Missy punched on the blinking line. “Did you get the guy’s name and number? Okay. I’m going to put you through to Ted Henderson. Hold on.”
A third line lit up in front of Missy. Another inside call. This time from security. Missy picked up.
“Busy back here, guys.” She listened for another moment. “Hang on.”
Missy yelled across the newsroom. “Ted?”
Ted Henderson was walking through the Channel Six Weather Control Center when Missy called his name. He stopped and squinted. In khaki pants and a pullover Brooks Brothers sweater, Ted suddenly looked awfully young, awfully pale, and awfully alone.
“We’ve got company,” Missy said.
“What’s that?” Ted ran his fingers through his hair.
“Three guys from Homeland Security. They’re up front. Want to come back and talk to us.”
Ted Henderson sat down in a straight-backed chair and stared hard at an empty Doppler radar screen. The clock over his head read 12:43 a.m.
CHAPTER 35
The blue van rolled down the alley, through patterns of wet light and darkness. Marcus watched with the others as it pulled into the loading dock, and the warehouse door rattled down behind it.
Four men got out. They ignored the gangbangers circling and focused on Ray Ray. One of them opened up the back and showed him what was inside. They pulled out maps and cigarettes. Ray Ray listened and nodded. The men talked for almost an hour. They unloaded everything and stacked it all against a wall. Then the men got in their van and left.
Ray Ray called everyone close. There were maybe forty of them. Marcus kept near the back, left hand wrapped as best he could. Ray Ray showed them what the men had brought. Gasoline. Power nail guns. Cans of red paint. Jace dragged two flat metal boxes to the center of the room. Ray Ray put a boot on one and began to talk.
They’d all seen the choppers. Heard about the fences. Some fools wanted to hit the streets. Some already had. But Ray Ray held the Fours in his fist. Wouldn’t let them off the chain. Until now. He told his crew what needed to be done. Then Ray Ray flipped open the boxes. In one were the shotguns. In the other, gas masks. They had five hours until sunup. And an entire neighborhood to burn.
CHAPTER 36
The Blue Line train made its way west, running parallel to the Ike and moving slowly. I looked out the window, at columns of dirty smoke drifting across streaks of early morning sun.
“Fires?” I said and turned to Molly Carrolton, who looked up reluctantly from her iPad.
“Hmm?”
I jerked a thumb outside. “Anyone notice the West Side’s burning down?”
“I told you, there were reports of violence all night. Some blocks torched in K Town. That’s all anyone really knows.”
I’d spent most of the night in a suite at the Colonial Tower, watching the mayor and his pals explain to the world what was happening in Chicago. The star of the show had been the fence line, backlit at dawn and guarded by men in NBC suits. Pretty much said it all.
Molly had knocked on my door at a few minutes after six. Wilson had asked her to get me out of the quarantine zone. Without the feds finding out. She’d suggested the L. And so, here we were.
“Is someone gonna try to put ’em out?” I said.
“The fire department doesn’t seem too keen on the idea. Especially since the feds don’t have any protective suits to spare.”
“Speaking of which… ” I gestured toward the suit and mask I was wearing. “Do we really need these?”
“It’s a great way to stay anonymous. And, as of today, we’re officially in a quarantine zone. Everyone wears a suit unless they’re in a designated scrubbed area.”
“What’s a scrubbed area?”
“You’ll see the signs.”
I could feel the river of sweat starting its slalom run down my neck and wondered when it was going to start itching. “You’re telling me the air is full of this pathogen?”
“It’s the smoke I’d worry about.”
“Why?”
“If the buildings they’re burning contain infected bodies, the smoke could theoretically be contaminated.”
“What are the odds?”
“It doesn’t matter. Protocol says you wear one.”
“Fuck protocol.” I pulled the mask off and put it in my lap.
Molly shook her head. “That’s not very smart.”
“Give me a better reason and I’ll put it back on.”
