Frontline

by Warren Hately

  “The 85th deployed itself?” Anna asked him.

  The Sergeant pointed to her phone.

  “That thing off?”

  He maybe possibly tried to disguise his voice, which only rendered him more grandfatherly and cute in Anna’s estimation. She smirked, nodded. “Yeah.”

  “More than happy for you to let everyone know we’re in the field, young lady,” he said. “But you don’t trace anything back to me and my boys, OK?”

  Anna nodded.

  “And would you mind to send a copy of that video to my daughter at Channel Four, too?”

  Anna blinked, discretion her best option as she pretended to enter the other young woman’s number into her phone with absolutely no intention to share her scoop. Guilt and the need not to incriminate herself cut any further questions short – and beside that, Sergeant Sisko told her everything she needed to know.

  “Command says the Governor’s at City Hall, arrived late last night,” Sisko said. “We’ve sent a delegation to meet with him to press our case for making the activation official. Now I’ve also been told police resources are completely stretched, and there’s been officer deaths – and I mean more than several. Hospitals are at breaking point, and my O3 used the words ‘Eighteenth Century asylum’ when he described the scene. Things ain’t looking good.”

  “Got it.”

  Anna smiled tightly to him, thanked him for his time and candor, then hurried past the APCs to where Archibald had parked.

  THEY REACHED THE traffic-depleted inner city, and the sight of early morning deliveries of the Gazette disjointed Anna like almost nothing else could. Although she dearly wished to stop the ride so she could get the first edition published since she started work with the newspaper, the memory of the page one lead and the fluster Anna felt at trumping O’Dowd’s story with the Freeman video now felt almost silly.

  Watching the early morning delivery drivers hump a massive pile of the plastic-wrapped bundles towards a big grocer’s mart, guarded by three employees armed with shotguns, they might as well be throwing the editions straight into the dumpster, Anna knew.

  The afternoon’s first reports of the calamity were truly yesterday’s news.

  The Gazette building downtown was quiet, though the remaining cars left on the street overnight had had their windows smashed in. A sinking feeling replaced the gentle hunger in Anna’s stomach as she saw the man who ran the downstairs café working alongside another man to nail boards across the shuttered windows.

  Anna paid Archibald with another twenty, thanking him again for being a good sport with the Facebook cross, then she cautiously approached the café owner.

  “I was sort of hoping you guys would be open for breakfast.”

  She smiled as the pair swiveled around with watchful eyes.

  “I’m starved,” she said and smiled.

  The older man’s frown broke, swapped for uncertainty as he looked back into his own unlit store, several trashcans filled with broken glass nearby.

  “Uh, I don’t think so,” was all he said.

  “You don’t have any, like, muffins, or … ?”

  “Well, I could check –”

  A woman’s harsh bark cut the man’s reply short.

  “Don’t you just jump because the nice white woman told you to, Harold,” the man’s wife said, coming out holding a broom.

  The woman looked like she wanted to take a swipe at Anna. For her part, Anna dropped her aspirations on the spot, inclined her head to them, and hurried back to the steps up to the main Gazette building itself.

  The lights were on, but there was no one around as she rode the elevator to her floor, again vaguely wondering at the lights left on, and then surprised – and then concerned – to find the Gazette’s glass doors also unlocked, despite her and Melina the last ones out the night before.

  A trill of caution ran through her. Anna gently eased into the reception area, then lowered her rucksack and equipment case to the ground.

  Listening.

  Without realizing it, she held her jaws apart, better to hear, though she was almost thwarted by her own pulse racing hot and flush in her ears. It took long seconds to detect a low murmuring sound coming down the main hallway.

  Anna swallowed with difficulty and glanced around, aware there was nothing at all adequately suitable for a weapon, and almost scoffing at thinking she might need one. The violent image of the young girl’s face back at the intersection leapt back at her, almost as fresh as at the traffic lights, tiny violent specks of blood erupting from the dead girl’s mouth as she shrieked at them and Archie hit the gas.

