Текст книги "Sleep Tight"

Автор книги: Jeff Jacobson

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

CHAPTER 63

5:21 PM

August 14

“You sure about this?” Qween asked.

Dr. Menard nodded. “It’s the fastest way to get out of the city. Once I’m on the other side, I can get this”—he clutched the jump drive in his fist—“to somebody. Somebody not connected to the CDC. Somebody with some authority. Somebody with some power.”

He pushed out of the front doors of Cook County General before he could change his mind. Qween followed him at a distance. It was clear to him that she didn’t like the plan. He turned back to her as they headed for the street, knowing the answer, but asking anyway. “You want to come with me?”

Qween snorted. “Naw. I leave this town, it’ll be on my own two legs. ’Sides, I gotta pick up my cart.” She’d stashed her shopping cart the day before in an alley a block from the post office and was anxious to make sure it was still there.

Dr. Menard said, “There’s nobody left on the streets, just the soldiers. They’re gonna see you.”

“Shit. They see me, then I deserve to get caught and hauled away. Don’t worry, Doc. Gonna be night soon.”

Dr. Menard stuck out his hand. “Thank you.”

Qween shook it. “You just make sure you let folks know.” She jerked her head back at the hospital.

Dr. Menard started off north along Upper Wacker. He didn’t want to look back, didn’t want to watch and see which direction Qween was headed. If things went wrong, and they wanted information, he didn’t want to know where Qween had disappeared.

It wasn’t long before a couple of soldiers noticed the lanky doctor shambling along. They shouted at him and he waved back, content to play the clueless scientist. They jogged over and demanded to know where he had been.

Dr. Menard acted confused. “I’ve been . . . working. What’s happening? Where is everybody?”

“Where, exactly, have you been working?” one of the soldiers asked.

Dr. Menard turned back the way he had come, and pointed. “The hospital.” He was glad that Qween was gone. There was nothing but an empty street behind him.

Both soldiers took a step backward. “The hospital,” the first soldier confirmed.

Dr. Menard nodded.

The other soldier pressed the button on his throat mike and said, “We have a survivor from the hospital. Repeat, we have a survivor from the hospital, waiting for pickup, Wacker and Washington.” He listened a moment. “Copy that.” He released the mike and looked up at Dr. Menard. His smile was as hollow as an alderman’s promise. “They’re sending someone around now, sir.”

“What is going on?” Dr. Menard tried again.

“Some problems in the city, sir. They’re evacuating everyone.”

Dr. Menard tried to go blank. “No kidding? I mean, I know things weren’t good, but Jesus, I didn’t think they’d evacuate the city.”

“Please stand still, sir.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“No, sir.”

“Why are you looking at me like that? What’s really going on here?”

“Just basic precautions, sir. Nothing to worry about.”

Dr. Menard was getting nervous and finding it harder and harder to play dumb. “Look, I’m fine. Really. I’m not sick.”

“I’m sure you’re not, sir. We need to get you on a bus, sir.”

Dr. Menard wanted to say, Stop calling me sir, you little bastard. Instead, he said, “Okay. Where am I going?”

“They’re taking everyone to Soldier Field. For decontamination.”

The second soldier shot the first a tight look, and the first soldier shut up. Something cold crawled up Dr. Menard’s testicles. Soldier Field. For some reason, the idea of gathering all of the evacuees in one place scared the hell out of him. “Why?” he asked.

“That’s our orders,” the second soldier said. He didn’t bother with the “sir.”

“There it is,” the first soldier said, sounding relieved. He pointed at an oncoming white bus in the wrong lane. With a sinking feeling, Dr. Menard realized it wasn’t a CTA bus. It was a Cook County sheriff’s prisoner transport bus. He swallowed. This was going from bad to worse. “Listen,” he said. “I can walk. Really. It’s no big deal.”

“I’m sorry, sir. Orders.” The two soldiers stepped apart, blocking both directions down the sidewalk. The bus got closer.

