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Part Eleven
“What can I getcha?” the bartender asked.
Uncertainly, Newsie glanced at the rows of exotic liquors and liqueurs interspersed between racks of test tubes and Pyrex glassware, all lit with blacklight. “Er…uh…just a ginger beer, please. Bleinheim’s, if you carry it.”
A frosty bottle plunked onto the counter before him. The Newsman paid for it and immediately took a long gulp. Gina had introduced him to the heady, potent brew during the summer heat; he usually didn’t go right for the strong stuff, but tonight he was feeling unnerved enough to want a panacea. His gaze traveled around the tavern, passing over a crowd of students performing some kind of experiment with a full rig of bottles, tubes, and a gas burner in the corner; a few professorish types puffing on e-cigs while they quaffed strong mugs of stout; two bespectacled, lab-coated young women at the bar clearly ignoring the two young men in argyle sleeveless cardigans who kept trying to start a conversation with them. There were a few tables still empty, but the Newsman was feeling too skittish to turn away from the bar and its long, mirror-tiled periodic table of the elements which gave him a good view of the whole room. Not that he thought it likely a monster would come in here…but better safe than sorry.
He took another swig of the ginger soda, coughing a little, reminding himself to slow down. His throat burned. The TV over this end of the bar showed some sort of pulsing, horrible fungoid blob wielding a blowtorch while a trio of monsters watched. Startled, Newsie gestured for the bartender’s attention. “What the heck is that? A horror movie?” he demanded, pointing to the blob onscreen; it appeared now to be doing some sort of ballet in excruciating closeup.
The bartender laughed. “Uh…no, I thought it was some kind of new talent show. Weird!”
“Well can you change the channel, please?” Newsie asked. Shrugging, the man wiped his fingers on his apron, found the remote, and turned the station to one of the major networks’ evening news broadcasts. “Thank you,” Newsie nodded. He jumped, almost falling off his barstool when someone patted his shoulder. “Ack!”
“Well hello, Newsman!” Dr Bunsen Honeydew exclaimed. “Fancy meeting you here! I didn’t realize you had an interest in chemistry!”
“Meep meep,” Beaker added, nodding familiarly.
“Er…hello, Dr Honeydew, Beaker. No, I…I’m meeting Gina. This is one of her favorite taverns,” Newsie explained. “Uh…do you come here often?”
“Tsst, tsst! Does that mean you want to buy me a drink?” Honeydew joked; Beaker tittered. At the Newsman’s obviously confused expression, Bunsen patted his shoulder again. “I’m just joshing you, of course! Excuse me, barkeep? One radiator coolant!” Beaker meeped at him. “Oh, sorry. Make that two, please!”
Two tall lab mixing beakers of thick, greenish liquid appeared quickly on the bartop; the bartender used metal tongs to carefully drop a chunk of dry ice into each of them, and then slid neon curly-straws into the glasses before pushing them over. “Mee!” Beaker said happily, slurping his noisily.
“Excellent! Keep the change,” Bunsen said, handing a bill over. He turned once more to Newsie. “This is our favorite bar. Most places simply don’t understand the research scientist’s need to enjoy a mildly toxic beverage after a long day in the lab! But here, even the drinks cater to our tastes, right, Beaker?” His lab partner made happy noises, the straw still stuck in his mouth.
Newsie gave the green stuff a dubious look. “Er…that isn’t really…”
“Radiator fluid? Oh, ho, ho! Of course not! No, this is a rather potent combination of green apple schnapps, Angustora bitters, absinthe and diet lime soda, with just a teensy touch of paradimethylaminobenzaldehyde! Would you care to try a sip? I can ask for another straw…”
A girl’s high peal of laughter from the experiment in the corner made Beaker look up so fast his straw jerked up, leaving the glass but still in his mouth; when one of the lab-coated ladies at the bar noticed Beaker and gave him a very frank study, and then a smile, Beaker blushed and tried to smooth down his hair. His arm knocked his straw from his lips and onto the floor. He looked from the now-contaminated straw to his drink, shrugged, and drank straight from the glass.
“Uh…I thought dry ice was poisonous?” Newsie asked.
“Oh, not really! But one does need to make sure one’s felt doesn’t actually come in direct contact with the frozen carbon dioxide! It can cause rather bad burns.” Newsie nodded, glancing at the door, hoping Gina would arrive soon. He knew he was early, and although it was nice to see a colleague, he’d never been entirely comfortable around these two…less so since the incident with them and the psychokinetic reverse field energy generator earlier this year.
Beaker started, hastily removing the drink from his mouth, but the bubbling, slowly evaporating chunk of dry ice refused to unstick from his upper lip. “Meee! Meee!” Frantically he tugged at it with one hand. His fingers stuck to it. “Meeee!”
“Oh, honestly, Beaker! If you like her proportions too, why don’t you offer to buy her a drink?” Bunsen grumbled, not looking at his assistant. He leaned closer to Newsie. “I keep encouraging him to have more of a social life, but you know Beaker! Totally devoted to his work!” He smiled. “It is very nice to know you and your Romany sweetheart get out together once in a while! It makes for a nice break from your news work, I would imagine.”
“It does,” Newsie agreed. He cast an uncertain glance at Beaker, who was now reeling between the nearest tables, meeping and flailing his elbows, his drink abandoned on the bartop. “Is…is he all right?”
Bunsen shook his head wearily. “Regrettably, my colleague sometimes forgets he shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach!” He nodded at the Newsman’s nearly-empty ginger beer. “Will you and Ms Broucek be eating here as well? They have some truly wonderful sandwiches! I highly recommend the organic metacarbon au jus – it comes with a side of the most delightful ammonium-iodide pommes frites!”
Irritated exclamations came from the table holding the experiment in the corner. Trying to keep up the conversation but feeling somewhat distracted, the Newsman sipped more of his ginger brew. “Ah…sounds very…culinary.”
“Why don’t you join us for dinner? It would be a pleasure to catch back up with the two of you,” Bunsen offered. “Oh! Speaking of joining…will you be participating in the charity walk on Halloween?”
“The MADL event?” Newsie shook his head. “Dr Honeydew, I really can’t. It would compromise my journalistic standards to actively take part in a special-interest group’s fundraising.”
“Oh, of course. How silly of me! I never considered that. I suppose you must have to walk a very fine line between us and the non-felted, what with your mainstream news job.”
Uncomfortably, Newsie shrugged. “No, no, my station probably wouldn’t mind…it’s just… Well, you try to be completely objective in your labwork, don’t you?”
“Absolutely.” Honeydew smiled at him. “I think I see your position! Well, might you give us some coverage on the news? Surely a few mentions leading up to that night, and perhaps a live report on the walk that evening, couldn’t hurt?”
Newsie considered it. From the back corner, high-pitched meeps gave way to shouts of “Watch it!” and “Look out!” and a series of glass-shattering crashes. Discomfited, he looked around, but couldn’t make out precisely what was going on amid the frantic movements of the student crowd; he glimpsed Beaker’s fiery orange hair above the melee only an instant. He tried to focus on Honeydew. “Well…uh…no, that sounds fair enough…”
“Splendid! It will take place Halloween night, on Doyers Street, at the old—“ An especially loud BOOM from the corner had the bartender shouldering past them, a fire extinguisher held aloft. Newsie started at the sight of Beaker’s hair actually aflame. “Oh, dear! Excuse me, Newsman! Beaker! For heaven’s sake, you forgot your drink!” Honeydew hurried into the surging crowd, excusing and pardoning himself numerous times to navigate the gawkers surrounding the blackened lab equipment.
