The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (47 page)

All three of the incidents
were all within a square mile of one another.

Was it true? Was their
some type of terror group stealing children in Highland Park?
Really?

“
ANSWER ME, YOU BITCH, OR
I WILL HAVE YOUR FUCKING JOB FOR THIS!!!” screamed the woman
through the phone, snapping Denise from her stupor.

“
Ah, uh…I’m sorry, ma’am,
we seem to have a bit of a problem here -,” she had
begun.

“
Well, I
have a pretty
BIG
fucking problem over here, god damn it! Someone just took my
little boy!” howled the woman.

“
Yes, yes, ma’am, I’m
sorry. Please, explain in detail what happened. Again, I
apologize,” replied Denise trying to restore her phone etiquette.
Her brain was still more than a little scrambled.

The woman huffed noisily
in her ear and then began answering her questions and giving her
information. Denise typed frantically, sending a request for a
police unit and prepared to send out yet another “tag” for the
issuance of a nationwide Amber Alert, summarizing what the woman
was saying so she could adequately debrief the police officers when
they arrived on site.

She was just about
finished and had restored a degree of order between her and the
woman when the first call came in from the intersection of Colorado
Boulevard and Eagle Rock Boulevard – North. She heard one of her
fellow dispatchers exclaim with a question - even now, hours later
- was seared into her brain.

“
Wait a
minute, are you telling me the
entire
mall is gone?” He had even
stood as he spoke, the incredulity written in his body language,
with every move he made. Then he paused, listening. “The parking
lot, too…! Jesus Christ, Lady, don’t you know there’s a hefty fine
for calling into the 911 Emergency Center making
jokes?”

What in the hell?
was all Denise had time to think.

The second call came in, a
third and that was when the night really began to turn for the
worse.

*****

Within ten minutes, the
call volume hitting their super-fast telephonic router had
quadrupled. Calls went out for those dispatchers who were on-call
to report to work due to an ever-growing set of circumstances out
of the Northeast Area of Los Angeles, particularly centered in the
neighborhoods of Highland Park and Eagle Rock. The overall workload
of the team had dramatically increased.

About four minutes after
the initial call that the Eagle Rock Plaza had completely vanished,
another myriad of calls came flooding around the area of Colorado
Boulevard and Figueroa Street. All of the callers were saying the
same thing. The local Vons supermarket had vanished as well. As
with the mall, the sudden disappearance of the grocery store had
apparently left a scene of pure horror in its wake. If what the
people who lived near-by were in fact telling the truth, it sounded
like a scene straight out of hell.

Over the course of the
next hour, additional calls came in with frantic parents on the
line, their voices made wild and clipped as they described a pool
house missing or an entire garage scooped out of the ground as if a
giant with a humungous spoon had eaten it for dinner. In both
cases, though, the heartsick parents had explained to the dispatch
team that one of their children had been within the structure when
it disappeared. They had told them through tears of panic and
desperation their precious little ones, their most prized
possessions, were gone.

The TV’s began to pop on
in the call center a little while after as the reports came
flooding in. The first news teams began to arrive on scene to
depict with morbid detail precisely what had happened. Again,
Denise was slack-jawed at what she saw on the flat screens. She
couldn’t believe it. It looked so bizarre and otherworldly. It
seemed more like a movie than the real thing.

Everything the local
citizens had reported, turned out to be one hundred percent
accurate – every detail, every nuance, and every aspect of what
occurred was correct. What was visible on the high definition
images flashing across the TV was sheer madness and
mayhem.

Where the mall had once
stood, there was nothing more than a gigantic bowl-shaped hole, a
perfectly symmetrical hemisphere, descending more than fifty feet
into the ground at its center. Only now, this steeply sided hole
wasn’t empty. Toward the middle, it was jam packed. It was piled
high with everything that had been resting atop the upper and lower
decks of the mall and parking lot. This included, of course, all of
the clerks, salespeople, managers, janitors, and shoppers who had
been in the mall before it had vanished as if it had never been.
All of it was a jumbled mess. The debris had slid downward, into
the furthest reaches of the hole. At its’ middle, metal and
concrete had met flesh and bone.

To Denise this would have
been bad enough, seeing the tangle of cars and huge decorative
planters, big enough to hold tree, mushed and mashed against the
bodies of men, women and children, if it hadn’t been for other
mitigating circumstances making the situation even
worse.

With the advent of modern
construction, most people in the “know” are well aware that in
order for a structure the size and complexity of the local shopping
mall to function properly, there has to be a high level of
infrastructure available to it. This is the rule of thumb, so even
on the busiest days, shoppers would always find the atmosphere
within the edifice inviting and comfortable. To provide this level
of luxury, though, requires many resources. Huge telephonic and
internet capable trunks, so each merchant had an adequate slice of
bandwidth to conduct business. There were massive amounts of
voltage to power equally massive air conditioners and heaters.
There were large actuating pumps to make sure waste was properly
pumped in the right direction. And, of course, just about
everything else one could conceive needing electricity. All of
these various MEP’s (a construction term meaning Mechanical,
Electrical and Plumbing) would’ve been “sized-up” to the industrial
level in order for a building like that of the Eagle Rock Plaza to
operate according to specification. This would mean a huge influx
and outflow of resources would have to travel to and from the mall
every given minute the complex was open.