  The dead girl, Anna repeated to herself.

  Yet that felt apt.

  Anna swallowed with even greater difficulty and advanced towards the hall.

  THE NOISE CAME from the control room – and it sounded more like a conversation than anyone getting murdered or coming back to life.

  With a slight huff, Anna steeled herself and pushed through the studio door to see Serik Iskov with his feet up on the studio desk while eating a bowl of cereal.

  In his underpants.

  Tattoos covered the lithe young immigrant’s body like a Russian mafia cliché, and he glanced Anna’s way without any apparent surprise while footage on the monitors replayed the panel discussion from the night before, filling the chamber with booming voices Iskov slowly faded to nothing as Anna walked in.

  “You’re here early,” he said.

  “Um, same to you.”

  Anna resisted tilting her head at him, nonplussed as he stood.

  In his underpants.

  Iskov took his time with it, slowly eating another spoonful of cereal and letting his rippled physique take the center spotlight as intended.

  “Would you like to have sex?” he asked.

  Anna made a noise somewhere between a bark and a cough.

  “You know that statement’s a HR disaster, right?”

  Iskov shrugged.

  “I might go put some clothes on,” he said.

  It took another spoonful of cereal before he started past Anna for the door, and she moved aside very deliberately to let him go, though not able to help herself from at least one question.

  “Why are you eating cereal?”

  “I have a stash,” he said. “You want some?”

  Anna exhaled heavily, glancing back to the turgid debate repeating on the monitors and thinking about the potentially colossal amount of work before her.

  “Absolutely,” she said. “Yes.”

  Iskov nodded and left. Anna sat down slowly on the second stool and gazed down on the unfamiliar controls.

  “It can’t be that hard,” she said.

  And got to work.

  ANNA UPLOADED THE footage from her phone and started a new package she knew would get split and split and split until she was working through all the differing components and angles of this ever-unfolding crisis – or Emergency, as she’d called it – trying hard not to surrender to the daunting tension of the task. As she worked, she back-and-forthed a flurry of emails with Mark Twining at the BBC, fighting her natural and begrudging irritation at the smug Englishman.

  The other reporters gradually filtered in, and as Anna stepped out of the newsroom, Douglas O’Dowd escorted a dignified, but scared-looking older man in a three-piece suit into the office foyer. The balding man clutched a briefcase like a child’s safety blanket.

  “This is Professor Phillip Rothman,” O’Dowd said to her. “He said Demien called him about the panel.”

  “It’s still really early in the day, Professor,” Anna said.

  She checked her phone for the time. Just after 8am. The phones had resumed their buzzing with Irene Mengele on duty early, and several other citizens had drifted into reception to bother her with questions of their own. Melina Martelle stood at the chairs near the window, notepad in hand as she listened to a distraught woman in rapidfire Spanish. Melina gestured to Anna, somehow communicating she’d uploaded the LD1
footage from their drive home and it was waiting for treatment and distribution.

  “I know it’s early, but I was waiting out front since just after seven,” Professor Rothman said. “I wasn’t able to get home, last night, and I’m afraid I’ve been out in the street for more hours than I feel is safe.”

  “Something happened, Professor?”

  “No, I just … the police have had a busy night.”

  Anna nodded, and didn’t begrudge him the anxiety when nothing felt right.

  The fluttering in her stomach fighting against her breakfast of dank cereal confirmed it. Things weren’t as they should be, and with official work hours not yet actually started, it already felt like anything but a normal Tuesday.

  “OK,” Anna said to him. “Mr O’Dowd here will show you through to where you can sit down and rest your feet. Can you get the Professor some water please, Douglas?”

  O’Dowd’s expression splintered as he gave an unvoiced sneer.

  “Just take a seat,” he told the Professor gruffly. “Irene will fetch you a drink when she’s free.”

