“Anna, you know I don’t care about any of that,” her brother said. “I want you to bug out, now. Please?”
“Maybe once I’ve spoken to the local contact,” Anna said.
“I don’t have a local contact,” Stefan replied. “I just got some advice from a . . . a friend.”
“Then get your friend to arrange a meeting,” Anna said. “That’s the only way I’ll even consider taking off.”
Monica Sisko’s departure was still fresh in Anna’s thoughts. Stefan was silent a moment, and then came a sulky tone, familiar from their childhoods even though he was nearly ten years older.
“That really sucks that you would do that, Anna.”
“I know, bro,” she said. “But I mean it.”
Stefan sighed loudly into the phone.
“I’ll come back to you,” he said. “Be safe.”
And he disconnected the call.
ANNA WALKED BACK to where Melina stood with the two surviving Channel Four crew members, motioning for her colleague to quit on them as Anna drifted intothe shadow of another civic plinth, the marble stairs up to the main chamber behind them.
“What’s up?”
“The CIA is here,” Anna said. “We need to find them.”
“We’re going looking for the CIA?”
Melina shot Anna a dubious look.
“A source of mine says the CIA is here advising the Governor and the Mayor and it’s not looking good.”
“What’s not ‘looking good,’ exactly?”
“I’m not really sure.” Anna didn’t like talking about her brother that way, but she added, “My source said anyone in Springfield should be focused on getting out of the country.”
“Far out.”
Melina emerged from her own brief shocked introspection to review Anna afresh.
“Is it … could it get that bad?”
“You saw the footage of the little girl?” Anna asked.
“Yes.”
“I think she was … dead.”
“Dead?”
Melina let the word hang there a moment, before speaking again.
“Did you hear what they said about it spreading according to the weather patterns?” the younger reporter asked. “It’s like the Bird Flu thing – only real.”
“Mad Cow Disease … but for people,” Anna said, and then thought better of it. “We don’t have any evidence for how it’s caused, Mel.”
“Maybe,” Melina said. “Nick Hocking certainly didn’t appreciate what our experts had to say overnight.”
“I’m going to text Demien, and make sure he gets hold of a biologist, an immunologist or something,” Anna said to her. “Meanwhile, City Hall’s your patch.
Cool? Can you work your contacts and see what they say about anyone from the CIA, an advisor, some sort of presence?”
Melina snorted.
“I can’t even get those cops over there to tell me the time,” she said and pointed. “Working contacts at City Hall, in these circumstances, isn’t going to happen. This is more than just angling for a press release under embargo.”
Melina pointed across the chamber to a thin youngish man in a dark suit.
“That’s Wade Jenkins,” she said. “The Mayor’s media guy I warned you about” Everything’s got to go through him.”
Anna knit her brows, focused on the media manager as she thumbed out the text to Demien and hit send. Then she tucked her phone away, shared the same look with Melina, and strode hard across the marble foyer to reach the City’s PR manager.
WADE JENKINS HAD just finished disappointing another two reporters, so he turned into Anna’s approach wearing the same pleasant yet pained expression. The media manager looked young for the job, and like he’d spent the bulk of his high salary on his wardrobe. He was a plainly handsome gingery blonde guy with an unfortunate cluster of dark moles around his left eye. It looked like a couple of kids had started decorating him like a cupcake and got distracted before their job was done.
“Hey, I’m really sorry, neither Mr Hocking nor the Governor are doing interviews today,” he said.
“That’s OK,” Anna said even if it wasn’t. “I’m Anna Novak, I’m –”
“Ah, the new girl at the Gazette, hi.”
Anna had her hand extended for a shake she reconsidered too late as Wade Jenkins offered his.
“Woman, not girl,” she said.
They were probably the same age. Jenkins winced at her correction, but true to his trade, didn’t let up with the professional smile even though it remained fastened in place.
“You’re quite right,” he said. “My apologies.”
“No big deal.”
“What can I do for you, Miss Novak?”
“Anna’s fine,” she said and smiled. “I was hoping you might be able to give some background to the meetings held behind closed doors and answer a few questions in a little more detail than the conference offered.”
Anna kept her fixed-beam smile in place as Jenkins slowly registered her questions meant work for him.
“As you’re probably aware,” she continued, “we’re striving to provide around-the-clock coverage on the Emergency, and with our printers shut down, we’re not constrained by the usual print deadlines.”
“Your printer’s shut down?”
“Apparently so,” Anna said and shrugged. “We’re all hoping this …
Emergency gets resolved, eventually, and life can –”
Jenkins snorted and Anna stopped short, regarding him with an openly curious look.
“Is there something you can tell me, Mr Jenkins?”
“You can call me Wade,” the PR guy smirked. “And no, I don’t speak for the City, so there’s nothing I can tell you. As for your request, I’ll be speaking with the Mayor in about twenty. If you send me a text, I’ll let you know then.”
He handed her a business card.
“Is there anything in particular you’re wanting to know?”
Apart from the reason for that damned smirk of yours? Anna growled to herself – though without losing her congenial air.
