his fellow officers broke their huddle to escort Lucasand the ever-growing number of paparazzi to the other side ofbarricades. Lucas waited there for fifteen minutes as hundreds ofcivilians filtered into the mall area and congregated alongside him.Many of them snapped photos and shot video of the scene with theirsmart phones.

Lucas could barely keephis eyes open and decided to walk the mile and a half home before hefell asleep standing up by the barricades. He needed to check onDrew, too.

* * *

Lucasdidn’t feel like waiting for the elevator, so he climbed up thethree flights of stairs. He unlocked the apartment door, removed hisshoes, and then slipped past Drew’s bed. Drew was snoring as he layon his left side, his back to the room.

Lucas sat at the studydesk and turned on his computer. While he waited for the sign-onscreen to appear, he pulled the flash drive out of his pocket and putit on the desk, careful not to damage it. Once logged onto hiscomputer, he connected the flash drive with one of the two dozenelectronic cables he kept stuffed inside the bottom drawer. He turneddown the computer’s speaker system and began to play back the videofootage on the screen. The audio was just loud enough for him tohear.

The video camera’soperator had been waiting in the movie line with his threefriends—two young women and one older guy who wore a baseball capwith a two-inch blue-and-red block-letter A on the front. The cameracaptured them laughing and joking around about the movie they wereabout to see.

Lucas fast-forwardedthe recording to a frame just before the flash appeared. The camera’stime stamp read 11:52 PM. He reviewed the incident in super-slowmotion, playing the recording frame by frame, until he came to thefirst appearance of blinding light. It started as a microscopic pointof light, just to the left of the Student union  ’s entrance door,before stretching vertically and then horizontally until the camera’slens was inundated with light. His suspicions were confirmed: Thetheatre flash, though more powerful and larger, was a near perfectcopy of the one they’d seen inside their reactor’s core. Inaddition, there’d been the black powder he’d found inside boththe crater and in the reactor’s core. The evidence wasunmistakable. They were related.

He walked over to his brother’s bed and shook him on the armseveral times. “Drew, you need to wake up. We have to talk.”