Текст книги "Sleep Tight"

Автор книги: Jeff Jacobson

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Текущая страница: 29 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

CHAPTER 76

9:11 PM

August 14

It was the infected.

They came swarming out of the darkness, unheard over the throbbing rotors of the Sikorsky. The first soldiers saw them and started shooting immediately. The ear-shattering sound of the gunfire and the muzzle flashes drew the infected like moths to hot neon. They attacked with the speed of shadows, tearing the soldiers apart before the victims’ eyes could adjust to the darkness.

Those inside the helicopter stared out through the few tiny windows, but couldn’t see much beyond the incessant muzzle flashes as the fully automatic assault rifles ripped great swaths in the night, cutting down the infected by the dozens. But for every one that fell, another ten took their place. The soldiers tightened their perimeter, backing slowly to the Sikorsky, firing nonstop.

The infected got close enough that Lee could see them in the glow of the landing lights. He yelled up the cabin at Phil, “Oh, shit! They’re everywhere!”

Phil opened the cockpit door again, and said, “Go! Go!”

Something smashed the door into Phil’s head, stunning him enough that he dropped to his knees. His revolver fell to the floor.

Tommy was on his hands and knees, but he wasn’t helpless. He’d been waiting for his chance. So when Phil stuck his head in the cockpit door, Tommy launched himself at the door and drove his shoulder into it, slamming Phil’s head in the doorframe. As Phil dropped, Tommy came up and turned to catch Grace, who had leapt out of her seat and wrapped her arms around her daddy’s neck.

He rose to his feet and started back down the aisle.

Lee blocked his way. He smiled. “I’m gonna be there when that crazy fuck cuts into you. I want to watch the—”

Tommy didn’t have the time. He shifted Grace to the side, still holding her with his left hand, and pulled Lee’s Glock out of his waistband with his right. He’d slipped it out of Lee’s shoulder holster when Lee had been lifting him outside of the chopper. After faking the extent of the blow so he could curl up and slip it into his pants, he’d let himself be thrown onboard, keeping the pistol pinned to his hip with his elbow.

As he brought it up, there was just enough time for the expression on Lee’s face to crumble from a satisfied smirk to a narrowing of the eyes. He was reaching for his holster, as if to check if his handgun was still there, when Tommy shot him in the face at point-blank range.

Lee’s head snapped back and he fell flat into the aisle. Kimmy screamed, wiping at the blood on her face.

“Run!” Tommy yelled at her, not stopping, still coming down the aisle, stepping on Lee’s corpse. He heard movement behind him and started to turn, knowing that he was too slow, knowing that the bullet from Phil’s revolver was in on its way. He couldn’t believe Phil was upright so quickly.

But Phil was indeed standing up, wobbling and blinking through the pain. His nose had been smashed, and blood sheeted his upper lip, dribbling down over his mouth and pouring over his chin. “Mudderfugger,” he wheezed and squeezed off a shot with his stubby .38.

Tommy flinched at the report, but the blast went wide.

Phil started forward, blowing bubbles of blood, intent on getting close enough so he couldn’t miss. Tommy stumbled backwards, trying to shift Grace to the side so he could shield her with his own body. Phil fired again.

Tommy heard a harsh grunt and glanced over his shoulder at Kimmy. The slug had caught her in the neck. She dropped back into one of the flight crew’s bench seats, raised her hand to her throat. She looked down in surprise at the blood on her fingers.

Tommy had the Glock up now, fired twice, and missed both times.

Phil dove sideways behind a row of seats.

Tommy turned back and ran, jumping through the open doorway.

Outside, the soldiers were still learning the hard way how noise and light drew the infected. The soldiers ignored Tommy and Grace completely, intent on shooting at the rushing swarm. More soldiers were now escaping from the subway and once they saw the chopper, they went sprinting for it across the plaza.

Metal scraped across metal. About fifteen yards down Washington, a manhole cover popped out of its groove and slid into the street. Soldiers immediately lunged out, crawling feverishly onto the street. Most were unarmed, having lost their weapons below. As soon as they found their feet, they broke out running in all directions. Some saw the chopper and broke for it.

Tommy stayed low and kept moving, holding Grace tight on his hip, running like a fullback weaving and dodging through the defensive linemen. He reached the sandbag wall on the western side of the plaza and dropped to his knees, crouching, covering Grace with his body. Her emotions had caught up to her and she started to cry. He put his lips against her ears and whispered, “Shhhh, shhhh. It’s okay. Daddy’s got you now. Daddy’s got you. Shhh. Shhhh.”

