Nightworld

2 • HOMECOMINGS

MONROE, LONG ISLAND

"Go faster, Jack. Go faster, please."

Ba wished he were behind the wheel. As the familiar streets and storefronts of downtown Monroe flashed by, his anxiety increased with every passing block. Empty streets, smashed storefronts, and only a few frightened people hurrying through the waning afternoon light. The town had deteriorated badly in the two days since he'd left.

"Easy, Ba," Jack said beside him. "I'm doing the best I can. Hell, I'm barely slowing down for stop signs, and none of the traffic lights are working. If we run into someone crossing our path we may not get there at all."

Bill Ryan laid a hand gently on Ba's shoulder.

"Jack's right. Between us we've traveled more than half way around the globe and back. It'd be a shame to crack up and die so close to home. This is, after all, the car that was labeled 'Unsafe at any speed.'"

"A lie!" Jack said vehemently. "Nader's first Big Lie!"

Ba disliked letting other people drive, but this little American car that had been discontinued even before he'd come to America had no space for him behind the wheel. He closed his eyes and willed the car closer to Toad Hall.

He had spent the entire trip home from Maui in this state of anguished fear. He could not escape the notion that something terrible was happening at Toad Hall without him. He had been unable to get through to the Missus from the phone in the jet. Just a word or two from the Missus, that was all he would have required to ease his mind. But he could not make the connection.

Fortunately the trip had gone well. They had caught the jet stream and made it back to Long Island without a fuel stop in California. Even more fortunate, Bill Ryan and Nick had already arrived and were waiting for them when they touched down.

Ba had tried to call again from the hangar phone but still there was no response. And so now he was being driven toward the scene of a tragedy. He knew it. He should not have left Toad Hall. If anything had happened to the Missus and her family…

Here was Shore Drive. Now the front wall of Toad Hall's grounds, the gate posts, the curving driveway, the willows, Toad Hall itself, the front door—

"Oh, shit," Jack said softly beside Ba. "Oh, no."

"Missus!"

The word escaped Ba when he saw how the bottom half of the front door had been smashed through and torn away. He was out the door and running toward the house before the car stopped. He took the front steps in a bound. The door hung open, angled on its hinges. He burst through and skidded to a halt in the foyer.

Carnage. Furniture strewn about, wallpaper hanging in tatters from the walls like sunburned skin, the Doctor's wheelchair sitting empty in the middle of the floor, and blood. Dried blood puddled on the threshold and splattering the outer surface of the door.

Fear such as he'd never known gripped Ba's throat and squeezed. He'd battled the Cong and fought off the pirates on the South China Sea, but they'd never made him feel weak and helpless like the sight of blood in Toad Hall.

He ran through the house then, calling for the Missus, the Doctor, Jeffy. Through the deserted upstairs, back down to the movie room, to another staggering halt before the cellar door. The door stood ajar, its finish gnawed off, its beveled panels splintered, nearly obliterated. Ba pulled it open the rest of the way and stood at the top of the stairs.

"Missus? Doctor? Jeffy?"

No answer from below. He spotted the flashlight lying on the second step. He picked it up and descended slowly, dreading what he'd find.

Or wouldn't find.

The basement was empty. A red candle had burned down to a puddle on the ping-pong table. Ba's finger trembled as he reached out and touched the pooled wax. Cold.

Feeling dead inside, he dragged himself up the stairs and wandered out to the front drive. Jack and Bill were standing by the car, waiting for him, watching him.

Bill said, "Are they…?"

"They're gone," Ba said. His voice was so low, he could barely hear himself.

"Hey, Ba," Jack said. "Maybe they left for—"

"There's blood. So much blood."

"Aw, Jeez," Jack said softly.

Bill lowered his head and pressed a hand over his eyes.

"What do you want us to do, Ba?" Jack said. "You name it, we'll do it."

A good friend, this Jack. They had only met a few days ago and already he was acting like a brother. But nothing could ease the pain in Ba's heart, the growing grief, the bitter self-loathing for leaving the people he loved—his family—unguarded. Why had he—?

He whirled at the sound of a car engine starting in the garage at the rear of the house. He knew that engine. It belonged to the 1938 Graham—the Missus' favorite car.

Fighting the joy that surged up in him, afraid to acknowledge it for fear that it might be for nothing, Ba stumbled into a run toward the rear. He had gone only a few steps when the Graham's shark-nosed grille appeared around the corner of the house. The Missus was behind the wheel, Jeffy beside her. Her mouth formed an O when she saw him. The old car stalled as she braked and then she was out the door and running across the grass toward Ba, arms outflung, face twisted in uncontrollable grief.

"Oh, Ba! Ba! We waited all day for you! I thought we'd lost you too!"

And then the Missus did something she had never done before. She threw her arms around Ba, clung to him and began to sob against his chest.

Ba did not know what to do. He held his arms akimbo, not sure of where to put them. As overjoyed as he was to see her alive, it certainly was not his place to embrace the Missus. But her grief was so deep, so unrestrained…he had never seen her like this, never guessed she was capable of this magnitude of sorrow.

And then Jeffy ran up, and he, too, was crying. He threw his arms around Ba's left leg and hung there.

Gently, gingerly, hesitantly, Ba lowered one hand to the Missus' shoulder and the other to Jeffy's head. His elation at seeing them was tempered by the slowly dawning realization that the picture was incomplete.

Someone was missing.

"The Doctor, Missus?"

"Oh, Ba, he's gone," she sobbed. "Those…things …killed him and dragged him off! He's gone, Ba! Alan's gone and we'll never see him again!"

For a moment Ba thought he glimpsed the Doctor's face peering at him from the shadows in the back seat of the Graham, thought he felt the warmth of his easy smile, the aura of his deep honor and quiet courage.

And then he faded from view and something happened to Ba, something that hadn't happened since his boyhood days in the fishing village where he was born.

Ba began to weep.