Dr. Menard stopped pretending. “You two have no idea what’s really happening, do you? This virus, it isn’t going to be stopped by an evacuation, do you understand? It is going to spread, unless we study it. We have to unlock it, don’t you get it?”

The two soldiers stared at him but didn’t say anything.

The bus pulled up behind him in a cloud of diesel exhaust. The driver, buried behind a layer of bulletproof plastic, opened the doors. Dr. Menard turned back and found the soldiers aiming their rifles at him. Mindful of the jump drive in his front pocket, he climbed aboard. The doors snapped shut behind him.

CHAPTER 64

5:22 PM

August 14

Dr. Menard didn’t think anything was wrong with the people on the bus at first. Sure, some of them appeared to be sleeping. Well, maybe most of them. And a guy in the back was weeping. Loudly. The rest of the passengers, the few that were awake, looked just like him, confused and scared and trying not to lose hope that the soldiers were there to help.

He moved through the bus, and the reality started to sink in.

The sleepers weren’t just taking a power nap. They were out cold. These people had curled up into a fetal position across two seats, or had ended up on the floor. A few of them had been written on with permanent marker. Someone had scrawled, KICK ME across some businessman’s face. Another guy, just a kid really, with long hair, dirty glasses, and a Death Cab for Cutie T-shirt, had HAVE FUN KILLIN PEOPLE, DUDE written in blocky letters from one cheek, across his nose, to the other cheek. Still another had a target circled on his forehead.

A tight, choking feeling enveloped Dr. Menard. He couldn’t help but notice the heavy-gauge wire that covered the windows. He wanted to turn around and bang on the driver’s plastic barrier and demand to be released. This bus was full of people infected with nearly every stage of the virus. But he knew that wouldn’t work. It might get him shot.

No. The soldiers knew damn well this bus was full of the infected.

So Dr. Menard kept moving toward the back of the bus. Nearly all of the seats had been taken. He didn’t know where to sit. At least none of the passengers had slipped into the final, violent phase. Yet. Almost at the very back, he spotted an Asian woman in surgical scrubs, staring morosely at her lap. Sensing a kindred spirit, he sat carefully next to her, trying not to let his elbow touch her arm.

The bus turned onto Upper Wacker and they drove past the hospital. He craned his head around, but he couldn’t see any sign of Qween. He glanced at the woman next to him, but she still hadn’t looked up. “Do you know what’s happening?” he asked quietly.

She looked at him, eyes hollow and wet with tears. The prisoner bus passed an empty CTA bus, and the glass reflected a glare from the setting sun back into the interior of the passenger bus. Nearly everyone flinched at the sudden flash of light, including the woman wearing medical scrubs. She turned her head away from him, and he finally saw them.

Three bedbugs were feeding on the back of her ear.

Dr. Menard jerked away and stood up in the aisle. Down at the front, the driver’s eyes met Dr. Menard’s eyes in the mirror, then flicked back to the street. Dr. Menard did his best to stand while the bus turned left on Jackson and sped up. He brushed imaginary flecks off his clothes and couldn’t stop. His hands shook.

He pressed his hand against the jump drive in his front pocket, just to reassure himself. It was still there; of course it was still there. He told himself that they would be unloaded at Soldier Field, and all he would have to do was make it through the decontamination process. It wouldn’t be much fun, but he could handle it.

He knew he would have to say good-bye to his clothes. That would be first. He figured that he would either slip the jump drive in his mouth or, if push came to shove, so to speak, he could hide it in his ass. Then they’d be hit by some kind of powder? Hard to say. Showers were guaranteed, probably a number of them. God only knew the chemicals that would be sprayed on them. Heat definitely. Lots of heat, to kill any bugs. From there, he imagined they would turn people loose inside the stadium itself. He’d join everybody else, and they would wait.