She wasn’t interested in playing. So I sat and listened to the creak of the tracks underneath us.
“What’s that for?” I pointed at an opaque sheet of thick plastic. It was strung across the front of the car, cutting us off from the rest of the train.
“If I tell you, will you put your mask back on?”
“I’m not worried.”
“We’re in a rolling hearse.”
“Infected?”
She nodded. “Fortunately for you, this car has been sealed. Besides, if they’re not breathing, chances are they’re not contagious.”
“I told you I wasn’t worried.”
The train slacked off its already snail-like pace and then stopped altogether, wheels squeezing out a sigh as they ground to a halt. A wisp of smoke crept across the tracks. Then another. Pretty soon we were plunged into a world of gray and white-thick whorls laced with sticky bits of debris from the fires.
“They were going to use vans for the dead.” Molly’s voice competed for attention with a sudden high wind. “But there’s been too many bodies. Too quickly. This way the media can’t get a good count.”
“How many so far?”
Molly touched the shiny surface of her iPad. A map flared to life in liquid reds and greens. Alongside it were names and columns of numbers.
“The pathogen killed at least seventy-three people while you were sleeping. A hundred fifty-four total, so far. Best we can tell, the rate of infection within the restricted zones is increasing hourly.”
“Is it spreading?”
“The greatest danger has been inside the buildings.”
“What about the hospitals?”
“Not enough resources, training, or real-time information.” Molly shrugged. “Pretty much a meltdown.”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“It’s about what we expected. The president is supposed to speak this morning.”
“What’s he going to say?”
“My guess? As little as possible.”
“You got that right. He should come down here and sit with the mayor in front of his phony fireplace. Be a hell of a show.” I nodded to the front of the car. “Can I take a look?”
“Just don’t try to open anything.”
I got up and took a peek around the plastic curtain. Through the connecting door I could see a dozen bodies in bags, stacked on the floor and across flat boards laid over the seats. Watching over the silent commuters were a couple of morgue assistants, suited up in case Molly’s theory proved to be awry and the dead turned out to be contagious. I snapped a couple of photos with my cell. Then I went back and sat down.
“Where do they take them?” I said.
“Cremation. If we bury them, we risk contaminating the soil with disease.”
“So you burn them?”
“A controlled burn, yes. The smoke is scrubbed before being released into the environment.”
I twitched my fingers and picked up her iPad. “This thing get the Internet?”
“We have a dedicated line.” Molly tapped the tablet and a Google window appeared.
“Ever heard of Thucydides?” I said and typed in a search term.
“Greek writer?”
“Historian. Wrote about the Plague of Athens.” I pulled up a screen of text and highlighted a passage:
… people in good health were all of a sudden attacked by violent heats in the head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes, the inward parts, such as the throat or tongue, becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural and fetid breath.
>
These symptoms were followed by sneezing and hoarseness, after which the pain soon reached the chest, and produced a hard cough…
Externally the body was not very hot to the touch, nor pale in its appearance, but reddish, livid, and breaking out into small pustules and ulcers. But internally it burned so that the patient could not bear to have on him clothing or linen even of the very lightest description; or indeed to be otherwise than stark naked. What they would have liked best would have been to throw themselves into cold water; as indeed was done by some of the neglected sick, who plunged into the rain-tanks in their agonies of unquenchable thirst; though it made no difference whether they drank little or much.
“Could be a lot of things,” Molly said. “Typhus. Bubonic plague. Maybe some sort of viral hemorrhagic fever.”
“Some scholars think it was the world’s first recorded use of a bioweapon. Released by Sparta inside the city of Athens. Either way, it killed almost forty thousand people. Athenians burned the bodies of their neighbors in the streets. Here you go.”
