The Living Dead

by Kraus, Daniel

Now, fallen it had. Unitas gave Baseman the kind of wince you gave an old fellow who’d slipped on the ice after insisting he’d shovel his own drive, It was over; Baseman had lost the argument with Glass. Worse, he’d lost it three years ago, and no one had had the heart to tell him. Unitas licked his teeth, fishing for excuses, and because he was a pro, came up with them. He even ticked them off his fingers.

  “Spates of attacks carried out with extreme loyalty,” Unitas said. “Complete lack of remorse regarding who gets caught in the cross fire. No evidence of theft. And yes, unfortunate as it may seem, the attacks do appear to be taking place in … crowded communities. Baseman, to me, this all says gang activity.”

  Crowded communities was the dumbest euphemism Baseman had ever heard, but it would do him no good to point it out. Before he spoke, he had to clear his throat. God, he sounded weak. No wonder Sherry had left him.

  “Let’s at least be rational.” His pathetic squeak. “Let’s conference call the other networks. Pool-coverage this thing. Public safety is not a ratings race. We used to know that, Nick.”

  Unitas turned to the VPs. “Pressburger, Offer Quincey what we discussed. Not a penny more for that bottom-feeder.”

  Glass clapped her hands, “Attaboy, baby.”

  “Collinsworth. Get what’s-his-name, the gang expert, the one with the mustache. Drag his ass in here—I don’t care if he’s drunk—and have him comb through the footage. Gang colors, hand signals, whatever he can find, Let’s do some reporting, for Christ’s sake. See if he’ll shave the mustache too.”

  Pressburger and Collinsworth pitched themselves into chairs, snatched up phones, punched extensions, and began speaking in the tones of people accustomed to calls that went poorly. Glass adjusted her blazer, just for effect.

  “I’ll get into makeup,” she announced.

  Unitas spoke over his shoulder, “Let Chuck finish the shift.”

  Glass frowned, not with the motherly displeasure prized by her viewers but the bratty pout only coworkers knew. “That’s an hour away. You seriously want the Face holding down the desk for another hour? Today?”

  Unitas turned around, and to Baseman’s surprise, the news director did not look defeated. His put his fists on his hips and sanded his jaws back and forth. Baseman felt a rogue bolt of hope. If Unitas could stand up to Glass, even partly, so could he.

  “Let me tell you something about Chuck Corso,” Unitas said. “While all we Walter Cronkites had our panties in a bunch over an actor exposing himself, the Face drove himself to the station, with his own little hands on the wheel, at the crack of dawn, six hours before he was due, and put himself on standby. Not for personal glory, not in hopes that his ‘brand’ would have something to gain, but because he recognized this as an all-hands-on-deck situation and wanted to help, Can you imagine that?

  “The Face was writing copy. He’s more current with what’s going on right now than the three of us. You may not think Chuck Corso is the crispiest chip in the bag. But goddamn if he’s not loyal. Goddamn if he’s not a team player, Which is something the rest of us, up here on the twentieth floor, should value a little more.”

  Baseman and Glass exchanged a look, playground pugilists collared by the recess monitor.

  “We’ve all learned a valuable lesson in class today,” Glass conceded. “But the Quincey video—it debuts on my show. I break it, and I break it the Rochelle Glass way. My format, my graphics, my commentary.”

  Unitas’s nod was barely discernible past a grimace that exposed his canines. He’ll bite us if we say another word, thought Baseman.

  The news director flapped a hand at the door, “Baseman, go help Chuck get through the next hour. Glass, you need anything at all, ask Baseman. Teamwork, people. Talk to each other. Communicate. We work at a goddamn news station, for Christ’s sake.”

  Chucksux69

  The instant Camera 2’s red light blinked off, Chuck Corso scooted his laptop closer. Plenty of anchors used laptops as props. Looked good on-screen, contributed to the façade that anchors weren’t heads on sticks trained to read teleprompters, Chuck had known a morning anchor in New York who used his news desk laptop exclusively to play porn GIFs to get his coanchor to crack up.

  Chuck used his computer for the purpose for which it was intended—for “computering,” as he’d once regrettably put it in a meeting. In fact, he computered so relentlessly, he’d short-circuited three laptops in five years. He tapped his touch pad and the official WWN site brightened to life. It was the only site he visited while at the news desk, which made producers, assistants, and touch-up artists believe him to be completely, if boringly, dedicated to his workplace. Every rumor about the Face, he knew, revolved around his looks or remedial wits.

