“Melina needs to get to City Hall … and if there’s no print deadline left, I’m going with her.”
“What?”
Again it was O’Dowd, and Lenore Barrett didn’t look sold on the plan either.
“I don’t see what’s the big problem.”
Demien Christopher surprised everybody by speaking up. Slumped as low as he could go in his seat, he glanced towards Anna and started to blush quite fiercely.
“You heard her yesterday,” the science reporter said. “She knows newspapers.
She knows online. Anyone can tell she could’ve gone to TV years ago, if she wanted.”
The awkward reference to Anna’s looks only nailed Demien’s coffin. Melina chuckled loudly and made a fey singsong noise, and Demien’s florid blush threatened to asphyxiate him. Charlotte Francis looked a little put out herself, the undeniably made-for-TV gorgeous redhead not used to coming in second best.
“Listen,” Lenore said. “I’m really sorry, people. If anyone’s feathers are ruffled, you have the hotline number for our HR provider.”
“Yeah,” O’Dowd growled. “Because Mr Casabian cut our HR too.”
“Doug,” Lenore said. “Did you seriously want to keep a HR department that was bigger than editorial?”
The older reporter didn’t have anything to answer that, and he slunk down belligerently into his chair like a bad Demien Christopher impersonation.
Lenore switched her focus back to Anna, halfway out the door yet still awaiting permission to go.
“Are you sure that’s a good use of your time?”
“No one knows their way around the LD1 better than me,” Anna said to her.
“And Douglas is right, I haven’t even walked City Hall until now.”
Anna sighed tightly in her chest and looked at O’Dowd until he returned the attention, sitting up again like an angry bear clutching his notebooks and folders like it was a form of exercise.
“But listen … Douglas … I’ve got a live-cross booked with the BBC from the street outside at quarter to nine,” she said politely. “I’d love you to do it.”
O’Dowd stared the peace offering down.
“You were going to front a camera for the BBC … and a world audience of, what, ten, twenty million?”
“It’s a global audience of about 370 million,” Anna said. “I Googled it.”
The other reporter didn’t take that news well either.
“Of course,” Anna said, “that doesn’t mean, you know … that all of them would be watching the news out of Springfield.”
Douglas growled yet again and stood, gathering his things.
“Fuck this,” he said and left the table. “I need coffee.”
LENORE ONLY WATCHED O’Dowd storm off, and then she returned her unfazed attention to the other reporters neglected during all the exchanges of barbs.
“There’s plenty to keep everyone busy,” she said.
“Are we really … not putting out a newspaper?” Charlotte asked.
“For now.”
Anna’s silenced phone started ringing, and because she and Melina were ready to roll, she took the call while saluting the others without another word, Lenore nodding to her before turning back to the others and telling Demien to find a few panelists who “weren’t old white guys”.
“When this is all over, I don’t want anyone who can tweet to say we didn’t have enough diversity in all our interviews,” Lenore said. “If you can find an expert in a wheelchair, that’d be good too.”
Anna tried not to laugh darkly at the cynical remark as she took the call from Mark Twining in London and explained she and her colleague were about to hit the road on a tight timeline to the City’s press conference.
“Can you stop somewhere along the way, just for five minutes?” Twining asked anxiously from across the Atlantic. “Somewhere maybe a little dangerous?
We’d love to capture some dramatic vision, Anna. What do you say?”
Anna only shook her head and said, “LOL.”
Then she hung up on him and the rest of the goddamned world press.
She had an Emergency to report.
THE TEN-MINUTE drive in Melina’s Citroen took nearly thirty, and Anna spent most of the time on the phone to Lenore Barrett who’d thrown herself on the grenade of Mark Twining’s request with barely-concealed avarice. They talked through the practicalities of how Iskov would rig the live studio desk for the cross, and wrangled an agreement by Anna texting the Englishman directly, as she and Lenore spoke, for the BBC to allow the Gazette’s site to mirror the feed for the sake of the local audience. As Lenore shrewdly knew, the only thing residents wanted more than news about the crisis engulfing their city was to know how their plight was viewed by the world outside Springfield. The editor’s own vainglorious self-interest was all the motivation needed to make the deal happen and Anna was oddly glad for it. It certainly beat O’Dowd’s belligerence, turning his back on the very recognition he was sour at losing to Anna.
Melina toggled the LD1 each time they sat in traffic, but the Citroen’s sporadic progress towards City Hall thwarted the bulk of their efforts. In the last mile, Anna disconnected from her headphone call and took the camera and trained it on the scores of policemen chaperoning the streets around the historic City Hall district.
They kept the camera rolling on the down low once they found an illegal park and went through the security gauntlet to get inside.
Nick Hocking hit the podium just as they got their gear in place, and Anna reinserted her ear-bud and called the studio as the Mayor started speaking with the Gazette’s live transmission losing the first ten seconds.
“Alright, people, thank you,” Hocking said. “I’ll get right into it. Conditions have worsened seriously overnight, the National Guard and Army Reserve will be deployed, and residents without urgent, urgent need are asked to please avoid the city’s hospitals.”
