Year One (Chronicles of The One #1)(32)

She’d had her quota of coffee for the day—take only what you need, she reminded herself—and opted for water.

She settled back at the anchor desk, checked her copy, rolled her shoulders. She’d be ready for that wine.

She put on her sober, professional face, took her cue. Into the first segment, she heard a minor ruckus off camera. And Jim’s voice into her ear.

“Bob Barrett just walked in the studio. I think he’s drunk. I’m coming down, see if I can distract him.”

She kept going, saw movement out of the corner of her eye.

Now Carol’s voice came through her earpiece. “Jim’s not going to get here in time. I can cut away.”

“Arlys Reid!” Bob’s rich baritone slurred his words as he walked—more like staggered—toward her.

“It’s all right, Carol. It’s Bob’s desk.”

“Damn right.” He stepped onto the platform, dropped down beside her.

He smelled of … gin, she decided, and stale sweat. His craggy face gleamed with more sweat, showed sickly pale under the studio lights.

Bloodshot eyes bored resentfully into hers.

“Twelve years I sat at this desk.”

“And rock steady. Do you want to finish this evening’s report?”

“Aw, fuck the evening report. The world’s gone to hell and everybody knows it. Ben’s story?” He snorted out a disgusted laugh. “Don’t pluck my heartstrings, rookie. I’ll give them a story.”

Arlys froze when he pulled out a gun and waved it toward Jim as Jim started sprinting to the desk. “You want to stay back there, Jim boy. You all want to stay back. And, Carol, sweetheart, if you cut the feed, I’ll know it. Cut it, and I put a bullet in this pretty girl’s head.”

Arlys tried to swallow on a throat that had gone dead dry. “It’s your desk, Bob,” she repeated.





CHAPTER SEVEN

When she’d been a fledgling reporter with dreams of conducting hard-hitting, insightful interviews with heads of state, Arlys had imagined herself in life-and-death situations, and how her courageous and intrepid on-the-spot reporting would impact the nation.

Now, as she faced a drunk, potentially crazy colleague with a gun, her mind went blank. Panic sweat rolled greasily down her spine.

“Didn’t take long for you to sit your fine, young ass down in my chair, did it? Backstabbing bitch.”

She heard her own voice: tinny, indistinct, as if on a bad connection. “Everyone here knows, everyone in the viewing audience knows I’ve only filled in until you could get back.”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, little girl.”

The “little girl” woke her up, pissed her off enough to snap her back. Later, when she analyzed it, she’d admit the foolishness, the sheer knee-jerk aspect of her reaction, but it got her up and running again.

“You’re better than that, Bob. You’re too good, too experienced to fall back on sexist insults and baseless accusations.”

She added the visual equivalent of a tsk-tsk with the angle of her head, the subtle frown.

“You criticized Ben’s story, and my reporting, and said you had your own story. I’m certain everyone watching would like to hear it as much as I would.”

“You wanna hear my story?”

“Very much.” Keep him talking, keep him talking. Maybe he’d pass out.

Or she’d just drown in a pool of her own panic sweat before he shot her.

“Twenty-six years I’ve been in this business. Twelve years I sat at this desk. Do you know why The Evening Spotlight’s the top-rated news hour?”

“Yes, I do. Because people know they can trust you. Because you’re a steady hand, a calm voice.”

“I didn’t just read the news, I found it, I fought it out, I reported it. I earned this desk.” He smacked the desk with his fist, hard enough to make the papers on it jump. “I earned it every single day. Night after night, I let the world know the truth. I’m going to give the world—what’s left of it—the truth tonight.”

Gun hand waving, he swung back to face the camera.

“It’s over! Are you fucking listening out there? Over! The human race is finished, and in its place come the weird and the strange, demons from hell. If you don’t die choking on your own bile, they’ll hunt you down. I’ve seen them, oozing out of shadows, slithering through the dark. Maybe you’re one.”

When he swung the gun toward Arlys again, numbness set in. He wasn’t going to pass out. She couldn’t run.

“You’re speaking of what’s been termed the Uncanny.”

“Fuck that! They’re evil. What do you think caused this plague? Them! Not some goddamn bird, not some mutating virus. They set it on us, and they’re watching us die like sick dogs. They’ve taken over the government, destroyed governments around the world, and they feed pitiful, third-rate reporters like you bullshit about a cure that’s never coming. They’ll enslave the immune.”

On a jerk, he pivoted back to the camera. “Run! Run if you can. Hide. Fight to spend your last days on Earth in freedom. Kill as many as you can.”

“Bob.” Arlys reached out a hand, but at the flash in his eyes, let it drop to the desk. “You’re a veteran journalist. You know you have to provide evidence, to give facts to substantiate—”