Everything would be put on hold until the SWAT teams in the subways came up for air. Once the rats had been destroyed and the pesticides had been sprayed from one end of the city to the other, then the government would want to declare the evacuation had been a success. They’d have to let everybody go at that point. They couldn’t rightly declare a victory without turning the survivors loose. It wouldn’t suit their version of the truth. Hell, if the CDC or the president wanted, they could claim they’d saved everybody in Soldier Field.

Be patient, Dr. Menard told himself. There was a light at the end of the tunnel. He would live to see the end of this.

The bus turned onto Lake Shore Drive, and he marveled at the wall of tanks and trucks that had been arranged to form a barricade across both Lake Shore Drive and Roosevelt. Dr. Menard glanced through the back windows. There were no more buses behind them. In fact, as far as he could see, nothing else moved on the streets.

The prisoner bus barely slowed down as it slipped through the barricade. For Dr. Menard, this was not a good sign. It meant that they didn’t want to stop and inspect the bus. It meant that they already knew who was on board, and wanted them through as fast as possible.

Soldier Field loomed ahead, the new gleaming steel and glass addition dwarfing the original dignified columns and solemn structure. Dr. Menard was confident they would pull around to wherever they had set up the decontamination staging area, probably outside in a parking lot somewhere. The bus headed down into the underground parking lot.

Of course, Dr. Menard reassured himself. They must have a huge lot under the stadium, easily accessible by the buses, and easy to control. It made sense that they would set up the decontamination tents down here. But instead of going deeper into the parking lot, the bus rolled up a ramp, and before he fully understood what was happening, the bus emerged out from under the northern seats of the stadium, past the goal post, and across the end zone.

Some of passengers moaned at the sudden reappearance of light as the bus left the darkness of the underground parking lot. Dr. Menard ignored them and peered through the wires at the stadium as the bus rolled arrogantly over the grass, passing the ten-yard line. The twenty. The thirty. Until finally, it slowed and stopped around the forty-yard line, joining dozens of other buses, all lined up in neat rows on the field.

Dr. Menard stormed up the aisle to the driver’s cubicle. He pounded on the plastic. “Where are the decon showers? What’s the protocol here? You cannot just dump these people in here. We need to be screened, do you understand? You have infected onboard! Get us out of here.” He pointed at the driver with one hand and clutched the jump drive with his other.

Something tickled the back of his neck and he slapped at it but he never took his stare off the driver.

The driver’s expression was unreadable behind the hazmat faceplate. All Dr. Menard knew was that the driver was facing his direction. The gloved hand hit a button and the door behind Dr. Menard opened. Dr. Menard refused to turn around.

The driver opened his own door and stepped outside. And walked away.

Dr. Menard looked back at the passengers. Everyone was asleep now. He came to a decision and went purposefully down the stairs. He put his foot on the badly wounded turf and moved swiftly. As he rounded the front of the bus, the thing that surprised him was the quiet of such a huge structure. Apart from some asshole yelling garbled directions through a megaphone down around the southern food court, the silence that hung over everything was unnatural, this calmness.

He turned in a slow circle and realized the main reason that such a huge place was so quiet was because most of the people were sleeping. Down on the field, people had crawled under the buses to escape the light. All those people under the buses made him think that they’d created some kind of horrible nest or burrow.

He put one foot on the top of the front tire and pulled himself onto the bus’s hood. From there he crawled up the windshield and stood on the roof, getting his first good look at the immense stadium. It looked empty. Then he saw the shapes wedged behind the seats, the rumpled seams of backbones and elbows and hair that skulked behind every row. Very few had fallen asleep sitting up. It looked like everyone had sought out the tightest, darkest, most secure spots as they drifted off, as if it was some kind of primeval ritual.

