He hurried to catch up to Don. Don said, “Watch your head,” and shined the light at the cave roof, revealing a slab of rock that sloped down at nearly a forty-five-degree angle. Don squatted under this and turned the flashlight at clusters of rat corpses. “Anywhere else, you try and lay out some poisoned bait, the rats laugh at you. They’re too damn smart. And there’s plenty of food. But down here, I dunno. Maybe the toxic fumes scramble their brains. There’s always plenty of dead ones. Anyway, this is where you find ’em.”
He led Tommy back to the van and they put on heavy leather gloves first, then disposable rubber gloves to cover the leather. Don took a box of blue plastic bags back to the rats. Tommy would hold each bag open while Don reached under the ledge and grabbed a rat by its tail. When the rat was in the bag, Tommy twisted the top and sealed it with yellow tape stamped with the three incomplete rings over a full circle, the sphincter-tightening symbol of biological hazardous material.
When they had collected fifty rats, they put them in a metal bin in the back of the van and laid out more poisoned bait. The entire process didn’t take longer than half an hour. They stripped off their rubber gloves and left them in the bin with the rats. Back in the cab, they sat for a moment, pulling off the leather gloves.
Tommy surveyed the rolling mounds of refuse. “Fifty rats. This doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, does it?”
“Not one damn bit.” Don turned off the headlights.
Darkness settled over the van with a totality that made Tommy feel as if someone had just pulled a thick rubber bag over his head.
“Check this out,” Don said. “Give your eyes a sec.”
Tommy’s other senses exploded into awareness. He clutched the door handle, just to triple-check the door was closed. Far off, he could hear a quiet skittering. The sound got closer.
Don turned on the parking lights. Countless red pinpricks out in the distant darkness froze and watched the van silently. “Holy shit,” Tommy breathed.
Don started the van, turned on the headlights. The rats vanished. “No. Not one damn bit,” he repeated. “Still, this is what we get paid for. Rats will always breed faster’n we can kill ’em. But it keeps Lee happy. And that, my friend, is the secret to a successful career in Streets and Sans.”
CHAPTER 10
3:57 AM
December 28
Dr. Reischtal was down on his knees on the smooth, polished stone floor, under the window at the end of the hallway. His back was bowed, forehead resting on his clasped hands, and he was halfway through whispering his morning prayers when the phone rang.
At first, he wasn’t sure how to react. His first instinct was simply to ignore the shrill bleating. One did not put God on hold while one answered a paltry phone call. Yet, this was the department phone. His staff was under strict orders only to call this phone under precise circumstances.
He felt his concentration vacillate. He clenched his hands tighter, raising his voice from a whisper to almost a hoarse shout. Work could wait. Everything could wait. His time with the Lord was precious. Sacred. In fact, his devotion to his Lord was what made him so effective at his profession.
Dr. Reischtal was the director of special operations for the special pathogens branch in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. With the exception of Dr. Reischtal himself, no one was entirely sure what these special responsibilities entailed, only that he was the man to contact if certain parameters were exceeded when a suspicious death was reported.
Dr. Reischtal knew. He understood the exacting nature of his responsibilities, and why striving to maintain a clear line of communication with his Lord was so vitally important.
Unlike the traditional priests and the wishy-washy New Age pastors who spoke of the devil as if he were some sort of harmless metaphor, Dr. Reischtal knew Satan was real. The idiotic fire-and-brimstone born-again evangelists were closer to the truth, but they howled about the devil as if he strode through the cornfields on cloven feet, slinging fire at all true believers with his pitchfork and seducing everybody else down into the pits of hell.
Dr. Reischtal knew better. He knew that Satan existed in the tiniest of organisms, patiently waiting for a chance to turn this paradise mankind had been given into a hellish wasteland. It was only fitting then, that the ancient one lurked in the primordial ooze.
Hell was not a place separate from paradise, and the devil strived to turn paradise into hell. He knew this because he had seen the devil, pinned under glass, as he watched him carefully with own two eyes through a microscope.
Pieces of Satan were kept frozen, locked away deep in the cavernous levels of the CDC. Dr. Reischtal had filed a memo that these samples be destroyed, but the suggestion was quietly rebuked. The samples were vital, in case further vaccines needed to be developed.
He said nothing else. In his professional life, he was smart enough not to refer to Satan by name, or even suggest that they were all dealing with mankind’s oldest and deadliest foe. But he knew. He knew. And his job, his holy mission, was to maintain a vigil, watching and waiting for any signs of where Satan may be trying to force his way through a crack into this world.
The phone continued to ring. There was no answering machine, no voice mail. It would continue to ring until he answered.
Dr. Reischtal’s prayers faltered and stopped. He pushed himself to his feet, placating his discomfort at leaving the prayers unfinished with the promise that he would start over when he finished with the phone call.
“Yes,” he said into the receiver. Only the knowledge that punishment would be severe for the voice on the other end of the line made him feel a little better. He listened for a moment, then said, “Chicago. I would have thought New York.” He exhaled. “No matter. Assemble the components. I want a plane ready within the hour. I will expect a car at my door in precisely thirty minutes.” He remembered his prayers. “No. Make that sixty. Please remind the liaison in Chicago that they are to follow the strictest isolation procedures. Any—I repeat, any—deviation from my written protocol will be dealt with in the harshest possible manner.” He replaced the receiver.
God did not tell him whether they were false alarms or if true battles were about to begin when the calls came in. So he made sure he was ready. “I pledge my allegiance, oh Lord, in this endless war. In this life and the next,” he said, then went back down the hall, knelt under the round window that looked out to the stars, and began to pray again.
CHAPTER 11
5:16 AM
December 28
Lee was not happy. His head felt like it was going to crack open any moment, spilling his throbbing brain onto the slate tile of the suite’s bathroom. The sun was creeping over the far edge of Lake Michigan, slicing through the air and boiling his eyes. He could handle the sun though; he’d find the damn switch that lowered the blinds later. Although he couldn’t, for the life of him, understand what he’d been thinking last night when he’d demanded a view of the lake.
No, what Lee needed right fucking now was a goddamn drink of water.
Problem was, he couldn’t figure out how to turn the faucet on.
There were no handles. Just curving horns of pure, smooth onyx that jutted boldly over two shallow black sinks. He tried waving his hands under what he thought might be the faucet, hoping for a motion sensor, but nothing happened. He squinted around the gleaming, ultra-modern bathroom. Everything was gray and black, with brilliant white starburst accents. Even the toilet and bidet, elevated on two steps like thrones, were jet black. He tried the second sink and got the same result. Behind him, across a space larger than most living rooms, waited both a tub big enough to fit four people and a shower that could easily fit another four, with a bewildering array of nozzles that sprayed you from every conceivable angle. Lee honestly couldn’t remember if he’d even used them last night or not.