  He didn’t think it was moronic in the least to keep his browsing fingers on the pulse of the viewing public. WWN had tools; why not use them? With a practiced flick, Chuck brought up the menu, which fractioned the site into sections like Tech, Money, and Style. He cursored to Feedback and chose Forum from the drop-down. Up it flashed: the familiar stars-and-stripes wallpaper. WWN Politics had established the forum during the run-up to the last presidential election, hoping die-hard newsies would gather there to address daily topics, drawn by unlimited character counts, and would click on an ad or two as well.

  The reality had been, as naysayers had warned, a swarm of trolls. Like rats, they sniffed out this new hole in the internet, flooded in, rubbed their vulgarities together, and made babies. Six months into an eighteen-month election cycle, the unmoderated forum had become a wasteland of alt-right conspiracy bread crumbs and theatrical far-left attention-seekers. The optics of shuttering the forum were poor, and the cost of adding moderators so high, that WWN chose to simply abandon it. It grew wild and sprouted strange tubers, and Chuck Corso suspected he might be the last staffer who knew the machete-hacked paths through its weeds.

  Four more clicks and he had fresh search results for username ChuckSux69. Ten posts since Chuck’s last check. His chest tingled. He clicked on the first post.

  Can you believe this????????? Chuckie not fugging up breaking news SO FAR. Hardly can believe my eyes. Maybe Im just blinded by his TOO WHITE TEETH.

  Chuck ran his tongue over his choppers. Perhaps Dr. Freeling had gone overboard at the last whitening treatment. Years ago, on advice from a female coworker, Chuck had begun coating his teeth in Vaseline; maybe he’d gotten sloppy with that. Either way, this was actionable feedback. He couldn’t allow shiny teeth to distract from his delivery, not with today’s news. He advanced to ChuckSux69’s next post. Camera 2’s warning light would flash all too soon.

  He knew nothing about ChuckSux69 aside from what he or she had plugged in to the forum template. To the left of each post was a box of user data. Beneath the username was an attribute field programmers had intended for job titles until users made mincemeat of it. ChuckSux69’s job title read TRUTH TELLER. Beneath was ChuckSux69’s custom image: an anime picture of a girl with beach ball–sized breasts. After that came ChuckSux69’s location (EVERYWHERE) and number of posts (14,272). At the bottom, users could display a quote that, in theory, nutshelled their worldview. ChuckSux69’s quote: Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo.

  Chuck Corso had feared the forum at first. Although he fantasized about being a self-confident freewheeler, he had Google Alerts set for every permutation of his name, including misspellings. Several times a day, he searched social media outlets, despite it never ending well. People didn’t use the internet to hail public figures for jobs ably done. Insults were the coin of the realm. Chuck Corso is the biggest dipshit on TV. Chuck Corso can’t pronounce Kim Jong-un. Chuck Corso probably spends fifty thousand a year waxing his eyebrows.

  Then there was the meme.

  Chuck found it wretchedly unfair. He’d been a soft-news reporter in Charlotte, just out of college, before being tapped to cover a similar beat by a New York station. It was a small station, an upstart. But New York was New York! He understood his looks
had played a pivotal role in scoring the job; the nonplussed expressions of his Charlotte colleagues made that clear enough. What could he say or do to make it better? Hone his craft and become the best newsman he could be, that was all.

  He’d been out in bright, brisk Battery Park on one of his first stories (gathering man-on-the-street reactions to the rumor Michael Jordan might rejoin the NBA) when American Airlines Flight 11 buried itself in the World Trade Center’s North Tower. Chuck and his photog were the station’s first team on the scene, and for twenty-two glorious minutes, it had been Chuck Corso, the guy known for such hard-hitting pieces as Rufus the banjo-playing cockapoo, standing before two smoke-billowing skyscrapers, his face pinched in concern, his voice bottoming to indicate he recognized the event’s gravity and would guide viewers through it.

  Senior news teams soon descended and assumed control. This failed to ding Chuck’s pride, especially after the collapse of the first tower forced those news vets, and everyone else, to retreat, He’d helped New Yorkers by staying strong on the air, and in reciprocation, they swept him to safety down streets he didn’t yet know, the white dust on their clothing matching the white dust on his. A stumble off a curb even allowed Chuck to match their uneven gaits; they staggered like their numbers included people who’d dived from the towers, touched with Lazarus powers, risen again.

