Sleep Tight (30 page)

Tommy kept his right foot pulled in on the metal footrest, nice and snug, as if the leather strap was still wrapped around his ankle. He had no idea how he might break out of the wheelchair restraints, but he had one foot loose, and that was a start. He just needed some time alone in his room where he could break the window.

The elevator doors slid open. Sergeant Reaves wheeled Tommy inside and pushed the button for the lobby instead of going upstairs. Tommy wanted to keep quiet, wanted to be a hard-ass, didn’t want to give Sergeant Reaves the satisfaction of hearing Tommy speak first, but as the descending floor numbers flashed, his will broke. “Where we going?”

For a long time, Tommy didn’t think Sergeant Reaves would answer. Tommy knew he had fucked up, and swore at himself for being weak.

Sergeant Reaves finally said, “Dr. Reischtal has given instructions to transfer you to a more secure location. This building . . . is no longer safe.”

Tommy didn’t know what to say. He stayed quiet as they dropped. The doors opened on the first floor with a happy
ding
. They came out behind the front desk and beyond it, Tommy could see that the waiting room was empty. Sergeant Reaves pushed him out a back door into the thick summer air that hung over the river. The tables between the hospital and Chicago River were vacant. Even the benches stood alone.

Tommy watched a bus push over the Madison Bridge; then, as if this was the last CTA bus in the city, the bridge split in half and began rising. From the wheelchair, every bridge he could see had been opened, as if the stitches on a fresh wound had been popped, that black thread cut in a hurry with a bone saw, sparing the clean flesh from the infection.

An ambulance was waiting on the sidewalk. Two more soldiers, completely encased in hazmat suits, rolled Tommy up a ramp into an ambulance. They locked his wheels. He hoped they couldn’t make out fine details with their plastic faceplates and wouldn’t notice the broken strap around his right ankle. One sat in the back on the opposite bench and stared at Tommy.

Sergeant Reaves stood a ways from the ambulance, his back to the river, and watched without expression as the other soldier slammed the back doors. He didn’t move. Tommy hoped it was the last time he ever got close to the man.

The other soldier climbed into the front and started the engine. He turned the lights on and drove through the sandbags until joining the parade of buses. Through the back windows, across the Chicago River, all along the river walk, Tommy could see trucks pulling massive tankers, arranging them into place next to the river, and more figures in hazmat suits uncoiling long hoses into the river. The ambulance turned onto Upper Wacker and the image was lost.

Tommy glanced at the soldier in the back with him. The man’s eyes, encased behind protective plastic, were blank and dead. Tommy might as well have been looking into the eyes of some deep water shark, something that went blind in the light and hunted by some kind of primitive, almost supernatural sense.

The buses pulled to the side for the lights and siren, allowing the ambulance to streak through downtown. They flew down Madison, and turned right on Michigan. When they hit Monroe, they turned left, heading into Grant Park, toward the Lake. As they broke free of the shadows of all the buildings, Tommy again turned to the back windows, looking at the afternoon sun. It was the first time he’d seen true sunlight in two days. He closed his eyes, trying to imagine he could feel the rays on his face, and that somehow the warmth and security of the sun could pass through the thick glass of the back windows.

They followed Monroe all the way to Lake Shore Drive and turned south, where they joined a convoy of CTA buses, all merging into one lane, the only lane through the blockade on Roosevelt, next to the Field Museum. Tommy leaned forward and could see the line of buses snaking along Lake Shore Drive past the parks, past the baseball fields, past Buckingham Fountain, and once they were through the roadblock, the buses turned east once more onto short McFetridge Drive, and curled down into the Soldier Field underground parking lot.

While the buses descended beneath the stadium, the ambulance left the line and continued east, toward Adler Planetarium. They turned south and pushed through the clustered knots of trailers, trucks, and military vehicles strung out across Northerly Island Park. The narrow strip used to be a landing strip called Meigs Field, until Daley Junior had a bunch of bulldozers rip up the runway in the middle of the night back in 2003. Now it was a flat, grassy field, full of emergency equipment. Everything was pushed back as far as it could go, their backs against the water, as though they wanted to get as far as possible from the stadium.