“Um…are they all right?”
Relieved at the familiar voice, Newsie turned to see Gina staring worriedly at the white-coated carnage. “As much as they ever are,” he replied, setting his drink down to give her a strong hug. He nuzzled his nose against her shoulder, sighing, and took comfort in her arms around him.
“Goodness. Bad night?” she asked, settling onto the barstool next to his. “I thought you liked being weekend anchorman?”
Since the departure of former star anchor Bart Fargo under a cloud of humiliation and a green tint he never could quite dye out of his hair, the station manager had appointed the Newsman as weekend anchor for the six o’clock news. The former weekend anchor, a veteran who’d been angling for the main seat for years, did certainly deserve his shot, the Newsman thought, but he still felt a twinge of irritation that he himself hadn’t been picked for the more important slot. However, it was still a step up, and even a small salary bump, so he wasn’t complaining – no matter how much Rhonda did. He sighed again. “No, the news was fine…I mean, presenting it…”
“Gotcha. So…what fell on you?” She discreetly checked the top of his head for bruising as she stroked her fingers lightly through his thick auburn hair.
He blushed. “Please…I’m fine…it was only a dozen or so cantaloupes.” He blinked seriously at her. “Naturally, I had them destroyed! Listeria is terrible!”
“Naturally,” Gina agreed, biting back a smile. She gestured at the bartender. “Dark and stormy, please?” She nodded at Newsie’s drink. “You want another of those, or something less potent?”
Newsie set the empty bottle on the bartop. “One more, I think.” A small rustling noise made him jump and nervously look all around, but it turned out to be only a couple of soused penguins bumping through the crowd’s legs as they passed by.
“Okay…you really are keyed up,” Gina observed. “Newsie, what happened?”
The bartender returned, setting another Bleinheim’s before Newsie, but then indicated Gina’s Day-of-the-Dead-evoking outfit. “Hey, if you want, we got a special going on for Halloween drinks all month! Want to try a ‘dark and stormy hayride’?”
“What’s that?”
“Same drink, but with pumpkin-spice liqueur and vanilla rum.”
“Oooh...yeah! Thank you!” She smiled briefly as the man poured out the drink for her in a large pumpkin-shaped glass and topped it off with a straw and a skewer of candy corn. “Mmm…wanna try?” she offered Newsie a sip.
He shook his head, casting an anxious look at the noisy young patrons carrying on their party or experiment or both, despite the faint haze of smoke still lingering. “Can we…find someplace quiet in here? If that’s possible?”
“I see an empty booth. Come on.”
The Newsman followed his beloved back to a cramped booth, and climbed onto the vinyl seat across from her. The fake cobwebs and tacky strings of skull-shaped lights everywhere did nothing to alleviate his mood. Gina took his hand in hers, concerned. “Is your aunt okay?” Seeing his expression instantly change for the worse, she stroked his fingers. “Oh…Newsie. I’m sorry. How is she?”
“She’s in the hospital,” he muttered, staring at the table. “The doctor doesn’t know if she’ll recover or not. She’s…conscious, but not at all aware of where she is. Less than before. She’s not even talking.”
“Newsie…I’m so sorry.” Gina kissed his fingers gently.
“They said she fell –“
“Geez. Wasn’t anyone with her?”
“Those two freaks were!” Newsie spat. Startled, Gina sat back, eyes widening. “They – they tripped her, or pushed her, or something! I caught them hiding in her room at the hospital!”
“Those two furry things? The…yipping jellyfish with the big mouths?”
“Yes! They hurt her! They – they called her ‘bad’!” He stared grimly at his worried love. “I’ve arranged for police protection for her, but something awful is going on, Gina. I’m sure of it! I saw them leave through the sewers! The sewers!”
It took her a second to realize what he meant. “This…this is connected to those stories of people disappearing you’ve been researching?”
“It must be!” He shook his head, and held tight to her hand. “Gina…if monsters really are invading the city…I have to warn people! I have to find out what their horrible plot is, and expose them!”
“Newsie…why would those two creatures want to hurt your aunt? They seemed to really like her, I thought. It doesn’t make sense…”
“It does if there is some master plan, and those two are part of it! Maybe…maybe Ethel found something out, or saw something about them they’d rather the public not know! What if there are terrorist monsters? What if there are hideous furry insurgents hiding in the New York City subway tunnels? Think of the damage they could do! It would be worse than Spain! It could potentially be bigger than 9/11!”
“Aloysius,” she said softly, holding his fingers tight in her own, “calm down. Take a drink, take a breath, let’s start this over, okay?”
Frustrated, Newsie nevertheless did as she suggested, downing two long gulps of the ginger beer, then suffering hiccups. Gina leaned over and smacked his shoulderblades; he gulped, took a deep breath, nodded thanks, and tried to organize his racing thoughts. “I haven’t seen you this anxious in a long while,” she said, watching him wrest himself under control with a concerned frown. “You’re jumping at every little noise.”
He shivered. “I saw them, Gina. They…dissolved right down the storm drain! It was grotesque!”
“Okay…but that doesn’t mean they attacked your aunt. Or that they’ve been dragging people into the sewers to eat them, or whatever.” She sipped her drink, eyes narrowed over the rim of the glass at her clearly shaken Muppet journalist. “So…how many people have gone missing in the sewers? Provable, I mean – that can’t be explained any other way?”
“At least seven,” he replied, then thought about it. “More likely nine or ten. And those are just the ones that have been reported by co-workers or friends of the missing! Remember when a whole enclave of homeless people were discovered living in an abandoned subway tunnel, a few years ago? If the monsters attacked a group like that…dozens would be simply gone and no one would be the wiser on the surface!” Distraught, he glanced around the room, not sure what he should be looking for but nagged by the disturbing feeling he ought to be on the watch for something. He downed the rest of his ginger brew, and cleaned his glasses with a small cloth; his vision seemed a trifle blurry, and he wanted to be sharp in every way right now. When Gina took his hand again he jumped slightly.
“Newsie…relax. Please,” Gina begged softly. “There are no monsters here. None.” He nodded curtly, still restless of eye and movement. Gina sighed. “So what are you going to do about it? Start yelling for everyone to go monster-hunting in the subway?”
“That would be irresponsible.”
“Good. I’m glad you realize that.” Gina shook her head, but stroked his fingers in hers. “Look, maybe there is something to all this, but sitting here worrying about it instead of enjoying a nice dinner isn’t going to help matters, or calm you.”
“I’ve already begun research. I spent the rest of the afternoon at the library.” He scowled. “All the blueprints are at City Hall, though, and they won’t be open until Monday! I did find a number of books on the subject, however…”
“Urban myths? Alligators flushed down toilets turning feral in the sewers?”
“Of course not! No…I mean material concerning the history and construction of the tunnels. Subway, abandoned lines, sewer systems, gas and power conduits, deep water routes below the bedrock…everything.” He swallowed the last trace of ginger, feeling suddenly sheepish. “Uh…I piled them all on the coffee table. I’ll organize when we get home.”
“So you’re not going to go on the air and declare the city has a monster infestation under the streets?”
“Absolutely not!” he said, shocked. “They…they might see the broadcast, and be ready for me!”
“Newsie…I kind of doubt monsters watch the local news.” Gina started to smile, then the implication of what he’d just said sank in. “Newsie. Please tell me you’re not planning on going down there yourself!”
