CHAPTER 55

10:27 AM

August 14

Ed tried to turn right on Randolph and head west between City Hall and the Thompson Center, but found himself face to face with the imposing grille on the front of a CTA bus. All three lanes of the street were blocked by buses, all them going the wrong way, streaming toward Grant Park and the lake. The sidewalks were full of civilians, lining up to climb aboard. Soldiers stood back near the buildings, watching everything.

Ed spun the steering wheel back to the left, drove through the intersection, and pulled over. He killed the spinning lights and said, “This is as close as I’m gonna get to that hospital. It wouldn’t do you two any good to be seen driving up with us. Be a good idea to get in quiet.”

“No shit?” Qween said. “They must pay you extra to figure shit like that out.”

Dr. Menard opened the door and climbed out. Qween followed, making popping noises with her tongue. She slammed the door.

Sam lowered his window. “You’re a cranky little minx, you are, so go easy on any sonofabitch you come across.”

Ed looked them over one last time, this old woman who had been living in the streets, the haggard doctor with the broken glasses, gave them a solemn nod, and pulled smoothly away. He wound down Clark, threading his way through the sandbags, Strykers, and trucks full of soldiers, and hit the siren again.

Qween pulled Dr. Menard close and spoke very quietly. “Look around. They’re gonna haul everybody’s ass they can find out of here. Right now, try and look like we’re jus’ waiting for the bus, like ever’body else.” She took a moment, turning slowly, taking everything in, as people ignored them and flowed around them like water around the remnants of an ocean pier.

She sensed the panic seething just under the surface. Their eyes spoke volumes. Too wide and uncomprehending for people that had lived and worked in the Loop for years. These people looked like Midwestern tourists who had found they had been mistakenly dropped off in downtown Baghdad.

It wasn’t just the expressions. One woman had bottles of water stuffed in a bulging purse, a man carried three briefcases, and another man awkwardly carried the large hard drive of a desktop computer. Nobody was flat-out running, but they looked like they wanted to. Instead, they formed shuffling lines until the next empty bus rolled into place.

Qween figured the soldiers and the guns helped some in keeping thing orderly.

Whistles broke the grinding monotony of diesel engines and buses halted at the Clark crosswalk. Soldiers cleared the intersection as a covered truck rumbled up to the intersection.

“Gonna be movin’ quick. Get ready,” Qween said to Dr. Menard without looking at him. “You stick to me like syrup on flapjacks.”

A squadron of soldiers in hazmat suits jumped out of the truck and a collective gasp rippled through the crowd. The orange figures carried a variety of weapons, from the standard assault rifles to mundane pesticide canisters to what looked like flamethrowers with heavy tanks on the soldiers’ backs.

As the squad headed for the front doors of the Thompson Center, and everyone was watching the soldiers, Qween tapped Dr. Menard’s hand and said, “Now.” Then she was off, not running exactly, but moving quickly. She led him into the street, scuttling through a break in the buses, and instead of crossing to the other side, she turned up Randolph and they moved west, using the buses to hide them from the soldiers on both sides of the street. They travelled two blocks this way, fighting against the inexorable current until they reached Welles without being stopped.

Once under the El tracks, Qween led Dr. Menard back to the sidewalk, where they slipped through the crowd and into a massive parking garage. They went up six flights of stairs, taking it slow, and came out onto an empty roof, into the muted, hazy sunlight.

Qween didn’t stop until she leaned on the edge and could look over. Dr. Menard sagged gratefully into the low wall and caught his breath. The east–west streets were jammed with buses, all headed toward the lake. The north/south streets were full of soldiers, funneling civilians out of buildings to the buses.

A short, guttural cry caught everybody’s attention. A bike messenger, wielding his U-lock and a switchblade, stumbled out from between the parked cars. Soldiers kept their distance, but they eventually formed a ragged half-circle around him. One of them, apparently some sort of officer, edged forward and shouted, “Cease and desist!” The kid moaned at the harsh sound and leapt forward with the knife and the lock, and the officer squeezed off a quick three-shot burst. The kid flopped backwards, landing hard on his butt, missing his nose and the back of his head.

The civilians on the sidewalk flinched away. One of the soldiers stepped out with a bullhorn and his inflated voice boomed out into the street. “Everything is under control. The federal government is in charge of the situation. Everything is under control.” Without the constant rumble of the El trains, his amplified voice exploded in the space under the tracks and sent the fragmented echoes bouncing down the bus-filled streets. The rest of the soldiers marched up the street, shooting out the tires of the parked cars. Other soldiers sprayed the white chemical foam over the body, then slipped a heavy black bag around the bike messenger and hauled him away.

The mournful cry of the tornado sirens pierced the unnatural stillness and Qween felt a chill, despite the stifling heat and humidity. She had grown accustomed to hearing them for a few moments every first Tuesday morning of every month when they tested the sirens. Now, in the middle of a blistering August, the sound was eerily out of place, as if a child laughed in a morgue.

News and military helicopters filled the sky above the Loop, endlessly circling, like lazy dragonflies.

Qween spit over the edge and watched the soldiers. They were concentrating on setting up roadblocks and arranging sandbags, but soon they would be watching for any civilians left behind by the buses. There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere to blend in. She took Dr. Menard’s arm. “’Bout half an hour, we gonna stick out like a busted big toe.”

She sank heavily to the concrete, back to the wall. Since the soldiers had shown they had no problems shooting people, she didn’t want to be seen. Here was a place to rest out of sight. She didn’t know if any the helicopters were relaying information down to the soldiers, and wouldn’t be surprised if they were, but they should be fine for a few minutes at least.

She got winded easily these days, but her body was conditioned to moving at a steady clip. Qween moved fast because she had a lot of practice. She had been through most every building in the Loop and had discovered that even when she was crazy-ass drunk, nobody usually hassled her if she kept moving. She couldn’t just crawl through a place as if she was looking for a warm place to crash, because then they’d be on her ass immediately. If she kept moving though, at that steady chugging pace, as if she was in a hurry to get to somewhere important far from here and this was the fastest her body could move, which wasn’t far from the truth, nobody would fuck with her. She figured it was because if she kept moving, she automatically became someone else’s problem. She wasn’t accosting anybody. She wasn’t scaring anyone. She wasn’t costing the city money. She wasn’t damaging anything.

She was, however, taking it all in, remembering everything. She knew, for example, over at the elevator in the corner of the parking garage, that if you pried off the locked cover between the floor buttons and the emergency button, you could press a button that would take you to the sublevels, where the garage sold private parking spots for a steep monthly fee.