Windkill

Ignoring Mark, Melissa tried to hear Cal as the man demanded information in a move no one had ever made. No one asked for the technicians to supply information. Mark’s shouting had stopped for the moment, but he had interfered enough to make Melissa require Cal to repeat his demand.

“Don’t you tell him,” Mark growled, his face dark to match the threatening tone.

Looking at the bank of screens, Melissa saw the men at the draw still blocked by the ghost as it decided on their entry into the valley. Another victim was down, probably unconscious, and the mother was missing with a check of the video feeds from the factory. Nothing but static.

She could hear Mark on the cell phone again as she decided after glancing at the clock hanging above the screens. Only fifteen minutes into the show, the family was getting destroyed by the ghosts in the valley. If she let this go any longer, more people were going to die and the names of the people managing ‘Scared to Death’ would become synonymous with gross negligence.

The trailer door opened. She paid no heed while keying the microphone open.

“Marilyn is missing in the factory at the north end of the valley and Cynthia has fa…” She never finished the sentence. Rough hands pulled Melissa from the chair and dragged her from the trailer. Once outside, the man let her fall to the ground. Rising on her elbows, Melissa saw Mark give a contemptuous glare then slam the door of the trailer shut.

The security man offered Melissa a hand up, but she brushed him aside and stood under her own power. He moved to block the door of the trailer, but Melissa made no attempt. The end had come in one fell moment, when she chose the lives of the Ottinger family over television ratings.

She could have cried at the futility of Mark’s determination and her own culpability, but gritting her teeth, Melissa faced the draw and knew what she had to do. If she could not radio the information to Cal, she would have to deliver it to him in person.

The security man watched the small woman walk away with a determined stride. He was missing something essential, a fact that might mean the difference between life and death. Looking toward the fence, he saw a few of the other security men were looking at him. He raised his hands and shrugged.

In the trailer Mark barked an order at the technicians, then forced a calm into his hectic thinking. The video feed from the valley was pure gold, the events so intense that he had to concentrate to keep the best of the lot on the feed to the networks. So far, the censors and producers had allowed most of what he sent, but now the audience needed to know how dangerous the valley had become.

Subtly, nothing more than a few seconds on each scene, he flashed the image from Cynthia’s camera. Then Bob’s camera. The network immediately went to commercial and Mark knew he had won; the audience had just seen two possibly dead people.