Deadly News: A Thriller Read online

  Despite his protestations, the doctor does end up in charge of ‘snacks’, as the thirteen-year-old calls them. You drink your ration of water too quickly, but it is so, so good. It hurts your throat going down, but in a good way, a way that lets you know, ‘Death may not have been far, but I’ve taken care of that now.’

  You also have a handful of skittles, which are beginning to melt in your palm. You think of all the dirty things you’ve touched, and wish you’d brought some of those cups from the kitchen.

  “That’s the last of the water,” the doctor says, holding up an empty bottle. “We have Perrier, some soda, and a beer—which I suggest no one drink. I’d suggest waiting, but it’s up to you.”

  Abby quickly swallows the candy bar she has been chewing. “About waiting. We also—” She swallows again. “We also found a way out—”

  “What!” the women who’s barely spoken cries out.

  Abby makes a calming gesture at the women. “I know, I know. It’s not exactly easy though.” She rushes through the next part before she can be interrupted. “It’s through a sewer, and we don’t even know if it will actually lead us out of here. I mean, of course it has to lead somewhere, but it doesn’t mean we can get out, fit through”—she throws up her hands—“whatever it is.”

  “A sewer?” The man with the suit jacket asks. He wears the same look the thirteen-year-old had earlier, enough to make you look between them to see if the resemblance is only imagined. “With… Sewage?”

  “Duh,” the girl says. “What else would be there? Potpourri? Gold fish?” She looks away. “Well, we might find dead gold fish.” A wide grin spreads across her face, and she looks at the man with the suit jacket as she says, “We could go fishing. They’re pre-marinated.”

  “Ugh. You know, there’s a song, it goes, ‘Teenagers scare, the living shit out of me.’ It’s very accurate.”

  While you were distracted by this exchange, Abby, the doctor, his wife, and the scruffy man were talking, though you don’t know what they said, since you had, after all, been distracted. You focus in on them now, tuning out the girl and the man, and also the long-haired man who has joined in by singing a part of the song the suit jacket man recited.

  “Alone?” the wife asks.

  “She’s right,” the doctor says. “It’s safer that way, no need to risk everyone.”

  “Right,” Abby agrees. “And it’s better if most of us stay here.”

  “Wait for rescue,” the scruffy man says, nodding.

  “How long will it take?” the quiet woman asks.

  Abby looks at her, smiles. “Don’t know, but I’m in good shape, I can move quick. I’ll go as fast as I safely can.”

  You really don’t like the idea of this. What if she does get out? Even if she means to come back, wouldn’t it be more likely, indeed easier and more reasonable to just tell the police where everyone else was than to crawl back in through sewage and tell the rest of them the way was clear?

  Even you couldn’t fault her for sending a proxy instead of coming back herself.

  You’ll have to go with her, you decide, and can already smell the stench, imagine the slimy feel of the blackwater as it washes over your legs, seeps into your clothes and up toward— “I’ll go with you.”

  The three of them stop conversing and look at you.

  Abby shakes her head. “I don’t think—”

  “Look,” you interrupt, “it will be safer if there’s two of us. What if something happens to you? Or me? With two of us, one can came back for help.”

  She contemplates this.

  “That does sound like a good idea,” the wife says. She looks you over. “Should you go, or maybe…”

  “I’ll go,” you say.

  Abby shrugs. “Okay.” She grimaces. “This isn’t gonna be fun.”

  Ten minutes later, trudging through dilute human waste, you agree with her earlier assessment. You try to only breathe through your mouth, but this doesn’t seem to help.

  At a fork, the two of you pause.

  “Any ideas?”

  You look at both passageways. Neither looks better than the other. You randomly point to your right.

  “Sure, why not.” She heads off in that direction, and you follow.

  You wonder if you should have tried to put more effort into deciding, maybe see if you could feel a breeze coming from one direction.

  As you continue on, the tunnel seems to shrink in around you. You are not sure if this is just in your head, until said body part scrapes against the ceiling.