The ambulance driver pulled around and backed into a narrow spot among a group of FEMA trailers. The soldier in the back didn’t move and never took his eyes off Tommy. Out of the front windows, beyond summer docks and small boats, Tommy could see the line of buses disappearing under the northern end of Soldier Field. Out of the back windows, nothing but the endless blue expanse of Lake Michigan.

He heard voices outside, but couldn’t make out any specific words. There was a muffled knock at the back doors, and the soldier in the back with Tommy got up and unlatched the doors, swung them wide open.

Dr. Reischtal stood there. The sun was not kind to his skin. “Good afternoon, Mr. Krazinsky. Sergeant Reaves has assured me that, for some unknown reason, you have not only survived the night with Mr. Wycza but as of yet, there is no sign of infection.” His lips pulled back into a thin grimace that may have been a smile. “We shall soon discover why. A proper laboratory is en route. When it arrives, I will see for myself exactly what secrets live inside you.”

The soldiers slammed the doors, leaving Tommy alone in the ambulance.

 

The hospital lobby was empty. It made Qween nervous. The waiting room was silent. The nurses’ station had been abandoned. The phones did not ring. The computers were dark.

But the old building didn’t quite
feel
empty. This was why she was nervous. Something in the air, something just out of the range of her hearing, some kind of vibration through the molecules that her conscious brain couldn’t pick up, something set off ominous warnings in her subconscious, the lizard part of her mind, as Sam would say. Somewhere, there was life inside the hospital.

Dr. Menard checked the computers at the nurses’ station. He shook his head. “They aren’t connected to the system that we used.” He headed for the elevators. “We have to go up to the third floor. There’s a central computer where I can access all the files.” He didn’t seem worried about the vibe of the place; he just looked relieved they hadn’t encountered any soldiers.

“You sure this is worth it, Doc?” Qween followed, the reluctant one now. “Smart money says there’s a damn good reason ain’t nobody here.”

The elevator doors opened immediately, as if it had been waiting for them, and they stepped inside. “Five minutes, tops,” Dr. Menard said. He fished a little plastic stick out of his pocket. “Just long enough to dump whatever I can find on this jump drive.”

Qween looked at it skeptically. “You be quick, or I’ll up and leave your ass here.”

The third floor was just as empty as the first. Great plastic sheets had been stretched over every surface, and while they may have been tight at the beginning, now they hung in tatters, as if a violent wind had ripped through the third floor. Dr. Menard moved quickly to the bank of computers at the nurses’ station in the center of the room. Cubicles with light blue curtains surrounded the area, beyond which, a long corridor stretched out. The end of the corridor was obscured with strips of shredded plastic hanging from the ceiling. It was impossible to tell if anyone was down there or not.

Dr. Menard tapped a few keys. While the system booted up, he dragged over a chair and then inserted his jump drive. “I’ll be surprised if they didn’t wipe these machines clean, but maybe we’ll get lucky if they left in a hurry.”

Qween said, “It’s the leaving in a hurry that makes me worry. We got no business being in here.” The plastic whispered under her feet, unnaturally loud in the empty area. She found herself wishing she had her cart up here; she missed the familiar bulk and weight. She had all kinds of weapons stashed inside, sure, but it had also been surprisingly versatile in a fight, all by itself. She had used it as battering ram, a shield, even an escape vehicle once, rolling away down the low hill on West Division over Goose Island.

As the computer screens flashed to life and Dr. Menard started muttering and clicking around, Qween eased down the corridor, avoiding the smears of clotted blood on the plastic. The ragged strips hanging from the ceiling caught the light from the buzzing fluorescents and shimmered with a faint green tint, like rotting strands of kelp. A medical cart lay on its side halfway down the long hallway. A couple of oxygen tanks had been forgotten at the far end. Piles of stained blue hospital gowns and scrubs had been scattered along the floor. Every single door was closed. The entire wing was so quiet she could hear the whisper of cool air hissing from the vents and the humming of some huge machinery several floors below.

