End Time (42 page)

Cheryl said nothing. A chasm opened under her, and she could feel the air rushing by. No Rachel. No Rachel. No Rachel. Ever again.

So amazing that someone you hadn't talked to in seven weeks, eight weeks,
whatever
—and this first thing you heard, the first thing.
I know your face better than my own.
A cold fist squeezed her heart, and she clutched her chest. Boedeker in an office on the edge of the Pacific Ocean had more to tell her.

“Sorry to pile on here, but we also need to talk about this Montoya wrongful death suit.” For a second the name didn't ring a bell; then
ding,
right, the late lamented Janet Sweet Jane Killer.

“Isn't that Herman's job?” Cheryl asked numbly.

Here Boedeker took a long breath. “Herman is sick. His kidneys shut down after a diabetic attack. It came on very suddenly. Cedars-Sinai is saying it's fifty/fifty. No kidney donor on the horizon.”

Cheryl didn't know what to say.

“In any case, the police union couldn't get the wrongful death charges dismissed. Judge Santiago ruled against you. The Montoya family is proceeding to discovery. We'd like to take depositions here, but perhaps we can do them by webcam. Obviously, the Montoya family will be going after Rachel's estate, but just because your assets are considerably less doesn't mean you're in the clear—”

She'd been silent for some time, making no remark or even nodding her head. The downside of face-to-face video calls: people could see you.

“Cheryl?” Boedeker prodded gently.

“I'm here, Arthur.” A silence stretched between them. “Is there anything you want me to sign? For all I know, Rachel changed her will.”

An awkward silence from lawyer Boedeker.

“Yes,” he sighed. “She did. But no, there's nothing you have to sign. Not right now, anyway.”

She clicked off the webcam connection, then closed the laptop and stared out the clean picture window of the Marriott's hospitality lounge. Outside in the parking lot a car ignition turned over; the tires rolled toward the exit. Cheryl sat there in the silence. She didn't get up to leave or even change positions. She sat there doing nothing, staring at nothing. The woman sat for a very long time, a beige woman in a beige room on a beige couch. And nobody noticed.

*   *   *

On the discount cab ride back to Council Bluffs, Bhakti tried to contact Eleanor again. But when he dialed Connecticut Valley Hospital directly he got a busy signal. Something was wrong.
Very Wrong
. Hospitals always answer the phone. Dammit, he should have called sooner.

His BlackBerry buzzed. No, not Eleanor. Billy Shadow texting him.
Meet me now. KPTM,
and the address of a local TV station. The one they'd been watching at the hotel while the Toyota sat at the dealership. What could Billy want this time? Go on TV; broadcast an Amber Alert for a girl named Chen using her grainy Facebook photo?

Bhakti sighed; that was exasperation talking. After seeing plaster people at the Nebraska fairgrounds, after the Chen girl trail going cold and the scads of people failing to show up for work, it felt as if some unseen barrier had been crossed. Maybe going to a news studio wasn't such a dumb idea. There'd be newsfeeds from around the country; a good way to get a handle on things. Besides, Lila Chen might even appear in a report—“Girl Survives Lunatics” or some such story, improbable as that sounded.

“Do you know where KPTM is?” Bhakti asked the cabbie, like he really expected a coherent reply. The driver was about twenty-two years old, with a silver stud through his eyebrow; he wore a Disney World cap in the shape of the cartoon character Goofy. A dog's nose, floppy ears, and two large white toofies hung from the brim.

“The business office or the studio?” Goofy asked.

The cab pulled into the parking lot of 42 Productions, a large studio building with two enormous broadcast masts planted nearby, a number of large satellite-receiver dishes on the roof, and several more running along the edge of the property. The kid with the stud in his eyebrow looked at his passenger. That hat with Chiclets teeth was really something. Goofy's large nose and big toofies talked again.

“You want me to wait?” Goofy asked, and idly scratched an itch on his ear.

“No, I'm all set—thanks anyway.”

