Frontline

by Warren Hately

  “I am … really hungry, though,” Anna said.

  “Mason thinks we can get in there fast,” Baz said. “The café, I mean. You coming?”

  “Who’s Mason?”

  “He’s packing heat,” Baz said. “He’s a PI.”

  “A private investigator?”

  Baz Washington only grinned like he was a little star struck. Despite the chatter, nuclear extinction seemed about the last thing on his mind as he grinned at her and patted his solid belly. The only question Anna had was why the bombs, if they’d been authorized, hadn’t landed already.

  She shuddered and checked her phone, but there was nothing from her brother or anyone else, so she plugged it into charge, moving out of the studio into the faintly dawn-lit hall, walking down with the retired policeman to the foyer where another black guy and a solid-looking blonde woman in cargo pants stood waiting.

  Just as the two couples met, the electric lights in the foyer gave out, then resumed flickering at half-strength. A soft chiming noise carried from the elevator out beyond the locked Gazette doors.

  “Jesus Christ,” the guy called Mason said. “That’s the power.”

  “Damn,” the blonde woman beside him said.

  She looked at Anna and offered her hand with a tough grip.

  “Leeanne.”

  “I’m Anna Novak.”

  “Yeah, no shit,” Leeanne said and winked, chewing gum. “We all know who you are. You hungry, doll?”

  “Jeez, you guys can cut it with all the sexist shit,” Anna said. “I’m an adult woman.”

  Leeanne held up her hands and gave the others a dry laugh, trying to get a little solidarity going, but no one else wanted the cheese touch.

  “Hey, I was just bein’ friendly,” she said. “You remind me of one of my exes.

  Got your hair from the same bottle, too.”

  The woman then wandered off towards the front door to examine any hostile reason for the lift making a noise other than the brief power outage, and Anna knew she felt too ill and anxious for any witty rejoinders. Serik Iskov joined them wearing just his jeans.

  “Hey,” he said. “What’s happening?”

  “We’re going out for breakfast,” Anna said drily. “Wanna come?”

  “Outside?”

  Any collegial expression he might’ve worn now slipped from his face completely.

  “Na, man,” he said. “I got all the breakfast I need here for now already.”

  “Well … shit, OK.”

  Anna frowned as Serik shrugged and took off again. Then she stepped closer to Baz and the other guy.

  “You’re a PI, Baz said?”

  Mason nodded his dark bald head, regarding Anna with sorrowful eyes.

  Clearly, no one had much faith in the President.

  “And you’re carrying a gun?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mason pulled back one side of his bomber jacket to reveal the fairly gigantic handgun in his shoulder rig.

  “Never actually had to use one on a human being,” he said with a demure grin.

  “A big flashy gun goes a long way in my business.”

  Anna chuckled bleakly, though not exactly with him.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got your Ferrari parked nearby so we can all get to your yacht and get out of this mess, by any chance?”

  “You’ve watched too much television,” Mason said. “Being a PI’s nothing fancy, and I never been willing to shoot anyone – not till now, anyway. You an’ me are the same, lady … er, excuse me, ‘grown-up lady’. We both stalk people for money.”

  Anna swallowed her counter-thrust, wheeling back and taking her annoyance out on Iskov’s retreating back.

  “We’re hoarding already?”

  Iskov stopped in the corridor, turned and shrugged.

  “You’re seriously not going to come with us?” Anna asked.

  “On a suicide run?” he replied. “No thanks.”

  “Jesus,” Anna replied. “Have you just woken up?”

  The insouciant Kazakh shrugged again, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his jeans as he stretched, suppressing a yawn that only made his taut physique pop, just as he the wannabe model sought.

  “Yup.”

  “You should … probably review the last part of the latest broadcast.”

  “It’s actually a live stream,” Serik said as if schooling her. “But whatever.”

  Anna felt ill at the other man’s apparent ignorance about the President’s scorched earth address, but the idea of breaking it all too him was too much to face.

