The Void by Michael Bray, Albert Kivak Page A

was debunked when they saw it was natural and the sewage pipes running underground were intact and left out in the open, twenty feet below.
    James Clifton knew terrorists had no part in creating the sinkhole, so when he heard orders from the top to investigate Tina Singh’s father, he was hesitant. He came out of his mobile unit command center and down the street of where the sinkhole was forming.
    The first thing he noticed was that there was no transportation. All the automobiles were gone. The people on Maple Street woke up to their driveway empty and the parking garage door crumpled outward and their cars vanished in thin air. The first call to the 911 dispatchers came in around 5:43 am.
    His name was Sheppard Singh, and he had a thick Middle Eastern accent.
    “My daughter says she saw our car run by itself,” he said into his cell phone. The signal was being hacked by TSP, otherwise known as Terrorist Surveillance Program authorized by the NSA to intercept all calls without warning in the Maryland headquarters.
    The dispatcher sighed and typed the info on the keyboard. “Your daughter said what?”
    “Our car is missing. Do you understand? Someone might’ve stolen the car.”
    “The car you say…”
    “Every neighbor’s car. They’re not here.”
    “Sir, what is the reason you’re calling? Are you in trouble? Do you need help?”
    “The sinkhole, you know the sinkhole? Why are you so stupid?”
    “Sir, please don’t curse at me or I’ll be forced to terminate this call,” the dispatcher said soothingly with an undertone of intimidation.
    “You people make me sick. If I said there was a bomb I bet you’d be here in no time.”
    The line chattered back to Maryland as the agents ears perked up.
    “Sir, we’re doing our best here. Threats won’t help the situation.”
    “I’ll say what I want,” Sheppard said, mockingly, into the phone. “You Americans come after all the warnings are too late, but never before to prevent it.” He hung up.
    Messages were relayed to the nerve center in Washington D.C. as orders were given to investigate. .
     
    II
     
    In the morning light Embry’s wife, Hanna, stood in what remained of her garden. She saw the sparkling dew drops on the lawn and inhaled the fresh, crisp air. A wind picked up the scent of disheartening moldy stench from the sinkhole, which ruined the serenity of the morning. She looked across the yard to the outer edge of the hole to where the partridge house had once stood. Now there was nothing left other than a few loose timbers and bricks, the earth jagged and broken where the house had fallen into the void. She wondered why they still hadn’t been evacuated yet when it was clear the hole was unstable. Already the men in suits – agents who were plainly working for the government-were milling around, speaking in groups or whispering into radios as they swarmed around the hole and the place where their neighbor’s house once stood.
    She glanced upward and noticed something strange. The azure sky (with tinges of yellow) was filled with black dots that were moving. She shielded her eyes and tried to get a better look at what they were. The last time she’d seen anything like that was in the basement of her home. Her eldest son had yelled up at her, screaming spider spider spider!
    She had gone down to see what the fuss was about and, in the corner of the ceiling, she noticed a mother spider had laid eggs and the sac had broken open, revealing millions of little squirmy arachnids scurrying and climbing up and over each other.
    The spiders in the sky weren’t little or small or childlike. They were all the size of golf balls, some even larger. They were thousands of these critters, hanging in the air, the thin thread of cobwebs arching across the canopies of the elm and the lamp post and the electric poles. These large marker-shaped spiders roved the sky, crawling back and forth, as if they were onyx oil paints with long draping legs.
    A sparrow