Iskov saved her from the looming inept questions about her personal life. The Kazakh technician gave Demien a bland look as he entered, then switched focus to Anna.
“President in five,” he said.
“I’ll come into the studio,” she said. “How’s the panel holding up? We should get their reactions.”
“The old priest’s hungry.”
Anna sighed, and despite the spare energy bar in her hand, slowly shifted her gaze – and a sweet smile – on Demien once more.
IT IRKED NOT to have any live feed of their own in Washington, forced along with the bulk of the country to rely on the major networks as their own emerging around-the-clock coverage got ready for the Presidential address to go live.
Phone and tablet in hand, Anna sat on the studio couch with her shoes off, conscious of the ghost if not the body of Lenore Barrett who had sat alongside her just the night before. Lenore’s body had, finally, been dragged into Fitzwilliams’ office, along with dead Gus too, the two ill-fated, unlikely lovers reunited and with the door shut to give them their privacy at last. Their dignity was already a lost cause.
“These scenes coming to us now out of Los Angeles show some of the most disturbing footage yet,” the TV anchorman said and looked utterly drugged on the excess of the gruesomely hardcore, ever-unfolding national news. “We’re seeing … what looks like a war zone, with gang violence taking over large parts of South Central, youth gangs, drug gangs, exchanging open gunfire with police, despite no reports yet out of the California quarantine zone about Fury attacks.”
Anna felt a shiver at the use of the epithet she’d coined just hours before. She hoped it troubled no one that the Greeks imagined the Furies as vengeful female spirits – but the moniker suited the “manifestation” well, and gave those sexist old Greeks their comeuppance too, perhaps.
The TV footage showed helicopter views of open LA streets barricaded in turn by cop cars and tricked-out urban gang vehicles, well-provisioned mostly black and Latino youth in Kevlar advancing with disturbingly tactical skill, triangulating against the triangulations of the city’s law enforcement, everyone from cops to the DEA to the National Guard out on the streets, and plenty of heavy ordnance too.
Unfortunately, the gangbangers had been stocking up at Walmart for years like they were ready for this.
LA’s crisis (and similar scenes across a dozen US cities) made the lack of National Guard in Springfield all the more stark, given the circumstances. California – and the North-East, Florida, and Canada – were free of whatever infestation or infection or manifestation triggered the Emergency now gripping twenty-one States.
It all seemed … unrecoverable.
Anna and Serik remained locked on the Washington broadcast, but the Gazette website continued running Alexandra’s deft yet understated street talk. She’d taken Anna’s advice to heart, though the former advertising exec wasn’t as hardened as a true professional and no one had the chance to tell Alex her make-up was a mess from her steady stream of sympathetic tears, listening to tale of tragedy and woe now made awfully commonplace, thanks to the scale of the Emergency.
“We’re getting the signal from our White House correspondent that the President is ready to address the nation,” the anchorman said with a hand to his earpiece. “We’re going there now.”
And as simple as that, the screen switched to the nation’s President taking over the official podium and casting her steel-eyed gaze across the invisible media throng.
ANNA SLUMPED WITH fatigue the moment she had a comfy seat, but the heavy look on the President’s face slapped her awake as if nothing else could. The President adjusted her neck tie a moment, then her lapel, then took a twin-nostrilled hit of stale Washington press conference air and steadied her gaze on the main camera with the aura of command that had carried her into her second term of office.
“My fellow Americans,” she began. “I’m here today with grim news and grim warnings the like of which it is safe to say we have never experienced before. For all we have endured to build a great nation, the Rise of the Furies is unprecedented.”
Anna gulped at the President’s words, eyes glued on the monitor just like Serik Iskov and Demien as he joined them in the booth.
“As I speak, the bravest emergency services, enlisted personnel, and nationwide law enforcement on the planet are facing their direst hour,” the President said. “I am not going to speak long, except to confirm I have activated all the considerable resources at the disposal of our great nation in this, our crisis hour, and I have declared Martial Law across every State of the United States. And unite we will.
We must.”
She adjusted behind the podium, ruing something, a faded sense of concern to the President’s eye that caught Anna’s attention as a standout amid all the other gravities of the speech. That look sent a trill of warning up Anna’s spine like the triggering of some primal, mammalian early warning system.
The President didn’t believe they had control of the situation.
“As a precautionary measure,” the Commander-in-Chief continued, “and as part of our international responsibilities, I have ordered all airline travel to be suspended, and also for every nuclear power plant across the country to go offline.”
The news sent the Congress press corps into a frenzy they contained through sheer professionalism, even as they withered off-screen under the President’s glare.
“I do not give these orders lightly, but nor do I see it as any admission of defeat,” she said. “These are, as I said, precautionary measures, in dire circumstances, while full emergency procedures go into effect. This … ‘Rise’ … whatever we will eventually learn is behind the Emergency, has not shut down the Government. It has not affected the North East of our great country, nor has it spread to Florida or the West Coast. With the correct … counter-measures, and precautions, I believe this Emergency can be contained … and addressed.”