Qween crossed over to the first door on the left and opened it. Inside, she found the bloody corpse of a woman strapped to a bed. It looked as if the woman had died in horrible agony, thrashing as she bled out of every orifice, spraying blood across the room in the final convulsions.

Qween backed out, wiping her hands on her cloak, and tried the door across the hall. Instead of just one corpse, she found a massive pile of body bags. All of the furniture and medical equipment had been removed, apparently to make room for the forty or fifty corpses. They had been thrown in haphazardly, as if whoever had been carrying them had been in a hurry. The bags weren’t sealed with any kind of biohazard precautions; blood was seeping through the zippers.

She shivered and reached for the door handle. She was finished with looking around. Fuck that. It was time to leave. She shut the door with a solid click. The sudden, sharp sound made her flinch and an instant later, an agonized howl erupted from two or three rooms down the hall. Someone crashed into that door from the other side. The door rattled and the handle quivered. The screaming didn’t stop. It got worse.

Qween moved quickly back up the hall. “Time to go, Doc.”

“I know, I know,” he called. He’d heard the shrieking. “Almost done.”

Then, another scream. This one distant, from the fourth floor above. Someone else joined in. A chorus of cries echoed up and down the hall. Soon, the hospital was alive with screaming.

Dr. Menard rose out of his chair, watching the ceiling. It sounded like hundreds of people were howling in despair and agony. The wave of pain reverberated throughout the halls, the empty rooms, the elevator shaft, and then somehow, grew impossibly louder. The awful sounds shook the ceiling, the walls, the very foundations of the building. Even the plastic seemed to be vibrating.

Qween kept moving back to the elevators, her Chuck Taylors making crackling noises that were nearly buried under the avalanche of shrieking. She stopped, lifting her feet to check the soles of her shoes. Nothing was there.

Qween squinted at the plastic under her feet. She put one foot out, experimentally pressing down on the floor. The texture of the floor under the opaque plastic changed somehow, swirling around her footprint. She cocked her head, trying to make sense of it. It almost looked like the surface of the floor was moving like sand in an hourglass. She turned back, and now could see, quite clearly, the plastic was stuck to the floor in the shape of her footprints.

Dr. Menard said, “Thirty seconds. And we’re out of here.”

Qween took a few tentative steps toward a tear in the plastic, over by the wall. She reached out, pinched the very edge, and peeled it back several feet. It tore easily, like wet newspaper.

The floor was alive with bugs.

They had been flowing under the plastic the entire time, heading down the hall. The bugs that had been revealed in the new tear stopped in the sudden exposure to fresh air, and behind them, the current continued to flow, and so a mound of the bugs grew as they piled up. They spilled out over the plastic and started to crawl toward Qween over the top of the plastic.

“We’re done here,” Qween said, heading for the elevator. “Don’t care if you’re finished or not. I’m fucking leaving. Now.”

Dr. Menard saw the bugs. He swallowed, tried to say something, failed, and settled for yanking the jump drive out of the CPU. He quickly scurried to the bank of elevators, noting how the bugs were still moving under the plastic on the floor in a vast, seeping flood.

The elevator doors opened and they didn’t waste time getting inside. The doors shut and the elevator dropped. “All those people—” Dr. Menard started to say.

“—are dead,” Qween finished. “Ain’t nothing you gonna do for ’em. They gone.”

 

The buses were full. It was time to move out.

Ed walked down the sidewalk, heading for the last bus, going over the plan in his head. The job was difficult, but not impossible.

He knew all about the bridges and street closures; the only way out of the Loop was through the single lane down by the Field Museum. Sam would ride in the first bus with some of the worst offenders, while Ed would ride in the third, keeping an eye on things and coordinating the trip from the rear bus.

