Prologue

When it happened, it didn’t happen with a clap of thunder or a bolt of lightning as wide as a mountain. There wasn’t a flood. There wasn’t a fire. The ground didn’t ripple and fall away. The air didn’t turn to poison. A siren didn’t blare out. There were no screams, no cries. It was a kind of quiet that doesn’t have a word. Whatever the opposite of noise is, it goes beyond that. It is removal. Absence. A silence that is further than nothing. Nothingness is at least something.

The Swipe, as it came to be called, was the moment 1.8 billion children disappeared. And it certainly was a moment: 20% of the world’s population erased in an instant, a millisecond. There was no warning. They were there and then they were gone. All at once, all over the world, children vanished. In classrooms, in beds, in pools and planes; in forests and on soccer fields and in basements and at dining tables. They went somewhere. Many people – the ones left behind – some of them their parents, their brothers and sisters, aunts, teachers, cousins, neighbors – believed and hoped it was good. The Rapture. God had taken His innocents to Heaven and left the wicked and unredeemed to wander the wilderness in agony.

Or maybe they were taken somewhere terrible. Many believed they were gathered up by the Devil and taken to Hell. Satan’s greatest trick wasn’t to convince the world he didn’t exist, it was to steal its children. But a lot of people – maybe half of the remaining 7 billion – simply weren’t sure where they were. They knew what had happened had happened and that was that. There was a science behind it, probably. Something chemical, perhaps. Logic had to be implemented. Cold truths needed to be realized. In America, people waited to be told by confused politicians about what to do next. What to eat and what not to eat. Food was left out in streets, untouched and spoiled, burned, or taken by animals. Cows were culled and their milk was disposed of; crops were destroyed, regrown, then destroyed again. Sobriety was broken by some and doubled down on by others.

Even in those chaotic first months, when cities and villages everywhere burned and suicides became an hourly occurrence, scientists were hard at work trying to solve whatever there was to solve.

After nearly a year, a global census had been completed, even in the midst of many nations sealing their borders and going dark. It was discovered that all the missing children had one thing in common: they hadn’t reached puberty. Newborn babies, toddlers, kindergarteners, sixth graders – all of them bundled together in a sack, thrown over the shoulder of a thief, and driven away into the endless night. There was at least some sense in this. People could wrap their heads around data. Entire grade schools and daycares closed. Hospital NICU wards were completely abandoned.

Children whose voices dropped or bled just in time were seen as holy or damned, depending on who was asked. They were the lucky ones, spared by nature’s call. Their classmates and friends dematerialized from this reality, and they were now forced to answer for them. Crucibles against them exploded everywhere, including in the United States; these children were rounded up, quarantined, placed on trial, jailed and in some cases, even executed. They were sacrificed to appease whatever god waited to feed again. None of these kids knew what happened, of course. But many weren’t convinced. They saw their fresh entry into adulthood as more than just eventual. It was a conspiracy. They were complicit. Part of it. Accessories to the greatest robbery in human history.

Paranoia was only made worse when information that had been previously classified leaked. Unborn babies were among the missing. All of them. Every last one. It wasn’t long before the next nightmare started: every new pregnancy, no matter how primed for life, resulted in the same outcome. These tiny, faceless things were taken, too. Taken to whatever dark and icy compartment far away, where all the other children of the world were kept. Frozen and stored for later. Impeccably arranged, organized, neatly stacked. Easily moved to make room for the rest when the time would come for them as well.