The force of the movement jerked the paramedic off his feet. The paramedic landed hard, flat on his back. It drove the breath straight out of his lungs. He gasped for a breath, but it was too late. Tommy pulled the man halfway under the ambulance, drawing the IV tubing tight around the ankles, snaring them together. The paramedic slapped at the side of the ambulance.

With his right arm, Tommy drove the scalpel deep inside the paramedic’s upper left thigh. The one-inch blade sunk easily into the flesh. Tommy ripped it across the large muscles, slicing through the femoral artery.

Blood hit the undercarriage.

The paramedic went berserk, spasms wracking his back and legs. He folded in half, reaching down, tearing at Tommy’s arms. Tommy jammed his left foot into the man’s crotch and pulled the ankles tight against his chest and rode out the convulsions.

In less than thirty seconds it was over. The paramedic was dead.

Tommy dragged the entire body under the ambulance and went through the man’s pockets. He found the ambulance keys and forgot everything else. He started to crawl away, then went back and unbuttoned the blue shirt, pulling it off the corpse. It took a while but Tommy kept at it, ripping the fabric at one point.

Once he had the shirt he slid into it under the ambulance, then scooted out and up and into the driver’s seat. The keys worked; the engine sounded as if it had been waiting for him. He looked around, and even found a white lab coat that had been tossed on the passenger side floor. He put it on. The upper half was relatively clear, so he hoped it would look better if he was driving the ambulance.

He started the engine and pulled away, nice and easy, through a line of FEMA trailers; a few people were standing around, smoking. Tommy drove slowly, trying to pretend he knew where he was headed. He’d only looked at the route through the back windows and had only a vague sense of where to find the street back to Lake Shore Drive. Once he spotted the two white radio tower transmitters of Willis Tower off to his left though, amidst the absurdly cheerful lights of the skyline, he knew where to look for the right road.

If he got stopped, he planned on bluffing his way through it, saying something vague about an emergency. If somebody really got in his way, he might even try to use the lights and siren, if he could figure out how to turn them on.

He passed plenty of soldiers and medics, but nobody looked twice at the ambulance. The lights above Soldier Field were on, and it almost felt like a preseason game in the late summer. The lack of sound made Tommy wonder if everybody was in the parking lots underground. He’d taken Kimmy to a Bears game a few years earlier, and he’d wanted to make it a big deal, so he’d borrowed his parent’s old Chevy, instead of taking the bus. Of course, the parking lot alone had cost him almost a week of wages, but he wanted to do it for Kimmy. They’d been amazed at how many levels had been built under the stadium. “Any deeper, and we’re gonna start seeing dinosaurs,” Tommy had said. This was back when Kimmy thought he was funny.

He drove between the stadium and the Field Museum, navigating through military trucks and Humvees. He saw a few other ambulances sitting around, so he tried not to panic when he rolled up to the barricade. Before he had a chance to try the siren and lights, a soldier in a hazmat suit was standing in front of the ambulance, motioning for Tommy to stop.

Tommy didn’t have much of a choice. He was surrounded by entire platoons of soldiers, by those giant tank things, and he didn’t think he’d make it ten feet if he tried to ram through the barricade.

He threw his elbow into the window frame, and leaned out, so the soldier wouldn’t be able to see his bloody legs. “I gotta get through,” Tommy said before the soldier could say anything. “There’s been an accident.”

“Nobody notified me,” the soldier said. He unclipped his handheld device, checked it.

“Shit, you think they’re worried about notifying everybody when there’s an accident?”

“I haven’t heard anything.”

“Look, man, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m just doing what I’m told. Said they needed me immediately. Something happened near the press conference.”

“Who gave you the orders?”

“Dr. Reischtal,” Tommy said without thinking.

“Who?”

“Jesus, pal. You want me to do your job for you? I gotta get fucking moving, you know?”

“Who gave the order?” the soldier asked again.

“I told you. Dr. Reischtal.”

The soldier touched his throat mike. “Need a confirmation at the gate. Got an order from a Dr. Reischtal. Anybody under that name in the database?”

Tommy shook his head. “Fuck, dude. No rush. Might be the difference between life and death, you know?”

The soldier ignored Tommy. He listened intently. “Oh. No shit. Do you have that number? Can we call and confirm this?”

“Yes, yes, give him a call!” Tommy shouted. “In the meantime, let me go, so I can do my job. Jesus Christ, what, you think I’m gonna go in there and rob the banks or something?”

The soldier didn’t know what to do. On one hand, he wanted to follow protocol, but on the other, he was expected to think on his feet. The name of Reischtal not only checked out, it elicited serious respect and no small amount of fear. If he held the ambulance driver up, and stopped him from getting to the scene of an accident in time to save lives, then he would be responsible. And if he let him go, what could one man in an ambulance do when downtown was full of solders? Who would want to try and break in to the Loop anyway? He should be worrying instead about waiting for clearance when the ambulance came back.

“Fine, fine. But in the meantime, I’ll be contacting Dr. Reischtal.”

“You do that, pal. But can you move, now?”

The soldier gestured at the driver of one of the CTA buses, who pulled forward just enough to let the ambulance slip through. Once he was tearing down Lake Shore Drive, the lights of the skyline twinkling through the trees, Tommy pumped his fist and grinned like a madman. He couldn’t believe it. He felt like a genius for mentioning Dr. Reischtal. The fear that man cultivated was a goddamn two-edged sword.

He was a hundred yards away from the barricade when they started shooting at the ambulance.

CHAPTER 69

8:47 PM

August 14

There was still a chance, Dr. Menard told himself. Still a chance that the bug hadn’t bitten him. And even if it had, there was still a chance that it didn’t carry the virus. He didn’t believe it, not really, but he still insisted that a chance was a chance, no matter how small. If he lost hope, then what?

He had almost convinced himself that he might not be infected when he felt more movement in the small of his back. He squirmed around, trying to slap back there and rip his lab coat away at the same time. More bugs fell off of his coat and onto his hands. He whipped off the coat and to his horror, saw that a dozen or more bugs were crawling over it.

He screamed then, an inarticulate howl of rage and despair. He slammed backwards into the driver’s seat, trying to smash the bugs. The soft leather absorbed the impact, and the bugs didn’t notice. Several of them crawled down into his pants, travelling down along the crease between his buttocks.

Dr. Menard shot up, jammed his right hand back there, and raked his fingernails up through his butt crack. He scraped up three or four of the bugs the way a snowplow might collect a family of dead possums, but it was over. The bugs had gotten into the bus. They were on the floor, under the seat, crawling across the dashboard, everywhere.

Dr. Menard’s chance was gone.

He pulled the jump drive out of his pocket and stared at it. He’d fought his way through so much to get this information out to the public, only to have it end now. He had half a mind to get out and walk to the top of the stadium and throw the damn thing over the side. Maybe someday, someone would find it and give it to the proper authorities. He figured if he started up to the edge, they might shoot him before he got that far, but what else could he do?