Sick (27 page)

The producer frowned. Sure, there was the unfortunate incident in Tehachapi, but soldiers openly firing on civilians? Not likely. Besides, his cousin was sixteen, an age when kids easily jumped to conclusions and felt everything was the end of the world.

“Hold on,” he said, then put his hand over the phone. “Tony, you know anything about some footage on TV of soldiers and dead bodies in the quarantine zone?”

Tony, the editor, spun around in his chair. “Yeah. It’s wild, isn’t it?”

“You saw it?”

Tony nodded. “When I went to get more coffee a few minutes ago. It was on the TV in the break room.”

“Who shot it?”

“They don’t know. They’re trying to figure that out. Someone uploaded it to the Internet but didn’t give their name.”

John took his hand off the phone. “You know who shot this video?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Frances said. “Okay, I don’t know who
actually
shot it, but I do know who put it up. It’s my friend Martina’s account.”

“You’re sure.”

“One hundred percent positive.”

“Have you asked her about it?”

“I tried calling her cell, but I couldn’t get through.”

“Give me a second,” John said. If his cousin was right, and this video
was
generating a lot of buzz, then this could be a very,
very
big moment for him. “Okay. Give me her name and her number.” She did. “What about her home? If we can’t get through to her cell, maybe we can find her there.” His cousin gave him that, too.

“Don’t forget I’m the one who gave it to you,” she said.

“Don’t worry. I’ll pass this on, and maybe someone will call you to find out more.”

“You mean like one of the reporters? Will I be on the air?”

“You never know. I’m glad you called me, Frances. I’ll talk to you later.”

He hung up before she could ask anything else.

“What was that all about?” Tony asked.

John just smiled, then ran out of the room. He didn’t stop running until he reached the door of the network president, who, it turned out, was watching the desert canyon footage on their sister network PCN at that very moment.

• • •

When the video of the desert shooting first aired on PCN, Tamara and Joe had been arguing about the story she and Bobby had put together about the riot at Tehachapi, and, specifically, what they thought had really happened to Gavin.

“I’m telling you,” Joe said. “The minute that goes on the air, we are all fired.”

“You saw what I saw,” she argued. “I could tell. It was in your eyes. You know it was the same guy.”

“We all
think
it was the same guy. We don’t know one hundred percent. But that’s not even my point.”

“Oh, come on, Joe. How can you say that? That man
killed
my brother.”

“See,
that’s
what I’m talking about. You aren’t objective on this. Even if it is the same man, and he did kill your brother, you are too emotionally involved to be the one reporting it.”

“Of course I’m emotionally involved, but I’ve kept myself in check and you know it! That’s a damn fine report and we need to air it.”

“Oh, we do, do we? And when whoever’s anchoring comes back to you, that is, if they haven’t fired us already for airing something we haven’t warned them about, when he comes back and asks you questions about the report, you’re going to keep your cool? You won’t show any emotion? What if he questions the connection? What if he just hints that maybe there’s another explanation? You going to be able to hold it together then?”

She clenched her teeth together. “It’s the truth, and you know it.”

“No. I
don’t
know it. Not for sure.”

She gawked at him. “What? You saw the same thing I—”

“Hey, guys!” Bobby called from inside the van.

“—did. You
know
it’s the same guy. You
know
he—”

“Guys, seriously! Get in here!” Bobby yelled.

Tamara glanced over at the van, then back at Joe. “We’re not done,” she told him, then headed over to see what the other member of their team wanted.

Bobby was sitting in the chair in front of the mobile editing station. On one screen was footage he’d been shooting around the base. He was supposed to be putting together a report about the conditions the media had to work under since being moved to the base. On the other screen was a live feed from the network of some amateur footage shot in what looked like a desert canyon. Tamara could see several people in biohazard suits, and, during a brief second when the camera tilted up just a bit, at least one helicopter outside the canyon.

The suited people were standing next to a couple of bodies.

“What is this?” she asked.

“More Internet video,” Bobby told her. “Network’s played this one a couple times already.”

As she watched it, Tamara couldn’t help but feel the sense of something familiar.

Whoever was doing the filming seemed to be above the action. As the bio-suited people began bagging up the two bodies, a voice said in a haunting whisper, “That’s my brother, and my girlfriend. Those…those men shot them. We weren’t doing anything, but they shot them.”

“My God,” Tamara said.

The image zoomed in, intending, it seemed, to identify the people in the suits. But the angle was making it difficult, and the suit masks weren’t helping. Still, the camera operator was able to hold on two of them just long enough to get an idea of what they looked like.

Tamara tensed. “You’re recording this, right?”

Bobby nodded. “Every second.”

She said nothing for a moment, willing herself to remain as calm as possible. “Bobby, can you bring up that video of the soldiers from the helicopters that landed here?”

He gave her an odd look but said, “Sure.”

He punched a few buttons, and the report he’d been working on earlier disappeared from its monitor, replaced by the requested shots.

“Scroll ahead to that part where you were trying to zoom in for me,” she said.

He sped up the footage.

“There,” she told him a few seconds later. “Back it up a little bit, then let it play.”