I showed her a second screen of text:
All the burial rites before in use were entirely upset, and they buried the bodies as best they could. Many from want of the proper appliances, through so many of their friends having died already, had recourse to the most shameless sepultures: sometimes getting the start of those who had raised a pile, they threw their own dead body upon the stranger’s pyre and ignited it; sometimes they tossed the corpse which they were carrying on the top of another that was burning, and so went off.
“Let me guess,” Molly said. “Those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it.”
“You assume we still have a choice.”
Molly shut down the iPad and slipped it back into her pack. I thought about the plague. It sounded like fiction when Thucydides wrote of it. Now it was a trip on the Blue Line. And very much real.
“Where are we headed?” I said.
“The train runs from Cook County Hospital west to a warehouse in Oak Park.”
“Where they process the dead?”
“Something like that. It’s outside the fence line, so you should be able to slip away.”
I grunted. The train creaked forward a few feet and stopped again.
“I need to tell you something else,” Molly said.
“I’m guessing it’s not gonna be good.”
“The scream you heard yesterday at our lab. That was Ellen.”
I didn’t know why, but I wasn’t surprised. “What happened?”
“Her sister, Anna, was booked on an early morning flight out of O’Hare. She was supposed to take a private car to the airport. We think she decided to save money and hop the Blue Line. Her train would have hit the subway about the time the pathogen was released.”
“Where is she?” I said.
“Anna collapsed in a bathroom at O’Hare. She was pronounced dead five hours later. Our first and, so far, only victim at the airport. Ellen watched her sister’s autopsy last night. I thought you should know. In case you see her.”
“Thanks.”
The wind had settled; the curtain of smoke slipped away. A weak beat of sunlight filtered through a window. Molly moved into the seat beside me. I could feel her shoulder tight against mine, and looked up at a poster telling me I should get tested for HIV.
“What happens next?” I said.
Molly’s laugh was muffled through her mask. “Kind of a loaded question, isn’t it?”
Just then a. 30-caliber slug shattered the window behind me, blowing Molly Carrolton off the seat and hammering her to the floor.
CHAPTER 37
A splatter of red trailed across the empty seat. My eyes followed it right off the edge. Molly lay on her side, one hand clutching her shoulder. She tried to raise herself up.
“Stay there.” I slid to the floor, keeping my head below the blown-out window. The train was still stopped, and I could hear voices from somewhere up ahead. “Where are you hit?”
Molly swore softly under her breath. “My arm, I think. Hurts.”
“I’m gonna take off your mask.”
Molly nodded. I undid the seals and slid it off. “Your suit was breached anyway.”
“Damn.” Molly rolled over and lay flat on her back. “There’s a first aid kit in my pack.”
I found the kit and opened it up. “Let me take a look.”
Molly eased her hand off the gunshot wound. I unzipped the suit and peeled it back.
“Why are you wearing a vest?” I said.
“Protocol. I was going to offer you one but didn’t think you’d wear it.”
“You figured right.”
I loosened the protective vest and slipped it off. The bullet had grazed the back of her arm, halfway between the elbow and shoulder.
“Lucky girl.”
“You could have fooled me.”
”Didn’t hit any bone. Looks like it might have passed straight through.” I cleaned the wound as best I could, opened up a couple of gauze pads, and pressed them gently against the rip in her skin. My eyes traveled across the car, to a hole drilled into a seam of metal.
“Get that for me, will you?” Molly pointed to a radio, lying a few feet away. She hit a button and talked briefly with someone. I listened to the voices in the car ahead of us. They were getting closer, but still hadn’t breached the connecting door.
“Will they come through?” I said.
“No. I told them we’re not wearing our suits, so they’re gonna send a team to get us out of here.”
“Are they sending someone out to look for the shooter?”
“They didn’t say.”
“Hang on to this for a minute.” I put her hand over the bandage and made sure she was keeping pressure on the wound. Then I crept across the aisle to the bullet hole. A minute later, I had dug out the slug. Molly had the bandage to her shoulder and was using her pack as a pillow.
“You all right?” I said. She nodded.