  The tape of his twenty-two-minute 9/11 broadcast didn’t resurface until YouTube was born and began demanding mother’s milk. Some editor brute had carved the footage free of context. All that was left was a streamlined lowlight reel of a greenhorn Chuck Corso blinded in the dazzling September spotlight and bursting with malapropisms to rival those of the current sitting president.

  “There is de-briss falling from the tower, lots of dangerous de-briss.”

  “The plane’s fuse-a-long may still be in the building, and that’s a concern.”

  “It looks to me like the building has perplexed.”

  It was this last one that got meme-ified: the word PERPLEXED in white Impact font over a freeze-frame of Chuck epitomizing the emotion, When colleagues attached the meme to emails to Chuck or joshingly used the word in conversation, he always made sure to laugh. He did it for his colleagues, for the country at large. Everyone needed to laugh, especially while overwhelmed by atrocity. Or else, as went the cliché, the terrorists won.

  But the gibes hurt. He’d been proud to report from Ground Zero. When he thought about it, his eyes welled up. Had it all been a lie, their beautiful, secure America? In the months following the attacks, the closest Chuck got to hard reporting were profiles of 9/11 widows. Breaking news: they were sad! It got worse from there: scientists are excited about this one-minute workout; someone could be spying on your computer; we asked people who they’d like to see walking away with a Golden Globe. Ten years he toiled on that beat, and not once did his heart, mind, or soul come to life like he had on 9/11. He didn’t wish for another attack—of course he didn’t—but the idea of another disaster consumed his dreams. It might mean a second chance.

  They were dark years through which a series of girlfriends guided him. Arianna, Ljubica, Nathalia, and Gemma were all models. What they gained from Chuck was gravitas at media events; Chuck Corso might not be respected, but reporter was still printed on his business cards. What Chuck gained from them was insight into how to effectively capitalize on his physical attributes.

  He was in his thirties and starting to lose his hair, Arianna combed through Chuck’s scalp, tugging and tsking, her painted nails cold as beetles. She made him get Propecia, Rogaine Foam, and a HairMax Ultima 12 LaserComb. Before they split, she introduced him to a plastic surgeon who explained the differences between hair transplantation, flap surgery, scalp tissue expansion, and scalp reduction. The final treatment plan was an aggressive combination of all four.

  Ljubica used the sharp point of a pinkie nail to pinpoint every developing skin tag, discoloration, and dry patch on Chuck’s face. Biweekly skin treatments, she told him, were his only hope against the ravages of age. Microdermabrasion, electronic muscle stimulation, oxygen mist treatment, LED light regeneration, whole-body cryotherapy, stem cell facials buttressed with snake venom—with Ljubica eager to showcase her expertise, he submitted to all of it. In the shower, hot water flumed from his new flesh so fleetly he didn’t need to dry his face.

  Nathalia connected him with Xander, a stunt man turned personal trainer whose specialty was getting actors ripped for shirtless action roles. Xander punished Chuck with burpees, thrusters, box jumps, pull-ups, kettlebell swings, and rowing, while Nathalia shoved Chuck’s pretty face into a macrobiotic, seaweed-heavy, five-times-a-day detox diet capable of maintaining the body’s pH balance within one-tenth of a point, Chuck’s chest and abs felt like iron plates hung by hooks. But he could see the workout in his face, and that mattered. Insidious neck flab, rounding cheeks, softening jawline—all gone, as if filleted by knife.

  Gemma arrived with Chuck’s fortieth birthday, thirteen years younger; his only American-born girlfriend and the most mercenary. The knife, she called it with gruesome relish, She shoved him down on the bed, straddled him, and showed off her augmented breasts, enhanced lips, and reshaped nose. Over the next three years, he underwent blepharoplasty (eye-bag removal), lower rhytidectomy (neck lift), mentoplasty (chin augmentation), setback otoplasty (ear reshaping), and a good old-fashioned face-lift.

  When all that work was finished, what struck Chuck the most was the work he hadn’t done, A belated boning up on world history. Studying political science, law, and ethics. Trying to finally make heads or tails of the Middle East. He’d had a decade, and all he’d done was make himself a better face—the Face.

