The Hero of Varay by Rick Shelley Page A

O’Hare. The same kind of crowd scenes had been played out in most of the major cities of the United States to one degree or another, and there were some reports of panic overseas as well. People had been hurt, trampled. At least three had been killed in separate incidents. The initial panic was slow in passing, but conditions were already improving—according to one network anchorman who was just beginning to get his own emotions under control.
    Nearly a half hour passed before Joy decided to try calling her parents again. The network had gone to a rehash of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and the problems following those. They even started talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only cities to suffer nuclear explosions previously. Joy only had to try twice to get through to St. Louis this time.
    I busied myself checking to see if there was anything I wanted to take along to Varay. Sure, the immediate danger seemed less than it had just an hour before, but I wasn’t ready to accept even the remaining risk. I was going to get Joy somewhere safe. That still presented its own problems, but I couldn’t slough them off any longer.
    The telephone conversation sounded like a disaster of its own. Joy was talking and sobbing at the same time. I don’t know if her parents could understand a word she was saying. I couldn’t understand some of them. But she did calm down a little before she finished. Her parents had to know that she was safe, and she knew that they were safe. Since there were still no dangerous alarms of additional explosions coming over the television, that had to be enough for the moment.
    I handed Joy a box of tissues when she got off the telephone and she went through about half the box. Then she hugged me and put her head against my shoulder and I just held her until she was ready to talk.
    “They’re okay,” she said.
    I smiled. “Yeah, I could tell. You feeling better?”
    She nodded. “We’re still not having much of a reunion, are we?”
    “It’ll get better.” I took her back to the sofa and we sat down again. I wasn’t sure yet how to break the news about Varay to her, but I didn’t want to put it off any longer. I guess I hemmed and hawed around the fringes for several minutes before I really took the plunge.
    “You remember that I said that I have a safe place for us to go?” I started. Joy nodded.
    “I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you about this place since we started getting serious about each other.”
    She got a mildly puzzled look on her face but didn’t say anything.
    “I love you,” I said. There was a long silence between us then. Joy’s puzzled look got deeper. I started feeling frustrated. I wasn’t getting anywhere.
    “I love you too,” Joy finally said, but she sounded hesitant, worried about where I was heading with the talk, I guess.
    “The problem is, if I just tell you about this place you’ll think I’m crazy. And if I take you there without telling you a little about it first, you’ll think you’re crazy. Or maybe you’ll just get scared.”
    “I’ve been scared since we heard about that bomb going off,” she said.
    Good point. Let’s try again, I told myself.
    “You know the story of Alice in Wonderland? She falls down a rabbit hole, then goes through a door into a crazy, magical world?”
    “I saw it on TV last year. What in the world are you getting at?”
    But I was running out of words. “I think it’s time to show you,” I said, getting up from the sofa. “Just remember A lice in Wonderland.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “We’re going someplace safe. And we start in the bedroom.” I had hold of her hand and half-pulled her up from the sofa. Joy started giggling. I guess she was ready to write off all the strange talk as the start of a new sex game. That would do for the moment.
    “You had me worried,” she said.
    We detoured to pick up her bags. I carried them into the master bedroom and left them right by the