The CDC was in town, scared to death. They knew something was wrong with the rats, and apart from some bullshit “rat flu” story they’d released just to cover their ass, they weren’t talking. Nobody else knew anything. Ed and Sam only had one person telling them anything, and that was a deranged homeless woman who liked to turn live rats loose in government buildings and drink everybody else under the table. And Ed had to face facts: nobody was going to listen to her.
But Ed had been there; he’d been under the city, He’d seen those rats in the subway tunnels, heard them hissing and scrambling over themselves as they tried to attack any humans who got too close. The three of them couldn’t be the only ones to have witnessed anything.
And then there were the deaths. So many this year. All those in the subway, started by that college student falling on the third rail in an empty subway station. The suicides. The blitzkrieg of traffic deaths. Unusual heat. A man going berserk for no apparent reason, attacking people on a downtown street with a pair of scissors. Rumors of disappearances. Rumors of more deaths.
None of it made much sense.
He kept driving.
CHAPTER 38
3:32 PM
August 13
Even with the somewhat extreme new measures, Roger Bickle and Daisy made weekly rounds throughout the Fin. In six months, they had not found a single bedbug. Roger still wore his uniform, and he only let Daisy loose to sniff at the bottom of the doors in the middle of the day, after the guests had either checked out or left for the day, and before any new guests checked in. If anybody asked, Roger was supposed to answer in a cheerful, yet vague manner. Yes, he could admit that he was from a pest control company. He was merely engaged in a routine patrol. Since he had been working here, he had never found any pests.
He was never, under any circumstances, supposed to mention bedbugs.
Daisy ran from door to door, keeping her nose in the corner where the wall and floor met. She would slow down at each door, taking great snuffles at the slight gap at the bottom. Sometimes up along the door frame, then pushing off, loping to the next one. After about five or six doors, Roger would call her back and she would cross to the other side of the hallway and check the doors along that side as he walked to the next group of doors. This way, they could cover each floor of the hotel in about two to three minutes.
Fifteen minutes in, Daisy was working along the fourteenth floor when she stopped. Drove her nose into the carpet in front of Room 1426. Took three snorting deep draughts of air. She sat, wagging her tail.
Roger stepped up and knocked. He waited, patient. After a full minute, he knocked again. After another minute, he knocked a third time and called the front desk. He gave them his name and consultant number, and asked if the guest in room 1426 had checked out yet.
“Just a moment, sir.”
From inside the room, he heard a moan.
“No, I’m sorry, sir. That room is still occupied.”
A sharp cry from inside.
Roger said, “Then I’m afraid I am going to have to speak with your general manager immediately.”
Something shattered against the inside of the door. It sounded like one of the room’s glasses.
Roger said to the clerk on the phone, “I think the guest in Room 1426 might be having a problem.”
Two more tinkling crashes against the door. There went the rest of the glasses.
Daisy barked.
“Shhhh,” Roger hissed.
“I’m connecting you now, sir. I will try and contact the guest.” A click, and Roger heard ringing inside the phone, then inside the room.
Mr. Ullman picked up on the second ring. “What?”
A wavering scream erupted from inside, echoing the electronic ringing of the room’s telephone. A deep, thudding crash. The screaming did not stop.
Daisy gave another worried bark.
“Where are you?” Mr. Ullman asked.
“Fourteenth floor,” Roger said, horrified at the violent sounds from within. “Tell them to stop trying to call this room. I don’t think the ringing is helping.”
Mr. Ullman gave a curt order; the telephone in the room went silent. The heavy banging did not stop. In fact, it grew in volume. Underneath it, Roger could hear sobbing.
Roger said, “Listen, somebody better get up here like right now. Something is terribly wrong in there.” He realized he was talking to a dead phone. The connection had been broken. Roger dialed the front desk again. “Have you called the police yet?”
“I’m sorry, who is this?”
Roger repeated his information and said, “Listen to me, dammit. Someone is in trouble in there. If you won’t call nine-one-one, then I will!”
“The proper authorities will be notified once we have ascertained the problem,” Mr. Ullman said as he rounded the corner down by the elevators, moving swiftly and silently on the thick carpet. “Many of our guests do not wish to involve any authorities unless it is absolutely necessary. It is our responsibility to respect their wishes.”
From inside the room, they both heard a final, crunching crash, then nothing.
As Mr. Ullman got closer, he produced an electronic key card. “Please step back and for God’s sake, get that dog out of here.”
He inserted the key card into the slot above the door handle. There was a click, and the light flashed green briefly. Mr. Ullman swung the door open, sweeping the broken glass aside. From the doorway, they could only see down the short hallway, past the bathroom, and the edge of the bed. A breeze stirred the rumpled sheet that hung off the bed.
There was no sign of the room’s occupant.
Mr. Ullman called into the room. “Hello? Hello? This is Mr. Ullman, general manager of the hotel. I hate to trouble you, but we have had a number of calls regarding the volume of activity in this room. I’m afraid I need to speak with you. Hello?”
Still nothing. Just the corner of the sheet fluttering.
Roger could feel warmth. He held out his hand. Warm air was definitely flowing from inside the room. Had the guest turned on the heat?
Mr. Ullman took one step inside, knocking one more time.
“Hello? Hello?”
Before Mr. Ullman stepped fully into the room, Roger realized why the room felt warm and why a breeze was moving the sheet when skyscraper windows do not open.
The room was demolished, as if the occupant had been given a shot glass of cocaine and a sledgehammer. The bed frame had been ripped away from the wall. The plasma television had been driven through the glass coffee table. Something had ripped great tufts of stuffing out of the chairs. And the desk chair had been used to shatter the floor-to-ceiling window.
A hot wind surged through the room, pushing aside the ripped curtains and making the sheet billow out a moment, before settling back against the corner of the bed. Roger stepped toward the window, saw blood on the edges of the glass. He got close enough to the edge to see the deep shadows on the building across the street when vertigo dropped into his gut like a bomb and he clapped a hand over his mouth, afraid he might vomit.
He screwed his eyes shut and tried to breathe through his nose. He kept imagining the fall, throwing yourself out over the abyss, feeling nothing but the humid summer air as the windows streaked past, faster and faster, the sidewalk rushing up in a brutal embrace. With his eyes closed, it was almost worse; he imagined he could feel the building swaying gently in the wind.
He popped his eyes back open and stumbled back to the couch, where he collapsed. He put his head between his knees and focused on his breathing. Daisy came up and licked his face. He scratched behind her ears and that calmed him.
“Don’t touch anything,” Mr. Ullman said, his voice strangely calm, almost placid. He was over his shock now, and a coolly efficient crisis mode had taken over. “The police will want a word. We will conduct the interviews in my office, not in here.” He called the front desk. “The police will be arriving shortly. Please send them up to room 1426. Thank you.”