One wild thought kept bouncing around her head, and although she dismissed it as being too ridiculous, it kept coming back. She was worried that they’d stumbled into a nest of those damn bugs, but there was no way that many bugs would clump together in one place like this. No way. So she flicked the light around the mounds of what looked like rich black soil. But she knew it wasn’t dirt. The particles were a touch too large for one thing, and the other was that they were flat, and lacked the way soil crumbled when it fell apart. It wasn’t clay, or mud.

Dr. Menard climbed out of the airshaft and sneezed.

Qween got down and leaned over the edge of the table. She held the flashlight close to a stagnant wave of the substance. It wasn’t exactly black; that was just the lack of light in the sub-basement. Up close, the stuff was a dark reddish-brown, and in some spots, almost translucent. Whatever it was, it wasn’t alive. She reached out to touch it; most of it crumbled to dust under her fingers. She cupped her hand, and brought a sample up so they could get a better look.

“Any ideas, Doc?”

“I don’t . . .” Dr. Menard trailed off. He pinched some of the stuff between his thumb and forefinger, taking the flashlight from her hand and holding the lens an inch away. The substance reminded Qween of fish scales for some reason.

“Oh good Christ,” Dr. Menard whispered. “It’s all the shells, it’s their exoskeletons. These bedbugs, they molt. Five times, if I can remember it correctly. And this . . .” The flashlight swept the room. The dark material was a least two feet deep, sometimes higher near the walls and some of the furniture. “This is what is left, when . . . when they . . .”

“When they shuck they skin,” Qween finished for him.

Dr. Menard’s eyes raced around the huge room. “This city has got a bigger problem than anyone realizes. There’s nothing on record.... I don’t think there’s anything that indicates . . . There’s gotta be . . . millions of exoskeletons here. Billions.” He swallowed. “If these things carry that virus, we are all in such big trouble.”

“I don’t have no fancy degree or anything, but I coulda told you that. So let’s get moving.” She slid off the table into the drifts of the shells of dead bugs. They came up to her knees. It felt like when she was a little girl, playing in an old silo full of wheat chaff. “We ain’t going back the way we came, ’less you can climb up that air shaft.”

Dr. Menard tucked the bottoms of his pants into his socks, then retied his shoes as tight as possible. “If we can’t get back out this way, how were you planning on getting out?” He pushed off the table into the dry swamp, feet disappearing from view as they slid through all those tiny exoskeletons.

Qween gave a dry, rasping laugh. “Shit. Never promised you a way to get out. Just a way to get inside. Once we’re in there, it’s your call. Figured you’d have an idea.” She waded through the drifts, heading for the door.

“I’m not coming back this way, I can tell you that much,” Dr. Menard said.

“What you worried about? Ain’t nothing here but a bunch of old shells. Shit, you oughta see what’s left after a crawfish boil on Maxwell Street. Now there, there’s a mess. This? This ain’t gonna slow us down. This is just a billion crunchy ghosts is all.”

CHAPTER 60

12:39 PM

August 14

Tommy still sat with Don’s corpse. There were no windows, no clock. He had no idea how long he’d been locked in the room. The IV bags hanging from the rod that rose above his right shoulder were empty. The slick plastic bag attached to his catheter that hung down by his left leg was full of urine. He did not know if he had been asleep or awake; the edges between consciousness and oblivion were getting blurry.

Sometimes he thought he saw bugs. On the bed. Lately, on the floor.

Tommy wondered if he was starting to hallucinate.

Driven down to nothing, he went back to testing the leather straps, flexing each arm and leg, giving each side a chance to rest while he yanked with the other side. It didn’t work. No matter how hard he pulled, he couldn’t recreate whatever combination of movements had led to that wonderfully elusive sound of popping thread. He worried that he was getting too weak. He had no idea the last time his body had gotten any kind of nourishment.

Now, instead of phantom flickers in his mind of Dr. Reischtal laughing at him from behind the monitors, of infected patients running howling through the halls, he could only see his daughter’s face. This was worse than anything. Watching her expression fall from warmth and joy to soul-crushing terror and pain as men’s hands groped and clutched and squeezed.

Tommy bucked and flailed at the wheelchair straps, howling and weeping, sobbing promises to Dr. Reischtal, to anyone watching, begging for release.

Something gave. More movement from one of the straps. He realized that it was the combination of jerking his left arm and right leg at the same time that gave him enough leverage. He tried it again. The tearing sound was perhaps the most blissful thing he’d heard in his life.

Soon, he had enough slack in the leather strap around his right ankle that he could pull his foot free. He used it to get a better grip on the plastic covering the floor, and pushed back around, away from the door, toward Don. The wall behind the bed and camera was filled with cabinets and Tommy was hoping for some kind of blade.

He stopped. Cold. At least five or six bugs were now clearly visible on the floor. He could only guess that they were leaving Don to come looking for the only warm body in the room. Using his toes, Tommy got the wheelchair rocking and angled it to the side, crushing a bug. Rolling back and forth, he used the wheels to smash every bug he could find, one by one.

He edged around the bed and tried not to think about the cold, clotted blood under his bare foot and hoped that the virus couldn’t survive for hours in a cool temperature. Once on the other side of the bed, the first thing he did was kick the camera over. It didn’t shatter like he had hoped, but it still felt halfway satisfying. Of course, he couldn’t do anything about the one in the ceiling.

Using his toes, he pulled the drawers open, swung the cabinet doors wide. Nothing useful. No scalpels. No bone saws. Just soft supplies, like rubber gloves, sheets, replacement paper towels for above the small sink. A goddamn bedpan.

He looked back to the door. Maybe he could push himself back, see if he couldn’t figure out how to unlock it. If he could get out of this room, he might be able to find something, anything that could help him get free of the wheelchair.

Tommy was halfway around the bed when there was a loud click, and Sgt. Reaves opened the door.

It wasn’t until the third bus was almost full that Sam had to make an example out of somebody.

They’d brought out sixty-two prisoners, splitting them between the three buses. Over half of these were low-level security concerns, mostly old white guys with three DUIs and black kids who still didn’t understand the difference between a federal charge of intent to sell versus the lesser Illinois charge of simple possession. These kids saw themselves as proud warriors, following in the footsteps of their fathers, uncles, and brothers. As if it was some kind of honorable career choice. However, they were still new enough that federal prison scared the living shit out of them. So they were fine, no trouble at all. Neither were the three or four junkies, so strung out that they thought they might be in hell.

The rest were career criminals, serial rapists, neighborhood narcotic kingpins, and guys who couldn’t manage to walk past a car without trying to steal it. For the most part, they were docile, and didn’t give anybody any trouble. The guards brought them down and out through the visiting area, further disrupting the prisoners’ expectations. All prisoners were normally moved in and out of the Metropolitan Correctional Center through a special passageway along the fifth floor of the parking garage. Instead, Ed and Sam had them led out into the plaza, then around to Clark, where the buses were waiting.