The Underground Read online

  “Lionel,” Judd said as he drove home, “what do you think about Ryan and Vicki?”

  “I don’t know, man,” Lionel said. “They have a point. You were acting like king of the world this afternoon.”

  “I was tired. Anyway, they don’t respect me.”

  “Hey, sometimes you have to earn respect. I mean, you don’t like to be told what to do by Bruce, right? It’s no different for us.”

  Judd sighed and shook his head. He thought when he became a Christian everything would be different. But he kept making the same mistakes. “I feel like a jerk,” he said.

  “You know what the Bible says,” Lionel said. “First John 1:9 and all that.”

  Judd knew all right. He had memorized that verse as a little kid: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

  As soon as they unloaded the supplies into the house, Judd jogged up to his room and lay on the bed. “God,” he prayed. “I can’t do this on my own. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. Please forgive me, and help the other kids to forgive me.”

  The house was silent when he came downstairs. Judd wondered if Vicki and Ryan had run away or were looking for another place to stay. He wanted to tell them he was sorry. He wanted the four of them to be a team again. But they were gone. Lionel was sprawled on the couch with the Global Weekly.

  Judd wanted to grab readers and draw them in with the first few words of his article. He played with the first sentence several times and finally decided on: “My life changed forever at 30,000 feet.” He told his story anonymously. Running from his family, Judd had stolen and lied. Over the Atlantic Ocean, in a plane he should have never been on, the unthinkable happened. People all around him disappeared.

  Judd described his return home and his discovery that his family was gone. The loneliness and hurt came back as he wrote. He hoped anyone reading the paper would feel the same and consider the truth he had found in the Bible.

  “Judd, I have an idea,” Lionel said. “Global Weekly gives a preview of Buck’s article, but it says their Web site has an advanced look at it. What if we use some of this in the Underground? Is that legal?”

  “We can find out later,” Judd said. He set Lionel up on a different computer and let him work. Even if they didn’t use Buck’s report, it would keep Lionel busy.

  Vicki and Ryan kept walking. Vicki was upset about the blowup with Judd and knew Ryan was too.

  “I don’t understand it,” Ryan said. “He can be your best friend, and then all of a sudden, bang, he turns into Dr. Jekyll. Or Mr. Hyde. Which was the bad guy?”

  “Whatever,” Vicki said.

  “We ought to tell Bruce.”

  “What would he do—ground Judd? I don’t think so.”

  “Somebody needs to talk to Judd.”

  They walked through half-empty neighborhoods. The farther they went, the bigger and more expensive the houses seemed to get. Vicki realized again how far she was from the life she had known.

  “I’ll bet the grass in these yards costs more than our trailer did,” she said.

  They came to a small lake with a playground and picnic tables. On a normal Saturday the beautiful park would have been filled with children running and playing. Now it was empty. There were no small children left.

  “Do you ever stop missing them?” Ryan said.

  “My family? I think about them all the time. On Saturdays my little sister used to ask me to play that memory game. You know, where you flip the cards over and try to get matches.”

  “I had one of those. It was animals. You had to match the mothers with their babies. Kinda boring.”

  “That’s what I said. I told her to leave me alone. She’d go into our room and play by herself or with Mom. I wish I had the chance—”

  “I dreamed about my mom and dad the other night,” Ryan said. “They were looking for me. I kept yelling at them, telling them where I was, but they couldn’t hear me.”

  “I thought I heard somebody crying the other night,” Vicki said.

  “I try not to cry,” Ryan said. “Sorry if I woke you up.”

  “It’s not a problem,” Vicki said. “I cry too.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. And sometimes I just think about what might have been. What if I’d have believed what my family believed?”

  “I’ve been praying that I could stop missing my mom and dad so much.”

  “I doubt you’ll ever stop missing them,” Vicki said. “But we could pray for each other that maybe it’ll get easier with time.”

  Ryan looked embarrassed. “OK,” he said.

  A car passed slowly. Vicki wiped her eyes and shielded her face from the sun.

  “What’s the matter?” Ryan said.

  “It can’t be,” Vicki said.

  “That car?”

  “Yes. It is!”

  “Is what?” Ryan said.

  “It’s my gym teacher!”

  ___

  Judd heard a car door and hurried downstairs. Vicki and Ryan quickly went to their rooms.

  “Can we talk?” he called after them.

  “What’s to talk about?” Vicki shouted from downstairs.

  Judd followed and stood awkwardly outside her door. Her room looked neat. And there was a hint of perfume.

  “Who brought you home?” Judd said.

  “I don’t answer to you,” Vicki said. “Go back to your paper and your ideas.”

  “Wait a minute,” Judd said. “I need to say something.”

  “Say it,” Vicki said.

  “I want Ryan to be here too.”

  “Fine, let’s go get him.”

  Vicki led the way into what looked like the aftermath of a tornado—socks and shirts everywhere, a half glass of milk on the nightstand, his bed a mess.

  “Pretty neat about Vicki’s gym teacher, huh?” Ryan said.

  “Mrs. Waltonen brought you home?”

  “You have a problem with that too?” Vicki said.

