And now for something completely different

I’ll be honest; I’ve been reading slacktivist’s page by page review of Left Behind for a long time now. I’ve never been a fan of the books. In fact I was once on a panel all about their short comings, so I’ve enjoyed the dissection of the story. As a writer every time I read one of the reviews, I can help but think that I could write it better.

Some of the recent comments have made me think about what would go on in such a situation, and I started playing around with an idea for a scene, and eventually wrote it out. It’s nothing fancy, heck, it’s not even a full story, but it was interesting to write (and had a surprising amount of research). I can't say that it's acutaly good, just interesting to write.

So here it is a scene from an original rapture story written by an agnostic-atheist. Enjoy!

Edit: There has been some confusion, so I should note that this in not fanfic, nor is it ment to fit into the Left Behind stories (of which I have never read). This is an original work on my part working from square one.

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"Ms. Teller?" a voice asked, intruding into her forced attention.

Kelly Teller looked up, finding that the Deputy Director Richard was standing across from her desk. "Yes sir?" she asked, half of her attention on the Russian TV news feed that was playing in her ear, the other half on her superior.

"Do you have any hard numbers on the population loss?" he asked.

"Nothing hard sir, we have some approximant numbers per a region, but everything is too crazy right now to be exact," she replied.

He nodded. "How fast can you generate a report?" the older man asked, shifting his weight slightly from one foot to the other.

She looked back at her computer screen, quickly writing up another piece of information from the Russian that played in her ear. On her screen should saw the numbers from everyone else in her group, each one monitoring a different satellite broadcast. It would take her long to pull everything into a single report. "Five minutes," she said.

Richard nodded his head and looked back over his shoulder. "Be quick about it, than meet me in the lobby," he ordered, turning around and hurrying away.

If she was meeting him outside that could only mean he was in more of a rush than usual. It gave some credibility to the rumor that the Director of the CIA was either dead or Missing. With that on her mind she diverted the Russian feed to one of her coworkers and started collating the data. She didn’t worry about being pretty with the numbers, she just pulled them into a single document then added any pertinent notes or rumors her them might have heard.

Once she was finished she copied everything onto a PDA then rushed out of large office space she shared with her team. The hallways were empty, only the sound of everyone working filled the twisting corridors. Soon she was past the last security checkpoint and entered the lobby.

The Deputy Director was waiting for her, a look of worry and concern on his face. "Do you have the information?" he asked.

"Of course, sir," she replied.

"Good, I have no time to review it, so you are coming with me," he said, then turned and headed out of the front office.

She followed quickly after him, blinking as she entered into the bright afternoon sun, which did nothing to help the chill of a February day. She hadn’t expected to leave the building, and didn’t bring her jacket. Kelly had no idea where they were going, but knew that it had to be important.

Her suspicions were assured when they reached the main parking lot. Many of the cars had been pushed away to make room for a helicopter. The livery on the machine was distinct, it was Marine One, or at least would be in the President was on board. Judging by the standard uniform the man by the door was wearing, that was not the case.

The Deputy Director climbed inside and she followed after. The Marine didn’t bother to look at her ID, he just ushered her into the well upholstered cabin and closed the door behind them.

Richard had settled down into his seat and had pulled on a headset, motioning for her to do the same. She quickly did so, and then fastened a seatbelt as the helicopter leached into the sky. As they rose she could see smoke rising from both the parkway and 123. As they rose higher she could see the long line of stopped traffic that filled the roads as far as she could see.

She had no idea where they were going, but it was clear that air travel was the only way to get anywhere at that moment.

"Have you ever been to a briefing with the President?" Richard asked her.

"No sir, I never have," she replied, a cold chill running down her back. She had seen President Locke a few times at a distance, but she had never been in the same room with him before.

The Deputy Director nodded his head. "No, I suppose not. Just keep it as simple as you can. He’ll ask you questions, be concise and accurate. There is going to be a lot to go over," he explained.

She nodded her head. Trying to compose herself, she looked out the window. They helicopter was flying to the south, and plumes of smoke rose into the air around them. She tried to take in everything that had happened, to comprehend it all, but failed. It was too much.

"Have you been able to contact your family?" Richard asked a few moments later.

Kelly turned to look at him, feeling a bit surprised. "Yes, I called them as soon after it happened. My sister and her family are okay. She said my parents are fine, but I wasn’t able to contact them before the phone network collapsed." The phone system had never been designed to hold up against a third of the country trying to call the other third, and had collapsed with in twenty minutes of whatever happened.

Three hours on from the event, the situation was worse.

"How about you sir?" she asked.

A frown pasted over his face. "I don’t know, I just don’t know," he said.

"I hope they are okay," she said as the helicopter started to descend. Looking out the window she saw the familiar shape of the Pentagon under them. They were landing just north of the building.

She frowned and touched the ID badge that was pinned to one of the buttons on her shirt. "Sir, my security clearance--"

"Has been taken care of," Richard replied.

The younger women nodded her head and tried to relax as the helicopter came to a landing on the grass outside the building. A few moments later the door opened and the pair of them hurried outside. Three other helicopters sat around the grassy area, all carrying the Marine One livery. One had a marine in full dress uniform standing next to it.

