Frontline

by Warren Hately

  “Down!” he yelled.

  Anna hit the sidewalk hard for the second time in the past minute. The big handgun boomed and then boomed again. Anna rolled several yards, then crawled down the first Urban Bakehouse steps, nearly breaking her ribs in the process before she felt safe enough to twist a look around ignoring the glass cuts to her palm.

  Mason’s pistol roared yet again.

  The heavy bullet punched through Demien’s throat, striking just above two more fresh wounds in the monster’s chest. Leeanne was already yelling for Mason to aim at the Fury’s head, so Anna did nothing more than watch in horror as the private investigator yelled, “It’s not as easy as it looks!” and the heavy gun shook in his flustered grip.

  Demien’s bulk took the wounds without much more than a hitched step or two, and as Mason tried to aim even more carefully, the Fury broke into a fresh and terrifying lumber right at them.

  Mason fired again, and Demien’s bearded jowls moved such that the bullet somehow took out his chin without doing anything else, rendering the Fury all the more gruesome and horrific with an exposed throat, the bloody tongue questing at its full length, freed from the limits of Demien’s mouth. Mason fired one more time, missing the monster completely, and then he gave into panic as well, helping Anna up as they ran with Leeanne one step in front of them. The brave woman hurled her trashcan lid like a Frisbee, and also with terrible aim, and then the three survivors ran together through the café door and Mason slammed it after them.

  Anna swore loudly as she and Leanne nearly collapsed together in the café’s foyer.

  “Douglas is still out there!” she cried.

  “O’Dowd?”

  Baz Washington stuck his head out through the kitchen doorway, his arms filled with bottles of cooking sherry, red wine, and Scotch.

  “The back door –” he started to say.

  “There’s no time,” Mason said.

  “If that dead thing gets distracted,” Leeanne hissed, “it’ll be on your gutless pal Douglas in a second.”

  Anna eyed the room wildly, no idea what to do except swing the baseball bat half-strength into the back of the solid front door. She started yelling as well.

  “What in tarnations are you doin’, girl?”

  Leeanne’s question was answered quickly as they took in Anna’s jeers and yells, letting Demien’s Fury know they were inside still. Mason checked through one of the security screens and nodded.

  “Keep it up,” he said. “Dude’s still there.”

  Anna moved to the door now, exhaustedly hitting it with her open palm.

  “Jesus Christ,” she gasped, throat hurting. “That’s Demien Christopher out there. He never got away.”

  “You know him?”

  Anna only shot Leeanne a speechless look, too strung-out to explain anything for the other woman’s benefit if she didn’t already remember the dead science reporter from before.

  Baz set down his looted bottles, saying he’d go “the back way” to let O’Dowd inside. Anna was pretty sure they hadn’t locked the Gazette’s front door. Mason gestured to get Leeanne’s attention.

  “You still got that ax?”

  “No stinkin’ way, man,” the big blonde said. “We’re not openin’ that door.

  Fatboy can stay hungry, far as I’m concerned.”

  Anna asked where Baz Washington was headed and Mason explained how they’d found a back passage connecting the café’s loading dock to the inside of the Gazette building. Washington had the keys to the kingdom thanks to Leeanne. Anna swept her gaze back to the café door and then met Mason’s look – and then down to the gun in his shaking grip.

  “You’re not much of a shot with that thing,” she said.

  “I’d offer to let you try yourself,” the PI said. “See how easy you think it is.

  But I only got three bullets left, and no more ammo. Sorry.”

  It wasn’t a sincere apology. Anna pounded the door a couple more times, too exhausted for further vocals. Mason took up the duty, yelling at Demien and rattling the security-grilled windows. The dead man’s shadow shifted to that spot, and just as fast, a section of front window exploded inwards as the flexible grill groaned against it. Mason leapt back, eyes wide, checking himself over for injuries at once.

  Then Baz Washington walked in to join them, trailed by Douglas O’Dowd.

