Sleep Tight (36 page)

 

At first, Tommy didn’t realize that the Strykers were shooting at him. The road in front of him didn’t erupt in great geysers of smoke and the trees around him didn’t explode in showers of sparks like in the movies. He heard a few dull thuds. That was all.

He raced down Lake Shore Drive, with Lake Michigan off to his right, and the ominous shadow of the warship growing out of the horizon like a tumor. After successfully negotiating his way through the barricade, he didn’t want to think that anything could go wrong. So he ignored the tight, tickling feeling that crawled over his scalp and pushed the thoughts of the bullets singing above his head out of his mind. Then he saw the two Strykers in the rearview mirror, closing fast.

One of the back windows exploded and his passenger mirror disintegrated. Now, through the open back window, he could hear the bursts of automatic gunfire, even if he couldn’t pinpoint the damage. He couldn’t ignore the truth any longer.

Tommy yanked the wheel to the left and jumped the curb and tore across the baseball fields. He tried to keep an eye on his driver’s side mirror and rearview mirror. He noticed that the Strykers couldn’t change direction as fast as the ambulance; they couldn’t navigate as nimbly as he could. Of course, they could smash their way through obstructions like cars and sandbags, but when they had two or three cars caught up on the front, it slowed them down, at least until the pitiless front wedge ground the cars along the asphalt and pushed the crumpled vehicles aside.

The ambulance careened into Columbus, coming close to blowing a tire. Sparks flew as he swerved around the abandoned cars. He veered to his left at the last second and shot over the southern Metra railroad line on Balbo. He reckoned out in the open, it was just a matter of time before they eventually flanked him, trapping the ambulance between them. He’d never reach Grace.

He glanced at the mirror. The Strykers hadn’t managed the turn yet, and hadn’t started across the bridge over the Metra lines. He turned his attention back to the road in front, plotting a course through the low berms of sandbags strewn across Michigan Avenue. If he could just reach the blocks of buildings, he might be able to stay a few blocks ahead of them, twisting and turning, keeping the buildings between the ambulance and the Strykers. After the massive withdrawal of troops and equipment, the streets might be empty enough that he could keep running, and put a little distance between himself and his pursuers. He just hoped they didn’t have anything that could blast through concrete.

He slalomed around the rows of sandbags on Michigan just as the first of the Strykers appeared on the crest of the Balbo Bridge. The windows of the Blackstone Hotel burst into dizzying cracks and shards rained across the sidewalk. It didn’t matter. He was through the sandbags and stomped on the gas. The ambulance grumbled, but it shot forward.

Ahead, the next two blocks were clear. Once he hit State, he’d jog left and see if he couldn’t disappear into the Printers’ Row area.

A great circle of white light stabbed out of the night sky, moving quickly, blowing away any and all shadows as it kept pace with the speeding ambulance. Another slash of bleached-bone luminosity appeared behind him. He leaned forward, craning his neck, and peered up through the windshield.

The tentative hope that had started flickering in his chest when he realized that he might just escape, sizzled and died as he saw quite clearly that he now had not one but two helicopters stalking him, with their immense spotlights burning a trail that a dead man could follow, leading the Strykers right to him.

 

 

Ed and Sam prepped for war.

They had the soldier’s pack on the table, loading it with extra clips, boxes of ammunition, even a couple of grenades. Both had climbed back into the suits, figuring they would allow them to blend in with the rest of the soldiers.

Sam slung assault rifles over both shoulders and stuck his Glock back into his shoulder holster, and a Beretta in one of the hazmat pockets. He just wished he could carry more guns.

Qween was still sleeping. She had found a quiet corner to gather herself, curling up and sleeping for a few hours. At first, she listened. Tuned into the rhythms of the building. The quiet hum of the air system. How it swayed slightly in the winds. When she felt like she knew the building, and had gotten comfortable with the muted sounds of the fifty-ninth floor, she curled up on her right side, pulling her cloak over her shoulder and ear. Her breathing stretched, grew slower and slower.

She was the first to feel the shockwave coming.

Ed and Sam saw popping, flashing lights bubble up out of Soldier Field, far to the south, and as the mushroom cloud of smoke roiled up and out of the stadium, the ripples from the explosion burst through the downtown streets, leaving dust and smoke in their wake. The waves rattled the windows and everybody flinched, but the glass held. The entire building swayed in the wash of the blast.

