Sleep Tight

by Jeffrey Jacobson

  He couldn’t just run and hide. How would he find Grace?

  He needed a plan. Fighting against every instinct shrieking inside of him, Tommy pulled his foot back and closed the door behind him. The first thing he checked was the ignition. Of course, the keys were gone. He still wasn’t sure exactly how he was going to find Grace, but an idea was starting to sprout in the back of his mind. He tore through the inside of the ambulance, looking for anything he could use as a weapon.

  The only thing halfway sharp he found was a basic scalpel. The blade wasn’t more than an inch long. Tommy shook his head. It figured. The one time he needed something big, something with a bit of range where he could defend himself, and he managed to dig up one of the more useless blades for getting out of here. Just his luck that he would find the one thing that could have made it easier to cut his way out of the leather straps after he had already gotten out of the wheelchair. Instead, he’d put himself through the equivalent of a car crash.

  Tommy told himself to stop being such a pussy.

  He was loose and he had a blade. It would be enough.

  He wrapped the IV tubes around his fist, tucked the scalpel into the front pocket of his hospital gown, and opened the back door again, slower this time. He leaned out and watched through the windows, but nobody was around.

  He stepped out and shut the back door softly behind him. He couldn’t escape the feeling that the warship not three hundred yards away was watching him. He tried to move slow and bored, acting like there was nothing out of the ordinary going on, like he was merely a doctor, or at the very least, a paramedic keeping an eye on the ambulance. The goddamn hospital gown tended to spoil the effect. No matter how tight he tried to pull it around his shoulders, it somehow still flopped open, leaving his ass hanging out in the wind.

  As dusk fell, various lights began blinking to life, all over the ship.

  He ignored it and slipped between two trailers. If he could find an empty trailer, he might be able to find some scrubs inside, anything to make him look like a medic, instead of a patient. Then he needed to find a computer, something that might be able to tell him if Kimmy and Grace were on one of the buses that he’d watched taking people into Soldier Field all afternoon. Then, with a decent disguise, and a whole lot of luck, he might be able to gain entry to the stadium and track down his daughter. He’d have the scalpel, just in case.

  The first trailer’s door was locked. The second had a ton of cables snaking underneath it, so it looked promising. It also had windows, open to take advantage of any breezes coming off the lake, and Tommy eased in close and listened. He could hear a voice, but it sounded tinny, fake somehow. And even stranger, it sounded like a voice he knew. Keeping his back flat against the trailer, he slowly leaned over and peered inside.

  He heard other voices, closer, louder. He guessed there were at least two men inside, but he couldn’t see them. One of them said something, something that made the other one laugh, but Tommy didn’t listen. He was focused on the flat-screen TV on the table.

  Lee was on the screen, sharply dressed as always, saying, “. . . could not unfortunately join us at the moment, but they will definitely be a part of our victory celebration later tonight.” Lee paused for a moment. “I stand before you in the heart of my hometown, a city that has withstood its share of tragedies, from the Great Fire in 1871, the sinking of the Eastland in 1915, the Our Lady of Angels school fire in 1958, and so many others. But this town, this city of broad shoulders, we have picked ourselves up by our bootstraps and marched onward into history.”

  One of the men inside the trailer said, “Laying it on a little thick, ain’t he?”

  “I can assure you that when this crisis is over, we will rebuild what we have lost, we will honor those we have lost, and we will become stronger, and safer, than ever!” Lee paused, as if for applause. None came.

  The camera pulled back, as if to explain the lack of an audience. Lee stood by himself behind a podium on a stage smack in the middle of Clark. City Hall was off to the left, the courthouse off to the right. Then, just before the camera slowly zoomed back in on Lee, so quickly Tommy wondered if he’d actually seen it or not, he spotted two figures standing back near the stage steps, as if waiting for their cue.

