Sleep Tight

by Jeffrey Jacobson

  A burst of static from the radio. It swelled, then settled into a low hiss. “Command, you copy? I need verification that a building has been cleared. Over.” Still no response. “Goddamnit. These pieces of shit.”

  “What do you want, man? They work in the desert,” one of the soldiers said. “Too many fucking tall buildings here.”

  The third soldier stuck his head in the back office. “Hello? Hello? Anybody here? Anybody?”

  Deep in the back office, Janelle was hiding under one of the desks, breathing fast, almost hyperventilating, sound asleep. She had curled up under of the far desks, wedging herself into the tightest corner possible, like a lost lamb under a dead tree, frozen in both snow and fear.

  “Fuck it, dude,” the other soldier said. “We don’t get back out on the grid, McLeary’s gonna shit a brick. ’Sides, isn’t Winston and those boys supposed to double back through, confirm that everything’s been cleared?”

  “Supposed to. Let’s head back outside, see if the radio works any better.”

  The first two soldiers groaned when they stepped back out into the sun. The third soldier hit the button on his radio again, suddenly shielded his eyes and pointed. The other two saw the rat at once, working its way along one of the graceful, curving flower beds, trying to remain hidden under the leaves. All three soldiers opened fire.

  Chips of concrete, flower petals, dirt, fertilizer, and rat flesh exploded into a pink and brown cloud. When the dust settled, there wasn’t enough left of the rat to fill a sandwich Baggie.

  “I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t fun,” one of the soldiers said as they wandered over to the flowers to look for any more rats. The gunfire attracted the attention of one of the grid commanders. Once he understood that it was only one rat, he sent a decon crew over to spray the area down with the sterilization foam.

  Behind them, the lobby remained empty and quiet.

  Sergeant Reaves said nothing as he surveyed Don’s hospital room. He wore a hazmat suit, minus the helmet. His expression never changed as he regarded bloody corpse, the tire tracks in the blood on the floor, the overturned camera, the open cabinets. He paused and tilted his head when he saw the dead bugs. When his gaze settled on Tommy, Tommy tried not to look like a child who’d been caught trying to steal a cookie and had accidentally knocked the cookie jar to the floor where it shattered. Sergeant Reaves’s gaze never wavered.

  Tommy shrugged.

  Sergeant Reaves blinked, took a deep breath, held it, and walked over to Tommy, rubber hazmat boots crunching on the dried blood. He leaned over Tommy, placed one gloved hand over his face. With his thumb and forefinger, he spread Tommy’s right eyebrow and cheek, widening the eye to painful extremes. He repeated the movement with Tommy’s left eye, peering intently at Tommy’s eyeball. Satisfied, he released Tommy’s head and spun the wheelchair around, so that Tommy faced the far side of the room.

  Tommy had no idea how his eyes might give something away, and had a nightmarish flash that Sergeant Reaves was simply going to pull out his pistol and put a bullet in the back of his head. He tensed, waiting for that blast of oblivion, but Sergeant Reaves simply dragged the wheelchair backwards through the blood to the doorway and out into the hallway.

  Sergeant Reaves exhaled outside the room. He wheeled Tommy down the hall to the elevator and they waited in silence for the doors to open.

  Tommy wondered if he was being taken back to his original room. One entire wall had been covered with a heavy curtain, and Tommy was convinced it had concealed a window. If he could just get out of his wheelchair, he might have a chance at breaking through the window. And if he could break the window, he could climb out. He didn’t care if there was a ledge or not, he’d take the risks of climbing out of a twelve- or thirteen-story room compared to facing Sergeant Reaves or Dr. Reischtal.

  Tommy kept his right foot pulled in on the metal footrest, nice and snug, as if the leather strap was still wrapped around his ankle. He had no idea how he might break out of the wheelchair restraints, but he had one foot loose, and that was a start. He just needed some time alone in his room where he could break the window.

  The elevator doors slid open. Sergeant Reaves wheeled Tommy inside and pushed the button for the lobby instead of going upstairs. Tommy wanted to keep quiet, wanted to be a hard-ass, didn’t want to give Sergeant Reaves the satisfaction of hearing Tommy speak first, but as the descending floor numbers flashed, his will broke. “Where we going?”

