The rear end of the Ford was fishtailing as he curved the entrance ramp at nearly fifty, sideswiping the guardrail, the Eisenhower Expressway opening up before him—the post office inter-change coming up fast—they were passing the post office now, Rourke shouting again to Natalia as he picked up more blue lights in the rearview mirror.
“Natalia!”
“Yes—I’m all right—I almost have them!”
Rourke cut the wheel hard left, shouting, “Hang on!” a police car starting toward them going against the direction of the lanes—but there was no traffic, just abandoned cars flanking the ex-pressway in both lanes on both shoulders. Rourke stomped the accelerator to the floor, shooting an intersection, into the Loop now, the police car on a collision course with them.
Gunfire—from behind him, the police car sud-denly swerving, its windshield shattered, another shot, the police car accelerating, Rourke cutting a sharp right to miss it, in the rear view seeing Nata-lia, holding one of her revolvers, and the police car crashing into an underpass abutment behind them. Rourke started to edge left, turning toward State Street. “It was made into a shopping mall—it could be cut off,” Natalia shouted.
Rourke cut back right— “Back seat driver,” tak-ing the next left—Wabash. Police cars—four abreast—were coming down Wabash, against him, he cut left at Jackson Boule-vard—heading against the flow of traffic had there been traffic—a one-way street, the signs half down but still visible.
“Just as well,” he shouted to her— “High speed on Wabash with the elevated train platform—sui-cide.”
And he stomped the gas pedal, crossing State, Dearborn, heading west, the city empty, ghostly, one out of every ten or so street lights burning—Rourke guessed the Russians had gotten power restored at least to parts of the city. But the street lamps were mostly shot out or otherwise shattered, it seemed, as he sped under them.
Natalia was back beside him now— “The rest of our gear—it’s in the back seat—here,” and she handed him a pistol—one of the little Detonics stainless .45s—she knew what he liked, he thought.
“Chamber’s loaded, hammer down,” she advised.
Rourke rammed the pistol into his belt, ripping open the overcoat buttons, swerving to avoid the body of a dead dog—and suddenly, behind him, there was a pack—the animals running after the car, the police cars two blocks back not frightening them off—Rourke swerved close to a curb to avoid a wrecked car in the middle of the street—he almost lost control of the Ford as a huge dog leapt out toward the car from the roof of an abandoned car—it was on the hood, snarling, foam dripping from its mouth— “Shoot it, for God’s sake,” Rourke shouted to Natalia.
He looked to his right—already she was leaning out the passenger side window, one of her revolvers in her right hand, the dog snapping at the wind-shield, somehow balancing itself on the hood. There was a loud shot—felt in his right ear. The dog’s head seemed to explode, the animal’s body flopping to Rourke’s left, blood and gray material that was brain splattering the windshield. The body slid from the hood of the car as Rourke swerved right.
He found the windshield wiper switch—only one wiper blade—in front of the driver’s side. The other was bare metal. He punched the washer but-ton on the wiper control switch—nothing— “Aww, shit,”
Rourke rasped—the blood and brain matter were smeared now like grease, all but ob-scuring the windshield—he kept the wiper blade going, hoping to at least scrape some of the mess away. More police cars—closing from the streets he crossed, falling in, almost like a formation, be-hind those already in pursuit.
Wacker Drive—Rourke turned right, accelerat-ing, police cars behind him now but still nothing ahead—the Civic Opera House—he had given a lecture there once, he recalled—police cars now blocking the street ahead of him.
He shouted to Natalia, “Did you ever block out underground Wacker Drive?”
“No—we couldn’t leave workers down there—the Brigands—some of their bodies—they were eaten partially—arms cut off and legs—and our pathologists said they weren’t dogs who had done it—people.”
Rourke looked at her, sucked in his breath, rasping, “Reach into my pocket and find me a ci-gar—soon as I do this,” and Rourke cut the wheel hard left, half bouncing over a lip of concrete curb, turning sharp right, fishtailing, skidding, his lights making bizarre patterns as he drove into the velvet blackness of the underground.
Chapter Forty-four
In the darkness—total darkness except for the headlights and the few working dashboard lights—he could feel Natalia’s right hand reach across him, searching his breast pocket for a cigar. “Lit?”
“Not with that auxiliary gas tank,” he told her, swerving sharp left, nearly piling up in a divider, the car bouncing away from it as he avoided a pile of cement blocks in the middle of the road. And suddenly the cavernlike underground drive was illuminated, an almost surreal blue wash of light, sirens loud in the distance behind him—more of the expropriated police squad cars. And there were single headlights too—motorcycles, he guessed.
Rourke stepped hard on the gas.
Beside him, the headlights of the police vehicles and the motorcycles growing fast now, Natalia had an M-16—she was leaning out of the passen-ger window— “Watch out when I run close to the tunnel walls!” He heard it, felt it—the pelting of hot brass against his bare skin, his hands, his neck, his right cheek.
A set of headlights behind them swerved mad-deningly to the right, a blinding flash in the dark-ness, a bright orange wall of flame, but punching through the wall—one set of headlights, then an-other, and then a single headlight—a motorcycle. The sidecar visible in the light of the fire was aflame, a man shape moving in it, arms waving, arms like torches, then the single headlight seemed to jump skyward as Natalia’s M-16 loosed a long, ragged burst, sidecar and motorcycle separating, crashing into opposite sides of the tunnel walls—flames. Two police cars, their Mars lights flashing blue in the darkness as Rourke took a sharp curv-ing right, police cars and motorcycles coming fast from his right flank as he passed another entrance into Underground Wacker.
The entire tunnel was washed in the blue light of the flashers now as Rourke made the Ford acceler-ate, swerving the wheel left, right, left again, evad-ing abandoned automobiles left everywhere in the narrow confines of the underground, dog packs running across his lights, yelping, snarling, some of the animals leaping upward as he passed them, fangs bared.
A massive animal—almost too large to be a dog, Rourke thought—it leaped from the hood of an abandoned car, Natalia screaming as he looked right, the dog half inside the vehicle, Rourke’s right hand snatching at the Pachmayr gripped butt of the Detonics, his thumb jerking back the trig-ger. He fired the pistol once, twice, a third time, point blank into the chest of the animal as it lunged for Natalia’s throat.
His ears rang with the gunfire, but the animal still moved, a low roaring gunshot, partially muf-fled, the animal slumping as Natalia pushed close to Rourke—her face normally had a paleness to it, an almost unnatural whiteness—what men an-other time would have called alabaster. But her cheeks were flushed bright red now—and her eyes were larger-seeming than he thought human eyes could be.
“That—”she gasped.
“Did he break the skin—at all—” Rourke shouted, not looking at her, swerving to avoid an overturned green dumpster spilling out from the sidewalk backing the underground entrances to buildings and restaurants.
“No—thank God—there—I said it again,” she laughed.
Rourke glanced at her, then back at the tunnel. It was coming into a sharp right—Rourke cut the wheel hard, shouting to her, “Push the dog out af-ter I finish the turn.”