Behind him, the sound of the Sikorsky’s rotors changed pitch. The pilots had finally decided enough was enough, and they were pulling out. The massive engines whined, and the tree-length blades sliced through the air, slow at first, then faster and faster as the last of the soldiers scrambled on board. More soldiers ran into Daley Plaza every second, bursting out of more manhole covers and the shadows surrounding Washington and Clark. But the CH-53K wasn’t waiting. Lights flashed as the chopper lifted into the air like a constipated dragonfly, moving slowly, weaving slightly, having trouble putting distance between itself and the ground.

Some of the soldiers started shooting at the ascending helicopter. The panic had slipped into anger that quickly; if they couldn’t get a lift out, if the chopper wouldn’t wait for them, then fuck it, no one was getting out. At least two of the squads carried a rocket launcher and fired them. They missed two out of three times. The third time, the first rocket caught the helicopter right in the guts, and vaporized seven of the soldiers inside.

The CH-53K was blown sideways, tail up, nose at the rushing ground. The pilot fought against being blown head over heels, a death spasm for this helicopter. The blades, seventy-nine feet long, whipped through the air at eight hundred feet per second. The pilot brought the nose up but couldn’t manage to stay in the middle of the street.

Phil spent the last seconds of his life trying to get out of his seat belt. He thought if he could just get out of the seat and move to the back of the helicopter he could survive the crash. He tried, but couldn’t manage to compress the right buttons in his panic and stayed trapped in his seat. Not that it would have mattered in the end.

The pilot had almost leveled off when the blades smacked through the glass and concrete of one of the theater buildings to the east. One of the four blades caught fast on a steel beam in the building’s fourteenth floor, and in less time then it takes to blink, the rest of the blades snapped into the beam and it was all over. The chopper whipped around as if it was slapping the building with its tail rotors. The fuel didn’t catch until it was halfway down the building, tumbling and bouncing down the side of the wall of glass, and it finally exploded. The wreckage slammed into the sidewalk in front of a Starbucks, sending burning fuel across the street in a blazing sunflower display. The impact blew an angry huff of wind back through the streets.

Dr. Reischtal watched it all unfold on the two monitors fed by the Apaches. The Sikorsky’s explosion blew out the infrared cameras and the images dissolved in a bright blast of green light.

Dr. Reischtal didn’t move. He watched the chaos without expression.

A few seconds later, the heat died away, and he could once again see how the plaza had been overrun. It was impossible to discern the soldiers from the infected. He kept searching for a figure carrying a child. This individual was all that mattered now. He wanted, no needed, to see the figure surrounded and attacked, to watch the infected hack Tommy Krazinsky and his daughter into pieces, to witness the man and the girl being ripped limb from limb.

He couldn’t find them.

Perhaps it was time to inform the president. Chicago was lost.

He dialed the number. Waited for the ring. Instead, there was just a dull click. Then nothing. He dialed it again. Same result. Dr. Reischtal left his phone face up on the table, stretched out his palms, curled his fingers into claws, then pulled them back to him, scraping his short fingernails across the plastic. The president was either too busy to answer, or was avoiding him.

Either way, it didn’t change anything.

Chicago was still finished.

He called Evans.

“Just got through,” Evans said. “Damn near there. Give us half an hour, forty-five minutes to get clear. I’ll call you as soon as we’re all topside.”

Dr. Reischtal said, “Of course,” and hung up. Evans had twelve trucks with him. They would provide the initial blast, sending death up through the underground caverns and subway tunnels. Three more tankers had been left in the massive parking garage under Millennium Park, at the north end of Grant Park. Six more had been spaced out along Lower Wacker, covering the north and west sides of the Loop.

If three trucks had been enough to utterly destroy Soldier Field, over twenty would vaporize most of downtown Chicago, and the tankers full of 2-4-5 Trioxin interspersed with the rest of the explosives would extinguish every form of carbon-based life within the blast radius.

Unlike Soldier Field, where only three trucks had to be synced, this would involve linking at least twenty-four trucks. It was time to begin. Dr. Reischtal dialed the number to start the arming process.

The fireball from the Sikorsky wreckage had drawn infected from all over the city. Most of them were infested with bedbugs. The bugs crawled through their hair, in and out of noses. Sometimes bugs would cluster in groups and feed, usually down around the corners of the mouth in a frozen, scaly scab of thirty or forty. Some of the freshly infected were still shambling around in a drunken haze. Not enough blood had been taken to steal consciousness and the victim could only fight to stay upright while coughing bugs out of their lungs and brushing them away from their eyeballs, surrendering the rest of their skin.

