Jack Cavanaugh - Death Watch

The cab driver steered off the freeway.

“Are we almost there?”

“No one gets you there faster than me,” the driver said.

The cab swung onto the Avenue of the Stars. When she saw the street sign, Cheryl chuckled to herself. Nobody was as infatuated with Hollywood as Hollywood.

In the distance the twin towers of the Excelsior Hotel rose up against a flat gray overcast sky.

Cheryl pulled herself to the edge of her seat.

Stacy stirred. “Mommy?”

“We need to run again, honey. Last time. Mommy promises.” Even as she spoke, she was digging in her purse for the fare, reading the meter, adding forty dollars to the total. She threw the money on the front seat just as the cab was pulling up to the doors of the Excelsior Hotel.

While the cab was still moving the back door flew open. Cheryl was out, Stacy tucked under one arm. The little girl was crying again.

Cheryl could see the front desk through the glass doors of the lobby: her goal line.

A man and woman, middle-aged, nicely dressed, reached the lobby door before her.

Cheryl panicked.

Could that be them?

Taking no chances, she ran for the door, her swollen belly bouncing side to side, her daughter taking giant steps behind her.

His hand on the door, the man saw her coming. His mouth dropped open. Seeing his expression, his wife turned. “Oh my!” she said, jumping out of the way.

The man held the door open and Cheryl bolted through it, Stacy in hand.

Please, not them, not them, please. She’d feel so guilty if it was them.

Two employees in hotel uniform stood behind the front desk. Both young. A male and a female. The woman had been watching Cheryl from the moment she bolted from the cab. The male glanced up from a stack of printouts, started to look down again, then did a comic double take.

What’s the matter, haven’t you ever seen a pregnant woman sprinting before? Cheryl wanted to ask him. Instead, she said, “I’m Cheryl McCormick. I’m—”

“Ah! Mrs. McCormick.” The female receptionist smiled. “We’ve been expecting you!”

Cheryl glanced back at the couple who held the door for her. They seemed in no hurry. She turned to the receptionist again. “Am I the first one?”

The woman beamed. “You’re the first.”

Cheryl started to cry.

The receptionist’s smile widened as she handed her a tissue. “We get that reaction all the time,” she said. She began punching keys on a keyboard.

Cheryl turned to the couple behind her, almost afraid to ask. Little Stacy clung to her leg. “You’re not here for. Wonder Wheel, are you?” The expressions on their faces told her they didn’t know what she was talking about. Cheryl felt better. When she turned back to the receptionist, there was a room key on the counter and a map of the lavish Excelsior facilities.

“I’ll need to see picture identification and a credit card.”

Cheryl dug in her purse.

“We’ll have someone help you with your bags,” the receptionist said.

“Oh, that’s all right. They’re still at the airport. I came straight here.”

“If you’ll give me your baggage claim tickets, we’ll have someone pick them up and deliver them to your room.”

Cheryl fought back a second wave of tears. This was really happening! “Thank you,” she said softly.

“And good luck on Wonder Wheel, Mrs. McCormick.”

Cheryl gathered the key and map, pried Stacy from her leg, and began to move in the direction of the elevators.

“Oh! One thing more,” the receptionist called to her. She disappeared behind a side door, then returned a moment later. “This came for you.” She handed Cheryl an envelope.

Cheryl thanked her and stood to one side so the nice couple behind her could register.

The envelope was buff color with a linen texture. It had an expensive feel to it. The only marking on the envelope was her name in Courier font as if it had been typed on an old typewriter. There was no return address and no corporate logo, which was odd since the only people who knew she was in LA were the folks at the television station.

It wasn’t sealed. Cheryl looked inside, thinking it might be coupons or vouchers for restaurants, or possibly free passes to Six Flags, Knotts Berry Farm, or Disneyland. But there was nothing colorful inside, only a single sheet of stationery that matched the envelope. Probably a welcome letter and directions to the television station. Cheryl tucked the envelope in her purse. She’d read it later.

The elevator ride was a long one. All the way to the top floor Stacy was hugging her leg again, nodding off on her feet.

“Almost there, honey,” Cheryl said.

When the doors opened she located their room and slid the electronic key in the slot. Her plan was to get Stacy down and order room service.

She gasped as the door swung open. This wasn’t a hotel room; it was a palace with more floor space than her house in Evanston. A gigantic fruit basket greeted her with a bright red bow. There was coffee in a shiny silver carafe and an assortment of pastries, enough to feed her entire fourth-grade class.

Cheryl began to cry again.

After tucking Stacy between ocean-blue sheets, she slumped into an overstuffed striped chair in front of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Los Angeles basin. It was a hazy day, but still the view was breathtaking. Her thoughts turned to the pastries, but she was too tired to get up. Her feet felt like she’d walked from Chicago to California. She propped them up on an ottoman.

Beside her on an ornate cherrywood end table, which probably cost more than she’d paid for her entire dinette set, was her purse. The envelope with her name was sticking out of it.

Cheryl reached for it.

Her breath caught in her throat as she read:

Cheryl McCormick,

You have been selected for death. Precisely forty-eight hours from the time of this transmission you will die.

This is an official death watch notice.

Sydney didn’t get much sleep, and even that was restless. After depositing Hunz Vonner at his hotel, despite his continued protests in which he called her professionalism into question, she arrived home at 2:30 a.m. after promising to pick him up at 6:00 a.m.

Falling into bed, she wrestled with the bedclothes for an hour and a half, sleeping fitfully with dream vignettes of Lyle Vandeveer looking up at her with startled eyes as he drew his last breath.

Her phone woke her at 4:30 a.m.: Hunz, reminding her to pick him up at six. It rang again at 4:45 a.m.: Sol Rosenthal’s assistant telling her to be at the station at 7:00 a.m. and not to forget to pick up Hunz Vonner.

Sydney flung her legs over the side of the bed. The way she felt, it would have been better had she not tried to sleep at all. There were rocks under her eyelids that burned when she blinked. Her head spun and swiveled like a toy gyroscope.

Willing herself into motion, Sydney switched on the thirteen-inch television set she kept in the corner of the bedroom.

Death Watch dominated the news. Overnight, the phenomenon had escalated dramatically. With the rest of the globe already well into the day, a mounting wave of panic was about to hit the West Coast like a tsunami.

Sydney listened to the newscast as she washed her face.

In the lower right corner of the screen, the Homeland Security Awareness Symbol, popularly called the Terror Meter, was set at Level Three.

Deaths are listed in the thousands. Among those dead are Dame Edna Bingham, a member of Great Britain’s House of Lords; Joey LaMott, Baltimore Ravens first-round draft pick; and Andrea Scott, femme fatale of the popular daytime series Days of Our Lives .