  For a long time, Tommy didn’t think Sergeant Reaves would answer. Tommy knew he had fucked up, and swore at himself for being weak.

  Sergeant Reaves finally said, “Dr. Reischtal has given instructions to transfer you to a more secure location. This building . . . is no longer safe.”

  Tommy didn’t know what to say. He stayed quiet as they dropped. The doors opened on the first floor with a happy ding. They came out behind the front desk and beyond it, Tommy could see that the waiting room was empty. Sergeant Reaves pushed him out a back door into the thick summer air that hung over the river. The tables between the hospital and Chicago River were vacant. Even the benches stood alone.

  Tommy watched a bus push over the Madison Bridge; then, as if this was the last CTA bus in the city, the bridge split in half and began rising. From the wheelchair, every bridge he could see had been opened, as if the stitches on a fresh wound had been popped, that black thread cut in a hurry with a bone saw, sparing the clean flesh from the infection.

  An ambulance was waiting on the sidewalk. Two more soldiers, completely encased in hazmat suits, rolled Tommy up a ramp into an ambulance. They locked his wheels. He hoped they couldn’t make out fine details with their plastic faceplates and wouldn’t notice the broken strap around his right ankle. One sat in the back on the opposite bench and stared at Tommy.

  Sergeant Reaves stood a ways from the ambulance, his back to the river, and watched without expression as the other soldier slammed the back doors. He didn’t move. Tommy hoped it was the last time he ever got close to the man.

  The other soldier climbed into the front and started the engine. He turned the lights on and drove through the sandbags until joining the parade of buses. Through the back windows, across the Chicago River, all along the river walk, Tommy could see trucks pulling massive tankers, arranging them into place next to the river, and more figures in hazmat suits uncoiling long hoses into the river. The ambulance turned onto Upper Wacker and the image was lost.

  Tommy glanced at the soldier in the back with him. The man’s eyes, encased behind protective plastic, were blank and dead. Tommy might as well have been looking into the eyes of some deep water shark, something that went blind in the light and hunted by some kind of primitive, almost supernatural sense.

  The buses pulled to the side for the lights and siren, allowing the ambulance to streak through downtown. They flew down Madison, and turned right on Michigan. When they hit Monroe, they turned left, heading into Grant Park, toward the Lake. As they broke free of the shadows of all the buildings, Tommy again turned to the back windows, looking at the afternoon sun. It was the first time he’d seen true sunlight in two days. He closed his eyes, trying to imagine he could feel the rays on his face, and that somehow the warmth and security of the sun could pass through the thick glass of the back windows.

  They followed Monroe all the way to Lake Shore Drive and turned south, where they joined a convoy of CTA buses, all merging into one lane, the only lane through the blockade on Roosevelt, next to the Field Museum. Tommy leaned forward and could see the line of buses snaking along Lake Shore Drive past the parks, past the baseball fields, past Buckingham Fountain, and once they were through the roadblock, the buses turned east once more onto short McFetridge Drive, and curled down into the Soldier Field underground parking lot.

  While the buses descended beneath the stadium, the ambulance left the line and continued east, toward Adler Planetarium. They turned south and pushed through the clustered knots of trailers, trucks, and military
vehicles strung out across Northerly Island Park. The narrow strip used to be a landing strip called Meigs Field, until Daley Junior had a bunch of bulldozers rip up the runway in the middle of the night back in 2003. Now it was a flat, grassy field, full of emergency equipment. Everything was pushed back as far as it could go, their backs against the water, as though they wanted to get as far as possible from the stadium.

  The ambulance driver pulled around and backed into a narrow spot among a group of FEMA trailers. The soldier in the back didn’t move and never took his eyes off Tommy. Out of the front windows, beyond summer docks and small boats, Tommy could see the line of buses disappearing under the northern end of Soldier Field. Out of the back windows, nothing but the endless blue expanse of Lake Michigan.