“Um. Er…”
“I thought all that was off-limits? Only city services workers, subway technicians, those kind of folks allowed down at all?” She frowned, her petite nose wrinkling in a way he would have found adorable in other circumstances. “Not to mention it’s dangerous! Live wires, nasty gunk in the water…why would you want to risk it? Please tell me you’re not even considering that!”
“Er. Uh…”
Gina sighed, watching him squirm and fidget with his tie and his shirtcuffs. “This really smells like a story to you?”
Unhappily, he met her gaze, and nodded. “That ‘nose for news’ thing isn’t really a joke. I honestly did pick the profession that best suited my natural talents…”
With a wistful smile, Gina stroked a finger down the sharp edge of his long nose. “And suited you are, my dedicated journalist. Uh…what does this story smell like, exactly?”
Newsie shivered all over. “Like dirty wet fur,” he muttered. “Like horrible things under the bed.”
Gina’s boot kicked something under their table. “Sheesh!” a fairly large orange-and-green-striped spider complained as it scuttled away, “Lousy service, spilled beers, and rude customers! See if I ever spin a web here again!”
The both stared after it a moment. Newsie pushed his empty bottle away, feeling mildly ill. “Spider,” Gina pointed out. “Not monster.”
“Close enough,” he grumbled. He felt her touch on his chin, and looked up into soft grey eyes.
“Do you know I love you, and I want you happy?” she asked.
Despite his anxiety, he melted inside. He nodded.
Gina smiled at him, though she appeared hesitant. “Then if you really think this is some kind of big conspiracy, do your homework and look into it. Just…be careful. Don’t go down there unless it’s with some kind of official guide, okay? And not without telling me first. Please.”
“All right,” he agreed, and leaned over the table to meet her proffered lips in a kiss. “I love you.”
“Homework first. I know how much you dislike monsters; just don’t let it color your judgment, okay?” She smiled more openly. “Hey, if there is something we need to worry about, I’ll play Paul Revere with you! But I think you need a lot more evidence than a couple of weird rag-things yipping down a storm drain.” She laid one hand on the as-yet-unopened plastic menu on the table. “Have dinner with me?”
“Of course,” the Newsman said, embarrassed at having been so gung-ho, and looked over the menu with her, the two of them passing it back and forth and finally waving down the harried lone waitress. Gina’s right, he thought. This did merit a great deal more investigation first…but he was still convinced malevolent monsters were lurking somewhere down there…plotting. Waiting. Maybe silencing those who discovered too much. He would have to be very, very careful, he realized. However, that didn’t mean he shouldn’t do something to warn people immediately…
Rhonda disagreed completely.
“Are you completely insane?” she squeaked, tiny eyes wide, when on Sunday afternoon she came storming into his dressing-room at KRAK, his news script for the night in hand. “Goldie, what the heck is this?”
Annoyed at her barging in without knocking, the Newsman finished buttoning up his dress shirt; he’d removed it to brush his teeth, always sensitive to his appearance on-camera. “Looks like tonight’s script to me. Something wrong with it?” he demanded.
“Oh, geez, lemme see. Hmm. Story on Occupy Wall Street, check. Story on Libyan rebel government, check. Story on listeria breakout –“
“Not more fruit,” he muttered under his breath, reflexively smoothing down his hair.
“Check,” Rhonda continued, ignoring his interruption. “Story on people vanishing in the sewers, check – oh wait a minute, am I wrong or does this story have absolutely nothing at all to do with reality?” She smacked the papers down on the long makeup counter in front of his mirror. “Obviously you wrote that one – I asked Art and Murray and neither of them knew anything about it! So what gives?”
“Rhonda,” he said, taking a deep breath, “in the past month, at least seven people have gone into the tunnels beneath this city, witnessed by others who were with them at the time, and have not re-emerged! That’s too many to be accidents and too many to be coincidence!” He glared at her. “And I personally witnessed a couple of suspicious, possibly homicidal monsters escaping down a storm drain in Queens!”
“Homicidal monsters?” She glanced through the reports again. “It doesn’t say anything in here about that!”
“Of course not! Do you think I don’t know the consequences of starting a panic? Or of alerting the monsters that I’m wise to them, before I have all the facts in hand?” Snorting disgustedly, he lifted his chin to see his tie in the mirror, and knotted it with quick, angry movements. “For all I know, there could be monsterist cells operating in this very station!”
Rhonda rolled her eyes. “Oh, right, of course, silly me! Hey, I bet there are monster spies around here who are keeping an eye on you, and who are all in a secret sinister plot to take over the airwaves and force a TV-addicted populace to its knees for their secret monster agenda!”
Newsie paused, giving her a worried look. “Really? You think it goes that deep?”
Rhonda jumped up, thwacking him over the nose with the news script. “Have you completely lost your mind?” Newsie stumbled back a step, one hand instinctively protecting his nose, startled. “Oh my frog! You really have been clobbered by too many falling objects! Newsie, come on! Do you think Sweetums is involved in a terror plot? Or Big Mama? Or the Mutations?”
“I never trusted those guys,” Newsie muttered. “Their singing is so bad it has to be a cover for something else!”
“Oh, please! What about the cute ones from that kid’s show – Cookie Monster? Herry Monster? Elmo? They’re monsters! Think they’re all plotting to take over the world?”
Newsie shot her a glare. “Well, the first two are probably all right, but that Elmo character…”
“I do not believe I am hearing this!”
“Oh no? Well what about this? Remember those two ConEd guys who filed the police report a week ago? No one has seen them since! They never even made it to their homes! I checked!” He scowled, feeling entirely justified. “Doesn’t that strike you as scary?”
“No, you know what’s scary? Scary is the fact that our nightly news is so poor, we’re being beat out in the ratings by some local-indie-channel talent show thing!” Rhonda pulled the latest Nielsen printout from a pocket, and Newsie blinked; where did the rat even have pockets in that tight miniskirt and bolo jacket? She waved the sheet in his face, although she had to jump onto the makeup counter to do it. “I mean, I never even heard of this station before! MMN? What the heck is that? And they’re beating us by two full points!”
Irritated, Newsie brushed the ratings sheet away. “I’m in the news business, not the entertainment business!”
“Oh, well la dee dah,” Rhonda sniffed. “Like you getting pummeled by stuff even on the regular news gig isn’t entertaining! Look, why don’t ya do a piece on cows or something?”
“Cows?”
“Sure. Or sheep. Sheep are funny.”
“D—it, Rhonda, I’m not here to be funny!” he shouted. “I’m here because people need to know about things which could affect their lives! And that certainly includes the possibility that monsters may be invading the city right underneath their feet!”
Rhonda’s whiskers bristled, and she put her nose right up to his. “I’ll tell ya what’s affecting my life right now – my just-became-a-real-anchor news partner is too caught up in his personal phobias to put any energy into making his broadcast more watchable, and what happens to him happens to me because I’m his stupid reports producer!” They glared at one another, fuming. Rhonda pushed her hair out of her eyes, trying to regain her professional mein. “Newsie…look. Drop the monster stuff. It’s just not credible. You wanna chase after missing people, fine, great, we’ll set up a two-unit shoot this week. Tromping around in other people’s waste sounds delightful and I can’t wait to ride shotgun on that! But meantime, can you please, please, please just stick to real stories that people actually wanna watch?”