Denise had sat there,
imagining all of the electricity and waste, etc., etc. being cut
away from its varying sources at once. With the edifice gone, the
only place it all could go was downhill, down into a pit already
filled with cars and people. What would a scene such as that look
like? What sort of carnage would result?

It was precisely the kind
Denise Miller had gazed upon in those first few minutes when the
realization of the scope of the Event was unveiled. It was a sort
inclusive of mass electrocution, drowning and the pulverization of
every single human being shopping within the mall on the day before
Thanksgiving. There had been hundreds of individuals, lovers,
friends… families.

Frankly, it was horrid.
She knew no matter how hard she tried, she would never get over
those first few images of the mangled and torn bodies out of her
mind. The sight of a stroller, crushed and twisted, splashed with
blood and something that looked grey would be with her for all
eternity. She knew in her heart a child had been strapped within –
a child who was dead now.

It was then her boss had
come to her. He had asked her to inquire about Federal assistance.
Even if he hadn’t had a wild look in his eyes, she still would’ve
known this was a job for departments much larger and better
equipped than their own.

It was…
overwhelming.

Still, as the night
progressed, the abductions continued… all through the night, more
reports, all as dramatic as the last. Within hours, no less than
five thousand Federal agents – from more agencies than she cared to
remember - descended upon the northeastern portion of the City of
Angles. The investigation had begun in earnest. It was tagged -
priority number one, a footing mandated from the highest reaches of
the government. The details of the Event
would
be unearthed. As far as the
White House was concerned that was all there was to it.

*****

She was still wrapped in
thought, when she realized the welcoming hot air blasting forth
from the vents in her vehicle. She hadn’t realized she’d been
gripping the steering wheel as tightly as she had been. She
loosened her death-grip upon the hard, formed plastic beneath her
palms. She breathed in the hot air and let it warm her inside as
well as without, still immersed in the happenings of the night
before.

There had been twelve
children between the ages of eight and seventeen years reported
missing in all, as well as a garage, a pool house, half of a front
porch, a Vons Supermarket and, of course, an
entire
shopping center (parking lot
included). All of the incidents had occurred in the neighborhoods
of Highland Park and Eagle Rock. All of it had happened
simultaneously…

…
6:28 pm…

…
a time she wouldn’t soon
forget.

6:28 pm, was when her life
had changed, quite possibly forever.

Even now, it was difficult
to believe.

You better hurry girl. You
are going to run out of time
, she thought
suddenly and shook herself free the echoes of the bygone night,
breathing deeply a couple of times. She put her car in gear and
twisted around so she could look at the back window of her Nitro,
making certain she didn’t hit anyone or anything. She eased the car
from its space, from the center-mounted gearshift, she put the
vehicle into drive, turning into the aisle between rows of cars and
made her away toward the exit of the parking lot.

Try as she might, she
still couldn’t shake the images of the night before out of her
head. It was as though she was stuck in mental loop. She couldn’t
break free from seeing. She was forced to sit there and play it
all, repeatedly, in her brain, before the back of her eyes. She was
a prisoner.

If she had known it would
get worse in the days to come, she might not have fretted as much
as she had over the course of those first few hours. She might’ve
been more accepting of the Event, if she had known it wouldn’t end
on the morning when she drove home a little later than she
typically did. If she had known there would be more abductions,
pets gone missing and other mysterious occurrences happening all
about Los Angeles, she might’ve merely made her way home, did what
she had to do and made her way back in time for her first ever
video conference with a level head. Maybe if she would have taken
all of that in stride, she could’ve spared herself the obsession
over those first few incidents. If she had known The Event would
spread beyond the borders of the southern California, outside of
the continental United States of America. Maybe then, when it went
global, she wouldn’t have sunk into the depths of despair as she
would eventually. By then – weeks and months later – when it became
very, very apparent something fundamental had changed in the World
of Man, she would’ve been prepared. Maybe, when the mayhem
continued to spread and something chaotic began to emerge, she
would’ve been able to cope.

She hadn’t though.
Whenever she looked back to that early morning in November, when
she’d marveled at the fallen snow and was in the grip of the cold,
she would wish she’d known more. Just about every time, she wished
she could’ve somehow known what was coming.

A war was coming and so
was he – the Lord of the Storm, the Great Maelstrom. The Snowman
was coming and he would wreak havoc upon the Earth. Never, would it
be the same.

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

All the ancient classic
fairy tales have always been scary and dark.

~Helena Bonham
Carter

I would rather live my life
as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't,

Than live my life as if
there isn't and die to find out there is.

~
Albert Camus

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~