As dusk fell, various lights began blinking to life, all over the ship.
He ignored it and slipped between two trailers. If he could find an empty trailer, he might be able to find some scrubs inside, anything to make him look like a medic, instead of a patient. Then he needed to find a computer, something that might be able to tell him if Kimmy and Grace were on one of the buses that he’d watched taking people into Soldier Field all afternoon. Then, with a decent disguise, and a whole lot of luck, he might be able to gain entry to the stadium and track down his daughter. He’d have the scalpel, just in case.
The first trailer’s door was locked. The second had a ton of cables snaking underneath it, so it looked promising. It also had windows, open to take advantage of any breezes coming off the lake, and Tommy eased in close and listened. He could hear a voice, but it sounded tinny, fake somehow. And even stranger, it sounded like a voice he knew. Keeping his back flat against the trailer, he slowly leaned over and peered inside.
He heard other voices, closer, louder. He guessed there were at least two men inside, but he couldn’t see them. One of them said something, something that made the other one laugh, but Tommy didn’t listen. He was focused on the flat-screen TV on the table.
Lee was on the screen, sharply dressed as always, saying, “. . . could not unfortunately join us at the moment, but they will definitely be a part of our victory celebration later tonight.” Lee paused for a moment. “I stand before you in the heart of my hometown, a city that has withstood its share of tragedies, from the Great Fire in 1871, the sinking of the Eastland in 1915, the Our Lady of Angels school fire in 1958, and so many others. But this town, this city of broad shoulders, we have picked ourselves up by our bootstraps and marched onward into history.”
One of the men inside the trailer said, “Laying it on a little thick, ain’t he?”
“I can assure you that when this crisis is over, we will rebuild what we have lost, we will honor those we have lost, and we will become stronger, and safer, than ever!” Lee paused, as if for applause. None came.
The camera pulled back, as if to explain the lack of an audience. Lee stood by himself behind a podium on a stage smack in the middle of Clark. City Hall was off to the left, the courthouse off to the right. Then, just before the camera slowly zoomed back in on Lee, so quickly Tommy wondered if he’d actually seen it or not, he spotted two figures standing back near the stage steps, as if waiting for their cue.
One was a strikingly beautiful young woman, wearing a black evening gown. She was holding the hand of a young girl in a yellow dress. Lee hit a point in the speech, sounding like he was declaring triumph in a closely contested election, and beckoned the two to join him onstage. Lee put his arm around Kimmy’s waist. He waved with his free hand for a moment, then bent down and hoisted Grace to his shoulder. She was smiling, but Tommy could see the confusion in her eyes as she faced the reporters and bright lights.
Tommy jerked his head back. He felt his insides clench. His heart sped up, booming away so loudly in his chest that he was worried that the men inside might hear it. He was certain that they would hear the gurgling of his empty stomach.
Kimmy and Grace weren’t safe in Soldier Field. They were still downtown, in the midst of the soldiers, bugs, and the infected.
And even beyond that, Lee still had control of Kimmy and Grace.
The decision was easy. Simple.
He heard one of the men inside stand, and the trailer shifted slightly. The man said, “Fine, my turn to go check on the prick. But when Reischtal gets here, it’s gonna be your job to help him. Guy’s an asshole. Makes me nervous.”
Tommy ran back to the ambulance. The new plan taking shape in his head wasn’t much, but it was a start. He dropped to his stomach and wriggled under the ambulance. He unwrapped the IV tubing from his wrist, still not sure if he could use it or not. He might have been able to use it if the ambulance had been parked in gravel and he had a lot of time to bury it under dirt and gravel, but it was hard to hide the clear tube in the grass.
As he lay in the itching, late summer grass, the compulsion to bolt, to flee far, far away still seethed inside. He fought it, driving it down deep, the same way he fought the panic earlier that threatened to take over completely. He forced himself to focus on the sound of Grace’s laughter. He knew he couldn’t focus on just the memory of her face. It was too much. They’d find him, sooner or later, curled up under the ambulance, sobbing his eyes out. But something about her laughter tightened his guts, made him grit his teeth and promise the universe that not only would she be able to laugh again, all this would be nothing but a brief nightmare, whisked away by the morning sun; he would damn well be there and they would laugh together.
Footsteps in the grass. The boots of one of the paramedics came closer. Keys jingled. Tommy undulated, like some malformed snake, under the transmission system until he was directly under the driver’s seat. He heard the driver’s door open, saw the hazmat boots go up on tiptoe as the soldier leaned across the seat.
The soldier said, “Still with us, shitheel?”
Tommy braced his bare feet against the front tire, bent sideways at the waist, and with his left hand, he whipped out the end of the IV tubing, circling it around the paramedic’s feet. He caught the end with his right, and slowly drew it tight around the man’s ankles. He waited until the paramedic had leaned in just enough to realize that the prisoner was no longer in the back of the ambulance, then seized the man’s ankles and yanked, flinging his upper torso backwards.
The force of the movement jerked the paramedic off his feet. The paramedic landed hard, flat on his back. It drove the breath straight out of his lungs. He gasped for a breath, but it was too late. Tommy pulled the man halfway under the ambulance, drawing the IV tubing tight around the ankles, snaring them together. The paramedic slapped at the side of the ambulance.
With his right arm, Tommy drove the scalpel deep inside the paramedic’s upper left thigh. The one-inch blade sunk easily into the flesh. Tommy ripped it across the large muscles, slicing through the femoral artery.
Blood hit the undercarriage.
The paramedic went berserk, spasms wracking his back and legs. He folded in half, reaching down, tearing at Tommy’s arms. Tommy jammed his left foot into the man’s crotch and pulled the ankles tight against his chest and rode out the convulsions.
In less than thirty seconds it was over. The paramedic was dead.
Tommy dragged the entire body under the ambulance and went through the man’s pockets. He found the ambulance keys and forgot everything else. He started to crawl away, then went back and unbuttoned the blue shirt, pulling it off the corpse. It took a while but Tommy kept at it, ripping the fabric at one point.
Once he had the shirt he slid into it under the ambulance, then scooted out and up and into the driver’s seat. The keys worked; the engine sounded as if it had been waiting for him. He looked around, and even found a white lab coat that had been tossed on the passenger side floor. He put it on. The upper half was relatively clear, so he hoped it would look better if he was driving the ambulance.
He started the engine and pulled away, nice and easy, through a line of FEMA trailers; a few people were standing around, smoking. Tommy drove slowly, trying to pretend he knew where he was headed. He’d only looked at the route through the back windows and had only a vague sense of where to find the street back to Lake Shore Drive. Once he spotted the two white radio tower transmitters of Willis Tower off to his left though, amidst the absurdly cheerful lights of the skyline, he knew where to look for the right road.
If he got stopped, he planned on bluffing his way through it, saying something vague about an emergency. If somebody really got in his way, he might even try to use the lights and siren, if he could figure out how to turn them on.