Chapter 14
Vanishing Act
Ryan raced up the wispy stairs in desperation. He returned moments later and shook his head. No one was on the second floor either.
How could this be happening, he thought in despair.
A tear rolled gently down Regan’s cheek. “Could they have escaped out another exit?”
Ryan shook his head sadly. “Those insect things picked the room clean,” he whispered woodenly. “Look at it. There’s no trace that anyone was ever here. No people, no equipment—nothing. The pole that was leaning against the stairs is gone. There’s not even any blood stains where Mom was hit.”
“But how could they eat through solid steel, Ryan? How?”
“I don’t know,” said her brother sullenly. “But you saw how quickly they devoured solid rock. I guess steel and . . .” he was about to say bone but thought better of it. “I guess steel is no different.”
“But we were only gone about two minutes,” persisted Regan. “They couldn’t be that fast. Are you saying they devoured the equipment and all those people and disappeared again in less than two minutes? I don’t believe it. Mom and Dad are still alive,” she insisted. “I know they are. They have to be.” And with that she broke into tears.
Ryan wiped away several large tears that had escaped from the corners of his own eyes and put an arm around his sister. He tried to find words to comfort her, but there were none to find.
After a few minutes Regan managed to get her emotions back under control. Her parents were alive, she told herself, and she was going to figure out where they were.
She forced herself to concentrate on the room once more. It was uncanny how quiet it now was and even more uncanny how selective the swarm had been. None of the many alien objects in the room had been touched, nor had the stairs, the floor, or the doorways. Nothing. The insects had devoured every last microscopic shred of everything from Earth, people or otherwise, and hadn’t touched a single atom of anything that was already here. She pointed this observation out to Ryan. “How did they know?” she asked him. “Why would they prefer Earth stuff?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably because the alien building material is too tough for them. You saw how tough just those thin strands are.”
“But they were able to eat through the floor,” Regan pointed out. “Yet there’s no trace of any damage to it. Where did they come from? Where did those rock chunks come from? What kind of . . . creatures . . . like to eat metal, plastic, and people? And how did they know that Earth stuff wasn’t poisonous?”
“You’re right. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Do you think the swarm will return?” said Regan.
Ryan shuddered. “Let’s not wait around to find out.”
They retraced their path back to where they had first entered the perilous city in numbed silence. This time, instead of marveling at the fantastic architecture around them they kept their eyes on the ground, searching for the return of the piranha-like insects and trying not to think about the fate of their parents.
Finally, after a period of time that seemed far longer than it really was, they arrived at the edge of the city, to the place at which they had entered. The opaque wall of energy ran in a smooth curve in front of them, distorting their vision. They looked for the swirling colors that would mark the hole in the energy shield that their father had torn open.
It wasn’t there! The entrance was gone! How could that be?
They were trapped!
Trapped in a city that had already shown how deadly it could be.
And who knew how long it would be before the swarm of alien insects became hungry again?