  “As a matter of fact I do. Now she knows you don’t live with family. Do you realize how dangerous that could be—for all of us?”

  “I didn’t tell her I lived here,” Vicki said. “I told her it was a friend’s house.”

  “Great, now you’re in the clear and they’re gonna come looking for me!”

  “I’m not as dumb as you think I am,” Vicki said.

  “I don’t think you’re dumb, I just need you to understand that wasn’t a very bright move.”

  “Something a trailer park girl would do, huh, Judd?” Vicki said. “For your information, Mrs. Waltonen asked about our church. She said she might come to hear Bruce tomorrow. She offered us a ride and I thought it would be a good chance to talk more. Satisfied?”

  Judd sighed. Instead of getting better, things had gotten worse. He wanted to do the right thing, say the right thing, but everything came out wrong. Judd sat on the bed and rubbed his neck.

  “I’m sorry. That’s what I wanted to say. And about this afternoon, I was way out of line. Vicki, I did take credit for the idea, and I rolled over you guys like a bulldozer. I’ve been this way a long time, so it’s not easy to change. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  Vicki and Ryan looked at the floor.

  “Does that mean we’re back on the Underground?” Ryan said.

  “If you forgive me,” Judd said. “And you’ll be doing more than grunt work. I promise.”

  Vicki and Ryan smiled. It was more than Judd could have hoped for. The three bounded upstairs to the den where Lionel was still at work. Judd had already laid out his own article and started Vicki’s on the second page.

  “I like what you did, Vick’. It’s a lot more personal than mine. If it’s OK, I’d like to put Bible verses around the copy.”

  “Sounds good,” Vicki said.

  “You guys give me different verses, and we’ll mix them with the articles. We can make them bold and put them in shaded boxes so they s
tand out.”

  “Maybe we could include the steps to knowing God that Bruce gave us,” Lionel said. “You know, a prayer for salvation and stuff like that.”

  “Great idea,” Judd said. “And we might use excerpts from the Buck Williams article in the second edition—that is, if we don’t get caught and if there is a second one.”

  “How close are we to printing something out?” Ryan said. “I want to see what it looks like.”

  “Tomorrow,” Judd said. “By evening we should have the first issue ready to go.”

  At church the next morning Vicki looked all over for Mrs. Waltonen, but she wasn’t there. Vicki didn’t understand. She had so hoped the woman would be there.

  At home Vicki herded Lionel and Ryan into the kitchen to get some lunch on the table. Suddenly she heard Judd scream, “Oh no!” She ran to the den and found him kneeling, his face on the floor.

  “What happened?”

  Judd sat up. She had never seen him this way. He looked pale and nauseated.

  “It’s gone,” Judd said.

  “What’s gone?”

  “The whole thing. Every word of it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Underground,” he said. “Everything we’ve done is gone.”

  THREE

  The Crash

  JUDD couldn’t believe it. The screen was blank except for an error message. Each time he rebooted he got the same thing.

  “Maybe it’s a virus,” he said. “I coulda picked it up off the Internet.”

  The four stared at the computer like it was a corpse.

  “All that work,” Judd said. “Gone.”

  “Did you save the articles and the logo on a separate disk?” Vicki said.

  Judd shook his head.

  “What do we do now?” Lionel said.

  Judd pulled the computer tower from under his father’s desk and looked at the connections. His dad had always said to check the little things. Make sure the monitor cable and power cords are tight. Everything was intact. But Judd noticed a silver sticker on the back that read: “Serviced by Donnie Moore.” He dialed the number underneath.

  “Oh, yeah,” Mr. Moore said. “I installed that machine about six months ago. Fastest available at the time. Your dad paid big bucks for that box.”

  Judd read the error message to Donnie.

  “Doesn’t sound good,” he said. “Let me finish a couple of things, and I’ll be over in a half hour, OK?”

  The kids ate lunch in silence. Judd felt like someone had kicked him in the stomach. He had wasted time and energy he could never replace. And the deadline approached.

  “Any chance this guy can get the stuff back?” Ryan said.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Know what I think?” Lionel said. “It’s got something to do with the devil.”

  Vicki laughed. “That’s crazy. What are we gonna do, ask Bruce to come over and cast demons out of the computer?”

  “Think about it,” Lionel said. “We’re putting together an underground newspaper that hundreds of kids are going to read. Hundreds of kids who aren’t Christians. Now if you were the devil, would you like that? Would you want all these people reading stuff about the Bible right when they’re looking for answers?”

  “He’s got a point,” Judd said.

  “Yeah,” Vicki said, “but don’t pin everything on Satan. Maybe God didn’t want that to be our first edition. Maybe he made the computer crash.”

  “How are we ever gonna know?” Ryan said.

  “I think that’s what faith is about,” Judd said. “Remember the passage Bruce was talking about? The one about how things work together, something like that.”

  “I know!” Ryan said. He ran for a Bible and brought it to the table. Judd could tell he was excited. Ryan was the youngest and hadn’t gone to church like the others, but he seemed to be absorbing Bruce’s teaching like a sponge.

  “Here it is,” Ryan said. “Romans 8:28. ‘And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.’ ”

  “That’s it,” Judd said. “Not everything that happens is good, but God can turn it into something good.”