Bhakti went through the glass doors. The effect, high-tech minimalist. Cool blues and grays, exposed ironwork, bolts, stanchions, spick-and-span metal sheeting. Head shots of the on-air announcers were displayed prominently. Not as large as New York or LA, but big enough to make the talent feel appreciated. Man with Helmet Hair. Woman with Swing Do. Honest heartland faces, smiling eyes. The telephone lights at the empty reception desk blinked, burring softly; people were trying to get through to the station. Bhakti pushed past the double doors marked
STUDIO
and down a long dark hall.

Two enormous photographs dominated the passage, historical black-and-whites blown up to artistic dimensions to make a statement and lit by spots. In the first photo, an old dustbowl farmer stood in front of a silo looking uncomfortably into the lens. An anomaly hovered in the sky behind him like a UFO. A cloud? A flying saucer? The photo made you wonder.

The other photo showed the 1880s Omaha Railway Station: steel, steam, and people who couldn't stand still for this newfangled camera thing. The photographer had captured the ghostly image of a figure, perhaps by accident. A lanky apish creature squatted on the crown of a lamppost. All you could see was the smudge of a top hat and a grin about a foot wide. Defective film stock? A ghost? Again, the peculiar photo gave one pause.

Bhakti entered the cavernous studio floor: cameras on cushy rubber wheels, the empty green screen, teleprompters lit but not rolling, the words
Good Evening, Omaha
.

Overhead, the dark control room window reflected the studio floor like a mirror. Somebody up there knuckled the glass to get his attention. Bhakti climbed a flight of utility stairs and pushed open the control room door to the soft hiss of pressurized air.

A dozen workstations with flat-screens and overhead monitors murmured in the twilight of the control room, the media—CNN, MSNBC, BBC—all playing against each other. One dedicated to FOX streamed raw feed. Bill Hemmer, a man with the earnest looks of Clark Kent, and Martha MacCallum as Lois Lane in faraway New York talking to each other in asides during a break:

Bill Hemmer:
So your housekeeper vanished?

Martha MacCallum:
No. She just called in sick.

Bill Hemmer:
So what are you going to do?

Martha MacCallum:
Told the kids to make their own beds.

Billy Shadow sat in front of a battery of control panel dials under the streaming screens; he stared into his own laptop on a callback to South Dakota. Clem Lattimore's face floated on the screen. Billy had been conferring with his boss a lot since Nebraska, then filling in the others on the most recent peculiarities, every discovery: the mea culpa of one young Webster Chargrove, PhD, who Billy had met up-close last month; the Pi R kooks' sick plan for mass mosquito insemination; the Chen girl's God Protein. Rat tail counts. Jasper in the hospital with malaria …

So it wasn't their imaginations—people
were
getting sick. Boss Lattimore signed off, the video call window closed, and Billy sighed. He pointed to one news report on an overhead screen: Amtrak trains stalled up and down the eastern corridor.

Apparently, an Acela Express had collided head-on with a freight train carrying chemical cars. The freight train jumped the tracks, and freight cars were spilling chlorine into a Baltimore neighborhood. The helicopter feed showed residents in the midst of a chaotic evacuation fleeing down residential streets. On the various screens the phrase “Asleep at the switch” was being repeated on three different news networks.

Billy looked hard at Bhakti. “How much you want to bet they pull the switchman in for drug testing and find out he's got a case of African trypanosomiasis?”

“Sleeping sickness? I'm impressed you know the medical term.”

“Don't be. Guys in the army know about tsetse flies. Wanna bet there are also some Skeeterbugs mating their little hearts out in the Port of Baltimore?”

Bhakti shrugged:
Wouldn't be surprised
.

Another feed popped on. A Southern belle stood in front of a sturdy wooden sign that read
FORT BRAGG—HOME OF THE AIRBORNE AND SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES.
The lady reporter spoke into her mike:

“This is Kimberly McKay. Here at Fort Bragg life goes on as normal—but sources tell WNCN News all leaves have been cancelled due to an outbreak of visceral leishmaniasis, more commonly known as leishmania or dumdum fever, which is spread by sand flies. Base authorities have instituted rigorous pest-control spraying—
Whoa, Nelly!
”

Kimberly McKay angrily waved the no-see-um from her face, violently slapped a flying bug, but hit her mike instead:
thunk!
The feed from Carolina died.

