Бентли Литтл - The Disappearance

Brian smiled to himself. Too bad his dad wasn’t still around. The old man would be shocked that his hippie son not only knew his way around weapons but was willing to use them. Had used them.

Some of his dad’s asshole-ness must have gotten passed down through his genes.

Brian’s brain had drifted away, lost the thread of the lecture, but his attention was once again focused on the front of the room when Dr. Meyer suddenly stopped speaking. The instructor was folding up his laptop, and the students around him were standing and stretching or gathering their belongings, and Brian understood that it was break time.

Just as well. He’d brought a Big Gulp to class with him, hoping the caffeine in the Coke would keep him awake, but he’d finished the drink early on and now desperately had to take a leak. He looked around for Tina, a chick he was interested in whom he usually managed to chat up during the break. She was already out the door, on her way to get coffee from the table in front of the building, no doubt, and he figured he could quickly go to the bathroom and worm his way next to her in line before she actually got her decaf.

He shoved his books under his chair, checking his phone to make sure he had no messages waiting as he followed the crowd through the door. He didn’t like using the restrooms next to the elevators—too crowded—so he usually walked down the hall to the bathroom opposite the Communications department office. The office closed at five, and there were no other classes at that end of the building at this hour, which meant that he was able to get in and out quickly.

He passed through the throng of students who were waiting for the elevator, lining up for the restrooms or making their way down the stairs. Once he turned the corner, the corridor was empty, save for a female instructor weighted down with book bags who was just entering the little-used back stairwell at the far end of the building. The sound of voices behind him grew muffled, faint, indistinct, before being swallowed up in the silence, and by the time he approached the closed door of the Communications department office, the only noise he could hear was that caused by his feet on the hard floor, which, despite the fact that he was wearing sneakers, sounded like the clicking of boots.

Tina was probably downstairs by now, lining up.

He reached the restroom, went in, quickly relieved himself and washed his hands. The dispensers were out of paper towels, so he wiped his wet hands on his pants. He came out of the bathroom—

And saw an old man in peasant clothes, holding a whip.

Brian stopped. The guy was coming toward him from the rear of the building, where the door to the stairwell was still closing slowly. He’d been holding the whip in front of him, using both hands, but when he saw Brian, his left hand dropped the tip of the lash and his right hand flicked the leather handle, causing the whip to crack.

How the fuck had they found him? Brian wondered.

He started walking away from the man, toward the front of the building, toward the elevators and his classroom and other people. Behind him, the whipcracks grew louder, more frequent, more insistent. The old guy was gaining on him, and unless he wanted to start running away like a little girl, he was going to have to deal with the man.

Brian stopped, turned.

The old man was closer but not as close as expected, and Brian examined his face, trying to figure out if he looked familiar, if he’d been at the Home. Brian didn’t recognize him, but both the plain homemade clothes and the poorly shorn hair clearly marked him as one of the Homesteaders.

The man stared hard at Brian and cracked his whip with extra vigor.

These were religious freaks, weren’t they? They were supposed to take the Bible literally and follow everything to the letter, right? He decided on a confrontational approach. “Thou shalt not kill. Ever heard of that rule? It’s one of the big ten. Maybe you guys should try following it.”

The man kept coming, cracking his whip. He said nothing, and the expression on his face was blank.

“Fuck you,” Brian said disgustedly. He was more scared than he dared let on, but he turned calmly to walk away, not wanting to give the son of a bitch the satisfaction of seeing him run—

And two more Homesteaders were coming toward him from the front of the building.

Carrying knives.

The blades were remarkably similar to the ones he’d brought to Texas, and it occurred to Brian that they might be the very same ones. These guys were out for revenge, and they could’ve easily broken into his room and found them in his closet. They probably could have found his schedule somewhere in the room, too, although their resident computer whiz could just as easily have looked it up online.

Neither of these two was wearing an expression, either. Their faces were just as blank as the old man’s, and as they approached, knives extended, they reminded him of zombies.

No.

Soldiers.

Following orders.

Suddenly he was much more afraid. People acting on their own, even out of strong emotion, could be reasoned with, talked to, convinced to alter their course of action. But people following orders, doing the bidding of others, had no ideas or convictions they could be argued out of. They were merely performing a task.

Brian thought quickly. One or more of the doors in this corridor might be unlocked, but if he tried to open them and failed, he would have wasted valuable time. The bathroom was open, but he didn’t think the door could be locked from the inside and he didn’t want to trap himself within a confined area—particularly not with people carrying knives.

He decided the best course of action would be to try to get by the guy with the whip. The old man might get in one or two lashes, but that wouldn’t be fatal, and if he ran fast and hard enough, he could knock the old fuck off his feet and speed past him, escaping down the back stairs.

Assuming there weren’t other Homesteaders waiting for him in the stairwell.

The men with knives quickened their pace, and Brian screamed at the top of his lungs, an incoherent cry intended to startle his attackers and throw them off their game. Simultaneously, he rushed the old man, keeping his head down as he charged so as not to be whipped in the face. The whip was more powerful than he’d anticipated, however, and either the Homesteader was more adept with it than expected or he was extraordinarily lucky, because even as Brian ran, the lash sunk into the flesh of his neck and instantly wrapped around it three times, cutting off his flow of air. Brian floundered, fell and desperately tried to claw the whip from his neck. His mouth and nose were frantically trying to suck in oxygen, but the passage to his lungs was blocked, and the braided leather acted as a barrier between his head and his body. He knew that he was dying, and he kicked his feet, jerked his body around, trying everything he could to breathe again.

Then a knife stabbed him in the lower back, and he could no longer move his feet. With one hard, jolting yank, the whip was pulled away, and another knife sliced into the back of his neck. He tried to use his hands to push himself up off the floor, but his arms were weak and his muscles wouldn’t obey his brain.

The three men spoke together, calmly, unhurriedly, in the strange language of the Home.

This can’t be happening , Brian thought. Not on a modern college campus, not in a building with hundreds of students in its classrooms.

But it was happening.

The last sight he saw was his own blood spreading slowly across the shiny white floor toward the wall.

Reyn looked up. “He’s still not answering.”