For the most part, the infected ignored Tommy and Grace, focusing instead on the fireball to the northeast. They flowed through the smoke across Daley Plaza, sometimes howling and gibbering with rage at the flickering light and erratic spurts of gunfire still chattering around the streets, as the soldiers fled in all directions.

Tommy watched a young blond woman, who might have been attractive once, stagger past. Her skin was blotchy and swollen. Bugs crawled up her neck. A pair of bloody panties was still clinging around one ankle. It didn’t take much imagination to see how Tommy and Grace would be transformed, and how they would become a slave to the virus.

Tommy whispered to Grace, “We’re gonna play a game, okay? We’re gonna be as quiet as we can, okay? Remember that movie where the girl went sneaking around her house, ’cause she didn’t want to get caught? That’s us, baby. We’re gonna be quiet, right?”

Grace nodded.

Tommy held her tight and breathed into her ear, “Good girl.” He eased over the sandbags and moved slowly toward City Hall. As long as they were quiet and kept their distance, it didn’t even appear that the infected even saw them. It didn’t look like they could see much beyond their own agony anyway.

Tommy crouched next to the stage and looked for the square, heavy packets the soldiers had taken earlier. There, up near the podium. Tommy set Grace down and said, “Okay, little girl. You climb under there for just a minute and hide. I’m going up on top of this just for a minute and I can’t crawl and carry you. I just gotta grab these two important things, and I’ll be right back. You stay still. And quiet.”

Grace nodded, putting her finger to her lips. Tommy kissed her forehead and wriggled across the stage. He had one packet and was reaching for the second when he heard Grace scream.

In the street behind him, not ten feet from where Grace hid, one of the soldiers from the subways dropped to his knees and pulled out a knife out of his belt. He must have been freshly infected and the awful itching was upon him. Weeping, he twisted the blade across his skull, sawing it back and forth in a desperate effort to satiate the horrible sensation. His sobbing rose into a moan and he drove the knife blade into his armpit, scraping it back and forth.

She watched this, couldn’t hold back the terror, and screamed.

Before Tommy knew what was even happening, one of the infected was already on his knees, crawling under the stage to reach Grace. She screamed even louder. The infected, a middle-aged man in a suit, stretched out and clawed at the girl. Bugs flitted across his face, wiggling in and out of his ears and collar. They covered his back and spilled out of his shoes.

Tommy scrabbled back across the stage, realizing that he wouldn’t make it in time.

Suddenly, Qween was there, grabbing the man’s ankles and dragging him away. She pulled him across the pavement, dropped his legs, and tried to catch her breath as he howled at her and rolled over. She kicked him in the head, avoiding the bugs that spilled off of him.

But she wasn’t fast enough to avoid the bug that latched onto the back of her hand. And by the time she spotted it in the flickering light from the flames across the plaza, it was too late. The thing had already driven its proboscis into her skin and was drinking her blood when she smashed it with her thumb. She flicked it into the street.

She tucked the thoughts and panic away and let her eyes go soft. She knelt and peered under the stage at Grace. “Now, now, baby girl, don’t fret none. Miss Qween is here, and nothin’s gonna hurt you.”

Tommy rolled off the stage and met Qween’s eyes. “Thank you.”

Qween waved it away. “Hush.”

Ed stepped close, assault rifle tight in his fists. “Didn’t want to use the rifle,” he whispered. “Too many—”

His words were drowned out by the roar of one of the Apaches as it came in low, driving a turbulent wind down Clark. It blasted them with the searchlight, and as Ed spun and looked back across the plaza, he could see every infected’s head swivel and lock onto the light, as if it was a beacon where they could find relief and exorcise the crippling rage that scurried through their minds.

Ed fired up at the light, superior firepower be damned. The rifle spit empty shells across the stage and his crouching companions as he followed the light. “Run,” he yelled, and fired again.

Tommy and Qween scrambled to their feet and ran to City Hall. Tommy had Grace on his hip again and carried the two square packets with his other hand. Ed followed, firing blindly over his shoulder. They pushed through the spinning doors and stumbled up the dark hallway.

Tommy and Qween stopped to rest, but Ed pushed them along. “No, no. Run! Run!”