“Actually,” Anna said – at the same time her inner voice just said Fuck it. “I’d love you to pass my card to the CIA advisor assisting the FBI investigation. Here’s my details.”
Anna in turn pulled one of her crisp new cards from her purse and held it out between two fingers. Jenkins merely looked at it a moment, like maybe it was venomous – and then he slowly took the card and returned a mystified look.
“The CIA?”
“I have it on reliable authority the Agency has a presence here,” Anna said straight-faced. “They might be willing to tell me something if you’re not.”
Jenkins examined her card a final moment, toying with it, before he slowly nodded and started to withdraw.
“Send me that text,” was all he said. “I’ll be in touch.”
Anna nodded, and entered his details into her phone then and there.
And just as she finished up, the phone lit up with Demien Christopher’s terrified call.
THE PANIC IN Demien’s voice set Anna on edge at once, and she hurried away from another disembarking camera crew making it difficult to hear the science reporter’s rasping call.
“Anna, Anna, something terrible has happened,” Demien said. “It’s Mr Fitzwilliams … and Ms Barrett … They’re here.”
“Of course they’re there, Demien.”
Anna took a deep breath, but couldn’t shake the conviction Demien wasn’t the last one to learn about the pair’s love affair – nor that it would trigger such a freak-out.
“No,” he said more firmly. “What I mean is … Mr Fitzwilliams, he attacked Charlotte when she went to … to brief him. And Lenore was in there, too. She’s trapped in his office. But the rest of us –”
“Yes?”
“We need help,” he said.
Anna tried to rapidly assemble the pieces and found herself completely disoriented.
“The police
… ?”
“Have you tried?” he asked her with fierce sullen anger. “911’s playing an automated message and going to voicemail.”
“Voicemail?”
“They say they’re working through the backlog and to stay indoors.”
“Jesus.”
“Anna,” Demien said again. “Mr Fitzwilliams … he’s still in the office.
Loose. It’s affecting him, do you understand? He’s infected too.”
Anna shook her head again at the question of how – or even what – was behind the rise of this pandemic – or epidemic, as increasingly seemed to be confirmed.
“Where are you?”
“We’re in the safe room.”
“There’s a safe room?”
“Sorta, yeah,” Demien said. “But Fitz is just outside. We’re trapped.”
“Didn’t somebody go for help or … ?”
“Irene,” Demien said flatly. “We haven’t seen her since.”
“Jesus.”
“Anna, we’re stuck in here, and there’s no one else on the way,” the reporter said and his voice broke.
“Please can you help us?”
ANNA MOVED IN a daze back to where Melina stood, expecting Anna to relocate the camera so they could do a live wrap-up. Anna hadn’t seen Melina wearing much make-up before, so the reporter’s spruced-up appearance threw her off as she approached wearing the clear war of emotions across her face.
“You look like hell,” Melina said. “What’s up?”
“I just got the most fucked up call,” Anna said.
She glanced at Buddy Lang and Dwayne standing looking lonesome twenty feet away while a street vendor wheeled his coffee cart in from outside and a few of the media stragglers set on him like meth addicts in withdrawal.
“Demien called,” Anna explained. “He says Fitz and Lenore … something’s happened to them, it’s the same as whatever the hell’s going on across the city –across the State … hell, across the country, from what it sounds like – and I think …well, no, I know, they’re in danger, and they can’t get through to the police or the fire service or … well, anyone, really.”
Melina’s prettily made-up mask collapsed as she absorbed the news.
“What the hell are we meant to do about that?”
“I’m gonna have to go back,” Anna said.
“You’re gonna go back?” Melina blinked at her. “And do what?”
Anna didn’t have any sort of answer.
“Anna,” Melina said and grew even more seriously alarmed. “There must be someone they can call, they’re in a fucking live news studio, for Chrissakes. What are you meant to do … go back and take on one of these dead things yourself?”
“He said Charlotte was bitten.”
“Well that’s … that sucks for Charlotte.”
Anna threw her a narrowed look, understanding but not endorsing her shrewish view. Then her gaze fell on the two TV men counting up their loose change between them and eyeing the coffee vendor near the entrance.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said.
Melina followed as Anna walked over to the two men with a pleasantly grim smile. Buddy welcomed them in kind, though his colleague Dwayne only looked distracted and glum.
“Hey, you two,” Anna said. “You’re just cooling your heels?”
“We called back to the station,” Buddy said. “It’s gone straight to switchboard.”
“Yeah,” Dwayne said. “Everyone’s clearing out. People are saying we need to leave the city. What do you think?”
“I still feel like I don’t know enough to know what I know.”
The two technicians nodded at that.
“One thing we do know, though,” Melina said and stepped into their confab.
“We are still working. Got a job to do. What about you?”
Melina gave a wink to Anna, understanding her plan.
“Been doing TV news here in Springfield twenty-five years, girl,” Buddy said.
“Not my choice to quit now.”
“Then I’ve got a hell of a story for you, if you want to help out.”
The pair swiveled their eyes back to Anna as one.
So she laid out for them what she did know.
