Ed and Sam exchanged glances. Ed nodded and twisted the key. He hit the gas and pulled up alongside the large, shaggy man. Sam had the door open and his pistol out before Ed had even stopped. “Chicago PD. Get in the car.”

The man gaped at them, cigarette halfway to his mouth. “I’m sorry, what?”

Sam said, “Shut the fuck up and get in the car.” He opened the back door.

The man looked up and down the deserted street as if seeking any witnesses, then climbed in the backseat with Qween. Sam kicked the door shut and jumped back into the front seat. Ed headed south in a short squeal of rubber.

Sam twisted in his seat to face the big man and found that Qween already had a straight razor buried in the guy’s straggly beard, pressed firmly against his throat. The big man was holding his chin so high the top of his head brushed against the ceiling of the Crown Vic.

“You just sit still now, you hear?” Qween said.

Sam had no idea where the hell she’d been hiding a straight razor. “Easy, Qween. He’s not going anywhere, are you, pal?”

The big man’s stare went from Qween to Sam to Ed, then to the buildings whipping past. Ed hadn’t slowed down yet; the car was approaching fifty miles an hour as it roared through the empty downtown streets.

“Suit yourself,” Qween said and slipped the razor back into the folds of her cloak.

The big man swallowed. Sam could tell he wanted to touch his throat to see if it was bleeding or not, but fear kept his hands frozen in his lap.

Sam said, “What’s your name?”

“David Menard.”

“You a doctor?”

“Yes. Dr. David Menard.”

“You work at that hospital.”

“No. Yes, well, I mean, I don’t know how to—”

Sam tapped him sharply on the forehead with the barrel of his pistol. “I want some straight fucking answers, you got me? You try to lie to me one more time and I’ll let my girl here cut your balls off.”

“I wasn’t lying! Swear to Christ, I’m not lying.”

“Let’s hear it then.”

Dr. Menard talked so fast that at first, it sounded like the babbling of one of the speed freaks they would occasionally confront in an interrogation. “I was working there, yes. Me and others. The CDC brought us in to work with their team. I study viruses, that’s my real job. This, this was something—I got a call in the middle of the night, telling me to pack up. Hopped on a plane in Sacramento, and they flew me out here. Next thing I know, we’re studying a new virus. From the little bit I’ve been allowed to see, parts of three floors, I do know this. There are a large number of seriously ill patients back there and God help us if there’s any more.”

“Why?”

“If this spreads, we’re . . . over. I’ve never seen anything like this. Nobody has seen anything like this. This is . . . this virus, they don’t even have a name for it yet.”

“How do you catch it?”

“We don’t know exactly. Based on the information we’ve been given, it appears that close proximity to a rat that is carrying the virus can be a source of the infection. It is certainly present in the rat saliva, much like rabies.”

Ed and Sam glanced at Qween. She ignored them.

“But that doesn’t explain all of the cases,” Dr. Menard said. “Many of the initial patients were homeless individuals, and therefore, we had to assume that because of their lifestyle, contact with a rat was certainly possible, if not likely, since the infected rats have shown to be quite aggressive. But within the last twelve hours, the number of patients that presumably would have no reason to be near a rat skyrocketed.”

Sam interrupted, “Just exactly how many patients are in there now?”

Dr. Menard shook his head. “I don’t know. Fifty. A hundred. Two hundred? I’m sorry. Dr. Reischtal, he’s in charge, and he kept all records classified.”

“Why?” Ed asked.

“I have no idea. Look, I don’t know what to say. We just started two days ago. Nobody has had any sleep.” Dr. Menard rubbed his face. “All we know is that it appears to be fatal in every case of infection.”

“What are the symptoms?” Ed asked.

“At first, apparently nothing. The patients sometimes fall into a deep sleep, when they awake, they often suffer extreme discomfort on the surface of the skin.”

“What kind of discomfort?” Ed asked.

Dr. Menard gave a heavy sigh. “They itch,” he said, meeting Ed’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “It must be awful. We have been observing patient after patient claw at their skin until they bleed. Back in my grad school days, I worked with addicts going through withdrawal, serious stuff, and I never encountered anything like this. And then, at some point, they begin to act . . . irrationally.”

“They get violent as fuck,” Ed said.

Sam glanced at Qween again, hearing the screams from the homeless shelter.

Dr. Menard nodded slowly. “Yes. Postmortem examinations of some of the bodies, people that had been shot and killed by the police—after the attacks, you know—they have revealed some clues about the damage the virus causes, but not nearly enough. The problem is, we have gotten so few specimens with undamaged tissue, it’s been impossible to tell what the effects of the virus actually are.” He gave a hollow laugh. “One guy got hit by an SUV. All that was left fit into a box this big.” He held his hands about two feet apart. “What little we do know is that it appears to attack the amygdala. You’re familiar with the term, ‘amygdala hijack’?” He caught the blank looks of the other three. “Okay. ‘Road Rage.’ I’m sure you have encountered this in your jobs. There’s an overwhelming sense of fury, when someone just snaps.”

“Sounds like a few domestic disputes I’ve seen.”

“I would imagine so, yes. But this, this is something else. Increase that fury by tenfold. Maybe fifty, a hundred. This is all such guesswork at this point. We need literally years of research before we’ll know anything for sure. Anyway, as far as we can tell, the virus seems to travel along the peripheral nervous system and it shoots straight into the limbic system of our brains, specifically the amygdala. They’re two little buds, tucked away deep inside your head. If you were to drill straight through here and here”—Dr. Menard pointed at his right eye and right ear—“you’d find it at the intersection of those lines. The amygdala is one of the oldest parts of the brain. It controls emotions like fear and anger. You’ve heard of ‘fight or flight,’ right?”

Ed and Sam nod.

“The lizard part,” Sam said.

“No. You’re thinking of stuff like keeping your heart going, breathing, blood in your brain, that kind of thing. This is a step higher on the evolutionary ladder. The amygdala dumps tons of adrenaline and cortisone into your system, so you can run. Fight. Take action, whatever. The thing is, there’s no direct connection between the prefrontal lobe”—Dr. Menard tapped his forehead—“and the amygdala. The body doesn’t want to waste any time thinking about what it should do when it’s in danger. It has to react. Immediately. And that’s the problem here. The virus attacks the prefrontal lobe. We don’t know why. Maybe it likes the taste. It multiplies astonishingly fast, wiping out your ability to think with any reasoning or logic. Meanwhile, while it is destroying the prefrontal lobe, it is attaching itself to the amygdala, causing the body to go into overdrive.”

“So it’s driving people crazy,” Ed said.

Dr. Menard gave a slow shrug. “I guess you could say that, yes. It is literally driving them mad with fear. With the amygdala going berserk, and the prefrontal lobes being chewed up and spit out . . . the infected are unable to stop themselves. They’re unable to think logically. And so they lash out. Violently. A lot of times, it’s sound that triggers the rage. Like with rabies. In the later stages, the virus attacks the rest of the body, causing massive internal bleeding. You’ve heard of the Ebola virus? It literally liquefies your insides. Ebola and rabies are similar, in many respects.”