Hocking then smiled at the media pack with his best sexy, fatherly charm – an odd note, given the news he’d just confirmed – and then he held out his hands for calm.
“But we are still in control, OK?” he said. “I want everyone to hear that. We need citizens’ co-operation. It won’t help to start a general panic, and I can’t thank our friends at the Gazette for fanning those flames with their speculation about infectious diseases overnight.”
Hocking backed away from the stand to let Special Agent In-Charge Westaway forward, and the slightly diminished crowd of reporters used the pause to shout a few questions. The woman with the burgundy hair asked about California putting itself into quarantine, precisely because it had no reported incidents of similar civic unrest yet. The question sent a further flurry of excitement – and fear – through the reporters, who trusted the older woman’s source.
Agent Westaway took the mic instead.
“We’re appealing for calm,” he said.
“What about the city’s water supply?” Melina yelled at him.
Westaway made a pained face, threatening as if he might decide not to speak if the school children didn’t behave themselves.
“Steady,” he said. “We are now moving into a much bigger investigation. The Emergency has now extended across fifteen States and it seems to be spreading, we believe, according to wind factors.”
Westaway cast a cool look over the crowd which grew silent with the gravity of the news.
“As we said at the time, precautions around public drinking water were exactly that,” the Special Agent said. “We no longer think there was any sort of contaminant, nor is it feasible to drink only bottled water supplies. Most of the City’s relief efforts have gone into supporting frontline personnel, rather than distributing actual relief …that’s how tough things are looking, though the Mayor’s office will have an updated list of shelters for you after we finish here … but the situation is much the same in every township and city between here and Columbus, right now.”
He was too tall for the mic, and had to kee
p leaning down to speak before straightening again in the pauses.
The FBI investigator also looked bone tired – and afraid.
THERE WAS A renewed susurrus from the reporters as now Governor Eddard Glenn took the microphone with a look like Nixon taking the stand.
“Good morning everybody,” the Governor said. “First of all, my thoughts and prayers are with each and every one of you during this crisis. We will prevail.”
He looked like he’d slept in his game-show host suit.
“I have authorized the Illinois National Guard who will also be well-supported by elements of the 85th Support Command of the United States First Army Reserve.
We thank those proud patriots for their efforts.”
“Have you heard from the President?”
Melina’s rude interjection had the media throng mesmerized, and the Governor gave an awkward smile, the microphone at eye level for him.
“So, first, we have activated our military to support what Mayor Hocking and Special Agent In-Charge Westaway have already done,” Governor Glenn said. “And quite admirably, too, I might say. Your city is in good hands.”
The Governor smiled tightly, and Anna somehow knew what came next.
Her bowels turned to liquid, and she wondered if maybe she should’ve taken that crap after all.
“However,” the Governor said, “this is an open call to all volunteers and well-minded citizens that we require every able body available to help establish relief centers, to volunteer at the city’s hospitals, or otherwise provide support to our first responders … We are overwhelmed with the number of injuries, and I regret to say, also the many fatalities coming in.”
Glenn eased back a moment, one hand massaging his chin, and the faraway look beguiling him made Anna wonder exactly what the Governor had witnessed overnight – as well as what else he might be privy to. The awful seriousness of the predicament seemed registered like a child’s first awareness of death itself, overwhelming, shocking, and jarring, no matter how many times the subject was turned over.
The LD1 was solid on its tripod, lime-green light winking. Anna stepped out from behind it.
“Mr Governor,” she called out. “Anna Novak, Springfield Gazette. Can you tell us how long we are looking at until this Emergency is brought under control?”
Again the media pack hung on the answer.
Anna added, “And I don’t just mean here … but across the affected States?”
The Governor nodded at the question and the scope of it.
In that moment, it was the career politician’s mistake to become just another fallible human.
“We don’t have an answer to that.”
And the room erupted with more questions.
MELINA PRESSED IN beside her as they shared Anna’s headphones to listen and watch Lenore Barrett’s interview with the BBC, now running for the second time on one of the Gazette website’s pop-up windows.
Lenore did a fine stateswoman’s job, but it wasn’t her summary of what the reporters already knew that had them glued to Anna’s phone. The package included a two-minute spot Mark Twining prepared earlier, with his voice narrating a video montage of clips off the internet and TV affiliates between Oklahoma and Ohio. It threw Springfield’s predicament into dire focus, though Twining’s report reinforced where the Emergency first arose.
“The eyes of Britain and the whole of Europe are now on the tiny city of Springfield,” the Englishman said as images showed riot cops charged by protestors –some of them, inexplicably, on fire – which played beneath his crisp, dispassionate tone.
“And the rest of the world is literally only waking up now to the chaos unfolding at a rapid pace across our great ally and trade partner,” Twining said.
“And people are wondering, too – could this nightmare apocalypse reach us as well?”
The clip ended. Melina unplugged.
“I feel like throwing up.”
“I keep thinking about all the parents who went ahead and already sent their children to school,” Anna said and tried to strain the shell-shock from her voice. “This is just … this is just turning into… .”
