Lost Friday

by Michael Bronte

  He has? I thought, noting that Scott Crowder was a network guy. Crowder’s face filled the screen.

  “Behind me, Governor McKenzie is issuing a statement regarding the phenomenon which has come to be known as Lost Friday,” Crowder said. The governor’s image appeared next.

  “We’ve already requested assistance from the FBI, ATF, the Department of Homeland Security, and possibly the CIA,” the governor said. “We’ve also requested assistance from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta to test the water supply, and we’re monitoring the air quality for toxic substances.”

  “Why would Sea Beach, New Jersey be a terrorist target?” someone called out.

  “We don’t know that it is,” the governor replied. “But we don’t want to take any chances. We won’t rest until we’re assured that everyone in that town is safe, and accounted for.”

  “Have there been any injuries?”

  “None that we’re aware of.” Then, the governor held up his hands. “Thank you for coming,” he called out. “We’ll release more information as it becomes available.”

  That was his way of saying that he and his staff didn’t know squat, and neither did I. The networks were already jumping on the story, and I still hadn’t written a single word. One thing was certain, however, the news of David’s disappearance couldn’t be kept secret forever. Soon, the situation would turn into one huge cluster-fuck, and people with badges would be snooping into anything, and everything, if only for the sake of justifying their presence.

  I looked at my watch and saw that I was down to an hour-and-a-half until deadline. I guess my thoughts must have been telepathic because my cell phone went off. I knew who it was before I pushed the talk button.

  “How’s it coming?” my editor blurted, sounding like he was in a tunnel, which meant I was on speaker.

  My editor’s name was Paul Romano, and he was one of those guys who never came at you head-on, so you never knew what he was thinking. He fired a guy once by telling him what a great job he was doing, and for his own benefit he might be better off doing it outside the organization. I know that, because the guy was me. As such, the question, “How’s it coming?” meant something else.

  “It’s coming along fine,” I said, lying through my teeth.

  “We’re planning the lead for tomorrow morning. Tell me what you’ve got,” Romano responded, which meant: I haven’t heard from you all fucking day, and I don’t think you have shit.

  Outside, I noticed a state police car pull up to the station, lights flashing, with three black, shiny, low-slung Crown Victorias right behind it. A platoon of suits barged in, and two state troopers took a stand outside the entrance, while two of the suits did the same inside. One of the suits was carrying a large aluminum attaché case that looked like one of those courier spy things you see in the movies.

  “Pappas, are you there?” Romano barked into my ear.

  “Hold on, boss. Something’s coming down here.” I could tell from the looks on the suits’ faces that my story might have just arrived.

  “Where is here?” Romano asked.

  “I’m back at the police station. Sit tight,” I ordered.

  The suit with the case stepped forward, and said to no one in particular, “I’m Special Agent Pierce, NSA. This is Special Agent Gordon. Those two over there are Agents Banks and Cor….”

  “Corvissi,” one of the other guys said, flashing an ID. “NASA.”

  I said to myself: NSA and NASA? No shit.

  On the phone, Romano shouted. “Pappas, what the hell is going on there?”

  “Boss?” I said lowly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Shut up a minute.” I hoped I wouldn’t pay for that later.

  “Where’s Chief Mulroney?” Agent Pierce demanded.

  Just then, Roy popped out of his office with the two FBI pukes. “Who the hell are all of you?” he asked impatiently. After another round of introductions, he pointed at the case, and said, “What the hell is that?”

  Agent Pierce opened it and pulled out a bunch of manila envelopes, inside of which were a series of pictures, all of them looking pretty much the same.

  Roy craned his neck from one side to the other, and asked, “What am I looking at?”

  Pierce replied, “Aerial photos.”

  “Of what?”

  “Ice.”

  Roy was clearly confused, as was I, and everyone else in the room. He looked at Pierce, and said, “So?”