  “YOU’RE ALIVE,” ANNA said and overcame the irrational desire to throw her arms around the taciturn old newshound and weep. If it wasn’t common sense that held her back, the anxious, weirdly-excited grin on the soot-stained older reporter told her something else was up. Then, of course, there was the little matter of him not exactly rushing headlong to her rescue a few minutes earlier.

  “What is it?” she asked him. “Where’s Buddy? We saw what happened … to Dwayne and –”

  “Buddy’s dead too,” O’Dowd said. The funeral announcement didn’t lessen his muted grin. Anna’s eyes grew wider and then she scowled.

  “What the fuck are you smiling about?”

  Anna stepped forward with the bat still in her hands and O’Dowd backed off.

  “Chill the fuck out,” he snapped and then moved a more discreet distance back into the kitchen service entrance just in case Anna wasn’t so inclined.

  “I couldn’t do anything to save them,” O’Dowd said. “You heard Osterland? I followed our source instead.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe we should discuss this somewhere safer,” Baz said quietly.

  Their raised voices only stirred the bugbear outside. Demien’s shadow shuffled back across the front of the café and then delivered several more powerful, desperate blows to another section of security grill. More glass shattered, shards raining onto the floor to the left of the door. Anna felt a faintness wash through her.

  “I could really use something to eat,” she said.

  “We’ve been moving stuff upstairs,” Baz said and shot her a wink. “Come on.”

  Anna tried to shake off his resemblance to the black cop who’d just forcibly offered her a ride, covering her myriad confusions with a polite nod and wondering how Baz managed to stay so upbeat. O’Dowd too. It stoked her curiosity for his report, but meanwhile Anna’s eyes flicked to Demien with the slightest apology. It made her glad O’Dowd had survived, no matter what, and even if poor Buddy and Dwayne had not.

  “Lead the way,” she said to Baz.

  The path back into the foyer was so straightforward they were embarrassed at even using the outside door. The lobby’s front glass doors were locked again, but the encounter with Demien showed they weren’t enough to keep the building secure.

  “We need to get that door boarded up,” Anna said.

  “We’re staying here?” Mason asked.

  Baz Washington answered in Anna’s stead.

  “We got auxiliary power,” he said. “Serik and me went and shut down most the other lights left on in the building. We’ll sweep the other offices as soon as we can, see what supplies we have. But there’s power on for the coolers, and propane for the kitchen back there. We could hold out a few weeks, easy.”

  “Weeks?”

  Anna stared at him open-mouthed, then caught herself in the unglamorous look. O’Dowd smirked, and Anna’s frown deepened.

  “What?” she snapped at him.

  “I’ve got some news you’re going to like,” the older man said.

  “Out with it,” Anna replied.

  O’Dowd only favored her with another condescending chuckle, his phone now in his hand as he waggled it at her.

  “I thought you might prefer to see for yourself.”

  Anna growled. “Let’s get on with it.”

  “You’re still confident we’re not all going to die anyway?” Anna asked.

  They trudged upstairs, and then Anna caught up with O’Dowd again once they re-entered the reception area, starting to guide him by the arm towards the live studio only to have Mason and Baz point them towards the Gazette’s conf
erence room. Baz set his booze down on the Oval Office table and the smell of freshly-cooked food wafted out the open door.

  “Hey, Douglas,” Anna said. “I’m sorry if I wigged out on you back there.”

  The silver-haired reporter only gave a shrug of bemusement. Watching him, Anna pictured her father, remembering the alternating waves of annoyance and abandonment she’d experienced with him which she knew also colored her lopsided relationship with the equally smug and superior O’Dowd.

  Apart from all the loose clothes and emergency bedding abandoned in different corners of the room, no one else was around. A solitary light blinked on the front office phone.

  “I’m glad you came back,” she said and shrugged. “It’s horrible about Buddy and Dwayne, though.”

  “Yeah, they’re dead,” O’Dowd said matter-of-factly. “But we don’t have to be. Or not today, anyway.”

  Anna narrowed her eyes at him, but O’Dowd only chortled, and motioned her towards the conference room.

