Michael Walsh - Early Warning

Let’s take them in reverse order, she decided. She had already noticed she couldn’t move her arms or her legs, but right now her arms were her primary concern, if only to wipe the dirt and the goo off her face, however it got there. But she couldn’t move her arms, and therefore her legs were the last of her worries at the moment.

The main worry was the plastic bag over her head and the rag in her mouth. Luckily, she could breathe, which was a duh because if she couldn’t have breathed, she would have been dead long ago. So whoever did this to her at least had enough of a heart to keep her alive, although for what, she’d rather not think…

Principessa Stanley was a good reporter. In fact, she was a better reporter than most of her rivals, including those on the newspapers. She had earned her job fairly, with a high degree from a good School of Communication, which was what all the former journalism schools were calling themselves these days. It was not her fault that she was pretty and had a killer body; those assets were only the deciding factors, the extras, whenever she had been up for a gig in the past. At her level now, every woman was either good-looking or unemployed. Such was the triumph of feminism.

So why was she here, buried up to her neck in a dirt grave behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Who had done this to her?

She tried not to panic. That was what she always heard. Panic would get you nowhere. Worse, panic would get you killed even faster. Take deep breaths…

She panicked. She struggled and writhed and tried to pretzel her way out of the shallow grave, but it was useless. She was planted in the backyard of the Met, like some kind of human vegetable like Farmer Brown’s victims in that ridiculous horror movie from the eighties, Motel Hell. Her assailant probably had seen the damn thing, which is what had given him the idea. Fucking hicks from flyover country were all the same: right-wing nuts who ought to be hunted down and exterminated. When Angela Hassett beat that horrid Jeb Tyler in the fall, things were going to change, but good. She could hardly wait, not that she would ever admit that on the air or anything. After all she was a neutral journalist.

She caught herself and stopped moving. Clearly, she wasn’t going to get out all at once. She was going to have to work her way out of this, wriggle out of it, like a worm or something, a quarter-inch at a time. Slow and steady wins the race.

She tried pushing down at whatever solid ground might be below her, but couldn’t get much of a purchase. The soil was soft and loamy, freshly dug; all she was managing to do was sink a little deeper, which obviously wasn’t the way to go. Once again she stopped, and this time she realized she was already out of breath. What a ripoff that gym membership had been. All that cardio exercise was supposed to help you in situations like this, wasn’t it?

Think.

Then she felt something move between her legs. If she could have jumped, she would have. Instead, she thought her heart was going to stop, right then and there.

What the hell was in the pit with her?

Her mind raced. She was starting to lose it.

A snake? Did they even have snakes in Central Park? There must be snakes in Central Park. There were coyotes in Central Park now, and she had to admit that she always felt a small thrill whenever another wild animal was sighted within the five boroughs. It was long past time that humans should move aside and start sharing the limited space on the planet with animals who, afterall, were just people without lawyers of their own species.

It moved again.

It didn’t feel like a snake. It didn’t feel like it was slithering, whatever slithering felt like. Snakes didn’t travel underground, did they? She remembered that time when she was a girl when she saw a sunning snake slither back into its lair, in a hole in the ground. So it could be a snake, after all.

But what if it was a gopher, or a groundhog, or a woodchuck, something with teeth? Would that be worse than a snake? Something that would start by nibbling on her extremities, get a tasty bite or two, and then set about making a meal out of her, so that when they finally found her, when the city wasn’t in lockdown anymore, they’d reach for her head and that would be all that was left of her, the rest having gone to nourish a colony of woodchucks the size of Staten Island.

There it went again. That same feeling. Whatever its source, it didn’t seem to be moving, just sitting there between her knees and her crotch, buzzing, tickling her, vibrating…in other context, she might even have enjoyed the experience. But not now.

She tried to push herself up again, which was a dumb idea, because she moved farther south, and she also felt whatever it was slide a little as it vibrated once more.

It was a cell phone. Her cell phone, which she had been looking at when that bastard assaulted her. If she could somehow slide her hand down and grab it…well, that was the first half of the plan. The second half would be to somehow get her arm out from underneath the dirt and bring the phone to her face, where she would somehow manage to get the damn thing to work, even if she had to press the talk button with her nose.

She reached. It was like fighting her way through molasses, but amazingly she could make a little progress. That was the upside of the loamy soil; her hand could actually move a little. Inch by inch. Keep it simple. Baby steps. Get to the goal eventually, even if it took forever.

Wait a minute-she didn’t have forever. She tried to recall what she read about people living without food and water. You could go without food for weeks-just look at those Irish hunger-strikers-but water, she was pretty sure, was a nonnegotiable commodity. Maybe a day or two, then madness set in, followed by death. What if the crisis wasn’t over by then? The way the cops fought these days, it might take them a week to round up the dudes for the fair trials. She couldn’t wait to cover the proceedings.

Her thoughts continued to run along these lines until she realized that she was already slipping into madness. Goddamnit, didn’t that bastard know who she was? He couldn’t treat her like this! The minute she got out of here, she was going to hunt his ass down, find him, and rat him out to the cops. She’d testify at the trial and hope to hell he’d get the death penalty. Normally, she was against the death penalty, but in this case she’d make an exception.

The buzzing again. Her hand moved closer. It brushed up against something. By God, she was closer to it all along than she had thought! Now we were getting somewhere.

Keep buzzing, you bastard, she thought. Come to mama.

She had it!

It was a cell phone!

But not her cell phone. She could tell by the feel. It was just a cheap piece of crap. WTF?

It was his. That dirty son of a bitch. She had him now. As soon as she got out of here, she could trace this sucker, ransack his phonebook. The little bastard would be sorry he was ever born after she turned the wrath of the Sinclair empire on his sorry ass. She started laughing. Revenge was going to be eaten hot and she was going to enjoy every bite.

Her arm was moving!

The dirt was falling away from her shoulder. All of that moving and shaking had loosened it just enough so that now, in her justifiable rage and anger and lust for vengeance, she could extract it.

Here it came-

Her shoulder popped out of the earth. She shrugged as hard as she could, just like she did in the gym with some light dumbbells in each hand, toning the traps, and raised her elbow. Pushing, pushing. Come on, do it. Remember the old bodybuilder’s motto: what can be conceived can be believed and achieved.

She did it! It was coming up through the ground, her hand along with it. Which meant she could snatch the stupid baggie off her head and in just a few minutes-