Sleep Tight

by Jeffrey Jacobson

  He stepped back to assess the bug situation in the elevator. He couldn’t tell how many he’d killed; if you scraped it all together it might be enough to butter a slice of toast. More were still crawling around the doors, about three inches off the floor. Mr. Ullman stepped in close, bent his toes on the door just above the bugs, and slid his shoe down, crushing the bugs with the ball of his foot.

  The floor numbers flashed. His ears popped.

  Once he shut the air circulation down, his next move would be to visit each of the remaining guests’ rooms. They could either leave under their own volition, or be removed by the soldiers who were even now marching through the city. After his encounter with the bugs, he did not care.

  Once the guests were no longer on the premises, he would inform the staff and they would file out in an orderly fashion. Of course, being the general manager, he would be the last out of the building, handing the operations key over to the emergency personnel.

  The elevator slowed, stopped.

  The doors opened and Mr. Ullman stepped into the basement, full of visions of handing the damn key over to somebody else. He was four or five steps down the corridor before he realized he was walking through an inch or two of the bugs. They were up his pants before he had a chance to even register the sounds of all of them under his shoes. He tried slapping at them with his clipboard, but he might as well have been trying to stop the rain with fresh laundry in a Midwestern thunderstorm.

  He went to his knees.

  The virus was already slipping into his brain, slinking into the cells, corrupting everything exponentially. He didn’t know that he was already infected, and still fought as he fell forward. Waves flowed to him, as if the tide of bugs had been lovingly called to the moon. They covered him, crawling over his face, into his hair, down his suit, fastening those horribly efficient tubes to every inch of his skin. He held on to the key until it was nudged aside by bugs looking for a place to feed.

  CHAPTER 55

  10:27 AM

  August 14

  Ed tried to turn right on Randolph and head west between City Hall and the Thompson Center, but found himself face to face with the imposing grille on the front of a CTA bus. All three lanes of the street were blocked by buses, all them going the wrong way, streaming toward Grant Park and the lake. The sidewalks were full of civilians, lining up to climb aboard. Soldiers stood back near the buildings, watching everything.

  Ed spun the steering wheel back to the left, drove through the intersection, and pulled over. He killed the spinning lights and said, “This is as close as I’m gonna get to that hospital. It wouldn’t do you two any good to be seen driving up with us. Be a good idea to get in quiet.”

  “No shit?” Qween said. “They must pay you extra to figure shit like that out.”

  Dr. Menard opened the door and climbed out. Qween followed, making popping noises with her tongue. She slammed the door.

  Sam lowered his window. “You’re a cranky little minx, you are, so go easy on any sonofabitch you come across.”

  Ed looked them over one last time, this old woman who had been living in the streets, the haggard doctor with the broken glasses, gave them a solemn nod, and pulled smoothly away. He wound down Clark, threading his way through the sandbags, Strykers, and trucks full of soldiers, and hit the siren again.

  Qween pulled Dr. Menard close and spoke very quietly. “Look around. They’re gonna haul everybody’s ass they can find out of here. Right now, try and look like we’re jus’ waiting for the bus, like ever’body else.” She took a moment, turning slowly, taking everything in, as people ignored them and flowed around them like water around the remnants of an ocean pier.

  She sensed the panic seething just under the surface. Their eyes spoke volumes. Too wide and uncomprehending for people that had lived and worked in the Loop for years. These people looked like Midwestern tourists who had found they had been mistakenly dropped off in downtown Baghdad.

  It wasn’t just the expressions. One woman had bottles of water stuffed in a bulging purse, a man carried three briefcases, and another man awkwardly carried the large hard drive of a desktop computer. Nobody was flat-out running, but they looked like they wanted to. Instead, they formed shuffling lines until the next empty bus rolled into place.

  Qween figured the soldiers and the guns helped some in keeping thing orderly.

  Whistles broke the grinding monotony of diesel engines and buses halted at the Clark crosswalk. Soldiers cleared the intersection as a covered truck rumbled up to the intersection.