Sam whispered, “Holy fuck me.”

The smoke had an odd, shimmering quality, and they couldn’t tell if the smoke itself had these speckles of color, or it was reflecting something underneath. It had a sickly rainbow glow, like the way an oil slick in a puddle will split light into a filthy prism.

“I think the CDC just cut their losses,” Ed said.

Nobody wanted to mention Dr. Menard.

 

 

Tommy was slowing down to make the skidding left turn onto State Street when he thought he heard a sonic boom, as if some huge jumbo jet had just flown way too low over the city. The shockwave made the ambulance bounce a little, but it wasn’t enough to throw him off course.

Tommy took a right instead onto State on two tires, heading north. He straightened it out and the ambulance rocked back down onto all four tires. The damn searchlights wavered and spun away as the Apache pilots fought the unfurling waves from Soldier Field.

Tommy hit the gas and shot north on State, weaving through the sandbags.

 

Lee wished he had a big M
ISSION
A
CCOMPLISHED
banner, something bold and bright they could have hung above the doors on City Hall. Something that would tell people in no uncertain terms that Lee Shea was a man who got things done. Something he could turn and point to, something that would give his speech the big finish it needed. That would have been a shot he could see on the cover of
Time
.

He tried not to dwell on it. Phil had told him that giving the speech out in the middle of Clark would look fantastic on TV. He didn’t need the banner. “It’s a hell of an image,” Phil had said. “You in the middle of the goddamn street, with City Hall all lit up behind you. Now’s that’s a fucking shot.”

Phil had only written a ten-minute speech. They’d been planning on plenty of government officials wanting to share the spotlight, lined up to lap at the trough of success and show their face to the media. But nobody else had the balls to show up. Those assholes in the CDC. And the rest of the feds, shit, they’d pulled out at least half, maybe more, of the soldiers. And good riddance, as far as Lee was concerned. Every time you turned on the TV, all you got were those endless shots of the hazmat suits going underground, the soldiers standing around behind the sandbags, with blank expressions as they rode around on the top of those tank things.

In a way, Lee was glad nobody else had showed up to give any other speeches. He didn’t have to share the spotlight with anyone. It made the whole thing that much more fucking dramatic. Like it was just him, the only politician who cared about his city, his people. His face would be on the front of newspapers. He had been building to this moment his whole life, practicing in front of the mirror, answering all those shouted questions amidst the dazzling flashes.

And let’s face it, the only people who mattered at a press conference were the media. Especially the TV folks. Nobody read newspapers anymore. So when Lee decided it was time to get to the questions, he would start calling on them by name. He’d gotten to the end of Phil’s speech a while ago, but since the spotlight was on Lee and Lee alone, he had simply kept going. The spirit of the situation had moved him, and he was giving the people what they wanted. His words would inspire the citizens of Chicago. His words would give them hope.

Phil, the asshole, had been walking behind the cameras, making increasingly violent gestures to wrap it up.

It figured. Here was Lee’s chance to seize the moment, to spin the entire pandemic in his favor, and Phil wanted him to quit. Sometimes Lee wondered if Phil was a little jealous of his looks, of his success.

Kimmy was still standing next to Lee at the podium, still smiling, still keeping her brat under control, but he could tell she was getting tired of his speech. Bitch.

He was right in the middle of telling an utterly bullshit story about when he was a young boy on the family farm, and his grandfather was gently explaining the realities about the circle of life, when a deep BOOM reverberated through the streets and a sudden wind kicked up the dust and smoke almost as bad as all the choppers.

Lee stopped talking for a moment and wiped at his eyes, trying to dig the grit out of them. He couldn’t help himself and patted his hair, just to make sure it hadn’t been affected. Then, to camouflage the gesture, he touched his ear, as if he had a hidden receiver. “Ladies and gentlemen, please remain calm. It is unclear at this time what we have just experienced, but I am being told that it is nothing to worry about.”

Phil was making angry slashing motions across his throat, but Lee ignored him and plunged ahead with his story. “As I was saying, my grandfather was a wise, wise man. He—”

Someone’s phone rang. One of the reporters answered it. Her hand went to the round oval of her mouth. She looked to her fellow reporters and said, “Soldier Field just exploded.”

