The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Reporter: A Tor.com Original

By Daniela Tomova

A reporter travels to the Norwegian Arctic to cover an unusual sled race with the undead leading the living into unknown territory.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Mar 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781250847003

Book preview

Noel—fiftyish, lanky, with fawn eyes and skin windburned to a sunset glow—is my translator. He meets me on the iced tarmac, shakes my hand, and hands me a rifle before opening his mouth.

For the polar bears, he yells over the Arctic winds, and leans in to yell a tad more conspiratorially, and I’ll only say this once—I won’t repeat it and you don’t repeat it around town either. But also in case one of the racers—you know—comes for you. He straightens his back again. It’s for self-protection.

Motherfucker, I say. I thought you were supposed to be my protection.

---

I did get my own damn self into this.

The scene: It’s a late, 105-degree July afternoon. El Paso, Texas, which to my father seemed like a good place to settle after a harrowing, bullets-whizzing-by-your-ear, losing-toes-to-frostbite escape from totalitarian Bulgaria. That’s the kind of experience that will put someone off winter permanently. But it’s also the kind of story that will make their daughter choose a gig in extreme-weather sports.

So: El Paso, Texas. The sun has come down to bang on my door and peek through the thick wooden slabs of the blinds like a red-eyed debt collector. A couple of flies hover, uninspired, in the lung-blistering air over my desk. Power is out, therefore AC’s out. Laptop, long drained of charge, is off and not coming back until I hear the blessed sound of the AC click and chirp and—ah, the whoosh of a tepid breeze.

I am on my phone, researching winter vacations I’ll never be able to afford and watching its battery, which is bullshit even on a good day, visibly inch down toward eight percent.

Underboob sweat be damned, I tuck the T-shirt under the girls for the sake of self-respect before I call Lorena, editor-in-chief of Adrenaline Review Quarterly. She’s the type one puts on pants and a bra even for a phone call. Our dealings always start with me pitching what become the most popular articles her magazine ever publishes and end with her lawyer saying not to talk to the police until she’s arrived. Mutually beneficial, I call it. Lorena calls it The minute cost outweighs clicks, I’m dropping your ass.

Hey, duckie, I was just about to get in touch with you. You hear about Artie? No? He fell out. No, literally. She giggles maliciously, yet disarmingly for a woman approaching deep adulthood. "He slipped out of his harness trying to zip-line his way to Kathmandu. He’s all right. Just out of commission for a full year, at the very least, and I have pages to fill. You better have a killer