We All Fall Down (16 page)

CHAPTER 42

I walked six blocks without seeing a soul. In the middle of a burned-out strip mall on West Madison, I found what I was looking for: Rosehill’s Wine and Liquors. Its front door had been reduced to a smoking hole. I racked a round into the shotgun Marcus had given me and blew out the remnants of what had once been the front window. Three kids jumped out a side door and streaked down an alley. Inside, the floor was sticky and littered with broken bottles. The cash register had been emptied, three lottery machines and an ATM cracked open. I found a pint of Early Times wrapped in brown paper and stuck on a shelf under the front counter. I drank some of the raw whiskey and sat on the floor, Marcus’s shotgun across my knees. Ray Sampson ran through my head, along with the two I’d killed—the one called Jace and the one I knew was in the doorway without understanding exactly how. I let the faces filter into my bloodstream, where they mixed with the liquor and washed downstream. The pint bottle danced a jig in my left hand. I reached over with my right and covered it. In the back of the place was a bathroom with a mirror. My reflection was clouded and looked like every other killer I’d ever met. I washed my hands and ducked my head under the cold tap. Outside, I broke the shotgun into pieces and threw them into a Dumpster. Cook County Hospital lay on the other side of the Ike, a mile and a half due east. I took out my handgun, chambered a round, and began to walk.

Some of the blocks I walked had already been torched. Others stood silent, more red eyes watching through drawn shades as I passed. A half block from Cook, I came up on a temporary fence that cordoned off the hospital. There was an uneasy crowd massing near a gate. Women pressed to the front, holding children over their heads, hoping it might gain them admittance. Someone on a loudspeaker was telling people to go home, turn on their TVs, and wait for instructions. A second announcement directed anyone who might be sick to proceed to a red zone, wherever that might be.

Molly told me the NBC suit and tinted faceplate would serve as both protection and my ID. I slipped into a doorway and put the suit back on. There were two guards inside a booth, manning one of the checkpoints. Each wore a mask with a clear faceplate and carried a rifle. I hit the audio button on my suit and told them I was a scientist from CDA. I threw in Molly’s name. Then Ellen’s. One guard gave me a quick up and down and waved me in. The other never took his eyes off the crowd behind me.

I passed through two lines of fences and into Cook County’s ER. The first thing that struck me was the smell. Just inside the front door, I saw the reason why. They’d bagged the dead and laid them out in two rows. I followed the trail, winding down a twisting green hallway and into the bowels of the hospital. A couple of people in NBC suits hustled past, stepping over body bags like so much furniture. I read the ID tags on the bags as I walked. Three bodies from the end, one of the tags caught my eye.

THERESA
JACKSON

AFRICAN AMERICAN, FEMALE

32 YEARS OLD

2302 WEST ADAMS

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

I touched the bag with a gloved hand and thought about the woman inside it. Two nights earlier she’d smiled and laughed while she patched up my ribs in the ER. Now she was cannon fodder for the guns of the pathogen.

I walked the rest of the way down the hallway. At the very end I found Ellen Brazile, staring through a window into an isolation room. Three bodies lay inside, each on a gurney, in various states of postmortem undress.

“Did you draw more blood?” Her voice was muffled by a clear faceplate and hood. A technician looked up and nodded.

“Get it to the lab as soon as you can.” She turned away from the makeshift morgue and saw me standing there.

“Can I help you?”

“It’s me,” I said. “Kelly.”

Ellen moved closer. “How did you get in?”

“Took a walk through the hot zone.” I glanced toward the bodies on the tables. Two were men. One looked like he was asleep. The other’s face was covered in a sweat of blood. The body in the middle was that of a young woman. She had skin like chilled cream and long black hair.

“I’m sorry about your sister,” I said.

“Who told you?”

“Molly.”

She nodded toward the window. “That’s Anna. We’re taking some samples.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I heard you the first time. Come on.”

Ellen led me down a short hallway, through two sets of doors, to an empty room.

“I need to ask you a few questions,” she said, gesturing to an examining table. “Did your suit suffer any ruptures while you were outside?”