  “It’s getting tight,” Abby says, hunching down.

  You follow suit and you both continue on. Shorty, you reach a sight that fills you with both joy and dread.

  “A ladder!”

  “Yeah,” you call ahead.

  “Okay,” Abby says, facing you. You’ve both stopped at the ladder. Looking up, you see it’s rather tall; the rungs disappear into darkness. “I’ll go first, you wait here until I get back or call you up.”

  You begin to object, but it’s too late. She climbs the ladder swiftly. Soon she is out of sight, and the only evidence you are not alone is the sound she makes ascending.

  After what feels like far too long, you shout upward. “Abby?”

  “Hold on,” her voice echoes back. It sounds strained.

  You hear a dull thudding. Then it sounds like she’s coming back down.

  “Fuck!”

  “What?”

  “I think it goes to a street, or, I don’t know, a manhole anyway. It seemed kinda quiet.” She kicks at the water, and some splashes on you. You’re already so dirty— but still, you take a step back. “Sorry. But I can’t budge it.”

  “Want me to try?”

  She shakes her head. “If you want. I think it’s welded. I don’t know, it might just be a drain hole or something. I don’t really know anything about sewers.” She looks at you expectantly.

  You shrug. “Me either.” This isn’t entirely true, but nothing you know will help this situation.

  “Goddammit. I guess let’s go back.”

  She seems so disappointed that you can’t stop yourself before saying, “There’s the other one. We can check that.”

  “Probably the same. Yeah, we should check it though.”

  The other tunnel is much longer, but thirty minutes later, you find yourself in a very similar situation.

  Abby jumps down, skipping the last few rungs. Water again splashes you. She smirks. “Sorry.” A short laugh. Then she becomes serious. “That one didn’t even have anything I could try to move. It was just a slit.” She looks up. “Why the hell would they put a ladder here? They have freaking tiny fairies working for them?”

  You laugh.

  Disheartened, Abby leads the two of you back through the sewer. When you reach the door to exit the sewer, Abby asks, “That way?”

  You look where she points, down the opposite direction from which you just came. You might as well. You don’t even notice the stench any longer. You glance at the exit door longingly, then nod. “Sure.”

  The other way leads to a dead end, where water pours through a small opening less than a foot high, but stretching across the width of the tunnel.

  Abby stares at it. “I wonder if I could fit.”

  Just the thought of crawling into that makes you shudder. “You don’t know what’s on the other side. You might not be able to get back through.”

  “Shit. You’re right.” She presses the back of her hand to her head. “I guess we’re going to be waiting for rescue.”

  “I can smell you already!” the thirteen-year-old calls before you’ve even made it back into the inner room with the fire, the circle of people around it.

  “So?” the scruffy man asks as the two of you come into view.

  You both shake your heads, but you imagine it was obvious from the looks on your faces.

  “It was too much to hope for,” the doctor’s wife says.

  The two of you take your seat
s. The quiet woman glares at you as you sit. The others scoot further away.

  The man with the suit jacket groans. “You really do reek. Did you fall in?” He asks this last very seriously.

  Abby shakes her head, but otherwise doesn’t respond.

  “So we’re stuck here,” the champagne bottle woman says.

  “Any signs of rescuers?” the long-haired man asks.

  “Not that I saw. I didn’t really look though.”

  “Do you think they’ll find us in here?” the girl asks.

  Abby doesn’t answer at first, just looks around. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “I’m not going back out there,” the man with the suit jacket says.

  “Yeah,” the champagne bottle woman agrees. “It’s dangerous. What if there’s another explosion? We don’t even know what caused it. It could be a gas leak.”

  “With everything she’s told us?” The scruffy man gestures toward Abby. “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t either,” Abby says.

  “You can’t know,” the woman replies. She staring at Abby hopefully.

  Abby whimpers, rests her head against her knuckles. “I do. They wanted me on this train.”