  “Even computer crashes,” Vicki said.

  Donnie Moore was in his late twenties, a blond with sideburns. Judd could tell he liked to talk. Donnie placed his hard-sided briefcase beside the tower and took the computer apart. As he poked inside, he told them about his business and his involvement with New Hope Village Church. He had installed phone systems and done odd jobs fixing printers and faxes for Pastor Billings and Loretta, the church secretary. But he had only attended church to expand his list of clients. His wife, Sandy, was interested in God and suggested they go. Though both heard a lot about the Bible, neither really changed. Except for Sunday mornings, Donny and Sandy lived the same as they had all their lives. After the vanishings, Donnie realized something about his belief in God was missing, but he wasn’t sure what it was.

  “I thought I just wasn’t good enough,” Donnie said. “The other people in the church were saints. They taught Sunday school, went to prayer meetings, and gave money to missionaries. They even let poor people sleep in the basement of the church and cooked meals for them. I thought I’d been passed by because I didn’t have enough brownie points.”

  Donnie ran a diagnostic program as he continued.

  “Then Bruce Barnes showed me the tape Pastor Billings had left. He explained what had happened to everybody. I’d never thought about God that way, the way your mom and dad must have, Judd. I found out I didn’t have to earn my way to heaven, that Jesus had already paid my way by being perfect and dying in my place. All I had to do was receive the gift. I couldn’t believe I had missed it so bad. ‘Course even Bruce had made the same mistake. You too, I guess, hm?”

  Donnie scowled at the screen.

  “A virus?” Judd said.

  “Nah, the hard drive. I mean, it could’ve been some kind of virus or maybe an electrical spike the surge protector couldn’t handle, but whatever it was, it’s fried. I was able to retrieve some of your dad’s old files, but everything else is toast.”

  “Do we need a new computer?” Judd said.

  “I don’t see anything wrong with the rest of the box,” Donnie said. “Just replace the hard drive and you’ll be in business.”

  “How much do we owe you?” Judd said.

  Donnie stopped at the door and put down his briefcase. “Your dad bought a service contract, so it’s no problem. But I gotta ask you something. Do you kids know why this happened? Do you know what’s going to happen?”

  Vicki explained why they were so upset about the computer crash. Donnie’s eyes moistened. “Isn’t that something?” he said. He was still shaking his head when he walked out.

  “Plan B,” Judd said that evening. “We’re not letting this stop us. The Underground will be out in the morning.”

  “You gotta be kidding,” Ryan said. “It took us three days to get this far. How are we going to start over and be done by tomorrow?”

  “What are we gonna use, crayons?” Lionel said.

  “We’re going to use what’s already been written,” Judd said.

  Lionel looked puzzled. “I thought everything on the computer was lost.”

  “We’re using your words, Lionel. Yours and Buck Williams’s. Did you finish it?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “That’s our first edition. We’ll hook your computer to the printer, and we’re on our way. Vicki, I know this is a long shot, but why don’t you try getting in touch with Buck. He might be able to add something really powerful.”

  Buck was senior editor of the most prestigious newsmagazine in the world, so his article was a masterpiece. He covered every theory for the disappearances from UFOs and alien attacks to a cosmic evolutionary cleansing. But the middle of the piece interested the kids the most. Here Buck had included the truth. Jesus Christ had returned for true
believers. Buck had interviewed several Christians, including an airline pilot the four figured was Rayford Steele. The Bible was communicated simply and powerfully.

  “So we let the best journalist in the world write our first edition,” Vicki said. “Perfect.”

  ___

  Vicki called Bruce for Buck’s number, but he was reluctant to give it. Vicki said she wanted to ask some questions about his article, and Bruce gave her Buck’s office number. His voice mail at Global Weekly gave his pager number. She left Judd’s home number on his pager and was amazed when he called half an hour later.

  “Using my stuff is a great idea,” Buck said. “I didn’t know it was on the Web yet. But don’t quote me outside the article. Wouldn’t be safe for me or you. Why not ask your questions and quote me as an unnamed source?”

  “I’m really interested about what people from other churches think happened,” Vicki said.

  “Many Catholics are confused,” Buck said. “While many disappeared, including the new pope, some remain. He stirred up a lot of controversy with a doctrine that seemed similar to the ‘heresy’ of Martin Luther.”

  “What was that?”

  “Luther read the book of Romans and believed salvation wasn’t gained through membership in the church, baptism, or doing good works. He said salvation was only by God’s grace through faith. The new pope agreed with that, and it sent shock waves through the Catholic church.

  “I talked with one of the leading archbishops, Peter Cardinal Mathews of Cincinnati. You might be hearing more from him in the coming months. Mathews said the vanishings were God’s way of winnowing out the unfaithful. He compared it with the days of Noah when the good people remained and the evil were washed away.”

  “So he thinks we’re the good guys and the people who vanished were bad?”

  “Exactly,” Buck said. “But remember, our view is that he was not a true believer. He was one who thought he could earn his way to heaven.”

  “What about the children and the babies?” Vicki said.

  “He didn’t have a good answer for that. He said he was leaving that to God.”