Imagine There's No Heaven - 3. Chapter 3

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will be as one*

‘I’m a friend of the driver who survived the bus explosion in Laferty two days ago.’ Colton said. ‘I’d like to speak to the commissioner.’

The beady eyed man with a pencil sharp nose glared at him as if he were asking the impossible. ‘Commissioner only takes appointments.’

‘I have information regarding the driver.’

‘Make an appointment and I’m sure he’ll see you. Depends entirely on his schedule,’ the man said, returning his attention to a file before him. His finger-knuckles had been crudely tattoed with the letters L-O-V-E.

The office was painted white with two doors and a glass window. Behind the sergeant, men and women in uniform answered phones and chewed gum and rushed here and there without noticing him.

Colton returned his gaze to the sergeant deeply engrossed in the file. Life continues, he thought. Indeed life continues after thirty-two children die. Thirty-two children! One survivor. Why would Jack survive? Why would he give me his notebook to read? A notebook that goes back to 1993. Maybe he was trying to tell me something. I should have read further. Am I jumping to conclusions about him.

The sergeant looked up from the file. ‘Well, do you want to make an appointment to see the big man?’

‘On second thoughts, I’ll phone in to make an appointment,’ Colton said, backing away from the glass encased booth. ‘Later.’

He dashed through the doors into the street and hailed the first taxi he could find to take him back to the hospital.

I’m such a fool. I need to read the rest of his notebook, if he’ll let me. Besides, how can I hate him? How can I possibly put aside my love at a moment’s notice and desert him? Is that fair? What if the roles were reversed? I would want support. I would want someone not to judge me. Christ, that’s what I did. I judged him. How could I do that when I’m far from perfect…

The driver nudged him. ‘Hey. We’ve arrived.’

Colton awoke with a start. The hospital entrance. He thanked the taxi driver, paid him his fair and bolted for the doors. Instead of taking the lift, he took the stairs two at a time and arrived at the ward where he found doctors and nurses running around in a panic.

A security official dressed in a grey suit stopped him from entering the ICU. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘Jack, I’m here to see Jack. I need to see him.’

‘He’s gone. The police will be here at any moment.’

‘Gone? What? Where? I…I’m sorry, I don’t understand...’

He spotted a pool of blood creeping out from under the ICU doors and his mouth went dry instantly. ‘Oh my God…what...what happened here?’

Without thinking, he made a dash for the door and swung it open, the security officer bolted after him and reached out to try and stop him. Colton stood frozen to the spot, mouth agape as he witnessed the carnage before him. Three nurses lay in awkward deathly poses on the floor. One had been shot through the heart, one through the head and one in the back. Two females, one male.

He sagged to his knees as the security official grabbed him, but he shook his hand away. ‘Oh my god! Oh my God!’

‘Sir, you can’t be in here.’

‘Who…who did this?’

The security official gripped him by the lapel of his shirt and whisked him to his feet, and that’s when Colton noticed the notebook, still lying in the very place it had fallen after he had thrown it at Jack.

He had never been trained in the martial arts, he didn’t know how to use his fists, or kick. He had no idea how to execute an upper cut or lunge punch, but he lashed out at the security official and the man spun on his heels almost three-sixty degrees and landed on the floor with a broken nose clutching his crotch where Colton had kicked him. The moment he went down, Colton grabbed the notebook and took off out of the ICU and down the corridor. He fled passed the ground floor reception and suddenly began to walk calmly when he spotted a group of well-dressed men and several policemen heading towards the double doors of the entrance. He passed them unnoticed, and climbed into the first taxi parked on the curb.

He reminded himself that until twenty minutes ago, he was just a normal person. Now he had assaulted a security official and removed evidence from the scene of a crime. He was in deep shit. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Going to the police was not an option. Jack had been taken by God knows who, but whomever it was had no idea that Colton felt like a jilted lover, something precious had been taken away from him. He decided there and then, that no matter the consequences, that he would find Jack. What he failed to understand was simple: had he been beside Jack at the moment of his abduction, he would have been dead. He clutched the notebook in his hands. The book of death. A book that would change his life forever.