  One was a strikingly beautiful young woman, wearing a black evening gown. She was holding the hand of a young girl in a yellow dress. Lee hit a point in the speech, sounding like he was declaring triumph in a closely contested election, and beckoned the two to join him onstage. Lee put his arm around Kimmy’s waist. He waved with his free hand for a moment, then bent down and hoisted Grace to his shoulder. She was smiling, but Tommy could see the confusion in her eyes as she faced the reporters and bright lights.

  Tommy jerked his head back. He felt his insides clench. His heart sped up, booming away so loudly in his chest that he was worried that the men inside might hear it. He was certain that they would hear the gurgling of his empty stomach.

  Kimmy and Grace weren’t safe in Soldier Field. They were still downtown, in the midst of the soldiers, bugs, and the infected.

  And even beyond that, Lee still had control of Kimmy and Grace.

  The decision was easy. Simple.

  He heard one of the men inside stand, and the trailer shifted slightly. The man said, “Fine, my turn to go check on the prick. But when Reischtal gets here, it’s gonna be your job to help him. Guy’s an asshole. Makes me nervous.”

  Tommy ran back to the ambulance. The new plan taking shape in his head wasn’t much, but it was a start. He dropped to his stomach and wriggled under the ambulance. He unwrapped the IV tubing from his wrist, still not sure if he could use it or not. He might have been able to use it if the ambulance had been parked in gravel and he had a lot of time to bury it under dirt and gravel, but it was hard to hide the clear tube in the grass.

  As he lay in the itching, late summer grass, the compulsion to bolt, to flee far, far away still seethed inside. He fought it, driving it down deep, the same way he fought the panic earlier that threatened to take over completely. He forced himself to focus on the sound of Grace’s laughter. He knew he couldn’t focus on just the memory of her face. It was too much. They’d find him, sooner or later, curled up under the ambulance, sobbing his eyes out. But something about her laughter tightened his guts, made him grit his teeth and promise the universe that not only would she be able to laugh again, all this would be nothing but a brief nightmare, whisked away by the morning sun; he would damn well be there and they would laugh together.

  Footsteps in the grass. The boots of one of the paramedics came closer. Keys jingled. Tommy undulated, like some malformed snake, under the transmission system until he was directly under the driver’s seat. He heard the driver’s door open, saw the hazmat boots go up on tiptoe as the soldier leaned across the seat.

  The soldier said, “Still with us, shitheel?”

  Tommy braced his bare feet against the front tire, bent sideways at the waist, and with his left hand, he whipped out the end of the IV tubing, circling it around the paramedic’s feet. He caught the end with his right, and slowly drew it tight around the man’s ankles. He waited until the paramedic had leaned in just enough to realize that the prisoner was no longer in the back of the ambulance, then seized the man’s ankles and yanked, flinging his upper torso backwards.

  The force of the movement jerked the paramedic off his feet. The paramedic landed hard, flat on his back. It drove the breath straight out of his lungs. He gasped for a breath, but it was too late. Tommy pulled the man halfway under the ambulance, drawing the IV tubing tight around the ankles, snaring them together. The paramedic slapped at the side of the ambulance.

  With his right arm, Tommy drove the scalpel deep inside the paramedic’s upper left thigh. The one-inch blade sunk easily into the flesh. Tommy ripped it across the large muscles, slicing through the femoral artery.

  Blood hit the undercarriage.

  The paramedic went berserk, spasms wracking his back a
nd legs. He folded in half, reaching down, tearing at Tommy’s arms. Tommy jammed his left foot into the man’s crotch and pulled the ankles tight against his chest and rode out the convulsions.

  In less than thirty seconds it was over. The paramedic was dead.

  Tommy dragged the entire body under the ambulance and went through the man’s pockets. He found the ambulance keys and forgot everything else. He started to crawl away, then went back and unbuttoned the blue shirt, pulling it off the corpse. It took a while but Tommy kept at it, ripping the fabric at one point.

  Once he had the shirt he slid into it under the ambulance, then scooted out and up and into the driver’s seat. The keys worked; the engine sounded as if it had been waiting for him. He looked around, and even found a white lab coat that had been tossed on the passenger side floor. He put it on. The upper half was relatively clear, so he hoped it would look better if he was driving the ambulance.

