Year One (Chronicles of The One #1)(33)

“Corpses rotting in the streets! That’s your evidence. Demons scratching at the windows,” he whispered. “Grinning as they float. Red eyes staring. I turned off the lights, but I could still see the eyes. They’ll poison the water. They’ll starve us out. And you sit here and spout their lies. You sit here and pretend a miraculous cure’s coming, that there’s some sort of pathetic hope because a man took in one stray kid and plays games with him? People need to listen to me! Destroy them while you can. Run while you can.

“You could all be demons. Every one of you. Maybe we need a demonstration. You! Redhead. What the hell’s your name again?”

“I’m Fred. I’m not a demon.”

He chortled. Arlys could think of no other word for the wet, sick sound of his laugh.

“Says she’s not a demon. Of course she says that. I don’t think they bleed. Not red like humans. We can test that right now.”

“Don’t hurt her, Bob.” Now Arlys did put a hand on his arm. “That’s not who you are.”

“The public has a right to know! It’s our job to tell them, show them the truth.”

“Yes. Yes, it is, but not by hurting an innocent intern who comes in every day, even through all this, to help us do just that. She could’ve gotten out of the city weeks ago, but she stayed and came into work. Jim, he’s the head of our division. He lost his wife in this, Bob, but he’s here, working in the control booth. Every day. Steve is working the camera, every day. Carol is in the booth, every day. All of us trying to keep the station up and running so we can inform and communicate.”

Now Bob’s eyes filled with tears. “There’s no point anymore. No point. False hope’s just a lie in soft focus. You lie in soft focus. I have two dead ex-wives now, and my son … my son’s dead. It’s all over, and they’re coming for the rest of us, so there’s no point. I’d be doing you a favor.”

He turned the gun back to Arlys, cocking his head. “Think about what the demons might do to a young, pretty woman like you. Do you want to risk that?”

“I don’t believe in demons.”

“You will.” He turned to the camera. “You all will, when it’s too late. It’s already too late. This is Bob Barrett, signing off.”

He put the gun under his chin, pulled the trigger.

Blood splattered, a shock of warm and wet, on Arlys’s face even as Bob fell back in the coanchor chair.

She heard—that same bad connection—Fred’s scream, the shouts. For three banging seconds, her vision grayed.

She lifted a trembling hand. “Don’t cut the feed.”

She felt Jim’s hands grip her. “Come with me, Arlys. Come on with me.”

“No, no, please.” She tipped her face to his, saw tears sliding down his cheeks. “I need to … On me, Steve,” she told the cameraman. “Please. Bob Barrett built an illustrious, admirable career as a journalist with his ethics, his integrity, his no-bullshit style, his dedication to serving the ethos of the Fourth Estate, to serving the truth. His son, Marshall, was … seventeen.”

“Eighteen,” Jim corrected.

“Eighteen. I didn’t know Marshall had died, and can only speculate how Bob suffered with his great, personal loss in the last several days. Today, he succumbed to his grief, and we who try to serve the truth, who try to mirror his ethics and integrity, suffer a great, personal loss. He shouldn’t be remembered for his last moments of despair. And even in them, even in them, he showed me I still have a long way to go to reach his level. In tribute to him, I’m going to serve up the truth.”

She knuckled a tear away, saw the red smear of blood, let out a breathy moan.

“I have to.” She looked directly at the camera, hoped—prayed—Chuck was watching. “I have information from a source I consider absolutely reliable. I’ve had this information since early this morning, and I withheld it. I withheld it from my boss, from my coworkers, and from all of you. I apologize, and offer no excuse. Contrary to the information and numbers given to the media by the World Health Organization in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, the death count as of this morning from H5N1-X is more than two billion. This is one-third of the world population, and does not include deaths from murder, suicide, or accidents connected to the virus.”

Under the desk, she forced her hands to release their fists, continued to stare into the camera.

“Again, contrary to what is being reported, the progress on the vaccine has stalled as the virus has, again, mutated. There is no vaccine at this time. Moreover, the virus itself has not yet been identified. Previous reports categorizing H5N1-X as a new strain of avian flu are false.”

She paused, fought to find her center. “All evidence indicates that only humans are affected. Recently sworn-in President Ronald Carnegie contracted H5N1-X, and succumbed to it yesterday. Former Secretary of Agriculture Sally MacBride has been sworn in as president. President MacBride is forty-four, a Yale graduate—summa cum laude—and prior to accepting the cabinet position had served two terms in the United States Senate from the state of Kansas. President MacBride’s husband of sixteen years, Peter Laster, died in week two of the pandemic. Her two children—Julian, age fourteen, and Sarah, age twelve—are reported to be alive and in a safe location. I can’t, at this time, verify the veracity of that information.”