  “Gonna be movin’ quick. Get ready,” Qween said to Dr. Menard without looking at him. “You stick to me like syrup on flapjacks.”

  A squadron of soldiers in hazmat suits jumped out of the truck and a collective gasp rippled through the crowd. The orange figures carried a variety of weapons, from the standard assault rifles to mundane pesticide canisters to what looked like flamethrowers with heavy tanks on the soldiers’ backs.

  As the squad headed for the front doors of the Thompson Center, and everyone was watching the soldiers, Qween tapped Dr. Menard’s hand and said, “Now.” Then she was off, not running exactly, but moving quickly. She led him into the street, scuttling through a break in the buses, and instead of crossing to the other side, she turned up Randolph and they moved west, using the buses to hide them from the soldiers on both sides of the street. They travelled two blocks this way, fighting against the inexorable current until they reached Welles without being stopped.

  Once under the El tracks, Qween led Dr. Menard back to the sidewalk, where they slipped through the crowd and into a massive parking garage. They went up six flights of stairs, taking it slow, and came out onto an empty roof, into the muted, hazy sunlight.

  Qween didn’t stop until she leaned on the edge and could look over. Dr. Menard sagged gratefully into the low wall and caught his breath. The east–west streets were jammed with buses, all headed toward the lake. The north/south streets were full of soldiers, funneling civilians out of buildings to the buses.

  A short, guttural cry caught everybody’s attention. A bike messenger, wielding his U-lock and a switchblade, stumbled out from between the parked cars. Soldiers kept their distance, but they eventually formed a ragged half-circle around him. One of them, apparently some sort of officer, edged forward and shouted, “Cease and desist!” The kid moaned at the harsh sound and leapt forward with the knife and the lock, and the officer squeezed off a quick three-shot burst. The kid flopped backwards, landing hard on his butt, missing his nose and the back of his head.

  The civilians on the sidewalk flinched away. One of the soldiers stepped out with a bullhorn and his inflated voice boomed out into the street. “Everything is under control. The federal government is in charge of the situation. Everything is under control.” Without the constant rumble of the El trains, his amplified voice exploded in the space under the tracks and sent the fragmented echoes bouncing down the bus-filled streets. The rest of the soldiers marched up the street, shooting out the tires of the parked cars. Other soldiers sprayed the white chemical foam over the body, then slipped a heavy black bag around the bike messenger and hauled him away.

  The mournful cry of the tornado sirens pierced the unnatural stillness and Qween felt a chill, despite the stifling heat and humidity. She had grown accustomed to hearing them for a few moments every first Tuesday morning of every month when they tested the sirens. Now, in the middle of a blistering August, the sound was eerily out of place, as if a child laughed in a morgue.

  News and military helicopters filled the sky above the Loop, endlessly circling, like lazy dragonflies.

  Qween spit over the edge and watched the soldiers. They were concentrating on setting up roadblocks and arranging sandbags, but soon they would be watching for any civilians left behind by the buses. There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere to blend in. She took Dr. Menard’s arm. “’Bout half an hour, we gonna stick out like a busted big toe.”

  She sank heavily to the co
ncrete, back to the wall. Since the soldiers had shown they had no problems shooting people, she didn’t want to be seen. Here was a place to rest out of sight. She didn’t know if any the helicopters were relaying information down to the soldiers, and wouldn’t be surprised if they were, but they should be fine for a few minutes at least.

  She got winded easily these days, but her body was conditioned to moving at a steady clip. Qween moved fast because she had a lot of practice. She had been through most every building in the Loop and had discovered that even when she was crazy-ass drunk, nobody usually hassled her if she kept moving. She couldn’t just crawl through a place as if she was looking for a warm place to crash, because then they’d be on her ass immediately. If she kept moving though, at that steady chugging pace, as if she was in a hurry to get to somewhere important far from here and this was the fastest her body could move, which wasn’t far from the truth, nobody would fuck with her. She figured it was because if she kept moving, she automatically became someone else’s problem. She wasn’t accosting anybody. She wasn’t scaring anyone. She wasn’t costing the city money. She wasn’t damaging anything.

