Death Watch (10 page)

A
n uneasy feeling wormed inside Sydney. Could it be that as she sat next to Lyle Vandeveer last night a nanobot was swimming in his bloodstream? A ticking time bomb smaller than a human hair? Could that really be what killed him?

She turned to Hunz, who still had the floor at Command Central. “Can they be detected? These nanobots. Is there a scanner that can detect them?”

“They’re microscopic,” he said. “I know that those who implant them can give them acoustic signals. Other than that ” He shrugged.

“Something worth looking into,” Helen said.

“What about Baranov and Kiselev?” Grant Forsythe asked. “Do we know their whereabouts?”

“The FBI has men on it.”

“Good,” Helen said. “What else do we have? Sydney?”

It took Sydney a moment to make the mental transition. She was still thinking about Hunz’s nanobots. When she realized Helen was expecting some kind of report from her regarding Death Watch, her heart stalled. Just like in high school. The one time you don’t do your homework and the teacher calls on you. Everything she had was reported by Hunz last night on the air.

“We have the follow-up on Lyle Vandeveer’s death, that he died of a blood clot,” she said lamely. “And there was a hoax last night at UCLA.”

“A dormitory hoax?” Cori scoffed. “Hardly breaking news.”

“Anything else?” Helen asked.

“Oh! Lyle Vandeveer’s brother says he received a confirmation regarding Lyle’s death watch notice. We haven’t found anyone else who’s received a corroborating notification, but it might be something.”

“Good,” Helen said.

Trying to make up for the lack of substance with quantity, she forged ahead. “And this morning, I plan to go to the Homeland Security Internet page. They’ve been logging the death watch notices. I thought I’d download the information and see if I could find any patterns.”

“Be sure to make a list of any injections they’ve had,” Hunz said. “Location. Date.”

“And don’t spend too much time playing solitaire,” Cori said.

“Is that all?” Helen asked.

Sydney grinned sheepishly and nodded.

“Helen,” Cori said, “I think it’s pretty obvious Sydney’s in over her head. Maybe I should take over for her.”

“Why?” Helen said. There was a sharp edge to the question. “Do you have a contact with the Russian mafia’s press secretary?”

Cori Zinn’s face reddened. Next to her, Grant Forsythe chuckled. From the tone in Helen’s voice, Cori was not on her list of favorite people right now.

“In case anyone hasn’t heard, seems she lied to get the governor’s interview,” Grant said. “No exclusive.”

“Shut up, Grant,” Cori said.

“How about a death watch clock on the news set?” Sol Rosenthal said, changing the subject. “You know, like the ones they have that keep an ongoing tally of American debt. How about a clock that updates the total number of deaths as they’re reported? We could have it running behind the anchor desk.”

“That’s rather ghoulish, if you ask me,” Helen said.

“I think it’ll make a splash,” Sol said.

Which meant it was as good as done.

S
ydney sat down at one of the station’s computer terminals just after Sol propelled Hunz into his office for coffee and croissants. She rubbed her eyes as she waited for the Department of Homeland Security homepage to load.

She took a sip of orange juice she’d grabbed from the vending machine and stared at the screen. There were actually two Internet sites for Homeland Security. One, a subdirectory of the official White House site, featured current news related to national security. The lead story today was about the death watch killings. An announcement indicated the president would be addressing the nation this evening on the subject of Death Watch. It was rumored in the newsroom he’d raise the Awareness system to Level Four, which meant government and public buildings would be closed; transportation systems would be monitored, redirected, and constrained; and emergency personnel mobilized.

Two raises in two days was unprecedented.

How do you mobilize a nation
against
nanobots?

She scanned the rest of the site to see if it said anything about the Russian mafia. She found nothing.

Switching over to the Homeland Security site, she found an organizational chart of the Department of Homeland Security; a photo of Wallace Perkins, the department’s second director; and instructions to follow in case of emergency or disaster. After Hunz’s briefing, Sydney realized how dated the information was. It was based on prior terrorist acts—the role of fire and police departments in an emergency, how to report suspicious activity around bridges and high-profile buildings, and so forth. There was nothing about how to guard against a subatomic nanobot attack.

She found a link to recent news items and clicked on it. A new screen appeared. At the top, a banner headline: Death Watch Notifications.

Bingo. One more click and a list of known death watch victims appeared. It could be sorted by name, state, or chronologically.

Sydney clicked on the date and time column.

Jeffrey Conley appeared twenty-first on the list. The seventh person to die in Los Angeles, the twenty-first in America. He died minutes after a woman in Montana and a West Virginia man.

The length of the list chilled Sydney’s flesh. A black dot appeared by the names of those confirmed dead. It reminded her of
Treasure Island.
The cursed black spot.