  The NASA guy named Corvissi stepped forward. “This is no ordinary ice, Chief. Right now, the blocks are about half-a-mile off the coast of Island Beach State Park. They’re being pulled out by the tide, and they are dissipating rapidly. These photos were taken from two thousand feet up, and we estimate there are several hundred individual blocks of ice here, each of them about the size of a large suitcase.”

  My head was swimming. First it was Lost Friday, then the ransom note, and now this. Roy looked like he’d been hit in the face with a shovel.

  Incredulous, he said, “An ice flow? Off the coast of Island Beach State Park? In September? What next? Space aliens?”

  A couple of people chuckled, but Corvissi didn’t. He looked Roy straight in the eye, and I got a little chill just standing there.

  Roy took in Corvissi’s intensity, and looked at the photos again. “What’s all this?” he asked pointing at areas of white surrounding some of the cubes.

  Corvissi said, “That’s where the ocean has frozen around the blocks. Those rings you’re looking at are a couple of feet thick, frozen solid.”

  Roy seemed to connect with what Corvissi was saying about the same time I did. He looked up, his face kind of blank, and said, “We don’t have glaciers in New Jersey, and ocean water down here doesn’t freeze—ever,” he added. Then, his voice got kind of shaky. “What are we looking at?”

  Corvissi looked around the room, noting that everyone’s eyes were glued to him. “Frozen helium, Chief. The temperature inside those blocks is somewhere around minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit.”

  My cell phone was connected with Romano the whole time. I stepped away and croaked lowly into the phone, “Boss?”

  “What the hell is going on, Pappas?”

  “I’m not going to get a story to you by six o’clock. You need to lead with something from the wires.”

  “Pappas!” Romano shouted, but I didn’t hear anything else as I ended the phone call and ambled over to Roy and Corvissi, notepad in hand.

  Chapter 5… The Story

  “Johnny, my office.” Roy just pointed, and everyone in the room wondered why I was so important all of a sudden. Inside, he said, “I knew this was going to get sensationalized.”

  Roy had popped a thick five o’clock shadow, and was turning a little surly. “Chief, this is sensational. It doesn’t need any help from anyone.”

  “I didn’t want to turn this town into a sideshow, Johnny. That’s why I brought you in on this.”

  “This is too big, Roy. The best thing any of us can do is to give the facts, and nothing more.”

  Roy took that in. “What are the other reporters saying?”

  “I have no clue. I’ve been tied up with you all day, and I haven’t even been able to put my own story together.”

  Roy picked up the phone, punched a couple of buttons, and said, “Johnson, would you find that portable TV for me?” Johnson was there a minute later, and Roy asked him to gather up the rest of the officers. Soon, the room was full, and smelling like frayed nerves. Roy flipped a few channels, and the phrases jumped from the TV: invaded by aliens; North Pole disintegrating; memory gas; Earth struck by a comet. There was no mention of David Robelle’s disappearance, or the ransom note. So far, it seemed that the only people who knew about that were the Robelles, the chief, and me. I wondered how Lost Friday, David’s kidnapping, and several hundred blocks of frozen helium in the Atlantic were related, not to mention the empty bank vault, an
d the missing prisoners—who had never made it to their final destination, I found out. Not knowing how it was all tied together gave me the feeling that any of us could be plucked off the face of the Earth any second.

  I mentally reviewed the conversations I’d heard a few minutes earlier. Agent Corvissi wasn’t an agent at all, it turned out, but a scientist, and the reason he’d been sent was because one of the main known applications for frozen helium was for things like fuel cells for space vehicles, and also for rocket propulsion systems. As he explained it, theoretically—theoretically because what he was explaining hadn’t even been invented yet—inside a rocket engine, frozen helium could go from minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit to an unbelievable plus 3,140 degrees, just by going through the process of going from a solid to a gas and recombining with other atoms. It sounded impossible, but the process could happen in a millisecond, and the resulting conversion would cause the helium to vaporize and shoot out of an engine with enough force to propel a rocket.

