The Last Handful of Clover - Book 3: The Stone in the Stream

3.04 Q&B

June 15, 10:57 pm

Morgan Jensen went on the air at 11:00 pm, replacing the two deliriously exhausted anchors. And Rhonda was right when she had warned her reporter that this night would be like no journalism she had ever experienced.

For the next hour Morgan reported a never-ending stream of rumors and vague second-hand reports, mixed in with an occasional official announcement faxed in by the Emergency Operations Center at the Capitol. Through it all, she was the only face on the screen, with only occasional breaks for shaky cell phone footage and still photos the public had sent in, and an occasional rerun of footage shot earlier in the day. By midnight she had a nagging feeling that what she was doing was probably of little help to the panic-stricken citizens of Salt Lake City, and might even be making things worse. With little useful information and no tangible help to offer, maybe it was a disservice to everyone for them even to stay on the air. And it didn't help that she was constantly being reminded by Rhonda and Larry, through notes passed to her desk, that she had to reinforce her inadequate information with ridiculously optimistic banter, about how the authorities were getting the situation under control, and help was on the way.

It all felt like some Kafkaesque nightmare.

Just before midnight word came down that, as expected, the federal government had officially declared the Salt Lake Valley a national disaster area. A disaster declaration was what they had all been waiting for, and had this been a flood or a hurricane, it would mean that the feds would descend on them in force and do what needed to be done—whatever that was. But even as she was reading the declaration into the camera (with as much optimism as she could muster) she knew that nobody was coming. Not now, and not in the foreseeable future.

Shortly after midnight, Morgan got her first break.

A special desk had been set up to track the fire situation, and Buck Jones, the station's weekend weatherman, had been pressed into service as what they were calling the "fire anchor." Buck had really risen to the occasion, using his special maps and the software that would normally be used for tracking storms and weather patterns, to keep track of the scores of fires that were still burning throughout the city. They had been cutting to him every hour, hit or miss, since about eight o'clock in the evening, when the fires were at their worst. Fortunately, the number had fallen to just under a hundred by the time Morgan passed him the torch at 12:15 am, because so many had burned themselves out without spreading, and because others had been doused by the flying tankers dispatched from California. If there was one saving grace to Salt Lake City's wide streets, it was that they provided natural firebreaks. Some blocks were destroyed completely, but the tankers were continuing to pull water out of the Great Salt Lake, and drop it on the worst of the fires. The one bright part of this disaster was that they finally appeared to be getting ahead of the blazes, and (at least so far) whatever was afflicting the city had not spread to the flying fire crews.

As soon as she could pass the camera to Buck, Morgan tore off her microphone and handed it to Phil King, the anchor she had replaced less than two hours earlier. Phil had combed his hair, but if anything, the circles under his eyes looked even darker. He sank into Morgan's chair without a word. She would have at least five minutes before Buck tried to send the live shot back to the anchor desk, and she hoped Phil could handle things until she got back. She stumbled out of the studio, rubbing her eyes and feeling like a zombie, hoping she would at least have some time to clear her head.

She didn't get far.

Halfway down the corridor she saw Rhonda, alone in the conference room. She was sitting under the big board, which now looked to have been abandoned in the chaos. Rhonda had her head in her hands, and she appeared to be either weeping or dozing, but Morgan couldn't tell which. She stuck her head into the room.