  She was, however, taking it all in, remembering everything. She knew, for example, over at the elevator in the corner of the parking garage, that if you pried off the locked cover between the floor buttons and the emergency button, you could press a button that would take you to the sublevels, where the garage sold private parking spots for a steep monthly fee.

  Down there, once you got past the storage area where they kept the snow blowers and salt, you could open a door to an access tunnel that led under the street, connecting to a maze of fire tunnels, forgotten corridors, and dusty storm shelters.

  Qween explained her plan. “We can go blocks without them soldiers seein’ us.”

  “It’s not the soldiers I’m worried about down here,” Dr. Menard said. “It’s the bugs.”

  Qween shrugged. “Maybe. I’ll take my chances stomping on dem bugs any day over tryin’ to stomp on a bullet.”

  CHAPTER 56

  10:34 AM

  August 14

  The convoy of trucks streamed east, strung out along I-80. Evans drove the third truck, and kept the drivers coordinated through a disposable cell phone. Every driver carried one. He kept them spaced roughly a quarter mile apart, allowing cars and even other trucks to slip into the convoy, all in the interest of maintaining the lowest possible profile. The trailers and tanks all sported different corporate logos.

  Evans didn’t want to think about what they were actually hauling, about the hell that would be unleashed if one of his drivers happened to accidently collide with a sleepy tourist behind the wheel of a minivan.

  Evans called Dr. Reischtal. “On schedule,” he said. “Should be arriving in the area by early evening.”

  “See that you do,” Dr. Reischtal said, and hung up.

  Uncle Phil pounded on the bathroom door. “I’d appreciate it if you could get out here right fucking now.”

  Lee raised his head out of the icy spray and yelled, “Heard you the first time. Go wait downstairs.” He added under his breath, “Ugly ass troll.”

  Phil thought Lee had said something else, but decided to ignore it. He continued to yell. “You’re late, and if you fuck this meeting up, swear to Christ, they’ll find a way to pin this shitstorm on you. It’s your ass.”

  Lee reluctantly turned the water off. He loved his showers cold, with the handle twisted all the way to the right, craving how the freezing needles lowered his body temperature to a tingling numbness. There wasn’t much worse than feeling his pores start to ooze sweat at the thought of stepping out into the goddamn humidity.

  He dried off and went into the bedroom, threw on a suit. His new phone rang. Lee opened it, said, “What?”

  Phil said, “Tell me you’re on the way down.”

  Lee snapped the phone shut. Phil had left it for him. It was a cheap piece of shit, unable to connect to the Internet or any other bells and whistles, but his old one wasn’t working right ever since he threw it at the TV. He didn’t even want to think about the fucking plasma, let alone look at it. It didn’t matter. All of this shit was temporary.

  He walked into the living room, struggling with his tie. Kimmy and Grace were on the couch, faces plastered to the windows, watching the endless procession of dozens and dozens of CTA buses, all streaming through Grant Park before heading south on Lake Shore Drive. Good. Let ’em stare at the spectacle, he thought. It would keep them out of his hair for a while.

  “Gotta go, babe. They need me.”

  Kimmy turned, confusion and worry crinkling her forehead. “Okay, but aren’t we supposed to evacuate too? That’s what the news said.”

  “You gonna listen to the news or you gonna listen to me? Who the hell you think has the inside scoop? Huh? No, you two stay here. You’re absolutely, one hundred percent safe. Believe me, it’s already over. I’ll be back quick as I can, soon as I get this business done. Then later on tonight, we’ll all go back down to the press conference. So lay out your best outfit and be ready for a night on the town.”

  “It’s all going to be okay? The city, all the sick people, I mean? They’re gonna get all those bugs, right?”

