Sick

brought his kids here in the first place?

He turned down the hall, knowing the only way to find out for sure was to keep going.

Silence continued to reign as they got closer and closer to the other end. With each new step, Ash couldn’t help but think that Matt’s information must have been wrong. There was no way anyone was here. He moved all the way to the end of the hall, then stopped for another check.

Stone. Dead. Silence.

Even in places with just a few people around, there was always a sense of others. Ash didn’t have that sense now.

He stepped out into the intersecting hallway without checking first, knowing no one would be there. And he was right.

“We’re alone,” he said, not bothering to whisper. “Matt was wrong. They’re not here.”

Chloe was more tentative as she stepped out to join him. She looked one way down the hallway, then the other, her face full of confusion. “He was sure of it. I know he was.”

“Maybe he was just-” He stopped himself and shook his head.

“Just what?”

“Nothing.”

“What did you mean? Just what?”

“I didn’t mean anything, okay?”

She stared at him, obviously waiting for more. When he remained quiet, she said, “I’d be dead if it wasn’t for Matt and Rachel. There’s no question about it. And you’d be dead, too, if they hadn’t changed how you look and given you a new name. So if you’re questioning whether Matt was lying to you or not, don’t. He wasn’t. He never would.”

Without another word, she turned and walked down the hallway to the right, fading into the black.

“Are you coming?” she called out. “I can’t see anything without the flashlight.”

“What’s down there?” he asked.

“If your kids were here, they would have been kept down this way. We should check.”

Doubting they’d find anything, he walked down the hall and joined her.

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 showTinseltown 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 whoactuallyshot 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 videowasgenerating a lot of buzz, then this could be a very,verybig 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 allthinkit 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 mankilledmy brother.”