Sick

34

Within fifteen minutes of being posted online, video of what appeared to be two teenagers murdered by soldiers somewhere within the quarantine zone had been picked up by several blogs, and spread through the Internet via Twitter, Facebook and a half dozen other social networking sites.

Its first television appearance was on a German network, thirty-five minutes later. Another hour passed before the American networks finally started showing the footage. While some immediately dismissed it as phony, others pointed not only to the effort that would have been needed to intentionally create something like it, but also to the footage’s incredible realism.

Network researchers worked feverishly to find out who had posted the video. The account had an ID made up of numbers and letters that, on the surface, meant nothing to anyone. When the video-hosting site was contacted, they denied requests for the user’s true identity, citing privacy guidelines. The only information that had been uploaded with the video was the line: Shot by my friend this morning in the Mojave quarantine zone, so sad!

While the search for the poster was going on, the Army vehemently denied any connection to the events in the video. They, too, pushed the idea that the footage was staged.

The breakthrough came in the form of a phone call from a teenage girl named Frances Newcombe of Ridgecrest, inside the quarantine zone, to her cousin John working at Glitz, an entertainment-focused cable channel based in Los Angeles. John was a producer on the long-running show Tinseltown Tales, which, in his case, meant he spent most of his time in edit bays making sure the shows were fast-paced, exciting, and made at least a little sense.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told her when she said she knew who had uploaded the video. He’d been tied up most of the day on an episode about a recently failed celebrity marriage, and was unaware of the latest developments concerning the Sage Flu.

“How can you not know?” Frances said. “It’s been on the news, like, nonstop for the last hour.”

“What has?”

“The video of the soldiers carrying away the bodies of two people they’d killed in the quarantine zone!”

The producer frowned. Sure, there was the unfortunate incident in Tehachapi, but soldiers openly firing on civilians? Not likely. Besides, his cousin was sixteen, an age when kids easily jumped to conclusions and felt everything was the end of the world.

“Hold on,” he said, then put his hand over the phone. “Tony, you know anything about some footage on TV of soldiers and dead bodies in the quarantine zone?”

Tony, the editor, spun around in his chair. “Yeah. It’s wild, isn’t it?”

“You saw it?”

Tony nodded. “When I went to get more coffee a few minutes ago. It was on the TV in the break room.”

“Who shot it?”

“They don’t know. They’re trying to figure that out. Someone uploaded it to the Internet but didn’t give their name.”

John took his hand off the phone. “You know who shot this video?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Frances said. “Okay, I don’t know who actually shot it, but I do know who put it up. It’s my friend Martina’s account.”

“You’re sure.”

“One hundred percent positive.”

“Have you asked her about it?”

“I tried calling her cell, but I couldn’t get through.”

“Give me a second,” John said. If his cousin was right, and this video was generating a lot of buzz, then this could be a very, very big moment for him. “Okay. Give me her name and her number.” She did. “What about her home? If we can’t get through to her cell, maybe we can find her there.” His cousin gave him that, too.

“Don’t forget I’m the one who gave it to you,” she said.

“Don’t worry. I’ll pass this on, and maybe someone will call you to find out more.”

“You mean like one of the reporters? Will I be on the air?”

“You never know. I’m glad you called me, Frances. I’ll talk to you later.”

He hung up before she could ask anything else.

“What was that all about?” Tony asked.

John just smiled, then ran out of the room. He didn’t stop running until he reached the door of the network president, who, it turned out, was watching the desert canyon footage on their sister network PCN at that very moment.

When the video of the desert shooting first aired on PCN, Tamara and Joe had been arguing about the story she and Bobby had put together about the riot at Tehachapi, and, specifically, what they thought had really happened to Gavin.

“I’m telling you,” Joe said. “The minute that goes on the air, we are all fired.”

“You saw what I saw,” she argued. “I could tell. It was in your eyes. You know it was the same guy.”

“We all think it was the same guy. We don’t know one hundred percent. But that’s not even my point.”

“Oh, come on, Joe. How can you say that? That man killed my brother.”