“I won’t say a word about monsters,” he promised grudgingly, lowering his voice. “But I will present my findings on missing persons in the tunnels. People need to be warned not to go down there, Rhonda. I’m serious.”
“I hadn’t ever noticed,” she sighed in return, but there was no venom in her jibe. “Okay, fine. Now can you work this in somewhere?” She handed him a sheet of paper with some news copy typed on it; he took it, read it quickly, and frowned, confused.
“Uh…an ad about Happy Harvey’s Hamster Hamburgers?”
“I was thinking maybe use it as a lighter-tone piece. Just don’t put it anywhere near that listeria story.”
“Rhonda…is this a sponsor?”
“They’ve offered us freebies off their lunch cart every weekday. Not a bad trade. The boss wants it worked into the broadcast, okay?”
Surprised, the Newsman stared hard at the blasé little rat. “Sponsorship? Are we labeling it as such, at least? Should I say this segment is brought to you by Happy Harvey’s?”
“Nah, you don’t need to go to that much trouble. Just…maybe…what if you ate one of their burgers on-camera, and mention they opened a new joint on the Upper East Side? I’ll make sure the front of the bag is facing camera two…”
“Rhonda! No!”
“Oh. Already had dinner? Okay – pretend to eat it. Really, it’s the bag that counts the most; you can fake the rest.”
“No!” Astounded, the Newsman drew himself up to his full three-foot-six (seven, with his shoes on) and gave her his deepest scowl. “That’s not news! I will not present it in any way which might even suggest that! If they want ads, have them talk to the station’s ad department, not the news division!”
“Newsie…” Rhonda sighed. “Look. You like being anchor, even on weekends, am I right? It’s nice?”
“What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything!” She leaned closer, glancing toward the closed door to the hallway. “Uh…but Blanke told me to tell you he wants all his anchors to earn their nicer pay. Capiche?”
“That’s blackmail!” he sputtered. “That’s…that’s compromising the news! I won’t do it!”
“You wanna go back to the only-Muppet-news gig? A few seconds a night on-camera, instead of being behind the big desk to introduce every story? You want to give up this cushy dressing-room?”
Shocked, Newsie stared at her. “But...but this is my dressing-room!”
Rhonda shrugged. “Hey, I’m not saying I like it either! Frankly, those hamster burgers kinda creep me out…and they taste terrible. But ratings are down, and if we don’t pick up some more ad revenue quick, cuts will be made, and people will be demoted if they aren’t locked into cushy contracts, and you know I was only able to negotiate schedule for you with them – not a guaranteed anchor position.” She took a deep breath, smoothed down her skirt, and crossed her arms over her chest. “So do the danged report already. It’s a small enough price to pay for all this, I think. And it’s the way everybody does the news these days. Sordid, I’ll grant ya, but established practice. So mention the nasty burgers and you get full funding for your special reports, including two cameras all week to go squishing through the sewers if that’s your cup a’ java. Okay?”
The Newsman didn’t reply, thoroughly disgusted. Without a word he tucked the reprehensible ad copy into his news script pages, and Rhonda patted his arm. “That wasn’t so painful, was it? No to monsters, yes to burgers, you’re due on set in two minutes, we all good?”
“Fine,” Newsie muttered. “Can I finish dressing in peace?”
“Ya know, I don’t know why Gina buys you nice coats. It’s only gonna need dry-cleaning,” the rat called over her shoulder as she trotted out of the room.
Angrily, Newsie read the ad again. An idea struck, and he woke up his PowerBook and logged on to the Web, typing in a search for the happy hamburgers. He found what he’d hoped for in seconds, and with a smile, turned his printer on and started feeding webpages to it.
“Good evening! It is Sunday, October the sixteenth. I’m the Newsman, and here are tonight’s top stories…” The newscast went fairly smoothly; he was prepared for the cantaloupes pelting him this time, and managed to stay more or less upright and focused on the camera after the last one had thumped his head. The brief about NATO air strikes had him flinching and crouching as frightening sounds seared the air over his head; he didn’t look up, not wanting to know whether it was missiles or attack drones this time. Finally, in local news, he swallowed dryly and launched into his warning: “A series of unexplained disappearances of workers in the city’s vast underground tunnel system has some at Consolidated Edison worried. Although workers keep their own maps of the extensive network of subway, service and water tunnels in order to facilitate their routine repair and maintenance tasks for the utility company, the company has been hearing reports of unusual things in the tunnels! Two workers actually filed a police report claiming to have seen some sort of creature briefly in a maintenance tunnel, and having heard continuous, unexplained noises while working in a seldom-used stretch of the tunnel.” Nervously, he checked the studio floor, but saw no monsters present. “KRAK News followed up on this report, and tried to contact the workers; however, they did not show up for work the following day, or any day since, and efforts to reach them at home have failed. Neighbors and family members are worried, saying the two men who filed the report have not been home since the day they did so! It has now been ten days since this mysterious chain of events began. Anyone with information on the whereabouts of either of these men,” (he glanced at a monitor to make sure the men’s names and photos were being displayed behind him; they were) “is asked to call NYPD. But this is not the only case recently of disappearances underground! Two weeks ago, a homeless man encamped near a disused subway station at Rockefeller Plaza claimed a friend of his went foraging for papers to use as heating fuel down into the subway, and never returned. Others have claimed to have heard strange sounds, like wild animals, and there may well be more people vanished off the streets of the city than the seven positively documented by police as missing persons last seen in the vicinity of sewer openings, subway tunnels, or the aqueduct route through Central Park. If you have any information on cases like these, please call or email this reporter, care of KRAK News.”
He took a deep breath, hoping more leads, real leads, would surface. “And also in local news tonight: chain restaurant Happy Harvey’s Hamster Hamburgers is being investigated for what health department officials say is a potential food code violation! Numerous customers throughout the five boroughs have brought complaints to the health department, as well as the Better Business Bureau, for having found alleged gerbil hair in the purported all-hamster burgers. To investigate these claims, KRAK has obtained a random, sample burger from Happy Harvey’s, which Muppet Labs will independently subject to various chemical and spectrographic tests. We’ll bring you the results tomorrow night, right here on KRAK Big Apple News! For the record, Happy Harvey’s is a sponsor of this program.” He smiled, easily ducking the apples which fell from the ceiling as well as the squeaking gerbils suddenly dashing madly underfoot. “Coming up: sports with Lewis Kazagger!”
The feed cut to commercial; Newsie could only perversely hope it was for Happy Harvey’s. Rhonda had one paw plastered over her eyes, her head thrown back in a why-me posture. Art the news floor director was shaking his head. In the control booth, Newsie could see one of the producers already on her cell phone, looking very stressed. He leaned back in his chair – ah, so nice to have an actual chair – and shuffled the papers on his desk, bringing to the front the national news and the script for the interview via live feed on-the-scene at the park where the Wall Street protesters were camped tonight. Rhonda darted forward.
“Blanke wants to talk to you after the show,” she hissed. He only smiled at her, and she put her paws on her waist and glared. “You better not get my parking space revoked! I earned that danged thing!”
She NEEDS a parking space? he wondered, curious, but then the feed was back in the studio, and he turned to the camera, and calmly went on with the news.
The black furry long-tailed bat with orange ears and wide yellow eyes crawled wing-over-wing from the stage lighting truss up into the ceiling, and scraped its way stealthily along until it reached the building’s ventilation shaft, then flew down toward the basement. It didn’t need to stick around for the rest of the show…it had heard enough.