The few people he saw actually walking, or at least moving, all seemed unaware of each other. They stumbled through the rows of buses, looking for a quiet place to rest. For whatever reason, they seemed content to curl up next to someone else who was already sleeping. He couldn’t quite tell, but from the buses nearby, it looked like the front doors were all wide open, and full of sleeping figures. The only vigorous movement Dr. Menard could see was inside the back of the CTA bus directly in front of him. It looked like a group of men were gang raping a young woman. He couldn’t tell if she was sleeping or not. He hoped she was.

There was not one soldier, not one police officer, not one doctor, no one from the government on the field itself. After scanning the seats for a while, he finally saw a few soldiers patrolling the upper decks. There was movement behind the windows of the exclusive club levels, the expensive private rooms on the east side of the stadium. But that was all.

They had been abandoned.

He quickly slid down to the hood and climbed back to the grass. He got into the cab of the bus and closed the door firmly behind him. Of course the keys were gone. He slid his shaking fingers along the rubber molding that provided a tight seal against the elements. He kneeled on the driver’s seat, following the seam where the stiff plastic shell had been bolted into the floor. It looked like it was tight enough to keep the bugs out, but he couldn’t be sure. He explored under the dashboard and worried about the gaps between the dash and the steering column.

Hopefully the bugs wouldn’t crawl up into the engine block. And if he was still in there when people started waking up and going berserk, it should hold. It had been designed to withstand potential prisoner hijackings after all. He allowed himself to sit back and look around the stadium once again.

He didn’t understand how tens of thousands of people had been herded into Soldier Field. Why were they keeping everyone here? These people needed doctors. They needed to be decontaminated. They needed help.

The back of his collar rubbed at his neck at again and he pulled at it with irritation. His index finger brushed against something tiny, a speck of gravel or scab-like crust or something. Pinching it between his thumb and forefinger, he brought it around and held the squirming bedbug up to his face.

He watched the legs twist, felt the tiny shell undulate under his fingers, saw how the proboscis reached for his breath, and when it couldn’t have that, it curled around to bite at the strip of soft flesh right up under the thumbnail.

He drove it into the center of the steering wheel. The horn echoed throughout the stadium.

CHAPTER 65

7:27 PM

August 14

As the sun sank behind the Loop skyline, Tommy waited in the darkness of the back of the ambulance.

Ideas, each worse than the last, swam through his head like dying fish trapped in a half-filled aquarium. Some, when he knew he was absolutely positive he was awake, seemed almost plausible. They had forgotten him when the virus had swept through the city, and they had abandoned everything. They were still watching him for any of the symptoms to appear. Or they were simply watching and waiting for his sanity to finally crack and for him to start screaming or drooling on himself.

Some of the worst ideas seemed to uncoil from the cold tendrils of his nightmares. Grace was strapped to an identical wheelchair, watching him on one of the monitors while Dr. Reischtal slid needles full of the virus into her veins. Or Tommy was trapped in a coma, only thinking he was awake, while the world withered away in dust and ashes outside.

But no matter the path of the theory, no matter what ghostly images swam into focus on the blank cellulose acetate of his mind, the utterly banal, inevitable fate waiting at the end of every train of thought was that the universe did not revolve around his problems. It was indifferent. It simply did not care.

The undeniable truth that lay in the darkest depths of his despair was the knowledge that he was going to die. Soon. And when he was gone, he understood now how little it would take, how a tiny ripple in the chaos of the world could hurt his little girl. There were so many ways to snap the life out of a four-year-old girl. Grace could die so easily.

Or maybe even something worse than death.

What would happen if Lee got his hands on her? Tommy kept seeing her in pain, hearing the anguish in her voice, watching those innocent, uncomprehending eyes as strangers touched her. . . .

A guttural cry escaped his clenched teeth.

Either he escaped or Grace died.