  For his sins, they rewarded him. WWN bought out his contract and hired him to read the news on midmorning weekdays. Chuck couldn’t relocate to Atlanta fast enough, Drastically fewer models lived in Georgia, and Chuck withdrew into a quieter life. He had few friends but realized he’d always had few; at every stop in his life, people had merely put up with him, gnashing their jaws at his unjustly advanced career. New York was in his past, but he thought of New Yorkers often, how they’d staggered on 9/11, how he’d staggered. He’d been one of the people then. In Atlanta, damn it all, he’d become one of the people again.

  And here was his opportunity, Right when he thought he’d be covering the kind of story he loathed—the indecent exposures of Ben Hines—up roared this other story, which might reach 9/11 pinnacles. A chance to lead, yes; to bury his PERPLEXED reputation, for sure. But more than that, a chance to truly help, however he could, in a time of need.

  To do that, he would need to do what he’d failed to do on 9/11. In the biz, it was called vamping—filling dead air with synopses and speculation. With so many reporters’ voices being patched in to his earpiece and so many people hustling around the studio, it was too chaotic to gauge his performance. Hence, ChuckSux69. Chuck held his breath as he read the user’s next post.

  I am DIGGING Chuckys Serious Face today and Im not even JOKING!!! when he was all WE MUST BE CAUTIOUS IN DRAWING CONCLUSIONS I was like <3 <3 <3 where has this Chucky been all my life??? Can see his plugs tho (sorry)

  Chuck exhaled a powerful gust that rustled the bangs over his problematic hairline. ChuckSux69 was right. He needed to schedule a follicle enhancement as soon as this news emergency settled. Eight posts from ChuckSux69 remained, and Chuck cycled through them, taking mental notes while keeping an eye on Camera 2.

  He knew others would find his dependence on ChuckSux69 strange if not downright twisted. The user, after all, had joined the forum with the express purpose of haranguing Chuck Corso. That was precisely why Chuck trusted him, From ChuckSux69’s first contribution, 14,272 posts ago, Chuck recognized the user’s MO to be exactly what he (could be a she, but Chuck doubted it) said in his profile: TRUTH TELLER. His takes were rude, vulgar, and spontaneous—more valuable than a million respectable opinions.

  Chuck Corso would need ChuckSux69 if he was going to
get through this.

  The light atop Camera 2 began a cautionary strobe. Chuck quit the forum, positioned the laptop inside the medium shot, and tuned back in to his earpiece, Lee Sutton, the director, delivered more bad news. The news team Chuck was supposed to throw to had gone off-line. No radio signal, no cell contact. It was the second WWN team to drop off the grid. Chuck told himself not to worry. Live shots got nixed by cops all the time, phone batteries died, developing situations got hectic.

  “Encapsulate,” Lee ordered. “Rehash, Soon as we have a team ready, I’ll tell you.”

  Chuck nodded into Lee’s erstwhile eye, the dead lens of Camera 2. His heart stuttered as the teleprompter went a shocking midnight black. He felt the unspooling terror of a thousand work-related nightmares; dreams of going on-air without a script were equivalent to most people’s dreams of showing up to class naked. Camera 2’s red light went solid, a bison’s goading glare.

  Drawing in a deep breath, Chuck gathered himself up, hoping the muscles Xander trained would hold. In one of his failed stabs at self-education, he’d read a quote from Charles Lindbergh, how there would be no more wars if only everyone could see the world from a plane, up where borders were invisible and all people looked the same. Before Chuck got to the part explaining Lindberg’s Nazi sympathies, he’d wondered if newspeople, who saw so much of the world unedited, were also privileged with a bird’s-eye view, which made them the best people to turn to when all hope looked lost.

  Reporters too could be TRUTH TELLERS.

  The truth that never changed was: ALL HOPE IS NOT LOST.

  Chuck Corso could tell his hair was draped just so over his imperfect hairline. He hoped ChuckSux69 appreciated it. He hoped they all did. Here went nothing. Here went everything.

  The Suspense Is Killing Me

  It was the longest elevator ride of Nathan Baseman’s life. The second he stepped into the car, isolated with Rochelle Glass, he felt his pocketed phone vibrate against his thigh. A text message. His instinct was to check it immediately, but with Glass’s victorious eyes on him, it seemed like a loser’s act, the gadget a measly acorn he, a lowly squirrel, was eager to chew. He let the message buzz twice against his thigh, an impotent sensation.