--------------------
“What can I getcha?” the bartender asked.
Uncertainly, Newsie glanced at the rows of exotic liquors and liqueurs interspersed between racks of test tubes and Pyrex glassware, all lit with blacklight. “Er…uh…just a ginger beer, please. Bleinheim’s, if you carry it.”
A frosty bottle plunked onto the counter before him. The Newsman paid for it and immediately took a long gulp. Gina had introduced him to the heady, potent brew during the summer heat; he usually didn’t go right for the strong stuff, but tonight he was feeling unnerved enough to want a panacea. His gaze traveled around the tavern, passing over a crowd of students performing some kind of experiment with a full rig of bottles, tubes, and a gas burner in the corner; a few professorish types puffing on e-cigs while they quaffed strong mugs of stout; two bespectacled, lab-coated young women at the bar clearly ignoring the two young men in argyle sleeveless cardigans who kept trying to start a conversation with them. There were a few tables still empty, but the Newsman was feeling too skittish to turn away from the bar and its long, mirror-tiled periodic table of the elements which gave him a good view of the whole room. Not that he thought it likely a monster would come in here…but better safe than sorry.
He took another swig of the ginger soda, coughing a little, reminding himself to slow down. His throat burned. The TV over this end of the bar showed some sort of pulsing, horrible fungoid blob wielding a blowtorch while a trio of monsters watched. Startled, Newsie gestured for the bartender’s attention. “What the heck is that? A horror movie?” he demanded, pointing to the blob onscreen; it appeared now to be doing some sort of ballet in excruciating closeup.
The bartender laughed. “Uh…no, I thought it was some kind of new talent show. Weird!”
“Well can you change the channel, please?” Newsie asked. Shrugging, the man wiped his fingers on his apron, found the remote, and turned the station to one of the major networks’ evening news broadcasts. “Thank you,” Newsie nodded. He jumped, almost falling off his barstool when someone patted his shoulder. “Ack!”
“Well hello, Newsman!” Dr Bunsen Honeydew exclaimed. “Fancy meeting you here! I didn’t realize you had an interest in chemistry!”
“Meep meep,” Beaker added, nodding familiarly.
“Er…hello, Dr Honeydew, Beaker. No, I…I’m meeting Gina. This is one of her favorite taverns,” Newsie explained. “Uh…do you come here often?”
“Tsst, tsst! Does that mean you want to buy me a drink?” Honeydew joked; Beaker tittered. At the Newsman’s obviously confused expression, Bunsen patted his shoulder again. “I’m just joshing you, of course! Excuse me, barkeep? One radiator coolant!” Beaker meeped at him. “Oh, sorry. Make that two, please!”
Two tall lab mixing beakers of thick, greenish liquid appeared quickly on the bartop; the bartender used metal tongs to carefully drop a chunk of dry ice into each of them, and then slid neon curly-straws into the glasses before pushing them over. “Mee!” Beaker said happily, slurping his noisily.
“Excellent! Keep the change,” Bunsen said, handing a bill over. He turned once more to Newsie. “This is our favorite bar. Most places simply don’t understand the research scientist’s need to enjoy a mildly toxic beverage after a long day in the lab! But here, even the drinks cater to our tastes, right, Beaker?” His lab partner made happy noises, the straw still stuck in his mouth.
Newsie gave the green stuff a dubious look. “Er…that isn’t really…”
“Radiator fluid? Oh, ho, ho! Of course not! No, this is a rather potent combination of green apple schnapps, Angustora bitters, absinthe and diet lime soda, with just a teensy touch of paradimethylaminobenzaldehyde! Would you care to try a sip? I can ask for another straw…”
A girl’s high peal of laughter from the experiment in the corner made Beaker look up so fast his straw jerked up, leaving the glass but still in his mouth; when one of the lab-coated ladies at the bar noticed Beaker and gave him a very frank study, and then a smile, Beaker blushed and tried to smooth down his hair. His arm knocked his straw from his lips and onto the floor. He looked from the now-contaminated straw to his drink, shrugged, and drank straight from the glass.
“Uh…I thought dry ice was poisonous?” Newsie asked.
“Oh, not really! But one does need to make sure one’s felt doesn’t actually come in direct contact with the frozen carbon dioxide! It can cause rather bad burns.” Newsie nodded, glancing at the door, hoping Gina would arrive soon. He knew he was early, and although it was nice to see a colleague, he’d never been entirely comfortable around these two…less so since the incident with them and the psychokinetic reverse field energy generator earlier this year.
Beaker started, hastily removing the drink from his mouth, but the bubbling, slowly evaporating chunk of dry ice refused to unstick from his upper lip. “Meee! Meee!” Frantically he tugged at it with one hand. His fingers stuck to it. “Meeee!”
“Oh, honestly, Beaker! If you like her proportions too, why don’t you offer to buy her a drink?” Bunsen grumbled, not looking at his assistant. He leaned closer to Newsie. “I keep encouraging him to have more of a social life, but you know Beaker! Totally devoted to his work!” He smiled. “It is very nice to know you and your Romany sweetheart get out together once in a while! It makes for a nice break from your news work, I would imagine.”
“It does,” Newsie agreed. He cast an uncertain glance at Beaker, who was now reeling between the nearest tables, meeping and flailing his elbows, his drink abandoned on the bartop. “Is…is he all right?”
Bunsen shook his head wearily. “Regrettably, my colleague sometimes forgets he shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach!” He nodded at the Newsman’s nearly-empty ginger beer. “Will you and Ms Broucek be eating here as well? They have some truly wonderful sandwiches! I highly recommend the organic metacarbon au jus – it comes with a side of the most delightful ammonium-iodide pommes frites!”
Irritated exclamations came from the table holding the experiment in the corner. Trying to keep up the conversation but feeling somewhat distracted, the Newsman sipped more of his ginger brew. “Ah…sounds very…culinary.”
“Why don’t you join us for dinner? It would be a pleasure to catch back up with the two of you,” Bunsen offered. “Oh! Speaking of joining…will you be participating in the charity walk on Halloween?”
“The MADL event?” Newsie shook his head. “Dr Honeydew, I really can’t. It would compromise my journalistic standards to actively take part in a special-interest group’s fundraising.”
“Oh, of course. How silly of me! I never considered that. I suppose you must have to walk a very fine line between us and the non-felted, what with your mainstream news job.”
Uncomfortably, Newsie shrugged. “No, no, my station probably wouldn’t mind…it’s just… Well, you try to be completely objective in your labwork, don’t you?”
“Absolutely.” Honeydew smiled at him. “I think I see your position! Well, might you give us some coverage on the news? Surely a few mentions leading up to that night, and perhaps a live report on the walk that evening, couldn’t hurt?”
Newsie considered it. From the back corner, high-pitched meeps gave way to shouts of “Watch it!” and “Look out!” and a series of glass-shattering crashes. Discomfited, he looked around, but couldn’t make out precisely what was going on amid the frantic movements of the student crowd; he glimpsed Beaker’s fiery orange hair above the melee only an instant. He tried to focus on Honeydew. “Well…uh…no, that sounds fair enough…”
“Splendid! It will take place Halloween night, on Doyers Street, at the old—“ An especially loud BOOM from the corner had the bartender shouldering past them, a fire extinguisher held aloft. Newsie started at the sight of Beaker’s hair actually aflame. “Oh, dear! Excuse me, Newsman! Beaker! For heaven’s sake, you forgot your drink!” Honeydew hurried into the surging crowd, excusing and pardoning himself numerous times to navigate the gawkers surrounding the blackened lab equipment.