PHASE 6

CHAPTER 66

8:36 PM

August 14

Lee had promised her that they would be perfectly safe, but watching all the soldiers rush around all the sandbags and tanks, and listening to the distant shooting, Kimmy wasn’t so sure. The men in the hazmat suits had made Grace cry, so Kimmy now had to keep the girl on her lap. Grace kept burying her head in her mother’s shoulder, and Kimmy just knew that she was getting tears and snot all over her evening dress. But that wasn’t the worst. The worst was the dust getting blown around from all the helicopters landing and taking off across the street, in Daley Plaza. The wind was wreaking havoc with her hair and the dirt was sticking to her makeup.

By the time the press conference started, she would be lucky to look like one of those insulting Bratz dolls that had been buried at the bottom of a trash heap for a few weeks. And with all these reporters standing around, with all their crews, not to mention the big trailers full of generators to run the lights, you’d think that somebody would have a makeup kit around. But no, all the reporters, even the women, seemed to be shedding the air of glamour and embracing the rough-and-tumble effect, as if to remind their viewers that being in the quarantine zone was serious business.

Kimmy wanted to shake them and say, Puh-leeze. You’re on TV, for god’s sake. And those stupid clothes—you’re not on safari here. Try not to look like you’ve been sleeping outside for the last two nights. She shifted Grace to the other shoulder and was thankful that she could at least sit down. Around fifty folding chairs had been set up in orderly rows, facing the stage. Whoever had set them up had been either misled or optimistic; most of the chairs were empty.

The stage itself had been erected in the very middle of Clark Street, between City Hall and Daley Plaza. Two flags bookended the stage, the light blue horizontal bars and four red stars of the City of Chicago flag, and the stars and stripes of the U.S. flag. The solemn walnut podium stood empty in the center.

Kimmy tried to relax. She reminded herself that she was just being catty to the reporters because she was jealous that they finally got to look cool, like those foreign correspondents who were always broadcasting while bombs and bullets burst over their heads.

But not her. Oh, no. Lee had instructed her to look as flawless as possible. So she’d pulled out her best black strapless evening dress. Diamond studded choker. One-carat diamond earrings. Hair upswept, precariously held together with a few hidden hairpins, strong hairspray, and a lot of prayers. Even Grace was wearing her best Sunday dress and the stiff shoes that she hated, because they hurt her feet.

Lee had on one of his most expensive suits. His tie was the color of the red stripes in the American flag, with a matching silk handkerchief in the breast pocket. His hair was slicked back and gleamed in the media lights.

The fear was making her impatient. The press conference was supposed to have finished over an hour ago. She’d overheard some of the reporters talking, and they were apparently all waiting for one of the main guys from the CDC to show up. The CDC could give an assessment of the situation, and then Lee could step forward and take all the credit, offering up Kimmy and Grace as proof that the city was quite safe.

Apart from that, she didn’t know anything else about the press conference. While she certainly didn’t expect Lee to stand at her side the entire time, it would have been nice if he’d come over once in a while to check with her.

Instead, he was too busy huddling next to the stage with his slimy uncle. Phil seemed to be angrier than usual; Kimmy watched him yelling into his phone, a finger stuck in his other ear to muffle all the chaos from the soldiers and helicopters. While his uncle was on the phone, Lee went over his speech. As she watched him move his lips as he read, practice his gestures, she realized she didn’t know how she felt about him anymore.

She didn’t really want to know, frankly.

At first, it had all been so gosh darn exciting. Lee was incredibly handsome, powerful, and rich. He was a man who would not just provide for his family, he would take care of everything. He was the kind of man who didn’t blink at spending over six hundred dollars on a four-hour meal for just the two of them. Back when she and Tommy were still together, she would try and explain that she wanted him to take her out, to make her feel special, and all he’d do was stare at her and blink uncertainly while he tried to figure out what she meant, as if it were some impenetrable calculus mystery that couldn’t be solved.

Now Tommy was gone and although she felt bad sometimes, she didn’t really want to see him again. He reminded her of a part of her life that she wanted to forget. She had closed the door on that chapter, and only wished to look forward. Like this quarantine thing. Soon it would be over, Lee would be seen as a hero, and their lives would only get better, filled with state dinners and long trips and getting her picture in the paper at charity functions.