“I was exposed if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That’s what I’m asking. For how long?”

“Pretty much the whole time. A couple of hours at least.”

“Were you inside any buildings?”

“Yeah, but everyone I met was dead.”

She began to pull supplies out of a cabinet. “This area of the hospital is sealed off and scrubbed—that means the air is constantly monitored, so people don’t have to wear their protective gear. Until you’re tested, however, you’ll have to remain in this room.”

“Tested?”

“We have a preliminary antigen test that screens for exposure. Takes about twenty minutes.”

“You need blood?”

She nodded. I stripped off my suit and rolled up my sleeve. Ellen tied a rubber band around my arm and prepared a syringe. She drew one vial of blood. Then a second.

“How’s Molly?” I said.

“What about her?”

“I was on the train with her when she got shot.”

Ellen marked both vials and left without another word. She returned a few minutes later with a stack of pages tacked to a clipboard. “I’m going to need you to fill out a couple of consent forms while I begin the run on your blood.”

I took the clipboard from her. The first page had three lines scrawled in ballpoint pen:

MOLLY’S FINE.

FEDS STILL LOOKING FOR YOU.

MIGHT BE WATCHING. BEHIND ME.

I glanced up at Ellen, then past her shoulder to a seam in the wall. I followed it up to the ceiling. There was a small hole there, and the pinhole lens of a camera, smiling back at me. I wrote down a single question, along with a name and phone number. Ellen took back the clipboard and nodded. The two of us talked about nothing for another five minutes. Then she left to run her tests.

I sat in the room and waited. Just me and Candid Camera. The purple notebook Marcus had given me was still in my pocket. I took it out and opened it. A blue van crouched at the bottom of one page, rear doors thrown open, red cans of gasoline stacked inside. On the next page, men with no faces and broad backs smoked and pointed at blank maps. Ray Ray stood in a long corridor of unapproachable light. Up front, I found pictures of the Korean. Smiling and pulling money from his sock. Lying dead on the narrow floor of his grocery store. Staring at a crooked clock on the wall. I flipped the notebook shut. Marcus’s name was on the cover. No address. No phone. I jammed the thing back in my pocket and wondered why he’d given it to me.

Forty-five minutes after Ellen left, the door opened again. I half expected James Doll, with a couple of Homeland goons and a pair of cuffs. Instead, it was Rachel Swenson, carrying a tight smile and a set of car keys.

CAMP CHICAGO

CHAPTER 43

They called it Camp Chicago. Much like the quarantine fences, it had sprung up literally overnight. Two square blocks cordoned off by Chicago’s finest, with Daley Plaza at its center. Ringing the camp’s perimeter was an armored shell of satellite trucks, thick hunks of cable sprouting from their cavernous bellies, a bristle of dish antennas tethered at the other end. Closer in, a skeleton of steel scaffolding ringed the plaza itself and stretched into the sky. Atop it, huge blue broadcast booths, enclosed in Plexiglas and bathed in banks of television lights.

The government had done its best to shut down the media, withholding any semblance of content from the blinking, ravenous beast. It didn’t matter. Once the fences went up, more than a thousand journalists sought credentials to cover whatever was unfolding on the West Side. Most of them knew next to nothing that wasn’t handed to them in a press release. That didn’t matter either. In fact, it only made things better.

A city terrified. A nation paralyzed. A world horrified. All of it, 24/7. Ratings went through the roof.

James Doll sat in the basement of City Hall, holed up in an airless room, watching the coverage on a bank of monitors. A parade of images streamed past. A reporter standing near the Water Tower, Michigan Avenue empty behind her. The Dan Ryan, jammed with cars going nowhere. People walking past soldiers into the Loop, belongings in shopping carts and strapped to their backs. Doll himself at a podium, mouth moving but no sound coming out. The mayor, even more so.

The man from Homeland hadn’t slept more than four hours in the last forty-eight, and the on-screen pictures held him in a sudden trance. The black phone on the table barked, and he jumped. Fuck. Doll scrubbed his face with his hands and shook his head. The phone rang again. Then a third time. Only a few people would have been routed in, and Doll wasn’t looking forward to speaking with any of them.