The plan was to turn right on Van Buren, roll out to Michigan, then down to Congress and onto Lake Shore Drive. In addition to the prisoners, each bus would carry three guards, all armed with .12 gauge pump Winchesters. Once they were in motion, the guards had been instructed, right in front of the convicts, to shoot to kill if anyone stepped out of line. The guards were more than happy to comply.

Once the three prisoner buses were through the blockade, a security detail was supposedly waiting to escort them down to Twenty-sixth and California. It wouldn’t take much to ambush the convoy; anybody halfway organized could create problems, cracking open the buses like a can of cheap beer, leaving the inmates to go sprinting through the streets.

So Arturo had promised Ed and Sam four patrol cars, with two officers in each car, and a couple of wild-eyed cops on motorcycles who weren’t part of the main force that surrounded the Loop. Everybody else was spread out across the rest of the city to maintain the illusion that the Chicago PD still had everything under control.

Once down at Cook County Jail, they would orchestrate the unloading of the prisoners, then head back with the empty buses for another load.

Ed boarded the third bus and scanned the faces, which ranged from wide-eyed and panicked to openly hostile. He called Sam. They were as ready as they would ever be. “Let’s get going.”

“Good. Sooner we start this shit, sooner we’re done.”

Ed hung up and nodded to the driver. The driver folded his newspaper and put the bus in gear. Ed turned to watch through the windshield. He could see Sam’s lead bus roll up to the intersection of Clark and Van Buren and start to turn right. Ed felt a sense of calmness settle throughout his body; he almost felt as if he could breathe easily again. They had a long ways to go, but at least they were on the move.

Then the first bus stopped. One of the soldiers was waving his arms over his head, pointing north, to where the lines of CTA buses were trickling down Jackson. Sam hopped out of the bus and walked over to the soldier. Sam pointed east down Van Buren. The soldier shook his head. Sam pulled out his phone.

Ed answered the call. “Christ, what now?”

“Believe the old-timers called it a failure to communicate,” Sam said. “Seems that nobody told these boys where we’re headed, and it doesn’t fit their plans.” Ed could hear the soldier yell something at Sam. Sam yelled back, “And I don’t give two shits about what you want, so go fuck yourself, pal.”

Ed hung up and locked eyes with the driver. “You stay here, keep the engine running, and you don’t move for anybody, until you hear from me. Got it?”

The driver shrugged, put the bus in park, and whipped open his newspaper yet again. Ed went down the steps and out into the heat and humidity. He was surprised he’d gotten used to the air-conditioning on the bus that fast. He quickly joined Sam at the front of the first bus.

Sam was still yelling at the soldier, “—tin star jackass wannabe hero. You ever pull that lump on your neck there out of your ass, you might try thinking for yourself for once.”

“Okay, okay,” Ed said. He shot Sam a look that said to keep his mouth shut.

Sam shrugged, put his hands on his hips, and turned his back on everything, watching the El tracks, missing the rumbling and sparks of the trains.

Ed approached the soldier. “What’s the problem?”

The man wore a hazmat suit without the helmet. An assault rifle was strapped across his back. Extra clips sagged from webbing down the front of his chest. A throat mike wrapped around his neck. “You’ve been misinformed. I’m afraid there is no way these prisoners can be transported anywhere but Soldier Field for decontamination procedures, no exceptions, by order of the president of the United States.”

Ed considered this, then spoke softly. “Do you have any idea who is on board these buses? Take a hard look at this building here. This is a maximum-security federal penitentiary, understand? We are currently transporting over sixty inmates down to the facilities at the Cook County Jail. To put them through some kind of decontamination process, along with regular citizens, this is out of the question. We don’t have the man power. Are you following any of this? The president wasn’t thinking about this when he signed that order.”

“No exceptions,” the soldier repeated.