  He heard voices outside, but couldn’t make out any specific words. There was a muffled knock at the back doors, and the soldier in the back with Tommy got up and unlatched the doors, swung them wide open.

  Dr. Reischtal stood there. The sun was not kind to his skin. “Good afternoon, Mr. Krazinsky. Sergeant Reaves has assured me that, for some unknown reason, you have not only survived the night with Mr. Wycza but as of yet, there is no sign of infection.” His lips pulled back into a thin grimace that may have been a smile. “We shall soon discover why. A proper laboratory is en route. When it arrives, I will see for myself exactly what secrets live inside you.”

  The soldiers slammed the doors, leaving Tommy alone in the ambulance.

  CHAPTER 61

  2:47 PM

  August 14

  The hospital lobby was empty. It made Qween nervous. The waiting room was silent. The nurses’ station had been abandoned. The phones did not ring. The computers were dark.

  But the old building didn’t quite feel empty. This was why she was nervous. Something in the air, something just out of the range of her hearing, some kind of vibration through the molecules that her conscious brain couldn’t pick up, something set off ominous warnings in her subconscious, the lizard part of her mind, as Sam would say. Somewhere, there was life inside the hospital.

  Dr. Menard checked the computers at the nurses’ station. He shook his head. “They aren’t connected to the system that we used.” He headed for the elevators. “We have to go up to the third floor. There’s a central computer where I can access all the files.” He didn’t seem worried about the vibe of the place; he just looked relieved they hadn’t encountered any soldiers.

  “You sure this is worth it, Doc?” Qween followed, the reluctant one now. “Smart money says there’s a damn good reason ain’t nobody here.”

  The elevator doors opened immediately, as if it had been waiting for them, and they stepped inside. “Five minutes, tops,” Dr. Menard said. He fished a little plastic stick out of his pocket. “Just long enough to dump whatever I can find on this jump drive.”

  Qween looked at it skeptically. “You be quick, or I’ll up and leave your ass here.”

  The third floor was just as empty as the first. Great plastic sheets had been stretched over every surface, and while they may have been tight at the beginning, now they hung in tatters, as if a violent wind had ripped through the third floor. Dr. Menard moved quickly to the bank of computers at the nurses’ station in the center of the room. Cubicles with light blue curtains surrounded the area, beyond which, a long corridor stretched out. The end of the corridor was obscured with strips of shredded plastic hanging from the ceiling. It was impossible to tell if anyone was down there or not.

  Dr. Menard tapped a few keys. While the system booted up, he dragged over a chair and then inserted his jump drive. “I’ll be surprised if they didn’t wipe these machines clean, but maybe we’ll get lucky if they left in a hurry.”

  Qween said, “It’s the leaving in a hurry that makes me worry. We got no business being in here.” The plastic whispered under her feet, unnaturally loud in the empty area. She found herself wishing she had her cart up here; she missed the familiar bulk and weight. She had all kinds of weapons stashed inside, sure, but it had also been surprisingly versatile in a fight, all by itself. She had used it as battering ram, a shield, even an escape vehicle once, rolling away down the low hill on West Division over Goose Island.

  As the computer screens flashed to life and Dr. Menard started muttering and clicking around, Qween eased down the corridor, avoiding the smears of clotted blood on the plastic. The ragged strips hanging from the ceiling caught the light from the buzzing fluorescents and shimmered with a faint green tint, like rotting strands of kelp. A medical cart lay on its side halfway down the long hallway. A couple of oxygen tanks had been forgotten at the far end. Piles of stained blue hospital gowns and scrubs had been scattered along the floor. Every single door was closed. The entire wing was so quiet she could hear the whisper of cool air hissing from the vents and the humming of some huge machinery several floors below.

  Qween crossed over to the first door on the left and opened it. Inside, she found the bloody corpse of a woman strapped to a bed. It looked as if the woman had died in horrible agony, thrashing as she bled out of every orifice, spraying blood across the room in the final convulsions.

