I walked six blocks without seeing a soul. In the middle of a burned-out strip mall on West Madison, I found what I was looking for: Rosehill’s Wine and Liquors. Its front door had been reduced to a smoking hole. I racked a round into the shotgun Marcus had given me and blew out the remnants of what had once been the front window. Three kids jumped out a side door and streaked down an alley. Inside, the floor was sticky and littered with broken bottles. The cash register had been emptied, three lottery machines and an ATM cracked open. I found a pint of Early Times wrapped in brown paper and stuck on a shelf under the front counter. I drank some of the raw whiskey and sat on the floor, Marcus’s shotgun across my knees. Ray Sampson ran through my head, along with the two I’d killed-the one called Jace and the one I knew was in the doorway without understanding exactly how. I let the faces filter into my bloodstream, where they mixed with the liquor and washed downstream. The pint bottle danced a jig in my left hand. I reached over with my right and covered it. In the back of the place was a bathroom with a mirror. My reflection was clouded and looked like every other killer I’d ever met. I washed my hands and ducked my head under the cold tap. Outside, I broke the shotgun into pieces and threw them into a Dumpster. Cook County Hospital lay on the other side of the Ike, a mile and a half due east. I took out my handgun, chambered a round, and began to walk.
Some of the blocks I walked had already been torched. Others stood silent, more red eyes watching through drawn shades as I passed. A half block from Cook, I came up on a temporary fence that cordoned off the hospital. There was an uneasy crowd massing near a gate. Women pressed to the front, holding children over their heads, hoping it might gain them admittance. Someone on a loudspeaker was telling people to go home, turn on their TVs, and wait for instructions. A second announcement directed anyone who might be sick to proceed to a red zone, wherever that might be.
Molly told me the NBC suit and tinted faceplate would serve as both protection and my ID. I slipped into a doorway and put the suit back on. There were two guards inside a booth, manning one of the checkpoints. Each wore a mask with a clear faceplate and carried a rifle. I hit the audio button on my suit and told them I was a scientist from CDA. I threw in Molly’s name. Then Ellen’s. One guard gave me a quick up and down and waved me in. The other never took his eyes off the crowd behind me.
I passed through two lines of fences and into Cook County’s ER. The first thing that struck me was the smell. Just inside the front door, I saw the reason why. They’d bagged the dead and laid them out in two rows. I followed the trail, winding down a twisting green hallway and into the bowels of the hospital. A couple of people in NBC suits hustled past, stepping over body bags like so much furniture. I read the ID tags on the bags as I walked. Three bodies from the end, one of the tags caught my eye.
THERESA JACKSON AFRICAN AMERICAN, FEMALE 32 YEARS OLD 2302 WEST ADAMS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
I touched the bag with a gloved hand and thought about the woman inside it. Two nights earlier she’d smiled and laughed while she patched up my ribs in the ER. Now she was cannon fodder for the guns of the pathogen.
I walked the rest of the way down the hallway. At the very end I found Ellen Brazile, staring through a window into an isolation room. Three bodies lay inside, each on a gurney, in various states of postmortem undress.
“Did you draw more blood?” Her voice was muffled by a clear faceplate and hood. A technician looked up and nodded.
“Get it to the lab as soon as you can.” She turned away from the makeshift morgue and saw me standing there.
“Can I help you?”
“It’s me,” I said. “Kelly.”
Ellen moved closer. “How did you get in?”
“Took a walk through the hot zone.” I glanced toward the bodies on the tables. Two were men. One looked like he was asleep. The other’s face was covered in a sweat of blood. The body in the middle was that of a young woman. She had skin like chilled cream and long black hair.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” I said.
“Who told you?”
“Molly.”
She nodded toward the window. “That’s Anna. We’re taking some samples.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I heard you the first time. Come on.”
Ellen led me down a short hallway, through two sets of doors, to an empty room.
“I need to ask you a few questions,” she said, gesturing to an examining table. “Did your suit suffer any ruptures while you were outside?”
“I was exposed if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s what I’m asking. For how long?”
“Pretty much the whole time. A couple of hours at least.”
“Were you inside any buildings?”
“Yeah, but everyone I met was dead.”
She began to pull supplies out of a cabinet. “This area of the hospital is sealed off and scrubbed-that means the air is constantly monitored, so people don’t have to wear their protective gear. Until you’re tested, however, you’ll have to remain in this room.”
“Tested?”
“We have a preliminary antigen test that screens for exposure. Takes about twenty minutes.”
“You need blood?”
She nodded. I stripped off my suit and rolled up my sleeve. Ellen tied a rubber band around my arm and prepared a syringe. She drew one vial of blood. Then a second.
“How’s Molly?” I said.
“What about her?”
“I was on the train with her when she got shot.”
Ellen marked both vials and left without another word. She returned a few minutes later with a stack of pages tacked to a clipboard. “I’m going to need you to fill out a couple of consent forms while I begin the run on your blood.”
I took the clipboard from her. The first page had three lines scrawled in ballpoint pen:
MOLLY’S FINE. FEDS STILL LOOKING FOR YOU. MIGHT BE WATCHING. BEHIND ME.
I glanced up at Ellen, then past her shoulder to a seam in the wall. I followed it up to the ceiling. There was a small hole there, and the pinhole lens of a camera, smiling back at me. I wrote down a single question, along with a name and phone number. Ellen took back the clipboard and nodded. The two of us talked about nothing for another five minutes. Then she left to run her tests.
I sat in the room and waited. Just me and Candid Camera. The purple notebook Marcus had given me was still in my pocket. I took it out and opened it. A blue van crouched at the bottom of one page, rear doors thrown open, red cans of gasoline stacked inside. On the next page, men with no faces and broad backs smoked and pointed at blank maps. Ray Ray stood in a long corridor of unapproachable light. Up front, I found pictures of the Korean. Smiling and pulling money from his sock. Lying dead on the narrow floor of his grocery store. Staring at a crooked clock on the wall. I flipped the notebook shut. Marcus’s name was on the cover. No address. No phone. I jammed the thing back in my pocket and wondered why he’d given it to me.
Forty-five minutes after Ellen left, the door opened again. I half expected James Doll, with a couple of Homeland goons and a pair of cuffs. Instead, it was Rachel Swenson, carrying a tight smile and a set of car keys.