“Um…are they all right?”
Relieved at the familiar voice, Newsie turned to see Gina staring worriedly at the white-coated carnage. “As much as they ever are,” he replied, setting his drink down to give her a strong hug. He nuzzled his nose against her shoulder, sighing, and took comfort in her arms around him.
“Goodness. Bad night?” she asked, settling onto the barstool next to his. “I thought you liked being weekend anchorman?”
Since the departure of former star anchor Bart Fargo under a cloud of humiliation and a green tint he never could quite dye out of his hair, the station manager had appointed the Newsman as weekend anchor for the six o’clock news. The former weekend anchor, a veteran who’d been angling for the main seat for years, did certainly deserve his shot, the Newsman thought, but he still felt a twinge of irritation that he himself hadn’t been picked for the more important slot. However, it was still a step up, and even a small salary bump, so he wasn’t complaining – no matter how much Rhonda did. He sighed again. “No, the news was fine…I mean, presenting it…”
“Gotcha. So…what fell on you?” She discreetly checked the top of his head for bruising as she stroked her fingers lightly through his thick auburn hair.
He blushed. “Please…I’m fine…it was only a dozen or so cantaloupes.” He blinked seriously at her. “Naturally, I had them destroyed! Listeria is terrible!”
“Naturally,” Gina agreed, biting back a smile. She gestured at the bartender. “Dark and stormy, please?” She nodded at Newsie’s drink. “You want another of those, or something less potent?”
Newsie set the empty bottle on the bartop. “One more, I think.” A small rustling noise made him jump and nervously look all around, but it turned out to be only a couple of soused penguins bumping through the crowd’s legs as they passed by.
“Okay…you really are keyed up,” Gina observed. “Newsie, what happened?”
The bartender returned, setting another Bleinheim’s before Newsie, but then indicated Gina’s Day-of-the-Dead-evoking outfit. “Hey, if you want, we got a special going on for Halloween drinks all month! Want to try a ‘dark and stormy hayride’?”
“What’s that?”
“Same drink, but with pumpkin-spice liqueur and vanilla rum.”
“Oooh...yeah! Thank you!” She smiled briefly as the man poured out the drink for her in a large pumpkin-shaped glass and topped it off with a straw and a skewer of candy corn. “Mmm…wanna try?” she offered Newsie a sip.
He shook his head, casting an anxious look at the noisy young patrons carrying on their party or experiment or both, despite the faint haze of smoke still lingering. “Can we…find someplace quiet in here? If that’s possible?”
“I see an empty booth. Come on.”
The Newsman followed his beloved back to a cramped booth, and climbed onto the vinyl seat across from her. The fake cobwebs and tacky strings of skull-shaped lights everywhere did nothing to alleviate his mood. Gina took his hand in hers, concerned. “Is your aunt okay?” Seeing his expression instantly change for the worse, she stroked his fingers. “Oh…Newsie. I’m sorry. How is she?”
“She’s in the hospital,” he muttered, staring at the table. “The doctor doesn’t know if she’ll recover or not. She’s…conscious, but not at all aware of where she is. Less than before. She’s not even talking.”
“Newsie…I’m so sorry.” Gina kissed his fingers gently.
“They said she fell –“
“Geez. Wasn’t anyone with her?”
“Those two freaks were!” Newsie spat. Startled, Gina sat back, eyes widening. “They – they tripped her, or pushed her, or something! I caught them hiding in her room at the hospital!”
“Those two furry things? The…yipping jellyfish with the big mouths?”
“Yes! They hurt her! They – they called her ‘bad’!” He stared grimly at his worried love. “I’ve arranged for police protection for her, but something awful is going on, Gina. I’m sure of it! I saw them leave through the sewers! The sewers!”
It took her a second to realize what he meant. “This…this is connected to those stories of people disappearing you’ve been researching?”
“It must be!” He shook his head, and held tight to her hand. “Gina…if monsters really are invading the city…I have to warn people! I have to find out what their horrible plot is, and expose them!”
“Newsie…why would those two creatures want to hurt your aunt? They seemed to really like her, I thought. It doesn’t make sense…”
“It does if there is some master plan, and those two are part of it! Maybe…maybe Ethel found something out, or saw something about them they’d rather the public not know! What if there are terrorist monsters? What if there are hideous furry insurgents hiding in the New York City subway tunnels? Think of the damage they could do! It would be worse than Spain! It could potentially be bigger than 9/11!”
“Aloysius,” she said softly, holding his fingers tight in her own, “calm down. Take a drink, take a breath, let’s start this over, okay?”
Frustrated, Newsie nevertheless did as she suggested, downing two long gulps of the ginger beer, then suffering hiccups. Gina leaned over and smacked his shoulderblades; he gulped, took a deep breath, nodded thanks, and tried to organize his racing thoughts. “I haven’t seen you this anxious in a long while,” she said, watching him wrest himself under control with a concerned frown. “You’re jumping at every little noise.”
He shivered. “I saw them, Gina. They…dissolved right down the storm drain! It was grotesque!”
“Okay…but that doesn’t mean they attacked your aunt. Or that they’ve been dragging people into the sewers to eat them, or whatever.” She sipped her drink, eyes narrowed over the rim of the glass at her clearly shaken Muppet journalist. “So…how many people have gone missing in the sewers? Provable, I mean – that can’t be explained any other way?”
“At least seven,” he replied, then thought about it. “More likely nine or ten. And those are just the ones that have been reported by co-workers or friends of the missing! Remember when a whole enclave of homeless people were discovered living in an abandoned subway tunnel, a few years ago? If the monsters attacked a group like that…dozens would be simply gone and no one would be the wiser on the surface!” Distraught, he glanced around the room, not sure what he should be looking for but nagged by the disturbing feeling he ought to be on the watch for something. He downed the rest of his ginger brew, and cleaned his glasses with a small cloth; his vision seemed a trifle blurry, and he wanted to be sharp in every way right now. When Gina took his hand again he jumped slightly.
“Newsie…relax. Please,” Gina begged softly. “There are no monsters here. None.” He nodded curtly, still restless of eye and movement. Gina sighed. “So what are you going to do about it? Start yelling for everyone to go monster-hunting in the subway?”
“That would be irresponsible.”
“Good. I’m glad you realize that.” Gina shook her head, but stroked his fingers in hers. “Look, maybe there is something to all this, but sitting here worrying about it instead of enjoying a nice dinner isn’t going to help matters, or calm you.”
“I’ve already begun research. I spent the rest of the afternoon at the library.” He scowled. “All the blueprints are at City Hall, though, and they won’t be open until Monday! I did find a number of books on the subject, however…”
“Urban myths? Alligators flushed down toilets turning feral in the sewers?”
“Of course not! No…I mean material concerning the history and construction of the tunnels. Subway, abandoned lines, sewer systems, gas and power conduits, deep water routes below the bedrock…everything.” He swallowed the last trace of ginger, feeling suddenly sheepish. “Uh…I piled them all on the coffee table. I’ll organize when we get home.”
“So you’re not going to go on the air and declare the city has a monster infestation under the streets?”
“Absolutely not!” he said, shocked. “They…they might see the broadcast, and be ready for me!”
“Newsie…I kind of doubt monsters watch the local news.” Gina started to smile, then the implication of what he’d just said sank in. “Newsie. Please tell me you’re not planning on going down there yourself!”
