Gnash by Brian Parker Read Free Book Online Page B

any day of the week instead of doing math problems .
    The engineer switched to another slide with more numbers and fractions and a bell-curve representing something or other at the bottom of the slide.  Apparently it made sense to the artillery guys because they started flipping back and forth between previous page’s calculations.
    The briefer was interrupted when Carolynn, the director’s secretary, burst into the room.  “The president has been shot!” she exclaimed as she turned the television on in the room.  “It just happened, they think he’s dead!”
    The litany of reactions in the room ranged from surprise, to shock and anger.  The television crackled to life and a reporter talked over the raw footage being piped in.  There was a “LIVE” caption flashing at the bottom of the screen.  “…pulled out a gun and shot the president point blank in the face then fired rapidly at the other heads of state seated behind President Gosebeck.  The Secret Service took several seconds to react to the shooter, who appears to be an agent himself.  Those seconds allowed him to fire at the other leaders on the stage before he was apprehended.  The gunman was standing less than two feet away from the president when he began shooting.  By the time the gunman was shot and taken into custody, the president and five other G-8 leaders had been shot.  The Chancellor of Germany, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the Prime Minister of Japan, the President of France and the President of Russia all seem to be among those hit.  Again, if you’re just joining us, the President of the United States has been shot and video of the scene appears to show a Secret Service agent doing the shooting.”  There was a pause in the voice over as the camera scanned the room shakily.  People were crowded around the prone bodies, several performing CPR.  It seemed that the medics hadn’t even arrived on the scene yet.
    “Yes, we can confirm that the man seen in the video, the man who shot the president, is indeed a Secret Service agent.  We don’t have his name yet, we’re working on that, but he’s been one of the agents who we’ve seen with the president since the election more than four years ago.”  A dark red liquid began to ooze off the stage towards the foreground.  “What would cause a man like that to do this?  Secret Service agents are the only people trusted enough to be allowed to have weapons near the president; even military members don’t carry weapons when he’s around.  Again, the president has been shot, along with the leaders of five other nations in Portland, Oregon just now.  Those other nations are Japan, Germany, Russia, France and the United Kingdom.  Oh this is just terrible.  It brings to mind the chaos when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot in 1963.  This will be a defining moment of a generation, just as that assassination defined a generation.  The leaders were attending a press conference at the annual G-8 Summit, held in Portland this year, when one of the president’s bodyguards opened fire on them.  He’s been taken into custody, we’re getting word that his name is Mike Winters, a fifteen-year veteran of the Secret Service.  The president, and I want to caution everyone that we don’t know his condition as of yet, was betrayed by one of his own.  One of the men that have…”
    The scene switched to the newsroom and the anchor sitting in his chair.  A woman was leaning over whispering something in his ear, her face was blocked by a sheet of paper she was holding over it.  The anchor’s expression went from composed to horrified.  “Uh, we’re getting word that there has also been some sort of incident at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.  Very preliminary reports here folks, but apparently the building has been locked down as the result of a chemical attack of some kind.  We don’t know what happened, but I’m being told all the emergency doors