  And she really was incredibly hungry, and still hating herself for such a ridiculous primal need. Nonetheless, Anna glanced again at Mason now holding his pistol, and then to Leeanne, who’d let herself into the corridor during their brief interchange and returned carrying a fire ax. Even Baz Washington had a seriously large screwdriver clutched beside his leg.

  “Serik,” Anna said. “Can I borrow your sword?”

  The technician eyed her a moment.

  “I’ve got something better you can have.”

  If not for their horrific predicament and all the brutality she’d most recently witnessed, Anna could have grinned ear to ear as Iskov returned from his bedchamber with a baseball bat he then offered her. While waiting, she’d put her shoes back on, as well as her dirtiest jacket. In some lame-sounding part of her brain, Anna thought about the Furies and their bites, wishing she had better protective gear, and then trying to imagine herself actually wearing it. She hefted the baseball bat instead, feeling almost drugged at the surrealness of it all.

  “The Road Warrior eat your heart out,” she said.

  Iskov nodded.

  “The Professor asked if you would visit, when you got back,” Iskov said.

  “Anything else?”

  “I’d kill for some Skittles,” he said.

  Anna shook her head.

  “Say goodbye to Alex for me … you know, in case I don’t make it back,”

  Anna said. “And you should really go watch the latest footage.”

  THEY DESCENDED IN the brittle morning light, cautiously taking the stairwell and listening to every sound. They knew nothing about the feral instincts of the citizens forced back into life thanks to whatever malady afflicted them, and even with Professor Irving directing some of the earlier survivors, they had no idea if the Gazette building was truly clear of the Fury threat. The outside world was a whole other proposition – as Dwayne, Buddy and O’Dowd’s hard-won footage had shown.

  Their quartet reached ground floor and then eased out into the lobby without speaking. Anna kept to the rear. The big blonde Leeanne insisted on taking point, the fire axe cradled in two hands ready for use. She also had the keys for the doors, though no explanation for how she’d acquired them.

  Bloody footprints marred the polished concrete downstairs, and there were two headshot Furies near the lifts as well as bucketloads of unexplained gore around the front doors. The small team crept over that way, Anna casting cautious glances at the two twisted bodies with their heads blown open by Alexandra Ngo. The head injuries looked fresh compared to the wounds causing their deaths the first time around. Anna blanched, then almost walked into Washington’s back as they paused to let Leeanne work the door.

  “So far, so good,” Mason said.

  Anna caught his eye, then flicked hers to his gun.

  “If you fire that thing, the Furies’ll come running from everywhere.”

  The private eye tried to put her at ease by waving the gun in her face.

  “We’re going to take this easy,” he said as if he had past experience in this sort of thing. “It’s just a little distance. Baz’s screwdriver should handle any locks. Then we get inside.”

  “The power’s still on for now,” Baz added.

  “Yeah,” Mason agreed with him. “And the café’s got a working kitchen.

  Breakfast first, then let’s find a way out of this mess. C’mon.”

>   The front door clicked, and Leeanne eased it open holding her breath, slipping through after retrieving her ax. The steps down to the street were clear, though another of Alexandra’s victims lay splayed stiffly backwards at the bottom. There was too much drying gore around for it to be the Fury’s alone.

  The in-close buildings kept them in a cold, gloomy haven despite the risen sun somewhere beyond the city limits. Anna shivered, as much from her shattered nerves as the cold, not to mention apprehension at following the others outside. Dwayne’s horrible murder played again and again in her thoughts and she fought to quash them.

  “Quickly,” Mason whispered ahead.

  Rather than descend all the way to the street, the PI scuttled across the concrete buttress to the neighboring café’s sunken mezzanine only ten yards away.

  The uninspired Urban Bakehouse occupied the north front of the Gazette’s foundations. Its sunken courtyard had fixed café table tops embedded in concrete like a potential minefield beneath the green canvas awnings. Mason got there ahead of Leeanne, who cast a watchful eye at either end of the deserted street, then motioned for Baz and Anna to join them.