“Um. Er…”
“I thought all that was off-limits? Only city services workers, subway technicians, those kind of folks allowed down at all?” She frowned, her petite nose wrinkling in a way he would have found adorable in other circumstances. “Not to mention it’s dangerous! Live wires, nasty gunk in the water…why would you want to risk it? Please tell me you’re not even considering that!”
“Er. Uh…”
Gina sighed, watching him squirm and fidget with his tie and his shirtcuffs. “This really smells like a story to you?”
Unhappily, he met her gaze, and nodded. “That ‘nose for news’ thing isn’t really a joke. I honestly did pick the profession that best suited my natural talents…”
With a wistful smile, Gina stroked a finger down the sharp edge of his long nose. “And suited you are, my dedicated journalist. Uh…what does this story smell like, exactly?”
Newsie shivered all over. “Like dirty wet fur,” he muttered. “Like horrible things under the bed.”
Gina’s boot kicked something under their table. “Sheesh!” a fairly large orange-and-green-striped spider complained as it scuttled away, “Lousy service, spilled beers, and rude customers! See if I ever spin a web here again!”
The both stared after it a moment. Newsie pushed his empty bottle away, feeling mildly ill. “Spider,” Gina pointed out. “Not monster.”
“Close enough,” he grumbled. He felt her touch on his chin, and looked up into soft grey eyes.
“Do you know I love you, and I want you happy?” she asked.
Despite his anxiety, he melted inside. He nodded.
Gina smiled at him, though she appeared hesitant. “Then if you really think this is some kind of big conspiracy, do your homework and look into it. Just…be careful. Don’t go down there unless it’s with some kind of official guide, okay? And not without telling me first. Please.”
“All right,” he agreed, and leaned over the table to meet her proffered lips in a kiss. “I love you.”
“Homework first. I know how much you dislike monsters; just don’t let it color your judgment, okay?” She smiled more openly. “Hey, if there is something we need to worry about, I’ll play Paul Revere with you! But I think you need a lot more evidence than a couple of weird rag-things yipping down a storm drain.” She laid one hand on the as-yet-unopened plastic menu on the table. “Have dinner with me?”
“Of course,” the Newsman said, embarrassed at having been so gung-ho, and looked over the menu with her, the two of them passing it back and forth and finally waving down the harried lone waitress. Gina’s right, he thought. This did merit a great deal more investigation first…but he was still convinced malevolent monsters were lurking somewhere down there…plotting. Waiting. Maybe silencing those who discovered too much. He would have to be very, very careful, he realized. However, that didn’t mean he shouldn’t do something to warn people immediately…
Rhonda disagreed completely.
“Are you completely insane?” she squeaked, tiny eyes wide, when on Sunday afternoon she came storming into his dressing-room at KRAK, his news script for the night in hand. “Goldie, what the heck is this?”
Annoyed at her barging in without knocking, the Newsman finished buttoning up his dress shirt; he’d removed it to brush his teeth, always sensitive to his appearance on-camera. “Looks like tonight’s script to me. Something wrong with it?” he demanded.
“Oh, geez, lemme see. Hmm. Story on Occupy Wall Street, check. Story on Libyan rebel government, check. Story on listeria breakout –“
“Not more fruit,” he muttered under his breath, reflexively smoothing down his hair.
“Check,” Rhonda continued, ignoring his interruption. “Story on people vanishing in the sewers, check – oh wait a minute, am I wrong or does this story have absolutely nothing at all to do with reality?” She smacked the papers down on the long makeup counter in front of his mirror. “Obviously you wrote that one – I asked Art and Murray and neither of them knew anything about it! So what gives?”
“Rhonda,” he said, taking a deep breath, “in the past month, at least seven people have gone into the tunnels beneath this city, witnessed by others who were with them at the time, and have not re-emerged! That’s too many to be accidents and too many to be coincidence!” He glared at her. “And I personally witnessed a couple of suspicious, possibly homicidal monsters escaping down a storm drain in Queens!”
“Homicidal monsters?” She glanced through the reports again. “It doesn’t say anything in here about that!”
“Of course not! Do you think I don’t know the consequences of starting a panic? Or of alerting the monsters that I’m wise to them, before I have all the facts in hand?” Snorting disgustedly, he lifted his chin to see his tie in the mirror, and knotted it with quick, angry movements. “For all I know, there could be monsterist cells operating in this very station!”
Rhonda rolled her eyes. “Oh, right, of course, silly me! Hey, I bet there are monster spies around here who are keeping an eye on you, and who are all in a secret sinister plot to take over the airwaves and force a TV-addicted populace to its knees for their secret monster agenda!”
Newsie paused, giving her a worried look. “Really? You think it goes that deep?”
Rhonda jumped up, thwacking him over the nose with the news script. “Have you completely lost your mind?” Newsie stumbled back a step, one hand instinctively protecting his nose, startled. “Oh my frog! You really have been clobbered by too many falling objects! Newsie, come on! Do you think Sweetums is involved in a terror plot? Or Big Mama? Or the Mutations?”
“I never trusted those guys,” Newsie muttered. “Their singing is so bad it has to be a cover for something else!”
“Oh, please! What about the cute ones from that kid’s show – Cookie Monster? Herry Monster? Elmo? They’re monsters! Think they’re all plotting to take over the world?”
Newsie shot her a glare. “Well, the first two are probably all right, but that Elmo character…”
“I do not believe I am hearing this!”
“Oh no? Well what about this? Remember those two ConEd guys who filed the police report a week ago? No one has seen them since! They never even made it to their homes! I checked!” He scowled, feeling entirely justified. “Doesn’t that strike you as scary?”
“No, you know what’s scary? Scary is the fact that our nightly news is so poor, we’re being beat out in the ratings by some local-indie-channel talent show thing!” Rhonda pulled the latest Nielsen printout from a pocket, and Newsie blinked; where did the rat even have pockets in that tight miniskirt and bolo jacket? She waved the sheet in his face, although she had to jump onto the makeup counter to do it. “I mean, I never even heard of this station before! MMN? What the heck is that? And they’re beating us by two full points!”
Irritated, Newsie brushed the ratings sheet away. “I’m in the news business, not the entertainment business!”
“Oh, well la dee dah,” Rhonda sniffed. “Like you getting pummeled by stuff even on the regular news gig isn’t entertaining! Look, why don’t ya do a piece on cows or something?”
“Cows?”
“Sure. Or sheep. Sheep are funny.”
“D—it, Rhonda, I’m not here to be funny!” he shouted. “I’m here because people need to know about things which could affect their lives! And that certainly includes the possibility that monsters may be invading the city right underneath their feet!”
Rhonda’s whiskers bristled, and she put her nose right up to his. “I’ll tell ya what’s affecting my life right now – my just-became-a-real-anchor news partner is too caught up in his personal phobias to put any energy into making his broadcast more watchable, and what happens to him happens to me because I’m his stupid reports producer!” They glared at one another, fuming. Rhonda pushed her hair out of her eyes, trying to regain her professional mein. “Newsie…look. Drop the monster stuff. It’s just not credible. You wanna chase after missing people, fine, great, we’ll set up a two-unit shoot this week. Tromping around in other people’s waste sounds delightful and I can’t wait to ride shotgun on that! But meantime, can you please, please, please just stick to real stories that people actually wanna watch?”
