Michael Palmer - A Heartbeat Away

The bike and a set of weights were her way of battling back. Best of all, for someone who struggled to sit through most movies, plays, and concerts, the equipment allowed her to multitask to her heart’s content. E-mail and riding. CNN and lifting. Reading and pedaling. Unless she were asleep, at the most five hours a night, she always seemed to be doing something, and something else at the same time. That trait had been a constant source of dismay and even annoyance to her boyfriend, Bill Collins. But had been were the operative words now that Collins was a thing of her past.

On her way back into the living room, Angie grabbed her BlackBerry to check e-mail. Nothing about the loss of signal had arrived in her inbox. Just the usual digital mountain of PR pitches from some of the brightest minds in science. They all wanted the same thing—a story in her paper, The Washington Post, and more important, for the paper’s respected science reporter, Angie Fletcher, to cover whatever latest breakthrough or discovery they felt needed covering.

Angie tried the television again. Nothing new. She had voted for Allaire, as had most of her friends, and like them, she had been looking forward to tonight’s speech. She loved that his background was at least as much about medicine and science as it was about politics. In addition, his oratory skills could make a laundry list sound important, so Angie felt more than a little disappointed to be missing any part of the first State of the Union message of his second term.

Figuring that Webcasts might be working, she used her BlackBerry and tried CNN.com and then her own paper’s Web site. Both ran virtually identical headlines in bold lettering: Broadcast Interruption at State of the Union Address . Utterly curious now, Angie checked, but could not find, any links to a more detailed explanation.

It had been six months or so since she had moved from Georgetown to the refurbished brownstone in the highly desirable Dupont Circle area of D.C. Her neighbor in 2B, the unit directly below her one-bedroom condo, worked at the White House, and Angie considered asking if he had heard anything unusual going on at the Capitol. Instead, she decided to towel off and cab it.

She darted into the kitchen, still clutching her BlackBerry, then suddenly paused to grab a spray bottle from the counter to spritz her herb garden, which seemed nearly ready to harvest, at least the mint anyway. The queen of ADD, Collins had called her, more than once. So what, she thought, racing into the bedroom to throw on a pair of slacks and a bulky fisherman’s sweater.

She hurried back into the living room and over to Horace, on whom she kept her coat, hat, and gloves. The movers had said nothing about hauling an adult human skeleton, but she did notice them exchanging uneasy glances when they unpacked him.

Over the months she had dated Collins, a lobbyist for the insurance industry, he continually found it odd that she had a skeleton in her living room, and that her cluttered bedroom looked like a college dorm. But she assured him that Horace had everything to do with an innate curiosity for all things biological and not some Goth fetish he needed to fear, and that her bedroom was always impeccably neat—just not when he happened to be there.

Collins’s lack of appreciation for Horace should have been a sign right from the start, but he was urbane, witty, and handsome as hell—clearly in the top ten of D.C. eligibles, as her girlfriends had ranked him. That was undoubtedly why she had hung on as long as she did, although ultimately, it was he who had decided they should “see other people.” As tired as Angie was of dating, and as anxious as she was to connect with a mate for life, and as aware as she was of the statistics on maternal age and fertility, the breakup was a two-ton weight off of her back.

She slipped her toasty peacoat off of Horace’s shoulders and grabbed the red wool cap from the top of his stand. There was something going on at the Capitol complex. She could feel it. Her instinct for news was what made her one of the most sought-after reporters at The Post. She understood that any story breaking on Capitol Hill would be covered by the political and national teams, and would probably have nothing to do with her expertise in science and technology. But the thought of missing out on an event unfolding in her own backyard was unacceptable, and the sudden, specific, universal loss of signal from the State of the Union screamed “Event!”

Having decided to spring for a cab, she was searching for her purse underneath the piles of stuff on her kitchen chairs, when her phone rang. She frowned at the name on her caller ID. Before she met Bill, it had been John Davis, chief of staff to one of the more powerful congressmen on the Hill. Davis had pursued Angie with such intensity that it made her at first uninterested and soon, uneasy. He had not called since her last plea just a few months ago that as nice as he was, it simply wasn’t going to happen between them—especially since she was dating someone else. She let his call go to voicemail.

Then he called again.

Strange, even for someone as persistent as John, she thought. He had to know she was watching the president’s speech. In fact, unless he had been fired, he had to be at the president’s speech. Perhaps he had lost the signal and did not get put through to voicemail. When he called for a third time, she answered.

“John?”

“Angie! Thank God you’re there,” Davis said in a coarse whisper. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

It sounded as though he were afraid somebody might overhear.

“John, what’s going on? I’m on my way to the Capitol right now to see why all the broadcasts have gone dead.”

She located her purse, grabbed the brush on the chair beside it, and pulled it twice through her shoulder-length hair—reddish brown that day, and most of the time. Then she gathered it back in a ponytail and secured it with a scrunchie, flashing for a pleasurable moment on how annoyed Collins was when she wore it that way.

“I don’t think you’ll get within five hundred yards of this place,” Davis was saying, “but I need your help. I think I may have been exposed to something. We all have.”

“We all? What are you talking about?”

“I’m at the Capitol and I’m talking about everybody at the State of the Union Address having been exposed to something biological, a virus, Allaire said.”

“Oh my God!” The news sent Angie’s heart racing. “Are you all right?”

“For now, maybe. But I’ve started coughing and I’m really freaking out. We all are.”

“Hang on a second.”

She pulled on her peacoat and hat, and grabbed one of the ubiquitous spiral-bound notebooks that dotted the landscape of her life.

“You still there?” Davis asked.

“I’m here, I’m here. Now try to calm down and tell me what’s going on.”

“I don’t know. It was some sort of biological weapon or something, we’ve been told. Allaire said Genesis has something to do with it.”

“Damn. John, I can barely hear you. Can you speak up?”

“I can’t. I don’t want to be spotted. The Secret Service and Capitol Police are confiscating all our cell phones. I’m guessing Allaire doesn’t want to start a panic.”

“Is that why the broadcast went dark?”

“I didn’t know it had.”

With her phone tucked beneath her ear, Angie rubbed on some ChapStick, scribbled some notes in a shorthand only she could decipher, and turned the television back on. CNN was reporting only that something had occurred inside the House Chamber and they were working hard to get more information. Someone’s grainy, shaky cell phone transmission filled the screen.