Free Vanished by Kathryn Mackel Page B

files,
a first-aid kit, keys to the cruisers. And the gun safe.
    "I got a long memory, Logan. And I sure as blazes won't be
afraid to use it when your superiors arrive."

    Pappas stomped back to work, doling the ice packs Hal had
pilfered from the Kiddie Academy. Retired or not, Hal had
slipped right back into his tough cop persona.
    Logan hopped onto Jamie's bike and rode it onto the path.
He preferred its relative solitude to the Boulevard where people
milled about, cursing their stalled cars or shaking their cell
phones. Yet for every whiner, there were two people wanting to
know what they could do to help.
    He glanced over his shoulder, hoping to make out Walden
Estates up on the hill. But the mist hung heavy over the blast
site, obscuring everything north of the Circle. He couldn't see
to the east or west either, as if the mist blossomed out around
the bike path. In one sense, it put him eerily in mind of the
doughnut-shaped cloud generated by nuclear bombs, except for
the opening where the bike path intersected the rotary.
    He cycled south, ignoring his back spasms and flaming
sciatic nerve.
    Looking down the boulevard, he could see mist obscuring
the top stories of the Werner Insurance building. The fire station
was a block past Werner. The air vibrated, reminding Logan of
his junior high science class when Mr. Lester explained about
the movement of electrons. The whole universe was in motion,
if one were to believe the physicists and the Discovery Channel.
That the earth under their feet felt solid was an illusion.
    Logan rode on, trying to pray for Kimmie and little Natasha
and the lady in the sundress and the girl who had run into the
bomb instead of away from it. One block, four blocks, six blocks,
praying for Jamie and Hal to do good duty and for Pappas to be
friend and not mortal enemy.
    Was God even listening?
    When he was within three blocks of the Spire firehouse, he
rode down the grassy border until he was back on the Boulevard. Even here, nearly a mile south of the Circle, cars and trucks had stalled, though the fronts of buildings were intact.
No windows were broken, nor was anything charred.

    Another phenomenon was in play here, Logan thought,
something that must have driven people to move north toward
the Circle. As Hal had described, the mist curved down to the
ground, a barrier to emergency responders who were either too
frightened to pass into the mist-or had been ordered not to.
    Was the mist a by-product of the bomb or its real intent?
Was everyone in the Flats already the walking dead?
    Logan's anger hardened, a rock-solid resolve to steal an
ambulance or rescue truck and drive it back himself. People
needed help, and they needed it now.
    The mist hung before him, a veil draped from the sky, close
enough so he could stretch out his arm and see his hand disappear into it. It was translucent, like one of his mother's sheer
curtains, but it refracted light in some odd way. If he stared
hard enough at it, he could see an endless stretch of trees and
sky. The green and blue vibrated as before, but now that he was
up close, Logan saw the movement in lines, like a clear tinsel
hung from above.
    Just a mirage, some trick of light. Nothing to fear here-he
knew exactly what lay on the other side, and it sure as spit wasn't
a forest. Hadn't he walked or biked these streets his whole life?
    What was that old line from World War II that Grampie
Logan used to quote? Nothing to fear but fear itself.
    Logan straightened his shoulders and walked into the mist.

     

chapter nineteen
    H, NO," CHLOE SAID. "There's the train."
t
    The Quanta car sat about a quarter mile down
the guideway, wrapped in a dark haze. She broke
into a run. Jon caught up, stopped her. "Slow down. The air
is thin."
    She yanked away. "Don't treat me like a child."
    "I'm treating you like the mother of a child. Our child.
Slow down."
    "We've got to do something."
    "I'll run up there, check things