  He started the engine and pulled away, nice and easy, through a line of FEMA trailers; a few people were standing around, smoking. Tommy drove slowly, trying to pretend he knew where he was headed. He’d only looked at the route through the back windows and had only a vague sense of where to find the street back to Lake Shore Drive. Once he spotted the two white radio tower transmitters of Willis Tower off to his left though, amidst the absurdly cheerful lights of the skyline, he knew where to look for the right road.

  If he got stopped, he planned on bluffing his way through it, saying something vague about an emergency. If somebody really got in his way, he might even try to use the lights and siren, if he could figure out how to turn them on.

  He passed plenty of soldiers and medics, but nobody looked twice at the ambulance. The lights above Soldier Field were on, and it almost felt like a preseason game in the late summer. The lack of sound made Tommy wonder if everybody was in the parking lots underground. He’d taken Kimmy to a Bears game a few years earlier, and he’d wanted to make it a big deal, so he’d borrowed his parent’s old Chevy, instead of taking the bus. Of course, the parking lot alone had cost him almost a week of wages, but he wanted to do it for Kimmy. They’d been amazed at how many levels had been built under the stadium. “Any deeper, and we’re gonna start seeing dinosaurs,” Tommy had said. This was back when Kimmy thought he was funny.

  He drove between the stadium and the Field Museum, navigating through military trucks and Humvees. He saw a few other ambulances sitting around, so he tried not to panic when he rolled up to the barricade. Before he had a chance to try the siren and lights, a soldier in a hazmat suit was standing in front of the ambulance, motioning for Tommy to stop.

  Tommy didn’t have much of a choice. He was surrounded by entire platoons of soldiers, by those giant tank things, and he didn’t think he’d make it ten feet if he tried to ram through the barricade.

  He threw his elbow into the window frame, and leaned out, so the soldier wouldn’t be able to see his bloody legs. “I gotta get through,” Tommy said before the soldier could say anything. “There’s been an accident.”

  “Nobody notified me,” the soldier said. He unclipped his handheld device, checked it.

  “Shit, you think they’re worried about notifying everybody when there’s an accident?”

  “I haven’t heard anything.”

  “Look, man, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m just doing what I’m told. Said they needed me immediately. Something happened near the press conference.”

  “Who gave you the orders?”

  “Dr. Reischtal,” Tommy said without thinking.

  “Who?”

  “Jesus, pal. You want me to do your job for you? I gotta get fucking moving, you know?”

  “Who gave the order?” the soldier asked again.

  “I told you. Dr. Reischtal.”

  The soldier touched his throat mike. “Need a confirmation at the gate. Got an order from a Dr. Reischtal. Anybody under that name in the database?”

  Tommy shook his head. “Fuck, dude. No rush. Might be the difference between life and death, you know?”

  The soldier ignored Tommy. He listened intently. “Oh. No shit. Do you have that number? Can we call and confirm this?”

  “Yes, yes, give him a call!” Tommy shouted. “In the meantime, let me go, so I can do my job. Jesus Christ, what, you think I’m gonna go in there and rob the banks or something?”

  The soldier didn’t know what to do. On one hand, he wanted to follow protocol, but on the other, he was expected to think on his feet. The name of Reischtal not only checked out, it elicited serious respect and no small amount of fear. If he held the ambulance driver up, and stopped him from getting to the scene of an accident in time to save lives, then he would be responsible. And if he let him go, what could one man in an ambulance do when downtown was full of solders? Who would want to try and break in to the Loop anyway? He should be worrying instead about waiting for clearance when the ambulance came back.

  “Fine, fine. But in the meantime, I’ll be contacting Dr. Reischtal.”

  “You do that, pal. But can you move, now?”

  The soldier gestured at the driver of one of the CTA buses, who pulled forward just enough to let the ambulance slip through. Once he was tearing down Lake Shore Drive, the lights of the skyline twinkling through the trees, Tommy pumped his fist and grinned like a madman. He couldn’t believe it. He felt like a genius for mentioning Dr. Reischtal. The fear that man cultivated was a goddamn two-edged sword.

