Lockdown

Fifty-one

Carrie slept late. Her late unscheduled appearance the previous evening meant she wasn’t due in to work until lunch. Usually she jumped straight into the shower but this morning she could smell Lock on her skin and she didn’t want to lose that. In the kitchen, she made breakfast for herself and Angel. They both cleared their plates in record time.

She wandered through into the living room and flicked on the TV. A few of the other networks had picked up the Meditech story. They were following in her wake, and had been since Gray Stokes’ assassination. The next month would be a good time to ask for a move into the studio. She liked the buzz of chasing stories, but she also knew that people doing her job were likened to sharks for a reason: you kept moving forward or you died.

On the kitchen counter her PDA blinked red. She picked it up and scrolled through the emails. There was a fresh one from Gail Reindl giving her the overnights. Gail wanted to congratulate her in person when she got into the office. That anchor job was getting closer.

Angel had taken up position at the door and was barking. Carrie went back into the bedroom, threw on some sweats and tied her hair back in a ponytail. She grabbed Angel’s leash from the closet next to the door, along with a jacket, and headed downstairs. In the lobby, the doorman greeted them both.

Outside it was still cold, but the sky was bright blue and the sun was shining. The weather reflected Carrie’s mood. She half walked, half jogged to the end of the block. Angel trotted alongside her, occasionally outpacing her and straining on the leash, desperate to get to the park.

Carrie gave the leash a sharp tug as they reached the crosswalk. ‘Hey, easy there.’

The dog stopped and looked up at her. The sign flashed WALK.

‘Now we can go.’

Carrie stepped off the sidewalk. She didn’t even see the Hummer as it ran the light and barrelled straight towards her, ten thousand pounds of chaos doing forty miles an hour and picking up speed with every foot of blacktop rolling beneath it. She looked up at the last minute, and hauled herself and the dog back up on to the sidewalk as the vehicle’s rims scraped the concrete at the top of a drainage hole.

An old man in his sixties, milk-bottle-thick glasses, touched her arm. ‘Are you OK?’

Her heart was drumming against her chest. Her whole body seemed to be vibrating. It was coming straight for me! she thought.

‘Those damn things don’t belong on the roads!’ the old man shouted after the receding Hummer as it ran the next lights, slowed, and swung left out of sight.