Carrion (The Bren Watts Diaries #1)

Chapter 102

DAY 87: July 4th, Sunday

After hours of fiddling with the antenna up on the roof early in the morning, Haskell managed to find the right channel an hour before the scheduled program.

We crowded into the intimate lounge inside the camper, opening the windows to let some of the fresh air in (we didn't bother turning on the AC, or else it would eat up our electricity). We were all nervous and excited about what was going to happen, and I had imagined everyone in the country felt the same. A countdown clock to the speech was embedded on the bottom-left corner of the screen, telling us we had forty-five minutes to go before the live press conference.

Logan sat next to me on the dinette with Indy on his lap, his gaze glued to the TV screen. "Will we see home?" He asked me.

"Maybe." I would turn into a puddle if I had a glimpse of Portland. Hell, I'd probably cry if they filmed in the same street as my home. I only wish...

"Look! That's LA!" Yousef shrieked, eyes wide, finger pointed at the TV. He looked like a kid who had seen Santa. I must admit, everyone in that room looked like that kid. It was the first time we saw something so...normal. A reporter on the street just interviewed some pedestrians lazily strolling some broad beach walk as if the pandemic never happened! They looked surprised when the reporter showed them images of the sick in the hospital with how they acted on the screen. Some were even denying that the pandemic wasn't that bad. We were all overacting, and that these images only belonged to the worst wing in the hospital, and that the media did not show the mild symptoms ninety-eight percent of the patients got, and who got better.

"Do you know anyone who got better or who survived from this disease?" The reporter asked one man in his late forties, who wore a yellow tank top with a coiled rattlesnake on it.

"Yes. My friend Mark got it two weeks ago, and he's feeling better now! He lives in Atlanta, and he sent me pictures often where they even had had barbecue and cookout in the middle of the street! Completely normal in the summer. Not like what had been in the news lately. No crazy people in the picture. Here. I'll show you." He then pulled out his phone and showed him a picture of his friend and the barbecue on the street.

When the reporter asked him if he could call his friend for an impromptu interview, the man quickly said his friend was busy and that he needed to be somewhere. She then asked him to show the viewers the images once again about this supposed barbecue in Atlanta, one of the worst-hit cities, and the man was more than happy to "educate the public" about the true nature of this disease. The reporter quickly figured out that the location stamp on the picture happened within LA two days ago.

"That's not Atlanta!" The reporter remarked.

The man quickly put his phone back, swearing how it was real and that he needed to get back to his office because he was running late and on his break, which was followed by the reporting quipping after him, "You work in the office with that outfit?" The man merely cursed at the crew before he disappeared from view.

"What the fuck?" Logan gasped. "That's some bullshit."

"It looks like LA wasn't hit," I said. "Well, not yet, anyway."

"They seem so...off. Like..."

"Normal? Crazy?"

"Yeah."

"They don't know what the vectors are like."

Logan bit his bottom lip and frowned. "I wish I didn't."

"Ignorance is bliss."

"Does this mean the west coast didn't have any outbreaks?"

I shared his frown. "God, I hope so."