Behind them, the doors exploded. The moratorium against killing Tommy was over, and the Apaches were itching to unleash a barrage of Hellfire missiles. The building shook as more missiles streaked down and transformed the east side of City Hall into smoking rubble.

Ed, Qween, and Tommy ran until they stood in the nexus of the four hallways, smack in the dead center of the building. Even before the smoke had cleared down the east hallway, they could hear the infected throwing themselves against the wreckage of the door, clawing their way through the chunks of concrete and the mangled remains of the spinning door.

More explosions.

Ed said, “They’re gonna bring this whole building down around us if we don’t figure out something fast.”

Qween said, “Let’s sneak out down there.” She nodded at the south hallway. “Gotta be a truck or something, something that still has the keys inside, like Sam’s bus. Fuck it. Drive that sucker to the lake.”

Ed shook his head. “They’ve got infrared. Doesn’t matter how dark it is out there. We wouldn’t make it five feet.”

“I got an idea. But it won’t work for all of us.” Tommy looked from Ed to Qween. “We go deep, into the tunnels,” he said. “That was my idea from the beginning. That’s why I grabbed these.” He held up one of the packets and opened it. A hazmat suit, complete with a helmet and air filter, had been vacuum sealed inside. “These will keep the bugs out. But I’ve only got two.”

Ed fingered the tears in his own hazmat suit. “Hell, we need four. Them bugs’ll crawl right inside.” He shook his head. “Maybe we can go a short distance. I can try and keep ’em off.”

“That’s how we gonna get out of here,” Qween said. “We’ll go down into the subway and come up on the other side of the street.”

“We don’t have enough suits,” Tommy said.

Qween gave a tired smile. “It’s okay. I ain’t fitting in one a’ them things anyhow.” She held up her hand and the look on her face was enough to tell them that she was already bitten.

“We’ll split up then,” Ed said. “Me and Qween will take the subway and come out across the street. If they don’t see us, then I’ll call Arturo soon as we get a chance. If they spot us, we’ll draw them off you.”

Tommy shook his head. “Won’t matter. I’m going deep. Gonna head down, go under the river, come up into the storm drains on the other side.”

Ed thought a moment and nodded. “Fair enough. But don’t waste time. I got a feeling that sonofabitch ain’t gonna be satisfied by just watching those choppers shoot the shit out of City Hall. I bet he’s got something else up his sleeve.”

Tommy unfurled one of the hazmat suits and climbed inside. Ed and Qween helped Grace climb into hers. It was huge on her; her arms and legs barely reached the elbows and knees of the suit. “Doesn’t matter,” Tommy said. “Seal her in. Got an idea.”

Once his own suit was completely sealed, he leaned over Grace and said, “Okay, little girl. Ready to go for a ride? Pull your arms and legs in and sit Indian style, okay?” Grace did. Tommy took the empty arms of her suit and lifted her onto his back, pulling the left arm over his shoulder and the right arm under his right armpit. Ed saw where he was going and tied the arms together across his chest, then pulled the empty legs around Tommy’s hips and tied them.

“Good luck,” Ed said.

As the Apaches continued to fire missiles into the building, the group descended into the darkness under Chicago.

CHAPTER 77

10:31 PM

August 14

Dr. Reischtal’s phone lay faceup on the table. The trucks had been synced. The voice recognition software had confirmed Dr. Reischtal’s identity. The system was armed and ready for the signal. On his phone, the green SEND button blinked patiently.

He’d been waiting, hoping to see some sign, something, someone trying to escape from the wreckage of City Hall. The Apaches had fired over thirty Hellfire missiles into the doorway and first-floor windows, but the building still stood, a testimonial to the strength and tenacity of the stone structure.

One of the Apache pilots’ voices crackled over the radio. “Still no sign, sir. Should we expand the sweep?”

Dr. Reischtal slumped back and didn’t bother to answer. While his sense of professional responsibility had been bruised, as well as his pride if he was honest, he told himself it mattered little. One tiny signal, and it would be all over.

“Sir? Do you copy?”

Dr. Reischtal shut the radio off.

He looked at his phone.

Yes, the toll had been devastating. The ancient one had almost succeeded with infecting the world and bringing with it a new age of darkness. But with God’s grace, Dr. Reischtal was about to choke the life out of the evil, and send it back to hell by burning Chicago off the map.

He picked up his phone.

The door to the chamber on the other side of the plastic slammed open and Dr. Reischtal watched as the black detective and the homeless woman stared back at him.