THEY LEFT MELINA and her vehicle at City Hall, the younger reporter confident in her ability to handle the LD1 solo and knowing the Gazette needed to keep a presence on-site. There would be another media briefing, though no one knew when. With the palpable sense of things breaking down across the city continued to build pace, it seemed like the best place for Melina was in the same foxhole as the decision-makers.
But whether there even was a Gazette, still, or a viable newsroom to report whatever she learned, was an entirely different matter.
Anna hurried outside, feeling overdressed in Buddy and Dwayne’s company as they fought their way out of City Hall and through the scores of concerned residents presenting a field day for the precinct’s street vendors. The Channel Four van was instantly visible along the side of one lawn, in the short-term parking reserved for broadcast vehicles, but even the hectic rush of the moment didn’t slow Anna buying two hotdogs she ate with guilty relish as she caught up to the two TV men.
“What?” she said, looking back at them, conscious of ketchup around her mouth. “You want some?”
“I gotta get to an ATM,” Dwayne said.
“Jesus H Christ,” Buddy said disapprovingly. “I thought we had a rescue mission to perform?”
“Sorry, man,” Anna said not really sorry. “I’m starved.”
Pot-bellied in his grimy gray t-shirt and stained jacket, Buddy Lang shook his head at her like a disapproving sit-com dad. Dwayne scooted around the van and fired it up. Lang opened the sliding door and motioned to a single bucket seat.
“You’re in there.”
“With all the equipment?”
“It’s a bit of a squeeze, driving up front.”
He smiled at her, old enough to justifiably call her a girl or even a kid.
Anna clambered into the vehicle as Buddy took the seat in front. Shelves filled with crates of gear, spools of cables, and an interface for the satellite truck’s transmission capability meant there wasn’t much in the way of legroom. Dwayne threw the vehicle into life and the heavy van chugged away from the curb.
“Are you two sure about this?’
The two men glanced into the back at her, Dwayne quickly checking the road and hissing under his breath as a cop car lurched out of a submerged parking garage and cut right in front of them, throwing on lights and sirens and burning rubber ahead.
“Sounds like you’ve got a situation,” Buddy said to her.
“I wish those cops were headed to the Gazette office now,” Anna said.
“Probably not,” Buddy said. “We can’t let you go in there on your own.”
Anna smiled at him.
“Even though I’m from the competition?”
“I read the Gazette every morning,” Buddy said. “And our reporters do too.
Otherwise, half of them wouldn’t know what to chase for the day.”
“Like that, is it?”
Buddy shrugged and turned back at the road as Dwayne drove them into the city proper, stuck at once in a bumper-to-bumper grind.
“This might take a while,” he said with a glower.
ANNA CALLED DEMIEN back to let him know help was on the way, and tried to get more coherent details out of him without much return for her efforts. Apparently, when the office subdivision took place earlier in the year, Gus Fitzwilliams carved out a safe room at the back of their suites, and now Demien, Charlotte, and their voluntary receptionist Alexandra Ngo were trapped in there, while it was believed Serik Iskov was flying solo in the control booth. The foyer had been full of people at the time Charlotte’s screaming alerted them to the danger – that, inexplicably, their general manager attacked her. Irene Mengele fled with the crowd, telling Demien she would get help.
“Or just getting the h
ell out of there,” Anna said to herself.
It was nearly another half hour before the Channel Four van reached the Gazette, and only then because of a little creative driving on Dwayne’s behalf.
Despite traffic chaos, there was a strong police and military presence across the inner city, but they had better things to do than stop a TV crew mounting a few sidewalks.
At at least two locations, they saw cops arresting people, several of the young offenders wearing gas masks or bandannas, and fire crews battled several minor building fires threatening to get much worse if left unchecked.
“We should be filming this,” Anna whispered.
“Wait until we hit your newsroom,” Buddy said. “We’ll get some images then.”
“You’re OK to do that?”
“Think of it as a pool shoot,” the cameraman said. “Times like these, maybe we all need to band together to get the job done.”
“Not like we got much choice,” Dwayne quipped.
“Your reporter, she just took off on you, huh?”
“She was very young,” Buddy said. “And very scared.”
“Won’t you get in trouble with your boss, helping out the Gazette?”
“If someone’d actually pick up the phone, they’re more than welcome to yell at me,” Buddy said with a dour snicker. Then he added, “I’m not sure if there’s even anyone there.”
“Teddy said Abrams and Denowitz were gone already,” Dwayne told him.
“Mendelson didn’t even turn up for conference.”
Buddy snorted. “That’d be right.”
“Do you have children, Buddy?”
The cameraman threw a sad shrug back her way.
“Yeah, two,” he said. “All grown up now. Their mother’s with my youngest, far, far from here, fortunately.”
“Why’s no one ever ask if I’ve got kids?” Dwayne said.
They rounded the turn ahead of the Gazette building and Anna checked in with her phone, her news feed now screaming about hundreds of thousands of residents displaced or under threat across more than a dozen States. She might’ve gleaned more, except a big crowd outside the Gazette offices demanded her attention.
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