“Yes?” Doll listened for a moment. “Put it up on five.”

One of the monitors flickered. The news coverage was replaced by a silent feed of Michael Kelly and Rachel Swenson in a Cook County examining room. Kelly moved close and ran his hand through her hair. The woman gave what Doll imagined to be a sigh. Their bodies mingled. Kelly backed her against a wall. She spread her arms and let him in.

“Why don’t we have sound down at Cook?” Doll spoke softly into the receiver and kept his eyes glued to the screen. The couple disentangled. A moment later, they headed for the door. The feed switched to a second camera in the hallway. Doll watched them walk away. “She’s gonna drive him out? Uh-huh. Fine. Let them go.”

The door behind Doll clicked, and a man in a long gray overcoat entered the room. He dragged his left foot behind him as he walked.

“I’ll get back to you.” Doll hung up the receiver.

The gray man took a seat on the other side of the table. His eyes were dead holes, pegged into his skull and fixed on Doll.

“Call DC.”

Doll waited long enough to satisfy himself he wasn’t taking orders. Then he did exactly that. The room filled with the thunder of numbers being dialed. The other end picked up on the first ring.

“It’s me,” Doll said.

“Where are you?” The voice was muted and full of precision.

“City Hall.”

“I’m here as well,” the gray man said.

“Where’s Michael Kelly?” the voice on the phone said.

Doll’s eyes flicked to the screens. The hallway at the hospital was empty.

“He walked into Cook County Hospital about an hour and a half ago. They screened him for exposure and released him.”

“We don’t know why he was there, or what he saw?”

“I haven’t spoken to him directly,” Doll said.

“Is he still pursuing the outbreak?”

“Honestly?”

“By all means, Mr. Doll.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about Kelly.”

“You don’t have much confidence in him?”

“Guy’s a hack.”

“Really?”

“Hundred percent.”

A pause. “Anyone out there ever talk about something called the Dweller?” the voice said.

“The Dweller?”

“Kelly ever mention it?”

“No.”

“Anyone else?”

“No.” Doll scribbled down the name on a piece of paper and underlined it.

Another pause. Then the voice on the phone again.

“I think we’re going to need to take care of this.”

“Take care of what?”

“Kelly. Crane can handle it.”

Doll felt his focus tighten until it blurred. “Why?”

“Get a location on him. I’ll explain the rest later. Crane?”

“Yes, sir.” The gray man scratched two fingers against the finish on the table.

“There’s a package of information on the secure link. Let me know once you’ve reviewed the options. Any questions?”

No one spoke.

“Good. Mr. Doll, we have a conference call with the mayor in an hour. You can update me then.” The man from DC cut the call.

“It’s a mistake,” Doll said.

“Wouldn’t be the first.”

“You ever heard anything about this Dweller?”

“I find it’s easier if I don’t hear anything at all.” Crane stood up. “Let me know when you get a fix on Kelly.”

The door opened and Crane limped off. Doll hit a few buttons on his computer and listened to a recording of the conversation. He made a copy to a flash drive and deleted the original from his desktop. After that he took a cell phone from his pocket. Rachel Swenson picked up on the other end.

“There’s been a change of plans,” Doll said.

CHAPTER 44

Rachel Swenson clicked off her cell and ventured a cautious smile. I was sitting in the passenger seat, tugging at a bandage they’d put on my arm.

“Who was that?” I said.

“Just my clerk.”

“You have to get back?”

“Yes.”

A guard checked her tag number and waved us through the last set of gates marking off the quarantine zone.

“How did you get in here?” I said.

“Your friend, Ellen, called and told me you needed to get out. I know some people at the DOD. Explained I had someone who got stuck behind the fence.”

“Did they ask for a name?”

“They wanted one.”

“Thanks for getting me.”

“You can thank me by explaining Danielson.”

“He had a gun. Shot himself.”

“Was he in your apartment when I went in to get Mags?”

“He was.”