“It’s over,” the detective said.

Dr. Reischtal agreed with him. Nodding, he hit SEND. “Yes. Now it is over.”

Tommy found a discarded flamethrower and used the blue pilot light to find his way through the darkness. He had only encountered a few of the infected, and these were too sick to move much. They flinched and turned away from the light, forcing themselves tighter into cracks and under ledges.

Bugs covered everything.

Sometimes they crawled over Tommy and Grace and Tommy had to stop and wipe them off his faceplate. The hazmat suits worked, and kept the bugs out. Once in a while he would turn and see how Grace was doing. He couldn’t hear her because she was too far away to use the little microphone in the air filter, but he could see her chubby fist giving him a thumbs-up in the flattened faceplate.

Tommy used his experience from working for Streets and Sans, and tried to remember everything that Don had taught him about the labyrinth of tunnels and cracks and abandoned lines under Chicago. He worked his way through the darkness, flicking the trigger on the flamethrower to make sure the tunnels were clear. In some ways, it was almost easier than if the city was up and running. Back then, they would have had to work hard to avoid the rushing trains and electrified third rail. Now, Tommy could walk straight up the center of the tracks.

He passed the signs of the battles. Huge piles of dead rats. Misty pockets of pesticides, where the dead bugs created a swamp nearly two feet deep. Bodies of soldiers. Bodies of subway passengers, caught by the rats or bugs before the evacuation. The bodies of the infected, who had crawled down into the musty gloom to escape the noise and light from above.

He untied Grace and cradled her as he slipped through a crack that took him down nearly twenty feet. This particular tunnel had not been used in years, and the tracks were covered in dust. No bodies of humans, but plenty of dead rats. And always, always, the bugs. They swarmed over Tommy and Grace, sensing heat and blood inside. Tommy moved slow, careful not to snag their suits on anything sharp.

He retied Grace on his back and studied the tunnel before him. It split in two, and Tommy’s gaze went back and forth between the two dark channels. “Goddamnit.” His metallic whisper echoed around the chamber. One of the tunnels eventually hooked up with north branch of the Blue Line at Clinton. The other dead-ended back in the massive cavern where Lee had been dumping all the illegal trash.

He couldn’t remember which tunnel was which.

The blackened railroad ties under his feet shivered, and he heard a distant, deep rumble. The cracking roar grew louder. Dust sifted off the walls and filled the air. The ground started to shake in earnest, as if Chicago was suffering an earthquake.

There was no time left.

He picked the left tunnel and started running.

When Dr. Reischtal hit SEND, they heard a growl of thunder somewhere far off on the horizon. But that was all. A few minutes later, there was a gentle rocking as the warship rode the lazy swells that had been pushed into the lake from the blast.

Ed ran his palm over the smooth, transparent plastic and ignored Dr. Reischtal. Qween clutched her bundle of rags, sat at the table, and just watched the man inside the sterile room.

Dr. Reischtal was hitting buttons, making phone calls, but no one was answering. Ed wasn’t surprised.

Earlier, they’d come up out of the subway across Clark and quietly made their way east to the lake. Ed had called Arturo. Arturo sent a police launch for them and told Ed that somebody in the upper levels of the federal government, somebody with some juice, maybe even somebody in the joint chiefs of staff wanted the mess in Chicago over. They couldn’t trust Dr. Reischtal anymore and they were more than willing to let someone else do their dirty work for them.

Whoever it was had called ahead. No one on the boat stopped them. The soldiers stood silent and still and watched as Ed helped Qween along. One soldier had escorted them down to Dr. Reischtal’s safe room, then stood aside while they went in.

Dr. Reischtal said, “I know your names. As before, I will find you. I will finish you.”

Ed didn’t say anything. He studied the bubble of plastic, feeling for any cracks, any stress fractures. He settled on the curve along the upper right corner, then hefted the fire axe he’d picked up on the way down into the bowels of the ship.

Dr. Reischtal almost laughed. “You do realize that this material is virtually indestructible. This warship could sink to the bottom of Lake Michigan and I would still be sitting comfortably inside when the divers came.”

Ed peeled his hazmat suit down to his waist, hefted the axe and swung it sideways in the cramped room, as if he was swinging for a high fastball. The blade bounced off the plastic with the sound of a boat propeller hitting a frozen pond. Ed looked like he expected nothing less. He pulled the axe back and swung again.

And again.

