Seven

"Why didn't you tell me about the girl?" was the first thing Sapphire asked. Meyer laughed on the other end of the line.
"I was going to," he promised. "How did you find out about her anyway? It's supposed to be like super top top secret, according to my source."
"I want that source," Sapphire demanded.
"Certainly, of course," Meyer said. "But how did you find out? I'm curious."
"I have my ways," Sapphire replied. "And my ways require payment sometimes. This is one of those times."
"Just send me the bill," Meyer laughed.
"I need to know more," Sapphire became serious. "Don't hold back on me, boss. Whatever you know, I need to know now."
"Take it easy, no worries," Meyer said, and Sapphire could just picture him in his high-rise penthouse patio, probably sitting in his custom rooftop pool under the shade of his swaying bamboo forest. His position had its perks but it also made him soft and lazy and his lackadaisical responses drove her crazy, and he knew it, and he knew that she knew he knew it too.
"You can get it straight from Agent Sneed," he told her, "Cindy Sneed. She and I go way back, went to college together at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, you know."
"This Sneed is here in Spring Hill Lake?" Sapphire cut in. She also hated it when he began to reminisce about his snooty university days.
"What? Oh yes," Meyer said. "I'm sending you her contact info now."
"And you've got nothing else for me?"
"Wait, wait a bit, don't hang up," Meyer chided.
"Meyer, I'm tired. I'm going to turn in. If all you've got to say is Sneed, then all I've got to say is goodbye."
"No, wait, first tell me how it's looking out there. All I see is the national feed and it's nothing but the usual circus as far as I can tell."
"I'm seeing what you're seeing," she told him. "I've got the local news on now. Looks like there's a bunch of tanks and soldiers surrounding a high barrier, and outside of that there's a lot of tents where the so-called reporters are sipping margaritas and telling dirty jokes. That's what they call a broadcast around here. Oh, and there's Kris Kintoja of Frantic News babbling as usual. Wait a sec ..."
Sapphire put the phone down and turned up the TV to hear the world's most famous beauty contestant turned anchorstar.
“No one should be alarmed”, Kintoja was practically screeching, “but could this be The One? Is it The Sign? Have the End Times finally begun? As we know, it is from a small acorn that the giant oak trees grow, so we must be ever vigilant for the roots of the cataclysm which we know for a fact is impending and impinging upon us on every turn."
Sapphire could swear that speech sounded familiar, as if she'd heard Kantoja repeating an earlier broadcast from some other fabricated freakout.
"It's just the apocalypse," Sapphire reported back to Meyer on the phone.
"There's been a lot of that kind of talk," he replied. "It doesn't help it's a gaping hole belching out the fires of hell. Doesn't leave much to the imagination, you know."
"I see it," Sapphire said. "They're showing the sinkhole now, I thought they weren't letting cameras at it anymore."
"It's likely old footage," Meyer said. "As of last Friday there's been a blackout. Even satellite images are being blocked. Not quite sure how they managed that. Could be a story in itself, you know. But ever since the girl there's been no live shots permitted. Things leak out, though, and rumors, no shortage of rumors to be sure. Some are calling it a black hole now, saying that things simply vanish within it. Some are calling it The Pit of Doom. All very dramatic and such."
"What does your source call it?" Sapphire said, "Or should I just get it from her?"
"By all means," Meyer replied. "She's waiting for your call."
"Is that Amy Dragberry?" Sapphire blurted out.
"Excuse me?"
"Oh nothing, just someone I knew from school, I think. Looks like she's a local reporter now. Not too surprising, I guess. Anyway, if that's all you got, boss ..."
"You haven't told me how you found out about the girl."
"And you never told me about her," Sapphire retorted, hanging up. She was already punching in Cindy Sneed's direct line. The scene on the TV had shifted away from the sinkhole and was now displaying some local carpet cleaner commercial. The last bit she had noted showed brown smoke billowing up from the hole. At least that much had been visible from beyond the security fences. She wondered if it still was. She peered out of the hotel room window in the direction she thought the sinkhole would be, but in the darkening dusk she couldn't make out much, so she turned away. Agent Sneed's phone was not picked up and there was no answering machine.
"Terrific", Sapphire snorted, and put the gadget away. The TV news returned but had moved on to sports, so she flicked the remote and searched through the channels. It was past the news hour so mostly there were game shows and reruns coming on. She did find one program talking about the hole, but it was just a televangelist trying to raise as much money as he could before the clock ran out and reality came to an end.
She looked up Argus Kirkham and found his number and address. She was surprised to see he lived down by the waterfront, near the old harbor warehouse district. She remembered the neighborhood as being pretty ugly and rundown, a poor part of town, home to derelicts and squatters. She guessed it must have been gentrified enough for solid middle class citizens to return. She called him, but there was no answer there either.
'Now what?' she said to herself. 'Dinner?'
It seemed a reasonable notion, considering she hadn't eaten all day. Heading outside, she began to regret her decision to pick this hotel near the airport, because there wasn't much of anything else around. The hotel itself was connected to some kind of twenty-four hour diner which reminded her of the one in Two Forks. The global traveler in her had become a food snob in some ways. She lived on street food as much as she could and here, in America, there was really no such thing. She gagged at the thought of chicken-fried steak and fries or a burger and fries or anything and fries for that matter, but she'd had enough driving for one day. Reluctantly she entered the diner and sat down at one of the many empty booths. 'Not a good sign', she noted, the fact that there was practically nobody in there. Even so, it took a long time for the waitress to notice her. She had memorized the menu already, eliminating practically everything from consideration. In the end she settled on chicken noodle soup. The waitress asked her if she wanted salad or fries with her soup.
'Fries with soup?', Sapphire thought to herself. 'What kind of hell is this?'
She ordered salad, but when the soup came, after another long wait, it was accompanied by fries. And the soup was too salty. She could hardly eat any of it. Sapphire, disgusted, threw down some money and walked out of the place. Standing again outside on the pavement, she surveyed her surroundings. Behind her loomed the hotel and the airport. Across the long driveway, a field lay of strewn rubble. Beyond that was the city, beginning with a handful of giant discount stores and gas stations, followed by some office parks and then, beginning perhaps a mile away, the concentration of bland houses and hideous high rises that made Spring Hill Lake what it was.
'Dismal,' she said to herself. 'No wonder I always hated this place.'