The light above flickered and eventually broke apart in the reflections of a fluid sun on water. Tommy floated to the surface. They’d brought him out of his anesthesia and he had one hell of a headache, but he didn’t feel much of anything else. This was mostly because some tech had jammed a suppository in his ass, flooding his system with oxymorphone. He blinked as Dr. Reischtal loomed over him.
“We have samples of your brain now. We will learn the truth very, very soon.”
Tommy tried to move his mouth, hiss, anything. A low croak escaped his lips.
“You’re welcome,” Dr. Reischtal said and left.
CHAPTER 36
9:16 AM
August 13
Carolina poured coffee, then served them eggs, bacon, and toast. She said, “So. Sam. You got a girl yet?”
“No.”
“That’s your fault and you know it. Guy like you, you choose to, you can get a girl.”
“Sure.”
“Ed here, he’s got himself a girl. Too dumb to know how good he’s got it.” She slammed eggs on Ed’s plate. “But I bet you’d be a little more thoughtful, wouldn’t you, Sam?”
“Sure,” Sam agreed. He wasn’t an idiot.
Carolina turned to Ed. “Hmm-mmm. See that. Man smart enough to go out and find himself a woman, he oughta treat her with respect. Don’t you think?”
Ed nodded. He was no idiot either. “Sure.”
The TV on the kitchen counter caught Sam’s eye. Cecilia Palmers stood in front of County General with her concerned expression, the one she usually saved for major car accidents. The news crawl at the bottom read, BREAKING NEWS—POSSIBLE VIRUS OUTBREAK IN CHICAGO. SPREAD BY RATS, BUT IS NOT FATAL IN HUMANS. THOSE WITH COMPROMISED IMMUNE SYSTEMS SHOULD SEEK TREATMENT IMMEDIATELY. A PRESS CONFERENCE HAS BEEN SCHEDULED FOR TEN A.M.
Sam said, “Turn it up.”
Carolina caught the edge in his voice and didn’t argue.
“—want to stress that this is not contagious, nor overly dangerous to most adults. However, young children and the elderly can be susceptible. Authorities are simply warning the public to remain vigilant and report any rat sightings to the police.”
The male anchor broke in, “And Cecilia, is it true that they have taken to calling this the ‘rat flu’?”
Cecilia stuttered a moment, her eyes flicking to someone off camera. “Uh, this has not been confirmed at this time. . . .” She trailed off helplessly, waiting painfully for someone to say something to fill the void.
The female anchor recognized her panic and said, “We would like to repeat that this is nothing Chicago’s citizens should pan—for people to worry . . . unnecessarily about. This is simply a general warning, to keep everyone fully aware of the situation.”
The male anchor wouldn’t let up, though. “Is it true, as sources here at the station have said, that this is related to the escaped rat at City Hall two days ago?”
Again, Cecilia didn’t know how she should answer. “We cannot confirm anything at this time. . . .” Her eyes checked with her off-screen contact again. “But that event, at this time, would appear to be an isolated, unrelated incident. Again, I have been told that the authorities are emphasizing that this is a general precaution and should not interfere with anyone’s plans or daily routine.”
Carolina asked, “Is this bullshit? Or should I be worried?”
For several seconds, Ed and Sam didn’t answer. Finally, Ed said, “I don’t know, baby. I just don’t know. But I want you and Charlie to pack and leave as soon as possible. Get out of the city. Go visit your mother. I don’t care. Just get out.”
Work hadn’t been quite the same for the two paramedics, Scott and Vince, since they picked up the Streets and Sans guy. Ever since they’d gotten the call to bring the patient to Cook County General, not Northwestern, they seemed to get all the sketchy calls. They weren’t the only ones, of course, but pretty soon it seemed like the only calls they got were the weird ones.
First off, they always seemed to be the only guys who took care of the meatloaf calls. These were the traffic accidents, where there wasn’t enough left of the poor sonofabitch to fill the body bag. It’s tough to determine a pulse when you can’t even identify body parts from the pile of slick meat scattered across the asphalt. Sure, they’d scraped their fair share of corpses off the streets over the years, but during these past weeks, something was off. It was like they were the only paramedics on duty when it came time to shovel the remnants of some poor bastard into the thick black bags. And the statistics were skewed. A hell of a lot of people in Chicago suddenly seemed to be driving the wrong way down the Kennedy or Ike, intentionally slamming into concrete dividers or semi trailers at seventy miles an hour.
Usually, this time of the year, the total deaths were somewhere between five hundred and six hundred. They had seen the death toll mount over the past few days to around fourteen hundred.
And it wasn’t like Scott and Vince didn’t notice that everybody else kept their distance when it came time for the wet work. The paramedics upgraded to thicker, heavy-duty rubber gloves and started wearing cotton surgical masks.
Then there were the calls that took them to single-family homes, sometimes apartments, and they had a ride-along. The ride-along was usually some silent military guy, pretending to blend in by wearing surgical scrubs. The guns the guys carried tended to give it away. It was a different feeling, riding with a guy who never talked and carried a goddamn machine gun.
These military guys always rode with them when some psycho had butchered their family or roommates and had invariably barricaded himself in a bathroom or closet. The psycho was either shot or held down long enough to snap cuffs on his wrists and ankles, then hustled out to Scott and Vince’s ambulance.
The next stop was always the CCG. Never any other hospital. They didn’t know why. But they knew that dead-eyed bastard in the Hawaiian shirt probably had something to do with it. They would unload the patient, and drive off to the next tragedy, and once in a while, they would hear about the suspicious fires that had somehow erupted in the neighborhoods and suburbs they had just visited.
The days became a blur. Whenever they dealt with one of these calls, they had to wear a hazmat suit. Pretty soon, every call required these special requirements. Their hazmat suits were coated in some noxious liquid that burned if it touched their skin. Then a rinse. They peeled out of the suit helmet first, the first step in a long, complicated process. It was sometimes better and easier to simply sleep in the suits. Scott and Vince stewed in their own filth, sleeping at the hospital on the visitor benches. The body bags were sealed and placed in dry ice, then shipped to God knows where. They watched more and more soldiers come and go.
Until that night.
That dead-eyed bastard in the Hawaiian shirt had been waiting in the break room, wrinkling his nose at the awful coffee. He noticed Scott and Vince. “Hey, you guys want some real coffee? I know they’ve got some decent sandwiches upstairs. No reason for you two to try and survive on this shit.”
It sounded awfully tempting for Scott and Vince. Something inside told Scott that it wasn’t a good idea, something about it felt wrong somehow, but he was so damn tired and hungry. They followed the man in the Hawaiian shirt to the elevator and rode it up to the sixth floor.
The man in the Hawaiian shirt didn’t get off the elevator. He said, “There’s plenty of food and coffee down there, down at the end of the hall.”