Ed felt his blood pressure spike. He said, “I don’t know who the fuck you work for. I don’t care.” He pulled out his star. “You see this? This gives me the right to do whatever the hell I deem necessary within the city of Chicago. And that, pal, is a fact.”

The soldier permitted himself a crooked, faint smile. “Look around. We’re in charge. And that, pal, is a fact.”

Three Strykers came roaring down Clark, each of them taking a position across from each bus. The rear door of the closest one opened with a rough hiss, and two more soldiers got out. Neither one wore any kind of insignia on his hazmat suit, but it was clear from the behavior of the other soldiers that these two were superior officers.

One stomped over. He had close-cropped, iron-gray hair and goggle-like sunglasses that clung to his skull as if they’d been surgically attached. He asked the younger soldier, “What’s the holdup?”

Ed said, “We seem to be getting off on the wrong foot here. These prisoners need to be taken down to the Cook County Jail.”

The soldier with the sunglasses turned to Ed. “Who are you?”

“Detective Jones. Chicago PD.”

“Well, I don’t know what you’ve been told, but our orders are quite clear. Every single man, woman, and child inside the perimeter will be evacuated and complete the decontamination process. After that, there is a medical evaluation, and then, and only then, will they be released. No exceptions. If we do not follow proper protocol, we risk breaching our containment system, which could lead to an outbreak. Then it isn’t simply Chicago that is in danger, it is the entire continent. We will not allow that to happen.”

“So tell me, what measures have been put in place to minimize the possibility of a prison break? If you planned this out, you surely recognized the fact that over five hundred inmates from a maximum-security federal prison would have to be evacuated. How do you intend to deal with these violent, dangerous individuals who will happily seize this opportunity to kill anyone in their way and escape?”

“That is your responsibility.”

Ed started to ask the hypothetical question of whether or not the man was fucking serious when his phone rang again. Shaking his head, he pulled it out to check the number. With any luck, it would be Arturo with a solution to this mess.

It was the warden. Ed answered it. “What?”

“We have a problem.... Something is happening. . . .”

Ed could hear chaos in the background. “Gonna have to be more specific.”

“We’ve lost contact with several floors.”

“Please clarify ‘lost contact.’ ”

That got the military officer’s attention.

The warden sounded frantic. “Guards were, uh, making a final sweep of the laundry facilities, I believe. There were guards lost . . .” More shouting in the background. Ed stuck his finger in his ear, straining to hear. “. . . floors thirteen through sixteen are not responding . . .” Gunfire, sudden and close.

Ed jerked the phone from his ear, turning to look up at the wedge-shaped building.

The officer stepped back, speaking low and fast into his throat mike. Hatches popped open on the three Strykers and soldiers appeared behind the .50 caliber machine guns like heavily armed jack-in-the-boxes. Another dozen soldiers ran along Van Buren and lined up on the sidewalk, their rifles unslung and ready.

The officer said, “I suggest you gentlemen step back and allow us to assess the situation.”

Ed ignored him, concentrating on his phone. The warden had stopped talking altogether. For all Ed knew, the warden may have dropped the phone. One lone gunshot, more screaming. Then silence.

Another dozen soldiers lined up along the El tracks over Van Buren.

Sam tapped Ed’s shoulder and pointed.

Ed turned and saw all the soldiers, the firepower. He lowered his phone.

The glass visitor doors opened and a man staggered out into the sunlight. He moved as if he couldn’t see very well, taking conservative, hesitant steps, holding his hands up over his eyes, to protect them from the light. He wobbled, confused for a moment, then struck out, almost at random, in a direction that headed straight for the building’s massive northern pillar.

Ed walked over, followed closely by Sam. A warning shout went up behind them. They glanced at each other, then at the figure that was stumbling along, trying to get as far as possible from the door. As they got closer, they could see that the man was wearing a guard’s uniform, although that did not necessarily mean he was actually a prison guard.