  No one asks who ‘They’ are.

  “Are you sure?” The doctor now scoots closer toward Abby.

  She sits upright. “Yeah, almost positive.”

  “We don’t have popcorn,” the teen says, “but we have candy.”

  “What?”

  “You know, like a movie.”

  “You’re far too happy with our situation,” the scruffy man says. “You remind me of people I used to work with.”

  “Oh ha ha. Come on Abby, we don’t have anything else to do.”

  “We all should know,” the wife agrees. “And if we’re still here when you’re done, we can finish our story.”

  “Your story?” Abby asks. “That’s right, you said something happened to you?”

  She looks at her husband, nodding.

  “They were telling us while you two were gone,” the scruffy man says. “Eerie.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The coincidences,” the man with the suit jacket says. “Or not-coincidences. It’s similar to yours. Very similar.”

  Abby frowns. “Maybe you should finish first.”

  “Oh, well, there’s not much more to tell.”

  “Okay, tell the rest then.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s more wine? No, didn’t expect it. Very well. To catch you up, my husband and I—Bill, by the way, I’m Matilda,” she laughs. “How could I have forgotten to mention our names?

  “In any case, Bill here was seeing a patient not too long ago.” She looks at her husband. “Oh, when was this?” Before he can reply, she waves a hand dismissively. “No matter, not too long back, he had a patient he was seeing—he works at a hospital, he was working the ER that day—”

  “Actually,” the husband interrupts, “I wasn’t. I was paged. A nurse told me John was busy with a car accident.”

  “Right. So he was seeing this patient, when a man comes stumbling in with burns. All dirty and… What’d he smell like?”

  The husband gets a faraway look. “Gingerbread.”

  “He says he needs help. This is unusual, since people aren’t just allowed back there.”

  “Yes. So I was rather dumbfounded, I didn’t know what to say.” He laughs. “But then he said something that got me into action.”

  The Story of Bill and Matilda

  Bill walked into the room the patient was in. The woman lying on the hospital bed did not appear fully lucid.

  He looked at the clipboard with this patient’s information. “Hello, Jane. How are you feeling?”

  She didn’t respond.

  He looked over the information. He wasn’t sure why he had been paged, since it seemed she had already been looked after; as much as she could be, in any case.

  Before he could try again or find who had paged him and see what this was about, a man stormed into the curtained-off room, almost taking the curtain with him.

  “Doctor!” he cried

  Bill took a step back. He quickly glanced at the man’s wrists for a weapon or signs he escaped restraints, but saw neither. And the man was wearing street clothes. “Can I help you?”

  “God, I hope so!” He coughed and Bill caught a whiff of something sweet. “My daughter, you’ve gotta help her.”

  “If she’s been admitted, someone will—”

  “No! She’s outside. She won’t make it if I try to sign in or whatever. She doesn’t have time for paperwork!”

  “I’m—”

  “Please! She’s just a little girl.” He broke down, looking at the floor. “I can’t lose her. She’s only a kid.” He looked Bill in the eye. His eyes were glistening in the florescent light. “Please.”

  Goddammit, Bill thought. “Where is she?”

  “Thank you, thank you. Right here.” He waved in a random direction, and began heading that way.

  Bill followed.

  When they reached the automatic doors at the back of the emergency room, where the ambulances brought in patients, Bill stopped at the threshold between inside and out. “She’s out here?”

  “I didn’t want to move her. My car’s right there.”

  Bill called to one of the nurses. She seemed unhappy with being interrupted, but came over. “I’m checking on something.” He scanned the area and found what he was looking for: a few police cars parked in the fire lane. There were always a few on nights like this, which was pretty much every night. “Find an officer, this man might be unstable.” He subtly gestured toward the man, now standing by a beat-up looking car.

  “Um. Okay.”

  At this, Bill exited. A few paces away from the car, he squinted inside. There was a human form on the passenger seat.

