Read Online Where by Kit Reed - Free Book Online

mystified community with everybody so scared, so wired and disrupted that they can’t think anything through, not the cameras or what they’re about or what happens when this many scared and angry humans come together in one place. The mood in MEETING HALL is toxic.
    The worst thing about the night isn’t them excoriating Father, muttering threats as they file in; he damn well deserves it. He did, after all, start the riot that brought on the electronic shutdown, but that isn’t what sparks the fight. In highly charged situations, it’s the small, stupid things that make people you thought you knew growl and struggle like a pack of werewolves in the middle of the change.
    Inside, our neighbors mutter and jostle, strung tight and jonesing for an explanation, and in the void that yawns at the center of this sterile nightmare, theories swarm, buzzing like wasps, armed to sting:
    â€œIt’s the government, they never explain,” “No. Scientists, messing with us,” “Chill, we’re getting pranked,” “Surprise, you’re on TV.” “Worse. It’s Guantanamo, damn CIA got us for some crime we never did.” “… gassed and airlifted to some heathen country God knows where…” “… high school kids from Walterboro, looking to punk the Charlton Tidal Wave.” “It’s the Chinese,” “It’s…”
    Some woman— who?— shrills, “It’s the hand of God!”
    Ray’s low, clear voice fills the hall. “We don’t know what it is. That’s why we’re here. Now, hush,” he says. He says into the silence, and for the moment, it works. “We’re here to figure it out.”
    Then it doesn’t. Jammed together like this, writhing with uncertainty, strung tight and miserable, our friends and neighbors self-destruct.
    Big old Gert Taggart stands; she was an air traffic controller for years. “Don’t worry. By now they’re out looking for us, you know, just like that airplane, you know the one.”
    Rebel Dawson shouts, “How they’re gonna do that?”
    â€œTechnology, asshole. Satellite cameras, sonar, drones, you know, all that stuff we saw on the TV, they can find anything on earth…”
    Errol Root stands up, fixing her with those crazy eyes: “What makes you think this is earth?”
    Gert overrides him, “… Like they’re still looking for some in that building collapse, you know the one, not dead, they just wandered off … and there’s some still out there from 9/11 that they never confirmed. We’re just missing is all. They’ll keep looking until they find us.”
    Missing.
    I hear Kara Maxwell’s heart break all over again. “They quit, but you don’t. He’s still out there somewhere, they just can’t find him is all, so you don’t give up.” Bill Maxwell, Missing in Action, somewhere in Syria, unless …
    â€œShh, honey. It’s not like that, but this is different. Hang in and they will find us, they will! ”
    â€œHow they’re gonna find us when we don’t know where this is?” Marlon Weisbuch kept hold of his apron and tied it on over his scrubs, in a show of … go figure. He would have been firing up the grill when it happened, while Boogie opened the store, and where is Boogie anyway?
    Errol Root yells, “We’re in a fucking desert.”
    â€œFucking A-rabs,” Bud Dawson says, and it starts.
    Gert shouts, “We don’t know what’s out there!”
    Rebel shoves Gert aside and jumps up on a bench; his voice is huge. “We fight the bastards!”
    She screams, “We don’t know what’s out there!”
    â€œLook outside, assholes,” Rebel says, knowing it’s too dark to see anything. “It’s terrorists. ”
    The men’s voices rise, shouts overlapping. “It’s the