  The bullish reporter scowled at Anna, and would’ve stridden off except Irene Mengele heard her name mentioned mid-fracas with an irate and tearful-looking bearded man at the reception counter flagged by his overweight wife and son.

  “Douglas, these people were hoping to –”

  “I haven’t even put my bag down at my desk yet.”

  The receptionist became the new target of the senior reporter’s wrath and Anna was boggled – and somehow glad for it. Anna returned her attention to the aging college professor and gently guided him by the arm as O’Dowd stormed off towards the editorial hub.

  “There’s a seat free here, Professor,” she said. “I’ll come back with you with a glass of water, but –”

  “Don’t you have any bottled water?” the older man asked. Uncertainly, he added, “Didn’t they say to only drink bottled water?”

  “Er, yes, but… .”

  Anna favored him with another of her fake smiles.

  “What is it you, er, do, Professor?” she asked. “Your area of expertise?”

  “I’m the Chair of Public Health at the University,” he said.

  “OK,” Anna said. “Just . . . take a seat. I’ll be right back.”

  The lie didn’t sit well with her, but there was a lot of work to do.

  LENORE BARRETT ARRIVED less than a minute behind Gus Fitzwilliams, who greeted everyone trying to maintain a semblance of morning cheer while completely thrown off to see more than twenty citizens of Springfield half-filling the wide foyer.

  Lenore glanced around the room and her gaze stuck on one of Gus Fitzwilliams’ sales executives at the second receptionist’s seat helping deal with the barrage of calls. Beside her, Irene fixed a Band-Aid to the knee of a six-year-old girl sitting on the counter, held in place by her ashen-faced dad.

  “Alexandra, what are you doing here?” Lenore asked.

  The Eurasian woman’s fluster was apparent as she tried to hang up a call only to have the line immediately start ringing again. She hung up on it twice, making sure it was dead like a bug.

  “I’m just … it’s pretty hectic out here.”

  If the news editor had a rebuke, Lenore kept it to herself. Her brows narrowed instead, and she took a few more steps on her five-hundred dollar heels and literally snapped her fingers until she had every reporter’s attention. Demien Christopher stood with Professor Rothman and another, exceptionally old man, while Charlotte Francis peeked out of another huddle, furiously catching up with her notes as a half-dozen citizens surrounded her, relating their stories from the night just passed.

  “Editorial meeting, five minutes!”

  That said, Lenore strode away to her office peeling off her coat and bag, and Anna resumed her trajectory into the reception office towards Melina and was met by Demien instead.

  “The Professor will only drink bottled water,” the science reporter said.

  Melina joined them and Anna included her in a gesture.

  “We need to find out what the City’s saying about the water supply, and also force some sort of update out of the FBI.”

  “That’s good,” Melina said. “Press conference for nine.”

  Anna never wore a watch and couldn’t be bothered unshucking her phone.

  “How’s traffic?” she asked instead.

  “CBD’s not too bad with the 85th protecting the inner city,” Melina said and offered Anna a grin. “That video package of yours is going crazy, you know. It’s gonna fuel everyone’s questions at the conference this morning.”

  “I know,” Anna said, and fought to keep her face twisting into a glum look.

  Melina glanced around impatiently instead.

  “I don’t have time for this damned meeting… .”

  “I know,” Anna said again. “But we have another edition to plan.”

  THE EDITOR WALKED into the Oval Office and the limited conversation fell quiet.

  Lenore thumped her folders down on the table and leaned her hands on it rather than sit, which reinforced the gravity of the moment. Anna was glad to see the editor knew how hard they’d be going in the face of this Emergency today.

  “Right, I’ll be quick, because Melina and Doug need to go.”

  Lenore then paused and surveyed each of them.

  “Good work, yesterday,” she said. “And overnight, of course. We’re not going to have a lot of time for holding hands today, but we are doing excellent work. Long may it continue.

