“Holy fuck.” Bryan jumped off the hood and went for his gun. “Hey!” he yelled at Robert Earl, but the sound was swallowed by the sound of disintegrating rock. Bryan squeezed off two shots at the rats.
Robert Earl released the trigger, peering through the cloud of dust at the drill. He’d heard something, but couldn’t tell if it had come from the drill or something else.
Bryan walked past him and fired three more times.
That got Robert Earl’s attention. His head flicked around, but his hips and feet didn’t move, anchored into the wall with the drill.
Back at the car, Lee snatched the remote detonator off the hood.
Bryan emptied the clip. He dropped it, slipping it into his jacket pocket, loading a fresh one in less than two seconds. He squeezed another burst into the darkness.
“Let’s go,” Lee shouted.
Bryan either ignored Lee or couldn’t hear him and fired once more. He paused for a moment, ultimately realizing his bullets were futile. There was a moment of stillness. Bryan flinched at something. He hopped backwards, twisting in midair, and started running full out for the car.
Robert Earl watched him run past, hands still on the drill.
The rats swarmed out of the gloom and launched themselves at Robert Earl, slashing with inch-long teeth and ragged claws. The combined weight of the attack knocked him off his feet. His screams echoed through the tunnel. He managed to struggle to his feet once, standing against the onslaught. He ripped a rat away from his face. Most of his nose was still between a rat’s front teeth. Other rats dangled from his arm. He stumbled forward a couple of steps, swayed. Rats writhed around his legs. One of them chewed through his Achilles tendon. He took one more step and the ankle gave way.
He fell into the swarm and disappeared.
Thousands of rats exploded out of the cloud of dust, a tsunami of rats shooting up the tunnel.
Lee saw very quickly that most of the rats were still chasing Bryan. He jumped behind the wheel and slammed the door. Bryan was halfway to the car.
More rats poured from the shadows, a goddamn tidal wave.
Lee said, “Fucking Christ,” and started the car. He jerked it into reverse and hit the gas.
Bryan faltered, and risked a look behind him. “Oh fuck, oh fuck!” he yelled and ran even faster.
Lee guided the car by keeping an eye on the side mirrors. He flicked the detonator’s protective cap open. When he judged the distance from the explosion to be at least fifty yards, he hit the brakes. The rats kept coming. Lee armed the detonator. Bryan ran and yelled, “Wait, wait, wait!”
Lee waited until Bryan was nearly to the car and clicked the button. Thunder erupted in the dust. The blast cracked the windshield and knocked the bodyguard on his face. Billowing clouds obscured the view and Lee couldn’t tell what had happened to the structure of the tunnel. Pieces of rats splattered across the hood.
Bryan got up and held his head, making an irritated noise in his throat. He coughed and spit a wad of bloody phlegm at the ground. He pulled open the back door and fell into the backseat. The front half of a rat was stuck to his chest. He grabbed hold of one ear and peeled it off. Shredded internal organs came loose and plopped into his lap. He flung it out into the tunnel and slammed the door.
Lee watched the swirling nightmare of dust and smoke through the windshield for a moment, turned around to face the back window, and hit the gas. The Mercedes scraped the side of the tunnel once or twice, but Lee didn’t slow down.
PHASE 4
CHAPTER 34
7:49 AM
August 13
Ed’s phone chirped, and he jerked awake. For a moment, he couldn’t figure out where he was. All he knew was that his back hurt. He blinked sleep from his eyes, and found himself in the front seat of their Crown Vic. A black metal fence loomed in front of the hood.
Sam was behind the wheel, slumped against the driver’s door, sunken eyes forever staring blearily at the world in that perpetual early-morning haze. “Morning.”
Ed rubbed his burning eyes and twisted around. They were parked in the small lot of a 7-Eleven. His hangover was awful. He tried to remember the night and had the oddest feeling he’d just stepped sideways at the right moment, dodging some speeding eighteen-wheeler.
Ed took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Bits and pieces were coming back to him, especially the icy cloud of dread that settled around his chest, as if a corpse’s hand had fallen on the back of his neck and squeezed.
He hadn’t felt anything like it in a long time. 1968. He’d been sixteen, edging in close to the back of the crowd amassed at the corner of Balbo and Michigan, anxious to see the unrest, curious to see the anger at the government for himself. The closest he’d gotten was State Street, and when the cops arrived on Michigan and uncertainty seeped through the crowd, he’d bolted. The politics of the time weren’t that important to him; the protests took a backseat to trying to get laid.
Later, having no luck with the ladies, he’d taken another hike up into the South Loop.
The streets were so empty it felt like a dream. He could smell the bitterness of something, maybe tear gas, in the air. He and his buddies heard the diesel roar of a bus, and hid behind cars along the curb, laying down in the gutters as it passed. The bus ran without lights, not even headlights. The streetlights gleamed dully off the scratched windows; the inside of the bus was darker than the sewers. It rolled through a red light, and in the wash of the stoplight, Ed could see the silhouettes of twenty or thirty riot cops.
Ed felt his insides clench, and for the first time in his life he’d faced the very real possibility of getting stomped and beaten to death by a squad of licensed white men. The bus kept rolling down Wabash and turned left, toward the lake. As soon as it was out of sight, Ed and the rest of his boys had sprinted west down Roosevelt.
The soldiers last night had given Ed the same feeling.
Last night scared him.
The soldiers last night hadn’t done anything threatening, exactly. But they hadn’t exactly been your typical weekend warriors either. They’d been older, for one thing. They wore a hell of a lot of extra gear for guys who supposedly did this soldiering thing once a month. They seemed awfully prepared for a bunch of gas-station attendants and insurance salesmen.
And why the hell were they at the hospital?
Ed dug his phone out of his sport coat. Checked the number. Carolina. He exhaled slow, knowing this wasn’t going to be good. “Hey, baby.”
Tommy clawed his way into the light. He tried to grab a breath, but something was in the way. He coughed and gagged. Something was blocking his airways; something had been shoved up his nose and down his throat. He went to grab for whatever it was, to rip it away, but he couldn’t move his hands. It felt like he was drowning. Agony ricocheted through his body, and his lungs screamed silently for air.
“Calm down and open your mouth,” a voice commanded.
Tommy’s mouth opened and snapped shut, gasping for air. Whatever was in his nose slid away, leaving a burning path down the back of his throat. Air, sweet air, rushed in, filling his lungs and his blood bubbled with oxygen.
His panic slowly subsided, and the overwhelming light in his eyes swam into focus as a row of buzzing fluorescent bulbs. He blinked, and he jerked his head around, trying to see more, trying to figure out where he was, trying to figure out what had happened. He remembered little beyond riding the elevator with Lee . . . and beyond that, nothing, just a dream of being underwater.