That said, waving the Springfield Gazette banner on the international stage was firm grounds to renegotiate Anna’s salary package.
And if it appealed to her ego just a little, she could live with that too.
“Do you want me live, or is it a pre-record?”
“We’ll do a live cross to the 8am news,” Twining said with glee. “That’s a forty million-plus audience, across all platforms and international affiliates.”
“Shit,” Anna said.
“Do you have a current headshot?”
“Er, yeah, I do,” she said and sat at the laptop. “I’ll email it to you now.”
“Cheers,” Twining said. “The whole world’s waking up to this, Anna.”
The echo of Tom Vanicek’s words only made Anna’s scowl deepen.
“How soon do you need me?”
“Ahem,” Twining said, and she could almost hear him smile. “Ten minutes?”
Anna nodded and signed off.
Just enough time to take a massive shit.
WITH TWO MINUTES to spare, Anna shrugged off any fantasy about sleep and dressed herself warm and changed to flat shoes, the understandable anxiety coursing through her also robbing all her body heat as she fought her body’s stress response.
Another of those old rookie days truisms taught by Tom Vanicek – “If you’re ever really stressed, go take a big dump” – remained good advice, even if she begrudged him for it.
Anna pulled on a sweater as her phone came to life again. She plugged in her headphone jack, then the two ear-pieces, before clearing her throat again and taking the call.
“Anna Novak, you’re a senior reporter with the Springfield Chronicle and you’re right in the thick of this,” Mark Twining’s voice came through clearly. “Can you talk us through this Emergency and then explain how things are right now?”
“Sure, Mark,” Anna said. “The trouble started two days ago with a few police callouts to domestic matters and other disturbances of the peace. Today, those overnight numbers continued to grow. From what we understand, police and emergency services are completely stretched in Springfield and at risk of becoming exhausted. At the same time, there’s reports now –”
“Yes, there’s reports now across eight States in the US,” Twining cut in over her. “We saw some startling footage during your broadcast earlier this morning … late evening for you over there, Anna. What can you tell us about that?”
“We don’t have any explanation, but the full video is available on www.springfieldgazette.com for anyone to view for themselves,” Anna said, glad they didn’t have her facing any cameras because she couldn’t contain her own grin at the blatant self-promo. “You’ve seen the footage, Mark. An elderly family member inexplicably attacks and kills her own granddaughter and takes down two police officers to do it. There’s no explanation I can give you for that.”
“The FBI are conducting an investigation –”
“There’s no answers yet,” Anna said, on a roll now, delighting also at now cutting off Mark Twining in turn. “Initially, people in Springfield were told not to drink potentially contaminated drinking water. We now think that’s not a likely explanation for the outbreak – or at least I hope not, because we’ve all had to drink plenty of it.”
“Yes, Anna,” Twining said and directed the conversation back to her. “What is it like in Springfield, right now, as we speak?”
“Police and firefighters are on high alert,” Anna said, “and every available hand’s been asked to report for duty at local hospitals, emergency shelters, police stations, and Council offices.”
It felt a little bit like towing the party line, but representing Springfield to the outside world – even if she’d only been here herself four days – there was no chance Anna would make herself a pariah talking ill of the local chiefs and cops.
“The City Council assured residents they still have civil control, and where I am right now, in Southern View, just on the outskirts of central Springfield, it’s generally quiet and orderly,” Anna said.
She could almost taste Twining’s disappointment.
Anna added, “However, as you can understand, even though it’s the middle of the night, there’s a tension and a sense of fear in the air on the streets in Springfield – in fact, all around the State of Illinois tonight.”
“And what have you seen for yourself, Anna?”
Twining’s tone had dropped. When Anna paused to consider what answer she could give to placate him, the mundane reality of her day unfolded indoors came back to her. She felt again the imposter.
“Well, uh, it’s hard to describe, Mark,” she said. “There’s clearly signs of civil unrest. We passed a –”
“It’s OK, Anna, thanks,” Twining said.
And the call went dead in her hands.
Anna stared at the phone in her lap.
“You … hung up on me? Motherfucker… .”
She tugged the ear buds free just as her email refreshed.
Mark Twining’s reply was appended to the copy of the profile pic she’d sent him from the last lot taken back when her hair was longer last year in London.
Thanks for your time, Anna, he had written. I’ll text you again when the sun’s up and see if we can find a way to shoot you in the street, OK? Ta.
“Oh, you’re gonna shoot me in the street, are you, Mark?”
Anna sighed and tossed her phone onto the table beside the laptop.
A police car blew past the apartment block with its lights and sirens blazing, gone before Anna could stand again to cross the short distance to the window to get much of a look at it. In the silent aftermath, she watched a person run quickly between more of the parked cars only to disappear into the trees at the front of the apartment building on the other side of the street.
Nothing else appeared.
Anna growled, making girlish fists as she stared down at her shoes.
“This is fucking ridiculous,” she snarled.
Something about falling short when the BBC wanted to know what she’d witnessed firsthand cut to her deep – most likely because she knew they were right.
