The Blue Light Project by Timothy Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

smoke and licks of flame.
    “Where’s Oats?” Eve asked.
    Nick followed her eyes down the hall. “Watching online, no doubt. This looks vaguely CNN-able.”
    “Where’s that look like?”
    “Dunno.”
    “Is it happening now?”
    “I guess.”
    Nick got up again. She expected him to go down the hall and find the remote control, toggle on the sound. Although at the same time she found herself hoping he wouldn’t. That he wouldn’t reveal whatever had suddenly gone bad in the world.
    Nick moved the other way, back into the kitchen. He yelled back: “We could finally get married.”
    She squinted. The building behind the burning car had banners fluttering down its front.
    “Okay,” she said. “Wait.”
    Above their heads, in their bedroom, Hassoman levered himself from the bed and thudded to the carpet. He did this when events on the main floor corresponded aurally to certain canine expectations: dishes going into the dishwasher, the front hall closet door opening in
advance of a walk. Nothing was signaling him now, but Eve could hear the dog move heavily on the floorboards into the hallway, over to the top of the stairs, where he stood and growled once.
    “Good boy,” Nick called from the kitchen.
    “Nick, that’s here,” Eve said. “That’s up in the Heights. I was there today.”
    “Come on, boy.”
    Eve was up and walking towards the living room now, arriving at the door just as Hassoman emerged at the bottom of the stairs, sniffing the air, then barking towards the front door. Once. Again.
    Eve started looking for the remote.
    More sound on the stairs. Otis coming down. Eve could see herself in a wide shot all at once, pulling up the cushions on Nick’s parents’ old couch while, for some unknown reason, a car burned in the plaza opposite Meme Media. While Otis stood in the doorway with an expression Eve had never seen on him before. All his teenaged confidence gone. His eyes wide, mouth seeming to work at some immobilized word. And here came the anchors again, the situationdesk expressions, the pre-fatigue of some event they both knew they’d be talking about for many further hours, through the night. An event that already perplexed and astounded. Eve watched a graphic roll on the blue screen. Familiar queues of children. Then the incident banner. It scrolled across the corner of the screen like a sash. It read: The Meme Media Crisis.
    Cut to the street, the reporter out of breath. Over his shoulder, three police trucks rolled out of Jeffers Avenue and into the square.
    Otis was still working the words, lips opening and closing.
    “Otis,” Eve said. “Are you all right?”
    “Hey, what’s up?” Nick said, entering the hall. He was holding a small skillet and a towel. He put the pan down on a side table and picked up the remote from where it sat on one of the shelves of the
bookcase. But he didn’t key the volume just that moment, staring over at his son. “Okay. Come on.”
    Otis got the word, finally. “Hostages.”
    “Turn on the sound, Nick,” she said.
    But Nick just stood there, remote dangling. “Hostages what?”
    Eve was nodding at the screen, just as Otis’s mental logjam broke.
    He said: “Hostages, Dad. In the TV building.” Then: “They say a guy took some of those KiddieFame kids for hostage in the building.”
    And here Eve did something that she couldn’t explain to herself then, and which she knew she would remember as a strange impulse later. She ran into the kitchen to look at the clock hanging there, to note the time. As if it were clear that the most pressing priority were to mark the beginning of this thing.
    The clock, innocent of all knowing, had ticked its way past 9:00 in the evening and was heading towards 9:01.

WEDNESDAY EVENING
    OCTOBER 23

GIRARD

    LIKE THEY WERE ACTING SOMETHING OUT. Like they were part of the show.
    They escaped by the rear doors of the television studio. Mad crowds, crazed. Adults and children. They slammed into each other and