They got within ten feet. The man stopped. He was white, mid-thirties, a little overweight, with red blotches across his skin. Ed couldn’t get a fix on whether he was actually a guard, and eventually believed it because of how the clothes fit.

So far the man hadn’t said anything.

“You okay?” Ed asked, watching the doorway. Sam had his Glock out.

A bug crawled out of the man’s hairline and made its way down his puffy face to his nose, and disappeared under a nostril. He didn’t appear to notice or mind. He scratched at his armpit, made eye contact for the briefest glimmer, and said, “It itches. Oh God, it itches.”

“Why don’t we get you some help?” Ed said.

Another bug crawled out of the guard’s collar, over his jaw, braving the sun, and disappeared up the other nostril. A third came out of his hair and crawled across his open eye.

The eye imploded, and the back of his head crumpled into a pink mist.

The sound of the gunshot bounced around the plaza, echoing between the El tracks and the building. Ed and Sam dropped to their knees, spinning, as Ed yanked his .357 out of his shoulder holster and Sam brought his pistol up with both hands. They faced over twenty soldiers, lined up along the sidewalk and the El tracks.

The body of the guard collapsed.

Ed yelled at the officer, “You said this was our responsibility.”

“Until we visually confirm presence of either bugs or the virus. Then our authority supersedes everything.”

Ed never got a chance to argue. Another man bounced out of the front door, but wasn’t slow and hesitant like the first one, this guy was running for all he was worth. He wore a prisoner’s jumpsuit and tried to slip around the corner to Clark. A three-round burst from one of the soldiers took him down in a tangled heap of orange cotton and splashes of blood.

Then a third. A fourth. More prisoners poured out of the visitor entrance, heading in all directions. It was almost like the bugs crawling out from the guard’s collar, using their overwhelming numbers to escape. The prisoners, like the bugs, flinched at the sudden sun and heat but kept running.

Gunfire erupted around the small plaza in a sudden storm. The prisoners were literally blown apart, their heads folding messily into themselves, causing the sudden lurching expressions of astonishment, as their lungs popped and their legs split open horizontally across the kneecap. At twenty to thirty yards, it wasn’t a challenge; it was more like shooting fish in a barrel.

The three machine gunners on the Strykers took that as a cue and unloaded on the buses. The ridiculously heavy bullets smashed through the windows, the side of the bus, through the seats, through the prisoners closest to the side, then more seats and the second set of prisoners across the aisle. Collisions with the seats and some of the major ligaments changed the original trajectory of the bullets, but they continued on, into the seats across the bus, smashing through more prisoners and seats, and out through the other side. They killed everyone onboard, including the drivers. The feather-like remnants of the newspapers floated serenely around the steering wheels and corpses.

When the third prisoner had bolted from the entrance, Ed and Sam dove to the side, rolling into shelter behind the north pillar. Gunfire came from Van Buren, then the deep, booming crackling from the Strykers’ .50 caliber guns opened up from the west, on Clark. They crouched, heads down, elbows up, arms wrapped over their heads to protect themselves from the exploding glass wall that encased the first floor.

The gunfire trickled away as the flood of prisoners slowed and stopped. Several unnaturally quiet seconds ticked past. The soldiers started reloading. Then, new gunshots, somehow different. Ed risked a glance at the shattered remains of the first floor. More men were now fleeing the prison, both prisoners and guards, but this second wave was armed. That was why the gunfire sounded different—it was coming from behind Ed and Sam.

The soldiers fell back into defensive positions and resumed shooting. The prisoners and guards dropped to the sidewalk and wriggled up behind the piles of corpses, using the bodies for cover. They stuck their shotguns and handguns over all the dead flesh and fired blindly.

Ed saw one soldier fall from the El tracks and land like a bag of loose laundry, sprawling over a low sandbag wall. But that was the only soldier he witnessed get hit. A few shotguns, with shortened barrels for close-range defense, and a handful of Smith and Wessons were no match against thirty or forty state-of-the-art fully automatic assault rifles, and the slaughter continued.