WGN cut to the reporter down in the subway holding his mike and talking to the cameraman and sound guy for a moment. “Any interference this way? I like the lights over here. Put me in profile. Okay. I can do another take. No sweat. And in three-two-one.” His pitch dropped while his cadence quickened. “I’m Chester Hackensack, deep in the Washington subway station. During any weekday rush hour, thousands of commuters use this particular station every five minutes at peak capacity. Tonight, it is practically empty. It is literally a ghost town.” The camera panned over to show two or three people standing in the brightest light in the middle of the station. “The soldiers up top won’t authorize any audio or video, so we’re shooting down here. No one is here, and yet, no one is talking.” As if he realized that made no sense at all, he took a breath, giving time for someone to jump in. No one did. Chester nodded. “At this time, these few commuters are waiting for a presumably vacant train. Back to you in the studio, Jim.”
Chester waited another beat. “Wish I could tell you more. Back to you, Jim.”
CNN and FOX News had cut from the experts and were now showing the same shaking, blurry footage. The shot was from overhead, definitely from a helicopter, of police chasing a frightened, scurrying figure into a playground. From the angle, it was impossible to tell if it was somewhere in the city itself or out in the suburbs. The figure, a woman, raised her arms, and kids started falling around her. There was no audio, but Ed didn’t need it. He knew only too well that he was watching a woman with a gun. Parents scooped up children and fled. The woman crawled under the slide, out of view of the helicopter. Chicago cops moved in. They surrounded her, all firing.
The CNN anchor said in halting tones, “This video was taken approximately thirty minutes ago in Chicago’s Near North neighborhood. Few details are known at this time. We can tell you that the attacker has been shot to death by the police. It is believed that at least four children are dead, with several more in critical condition in area hospitals. The names of the deceased have not been released, nor are authorities speculating about a motive.”
Fox News kept showing the footage, over and over, zooming in when the woman started shooting, while experts debated what exactly had driven the shooter to the playground. They kept repeating the word “terrorist,” sometimes with a question mark, sometimes not.
A record of fifteen homicides and counting. A husband bludgeoned his wife to death with her own clothes iron. A woman stabbed her youngest child to death with a seven-inch stainless steel knife designed to chop vegetables. A man drove his car into a line of people waiting for the bus at the corner of Michigan and Adams.
Sam caught Ed’s eye, tilted his head at the door.
They got in their car and drove east, toward the lake, toward the Loop.
Tommy clutched the phone so hard he heard the plastic crack. He forced himself to unlock his fist. The cell phone fell from his rigid fingers to the thin, industrial carpet. Deep in his mind, he knew he should have tried to keep hold of it, tried to smuggle it back to his room. Maybe he could figure out a way to make it work, to call outside the hospital, or at least text something to alert the outside world.
A single television in the center of the wall went from a blue screen to an overhead shot of a patient strapped to a bed. It was a man, a large man, and as he writhed against the restraints, his tremendous gut rolled back and forth. Tommy recognized Don almost immediately.
Don was in agony. There was no sound, but Tommy could see the open, screaming mouth. Fingers scrabbled at the mattress. The toes curled. Don’s back arched in one unending spasm. Tommy kept waiting for him to stop, to fall back slack against the bed, to collapse with fatigue, but Don never showed any sign of release. It was as if he was connected to a live wire that was sending a relentless, unbroken high-voltage stream through his battered body, and the torturer had fallen asleep at the switch.
It was exhausting just watching him.
A second TV switched over to another overhead shot of a patient. Tommy didn’t know this one. The man was ragged and thin and dirty. Maybe some homeless guy. It didn’t matter. The unsettling body language mirrored Don’s thrashing. This man’s mouth opened and closed, broken teeth crunching together. A glimpse of gauze inside the mouth meant that the irregular teeth had snapped shut on the man’s tongue.
A third television blinked; another patient, this one also in the grip of agony. A fourth TV, a fifth. Soon the whole wall was alive with pain. The soundless cries filled the quiet room and Tommy recoiled in silent horror.
Dr. Reischtal whispered in his ear, “Do you see?”
Tommy flinched. He hadn’t heard Dr. Reischtal enter the conference room.
“Everyone else around here calls it a dreadful disease. A horrible tragedy. A supervirus. How absurd. They don’t see this for what it really is. They don’t see it as corruption of the spirit. But you, you see the truth. You can see that these hosts, they are not victims. They are not simply infected. They have been consumed by the darkness. They are all lost souls. You can see this. You know this to be true.”
Tommy didn’t say anything. With his luck, he’d try and say something that the lunatic would agree with, but would end up being the absolute worst thing to say. Tommy would end up cementing his compliance with the virus, driving Dr. Reischtal deeper into madness. Tommy knew that his very life teetered on the edge of this doctor’s insanity, hanging precariously on a thread in the cobwebs of Dr. Reischtal’s poisonous mind. So he kept his mouth shut.
“Why doesn’t this”—Dr. Reischtal nodded at the wall of TVs—“live within you?”
Tommy didn’t bother to say anything. He figured it was another rhetorical question.
Dr. Reischtal leaned in close, tiny glasses focusing his eyes like black lasers. “Obviously, there is still much we do not know. Therefore, you will be placed in close proximity to your partner, and we will observe the results.” Dr. Reischtal drew himself to his full height and gazed down at Tommy. “We will find out, once and for all, what you are hiding.”
CHAPTER 42
6:11 PM
August 13
A riot of swirling blue and red lights and irritated horns surrounded the Loop. Ed and Sam found that Upper Wacker was a parking lot, so they tried Congress and found it blocked as well. Ed finally turned on the radio. WBBM was talking about the murders, of course, but took a break every ten minutes to give updates about the weather and traffic. As it turned out, Chicago police had restricted all of the interior streets in the Loop down to one lane in cooperation with a special unit acting as liaisons with a branch of the CDC.
“Sounds like more horseshit to me,” Sam said.
“This is why I don’t turn on the radio,” Ed said. He flashed his lights, hit the siren, and whipped a U, heading south. He tore down Halsted to Roosevelt, turned to the lake. Left on Lake Shore Drive, this time heading north. Ed left the windows down. Sam cranked the air-conditioning.
Ed kept the siren and lights going as he raced up LSD, drifting across lanes with an almost drunken confidence. He turned left on East Monroe, heading west, back into downtown. They turned right on Michigan, then tried to go left on East Madison. A mass of cars blocked the intersection, all vying to be the next in line. Sam took the bullhorn and yelled at the driver of a silver Lexus. “Stop that car fucking right there, douche bag.”