  “That workload, though, and our funding to integrate efforts with our online division is why I want to make something extraordinarily clear, right now.”

  Lenore threw a baleful look around the table, and then her dark eyes settled on Anna fierce enough to make her wonder if she’d be needing another one of those Tom Vanicek-inspired bathroom visits next.

  “Anna Novak has my full support,” Lenore said.

  The words were a surprise, but Anna couldn’t dwell long on the pride she viewed as childish welling in her chest. Lenore Barrett turned her gaze around the room like a basilisk.

  “We have a problem – a major problem – and it’s going to require every one of you to pitch in and show Anna the same support as you’ve shown me,” Lenore said.

  “What’s the problem?”

  Douglas O’Dowd already didn’t like the way the conversation was headed, and the silver-haired reporter resisted shooting a serrated look Anna’s way.

  His grim look only worsened when Lenore ignored the question.

  “We’re going to be up against it, if we’re going to do good work today,” the editor said. “If you’re in any doubt at any time, defer your questions to Anna if I’m not available. Thanks to Anna’s guidance – and this awful, unthinkable tragedy affecting our city and other neighboring States – we have online page ratings through the roof, and Gus has had calls all night from major sponsors wanting to book ad placement on anything and everything we’ve got.

  “Despite what you were told after Mr Casabian was here, we’re even going to invest in Facebook ads, no matter how unclear their metrics and the lack of accountability in their reporting.

  “And the integration of all your frontline reporting and the audience online means you can effectively consider Ms Novak the deputy editor now. Clear?”

  The news wasn’t a complete surprise to the younger hands in the newsroom, who already understood the de facto lay of the land, but O’Dowd bridled visibly in his chair and he pushed himself from his slouch to the table’s edge like he might just keep on going. Anna might’ve felt the shock as well, except the dead girl hissing in the street leapt into her thoughts again, and she had to blink the disturbing vision away as O’Dowd pointed a thick finger towards her.

  “She has literally been here one day,” he said. “No offense to Ms Novak or anyone else, but that’s fucking stupid, Lenore.”

  “Thanks for your feedback, Doug,” the editor growled. “The re
ason I’m telling you this now and making things clear is because its highly-fucking-unlikely we’re putting out another edition in print, at least this week.”

  “What?”

  Pretty much all of them gasped the same question. The news took the wind right out of O’Dowd’s sails, and Anna felt a weird pang of sympathy for the curmudgeonly older man who looked like he’d just learnt his puppy died.

  “Lenore?” he asked.

  “Fitz got a call from Pete Gutierrez,” the editor said. “Half his print hall left work early last night and they barely got our edition on the streets. One of the delivery drivers – another Pete, Pete Salpietri – was … he was killed, Doug. Last night.

  Delivering our papers.”

  Several muttered curses filled the aftershock.

  “This is … news,” O’Dowd said slowly, like it was only dawning on him now. “We should be reporting this.”

  “We will,” Lenore said.

  Melina stood and slung her bag over her shoulder.

  “Sorry,” she said. “We need to go.”

  “Not yet,” Lenore told her. “Sit down.”

  O’Dowd had also stood, but while Melina complied with Lenore’s order, the senior reporter stood stock still with his fists clenched at his sides in rage.

  “You too, please, Doug,” Lenore said.

  “It’s Douglas.”

  His eyes snapped back to Anna.

  “You’re putting her in charge over me?”

  “Douglas, please,” Lenore said. “You know you have leadership in the newsroom too, if only you’d show it. You’re our grizzled Sergeant, the guy who gets things done. Don’t get too excited about Anna’s ‘promotion’. We’re not fucking paying her any more.”

  Lenore flicked a look at Anna.

  “You got that, clear?”

  Anna opened her mouth to say something and thought better of it, already withering under O’Dowd’s insurrection and her own shame at causing it. The truth was, it didn’t feel earned to her either. She stood, retrieving her tablet and notepad.