“I think we're seeing a cluster of the same disease in one place, then a cluster of another disease somewhere else,” Billy said. “In New York, you might see a burst of yellow fever or bubonic plague. Down in Philly, Baltimore, and Washington, DC, it'll be sleeping sickness, or say bacterial meningitis. Up in Sioux Falls, Jasper has malaria. A cluster here, a cluster there. Wherever the mosquitoes roam.” Billy pinned Bhakti with a dark stare. “Over at Fort Bragg they think it's sand flies, but I think we know better.”

Bhakti smiled wanly. “Around here, I think it's St. Vitus' Dance.”

“St. Vitus' Dance,” Billy repeated, returning the smile.

“Huntington's Chorea, or maybe all the various choreas—akin to rheumatic fever. Problems with the nerves and joints; do a spastic dance and then you die.”

“Oh, you mean like him?” Billy Shadow nodded across the darkened control room. About three rows back, one of the newsies sat at his desk, deep in shadow and dead as a doornail. The poor sap was slumped backward, his hands and fingers twisted into claws, his blackened face a frozen wild grin. He'd chewed off a bit of his tongue, which lay on his tie.

“Jesus!” Bhakti knocked into Billy's chair; then after a moment got the better of himself and replied sensibly, “Yeah, just like him. I saw a guy nearly get run over across the street from the dealership. He's probably chasing parked cars by now.”

“Not particularly infectious,” Billy mused. “But still…”

Bhakti finished the thought: “If there are enough mosquitoes spreading the condition, who cares how it spreads?”

“And if the larger story isn't framed, every incident is random,” Billy added. “There's no rhyme or reason—and the Big
They
like it that way.”

Bhakti understood. “When no one really understands, no one is required to fix anything.
As if they could,
” he replied cynically. “All the relevant details are dying in studios like this from coast to coast.” Bhakti left the console and went over to the dead man in rictus; an ID hung from his neck on a chain. Bhakti examined it. “Station Manager.” A phone light blinked, then buzzed softly, and the Punjabi scientist tapped the manager's speakerphone.

“Hello?”

The clear and precise voice of a woman came charging through the base. You got the impression of lady talent with the Swing Do in the publicity shot.

“Who is this, please?” she demanded.

“Bhakti Singh.”

“Are you new?”

“I'm kind of a temp,” Bhakti replied.

She accepted this without question. “Okay, Bhakti. Hi. I tried the switchboard, but nobody is picking up. This is Juliet Jay. Will you tell the boss I can't come in today? Just feel really sorta sick. Kinda twitchy, and my throat feels swollen. Tried calling Marianne to sub for me at the three o'clock, but she's not answering either. So the boss is going to have to figure something out on his own. I should be better by tomorrow. Okay bye, thanks.”
Click.
Bhakti stared at the dead phone.

Billy came over and patted the station manager's lifeless shoulder. “You hear that, Chief? Julie isn't coming in and can't reach Marianne either. So you're on your own.”

Bhakti looked away; when you talked to the dead you had to hold up both sides of the conversation. Suddenly the Punjabi scientist's BlackBerry thrummed in his shirt pocket again. A text message from Eleanor, coherent this time:

First time e-mail has worked in days. Tried L&G but no reply. I want to leave now. I'm not sick. Just please come and get me. Bhakti, please come get me.

In five heartbeats he typed back,

I will, I'm coming. Calling G&L. They can get there quicker. See you soon. Does your phone work?

He pressed send, but it came back, MESSAGE NOT SENT.

“Damn,” he swore. “Dammit! I have to get back. I have to phone Guy and Lauren. And I don't have a car and nothing is friggin' working! What the hell are we doing here anyway?” Bhakti growled. He knew the answer … so they could see what was happening in the big bad world. There was even an outside chance they might see Lila Chen on TV on some news story. Not a big chance, but a chance all the same.

The two men left the station manager to his TV station control room, clattered down the utility stairs and back out the empty studio.

As they emerged from the building, an ambulance with its lights flashing and siren going full blast roared up the street. The siren flared and abruptly died. The emergency vehicle slowed as if the driver had taken his foot off the accelerator, but it swerved off the highway, hopping the parking lot curb. The ambulance came to a sudden halt against one of the antenna towers, with a bang and scrape of metal.