“So he could have taken me if he wanted. With the gun. A knife. Whatever.”

“If I knew he was there  … ”

“You never would have let me go in. But you didn’t know. And I did go in.”

I’d put her in danger. And I swore I never would again. “I’m sorry, Rach.”

“Forget it.”

We drove in silence.

“Where are we headed?” she said.

I gestured vaguely. “Just drive north.”

She swung a left off Ogden onto Ashland. “The government doesn’t think you murdered him, Michael.”

“So they’re not looking for me anymore?”

“From what I understand, no.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I think they’d rather have you under their control but are too busy to worry about it.”

More silence.

“Who was on the phone just now?” I said.

“I told you. My clerk.”

There was a flaw in her voice—a cold, hard malignancy that found a home in my stomach.

“You sure about that?” I said.

“What does that mean?”

I pointed to an Osco parking lot. “Pull in.”

She turned into the empty lot. The drugstore was locked up tight. An increasing number of drugstores and grocery stores had threatened to shut down across the city. Either because they’d run low on inventory or didn’t want to deal with the panic buying.

“This place is closed,” Rachel said. “You need something?”

“No.”

“Then why did we stop?”

“Tell me about it.”

“About what?”

“Whatever’s bothering you.”

“Nothing’s bothering me.”

“That’s another lie.”

Her phone buzzed again. She reached, but I beat her to it. The caller ID window flashed
RESTRICTED
.

“Go ahead and answer,” she said. I tossed the phone into her lap, where it went silent.

“They knew you were down at Cook, Michael.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Homeland.”

I nodded, as if the moment of her betrayal was one I’d expected.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Why didn’t they just throw me in a cell?”

“I told you. They wanted you out.”

“But on a string. With you at the other end.”

Her phone buzzed a third time. Like a goddamn toothache knocking inside my jaw. She turned the thing off.

“What do they have on you?” I said.

She shook her head. I waited.

“CDA Labs.”

“What about them?” I said.

“I’m an investor. Got involved when it was just a start-up. Jon Stoddard was a friend. I believed in his work.”

“What do you know about CDA’s work?”

“I know they do genetic research.”

“They create bioweapons for the government.”

“If you’re asking if I knew that I had to divest when I came onto the bench, the answer is yes. The potential conflicts of interest were obvious.”

“But you didn’t?”

“Not really, no.”

“How much?”

“Jon talked about going public. Even my small stake would have meant millions. So I told the Justice Department I’d liquidated my holdings, but I hid them.”

“And now the feds are squeezing you?”

“They offered a way out.”

“You mean me.”

She stared at the lines in her hands. I thought about the cracks in our life. When I looked over, it was through a window. Her features scratched and dull. Sealed off from me forever.

“Are you recording this?” I said.

She shook her head.

“Are they following us?”

“They want to know where you’re going. What you’ve uncovered.”

I took out a piece of paper and scribbled down an address. “Fat Willy’s on Western. I’m supposed to meet Rita Alvarez, but she doesn’t know anything. Tell your pals I’m working a lead but wouldn’t tell you about it. Tell them I wanted to protect you.”

She nodded but didn’t look at me.

“That’s all I can give you.” I stuck the note on the dash and reached for the door handle. “Be careful.”

I started to leave. She touched my sleeve.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

I waited.

“Do you really have an idea who might be behind the release?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Would you tell me if you did?”

“Don’t know that either.”

We lapsed back into silence.

“Can you handle Mags for a couple more days?” I finally said.

She nodded.

“Are you staying outside the city?”

“We’re fine, Michael.”

I opened the door and got out. Halfway across the lot, I wanted to turn around. And that scared me as much as anything.

Rachel picked up her phone and hit
REDIAL
.

“He’s headed to a place called Fat Willy’s. On Western Avenue.” A pause. “That’s right. Call me again and I swear to Christ I’ll go public and take you down with me.”

She threw her cell to the floor of the car, where it broke into a couple of pieces. Rachel wanted to cry, but there was nothing left inside. Instead, she kicked over the engine and pumped the gas, smoking her tires as she left the lot.