Jeff Jacobson - Sleep Tight

“I hope we don’t need to talk ever again.” Lee said. “Fact is, I don’t want to look at you. Makes me a little sick, thinking about you and Kimmy. Tell Ray down at the desk I said you didn’t have to sign out. Let’s keep this meeting off the books.”

CHAPTER 6

10:01 PM

December 27

The bat wheeled through the freezing night air, senses reeling. Once free of the nylon pouch, it had flitted about the terminal, keeping to the shadows. The giant Christmas trees erected throughout the terminal offered no clear openings, and the lights confused it, so the bat rose higher and eventually squeezed into a crack between one of the futuristic struts and the ceiling. It tried eating a spider, but found the taste to be bitter and alien. The brief respite allowed the bat to catch its breath, but it couldn’t remain hidden much longer. It needed warmth and water.

The six-year-old female sheath-tailed bat was one of the most endangered animals in the world. Experts estimated the total population to be less than a hundred mature individuals. She had been caught with a fishing net strung over the fissure where the colony lived on the Seychelles Island, just north of Madagascar. She weighed close to ten grams, and wasn’t much bigger than a young mouse.

She was sick.

She was having trouble swallowing, and she had scraped bloody furrows in her pelt with her claws and teeth in response to the infuriating parasites that crawled through her fur. Arching her back, she tried to scrape the invaders off on the sharp edge of the angled ceiling, but they just flattened themselves against her pale skin or took refuge under her wings. A growing restlessness drove her from her perch, and she fluttered through the terminal once more. She had known fear for so long, it was simply a part of her now, but the disorienting panic kept her moving.

She found a sliver of a crack near the top of the vast wall of windows that faced north, and tasted unfamiliar air. Wanting only to leave the stale, dry atmosphere of the terminal behind, she squeezed through and immediately panicked. The temperature hovered around twenty-eight degrees, and she had never been this cold. She beat her wings harder, swooping through the hurricane of flashing red and blue lights that covered the inner drive of O’Hare.

She rose higher, soaring out over the parking lot. She could sense the tectonic vibrations emanating from the city below, urging her higher and higher. The bat had never encountered snow before, and the drifting flakes wreaked havoc with her echolocation organs. A roaring filled her ears, and the horrible, shrieking engines of an incoming jet drove her away from the airport.

She turned east, instinctively drawn to the vast stillness of Lake Michigan. For a while, she simply glided, surfing the bitter winds that pushed her to the southeast. The adrenaline that had surged through her compact body began to ebb. Her tiny heart hitched twice, her wings folded, and she dropped, tumbling through snowy skies into the vast forest of concrete and steel and harsh lights of downtown.

The free fall squeezed the last dregs of adrenaline into her system and she found the power to spread her wings and soar, whirling in an ever-downward spiral. She smacked into a frost-covered window, bounced off, and plummeted to the street. She found her wings once again, and tried to aim for the darkness along the Chicago River, but the draft from a passing El train sent her spinning into the girders that held up Upper Wacker Drive.

She fell like a stone into the frozen gutter along the edge of Lower Wacker.

Her heart convulsed again, and she pulled her wings close. Headlights splashed over her and moved on, leaving her bathed in the sickly yellow light from the irregular fluorescent bulbs. The panic and sickness had driven her consciousness deep into the recesses of her mind, and she was only dimly aware of the icy concrete.

She was still alive when the first of the rats emerged from the sewer drain and scurried along the gutter. It was soon followed by several more. Farther down the street, even more rats appeared in another drain. Waiting for the relative darkness between the passing headlights, they crept along toward the bat.

The first rat seized her in his huge incisors and scurried back into the darkness of the sewers, leaving nothing but splayed footprints and long, wormlike tracks from their tails in the gray slush.

The parasites, commonly known as bat bugs, sensed the life slipping out of their host and crawled off of her body as it was ripped apart and the pieces grew cold. They smelled the carbon dioxide exhaled by the rats and crept onto their new hosts. The rats, eyes bright with hunger and muzzles wet with the bat’s blood, felt nothing as the bat bugs wriggled through their coarse hair and gorged themselves.

CHAPTER 7

10:44 PM

December 27

Tommy’s first night on the job started in a bar, a dim hole in the wall on the West Side. It wasn’t anything fancy. A few flat screens hung around the place, tuned to sports. A dozen tables were spread out over a greasy linoleum floor. A thick haze of smoke hung throughout the bar; these guys didn’t pay much attention to the no-smoking ordinance either. It didn’t even look like the place had a name. The only notable attribute was an extremely large parking lot in the back, with at least three exits leading to major avenues and expressways.

The parking lot was full of city vehicles. CTA vans. Dark blue electrician trucks. Sewer behemoths, with the huge tubes draped over the cab. Tommy counted at least thirteen Streets and Sans trucks. Some were garbage trucks, others were heavy-duty work vans, fellow rat control workers.

Don, his partner, led Tommy through the tables and sat near the grimy front windows, filled with neon beer signs and dead flies. Don lit a cigarette and shoved a sticky menu at Tommy. There was a narrow kitchen behind the bar, where, apparently, they’d make pretty much anything you wanted as long as it was deep fried and covered in plastic melted cheese.

“First night, my treat.” Don’s mustache and wide nose made him look a lot like an easygoing walrus. When he first climbed in the cab, Tommy wasn’t sure what to make of his new partner. Don’s bulk made it difficult for him to even fit behind the wheel. He’d fixed Tommy with a cold stare and nodded at Tommy’s ragged Sox cap. “You a fan, or is that for show, just to fit in with the guys here?”

“I grew up in Bridgeport,” Tommy answered, getting pissed.

“Thank Christ.” Don grinned. “Last guy I had to break in, fucking douche bag coulda cared less about sports. Jesus humpin’ Christ, can you imagine? Fucking living in Chicago, and you don’t like sports? Give me a fucking break. The only thing worse woulda been if he’d a been a Cubs fan.”

So they talked baseball as Don headed west. Both clubs had new managers, so there was plenty to discuss. They really didn’t hate the Cubs, but it was more fun to make fun of the struggling north-side club. As south-side fans, neither one missed Ozzy, but they were heartbroken that both Buehrle and Pierzynski were gone. It wouldn’t be the same without them. And before Tommy knew it, they were pulling into the parking lot.

Don ordered a double cheeseburger and cheese fries with a Diet Coke. “Don’t drink booze anymore,” he said. “Doc says it’s not a good idea. But hell, you feel like a beer, knock yourself out.” Tommy got the chicken sandwich and potato chips. He thought about it for a moment, decided fuck it, and ordered a beer with it. He had to admit, so far, his first night on the job wasn’t so bad.

“I’m not gonna bullshit you. Day shift has the cushy end of the job. Hell, all they do is ride around all day and look busy. Put out some poison, a few traps, hang some signs, quote, ‘make their presence known in the neighborhoods.’” Don shrugged. “You and me, we get the shit end of the stick. We’re the ones getting our hands dirty, out collecting the dead rats.”