Halfway down the list the times caught up with the present. There was an hour lag between the placing of black dots and present time, nothing to indicate this was anything but an administrative lag as the deaths were confirmed.

Sydney printed out the list, then clicked on the state column to get a list of California names. Lyle Vandeveer’s name stood out. Sydney wondered who would inherit his trains and scenery layout.

Sydney bit her lower lip to fight back her emotions.

She’d promised him he would beat Death Watch.

After printing out the state list, she scanned the lower half for LA residents, those people who were counting the minutes until they died. One name didn’t fit. The address was a temporary one, the Excelsior Hotel in Century City. An out-of-town visitor had reported receiving a death watch notice.

“Welcome to California,” Sydney muttered.

Before logging off, she checked her email. It was a reflex, something she did several times a day. Today, however, the moment she hit Enter, while the computer accessed her account, her heart caught in her throat at the sudden realization of what she might find in her in-box.

The screen changed, and she wished she hadn’t initiated the process. She hadn’t really prepared herself for what she might see. She’d forgotten how everything had changed since yesterday.

Checking email. Opening a mailbox. Answering the phone. Answering the front door. Yesterday these were ordinary events. Today, a person’s life could change by any one of them.

Her personalized email screen came up.

Thirteen new messages.

Sydney stared at the number for several moments. A mouse click would list the messages by subject. Was she sure she wanted to do this?

Her breathing was shallow. She was spooked, she admitted it. And the longer she sat there staring at the screen, the more spooked she became.

She reached for the mouse and clicked the program closed. She didn’t want to know. It was better not to know, wasn’t it? It was unnatural for a person to know the precise moment of her death, wasn’t it?

Terminally ill patients knew, but they were given a general time frame. You have six months to live. You have a year to live. To know the exact time was to share an experience with death-row prisoners, but they’d done something to deserve their fate. Even then, some people argued that knowing one’s time of death was cruel and unusual punishment.

It was better not to know. You could put off thinking about it. You could deny it would ever happen to you. You could believe you were going to be the exception to the history of humankind and live forever, or that like Enoch and Elijah, God would spare you the penalty of death and take you straight to heaven. Jesus could return at any moment, couldn’t he?

Sydney stood and backed away from the computer. The screen had returned to the station’s homepage.

She stared at it without looking at it.

Wanting to go. Wanting to know.

She sat back down and logged in. She clicked on the button that called up her email. Since it had already been retrieved, it came up faster this time.

Thirteen new messages.

Taking a deep breath, Sydney clicked on her in-box icon. She scanned the list, looking for two words.

She recognized several online store names, merchandisers from whom she’d ordered who now bombarded her daily with ads. There
were replies to emails she’d sent; forwarded email, usually junk poems with animated pictures encouraging you to pass the email to ten friends.

Three quarters down the list she saw it.

Two words.

Death Watch.

S
ydney’s mind wasn’t on her driving. She was thinking about the death watch email she’d found in her in-box. It had been sent from the public library by The Rev, the same man who’d tried contacting her yesterday. He claimed he knew who was behind the death watch notices and, this time, wanted her to meet him at the Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery at noon today. He didn’t give a description of himself, said it wasn’t necessary. He knew what she looked like.

What had Cori said about this guy? That she’d interviewed him for a mental insanity news feature—that was it, wasn’t it? Wasn’t he the guy who claimed he could talk to angels?

Sydney had deleted the message, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Probably because the death watch subject heading had scared ten years off her life, and then when she realized it wasn’t what she thought it was, she’d gotten angry at him for scaring her.

But even if she had the time, which she didn’t, she wouldn’t have followed up on the story. Newscasters get tips for stories, every day from people who, nine times out of ten, have an ax to grind or are crackpots.

Pulling to a stop in the middle of a downtown intersection brought Sydney’s mind back to the present. Her left signal blinked repeatedly while she waited for a break in the traffic. A steady flow of cars streamed past. The signal light turned yellow. The cars kept coming. Red. Still the cars came, two, three, four, five, before finally someone stopped, but by then, the cross traffic was crowding into the intersection, honking at her because she was in their way.

Driving in LA used to bother her. Not so much anymore. If you wanted to get around in LA, this was the kind of thing you had to deal with.

Moving again, Sydney shifted her thoughts to the Homeland Security Web site and the growing list of death watch victims. The list was limited to deaths in America. Other Web sites attempted to tally worldwide totals. It was these numbers that would power the KSMJ death watch clock to tick with relentless horror.

Sydney found that scanning the worldwide list of names was in some ways like reading headstones in a cemetery. You’re aware that they were all dead people, but it didn’t impact you emotionally because you didn’t know them.

Reading Lyle Vandeveer’s name on the list was different. His name got to her. It was personal.