As a news reporter, she wasn’t used to sitting in her comfortable office getting the details from social media even if it could offer so many eyes on the street.
Flustered with herself, Anna started repacking her things. The work gear at the office and the iPad in her slim-line leather satchel was all she really needed, but something made her move to one of her two redundant portable equipment cases and retrieve her Zoom H5 recorder and an unopened packet of disposable batteries, safe in their own zippered carrycase.
And something else made Anna stop and glance all around, imagining what else she might be wise to take with her, in case it was a long time before she made it back.
She took off her shoes, called an Uber for 5am, and set her alarm for sleep.
CHAOS SPREADING ACROSS the city didn’t deter Uber from trying to make a buck, and likewise the beleaguered-looking young Iranian dude who pulled up out the front of Anna’s apartment just before 5am. The driver jumped out of his Lexus at the sight of Anna with a heavy rucksack over one shoulder and her camera case by its strap in her hand.
“Hello, Miss,” he said. “I’m Archie.”
“Hi, RG,” Anna said. “I’m Anna.”
“Archie, short for Archibald,” the young man said.
Anna only frowned and said, “Yes, OK, well I think you know my name already from the details they sent you. I need to get back into the city.”
“It’s a pretty crazy night,” Archie said.
“I know, I’m a news reporter.”
“Oh really?” he replied. “Then let’s go.”
Archibald hurried back to his open door and Anna got in the back, diagonal from the driver. The Iranian youth shifted away from the curb, checking in his rear-view mirror as the Lexus slowly gained speed.
“You’re going into work?” Archie asked.
“Yes,” Anna replie
d. “Long night?”
“No, I’ve only been on since one,” he said. “Shortage of drivers. Thought I might make some good money. Not sure it’s worth the risk now.”
“What risk’s that, Archie?”
Anna slipped comfortably into reporter mode, shrugging sleep from her shoulders and pulling out her phone. Before Archie could answer – his eyes traveling to her every movement – she favored him with a tight smile.
“What have you seen, tonight?”
“Lady, I’ve seen some shit you wouldn’t believe.”
“Would you be OK to go on air while I ask you some questions about it?”
“You want to put me on TV?”
“Not TV,” Anna said. “The internet.”
“Even better.”
Anna chuckled. The driver’s enthusiasm redoubled at her more genuinely warm smile. The faintest dawn light began its watercolor brushstrokes across the densifying suburbia.
“Are you sure?”
“Are you going to pay me?”
“No.”
“Oh,” Archie said and thought about it and shrugged. “I’ll do it anyway.”
“Cool.”
Anna said finished the process of starting her live post through the Gazette’s prime social media page, not technical enough to transmit through the website itself.
Then she held her phone up level as Archie shot her a nervous grin.
“Is it legal for me to be doing this?” he asked and laughed shrilly.
“You’re not allowed to film while you’re driving, but this is OK.”
“Cowabunga.”
Anna held a hand up so the driver wouldn’t speak.
“This is Anna Novak from the Springfield Gazette,” she said.
“It’s 5.05am here, and I’m with Archie, one of Springfield Uber’s finest… .”
ARCHIE WAS HAPPILY talking about seeing two men apparently beating another man to death outside a liquor store when a flash of unexpected movement caught Anna’s eye. Although she kept her camera hand steady, her gaze turned as Archie slowed for the red lights of the next intersection and at the same time kenned to what she’d seen. His comedic monologue petered to a halt.
“What the… ?”
“No cussing,” Anna said, distracted too.
A girl aged about ten padded across the otherwise quiet intersection with the bloodied legs of her pajamas slapping at the blacktop – as did her mutilated feet.
The girl’s mouth was agape as she quested around, her chin and the front of her white singlet filthy with blood. Her eyes looked black under the street lights.
“Oh my God,” Anna said.
“Are you seeing that?” Archie gasped. “We should stop.”
“No!”
“She looks … hurt.”
Anna kept filming the little girl even as the Lexus slowed at the red light.
Anna slammed her hand across Archie’s steering wheel.
“Keep driving!” she barked. “Go!”
The girl turned her bloody face in the car’s direction and visibly hissed at them, hands stretching like she might charge the moving vehicle to get at them.
Archibald didn’t need any further encouragement, and the Uber’s wheels screeched as he accelerated through the red light and across the intersection and away.
Anna killed the video feed, utterly rattled, and more so knowing she’d just filmed what might be her generation’s Nick Ut photo of the little girl running naked down the road in Vietnam with napalm burns to her skin.
The Uber driver sniffled, crying. Anna’s face softened from its look of abject horror, Archibald’s miserable expression winning some sympathy.
“You just filmed me running a red light,” he said.
“It’s OK.”
“Is it?” Archie said. “What … what was that?”
“A little girl … injured.”
“And we drove and left her there –”
“You know she wasn’t just injured,” Anna snapped.
Archibald started to cry again as he nodded. Anna’s ferocity wilted at once, unnoticed as a tremor passed through her as she remembered the child’s hideous red snarl.