Down the street, in the wash of the TV lights, she watched a rat crawl out of a storm drain. The animal was filthy, emaciated. She wondered if she should say something, let someone know, but hesitated because she didn’t want to interrupt Lee’s big moment. The rat scurried off into the shadows and she stopped worrying about it and wondered instead if they would be staying at a hotel tonight outside of the city or end up back at Lee’s condo.

Kimmy turned her head away from yet another helicopter landing, shifted Grace again, and didn’t see the second rat emerge.

Or the third.

Or the fourth.

Even with his right foot free, Tommy could not pull any of his other limbs loose or tear any of the other straps, all them each a full three inches of leather. He flailed even harder, kicking out with his bare right foot, and only managed to stub his little toe on the bench opposite. The pain almost made him cry.

It wasn’t fair.

One leg. Nothing else. Just enough to tease him.

One goddamn leg.

The paramedics had left the windows cracked so he didn’t die of a heat stroke. Still, it was terribly hot. Sweat streamed down his face, his chest, his arms. The moisture made the leather straps swell, which made things worse as they grabbed hold even tighter. The paramedics had kept him hydrated, but hadn’t given him any food. He hadn’t taken a piss in over nine hours. He was hoping that night would cool things off a little.

He caught a flash of something out of the corner of his eye, and turned his head to look through the back windows of the ambulance. At first, he thought it might be some kind of sticker on the window, maybe a dead leaf or something, because the image looked so out of place. After growing up next to Lake Michigan, he’d grown so accustomed to the flat, featureless expanse of water that seeing something large out there was like finding a tree growing out of the middle of the Dan Ryan Expressway.

There was a warship out there.

It wasn’t one of the giant behemoths, of course, not like those huge aircraft carriers that lumber around the ocean, floating cities in their own right. Still, spotting it suddenly just offshore made it seem even bigger. It must have been five to six hundred feet long. It looked like it had one large cannon mounted on the forward decks, but that wasn’t what took his attention. He blinked the sweat out of his eyes. It looked like there were not one, but two helicopters waiting on two separate landing pads on two levels at the stern.

Something Dr. Reischtal had said bubbled up in the back of his mind: “A proper laboratory is en route.”

It all clicked into place. That warship must have some kind of lab on it, and now that it was here, Dr. Reischtal would be showing up at any minute to drag Tommy out there. He didn’t want to think about what might happen to him once Dr. Reischtal laid him out on an operating table. He focused instead on the unyielding fact that he was out of time and out of luck.

In frustration, he kicked at the bench opposite, this time driving out with his heel, and drove his wheelchair back against the wall of the ambulance. The force of the kick was enough to push the back wheels off the floor an inch or so. He abruptly released the tension, and the wheelchair hit the floor with a creaking thud. He tried it again, extending his leg all the way, pushing the back wheels up the wall. This time, he guessed he must be five or six inches off the floor.

He relaxed his leg and crashed into the floor once again. The impact made the metal shriek. He rolled it forward. He couldn’t tell if it was his imagination or if the chair actually felt wobblier. He tried it again, this time leaning slightly to his left, trying to put more pressure on a single wheel.

Again. And again.

He lost count after twentieth crash. The wheelchair started rattling and shaking loose every time he positioned himself for another drop. Somewhere around the fiftieth or sixtieth fall, the left wheel snapped off abruptly, dumping Tommy sideways on the floor.

He went berserk, kicking and arching his back, flopping around in one last burst of energy. Once unlocked, some of the metal bars simply slid apart, and he was able to bend the rest of it enough to break free. He still had both armrests strapped to his arms and a strip of metal along his left leg, but he was loose.

The first thing he did was to pull the catheter out. The second was to pull the needles connected to the IV units out of the back of his hand.

The third thing he tried was the back door.

It was unlocked.