Paul helped an elderly lady out of the carriage. Mackenzie smiled and smiled again as she looked at Paul’s red shirt. It was his favourite colour and it suited him. Paul took Mackenzie’s hand as they headed towards the exit. Mackenzie noticed the blind man ahead of her on the escalator with his guide dog. She often saw him and had a quiet admiration for him. He had a humble demeanour, smiling all the time. They headed towards the pedestrian crossing at the intersection of Creek Street and Ann Street.
They stopped at the traffic lights. Many people subconsciously tuned in to the slow beeping, making them pause. Mackenzie looked at the blind man and his dog, wondering how the dog decided when to go —at least dogs were obedient. Some people waited patiently for the beeping to speed up, for the red man to change to green. Others crossed when they felt it was safe—they made up their own laws. The road was clear, but the walk symbol was red, so the jaywalking started, the confident people first and then those influenced by others.
Mackenzie heard someone yelling behind her. She turned to see a tall man with a look of panic on his face, rushing towards the intersection with two police officers in pursuit. The man turned to look behind him and crashed into her. They both fell towards the road. Paul went to grab Mackenzie and stumbled as well.
The blind man’s dog started barking. A humming noise engulfed the area. Somebody screamed.
Mackenzie looked around. People were turning their heads trying to locate the source of the sound, their hands raised over their ears. The air became distorted. Mackenzie saw something coming towards her. It was like a wave but she could see through it. People on the footpath on the other side of the road had been knocked over from the wave’s force. It passed over the jaywalkers and they vanished. Vanished? It was getting closer. She moved her hands to her ears. She turned to Paul just as the wave hit him. Gone.
Now she was floating. Rising up. She looked down. A lady started screaming and yelled out. “Where have they gone . . . where have the people gone?”
Then there was silence.
<°)))><
Mackenzie picked herself up off the floor. Floor? What had happened to the road? Where was she? There were others. Where was Paul? Her heart was thumping and her head was throbbing. She looked around at the others—everyone trying to work out what had happened. She helped pick up a lady from the floor who was struggling. Mackenzie was thankful that the floor had been softened with some kind of thick flooring material. She looked around again. Where was Paul?
Some people had their mobile phones out, trying to make calls. She heard some crackling. It was coming from a speaker mounted near the ceiling.
“Hello, people. Please don’t be alarmed. You are all perfectly safe and have been transported to a holding house. We ask that you make yourselves comfortable. We will join you all soon. Please note that mobile phones will not work here.”
Mackenzie watched one man moving about, the one who crashed into her. He was like a caged tiger—she hoped he would settle down. The others looked dumbfounded.
“Did he say ‘holding house’?” someone asked.
Mackenzie confirmed this as she looked around. She did a count. There were seven of them: four men, three women. Most were dressed for work—they didn’t expect to end up on a dusty floor in a ‘holding house’. A few were still dusting themselves down. There was a table of refreshments and a stack of white plastic chairs. She heard a quiet whirring noise and looked up to see a video camera scanning the room. What is going on?
The caged tiger was the most casually dressed. Mackenzie watched him as he walked over to the only window and tried a few things. Then he went into a small room, and came back out shaking his head.
“A toilet and only a small window,” he advised no one in particular.
The man then decided to try and open the main door. He gave it a kick and then looked at Mackenzie and raised his hands.
“It’s like Fort Knox,” he said. “It’ll be difficult to get out of here.”
Time ticked by and nothing happened. One of the businessmen suggested they best stay calm and maybe take advantage of the refreshments offered on a table to the rear of the room.
Mackenzie looked at her watch. The train had arrived at 7.29. It was now eight-thirty. She wondered when their kidnappers were going to join them.
Chapter 15
WAR IS DANGEROUS, AND dangerously loud.
Aaron was now back in Brisbane city and office-bound. The Bushmaster troop carrier’s unique design and armour plating had saved them. They were evacuated by helicopter to the Tarin Kowt military hospital—a hospital that Australian Army engineers helped rebuild, and staffed by nurses and midwives trained with Australian aid. Aaron always emphasised these things when he spoke to people—he believed there was purpose behind it all, and what he had seen confirmed that.