  He was a hundred yards away from the barricade when they started shooting at the ambulance.

  CHAPTER 69

  8:47 PM

  August 14

  There was still a chance, Dr. Menard told himself. Still a chance that the bug hadn’t bitten him. And even if it had, there was still a chance that it didn’t carry the virus. He didn’t believe it, not really, but he still insisted that a chance was a chance, no matter how small. If he lost hope, then what?

  He had almost convinced himself that he might not be infected when he felt more movement in the small of his back. He squirmed around, trying to slap back there and rip his lab coat away at the same time. More bugs fell off of his coat and onto his hands. He whipped off the coat and to his horror, saw that a dozen or more bugs were crawling over it.

  He screamed then, an inarticulate howl of rage and despair. He slammed backwards into the driver’s seat, trying to smash the bugs. The soft leather absorbed the impact, and the bugs didn’t notice. Several of them crawled down into his pants, travelling down along the crease between his buttocks.

  Dr. Menard shot up, jammed his right hand back there, and raked his fingernails up through his butt crack. He scraped up three or four of the bugs the way a snowplow might collect a family of dead possums, but it was over. The bugs had gotten into the bus. They were on the floor, under the seat, crawling across the dashboard, everywhere.

  Dr. Menard’s chance was gone.

  He pulled the jump drive out of his pocket and stared at it. He’d fought his way through so much to get this information out to the public, only to have it end now. He had half a mind to get out and walk to the top of the stadium and throw the damn thing over the side. Maybe someday, someone would find it and give it to the proper authorities. He figured if he started up to the edge, they might shoot him before he got that far, but what else could he do?

  He didn’t even have a phone. And even if he could find one, it wouldn’t help. The jump drive used a full-size USB connector, and Dr. Menard had never seen a phone with a port that large. He sat up straighter for a moment, reaching out to grab the steering wheel. Phones couldn’t take a jump drive, but laptops . . .

  He jumped out, ignoring the bugs that still were crawling on him. If he could just manage to find someone with a laptop, one that could connect to the Internet on its own, or maybe even the stadium had their own local Wi-Fi that he could tap into. He couldn’t remember seeing any bags on the prison bus, so he ran around to other side of the closest bus and kicked open the doors.r />
  Somebody growled from under the bus. People were waking up.

  Dr. Menard jumped onboard. At first, the bus looked empty. He took another step, bent down, saw the sleepers. They were all either curled up on the seat or had fallen asleep hiding underneath the seats. A lot of them had bags. He started through the bus, testing the satchels and backpacks, weighing them, sizing them up for a laptop.

  Dr. Menard had accepted the clear outcome of being bitten. He knew, on an immediate level, that he was infected and would likely die within a few days. Of course, he didn’t truly understand the implications of his death, he hadn’t had the time to sit and contemplate. He only understood that he had a few hours left to make a difference. If he could find a laptop with the right connections, the evidence, all the lists of names, pictures, and even video of the test subjects waking from the deep sleep could be transmitted, and even if he was gone, it could have a lasting impact. He had a catalog of every horrific act inside the hospital, with all kinds of helpful information like names, dates, lab work, and it would crucify those responsible.

  He might be dying, but the information could live forever, if he could find the right laptop. He kept dragging bags out from the seats, until he came across one guy who had a laptop in a satchel still wrapped around his shoulders.

  Dr. Menard felt the laptop inside, and ripped the strap over the guy’s head. He unzipped it and pulled out the laptop.

  The guy started to wake up. He stared at Dr. Menard, blinking furiously, trying to clear his head.

  Dr. Menard opened the laptop and almost cried out in relief when he discovered it was already snapping out of its own sleep, powering up and ready. His forefinger slid across the trackpad, clicking on the Web browser. A few blank Web pages sprang out of the menu bar, still waiting for a signal.