  This didn’t explain the helium ice blocks off Island Beach State Park, but it was the only scientific tie-in with frozen helium anyone knew about, Corvissi explained. I, on the other hand, having seen the ransom note in David Robelle’s room, would have said it was the only scientific tie-in anyone knew about today. What made Corvissi’s explanation really interesting was the fact that current scientists hadn’t found a way to completely freeze helium yet. That, obviously, led to another question, which was: so where the fuck did it come from? In an effort to provide a perhaps more plausible explanation, Corvissi put forth another theory that had to do with comets. Simplifying it for us dummies, he said that comets are basically nothing but huge snowballs. Instead of being made solely of water, however, they are made up of other frozen gases, helium being one of the primary components. Hence, I concluded, the theory we’d just heard on TV about the Earth being struck by a comet. Whatever the situation, tons of frozen helium boded something extraterrestrial, at best, demonic, at worst, and either situation would be enough to cause a shitload of panic if any available information wasn’t controlled properly. I was suddenly almost overcome with the power of the information I was hiding, and I asked Roy if I could speak with him privately in his office.

  Roy was a minute behind me, and I took the opportunity to use his private bathroom and splash some cold water on my face. I caught my reflection in the mirror, noting that the bags under my eyes were big enough to carry groceries. Roy came in and closed the door. He didn’t look much better.

  “Do you know what we’re sitting on?” I asked candidly. “You, and I, and the Robelles are the only ones who know we’ve been visited by someone, or some thing, from the future.”

  Roy looked at me and I thought he was going to say something like, “You can’t prove that,” but he didn’t. I guess the evidence was just too overwhelming for him to argue otherwise. “We’ve got to go public with this, Roy. It’s bound to get out anyway; wouldn’t it be best if we managed how the story was put out there?” I could see that Roy didn’t want to hear it. “No matter what we do, this is going to get dicey. The best way to control any possible panic is to go out there and be the picture of sanity this town needs.”

  “What kinds of organizations kidnap people, and have causes?” Roy asked, apparently changing the subject.

  “Terrorists,” I answered quickly.

  “Are there good terrorists and bad terrorists?”

  “Terrorists deal in death. Is there such a thing as a good terrorist?”

  “What if these supposed terrorists are on our side?”

  I thought about that for a second, and tried to figure out where Roy was going. “Then why would they be threatening to not return David unless we complied with their demand of silence?”

  Roy took a stand at the window and stared at the small army of cars that crowded the parking area behind the station. “Because we still have something they want,” he said calmly.

  The sun was going down, and it was as if the room was cooling off along with the outside temperature. “How do we know what that is?” I asked. “We have no way to communicate with them.”

  “But we do,” Roy said, turning away from the window. “Simply by not giving in to their demands.”

  My stomach started churning, but it wasn’t because I hadn’t eaten anything since morning. Sure, Roy was worried about the townspeople, but soon the whole country—no, the whole world—would crush us with attention. People would hunker down to protect themselves—from what nobody knew yet—but they’d take action. They’d also demand protection, and it would come in the form of… what? The National Guard? I suddenly visualized tanks rolling into the streets of Sea Beach to keep us prisoners in our own homes. The question would be asked a million times: If they could take one person against his or her will—and here I assumed that David Robelle didn’t leave of his own accord—what was to prevent our invaders from doing it to anyone else? Who was going to stop them? And what about Lost Friday? The entire town had been affected against its collective will, what next? This could go much further than Sea Beach, and Roy was trying to keep it contained.

  I said, “It’s all connected, you know. Lost Friday, David, the helium ice blocks—all of it.”

  Roy nodded but said nothing, as he was distracted by some headlights that flashed through the window. A parade of black Suburbans, a couple more low-slung Crown Victorias, and a Humvee all pulled up across from the station. Doors swung open simultaneously and several big men stepped out, all of them wearing sunglasses despite the fact that the sun was almost down. Wearing a black trench coat, one of them covered up an automatic weapon hanging from a sling at his side. Out of the corner of his mouth, Roy said, “Johnny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Get your notepad and take some notes. We’re going public with this, and you’re going to write a story. Then, I’m going home and eat a steak before I go in front of the cameras and let the world know what’s going on. After that, let the Robelles know their house is going to be turned into a crime scene.”