She told herself this next interview would be different. She’d made a mistake with Lyle Vandeveer. She let herself get too close to him. She knew at the time it was a mistake, yet she did it anyway. A reporter is supposed to remain detached. Objective. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

The twin towers of the Excelsior Hotel rose up in front of her. Sydney began preparing herself for the interview, to distance herself mentally and emotionally.

S
ydney St. James fell in love with Cheryl McCormick the instant she laid eyes on her. She fell in love with little Stacy a second later. Mother and daughter greeted her with smiles.

“My, they sure grow them pretty out here,” Cheryl said, when she first saw Sydney.

“Actually, I’m an Iowa girl,” Sydney said.

Cheryl invited her in while Stacy stared at her from behind her mother’s legs. For a woman who had just recently learned she was going to die, Cheryl seemed unusually chipper. A show of strength for the little girl’s sake?

“Honey, why don’t you color in the other room,” Cheryl said. “Mommy’s going to talk to this nice lady.”

Sydney was impressed that Stacy agreed without a fuss. Before going, however, she had to show Sydney some of the pictures she’d already colored.

“Wonder Woman!” Sydney flipped page after page of green scribbled faces. “I love Wonder Woman! I used to pretend I was Wonder Woman when I was a little girl.”

Stacy beamed.

While Cheryl deposited her daughter in an adjoining room, Sydney took a quick look around. The suite was immaculate, but cold. Tile floors. Gold inlaid pillars. Cathedral ceiling. Polished ferns strategically placed. Maybe the subject of her visit was influencing her, but it reminded her of a mausoleum.

Cheryl returned and joined Sydney in a little alcove overlooking the city.

“When are you due?” Sydney asked.

“Less than a month,” Cheryl said. “Will there be cameras?”

“The cameraman’s about thirty minutes behind me. I like to do a precamera interview. That way we both know what to expect.”

“How considerate. Thank you. Is what I’m wearing all right?”

Cheryl was dressed in an emerald green maternity top that draped gracefully over her form and set off her red hair.

“You look beautiful,” Sydney said.

It was the truth. Cheryl McCormick had an aura of pleasantness about her that had nothing to do with her expectant condition and everything to do with her personality, which troubled Sydney even more. How could this woman be so composed under the circumstances?

“May I see the letter?” Sydney asked. She found it difficult to say
Death Watch,
as though saying it would confirm it. It wasn’t needed anyway. Cheryl knew what she was referring to.

Without getting up, she groaned in an effort to reach across her belly for her purse. Sydney jumped up to help.

“Thank you,” Cheryl said. “Sometimes I feel like a beached whale at low tide.”

With Cheryl directing her, Sydney found the envelope stuffed in the purse. She opened it. The wording was identical to all the other death watch notices. The time of notification was at the top. 7:28 a.m. The exact time she checked in. Cheryl had less than forty-two hours to live.

“Did anything happen after you got this?”

Sydney was hoping Cheryl would say no. That this was someone’s idea of a joke, like the one played at Dykstra Hall.

“How did you know?” Cheryl said. “I got a phone call shortly after we settled in. It was the strangest voice.” She wrinkled her nose. “I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. Weird, huh? Sort of like special effects. And it was as though it knew I was the one going to answer the phone, you know what I mean? No hello. It didn’t ask who it was speaking to. It just repeated what was in the letter.”

Sydney’s heart ached. This was the real thing. “No, it doesn’t sound weird at all. And it conforms to prior experiences.”

“So what’s this all about? Are you at liberty to tell me?”

Sydney glanced out the window. An entire city lay before her. For most people, this was an ordinary workday. For death watch victims like Cheryl, there was no such thing as ordinary anymore.

“We don’t know,” Sydney said. “At this point, we really don’t know.”

Cheryl smiled.

Smiled.

Why would Cheryl smile?

“You seem so calm about all this,” Sydney said. “If I were in your shoes I’d probably be a blubbering puddle of emotion right about now.”

Cheryl glanced down at her hands that were folded serenely across her belly. Her expression was that of a game show contestant who knew the answer to the million-dollar question.

“I have to admit,” she said, “I have some experience in this sort of thing.”

“You do?”

“A degree in theater. I’m used to being under the lights, to thinking on my feet. We did a lot of improv.”

“You’re talking about the game show.”

Cheryl nodded. “I’m hoping my experience will give me an edge. We can really use the money.”

“And the death watch notice?”

“I was surprised at first. Off the record? It shook me. That’s why I called the police. Then I remembered where I was. Hollywood, with all those reality shows.” She looked around. “It wasn’t hard to figure out. They put us up in these rooms outfitted with hidden cameras, introduce an unexpected element when I check in—the letter—designed to throw me off balance, then send someone to interview me. All part of the game. “She leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered, “When I answered the door, you confirmed my suspicions. You’re far too pretty to be a reporter.”