“This ain’t feeling fun anymore, I think you’re saying.”
The deep male voice sounded over Melina’s shoulder, but it was hard to miss the tall, unshaven man.
An uncertain mix of races rendered the older man slightly generic, but the loose cargo pants, decent paunch, and gray-flecked whiskers – and the TV camera he hoisted with ease on one shoulder – identified him as one of the nearby camera crews.
A thinner, sallow-looking man with a bad complexion stood beside him like a silent partner, arms crossed over his narrow chest and the Channel Four news t-shirt he wore.
“You can say that again,” Melina said and smiled.
“I’m Buddy Lang,” the speaker said and offered his hand. “This is my offside, Dwayne Patowski.”
“Dwayne Patowski?” Anna said.
“What, you heard o’ me, princess?”
“No, I was wondering what sort of Polacks name their kid ‘Dwayne’.”
“Hey,” the ratty sound technician said. “They was tryin’ to fuckin’ integrate.
At least they used to do that, immigrants.”
Buddy slapped his colleague in the chest with enough comedic force to knock him off-balance, motioning at the two female reporters like swiping his credit card in a machine.
“Hey, don’t take any notice of him,” the big man said. “That’s why we work behind the camera, you dig?”
“Yeah, and now we’ve got no one in front of our camera,” Dwayne said.
Anna and Melina exchanged a glance.
“OK, I’ll bite,” Melina said. “What does that mean?”
Buddy Lang made like he was going to laugh the whole thing off, except he looked too anxious and shaken himself, disheveled grin about as convincing as a three-dollar bill.
“Our, er, colleague, she didn’t take the Governor’s response too well.”
“You’re Channel Four?” Anna asked.
“Guilty as charged.”
“That’s Monica Sisko, right?”
“Yeah,” Buddy said with the shrug of a cameraman who’d seen a lot of young reporters come and go. “Maybe having a rethink about her career choice right now.”
“Wait a minute,” Melina said and laughed. “You’re telling me your pretty little weather girl has taken off?”
“Effectively,” Buddy said.
“Something like that,” his offsider agreed.
“Wow, shit.”
Melina laughed, looking to Anna to share the venom she obviously had for their cross-town rival, except Anna wasn’t buying into it, thinking about the AWOLyoung reporter’s father who’d helped her out only a few hours before.
“Channel Three’s switched to repeats of Seinfeld,” Dwayne said.
“They’re dropping like flies,” Melina said softly – and with evident delight.
“Yeah, that’s really tough news,” Anna said.
She motioned at the other groups of reporters breaking up around them, another TV crew and then several more reporters staking out post-conference locations to shoot more to-camera pieces. The logo on one of the cameras caught her by surprise and she forgot whatever else she was about to say.
“Holy shit,” she said instead. “Is that Al-Jazeera?”
“What the hell?” Buddy Lang said in his deep and slightly elongated way.
“How did they get into here so fast?”
“This shit keeps up, they’ll be closing down the airports for sure,” his partner said.
Anna nodded at the awful truth of that – and all it augured for this incessant sub-panicked thought she kept suppressing about frontline reporting the possible end of the American way of life as they’d known it … or at least until some kind of national recovery could be waged, she tried to reassure herself.
Just then, her phone started to ring.
Her brother Stefan
was on the other end.
“I NEED TO talk to you,” her brother said in an urgent voice. “Are you free? Can you hear me, sis?”
“Yeah … yes, hang on a minute.”
Anna moved away from the others and found an unmolested corner of the Neoclassical building, conscious of her low-pitched voice rebounding off the marble and pillars.
“Stefan, what is it?” she asked. “You’ve got me worried, though I’m worried enough as it is. Were you just watching the broadcast?”
“No, it’s nearly four-thirty here,” her brother said in a clipped tone. “I made a few calls like I said that I would.”
Anna gulped slightly, imagining her brother working his Agency contacts on her behalf, aware that a big part of her was equal parts thrilled and terrified about what he might say.
“Listen, sis, you need to get out now, I think,” Stefan said.
“Out of Springfield?”
“Preferably out of the States.”
“You’ve been living among the Europeans too long.”
“Anna, I’m deadly serious,” her brother said. “There’s an Agency presence in Springfield now. Where are you?”
“The CIA are here in Springfield?” Anna asked to be sure. “I’m at City Hall.”
“Then there’s CIA advisors in the building with you as we speak.”
Anna digested this for only a second.
“Can you put me in touch with someone, bro?”
“Anna, I called you to warn you … not to be a source,” Stefan said. “Are you listening? The Agency thinks whatever’s driving this Emergency originated in your area – and it’s spreading at an alarming rate.”
“But it’s … contained.”
Anna said the words lamely, then shut her mouth as she pondered what “containment” meant. Contained to North America? That wasn’t much of an outcome to celebrate.
“Stefan, if I’m … if I’m exposed, if I’ve been at ground zero, it’s a little late for me to skip town,” she said. “And I’m not doing it before I report what I know.”
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