“See,that’swhat I’m talking about. You aren’t objective on this. Even if it is the same man, and he did kill your brother, you are too emotionally involved to be the one reporting it.”

“Of course I’m emotionally involved, but I’ve kept myself in check and you know it! That’s a damn fine report and we need to air it.”

“Oh, we do, do we? And when whoever’s anchoring comes back to you, that is, if they haven’t fired us already for airing something we haven’t warned them about, when he comes back and asks you questions about the report, you’re going to keep your cool? You won’t show any emotion? What if he questions the connection? What if he just hints that maybe there’s another explanation? You going to be able to hold it together then?”

She clenched her teeth together. “It’s the truth, and you know it.”

“No. Idon’tknow it. Not for sure.”

She gawked at him. “What? You saw the same thing I—”

“Hey, guys!” Bobby called from inside the van.

“—did. You know it’s the same guy. You know he—”

“Guys, seriously! Get in here!” Bobby yelled.

Tamara glanced over at the van, then back at Joe. “We’re not done,” she told him, then headed over to see what the other member of their team wanted.

Bobby was sitting in the chair in front of the mobile editing station. On one screen was footage he’d been shooting around the base. He was supposed to be putting together a report about the conditions the media had to work under since being moved to the base. On the other screen was a live feed from the network of some amateur footage shot in what looked like a desert canyon. Tamara could see several people in biohazard suits, and, during a brief second when the camera tilted up just a bit, at least one helicopter outside the canyon.

The suited people were standing next to a couple of bodies.

“What is this?” she asked.

“More Internet video,” Bobby told her. “Network’s played this one a couple times already.”

As she watched it, Tamara couldn’t help but feel the sense of something familiar.

Whoever was doing the filming seemed to be above the action. As the bio-suited people began bagging up the two bodies, a voice said in a haunting whisper, “That’s my brother, and my girlfriend. Those…those men shot them. We weren’t doing anything, but they shot them.”

“My God,” Tamara said.

The image zoomed in, intending, it seemed, to identify the people in the suits. But the angle was making it difficult, and the suit masks weren’t helping. Still, the camera operator was able to hold on two of them just long enough to get an idea of what they looked like.

Tamara tensed. “You’re recording this, right?”

Bobby nodded. “Every second.”

She said nothing for a moment, willing herself to remain as calm as possible. “Bobby, can you bring up that video of the soldiers from the helicopters that landed here?”

He gave her an odd look but said, “Sure.”

He punched a few buttons, and the report he’d been working on earlier disappeared from its monitor, replaced by the requested shots.

“Scroll ahead to that part where you were trying to zoom in for me,” she said.

He sped up the footage.

“There,” she told him a few seconds later. “Back it up a little bit, then let it play.”

He did. On the screen they watched the soldiers talk together, then the picture zoomed in quickly, rushing past Gavin’s killer and focusing for a few moments on the interior of the helicopter. Just like she remembered, there was a clump of something yellow on the seat.

“Freeze there,” she said. Once the shot stopped moving, she looked at the other two. “Am I seeing things?”

Both men stared at the screen, then looked back at the network feed.

“Son of a bitch,” Bobby said under his breath.

The yellow clump looked very much like one of the bio-suits worn by the people in the desert canyon.

“Hold on,” Joe said, shaking his head. “I’m sure all crews have been outfitted with these kinds of suits. They probably all look alike.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Tamara said. “But then that means you’re also conceding those people in the video are part of the military.”

Joe didn’t have a response to that.

“There’s something else,” she said.

Once the network finished playing the desert clip, Tamara had Bobby go back to where the kid whose friends had been shot zoomed in on the biohazard face masks. Bobby paused on the image she requested, then went back to the footage he’d shot of the men outside the helicopter there at Fort Irwin. Once more, she had him pause on an image.

She didn’t have to say anything.

The features and expression of the man on the left screen were exactly the same as the features and expression of the man on the right.

“I want to talk to whoever shot that footage,” she said.

Without looking away from the screen, Joe said, “Let me see what I can do.”