Just past Armitage, the train descended into the tunnels under Chicago.

Sam pulled out the bottle and spent the night riding the subway, watching his reflection bounce and flicker against the rushing darkness beyond the window, wondering how many dead rats were out there.

CHAPTER 28

8:15 AM

August 12

The maintenance man in charge of the day shift found Herman curled up under his desk. He frowned. This was not like Herman. As long as he’d known the man, Herman had never slept through the night on the job. He knew for a fact that Herman sometimes took a nap, but only after he had finished his work, and needed rest before heading off to drive a cab. The day shift man didn’t give a damn if Herman slept or not as long as the work was done, but he’d found the floor buffer in the middle of the hallway.

“Herman, Herman.” He shook Herman’s shoulder. “You can’t sleep here, man. Come on.”

Herman jolted awake and stared around, blinking rapidly, as if he didn’t know where he was. He tried to swallow. His eyes finally focused on the day shift man. He croaked out a question.

The day shift man didn’t understand him. “I don’t know what the problem is, man, but you’d better get up and finish the floor before anybody else gets in, you know?” He held out his hand.

Herman smacked it away and scrambled out from under the desk. He made a sound halfway between a whimper and a deep whine, and backed away from the other man.

“Herman, you okay? You want me to call somebody? A doctor, maybe?”

Herman spun and shuffled quickly down the corridor, disappearing into the shadows.

He raced up a utility staircase and burst into a corridor padded with thick carpet and bright fluorescent lights that burned his eyes. He stumbled along, hand slapping at door handles. They were all locked. He finally found a supply closet and fell inside. He crawled under the shelves to a dark corner and pressed his face into it, trying to quell the sobs threatening to erupt. The pain in his head was excruciating. The pain obliterated everything else, his job, his appearance, any rational thought. He couldn’t even follow a logical sequence of ideas to try and understand what was wrong with him. He scraped his fingernails against the rough paint and pushed his forehead even harder into the corner.

Gradually, a new sensation crept up underneath the pain. Something bubbled mischievously under his skin. For the briefest moment, he almost felt relief, as this new feeling tipped the balance and he found that he could focus on something other than the agony spiking through his head.

But the sweet reprieve was gone in the time it took to exhale.

And then he wished he could have the pain back.

A sinister itch crawled up his back, starting just under his buttocks and snaking its way along his spine. He’d never felt anything like it before. It was maddening, as if a spider with feathers for legs was gently pulling itself along the inside of his skin.

He twisted his right arm back and frantically clawed at the whispering, teasing irritation. The second his fingers dragged the fabric of his shirt across the bare skin, disturbing the thick hair on his back, the itch got a thousand times worse. He heard something, something indistinct from a great distance, and didn’t realize it was his own moan of despair.

He ripped his shirt over his head and dropped it. Twisting, he tried to reach the bad spots, his thick, stubby fingers failing to provide any relief. The blunt fingernails finally tore the surface of skin, and blood trickled down his back.

It made the itch worse.

He was openly sobbing now, slapping, clawing, raking his nails across the skin on his back as far as he could stretch. The itch, though, kept dancing away, waiting mockingly just out of reach. He struggled to his feet, pawing through the shelves for something, anything that he could use to scratch.

His fingers closed over a pair of industrial scissors with foot-long shears.

Without hesitation, he shoved the sharp points up into the spot between his shoulder blades. He rubbed them vigorously back and forth. A curious burning relief slowly spread along his spine and he closed his eyes. His breathing sounded unnaturally loud in the cramped closet.

The itching under his buttocks grew worse. He shifted his grip on the scissors, gripping them halfway up the shears. He stabbed the back of his right thigh, and raked the points from side to side. The blades tore through his pants and flesh like a fork sinking through the skin that forms on pudding as it cools. He paid no attention to blood seeping down the back of his legs, staining the khaki fabric a dark red.

The closet door opened.

A woman stood there. She gave a startled gasp at finding someone inside. She’d been working as an office administrator for over five years, and she’d never, ever been shocked like this at work before. She blushed and started to apologize. Then she saw the look in Herman’s eyes. And when she saw the blood, she started screaming.

The scream pierced the insanity of itching, driving a bolt of fear directly into his skull, right between his eyes. The itching and pain from the headache cracked and fell away, leaving nothing but raw, naked panic. Adrenaline exploded throughout his system, and he lashed out with the scissors.

The two tips, spread slightly apart about an inch, like the jaws of a bored, not very hungry shark, sank into her side between the lower ribs, just under her left breast. Her scream caught and broke apart sharply as she struggled for another breath.

Herman yanked the tips of the scissors out, reversed his grip, curling his fingers through the round holes of the handles.

The woman found another breath as she stumbled backwards into a cubicle wall, and produced an even louder scream. Herman stayed close, raised his arm, and brought the scissors down across her face. The points slid through the plump tissue of her cheek, scraped along her jawbone, until finally plunging into the soft skin above her collarbone. He ripped them out and drove the blades into her skull again. This time, the shears sank four inches into her left eye, popping it like a squashed grape.

She kept screaming.

He did not relent, even as she fell to the floor. Again and again, he drove the scissors into her eyes. Her mouth. When she finally stopped making noise, her face looked like she’d fallen headfirst into a wood chipper.

He left her twitching in the hall and ran.

Herman burst out of the spinning doors into the August heat, full of sticky air and exhaust fumes. He stumbled, falling to his knees on the sidewalk in the midst of a throng of early-morning commuters. He had no comprehension that he was shirtless and covered in blood. Nothing existed for him except the liquid fear that was quickly hardening along his nerve endings into teeth clenching hate.

The roar from a northbound Orange Line train grew louder as it passed, clattering along above Wells a block away. Herman clapped his hands to his ears and howled.

Most everyone approaching stopped once they saw all the blood. Except for one businessman, striding purposefully down the sidewalk, yammering into a cell phone. He wasn’t paying attention and was nearly on top of Herman before he noticed anything. All he saw, though, was a shirtless man, which undoubtedly meant he was inebriated, rocking back and forth, hands on his head for some reason.

“Hang on, Bob. There’s some kind of moron—”

Herman sprang at the man and stabbed him in the throat. The scissor blades hit the businessman’s carotid artery, and when Herman yanked them out, blood erupted in a fine mist, spraying four feet across the sidewalk. The man took a step back, but something about his inner drive, his desire to dominate, remained in his posture, keeping him on his feet. His brain wouldn’t let him drop his cell phone either.