  Anna steeled herself to the silent hurry, but halfway between the lobby and the Bakehouse, a far-off car alarm nearly caused her to yelp. Immediately, a far distant explosion sent a tremor through the street. Anna accelerated, scooting around the much-less trim Barrance “Baz” Washington, and she vaulted the last distance off the ledge to land athletically beside Mason and Leeanne.

  “Here,” Mason said to the other blonde. “Hold this.”

  He handed Leeanne his Desert Eagle, then took the long screwdriver from Baz and started working a big padlock on the metal grill of the Urban Bakehouse door.

  The sunken eatery had its security rollers drawn. Tasteful outdoor ferns and ivy crept up the concrete pillars between the shutters, and Mason tore some of it away.

  The lock then cracked, and easy as that, Mason and Baz ventured inside.

  Leeanne eyed the door with her hands full with the ax and the giant handgun.

  “Hold it open for me, will ya?”

  “Like a gentleman,” Anna replied.

  She offered a glib smile, clamping her teeth together to stop them chattering, but that only turned her face into a pained grimace. Leeanne raised an eyebrow, comparatively unflappable, and once inside, she glanced back at Anna casting one final look around at the street.

  “Coming?”

  Anna looked at Leeanne in the doorway, the two men behind her. A light came on within the bakehouse, highlighting their shadowed faces.

  “Hey,” Mason hissed to her. “Stop foolin’ and get inside.”

  “What was that noise?” Anna stage whispered.

  “That was somethin’ blowin’ up,” Leeanne said. “Get in here.”

  Anna remained where she was, though her thoughts were almost anything but present. Almost absent-mindedly, she released the door into Leeanne’s custody and took two steps back towards the unmoving street.

  She dared two more steps, constrained by the pencil skirt as she ascended to street level and then crouched behind the stone ledge. A car passed through one of the distant intersections. Otherwise, all was still.

  Anna scuttled back down halfway to the café entrance. Baz had all the lights on inside now, though little of it came through the shuttered windows. He stepped close to Mason, who remained there unimpressed watching Anna’s foolishness.

  “The cold room’s still on,” Baz told them with barely-contained excitement.

  “We can have a good ol’ fry-up right in here.”

  Mason nodded, distracted.

  “Keep it quiet, though,” he said. “And there must be a back way in. Let’s see if there’s a direct way into our building.”

  Mason then glanced back to Anna and motioned.

  “Come on.”

  “Where are all the people?” she asked instead.

  “Do we care?”

  Leeanne tsk ed and gave up waiting, leaving Mason to hold the door ajar.

  “Come inside, now.”

  Anna had the opening lines of a fresh report forming in her head – something about the dawn of the third day of the crisis, with everyone who couldn’t escape Springfield now seeking sanctuary, lying low, licking their wounds wondering whether night would ever come again – or no, whether it might soon come forever.

  “I’m just going to the next corner,” she said suddenly, blinking out of her reverie.

  To his credit, Mason only shook his head.

  “I’m not giving you my gun.”

  “That’s fine,” Anna said and smiled with a sweetness she certainly didn’t feel, hefting Iskov’s baseball bat over one shoulder. “I’ve got this.”

  “You’re crazy, lady,” Mason said.

  “No, Mason,” she said instead. “That’s the difference between you and me.

  I’m not going to just sit here and wait to die if there’s a story still to report.”

  Mason eyed her with his tongue balled up inside one cheek with speechless irritation. Confident she’d got the last word, Anna remained too tense and fearful herself to deliver the satirical curtsey her tomfoolery required.

  “Make me something with bacon though, OK?”

  With an impious mirth she didn’t feel, Anna winked, and then crept back up to the big planter boxes defending the sidewalk and she peered out along the street, glad to be doing something, at least, and keeping the madness of it all at bay.