“I won’t say a word about monsters,” he promised grudgingly, lowering his voice. “But I will present my findings on missing persons in the tunnels. People need to be warned not to go down there, Rhonda. I’m serious.”
“I hadn’t ever noticed,” she sighed in return, but there was no venom in her jibe. “Okay, fine. Now can you work this in somewhere?” She handed him a sheet of paper with some news copy typed on it; he took it, read it quickly, and frowned, confused.
“Uh…an ad about Happy Harvey’s Hamster Hamburgers?”
“I was thinking maybe use it as a lighter-tone piece. Just don’t put it anywhere near that listeria story.”
“Rhonda…is this a sponsor?”
“They’ve offered us freebies off their lunch cart every weekday. Not a bad trade. The boss wants it worked into the broadcast, okay?”
Surprised, the Newsman stared hard at the blasé little rat. “Sponsorship? Are we labeling it as such, at least? Should I say this segment is brought to you by Happy Harvey’s?”
“Nah, you don’t need to go to that much trouble. Just…maybe…what if you ate one of their burgers on-camera, and mention they opened a new joint on the Upper East Side? I’ll make sure the front of the bag is facing camera two…”
“Rhonda! No!”
“Oh. Already had dinner? Okay – pretend to eat it. Really, it’s the bag that counts the most; you can fake the rest.”
“No!” Astounded, the Newsman drew himself up to his full three-foot-six (seven, with his shoes on) and gave her his deepest scowl. “That’s not news! I will not present it in any way which might even suggest that! If they want ads, have them talk to the station’s ad department, not the news division!”
“Newsie…” Rhonda sighed. “Look. You like being anchor, even on weekends, am I right? It’s nice?”
“What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything!” She leaned closer, glancing toward the closed door to the hallway. “Uh…but Blanke told me to tell you he wants all his anchors to earn their nicer pay. Capiche?”
“That’s blackmail!” he sputtered. “That’s…that’s compromising the news! I won’t do it!”
“You wanna go back to the only-Muppet-news gig? A few seconds a night on-camera, instead of being behind the big desk to introduce every story? You want to give up this cushy dressing-room?”
Shocked, Newsie stared at her. “But...but this is my dressing-room!”
Rhonda shrugged. “Hey, I’m not saying I like it either! Frankly, those hamster burgers kinda creep me out…and they taste terrible. But ratings are down, and if we don’t pick up some more ad revenue quick, cuts will be made, and people will be demoted if they aren’t locked into cushy contracts, and you know I was only able to negotiate schedule for you with them – not a guaranteed anchor position.” She took a deep breath, smoothed down her skirt, and crossed her arms over her chest. “So do the danged report already. It’s a small enough price to pay for all this, I think. And it’s the way everybody does the news these days. Sordid, I’ll grant ya, but established practice. So mention the nasty burgers and you get full funding for your special reports, including two cameras all week to go squishing through the sewers if that’s your cup a’ java. Okay?”
The Newsman didn’t reply, thoroughly disgusted. Without a word he tucked the reprehensible ad copy into his news script pages, and Rhonda patted his arm. “That wasn’t so painful, was it? No to monsters, yes to burgers, you’re due on set in two minutes, we all good?”
“Fine,” Newsie muttered. “Can I finish dressing in peace?”
“Ya know, I don’t know why Gina buys you nice coats. It’s only gonna need dry-cleaning,” the rat called over her shoulder as she trotted out of the room.
Angrily, Newsie read the ad again. An idea struck, and he woke up his PowerBook and logged on to the Web, typing in a search for the happy hamburgers. He found what he’d hoped for in seconds, and with a smile, turned his printer on and started feeding webpages to it.
“Good evening! It is Sunday, October the sixteenth. I’m the Newsman, and here are tonight’s top stories…” The newscast went fairly smoothly; he was prepared for the cantaloupes pelting him this time, and managed to stay more or less upright and focused on the camera after the last one had thumped his head. The brief about NATO air strikes had him flinching and crouching as frightening sounds seared the air over his head; he didn’t look up, not wanting to know whether it was missiles or attack drones this time. Finally, in local news, he swallowed dryly and launched into his warning: “A series of unexplained disappearances of workers in the city’s vast underground tunnel system has some at Consolidated Edison worried. Although workers keep their own maps of the extensive network of subway, service and water tunnels in order to facilitate their routine repair and maintenance tasks for the utility company, the company has been hearing reports of unusual things in the tunnels! Two workers actually filed a police report claiming to have seen some sort of creature briefly in a maintenance tunnel, and having heard continuous, unexplained noises while working in a seldom-used stretch of the tunnel.” Nervously, he checked the studio floor, but saw no monsters present. “KRAK News followed up on this report, and tried to contact the workers; however, they did not show up for work the following day, or any day since, and efforts to reach them at home have failed. Neighbors and family members are worried, saying the two men who filed the report have not been home since the day they did so! It has now been ten days since this mysterious chain of events began. Anyone with information on the whereabouts of either of these men,” (he glanced at a monitor to make sure the men’s names and photos were being displayed behind him; they were) “is asked to call NYPD. But this is not the only case recently of disappearances underground! Two weeks ago, a homeless man encamped near a disused subway station at Rockefeller Plaza claimed a friend of his went foraging for papers to use as heating fuel down into the subway, and never returned. Others have claimed to have heard strange sounds, like wild animals, and there may well be more people vanished off the streets of the city than the seven positively documented by police as missing persons last seen in the vicinity of sewer openings, subway tunnels, or the aqueduct route through Central Park. If you have any information on cases like these, please call or email this reporter, care of KRAK News.”
He took a deep breath, hoping more leads, real leads, would surface. “And also in local news tonight: chain restaurant Happy Harvey’s Hamster Hamburgers is being investigated for what health department officials say is a potential food code violation! Numerous customers throughout the five boroughs have brought complaints to the health department, as well as the Better Business Bureau, for having found alleged gerbil hair in the purported all-hamster burgers. To investigate these claims, KRAK has obtained a random, sample burger from Happy Harvey’s, which Muppet Labs will independently subject to various chemical and spectrographic tests. We’ll bring you the results tomorrow night, right here on KRAK Big Apple News! For the record, Happy Harvey’s is a sponsor of this program.” He smiled, easily ducking the apples which fell from the ceiling as well as the squeaking gerbils suddenly dashing madly underfoot. “Coming up: sports with Lewis Kazagger!”
The feed cut to commercial; Newsie could only perversely hope it was for Happy Harvey’s. Rhonda had one paw plastered over her eyes, her head thrown back in a why-me posture. Art the news floor director was shaking his head. In the control booth, Newsie could see one of the producers already on her cell phone, looking very stressed. He leaned back in his chair – ah, so nice to have an actual chair – and shuffled the papers on his desk, bringing to the front the national news and the script for the interview via live feed on-the-scene at the park where the Wall Street protesters were camped tonight. Rhonda darted forward.
“Blanke wants to talk to you after the show,” she hissed. He only smiled at her, and she put her paws on her waist and glared. “You better not get my parking space revoked! I earned that danged thing!”
She NEEDS a parking space? he wondered, curious, but then the feed was back in the studio, and he turned to the camera, and calmly went on with the news.
The black furry long-tailed bat with orange ears and wide yellow eyes crawled wing-over-wing from the stage lighting truss up into the ceiling, and scraped its way stealthily along until it reached the building’s ventilation shaft, then flew down toward the basement. It didn’t need to stick around for the rest of the show…it had heard enough.
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That the best part!
