August 14

Tommy’s first instinct was to bolt from the ambulance and simply run, just pump his arms and legs and haul ass in any direction. He knew that wouldn’t work, but maybe he could drop down by the shore, maybe slip into the water and try to escape that way. The urge to run was so strong he had the back door open and one bare foot on the ground before he realized he’d been spending so much time just trying to escape, he hadn’t considered what he would do if he actually got loose.

He couldn’t just run and hide. How would he find Grace?

He needed a plan. Fighting against every instinct shrieking inside of him, Tommy pulled his foot back and closed the door behind him. The first thing he checked was the ignition. Of course, the keys were gone. He still wasn’t sure exactly how he was going to find Grace, but an idea was starting to sprout in the back of his mind. He tore through the inside of the ambulance, looking for anything he could use as a weapon.

The only thing halfway sharp he found was a basic scalpel. The blade wasn’t more than an inch long. Tommy shook his head. It figured. The one time he needed something big, something with a bit of range where he could defend himself, and he managed to dig up one of the more useless blades for getting out of here. Just his luck that he would find the one thing that could have made it easier to cut his way out of the leather straps after he had already gotten out of the wheelchair. Instead, he’d put himself through the equivalent of a car crash.

Tommy told himself to stop being such a pussy.

He was loose and he had a blade. It would be enough.

He wrapped the IV tubes around his fist, tucked the scalpel into the front pocket of his hospital gown, and opened the back door again, slower this time. He leaned out and watched through the windows, but nobody was around.

He stepped out and shut the back door softly behind him. He couldn’t escape the feeling that the warship not three hundred yards away was watching him. He tried to move slow and bored, acting like there was nothing out of the ordinary going on, like he was merely a doctor, or at the very least, a paramedic keeping an eye on the ambulance. The goddamn hospital gown tended to spoil the effect. No matter how tight he tried to pull it around his shoulders, it somehow still flopped open, leaving his ass hanging out in the wind.

As dusk fell, various lights began blinking to life, all over the ship.

He ignored it and slipped between two trailers. If he could find an empty trailer, he might be able to find some scrubs inside, anything to make him look like a medic, instead of a patient. Then he needed to find a computer, something that might be able to tell him if Kimmy and Grace were on one of the buses that he’d watched taking people into Soldier Field all afternoon. Then, with a decent disguise, and a whole lot of luck, he might be able to gain entry to the stadium and track down his daughter. He’d have the scalpel, just in case.

The first trailer’s door was locked. The second had a ton of cables snaking underneath it, so it looked promising. It also had windows, open to take advantage of any breezes coming off the lake, and Tommy eased in close and listened. He could hear a voice, but it sounded tinny, fake somehow. And even stranger, it sounded like a voice he knew. Keeping his back flat against the trailer, he slowly leaned over and peered inside.

He heard other voices, closer, louder. He guessed there were at least two men inside, but he couldn’t see them. One of them said something, something that made the other one laugh, but Tommy didn’t listen. He was focused on the flat-screen TV on the table.

Lee was on the screen, sharply dressed as always, saying, “. . . could not unfortunately join us at the moment, but they will definitely be a part of our victory celebration later tonight.” Lee paused for a moment. “I stand before you in the heart of my hometown, a city that has withstood its share of tragedies, from the Great Fire in 1871, the sinking of the Eastland in 1915, the Our Lady of Angels school fire in 1958, and so many others. But this town, this city of broad shoulders, we have picked ourselves up by our bootstraps and marched onward into history.”

One of the men inside the trailer said, “Laying it on a little thick, ain’t he?”

“I can assure you that when this crisis is over, we will rebuild what we have lost, we will honor those we have lost, and we will become stronger, and safer, than ever!” Lee paused, as if for applause. None came.

The camera pulled back, as if to explain the lack of an audience. Lee stood by himself behind a podium on a stage smack in the middle of Clark. City Hall was off to the left, the courthouse off to the right. Then, just before the camera slowly zoomed back in on Lee, so quickly Tommy wondered if he’d actually seen it or not, he spotted two figures standing back near the stage steps, as if waiting for their cue.

One was a strikingly beautiful young woman, wearing a black evening gown. She was holding the hand of a young girl in a yellow dress. Lee hit a point in the speech, sounding like he was declaring triumph in a closely contested election, and beckoned the two to join him onstage. Lee put his arm around Kimmy’s waist. He waved with his free hand for a moment, then bent down and hoisted Grace to his shoulder. She was smiling, but Tommy could see the confusion in her eyes as she faced the reporters and bright lights.

Tommy jerked his head back. He felt his insides clench. His heart sped up, booming away so loudly in his chest that he was worried that the men inside might hear it. He was certain that they would hear the gurgling of his empty stomach.

Kimmy and Grace weren’t safe in Soldier Field. They were still downtown, in the midst of the soldiers, bugs, and the infected.

And even beyond that, Lee still had control of Kimmy and Grace.

The decision was easy. Simple.

He heard one of the men inside stand, and the trailer shifted slightly. The man said, “Fine, my turn to go check on the prick. But when Reischtal gets here, it’s gonna be your job to help him. Guy’s an asshole. Makes me nervous.”

Tommy ran back to the ambulance. The new plan taking shape in his head wasn’t much, but it was a start. He dropped to his stomach and wriggled under the ambulance. He unwrapped the IV tubing from his wrist, still not sure if he could use it or not. He might have been able to use it if the ambulance had been parked in gravel and he had a lot of time to bury it under dirt and gravel, but it was hard to hide the clear tube in the grass.

As he lay in the itching, late summer grass, the compulsion to bolt, to flee far, far away still seethed inside. He fought it, driving it down deep, the same way he fought the panic earlier that threatened to take over completely. He forced himself to focus on the sound of Grace’s laughter. He knew he couldn’t focus on just the memory of her face. It was too much. They’d find him, sooner or later, curled up under the ambulance, sobbing his eyes out. But something about her laughter tightened his guts, made him grit his teeth and promise the universe that not only would she be able to laugh again, all this would be nothing but a brief nightmare, whisked away by the morning sun; he would damn well be there and they would laugh together.

Footsteps in the grass. The boots of one of the paramedics came closer. Keys jingled. Tommy undulated, like some malformed snake, under the transmission system until he was directly under the driver’s seat. He heard the driver’s door open, saw the hazmat boots go up on tiptoe as the soldier leaned across the seat.

The soldier said, “Still with us, shitheel?”

Tommy braced his bare feet against the front tire, bent sideways at the waist, and with his left hand, he whipped out the end of the IV tubing, circling it around the paramedic’s feet. He caught the end with his right, and slowly drew it tight around the man’s ankles. He waited until the paramedic had leaned in just enough to realize that the prisoner was no longer in the back of the ambulance, then seized the man’s ankles and yanked, flinging his upper torso backwards.