Dr. Reischtal said, “Even if you manage to crack it, it will take you days to create a hole large enough to fit inside. And I have no intentions of leaving. I have enough rations to last weeks, if necessary. When the authorities do show up, I will make you wish you had died back in that city.”

Ed never stopped. He kept swinging, smashing the axe blade into the same spot, over and over. After nearly half an hour, sweat was pouring off of him and he was breathing in short, whistling bursts. He swung again, and this time, it sounded slightly different.

A tiny sliver of plastic landed on the table in front of Qween. She picked it up and sleepily inspected it. She smiled. Ed stepped up the pace, swinging even harder. When the blade struck, it now sent up a flurry of plastic shards.

Before long, the blade broke through, puncturing the surface.

“Not so airtight now, are you, motherfucker?” Qween asked.

Dr. Reischtal didn’t answer. He tried his phone again, but it wouldn’t function at all.

Ed didn’t stop. He worked at the hole, created a jagged rupture nearly a foot in diameter. He stepped back, gasping, and dropped into one of the chairs. The axe clattered to the floor. Then, as if remembering something else, he picked the axe back up, walked over to the locked door that led into Dr. Reischtal’s safe room, and wedged the axe handle up under the door handle. He kicked it tight, then went back and sat down.

Qween rose with all the regal elegance her name implied, and approached the hole. She still carried her bundle. She gave Dr. Reischtal another chilling smile, untied the bundle, and pulled out a rat by the tail.

Hundreds of bugs wriggled through the coarse hair.

The rat blinked, dazed, trying to shake off the deep sleep. She gently pushed it through the uneven hole and dropped it inside the once sterile room.

As Dr. Reischtal gave a hoarse cry, she turned to Ed and leaned on the table. “I need to breathe some real air.”

He stood and took her arm. They left Dr. Reischtal scrabbling around, stomping at the bugs that were flowing off the rat. He slapped his phone down, squashing four or five at a time. But they kept coming, covering the floor. He climbed up on his chair, then to his table. All of the monitors had gone dark.

As they were leaving, Ed turned out the lights, leaving Dr. Reischtal alone with the bugs.

Dr. Reischtal still had lights, of course, but the darkness beyond the plastic bubble filled him with a horror he hadn’t felt since his parents had used to lock him in the basement closet.

For a few brief moments, he thought he might actually be able to kill all of the bugs, until he spotted one nestling into the cleft between his toes. He snaked a finger down there, squashing it. His finger came back up with just the hint of a smear of blood. It was enough.

And while he stared at the fresh blood on his index finger, more bugs swarmed his bare feet and ankles, and started up his legs. He knew it was over and knelt back down on the floor, clasped his hands in front of his chest, and closed his eyes.

If he could only see the stars.

Ed and Qween made their way to the bow, faces lit by the glow of the fires in the Loop. The skyline was so different, as if a child had come along and swept his building blocks away, leaving some stacks barely standing, dashing others to the ground.

The sky over the lake was alive with helicopters.

“I’m awful damn tired,” Qween said. “Gonna rest now, I think.”

“You want help?” Ed asked without looking at her.

“You got a good heart for a cop, Ed Jones. And I thank you. I truly do. This is my job. Not yours.”

Ed nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He stood abruptly, pulling his .357 out of its holster. He held it by the barrel and offered it to her, handle first.

She took a deep breath, then finally took it. “Now go. Find your woman. Take care of her. And yourself.” She met his eyes, shiny with unspilled tears. “Gonna take me a nap.”

He kissed her forehead and left.

She watched Chicago burn for a while, felt her eyelids grow heavier and heavier. She considered the long sleep ahead of her and what awaited when she finally awoke. She could feel the strength slowly leaving her bones, replaced by something cold and sluggish.

She thought about her home. Gone now.

She opened her mouth and put the barrel of Ed’s .357 inside. As she watched the distant glow of the shattered Chicago skyline, she tilted the handgun until she felt the tip of the barrel tight against the roof of her mouth. She took one more deep breath and let it out slow, aware of the humidity in the air, the slow roll of the warship in the new waves spreading out across the lake, the coolness of the bench under her, the faint spattering of stars above, the rough checkerboard pattern of the handgun’s grip in her hand.

Then she squeezed the trigger.

And slept.

Ed got back in the police launch and heard the single gunshot.

He sat heavily in the stern. He kicked off the hazmat suit and threw it in the lake. He stuck his hand in his back pocket and pulled Sam’s flask out. He unscrewed the lid, avoiding the surreptitious glances from the two cops at the controls.