Ed plotted a course west out of downtown to Lake Shore Drive and turned south when he hit the lake. They passed the Field Museum and Soldier Field.

Sam yawned. It surprised him. He turned his radio off. “I think I’m gonna try to sleep,” he said.

Ed nodded, turned down his own radio, and found a talk-radio AM station on the car’s stereo, the frenzied hosts doing whatever they could to make everything sound like the world was about to crash into chaos and death. He turned the volume low, so it could serve as soothing white noise for Sam. Ed knew the truth.

Sam had never talked about his insomnia, but he’d never tried to hide it either. He adjusted his seat back, getting just enough of a incline to rest his skull against the doorframe, just out of sight of the side window. He held his notebook in his lap, and sunglasses so he could close his eyes and no one could tell he was asleep.

Ed drove while Sam slept. Since his partner was out, he tried to look at the world with both of their eyes. Problem was, Sam was more paranoid than a meth addict on a seven-day bender; but he still had this preternatural sense of who was dangerous and who wasn’t.

Ed never could find that fine line; almost always he was either too disbelieving or too trusting. He drove slowly, letting the motions of the car help Sam get some sleep. They passed hulking shells of empty project homes. This was August, and nature ran rampant through unkempt concrete. Trees, bushes, grass all exploded with life, as if the warm, thick air acted as a kind of steroid.

He kept the AC on for Sam, but rolled down the driver’s window. When he was thinking and driving through the city, he preferred to breathe the same air as everybody else on the streets. He wanted to hear everything, to feel the heat.

Nothing was happening, at least as far as this new threat was concerned, though. Oh, there was the usual shit, of course. Gangbangers swaggering down their blocks, itching for any excuse to prove their manhood. Certifiably brain-dead patients behind the wheels of vehicles. Public intoxication. Crack passing hands in the open sunlight. Zombies, almost always women, stumbling along, clear victims of domestic abuse, all bruised up. Some with blood still in their hair. If Ed felt like it, he could park the damn car on one corner and arrest five people inside of fifteen minutes.

But there was nothing concrete he could put his finger on, nothing that he could stop and wake Sam for, nothing that he could point to with clear conviction and say yes, there, right there is irrefutable evidence of the problem. So he kept driving. Up and down avenues along the South Side. Through areas that resembled nothing more than bombed-out wasteland where people eked out a living, once step ahead of homelessness and starvation.

The unwelcome cousins of paranoia and frustration started creeping into his thoughts and he decided that a possible solution was simply to become more paranoid, like Sam. So he found a quiet street lined with limp, lifeless trees and ravaged three-flats, pulled over, and fished in his sport coat for a blunt. He fired it up, took three deep hits. He stubbed the end out and stashed the blunt back in an inside pocket.

He drove to the end of the block, exhaling through his nose. Already, the air felt denser, the sounds were crisper, and the situation seemed more definable in his head. He turned off the radio, driving aimlessly, and tried to lay it out.

The CDC was in town, scared to death. They knew something was wrong with the rats, and apart from some bullshit “rat flu” story they’d released just to cover their ass, they weren’t talking. Nobody else knew anything. Ed and Sam only had one person telling them anything, and that was a deranged homeless woman who liked to turn live rats loose in government buildings and drink everybody else under the table. And Ed had to face facts: nobody was going to listen to her.

But Ed had been there; he’d been under the city, He’d seen those rats in the subway tunnels, heard them hissing and scrambling over themselves as they tried to attack any humans who got too close. The three of them couldn’t be the only ones to have witnessed anything.

And then there were the deaths. So many this year. All those in the subway, started by that college student falling on the third rail in an empty subway station. The suicides. The blitzkrieg of traffic deaths. Unusual heat. A man going berserk for no apparent reason, attacking people on a downtown street with a pair of scissors. Rumors of disappearances. Rumors of more deaths.

None of it made much sense.

He kept driving.

CHAPTER 38

3:32 PM

August 13

Even with the somewhat extreme new measures, Roger Bickle and Daisy made weekly rounds throughout the Fin. In six months, they had not found a single bedbug. Roger still wore his uniform, and he only let Daisy loose to sniff at the bottom of the doors in the middle of the day, after the guests had either checked out or left for the day, and before any new guests checked in. If anybody asked, Roger was supposed to answer in a cheerful, yet vague manner. Yes, he could admit that he was from a pest control company. He was merely engaged in a routine patrol. Since he had been working here, he had never found any pests.

He was never, under any circumstances, supposed to mention bedbugs.

Daisy ran from door to door, keeping her nose in the corner where the wall and floor met. She would slow down at each door, taking great snuffles at the slight gap at the bottom. Sometimes up along the door frame, then pushing off, loping to the next one. After about five or six doors, Roger would call her back and she would cross to the other side of the hallway and check the doors along that side as he walked to the next group of doors. This way, they could cover each floor of the hotel in about two to three minutes.

Fifteen minutes in, Daisy was working along the fourteenth floor when she stopped. Drove her nose into the carpet in front of Room 1426. Took three snorting deep draughts of air. She sat, wagging her tail.

Roger stepped up and knocked. He waited, patient. After a full minute, he knocked again. After another minute, he knocked a third time and called the front desk. He gave them his name and consultant number, and asked if the guest in room 1426 had checked out yet.

“Just a moment, sir.”

From inside the room, he heard a moan.

“No, I’m sorry, sir. That room is still occupied.”

A sharp cry from inside.

Roger said, “Then I’m afraid I am going to have to speak with your general manager immediately.”

Something shattered against the inside of the door. It sounded like one of the room’s glasses.

Roger said to the clerk on the phone, “I think the guest in Room 1426 might be having a problem.”

Two more tinkling crashes against the door. There went the rest of the glasses.

Daisy barked.

“Shhhh,” Roger hissed.

“I’m connecting you now, sir. I will try and contact the guest.” A click, and Roger heard ringing inside the phone, then inside the room.

Mr. Ullman picked up on the second ring. “What?”

A wavering scream erupted from inside, echoing the electronic ringing of the room’s telephone. A deep, thudding crash. The screaming did not stop.

Daisy gave another worried bark.

“Where are you?” Mr. Ullman asked.

“Fourteenth floor,” Roger said, horrified at the violent sounds from within. “Tell them to stop trying to call this room. I don’t think the ringing is helping.”

Mr. Ullman gave a curt order; the telephone in the room went silent. The heavy banging did not stop. In fact, it grew in volume. Underneath it, Roger could hear sobbing.

Roger said, “Listen, somebody better get up here like right now. Something is terribly wrong in there.” He realized he was talking to a dead phone. The connection had been broken. Roger dialed the front desk again. “Have you called the police yet?”