She looked like she might say more, yet with the sense her speech was also coming to an abrupt and unusual close.
“When we read back on the history books of this moment,” the President said,
“I hope they will be written with an understanding of the horrors we have faced today.
All of us, myself included. Forgive me.”
She nodded from the lectern as she turned, and the feed from the cameras cut out just as the press corps erupted with questions.
“Is it just me, or did that not sound really good?” Anna asked the others in the studio.
Iskov swiveled on his stool and merely shrugged. Demien looked even more freaked out than normal, which didn’t seem possible – until Anna saw the piss stain darkening the leg of his spare pants.
The science reporter arose as circumspect as anyone could be in such circumstances and simply left the studio.
Anna sank her face into her hands. If nothing else, it helped filter out the smell of urine. Then her phone buzzed.
Melina: WTF was that?
Anna sighed and curled up on her side on the sofa regardless of Iskov turning back to his work. She took her depleted phone with her, setting the iPad on the carpet, making fists of her feet in the dank studio air as she thumbed a reply.
That didn’t give me a wide-on.
Melina: Me neither.
Anna: Ask around, find out what everyone’s thinking.
Melina: U OK?
Anna let the question hang there, her lack of response as great as any admission.
IT WAS TOO soon to sleep, even if that was all she wanted.
Iskov’s gently-squeaking stool angled back towards her.
“What do you want now?”
“A cheeseburger and a Coke?”
“You want fries with that?”
Anna sat up. However many surprises Iskov’s den contained, a full service McDonald’s probably wasn’t one of them, and Anna was on a diet anyway – though it wasn’t meant to be unintentional.
“Have you checked on Charlo
tte?”
“Reverend MacMahon’s assistant’s some kind of nun,” Iskov said. “She’s in there with her.”
“The woman was wearing a pants suit.”
Iskov shrugged.
“Everyone wants the Church to evolve with the times, and when they do… .”
Anna snorted weakly, not much energy for something as unimportant as humor.
“Buddy’s team’s still in the street,” Iskov said. “Alex and me have been texting. Their stories are starting to get a little stale. What’s got priority on the site?”
“I guess there’s only so much crime and murder we can report on until it all becomes a blur, huh?”
Iskov shrugged again to say he didn’t have much skin in the game. It only made Anna sigh – and feel alone. She wished Melina were with them. Instead, Anna stood to ease the ever-growing stack of worries gnawing at her ass.
“Switch back to Alex and the boys,” she said.
It turned out to be one of her more timely decisions.
THE CHANNEL FOUR camera showed Alexandra looking slightly weary as she propped up one arm to hold the microphone now exhausting her, a couple of hours into her first day as a TV reporter. However long the peroxided woman clutching a little dog had been at it, the woman had fresh tears aplenty. Tiny scratch marks dotted the side of her face, caused by the dog, trapped in its owner’s traumatized grip, rather than any of the Dead.
Whatever else the trauma victim had to say was abruptly cut off by a shout and then a whole lot more.
Buddy worked the camera like the pro he was, ejecting from the interview to come about on the far end of the depleted crowd still containing more than a hundred TV extras misguidedly clinging to the prestige of the old media to give them the answers they craved, even as the old world order fell down around them – or more aptly, became torn to shreds.
Residents had set up along the sidewalk and down in the lower mezzanine of the shutdown café and the glass-windowed car dealership fronting the next building along. As Buddy’s camera zoomed in on the people either queued or lounging across the space, the citizens at the back started running – first, in all directions, and then more and more of them turned, streaming right for the camera. And they didn’t do it quietly.
“Holy sweet Hector,” Buddy intoned amid the screaming chaos as the first of several more people appeared beyond the freaked-out crowd.
But they were not people.
They were Furies.
Safe and secure in the studio, Anna sit bolt upright in her seat.
“We have to get down there,” she said.
“We are down there,” Iskov reminded her.
One, and then a half-dozen more of the things that used to be people ran out from the corner of the next street, framed expertly in Buddy’s view. The first Fury looked like a businessman with his tie loose and jacket half off, but the woman in the blood-spattered sundress behind him was missing half her face. As they spread out, the Furies were joined by a pair of teenagers in running gear, light-colored t-shirts riddled with bullet wounds, and then a big overweight man in overalls emitting a terrifying low moan joined them. A Korean woman with one arm missing, and a hot rock chick with a nasty throat wound completed their pack.
And a pack they were.
The seven of them fanned out across the street, the teenage joggers taking the mezzanine and almost deliberately driving the terrified onlookers before them. The fat guy’s moans were almost like a signal to the rest.
A fit-looking young black guy in a retro suit saw which way things were headed, and trusted to luck and genetics that he could get through the tightening noose of the Furies’ pack formation. Still carrying his briefcase, the man wheeled about in the street and took off at a dash.
It didn’t turn out well for him.
For a big guy, the fat delivery driver lurched with incredible speed, and he had the Korean shopkeeper and the hot girl as back-up.