Lee said into the microphone, “We have no confirmed reports at this time. I think we should all stay put until we receive some kind of confirmation or something. . . .”

But the media people weren’t listening. Everyone was packing up, hoping to get to Grant Park and get a shot of the devastation.

 

 

The Apache pilots asked no questions. No matter how they felt about the explosion at Soldier Field, they had orders. Both of them regrouped in the turbulent skies above Chicago, then dove back down, using their FLIR systems to zero in on the ambulance. One of the gunners had everything lined up, both he and the pilot watching a bobbing, bright white vehicle in a high-res sea of green of the forward-looking infrared system. The images were projected directly into a monocular lens attached the pilots’ helmets. Aiming was achieved by simply moving their heads as they followed the target. The crosshairs smoothly tracked the ambulance, bouncing a laser off the target to guide the Hellfire missiles.

The gunners wanted to simply unleash hell on Tommy Krazinsky, whoever the hell he was, carpet-bombing the streets with everything they had, but the pilots had been given strict instructions to merely locate the target, and nothing else. And nobody wanted to defy Dr. Reischtal’s orders.

So they roared back down into the concrete and steel valleys, following the ninety-degree grid pattern of the streets and blocks, until they spotted the ambulance, and gave his location to the Strykers. “Target is fleeing up South Plymouth Court, on the east side of the library. Disable vehicle. Keep damage to target to an absolute minimum.”

The Strykers responded, “Affirmative. Six, two, out.”

As the Strykers rammed their way down parallel streets to cut Tommy off, both choppers noticed activity in the FLIR systems. A flailing mass of bodies spewed out of some of the buildings. The sea green screens flared with spastic, violent movement.

“That . . . that ain’t our guys,” one of the gunners said.

The pilots pulled back, and the rotors slapped against the humid, smoky air, dragging the choppers above the buildings to get a better view. All along the path of the ambulance, the streets were coming alive with lurching, running figures, as if Tommy was some kind of Pied Piper, calling to the infected.

“Strykers, six, two, be advised that we’re catching a lot of civilian, ah . . . activity down there. Movement right now is confined to target’s path.”

The lead Stryker’s reply was brief. “Fuck ’em. Estimate contact with target in less than ten seconds.”

 

 

Tommy didn’t see the Stryker come up on his passenger side out of the darkness of East Van Buren until it was too late to stop. He hit the gas instead, trying to outleap the Stryker the way a gazelle would strain in slow motion against the outstretched fury of a lioness’s leap.

They had decided to ram the vehicle, instead of trying to shoot out the tires. If they missed and hit the driver, there was no telling how Dr. Reischtal might retaliate. He might even order one of the Apaches to take out the Strykers.

The ambulance almost made it through the trap unscathed. The edge of the Stryker’s front wedge kissed the ambulance’s back bumper, sending the lighter vehicle sideways across the intersection. The ambulance skidded into a line of parked cars, bounced a little, and came to rest backwards against the northwest traffic light.

The Stryker smashed through the El station stairs and crunched through hundred-year-old bricks in the dark building across the street. After a moment, the tires began to spin in reverse, as the driver tried to back out of the rubble.

That gave Tommy an idea and he jerked the gearshift into reverse and hit the gas.

He backed up until he hit Jackson, then spun around and took off. The searchlights followed. He took a left down Dearborn, bouncing over sandbags and taking off once he was clear. The ambulance’s engine strained and whined like an old man trying to pass a kidney stone as Tommy pushed his foot to the floor.

Headlights flashed behind him, coming fast. Another goddamn Stryker.

Tommy was so busy watching the Stryker behind him that he missed the second one popping out of LaSalle to his right. The front wedge smashed into the passenger door and the center of gravity shifted inside the ambulance. He had one moment of clarity when he realized he was glad he was wearing his seat belt. The road spun and the air was suddenly full of crap from the floor and his seat threw him at the steering wheel. The ambulance jolted under him, around him, and whipped around like an unlicensed carnival roller coaster.

The ambulance rolled through the intersection and crashed, upside-down, on the far sidewalk. The Stryker behind him skidded and stopped in the middle of the intersection, while the one that had smashed the ambulance came to a shuddering halt ten yards down LaSalle. The hatch on the Stryker to the rear popped open and a soldier appeared behind the .50 caliber machine gun.