  “Of course.” He gave her his best smile. “They’re just being careful. And as it happens, it’s gonna be the best thing that ever happened for us. I’ll make a big deal out of how I’m volunteering to stay behind to protect my city. Phil says the media is gonna eat it up. Says it could be the defining moment of my career. You’ll be at my side later when I give that press conference telling people that the city has been saved. You watch. I’m gonna be a hero. Trust me.”

  “Okay, baby. Can we bring Grace?”

  “Yeah, I wanna come,” Grace said, finally tearing her eyes away from all the buses when she heard her name.

  Lee kept his grin alive. “We’ll have to see, kiddo.” He grabbed his briefcase. It was empty except for a Maxim magazine, but Phil told him he looked more professional carrying it around. He checked his watch. “I’m sorry, but I gotta run. Phil and Bryan are downstairs.”

  Kimmy came off the couch and stood in the sunlight, hands clasped at her chest. “Love you.”

  It was impossible to ignore the pleading, questioning tone in her voice. Lee struggled to keep his smile wide. “Yeah, see you later,” he said and left.

  As he walked down the hall to the elevator, he reconsidered his initial anger and outright revulsion at being around the brat at home, let alone in public. The more he thought about it, the more he came to understand that she might not be such a bad prop for the press conference. Might be the best visual confirmation that the city was safe, hoisting a four-year-old girl to his shoulders. Yeah. That would make a hell of a shot.

  He made a final adjustment to his tie in the reflective metal of the elevator. Funny how things turned out. Less than twelve hours ago he had been on his way to becoming one of the most reviled politicians in the city’s history. And for Chicago, that was really saying something. The way Phil barked, he’d be lucky if he avoided jail time. But that was then, as they said, and now things had definitely swung back in his favor. He wondered what the hell that freak Dr. Reischtal wanted. He strode out into the lobby and saluted the doorman.

  The doorman, some simpering idiot who couldn’t find a real job, held up his hand. “So sorry, Mr. Shea, but I’m trying to get a tally of who is left in the building. Most of the residents have already left, of course, but I’ve been told that I need to give the soldiers a count of who is left on the premises.”

  “You can scratch my place off your list, then,” Lee said. “It’s empty.”

  “Oh, so Kimmy and Grace are gone, then? I must have missed them.”

  Lee was irritated that this piss-boy knew Kimmy’s name. “I sent ’em to her mother’s last night. Like I said, it’s all clear up there.” Lee didn’t wait for a response, and strolled through the spinning doors, down the steps to where Bryan and Phil waited in
the car.

  CHAPTER 57

  10:44 AM

  August 14

  Farther down Clark, where it passed under the El tracks that covered Van Buren, a slim slab of beige granite sat all by itself in the midst of a perfectly average city plaza, filled with plenty of benches, a few ornamental trees, some shrubs and flowers in long cement planters. Lots of people who worked in the Loop liked to sit in the sun and eat their lunch before returning to the skyscrapers. If you weren’t paying attention, you’d never know it was a maximum-security federal prison.

  The windows gave it away. They were narrow slits and resembled ports for medieval archers to fire arrows, too small for anyone to squeeze through. A small, nondescript sign identified the building as the Metropolitan Correction Center.

  Ed and Sam rolled into the secure parking lot next door. The guard at the entrance wasted time by having them wait in their car while he called his superior officer upstairs. He got the all-clear, but still demanded to know what he should do if he saw a rat—“or one of them bedbugs.”

  Sam said, “You got a sidearm. Use it.”

  Ed parked in a handicapped spot on the second level next to the walkway into the prison reserved for cops and prison personnel. The convicts were brought in through a different entrance, up on the sixth level, at the top of the parking structure.

  The warden himself was waiting. “This, this is most unusual, officers.” The warden was in his sixties, with a head full of brilliant white hair and soft hands. He wanted to stop and talk in the corridor, but Sam and Ed blew past him, heading for the elevators. He hurried to catch up.