Sydney was stunned. Cheryl McCormick had no idea she was going to die.

“Haven’t you watched the news lately?” Sydney asked.

“Will there be a lot of current-event questions? For the last week, I’ve been so tired, all I’ve done is take care of Stacy. Last night was the first time I’d turned on the television in a week. Talk about good timing. You know, I called
Wonder Wheel
on a lark, never expecting to get through, and when I did, I certainly didn’t expect to win. After that, everything’s pretty much a blur.”

The poor thing didn’t know.

There had been times when Sydney was appalled at how little people were aware of world events, until she realized that this was her chosen field, not theirs. It was sort of like dentists who are appalled at how little thought people give to their teeth, and nutritionists in arms over how little concern people give to their diets.

She fingered Cheryl McCormick’s letter and thought of little Stacy in the next room, and of the unborn child Cheryl was carrying. How to break the news to her? All of a sudden Sydney knew how doctors feel when they say, “I’m sorry, it’s cancer.” Or police knocking on the door in the middle of the night with “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“Cheryl, there’s no easy way to tell you this,” she said.

The pregnant woman looked at her with an unassuming grin.

“This notice? It’s not part of the
Wonder
Wheel game. It’s not Hollywood. It’s real.”

Sydney spoke in a hushed voice so Stacy wouldn’t overhear. She told Cheryl about Jeffrey Conley’s car accident, about Lyle Vandeveer, about the escalating terror that was gripping the world, and about the 100 percent fatality rate.

Cheryl listened intently. At times a hint of a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. She still wanted to believe this was part of the show, that it was Sydney’s role to sell the charade. But there was something about Sydney’s earnestness that began to sink in. Her cheerful foundation began to weaken until, at last, her footing gave
way and she plunged into icy reality—in less than two days she was going to die.

“My baby,” Cheryl said. A trembling hand caressed her belly. “If I die, my baby will die.”

She broke down and sobbed.

There was a knock at the door.

Torn between comforting Cheryl and answering the door, Sydney answered the door because she thought she knew who it was. She was right.

Fred Zappa, the clothes hamper with legs, lumbered in with his KSMJ camera atop his shoulder. “Here comes bad news,” he said cheerfully.

Sydney grabbed him before he got two steps into the room.

“This isn’t a good time,” she said.

Zappa saw the weeping woman on the far side of the room. “I can’t hang around,” he said. “I have to be at city hall in forty-five minutes or Cori will have my head.”

“What about after that?”

“Sorry.”

Sydney looked at Cheryl. It would be cruel to put her in front of a camera now.

“Just tell them we couldn’t get the interview. I’ll explain when I get back to the station.”

“We have a slot for it at six,” Zappa said.

“I’ll take responsibility for it,” Sydney said, turning him toward the door. The cameraman offered no resistance.

“Your funeral,” Zappa said, shaking his head. “But, hey, I’m easy. This way I can grab a donut.”

He ambled out.

Sydney rejoined Cheryl in the alcove. She was flushed red and wet with tears.

“What am I going do?” she cried.

Sydney put her arms around the woman. So much for remaining detached and objective.

How desperately she wanted to tell Cheryl it would be all right, that she would use the full resources of the station to protect her. Then she thought of Lyle Vandeveer and how much her assurances had helped him.

“I’ll contact the station,” Sydney said, “and tell them you’re not going to be able to go on the game show tonight.”

Cheryl nodded, dabbing her nose and eyes with a tissue.

Then, suddenly, she changed her mind.

“No, I have to go on tonight.”

“Cheryl, you’re in no condition.”

“I need the money. Especially now. Who’s going to take care of my babies after I’m gone? If I win, at least they’ll have money. If I win big, maybe they’ll even have enough for college.”

“You’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself.”

But Cheryl had made up her mind. “I have to do it.”

“What about relatives? Is there someone you can call?”

“We’re alone. Both my parents died when I was young. I was raised in foster homes. Larry’s father died a few years ago. His mother is sickly and needs round-the-clock care. And his only brother is younger. He’s in the Marines in Afghanistan.”

Sydney took her hand. “You’re not alone. We’ll work something out. I promise you.” She meant it, though she had no idea how she could complete the promise. It didn’t matter. The way she felt right now, she’d lead a crusade to see that Cheryl’s children were taken care of.

“I should make airline reservations for after the show tonight,” Cheryl said. “No offense, but I don’t want to die in LA.”

“Can you fly this late in your term?”

“I lied to get out here. I can do it again.”

Sydney said, “Let me take care of getting you back to Chicago.”

“Evanston, actually,” Cheryl said. “And I should call my obstetrician. If I’m going to die, I’m not taking this baby with me.”