  “Other side,” the man said, waving frantically. He then went over and opened the passenger door. “Sweetie?” Bill heard the man say. “Sweetie, wake up. This man is going to help you.”

  Bill’s perspective of the situation shifted, and his heart sunk. He would have preferred the man was hopped up on drugs.

  “I need some room,” he said, kneeling on the asphalt to get a better look. The girl was shivering. She was maybe five. “What can you tell me about her status?” Too formal, he admonished himself.

  “Are you blind!” He put a hand to his face. “Sorry, I’m just—” He leaned in and moved the blanket the girl was wrapped in away. A large patch of red stood out against her T-shirt.

  Bill almost fell backward. “Jesus! Why didn’t you call an ambulance?” But he was already up, moving toward the emergency room.

  The girl was put on a stretcher and brought into the emergency room, where time slipped away as Bill fell into routine.

  Now, everything that could be done for her, was, and they were in one of the actual rooms, with a small window and a door, which was shut.

  The man was seated in a chair next to his daughter, holding her hand. She was unconscious.

  The room was on account of the two officers in the room, one standing by Bill’s side at the door, and the other sitting in a chair opposite the father.

  “Okay, Randall,” the one in the chair said. “Can you tell me how your daughter was injured?”

  The man’s eyes were still wet, though he’d stopped crying. “We were at the store.” He pointed off in a direction. “I was trying to decide which brand of sourdough bread to buy. The brand I usually by seemed stale, so I was looking at the others. Then I heard a scream.

  “I panicked. I looked around and saw Lily wasn’t in sight, and I thought, Oh, no, she’s hurt.” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have had her out so late.

  “Then I heard a pop. It wasn’t very loud. But I guess it was a gunshot—”

  “A gunshot?” The officer looked to her partner, then back to Randall. “Randall, when was this? Was it a gunshot?”

  He stared blankly a
t the officer. “Oh, Jesus.” He put his head in his hand. “The store. The store was robbed.”

  The officer standing next to Bill said something into the radio on his right shoulder. Then, “Which store were you at?”

  “Uh, uh, Albertson’s? Vons? You know, that one, by the McDonalds.”

  The officer none too gently moved Bill aside and exited the room talking rapidly into the mike on his shoulder.

  The officer interviewing Randall eyed Bill, then focused again on Randall. “Okay, go on. You heard a scream, then what sounded like a gunshot.”

  “Oh, no it was. I saw the gun. He’d shot her.”

  “Who? Who’d he shoot?”

  “Who? Are you blind?” He shook his daughter’s hand at the officer.

  She turned to Bill again. “Doctor? She was shot?”

  Bill shook his head. “No. It was clearly a laceration. Shallow. There’s no sign of a gunshot wound anywhere on her.”

  “Okay, Randall. I need you to really think for me. Just tell me exactly what you remember.”

  “The man shot—”

  “No, just tell me the actual events. You were on the bread isle, heard a scream then a pop. You walked—”

  “I ran.”

  “Ran to, where? The front of the store? The back?”

  “The front, by the cash registers.”

  “And what did you see? Just the images, try to paint a picture. Try to remember what the man was wearing.”

  “A mask. I remember that. I think it was black. He had a gun— No, he had something in his hand. I think it was a gun.”

  The officer was nodding as she wrote. “Good. Perfect. Go on.”

  “She was on the floor next to him, off to the side. By those baskets. You know, the ones you hold.”

  “Your daughter was?”

  “Yes. When he saw me, he pointed his finger at me. I remember it was his right hand. He asked if she was mine. He used those words.

  “I don’t remember what I said, but he told me to get her to a hospital. He said there was one just a few blocks away. I knew that already, but hearing him say it gave me hope.”

  When Randall didn’t continue, the officer said, “So you went to her, and then what?”

  He looked at his daughter, the beeping machines surrounding her, her hand in his. “I carried her outside. He stopped me. Said she only had minutes to live, that if I tried to do anything else but get her to the hospital, she wouldn’t make it.