They decided to take the elevator, just to get as far away from the alarm as possible. Sam hit the top button, and they got off on the fifty-ninth floor.
The elevator bank unfolded into a dining room, filled with spotless tables and chairs surrounded by a stunning view of downtown Chicago. The Chase Tower took up one full city block, bordered by Clark, Dearborn, Madison, and Monroe streets. The deep impression and its endless cement stairs were sunk into the south side, along with Chagall’s Four Seasons mosaic. Except for a few buildings popping up that blocked their field of vision, like the big red CNN building, they could see most everything in all directions. They wandered around the perimeter, but still nothing much was happening on the streets.
Back near the elevators, they found a food prep area with a small TV on the counter. It was tuned to a sports channel. They switched around to find the news.
The anchor was saying, “. . . potentially graphic, so parents may want children to leave the room. This raw footage was uploaded less than an hour ago, and again, while we feel it needs to be seen, it could prove upsetting to sensitive viewers.”
They switched to blurry, shaking video, obviously from a smartphone, as someone panned too quickly around an expensively furnished high-rise condo. It must have been shot earlier that day because the sun was shining and downtown Chicago could be seen through the windows. A woman’s voice, tight and shrill, was saying, “And then we started finding them everywhere.” She got closer to the leather couch and reached out to overturn one of the cushions.
It landed on the floor and reddish black bugs spilled out of the seams. The woman squealed and the phone went berserk as she stomped on the bugs. “Everywhere!” The footage spun back around, up the two steps from the sunken living room and into a huge white kitchen. “I will sue this landlord for everything!”
A boy, maybe ten, pointed up at the massive ventilation hood over the stove island. Bugs were crawling out of it by the dozens. Some fell out onto the black cast iron grates.
The woman leapt to turn the burners on. Flames licked the bugs. She hit the exhaust fan on the hood, which slowed the bugs’ descent, but they still kept emerging. The video whipped across the floor. More bugs were crawling out of the heating and air-conditioning vents. Some squirmed out of an electrical socket. Her son had a can of Raid, and bent in front of the camera as he blasted them.
A bug trundled across his white T-shirt. His mom slapped it away. She started sobbing. She ripped the shirt off his back and held it up to the phone. Several more bugs crawled along the seam around the collar. Then she really shrieked and grabbed her son and ran for the door. There were a few more seconds of blurry footage before the network cut back to the anchor, who seemed to be at a loss for words. Maybe the teleprompter wasn’t ready.
He shuffled his papers and cleared his throat. “At this time, we are unable to verify the status of the woman and her son that you have just watched in the video. We are assuming that they were evacuated, along with the rest of downtown Chicago, but we have recently lost contact with our field reporter on the scene. We have been following disturbing reports emerging from within the Soldier Field FEMA decontamination camp.”
Ed switched the TV off. Nobody protested. Ed scratched at his back.
He wasn’t the only one. Sam suddenly felt itching slither all over his body, and a hyperawareness of the bugs began to grow. Sam tried not to scratch anything, because once he started, he wouldn’t be able to stop. Instead, he turned, let his breath out slowly, and started searching out crevices and shadows and under the toaster.
Wordlessly, they began to strip, examining every minute fold and stitch. Eventually, Sam turned his back, stripped bare, and gathered up the handful of clothes and stuffed them in the microwave. He stepped back and bent over, watching as his clothes rotated slowly. The zipper metal sparked, sending flashes bouncing around the inside of the microwave. “That’s right,” he said. “Ride the lightning, bitches.”
Qween laughed. “You got the skinniest white ass I ever seen.”
Sam was the first to take all his clothes off and cook the hell out of them. Qween made them leave the room when she disrobed. When they came back, she was climbing back into her layers. The kitchen smelled like a wet dog that had been rolling in a dead moose.
Qween glared at Sam, daring him to say anything.
Sam raised his hands. “Not one fucking word, I promise. God knows I could, though. . . .”
Ed stepped out of his jeans and threw them in the microwave. “Wish you two would stop flirting and just kiss. Get it over with.”
While Sam and Qween settled into a table along the southern windows, Ed found the light switches and turned most of them off. The lights of downtown snapped into life all around them. They opened the MREs the detectives had taken off the dead soldiers and ate without talking. Sam passed his flask around. For a while, it was rather peaceful, resting in the dim light, silently looking out over the city, with the gunfire, the bugs, the blood, far, far beneath them.
Sam squinted and sat up, peering through the window. He fumbled for his glasses, couldn’t find them. Pointing down at Grant Park, he asked, “What’s that?”
Ed and Qween followed his gaze. The headlights of a vehicle had just left Lake Shore Drive and were now tearing across the baseball diamonds at the southern end of the park. At least two Strykers appeared to be in pursuit. They were too far away to hear the chatter of gunfire, but they all saw the unmistakable flashes of heavy artillery.
Ed dug around in the pack and pulled out one of the soldiers’ walkie-talkies. He couldn’t figure out how to disengage the earpiece, so he stuck it in his own ear and listened for a minute. “Damn,” he said. “It’s Dr. Reischtal himself. He’s pissed. Wants this dude taken alive. No more shooting.” Sam started to ask a question, but Ed held up a finger, listening intently.
Ed met Sam’s eyes. “They’re after one of those rat guys from City Hall. Tommy Krazinsky.”
CHAPTER 70
8:48 PM
August 14
Dr. Reischtal stared down at the body on the grass. The paramedic’s mouth was open, as if he was still protesting being slashed and bled out. A ripe, foul odor wafted up from his pants; his bowels had emptied in death. Maybe he was pissed about that too.
Dr. Reischtal fought to stop his teeth from grinding together. He could hear his dentist’s admonishments. He was supposed to wear a special mouthpiece at night to stop the gradual demolition of his molars when he was asleep, and he certainly did not want to start wearing it when he was awake.
Tommy Krazinsky had escaped.
Patient 0.2. Gone.
Until he had been interrupted by the president’s phone call, he had been watching that fool Shea attempting to hold a press conference in the middle of a quarantined city. While the current state of affairs was nowhere near as safe as the idiot kept pronouncing, as if saying it enough times would make it true, they were, at least, going according to schedule.
But now, now the situation jerked at his fingertips, threatening to slip out of his grasp, like a pack of wild dogs going crazy on the scent of a bleeding pig. The urge to simply step back and burn everything boiled up inside of him, and he fought it, recognizing the feeling as panic. No. Someone with his control would not panic. Would not.
No matter what.
His voice was barely audible above the soft wind. “I expected this patient to be held until the laboratory was properly prepared. He is a confirmed bioterrorist and his escape is unacceptable.”