Tommy blinked stars out of his eyes. He hoped they weren’t shards of glass from the shattered windshield. It took him a moment to realize he was hanging upside down, held in place by his seat belt. He rolled his head, flexed his fingers, pulled his knees up, making sure that nothing was broken, and everything still worked.

His knee hurt like hell, but as far as he could tell, he was still in one piece. A pair of boots crunched through the broken safety glass outside his door. His door was wrenched open with a squeal of metal pain and a hazmat faceplate leaned down and peered at him.

“How ya doin’, Tommy?”

The metallic voice sounded almost familiar, but Tommy couldn’t place it. He slapped at the seat belt release button.

“Easy, easy does it.”

From one of the Strykers, Tommy heard an amplified, no-nonsense voice say, “Step away from the vehicle, soldier. This man is a suspected terrorist. Step away. Now.”

The man in the hazmat suit ignored the warning. He reached in, and hit the release button, catching Tommy when the belt gave way. His hands guided Tommy gently to the roof of the ambulance and unfolded him so he was lying halfway on the street. Behind the faceplate, Tommy caught a glimpse of a dark face and a grin.

“Relax. We got this.”

“Last warning, soldier. We will open fire.”

The man suddenly had a giant revolver in his gloved hand. He pivoted, brought the handgun up in one smooth motion, and fired.

The man visible in the hatch in the Stryker behind the ambulance flopped back as if he just needed a few minutes to study the sky. The driver was still very much alive inside, and he had control of the cannon. The Stryker’s engine growled as the canon swiveled around with a mechanical purr, looking for the hazmat soldier.

Then an overweight black woman came out of nowhere, stepped up on the Stryker’s tires, and dropped something down through the hatch where the dead machine gunner slumped. The cannon continued to rotate, until it was almost in line with the ambulance. A muffled boom came from inside the Stryker. It shook like a dog in the middle of a dream, and Tommy understood that the woman had dropped a grenade or something.

The second Stryker hadn’t missed any of this, and it roared backwards. The top hatch swung open, and a soldier grabbed the .50 caliber. This gunner wasn’t taking any chances, he was already firing, spitting bullets all over the place. He couldn’t aim worth a damn while the Stryker was backing up, but it was clear to Tommy that once it stopped, they were all dead meat.

A dark CTA bus burst out of the darkness of LaSalle and smashed into the Stryker. Bullets sprayed into the night sky as the gunner snapped against the hatch with such violence it didn’t appear that he had any bones at all, and was instead some invertebrate species as his body rolled in the whiplash with all the resistance of a wet towel.

The bus hit the Stryker hard enough that the back tires lifted off the ground a few inches. It dropped back, bounced once, and didn’t move. The Stryker spun counterclockwise, blasting through a few sandbag berms.

The woman was now suddenly at that wreck, casually dropping a grenade inside. This time, the driver didn’t try to use the canon. He may have been running for the hatch, he may have been trying to trap the blast with a shield or whatever was inside, but in the end, it didn’t matter. There was another muffled whump, like a stifled sneeze, and it was done.

The boots left Tommy and ran for the bus. Tommy rolled over and watched the hazmat suit and the woman kick open the door. Tommy climbed to his knees. His ears were ringing and he couldn’t quite nail a perfect balance yet, but he didn’t think anything was broken. His fingers tingled now, where before there was only numbness. He cautiously rose to his feet and took a moment to orient himself.

When he felt he could walk without falling down, he lurched over to the closest Stryker. As he got closer, he found he could clench his fists and loosen his legs. He lifted the gunner’s corpse, and pulled it out. There was nothing there he could use. He took a deep breath, and climbed down. The heat was still incredible. He squinted in the murk, found the driver. The man wore fatigues.

Tommy climbed out, and after some gasping to escape the heat, he dropped back down and went for a storage locker. He felt a couple of dense plastic squares, almost like baseball bases that a family might take to a picnic. He crawled out and rolled down the tank, stuck one square under each arm and went to the bus.

The driver was out now, coughing and holding his side, but pacing around like he was shaking off a bad dream, nothing more. Hazmat suit and the woman started arguing. Tommy walked up and saw that the man pacing around was the detective who had given Tommy his card. Sam something.

The detective started to speak, and coughed instead. His tongue and teeth were dark and shiny at the same time with blood. After a few tries, he said, “I’m fine, goddamnit. Knock that shit off.”