First off, they always seemed to be the only guys who took care of the meatloaf calls. These were the traffic accidents, where there wasn’t enough left of the poor sonofabitch to fill the body bag. It’s tough to determine a pulse when you can’t even identify body parts from the pile of slick meat scattered across the asphalt. Sure, they’d scraped their fair share of corpses off the streets over the years, but during these past weeks, something was off. It was like they were the only paramedics on duty when it came time to shovel the remnants of some poor bastard into the thick black bags. And the statistics were skewed. A hell of a lot of people in Chicago suddenly seemed to be driving the wrong way down the Kennedy or Ike, intentionally slamming into concrete dividers or semi trailers at seventy miles an hour.

Usually, this time of the year, the total deaths were somewhere between five hundred and six hundred. They had seen the death toll mount over the past few days to around fourteen hundred.

And it wasn’t like Scott and Vince didn’t notice that everybody else kept their distance when it came time for the wet work. The paramedics upgraded to thicker, heavy-duty rubber gloves and started wearing cotton surgical masks.

Then there were the calls that took them to single-family homes, sometimes apartments, and they had a ride-along. The ride-along was usually some silent military guy, pretending to blend in by wearing surgical scrubs. The guns the guys carried tended to give it away. It was a different feeling, riding with a guy who never talked and carried a goddamn machine gun.

These military guys always rode with them when some psycho had butchered their family or roommates and had invariably barricaded himself in a bathroom or closet. The psycho was either shot or held down long enough to snap cuffs on his wrists and ankles, then hustled out to Scott and Vince’s ambulance.

The next stop was always the CCG. Never any other hospital. They didn’t know why. But they knew that dead-eyed bastard in the Hawaiian shirt probably had something to do with it. They would unload the patient, and drive off to the next tragedy, and once in a while, they would hear about the suspicious fires that had somehow erupted in the neighborhoods and suburbs they had just visited.

The days became a blur. Whenever they dealt with one of these calls, they had to wear a hazmat suit. Pretty soon, every call required these special requirements. Their hazmat suits were coated in some noxious liquid that burned if it touched their skin. Then a rinse. They peeled out of the suit helmet first, the first step in a long, complicated process. It was sometimes better and easier to simply sleep in the suits. Scott and Vince stewed in their own filth, sleeping at the hospital on the visitor benches. The body bags were sealed and placed in dry ice, then shipped to God knows where. They watched more and more soldiers come and go.

Until that night.

That dead-eyed bastard in the Hawaiian shirt had been waiting in the break room, wrinkling his nose at the awful coffee. He noticed Scott and Vince. “Hey, you guys want some real coffee? I know they’ve got some decent sandwiches upstairs. No reason for you two to try and survive on this shit.”

It sounded awfully tempting for Scott and Vince. Something inside told Scott that it wasn’t a good idea, something about it felt wrong somehow, but he was so damn tired and hungry. They followed the man in the Hawaiian shirt to the elevator and rode it up to the sixth floor.

The man in the Hawaiian shirt didn’t get off the elevator. He said, “There’s plenty of food and coffee down there, down at the end of the hall.”

Scott and Vince looked down the empty hall. It didn’t look inviting.

“It’s down there. Trust me,” the man in the Hawaiian shirt said. He hit a button and the doors closed.

Vince shrugged. Scott started down the long hallway, wondering if he had time to get out of the damn suit. As he passed each room, he noticed every single door was open. From what he could see, the rooms were empty, but he couldn’t help but feel as if there were people on this floor, people hiding out, people waiting for the right moment to appear.

A low, keening moan. Down on the right.

Some kind of banging, way down at the far end of the left side.

Nothing else. Just those horribly empty hospital rooms.

Scott said, “Fuck this.”

Vince turned to the elevator, wanting to hit DOWN. He found the control panel open, hanging broken and limp. Inside, every wire had been cut. He slapped the panel aside in frustration.

It banged into the wall and the sound echoed along the corridor.

Scott found a chair on its side, used it to fling at the video camera, a clear fuck-you to whoever left them on this floor.

The chair hit the ceiling, missing the camera, and crashed back to the floor.

A few howls and screams echoed in answer.

Scott turned back to Vince, started to ask, “Where’s the goddamn stairs?” when the first one came out of one of the rooms.

By the time they saw the running woman, it was too late. She had cracked under the strain to maintain the quiet, and came at the noise, bludgeoning Vince, the closest, with a wooden chair leg.

The rest came screaming out of the rooms. They swarmed the paramedics, striking, slashing, biting, sometimes each other, in a frantic effort to silence their world.

CHAPTER 37

10:23 AM

August 13

Ed drove. South on Canal. Left onto West Monroe, heading east, to the lake. The morning sun hung in the sky in the upper right corner of the windshield. After showers, breakfast, two pots of coffee, and surviving his girlfriend’s wrath, Ed explained that they were not to go within ten blocks of the hospital. Seemed that the word from above had come down on Arturo, with the weight of none other than the federal government, and this time, there was no way he would stick up for the two detectives.

“I guess we better find Qween,” Sam said.

“How?” Ed asked.

“We go looking for folks that look like they live under a rock. See if they know her.”

“That’s a hell of a plan.”

“It’s been a hell of a couple of days,” Sam said, readjusting his bulletproof vest, tightening the Velcro straps.

“Which way?” Ed looked north and south along State, then west along Madison.

“Let’s hit the river. Should be plenty of folks along there that know her.”

They parked on the sidewalk along Upper Wacker. Nobody would mess with the Crown Vic.

At the stairs down to the River Walk, Sam sank onto the top step to catch his breath. He pulled out his flask and Ed sat down heavily next to him. They passed the flask back and forth for a while, not saying anything. When it was empty, they got up and descended the rest of the stairs. They headed east along the river, moving almost as slowly as the water as it sluggishly flowed away from the lake.

Most of the usual haunts, the man-made caves and hollows, were vacant. They could see the remnants of the inhabitants, such as empty bottles, food wrappers, old blankets, stacks of old newspapers. But everything was empty until they passed under the Wabash Bridge.

Sam saw the man’s shoes first. He whistled at Ed, who was down near the water, peering over the edge. The shoes, a warped and cracked pair of black wingtips, ended in surprisingly clean white socks. Black wool suit pants disappeared in the darkness of the narrow culvert. Sam tapped the shoes. “Excuse me, sir.”

“Fuck you.” A rasping voice from inside the shadows. “Ain’t hurting nobody. Leave me alone.”

“Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I need to ask you a question.”

“Got nothin’ to say.”

Ed was short on patience. “Listen, pal, I know there’s all kinds of bad shit going on around here, but we need some help and we don’t have much time. You want to stick your head out of your hole and help us, or am I gonna have to drag you out on your ass and throw you in the goddamn river?”