Бентли Литтл - The Disappearance

“Brian always answers his phone.” Gary was worried. This was the fourth time they’d tried to contact their friend in the past hour, and each time they’d been put directly into voice mail. Outside the coffeehouse, the light was fading. The sun was almost down, and most of the campus was now in shadow. The security lights lining the walkways were already on. Both Joan and Stacy were in lab classes—different lab classes in different buildings—and he and Reyn were waiting here, next to the window, where they could see the entrances to each building.

Reyn said aloud what they were both thinking. “Do you think something happened to him?”

“I hope not,” Gary said, but that was a lame response and he knew it. He finished his coffee and stood. “We need to find him.”

“But Stacy and Joan…”

“They’ll be in class for another twenty minutes. We’ll be back in plenty of time.”

Reyn nodded, but Gary could see that he was worried. If something had happened to Brian, they might be putting themselves in harm’s way. And the fact that Joan and Stacy were in class didn’t necessarily mean that they were safe.

Still, it was a risk Gary was willing to take. Right now, Brian’s silence concerned him more than anything else.

The two of them left the coffeehouse. Outside, it wasn’t quite as dark as Gary had thought. Looking through the windows from inside the lighted building had made the exterior world look like night, though in reality it was still dusk. “I know he has a class right now,” Gary said, “but I can’t remember what it is.” Brian had flirted with several different majors, and it was hard to keep track of what he was studying.

“Isn’t it that long class? The one he was dreading on the trip back?”

“Yeah. But what was it?”

“Wasn’t it some type of law class?”

“Communications law!” Gary suddenly remembered. He frowned. “But what building’s it in? And what room?”

“Somewhere near the Communications department, I assume.” Without mentioning it, both Reyn and Gary had automatically reoriented themselves and started off in that direction. Reyn had his phone out, and while it wasn’t as sophisticated as Brian’s BlackBerry, he was typing on the small keypad and trying to access the school’s current course catalog. “Fourth floor,” Reyn announced. “Room 411.” He shut the phone, shoved it into his shirt pocket, and they both strode more quickly toward the Communications building.

There were very few students out at this hour. Some were in classes, but most were studying or had gone home or were eating dinner. The two of them pretty much had the walkway to themselves. Gary was focused on their goal, had his eye on the square, blocky structure ahead, with its asymmetrically lit windows that gave the front of the building the appearance of a primitive computer terminal. So he was surprised when Reyn nudged him with an elbow and pointed. “Look,” Reyn said quietly.

Between the bushes, moving away from them, was a dark-haired man wearing familiar-looking peasant clothes.

Gary didn’t wait. He took off running, leaping over a low hedge border and dashing over the short expanse of grass. He hit the bushes hard, branches scraping his arms, leaves slapping against his face, but he refused to slow down. He was not athletic, had never played football, but he brought the man down with a flying tackle just as the Homesteader emerged into an open area near an intersecting sidewalk.

He fell onto his quarry, who tried to scramble out from underneath him and get away. Gary twisted the man’s neck until the Homesteader turned onto his back, then sat on the man’s chest, his knees pinning down the cult member’s arms. The guy beneath him looked perfectly normal. His bones weren’t strangely shaped; his head wasn’t oddly formed; he didn’t appear to be slow or impaired in any way. A convert , Gary thought. And that was good. In movies and on TV, fanatics and true believers inevitably held out against any questioning, steadfastly refusing to divulge information even while being tortured. But in real life, most people weren’t that strong. And anyone weak-willed enough to voluntarily join a cult would not have the fortitude to withstand a hard interrogation.

“Call Joan,” Gary told Reyn, who was just catching up. “Make sure she’s all right.” His fear was that Homesteaders had been sent out to distract the rest of them while Joan was attacked and captured—or killed.

Reyn whipped out his phone and punched in her number.

Gary turned his attention to the man beneath him. “You were following us, weren’t you?”

The man smiled, his teeth eerily white in the ever-increasing darkness.

“Why?”

There was no answer.

“Where’s Father?” Gary demanded.

The smile grew wider.

Gary punched the Homesteader in the face. His fist didn’t connect directly with the man’s nose, the way he’d intended. Instead, it sort of hit the side of the nose and the cheek. But it had the desired result, and Gary felt the hardness of bone beneath his knuckles, the warm wetness of blood.

“Where’s Father?” he asked again.

The man was crying. He seemed surprised by the pain, as if he never thought such a thing could happen to him.

Gary held up his fist again. “Tell me where Father is! Tell me why you’re here and what’s going on! Now!”

“God doesn’t want—”

“God wants me to beat the shit out of you,” Gary said. “That’s why I’m here and you’re there. Now talk!”

The man recovered his composure and, through his tears, smiled again, blood covering his gums and seeping between the cracks of his teeth, distorting the look of his mouth and giving him an almost inhuman appearance. “Father is coming.”

Father is coming.

The words sent a chill stabbing straight to Gary’s heart. “Where is he?”

There was only the bloody smile.

A student walking by on the sidewalk to their left had noticed the commotion and was looking at them suspiciously.

“Get the police!” Gary yelled at him. “Now! This guy’s a rapist! I caught him!”

The student ran off, taking out his cell phone as he did so. Thankfully, the guy was rattled and not thinking clearly or he would have noticed Reyn standing there and talking on his phone.

Or he would have realized that he didn’t have to go anywhere to make the call.

Or he might have stood there and used his phone to take a picture.

Things could have gone so much more wrong, but miraculously they hadn’t, and Gary quickly tried to think of a way to incapacitate the Homesteader. He wanted the man to remain in this spot but didn’t want to be around himself when campus security or the police arrived. He and Reyn needed to get out of there fast. Looking around, he saw a recently planted sapling in the center of the grass. The small tree was being supported by guide wires secured to the trunk and attached to stakes in the ground. If he could—

The man bucked beneath him, the force and suddenness of the movement throwing him off, and before Gary could right himself and reestablish his hold over the Homesteader, the man had scrambled away, jumped to his feet and dashed into the bushes. Every instinct he had was telling him to take off in pursuit, but Gary knew that he had no hope of catching up to the man now, and at the moment his chief concern was for Joan. If he was being shadowed, it was a certainty that someone, or several someones—

Father

—had been sent after her.

Reyn was talking to Joan on the phone right now, and when he told Gary that she was in the library, working on research with a group of students from her lab class, a flash of panic shot through him. She wasn’t in the lab? She’d walked all the way to the library without telling him? At this point, any variable at all was cause for worry, and he took the phone from Reyn. “Stay where you are!” he ordered. “Father is coming! That’s what the Homesteader said. I caught one and—”