  “Everyone might as well watch this at the same time.”

  And he pulled out his iPhone again.

  SERIK AND ALEXANDRA came from the control room, and a tired and tearful-looking Professor Irving joined them from the back room. One look at Anna and he shook his head. It wasn’t good news for Charlotte, no matter what Douglas O’Dowd’s camera contained.

  Apparently the last of the unidentified survivors had quit the building while she was gone. Otherwise, they would’ve been at the feast of scrambled eggs, omelets, French toast, bacon, sausage, and even sirloin steaks rapidly turning lukewarm on a heap of plates and metal dishes on the conference room table. Anna’s eyes nearly fell out of her head as she advanced like a sleepwalker, her interest almost lost in O’Dowd’s stage-managed denouement as he fussed with the camera, quickly getting Iskov’s help to Airplay the video to one of the big monitor screens.

  The other monitor showed the Gazette’s website. A pop-up video window showed the last hour of the most recent panel discussion, while the other looped Anna’s latest report, front-loaded onto Melina’s footage from City Hall. Not for the first time, Anna wondered if her friend Melina lived – and how many of the City’s elite had made it out from the airport. It made the fact of O’Dowd’s survival even more miraculous.

  The other screen blinked into life showing a dawn-lit scene, the 85th Army Captain Eric J Osterland in a bloodied tunic with his Kevlar pulled aside, resting against French blinds spattered with grime admitting bands of early morning daylight.

  Blood daubed the corner of the old soldier’s mouth looking dark and sickly.

  Osterland was on the way out. O’Dowd filmed his deathbed confession.

  Anna glanced to the older reporter in the room with them. Of all the editorial team, it was now just him and Anna, with Serik and Alexandra and Professor Irving and the other random survivors Mason, Baz Washington, and Leeanne. Anna set aside more turgid thoughts about Charlotte, eyes still on O’Dowd’s pleased-with-himself grin. The dying Captain’s soliloquy finally explained it.

  “I stayed,” the officer said weakly. “Me and a few of my best boys. Never believed for a second the United States military … not even those Airforce jockeys, would drop … drop nuclear bombs on our own people.”

  The camera shook in O’Dowd’s hand, held close up on the gray-faced soldier as Osterland fixed his eyes past the camera, on the senior reporter who’d escaped the carnage outside with him.

  “Tell us, please,” O’Dowd asked. “You said the President ordered –”

  “The President might have ordered nukes deployed,” the officer said. “That doesn’t mean the order … had to be obeyed.”

  “Captain, people will want to know,” O’Dowd said. “Anyone still holding out hope, please … What is the deadline for the attack?”

  The Captain batted his lashes slowly, drunk with blood loss.

  “By my estimation,” he said and managed his wristwatch up to his face and squinted at it. “Fifty-five minutes ago.”

  He dropped his hand and gave a single weak laugh.

  “Doomsday was set for dawn,” the Captain said. “Six-fifty a.m., local time.”

  The camera stayed on him, face becoming slack, but not yet dead. Anna watched with the same flush as the others. Baz let out an enthusiastic whoop, and Alexandra, him and Leeanne crowded O’Dowd to congratulate and also thank him for everything he’d done to let them know.

  “Washington gave twenty-four hours for the evacuations,” Osterland said softly. “OC … My OC, General Ryan Mahoney, said it wasn’t right, not to let the boys know … they were gonna burn us all, just to keep the peace.”

  The Captain went still for a creepy length of time. Anna moved to put a hand on O’Dowd’s shoulder as waves of undeserved relief turned her legs to water. She took a chair instead, turning back to the TV screen just as the Captain spluttered his final words.

  “Proud of my boys,” the dying soldier wheezed.

  His chin dropped slightly and his mouth slack.

  The newspaper office fell silent. O’Dowd looked at them all, expression solemn now.

  “We have to get this out as soon as possible,” he said.

  Leeanne started some enthusiastic applause, but no one joined her. O’Dowd sat down, task complete, and started a businesslike attack on the food.