  Qween backed out, wiping her hands on her cloak, and tried the door across the hall. Instead of just one corpse, she found a massive pile of body bags. All of the furniture and medical equipment had been removed, apparently to make room for the forty or fifty corpses. They had been thrown in haphazardly, as if whoever had been carrying them had been in a hurry. The bags weren’t sealed with any kind of biohazard precautions; blood was seeping through the zippers.

  She shivered and reached for the door handle. She was finished with looking around. Fuck that. It was time to leave. She shut the door with a solid click. The sudden, sharp sound made her flinch and an instant later, an agonized howl erupted from two or three rooms down the hall. Someone crashed into that door from the other side. The door rattled and the handle quivered. The screaming didn’t stop. It got worse.

  Qween moved quickly back up the hall. “Time to go, Doc.”

  “I know, I know,” he called. He’d heard the shrieking. “Almost done.”

  Then, another scream. This one distant, from the fourth floor above. Someone else joined in. A chorus of cries echoed up and down the hall. Soon, the hospital was alive with screaming.

  Dr. Menard rose out of his chair, watching the ceiling. It sounded like hundreds of people were howling in despair and agony. The wave of pain reverberated throughout the halls, the empty rooms, the elevator shaft, and then somehow, grew impossibly louder. The awful sounds shook the ceiling, the walls, the very foundations of the building. Even the plastic seemed to be vibrating.

  Qween kept moving back to the elevators, her Chuck Taylors making crackling noises that were nearly buried under the avalanche of shrieking. She stopped, lifting her feet to check the soles of her shoes. Nothing was there.

  Qween squinted at the plastic under her feet. She put one foot out, experimentally pressing down on the floor. The texture of the floor under the opaque plastic changed somehow, swirling around her footprint. She cocked her head, trying to make sense of it. It almost looked like the surface of the floor was moving like sand in an hourglass. She turned back, and now could see, quite clearly, the plastic was stuck to the floor in the shape of her footprints.

  Dr. Menard said, “Thirty seconds. And we’re out of here.”

  Qween took a few tentative steps toward a tear in the plastic, over by the wall. She reached out, pinched the very edge, and peeled it back several feet. It tore easily, like wet newspaper.

  The floor was alive with bugs.

  They had been flowing under the plastic the entire time, heading down the hall. The bugs that had been revealed in the new tear stopped in the sudden exposure to fresh air, and behind them, the current continued to flow, and so a mound of the bugs grew as they piled up. They spilled out over the plastic and started to crawl toward Qween over the top of the plastic.

  “We’re done here,” Qween sai
d, heading for the elevator. “Don’t care if you’re finished or not. I’m fucking leaving. Now.”

  Dr. Menard saw the bugs. He swallowed, tried to say something, failed, and settled for yanking the jump drive out of the CPU. He quickly scurried to the bank of elevators, noting how the bugs were still moving under the plastic on the floor in a vast, seeping flood.

  The elevator doors opened and they didn’t waste time getting inside. The doors shut and the elevator dropped. “All those people—” Dr. Menard started to say.

  “—are dead,” Qween finished. “Ain’t nothing you gonna do for ’em. They gone.”

  CHAPTER 62

  3:33 PM

  August 14

  The buses were full. It was time to move out.

  Ed walked down the sidewalk, heading for the last bus, going over the plan in his head. The job was difficult, but not impossible.

  He knew all about the bridges and street closures; the only way out of the Loop was through the single lane down by the Field Museum. Sam would ride in the first bus with some of the worst offenders, while Ed would ride in the third, keeping an eye on things and coordinating the trip from the rear bus.

  The plan was to turn right on Van Buren, roll out to Michigan, then down to Congress and onto Lake Shore Drive. In addition to the prisoners, each bus would carry three guards, all armed with .12 gauge pump Winchesters. Once they were in motion, the guards had been instructed, right in front of the convicts, to shoot to kill if anyone stepped out of line. The guards were more than happy to comply.

  Once the three prisoner buses were through the blockade, a security detail was supposedly waiting to escort them down to Twenty-sixth and California. It wouldn’t take much to ambush the convoy; anybody halfway organized could create problems, cracking open the buses like a can of cheap beer, leaving the inmates to go sprinting through the streets.