  SOMEONE HAD LEFT a shoe in the middle of the pavement, and Anna stalked towards it amid the sound of faraway sirens, coming alongside a hatchback with its trunk spilling someone’s personal effects all over the street. Anna scanned around for a pair of more comfortable running shoes, but in truth, she was barely holding her bowels in, let alone feeling like she could put shoes on while advancing in a crouch along Fury-ravaged streets. Thoughts of doomsday kept cartwheeling through her mind, disturbing her inner balance as thoroughly as the tremors of the minute before.

  If the President had ordered the city nuked, she wouldn’t need any new footwear by day’s end anyway. Anna felt like she was about to vomit butterflies at any moment.

  The car alarm ringing in the middle distance came to an end, letting Anna hear the more subtle far-off gunfire, if gunfire could ever be called subtle, and then the breeze changed slightly, the sirens and gunshots grew fainter yet, and the smell of upturned garbage cans reached her like they’d been waiting for it. Anna moved ahead, pulling her shirt up over her face. The baseball bat hung from her right hand, relaxed and behind her, ready to swing into action with maximum effect despite Anna’s doubts she could actually protect herself if attacked by one of the lithe, ravenous creatures now roaming the city in packs – a pack mentality which had only hastened the rapid decay of law and order across Springfield.

  The ever-present danger of the Furies raised a fair question about what the hell Anna was doing out on the street at all, and she hoped to have an answer to that soon.

  For now, guided by her reporter’s spider-sense alone, Anna went onto the tips of her feet to peer down Ninth Avenue, checking the narrow laneway between hers and the next building, then hurrying along the face of the neighboring four-story block towards the glass-walled luxury car showroom at its northern end.

  A row of parked vehicles and abandoned delivery vans formed a barricade between her and the street itself. A treed swatch of inner-city landscaping dominated the far side of the road, inserted between yet more heavy buildings, and the parkland obscured any more thorough check of the surrounding area. Anna winced, nervous, thoughts of nuclear Armageddon in abeyance for now as she flinched at the ongoing play of noises from more distant city blocks. A few bullets crackled like fireworks, perhaps closer than before, and now Anna wished she’d taken Mason’s gun after all.

  Cussing to herself, she crept between two parked sedans. One of the foot scooters favored by hip young professionals lay upturned in the middle of the road with a d
elivery satchel beside it. The rider’s corpse was wedged beneath the back wheel of a parked BMW on the far side of the street, stuck there by the force of the collision that killed him and crushed his head so badly he was at least spared the living undeath of the Furies.

  Anna calmed her recurrent panic with her more neutral, rational reporter’s voice, and took several steadying breaths, forced to consider how she might describe the scene before her if she’d actually done anything as useful as bring a camera with her onto the street. Anna didn’t even have her phone. So instead, she kept low as she continued along Ninth, coming level with the car dealership lit up brighter than the newly-risen day. Several young men dressed like they’d been out nightclubbing stood out inside the dealership. A curly-haired young lothario in a yellow silk shirt saw her through the tall windows, but ignored her in favor of his friends who scampered excitedly in and among the prestige vehicles positioned like a museum of excess.

  Anna moved on. The intersection ahead was wide open, with an extended front verge on the far northern corner and a small office building on the other side.

  But any number of vehicles littered the street, and she hurried between them like an imitation of the idiots in the showroom, checking around herself for signs of movement and trying not to scoff at her likewise self-conscious imitation of someone who knew what they were doing. Anna’s baseball bat chimed off the fender of a skewiff Cadillac and she grunted to herself in admonishment, as frustratingly feminine as ever, and then made the next corner and jogged at a good pace along the next block.

  There were people in the small office building, though they put their hands against the front glass door from inside in a clear show they weren’t taking on any more refugees. And across the road, moving as quickly as they could along the front of the open garden, a beleaguered-looking street cop and a firefighter with an AR-15 escorted a harried-looking group of about fifteen civilians – their number including a woman with a baby, a pair of teenage twin girls, a radical vegan, a proud cross-fit couple, and a guy in a shit-stained Pokémon onesie who looked like he could tell a hell of a good story already – and the Latino cop looked Anna’s way and gestured with his Remington for her to get to safety.