Aaron had recovered from his injuries from the IED blast but was left with slight hearing damage, which limited his military options and prevented him completing his tour of duty. He struggled with not being able to go back to Afghanistan. He desperately wanted to remain in active service, to remain a soldier, to honour his dad and his brother Jack, and to serve his country.
Mackenzie and Lucas were always at the forefront of his mind. He had caught up with Mackenzie a few times and he was feeling more confident as days went past that maybe his threat to Lucas had a lasting effect. He’d asked Mackenzie about the minister guy and his drivers. Mackenzie hadn’t seen them at church, although she did stress that she went to a ‘younger’ service than his mum’s. That Friday night service Aaron had attended, the one where they’d seen Jill and the minister, was a special event.
Paul and Mackenzie were still going strong. That was another reason why he would have loved to have gone back to Afghanistan. Out of sight, out of mind. Maybe he should have moved interstate—he quite liked Townsville.
He followed up news articles to see if vanishings were still happening, but there was nothing. He came across a general article on suicides. One of the stories included a government minister losing his son to suicide. Although no names were mentioned, Aaron believed it was the man he had helped that day at the intersection, after the incident with the girl. Maybe that incident was the cause of his death.
His army training and experience had taught him a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder, and he knew it contributed to a large number of suicides. On his return from Afghanistan, he had to make a few visits to a psychiatric practice to make sure he was okay. Aaron constantly checked his thoughts. He was lucky. Although his war experience wasn’t overly pleasant, he hadn’t experienced excessively frightening or distressing events as some had.
He was challenged. The doctors told him that he had just been through a traumatic event in Afghanistan. It was a battle, but Aaron convinced them he was okay. The event had minimal impact on Aaron, even though the same event could have caused severe distress in another individual. Aaron decided it was the wiring in his head; he had inherited solid coping skills from his parents. He was thankful for the good wiring job.
He caught up with the detective that was investigating Dad’s death. He was apologetic: not much progress had been made. The investigator’s report on the fire gave no leads. It looked like it could have been an accident. They were unable to trace the white van, but they would keep Aaron posted if anything else cropped up. Aaron felt bad when he got off the phone. Maybe he should have passed on the information he had.
Aaron thought of Lucas. He told the image of Lucas that he was coming to get him.
<°)))><
The M on Mary had 43 levels of apartments. Aaron’s was a mid-level apartment. It was a good-sized one-bedroom apartment, purchased with Dad’s life insurance payout when Aaron returned from Afghanistan. The marketing spin for the apartment included words like style, elegance, opulently finished. To Aaron it was a simple investment that allowed him to live close to work and enjoy the city life.
Aaron had a late start this morning. He sat in his small study dressed in uniform camouflage trousers and brown t-shirt, reviewing some documents that he needed for a meeting this afternoon.
Although it was a cool morning, he had his balcony doors open. There seemed to be an abnormal number of sirens and sounds of emergency vehicles this morning. He got up from his chair and headed towards the living room balcony, grabbing a shirt that draped the back of a chair on the way. It was a bit chilly so he put his camouflaged shirt on.
Where was the sun? He looked up and saw a large thick cloud moving across to conceal it. He then looked in the direction of the sounds. It was the same direction as his route to work, near Central railway station. It looked like a huge ruckus going on. A train accident? He was leaving for work soon and would check out what had happened then.
Out in the streets, as usual people stared at his General Duty Dress uniform. They stared at you more in Brisbane than Townsville—curiosity, as there were few army personnel based in the city. He was getting closer to the ruckus. Some crowd barriers had already been put in place and it looked like more were needed. It was that intersection again, where he’d seen the accident. Was the intersection cursed?
It looked like a scene from a Hollywood action movie. Traffic was stopped behind several police cars, their red and blue lights bouncing of the glass of the surrounding buildings, search and rescue vehicles, news wagons with their satellite dishes extended, and people everywhere.
Aaron watched crowd barriers being moved to let an emergency vehicle through. Emergency staff disembarked from the vehicle and started to assist with getting the crowds under control. What was going on? Another vehicle came through with ‘Gracie Rentals’ painted on the side, carrying a load of rent-a-barriers. It looked like a big event.
Aaron noticed a lady and a police officer on their own, away from the crowd. The lady turned and pointed towards the intersection, and he recognised her. It was Kathy, Mackenzie’s mum. Something was wrong. He walked towards them.
