The Quest: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 6 Read online

  “How bizarre. So should I assume it doesn’t take very long for a lamb to shake its tail twice?”

  “That would be my assumption, although I don’t spend a lot of time following lambs around and watching their butts. I’d much rather watch yours.”

  “Oh, you silver tongued devil, you…”

  “Another bizarre saying.”

  “Yes, and another I heard from you. Did you get that one from your grandmother too?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact…”

  “I knew it. No wonder you’re nuts. It runs in your family.”

  “Yeah, yeah… what was it you wanted to show me?”

  She called up a friend’s profile on Facebook.

  “Remember Linda, and her husband John?”

  “The black helicopter people. Yeah, they’re the ones I said I want to avoid forever, after that last Christmas party we went to. He bent my ear for half an hour about how FEMA was coming after all of us. I couldn’t break away from him and dump him on anyone else because everyone else already knew to avoid him.”

  Megan giggled.

  “Yes. I’m sorry about that. I should have warned you about him ahead of time.”

  “So what about them?”

  “Linda… she’s perfectly sane, by the way, hasn’t been on Facebook in almost two weeks now. The last thing she posted was twelve days ago.”

  “Maybe she’s too busy having her husband committed. There’s a lot of paperwork involved in that process, you know.”

  “And speaking of John, he’s not on my friend list, but I looked up his profile. His last posting was the same day hers was.”

  Jason conjured up a look of terror, and the theme to The Twilight Zone.

  “Doo doo doo doo… doo doo doo doo…”

  Then, in the falsetto voice of a scared little girl, “Oh, my goodness. What does it all mean?”

  “Please don’t make fun of me, baby. I’m serious. They just disappeared.”

  “They probably just went to the Star Trek convention and forgot to post it. It’s no big deal. Don’t worry about it.”

  “That’s just it, baby. It’s not just them. I’ve had several other friends who have just disappeared from Facebook in the last couple of weeks. And the Delgado family, four doors down?”

  Jason gave her a blank look.

  “You know. Ethan’s little friend Will.”

  The light came on.

  “Oh, yeah. What about them?”

  “I walked Ethan over there a couple of days ago to see if Will wanted to come over and play. And they were gone. The neighbor said he had to close their front door and lock it because they vanished. Left their door wide open, their cars in the driveway, and food on the table, like they were ready to sit down for dinner.

  “And that same neighbor told me there were a couple of people he worked with that just stopped coming to work and nobody knows where they went.”

  “They probably went to the same convention. Listen, people take breaks from the internet all the time. And sometimes people leave their homes for short periods of time too, at the spur of the moment. Maybe there was a family emergency and they rushed out to attend to it.”

  “Rushed out so fast they forgot to close their front door?”

  “Hey, it could happen.”

  He wrapped his arms around her.

  “Don’t put too much thought into any of this stuff, honey. If you do, it’ll drive you crazy.”

  He pulled her hair aside and kissed the nape of her neck. She closed her eyes and moaned softly.

  “Well, if you want to change the subject just keep that up.”

  So he kept it up.

  She asked softly, “Is Ethan still sleeping? Do I have time to take advantage of you?”

  “I let him stay up watching SpongeBob until ten, remember? He’ll sleep for at least another hour.”

  She got up from the chair and stood before him, draping her arms over his shoulders and clasping her hands behind his head.

  Then she said, “Well, that’s not as much time as I’d like, but I guess it’ll have to do.”

  A little while later, when they heard the mournful words, “Mommmmm, I’m hungry!” coming from the general direction of the dining room, Megan got up to take care of their son.

  Jason lay in bed a little longer, thinking about the conversation they’d had.

  And try as he might, he just couldn’t get the vision of Paul Martini out of his mind.

  REBELLION Book 1:

  The Allegiance Device

  is available now on Amazon.com and through Barnes and Noble Booksellers.