The three Furies caught the fleeing man on a vector with the delivery driver slightly ahead, snagging the man’s case-carrying arm and swinging him about just as the old lady smashed into him with her one good hand clawing at the businessman’s face, driving him to the pavement and coincidentally knocking him out – smashing the back of his skull out, in fact – just as the black-haired rocker chick threw herself into the tangle. Anna almost couldn’t believe the camera was still rolling as the woman Fury started pulling what looked like intestines from the thrashing victim, lifting the tangled mess into the air like that moment in The Lady and the Tramp gone obscenely wrong as she and the Korean woman not so much ate the dying man’s innards, but guzzled and strained the blood from it as they gnawed the sinews apart.
“Oh my God!”
Anna couldn’t tell who emitted the curse until she realized it was her, standing like a madwoman herself, eyes fixed on the monitors and the transmission now beaming worldwide to their global audience with absolutely zero censorship. O’Dowd and the panelists watched their own monitor in the other room, trading horrified looks and insightful remarks muted by the plexiglass screen.
Anna’s phone started ringing as she barreled her way out of the studio looking for anyone else who might join her heading straight down the corridor for the foyer at an indoor run.
“Yes? It’s Anna.”
“Baby sis, you OK?”
“Stefan?”
Racing through the office didn’t give her much chance to check caller ID, though her brother was on a secure line from Berlin anyway.
“Are you OK? You’re breathing heavy.”
“Kinda in the middle of something.”
“Seriously sis, what the hell’s going on?”
“You tell me!”
She reached the office doors and realized she didn’t have her keys for the front-door locks. Patting herself down without reason – her jacket and other things were back at her desk – Anna jogged back the way she’d come as more and more gruesome sounds emanated from the live studio whose door she’d thrown completely ajar. Professor Irving came to the entrance from the live studio itself, a look of severe concern creasing his dark features.
Anna turned into the bullpen rather than face him, rifling through her handbag to find her keys.
“What are you doing, Anna?” Stefan asked. “What’s going on?”
“This thing’s out of control.”
“You saw the President’s address?”
“Did you?”
“Of course,” her brother said.
“Anything strike you as off about that?”
“Why do you think I’m calling you?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Anna said as she retrieved her keys and smirked with a weird joie de vivre completely at odds with her distress. “Brotherly concern?”
“It took her a long time to declare Martial Law, don’t you think?” Stefan said.
“I’m hearing the military’s deployed to create what they’re calling the Doomsday Line.”
“‘Doomsday Line?’”
“Anna,” Stefan said. “That’s what we call it when they’re looking at a hard border, for either permanent quarantine … or a scorched-earth response.”
Anna reached the front doors again, but sudden tremors through her left her to weak and terrified now to unlock the Gazette’s door.
“You think they’re … what, exactly?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Stefan said. “They never drilled us on … dealing with the apocalypse.”
“Apocalypse?”
“Anna … there’s cases in New York.”
“New York City?” she said. “No, they said New England –”
“It’s not contained, Anna, no matter what kind of response they’re working on now,” her brother said. “You have to get out of there.”
Anna looked at the glass doors again and the nerveless hand which most recently betrayed her.
“Stefan, I have a job to do.”
“Funny, mom always said it was my job that was g
oing to get me killed.”
Anna felt too weak and diarrhetic to laugh at the remark, because the funny thing about real gallows humor was there was nothing to laugh about.
Her colleagues were possibly under attack outside and almost any other concern had to be set aside.
“I’ve got to go,” Anna said into the phone. “People need me.”
“I want you to get out, Anna.”
“I know,” Anna said. “Call me later, and tell me what you got on the local Agency spook. His name might be ‘Jones’, OK?”
“I want you to text me in an hour so I know you’re safe.”
Her brother’s voice cracked at the end. It was such a genuine moment for siblings in a family not exactly described as open-hearted. Anna felt another flutter of weakness, this one of a different nature, and she forced it away by forcing the key in the front door lock.
“I will,” she croaked.
And then hung up.
PEOPLE CAME RUNNING out of the elevator almost the moment Anna had the front door open, and it would occur to her hours later that if any were “infected” by the Furies in the street below, she would’ve just killed everyone still inside the Gazette. For one reason or another, though, that wasn’t the case.
The dozen fleeing civilians ran directly into Gazette office whether Anna welcomed them or not. It left her standing barefoot and uncertain in the outside hall wondering how come the carpet out there was so much more lush than back in the Gazette’s suites. The lift door chimed and closed, halfway down the corridor, and Anna stood there indecisive long enough for the nearby fire door to bang open as a skinny man shepherded out a fat and flustered-looking teenage girl aged about fifteen.
The man held the door open with ragged patience as several more people came with them.
“Where’s the camera crew?” Anna asked.
Aged in his early fifties and gray-whiskered, the man was too breathless to speak for long moments, finally summoning the effort to overcome himself long enough to rasp an answer.
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