“How long did they say they’d be?”
“Minutes.”
I put the slug into a Baggie and shoved it into a pack I’d brought with me.
“Go ahead,” Molly said.
“What?”
“You want to take a look, right?”
“I was thinking about it.”
“If you wait, they’ll never let you go.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. They’ll be here in a minute.”
I checked her bandage and taped it tight to her shoulder. Molly gripped my upper arm as I finished and pulled herself up to one elbow. I was surprised by her strength.
“Why did he shoot me?” she said.
“You talk like you know who did it.”
“I think you know.”
“I don’t.”
“But it’s related to the release.”
“Could be just a random gangbanger.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Not really, no.”
Molly eased back to the floor and pointed to the radio beside her. “Take that with you.”
“You keep it.”
“Your cell phone won’t work down here.”
“I’ll be all right.”
Molly didn’t fight me. She looked a little pale and I thought there might be a touch of shock setting in.
“Maybe I should hang around until they get here,” I said.
“Go. I’ll tell Ellen what happened.”
I could hear sirens now and crept to a door on the opposite side of the train. Molly waved me on. I sealed up my mask, pried the door open, and stepped out onto the track bed.
CHAPTER 38
Marcus had killed two in as many minutes. The first was lying in a hallway filled with haze, crawling toward a door filled with light. Marcus came through the door and put a shell in his chest. The second was wearing a New York Yankees hat, lying against a wall in a bedroom. He had a gun in his hand but couldn’t gather the strength to li
ft it. Marcus kicked the gun away. The banger’s eyes fluttered open. Marcus closed them for good.
Ray Ray had told them to hit the Six Aces where they lived. Burn ’em out. Bust ’em out. Then he told them how. Young ones came through with red paint first, marking an X on doors where leaders from the Aces slept. They were followed by teams of two, carrying cans of gasoline and nail guns. One would soak the stairwells and rugs. The other nailed the doors and windows shut. The first would toss a match. Then they’d sit on the curb and watch the building burn until it put itself out. They’d listen for screams, try to guess who was who. Marcus’s job was to shoot anyone who made it to the street. When the rubble had cooled, he’d do a final walk-through. Finish off the ones inside.
Marcus slipped the mask they’d given him up on his head and wiped his face. His hand ached. He kept it cradled close to his chest and scooted through a lot full of wind and weeds. Ray Ray should have killed him when he had the chance. Instead, he broke Marcus’s fingers and gave him a shotgun. The boy racked another shell, one handed, into the chamber and wondered about that.
Up ahead, a crease of daylight opened up a street of cracked cobblestones. Silhouetted at the other end was an old church with washed walls. Standing on the church’s steps, a tall figure with a gun. Marcus ducked into a shadow. He knew who it was, just by the way he shifted in his boots.
Marcus crept between two buildings, gun up, damp finger on the trigger. Ray Ray turned a fraction, face lit by a fresh stream of light from the east. The boy’s heart slowed; blood ran cool to cold. Marcus was a natural hunter, patient for his age, but young. Callow. It never occurred to him that he might be hunted himself. Until it was too late.
CHAPTER 39
I hiked across the Eisenhower and up an exit ramp. A single building squatted over the highway. It was an old Schlitz beer plant, four stories high, with an S stamped in white stone on the redbrick facade. They weren’t making Schlitz anymore, and the plant looked empty. Perfect for my shooter.
On one side of the building I found a service entrance swung open on its hinges. I checked the first three floors. Empty. A set of steel stairs took me to the top. A single window was open, a thick black pad on the cement floor beneath it. I looked out at the Ike and the L train. An emergency vehicle, lights flashing, was just pulling up. I watched as men in NBC suits climbed out. It was a tough shot but doable. I stepped back from the window and examined the shooting pad. Then I walked the bare, empty space. He’d been here. And didn’t leave anything behind. At least nothing I could see.
We All Fall Down mk-4 Page 14