Ahead of them, the glare of halogen lights and the silhouette of big military vehicles drew their attention. Archie’s sniffles diminished at the latest perplexing sight: three armored personnel carriers bearing fixed machine guns and more than thirty soldiers commanding a checkpoint. A dozen cars headed for inner Springfield sat in a queue, armed guards poised at the windows.
“Listen, lady … Miss Novak … I can just drop you here.”
Anna shot Archie a look.
“You’re not serious, right?” she said. “You wanted to make some money? Here.”
She pulled a fifty from her wallet and stuffed it at him.
“Now be patient … and leave any talking to me.”
THE CHECKPOINT TOOK several minutes to let the other cars through before Archie could advance his Lexus to the roadway between two of the APCs. Six soldiers trained guns on the Uber from all directions. A lone officer with a cloth cap held a clipboard and a drawn handgun by his side. It very lightly started to rain, but the soldiers ignored it.
The Sergeant tapped on Archibald’s window with the barrel of the gun. Archie rolled it down, then immediately pointed across the seat to Anna.
“You should talk to her, man,” he said. “I’m just an Uber.”
“Aw, no one’s just an Uber, son,” the graying, gaunt-faced soldier said with a smile like a cadaver, glancing politely through the car to eyeball Anna, humming to himself, then skirting the vehicle to come around to her side.
The dawn light strengthened that moment with the sunrise appearing between the buildings to her right.
Anna cracked her door open and the three nearest soldiers bristled.
Disconcertingly, the soldiers on the far side of the Lexus backed away, guns still leveled at the car, clearly protecting themselves in the event of any crossfire. The last car in the queue behind them honked its horn loudly.
“Remain in the vehicle!” one of the soldiers bawled.
The Sergeant made soothing motions and lit his unhandsome grin on Anna, somehow still managing to look grandfatherly despite his scarred face.
“Your name and purpose, please ma’am?”
Anna lifted her phone and started filming him.
“Hello, uh, officer, my name’s Anna Novak and I’m a reporter for the Springfield Gazette,” she said.
The Sergeant’s expression wilted at finding himself famous. He scowled, tutted once, and motioned with a finger to Anna’s phone.
“No need for that, ma’am,” he said. “Your reason for coming this way?”
“I’m working.”
“In an Uber?”
Anna shrugged, and took the pause to cast an eye over the soldiers’ insignia.
“I didn’t think they called out the National Guard,” she said.
“They didn’t,” the Sergeant said.
His men snickered, seemingly less inclined now towards drilling Anna with bullets. The Sergeant made a lowering motion at Anna and her camera. For her part, Anna took the chance to step completely out of the cab.
“You’re a reporter, miss?” the Sergeant asked. “You don’t need that.”
The officer crinkled his eyes in such a way that for some reason Anna trusted there was subtext here to intrigue her reporterly wiles. She lowered and switched off the phone, and eyed the officer’s name tag. Approving, Sergeant Sisko motioned at the Uber.
“Drive through and pull over to the left,” he said.
Sisko’s men let the Uber through and turned their attention to the next car in line. Anna slowly walked beside the Sergeant, trusting her patience would be rewarded.
“I have a daughter who’s a reporter,” Sisko said. “Monica Sisko, Channel 4 News?”
“You’re from Springfield?” Anna asked.
“That’s right.”
“You didn’t tell
me if you were National Guard, but now I see you have that insignia with Custer’s name on it,” Anna said. “You’re the 85th?”
“Yes ma’am,” he said and casually saluted her with a pleased look.
“The President’s deployed the Army?”
“Nope,” the Sergeant said. “We deployed ourselves.”
“You … what?”
Anna immediately lifted her phone again, but the Sergeant stilled her.
“You can’t film me,” he said. “We’re mostly Army Reserve, and the 85th is a Support Command these days. But we couldn’t stand by and just do nothing.”
“So you’re running … checkpoints?”
“More than that,” the Sergeant said and motioned for her to follow.
“Come with me,” he said. “And I’ll show you something you can film.”
THEY WERE AT the edge of a public park already. The third APC threw its halogen light to dispel the shadows between the trees dotted around a paved concourse. As the gloom lifted and the shapes and the story they told started to make sense, Anna slowed in her walk, hesitating as the 85th Infantry Division commander stepped carefully out of phone camera’s frame.
More than a dozen zippered body bags lay together, glinting in the moonlight like beached sea life. The pavement around them was spackled with blood. Anna felt her stomach thrust up into the back of her mouth, horrified. The two soldiers guarding the site followed their commander out of camera shot.
Anna’s professionalism slammed down like the visor on a helm, and she swallowed and moved in closer to the spread-out body bags, carefully bringing the phone down to their level and keeping the shot steady. Something prescient stopped Anna narrating the footage, keeping it anonymous, and better to avoid any links back to the 85th.
She reached out a shaking hand to unzip the nearest body bag and sensed at once the Sergeant’s shadow. He made an annoyed cutting gesture. Anna switched off the camera and stood, face thoughtful, and the officer’s face relaxed into a look of mutual contemplation.
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