Free NightFall by Roger Hayden Page A

them said, holding her phone.
    “ I don’t know what the
hell’s going on. Terrorists?” another man said to his friends as
they walked by.
    “ Your guess is as good as
mine, dude,” his friend said.
    “ EMP,” another one said.
“I’ll bet you a million bucks.”
    The words caught Rob’s
ears.
    Approaching the museum,
they crossed over to Madison Avenue and took East 84th Street. The
regal stone building with Greek columns lined up at the entrance
was a welcome sight. The overflow of people coming outside made
Rob ’s heart jump. He squinted to search
for any sign of Josh and Kelly. It was impossible to tell anyone
from anyone else.
    “ Where do you think they
are?” Mila asked. The three-story metropolitan building was massive
in size, and they had a lot of ground to cover.
    “ I’m sure their teachers
have kept the classes together for the time being. A power outage
in a museum isn’t the end of the world. No reason for panic among
the students.”
    As they got closer to the
front entrance, they noticed that most of the doors were closed;
only a few remained open. A considerable amount of security guards
manned the doors, and it appeared that they
weren ’t letting anyone in.
    “ Come on,” Rob said,
running ahead. “We don’t have much time.”
    They charged up the steps
of the entrance, dodging around people leaving, and tried to push
their way through. Rob had lost Mila ’s
hand and turned back to find her. She was struggling to get up the
stairs, pushing through an angry batch of people denied
entrance.
    “ Where do you think you’re
going?” one loud-mouthed dirty-looking man shouted at her as she
tried to push by.
    Rob went back down a few
steps and tried to make some space for her to get through. He took
her hand and walked up a couple steps, shouting, “We’re looking for our children!” His pleas only
did so much, but it was just enough that people began to let him
push past, all the way up to the platform entrance, where security
guards manned two open doors.
    “ My children are on a
field trip here,” Rob said to the first, blue-uniformed security
guard. “We need to find them.”
    The thirtyish security
guard showed little sympathy for Rob ’s
plight. There were simply too many people making demands to get
inside, and he had heard it all. “Sir, in light of current events,
we’re temporarily closing our doors for the safety of our staff and
of our artifacts. It’s standard protocol.”
    Rob tried to push his way
through. The guard grabbed his arm as other security guards stepped
closer, ready to act. “I’m not leaving
without my son and daughter, do you hear me?” Rob shouted. “They
came here on a field trip. Do you still have any school children in
there?”
    The guard looked unsure, and didn’t
respond.
    “ You don’t even know, do
you?” Rob asked. “That’s why you have to let us in.”
    The guard raised his hand,
blocking Rob. “Sir, I can’t allow
that.”
    “ Let me in!” Rob
shouted.
    Suddenly a woman came out
of the building wearing a long dress, her hair pinned-back in a
bun. She called for the guards to wait and examined Rob through her
glasses. “I’m a teacher!” she shouted.
“And this man is right. We have three grades still in the building.
There’s a good chance his children are among them.”
    Rob looked back at the
guard.
    The guard looked his
partner, who nodded in agreement. “Make it
quick,” he said to Rob.
    They walked inside
as Rob shook the teacher’s hand. “I’m Rob Parker, and this is my wife, Mila. We’re
looking for our son, Josh, and daughter, Kelly. They’re in the
sixth and eighth grades.”
    The teacher thought to
herself carefully, distracted as further unrest was grew steadily
outside the museum. “We have classes from
all three grades in here. No one has been released yet, so there’s
a good chance they’re still in here.”
    “ Good,” Rob
said.
    The museum lobby was dark as night
inside. The staff was