She did not have any more time to look as they were quickly ushered into the building though a below ground entrance. Inside it looked just like any other office building she had been in: long hallways with rows of indistinct doors only broken by the occasional crossing hallway. They moved though the corridors, the Deputy Director sure of his way until they were deep inside the building.

He finally stopped in front of a blank wooden door which he pushed open. A pair of marines were standing inside the doorway, giving them both an eye as the Deputy Director handed them his ID. She followed suit, turning away slightly as they looked her over.

"Go head," one of the marines said, as the other one handed back her ID. She took it from him, clipping it to her shirt as they walked into the large meeting room. The room was dominated by a large table with twenty chairs, most of them full. One wall had a trio of large monitors mounted on it, each one currently blank. The president was absent.

The pair of them walked some open seats, and sat down. Kelly found herself sitting next to a Three Star General. He gave her a look, but said nothing, his face a mask of perfect calm.

An uncomfortable silence filled the room for the next few minutes. The tension was thick and the room was growing warm from all the bodies. More people filled in, one or two at a time and most of them had to stand. Only one chair was left open at the head of the table.

Then, without warning, the meeting began as President Locke entered the room. He was in his late 50s, grey just starting to streak over his otherwise black hair. His glasses were of a tastefully small size and framed his eyes, highlighting the slight oriental cast to his features.

He sat down at the open chair and looked out over the collected people in the room. "How bad is it?" he asked.

"It’s bad, sir." Some replied.

"Do we have any idea what happened? What caused this?" he asked.

"We have some thoughts sir, but it’s too early to know for sure. We can say that this is global, it’s affected every corner of the world," The Deputy Director said.

The president nodded his head. "How badly?"

Richard gave Kelly a quick look, and she took that as her cue to speak. "Well sir--"she started, but her voice cracked. She gulped, trying to rewet her mouth before speaking again. "The numbers is different for each region, but we estimate that that about 30% of the global population have vanished."

That statement brought a soft gasp from many of the people in the room. "That’s two billion people," someone in the back muttered.

"Are you sure?" President Locke asked.

"As sure as we can be at this moment, sir. That number doesn’t reflect the true magnitude of the number," she paused, trying to find the best way to tell them what she knew, but found there was simply no other way to say it. "Among the Missing is every child under the age of thirteen; regardless of color and creed."

It was the worst silence she had ever heard in her life. No one said anything, no one could say anything. Looks of horror were starting to cross over the faces of many of the people around the table. A moment later there was the sound of the door closing as someone left the room.

The president looked at her, his face pail. "How can you be sure?"

"It’s consistent on every news station throughout the world."

He slowly nodded his head, taking a moment to digest the information.

"It’s an attack," the general next to her said, his voice calm and even.

"By whom?" someone else asked.

"I don’t know, but it’s clearly an attack. Whoever they are have taken our children, even last one of them. The adults maybe part of their plan, or an accident, but it must be an attack. How could such a thing happen otherwise?"

President Locke nodded his head. "Perhaps it is, but the attack is not just on us, but the whole of the world, that implies an enemy outside of this world. We have already moved to DEFCON 3 for all forces, but for now we cannot attack an enemy we cannot even see, let alone conceive of."

The general nodded, the said: "Yes, sir."

"There will be riots," someone else at the table said. Kelly thought it was the head of FEMA, but wasn’t sure.

"Yes, there will be. We should declare a state of emergency," another person said.

The head of FEMA shook his head. "We recommend against that. After the Yellowstone scare it is clear that a country wide emergency response is untenable at a federal level."

"If we federalize the National Guard it will be difficult to maintain local law enforcement, so we are leaving it in the hands of the individual states," the president added.

An older woman spoke up. "I beg to differ, sir; the infrastructure of the country has been severely damaged. There is not a mile of highway that does not have some sort of accident on it because of being vanishing from their cars. There ninety-seven downed aircraft, most on runways, the air traffic control system is at a breaking point. We are getting planes out of the sky as fast as we can, but there are simply some that won’t make it. There are at least five where the entire flight crew have vanished, leaving a locked cockpit and no way to even try to get them down. Every one of these is of a national concern."

President Locke looked at her for a moment then nodded his head. "We’ll grant the authority for the National Guard to work with the DOT and FAA to clear the accidents and get the primary routes open first."

"It’s going to have to be by executive order, almost half the house and nearly a third of the senate are among the Missing," a voice from the back said.

"Including the Vice President," was the president’s simple response. "We need to confirm the status of every member of Congress, then replace as many as we can. People are going to be looking to us to help them through this, we have to be strong, and we have to be direct. The United States still exists even in the face of a crisis of this magnitude."

Richard leaned over and touched Kelly’s arm. She turned in surprise to look at him.

"You’re not going to be needed anymore. Get back to your office anyway you can and keep going on that data," he said.

She nodded her head. "Yes, sir," she said, pushing her chair back, slipping out of it and moving to the back of the room. No one paid any attention to her, but parted to let her pass. Soon the plain wooden door was closing behind her, leaving her deep inside the largest office building in the world. She had no idea where she was, how to get outside or even how to get back to Langley.