  “Is that all of it?” Anna asked.

  “I wasn’t going to sit around and wait until the Captain woke up.”

  O’Dowd fished out an M17 pistol and set it down heavily next to the plate he loaded with eggs and meat.

  Anna checked around the room, the others mostly also swapping looks of awe, wonder, and mild jubilation that annihilation had been spared – or at least put on hold for now, Anna thought, with dark images of their still-uncertain future and Dwayne’s torn-open corpse in mind.

  Anna numbly took the empty plate O’Dowd offered, as disoriented to find herself still alive as the moments before when they all seemed doomed. Moving stiffly, she added bacon and toast to her plate, and then jumped and nearly yelped when a champagne cork popped at the far end of the table. Baz poured the frothing contents into a series of coffee mugs.

  “It’s the only bottle of champagne they had in the café, and don’t tell me why, but I thought it suited the occasion, hmm?” Baz said to them with a chuckle. “After that, we got a whole lot o’ other booze to get through. And dibs on the cherry liqueur.”

  The others grinned back at him, but not Professor Irving. The immunologist sat at the other end of the table eating like a robot, the brightness of the other survivors inoculating them to his gloom. Anna forced herself to eat something, conscious of the Professor’s sad gaze, and when they steered a mug of champagne her way, she drank it thirstily and held out for more. A weird mix of elation and terror burnt within her, but for now, she was determined to sate herself on her salt-riddled breakfast before turning to all the other complexities their salvation now threw up.

  ISKOV AND ALEXANDRA curated a package for O’Dowd’s report. The senior reporter prettied up in the men’s restroom before filming an in-studio preamble. Then they sent the video of the Captain’s revelations out wide. The whole thing would reappear across European and international networks before the hour’s end.

  Anna, superfluous to it all, drifted through the office, abstract of thought thanks to her exhaustion, the champagne, and a good portion of warm red wine suffusing her few useful thoughts with the quiet urge to find a vacant corner and curl up for a week, unable even to consider what the next days would bring. Yet her feet dragged her down the corridor to where Theodore Irving stood at the open safe-room door.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said.

  “Why does it have to be me?”

  The Professor shrugged, then retreated into the secret room to let her follow.

  Charlotte Francis lay propped on the bed, dead already, even though she breathed still. Irving had jerry-rigged a decent care ward in Iskov’s bed. Tubes were taped to C
harlotte’s left arm, leading to a plastic bag drained of blood hanging from a hook on a shelf nearby. In a priest’s voice, the Professor quietly explained that Iskov knew how to access the Gazette’s medical files, and fortunately Charlotte had “a common blood type”. Baz Washington and Buddy had given transfusions.

  “But Charlotte needs better care than we can give her now,” the faded old scientist said. He flicked his eyes to Anna, but mostly stayed focused on a blank section of the bed. “She lost too much blood, and the amputation’s infected. It’s … burning right through her.”

  Charlotte was pale with the blood loss, so it was hard to notice the fever until Anna saw the bed was damp with sweat. The smell wasn’t good either. There was no ventilation, and the slender redhead lay bloated and uneven-looking, eyes closed, dead to the world.

  “Oh God… .”

  Anna sat in the lone chair and rested her face in her hands.

  “What are you proposing?”

  “I can’t stay any longer, Miss Novak,” the Professor said. “I don’t see how your colleague will survive.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Yes.”

  Fat tears started running down Irving’s dark cheeks and he brushed at them almost angrily as he spoke.

  “Mrs Hernandez fled yesterday, even though I offered her medical care.”

  “Mrs Hernandez… ?”

  “The pregnant woman,” he said. “She went out there with her cousin, knowing the risks … knowing they’d never make the hospital. Why would she do that? She was better here with me.”

  “Isn’t Charlotte?”

  The immunologist shook his head and sniffed. His tears were finished already.

  “No,” he said. “There are people out there I can help, but your friend isn’t one of them. Charlotte Francis is dead already.”