He did. On the screen they watched the soldiers talk together, then the picture zoomed in quickly, rushing past Gavin’s killer and focusing for a few moments on the interior of the helicopter. Just like she remembered, there was a clump of something yellow on the seat.

“Freeze there,” she said. Once the shot stopped moving, she looked at the other two. “Am I seeing things?”

Both men stared at the screen, then looked back at the network feed.

“Son of a bitch,” Bobby said under his breath.

The yellow clump looked very much like one of the bio-suits worn by the people in the desert canyon.

“Hold on,” Joe said, shaking his head. “I’m sure all crews have been outfitted with these kinds of suits. They probably all look alike.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Tamara said. “But then that means you’re also conceding those people in the video are part of the military.”

Joe didn’t have a response to that.

“There’s something else,” she said.

Once the network finished playing the desert clip, Tamara had Bobby go back to where the kid whose friends had been shot zoomed in on the biohazard face masks. Bobby paused on the image she requested, then went back to the footage he’d shot of the men outside the helicopter there at Fort Irwin. Once more, she had him pause on an image.

She didn’t have to say anything.

The features and expression of the man on the left screen were exactly the same as the features and expression of the man on the right.

“I want to talk to whoever shot that footage,” she said.

Without looking away from the screen, Joe said, “Let me see what I can do.”

35

The door Chloe opened led into a dark section of the building that was obviously built into the side of the hill. Ash moved past her into the room, swinging the light around to get a quick take on the space. But he barely registered anything before the overhead lights came on.

He whirled around. Chloe was standing by the door, her hand next to a switch.

Power in this decrepit building?

It seemed odd, but then, as he looked around, he realized the room he was in wasn’t decrepit at all. It was clean, almost sterile—white walls, black-tiled floors, no dust, no mud. Even the air smelled pure. It was as if they’d been transported out of the abandoned building they’d been in, and into a brand new hospital a million miles away.

The room wasn’t particularly large. There were benches against two sides and a row of empty bins along the wall.

Chloe pulled open the only other door in the room and passed through. As Ash followed, she switched on a light in the new space. They were in a corridor, with a dozen doors leading off it in either direction.

“They’re gone. Definitely,” she said.

“If they were here at all.”

She looked at him. “Let’s check.”

She began opening doors. Behind each were shorter hallways with what appeared to be a nurse’s station near the front, and anywhere from three to five doors on either side. These spaces were as immaculate as the first room had been.

Starting at the far end, Chloe and Ash entered each hall and went door to door, checking inside. Each door opened onto an empty room. It wasn’t hard to imagine the rooms were designed to hold a bed, and that each of these small hallways was like a hospital ward.

“What do they use this for?” he asked.

Chloe said, “Whatever they want.”

That seemed to be all the answer she was willing to give. Ash noticed that with each new ward they entered, she seemed to draw more and more into herself.

So far, they had found nothing. As Ash approached the door for the next ward, Chloe said, “Not that one.”

“Why not?”

She walked past him to the next door down. “We’ll try this one.”

But it was as empty as the others, and so were the final two after that.

“We haven’t checked that one yet,” he said, nodding at the door they’d skipped.

She stared across the hall at it for several seconds, then finally said, “Okay.”

When he opened the door, the new ward looked exactly like all the others. He walked in and checked the first room. Empty. As he stepped back out, he noticed that Chloe was standing in the ward doorway, her feet not having crossed the threshold.

“You okay?” he asked.

She gave him a quick nod, but didn’t say anything.

He knew this must have been where she’d been imprisoned. He wondered what they’d done to her, what had affected her so deeply.

He walked over to the room directly across the hall and looked inside. It was a mirror image of the first room. He moved to the room next door—same again—then crossed over to its opposite.

When he flicked on the light this time, he got a surprise. The room was furnished. There were two hospital beds, two tables that could be rolled into position so a patient could use them, a padded chair by the door, and a cabinet between the beds.

He walked all the way in.

“What is it?” Chloe called out.

“This one’s not empty.”

There were no sheets on the beds, but the mattresses themselves looked new. He leaned down to take a cautious sniff. Neither smelled of age or decay.

He checked the cabinet, then searched the rest of the room to see if anything had been left behind. The only thing he came up with was a hair, thin and brown and long, that had fallen between the mattress and the headboard of one of the beds. It could have belonged to a million different people, a billion even, but it could have also belonged to Josie. Had his children really been here? Was it possible?

He carefully rolled up the hair, put it in the change pocket of his jeans, then continued searching the room but found nothing else. When he turned to leave he was surprised to see Chloe standing at the door.

“I…I had the same kind of bed,” she said, her eyes flicking to the left down the hall, unconsciously looking in the direction of the room Ash assumed had been hers. “But it was…it was only me. Your kids are lucky they have each other.”

“There’s no way to know if they have each other,” Ash said. “I don’t even know if they were really here.” He looked back toward the beds, trying to hold himself together. “The only thing we know for sure is that they
aren’t
here now.”

When he looked back, Chloe wasn’t in the doorway any more. He exited the room, assuming she’d be back at the ward door, but instead she was standing in the middle of the hall, staring at the last room on the right.