  Roy went outside to greet the goons with the sunglasses, and I called Romano right away and told him to hold the presses.

  * * * * *

  Chuck Robelle looked like he was going to eat someone. After dinner, Roy had called him and asked him to come down to the station, and Chuck was there in fifteen minutes. He too had beard stubble that looked like black wire, and he was dressed in only a t-shirt and jeans, his chest looking like the front of a Mack truck.

  “I’m going public with David’s disappearance,” Roy said directly, not even giving Chuck a chance to sit down.

  I expected Chuck to get in Roy’s face, and they actually squared off for a second, but Chuck was a cool customer. Good thing, because I was caught in the middle and they could have squashed me like a Greek bug. In fact, Chuck looked at me as if I was an ant crawling up his arm, but I was getting used to it, having tagged along behind Roy like a puppy dog all day.

  Roy saw Chuck’s poison gaze land on me, and said, “He’s here because he’s going to release the truth about what’s going on, Chuck. I don’t want your family, or anyone in this town, being portrayed like a bunch of whackos. The second that happens, the feds will be in here like blues on baitfish, and the whole situation will spin out of control. If that happens, David’s disappearance will undoubtedly be discovered, and it’ll be out of our hands. Hell, there’s already a chance that someone knows. It’s better that we keep control of this thing.”

  Chuck absorbed that for a moment, and said, “Coach Lucas has already called for him twice today. Seems he’s lining up an extra practice tomorrow before they make up the lost game against Barnegat, and he wanted David to come in a little early to review some new plays. I told him David was sick in bed, and the coach asked if he was too sick to come to the phone. It’s only a matter of time before he calls back.”

  “There you go,” Roy responded.

  “What
about the ransom demand?”

  “Look, I don’t know who took David, or why, but I do know one thing, and that is that kidnappers can’t be trusted. I hate to say this, and I know the truth hurts, Chuck, but we have no idea if David is even still alive. Violating that ransom demand is our only way of finding that out. We have to force their hand, find out what they’re really after.”

  Chuck nodded, and said, “You’ll have to explain this to my wife.”

  Roy nodded back. “I’ll be there with you.”

  Chuck shifted his attention back to me. “What are you going to write?”

  Standing there, I suddenly realized that what I was about to say was going to change my professional life, and quite possibly my personal life, forever. The story was in my head, and it was so vivid it was as if I was reading it off the front page itself. I turned toward Chuck and said, “The headline is going to read: Sea Beach Attacked By Futuristic Terrorists.”

  Chapter 6… The Future Is Now

  My phone rang at 4:37 a.m., waking me from an already restless night. It was Romano, and he didn’t bother to ask how I’d slept. He said, “I have the Times, The Daily News, Newsday, and USA Today. It looks like we’ve scooped them all.”

  I thought: we?

  “Good job, Pappas. Your dad would have been proud.”

  My dad had been a beat reporter for the New York Daily News for thirty-seven years, one of the best, people said, and I guess the two Pulitzers hanging over the mantle in my mother’s living room proved it. I’d been trying to get out from under my father’s shadow ever since I’d stumbled out of Rutgers, which is why I started at the bottom of the totem pole at the Asbury Park Press instead of letting him pull strings to get me into the Daily News, but even at the Press I was constantly being compared to him. After thirty-seven years, his shadow was still pretty big. He died of cancer at the tender age of sixty-seven, cranking out five thousand words a day until the very end. Romano knew I was trying to carve out my own legacy, but legacies come with experience, and Romano didn’t hide the fact that he thought I was still quite damp behind the ears. Yeah, well, screw him, I would have thought normally, but it felt good knowing I’d come across with a national exclusive.