Plague (25 page)

‘Let you go?’
the Captain said, frowning. ‘Do you think that’s a very good idea?’

‘I would like
to go,’ said Adelaide quietly.
‘If you don’t mind.’

The Captain
shook his head like a worried welfare officer. ‘It aint as easy as all that,’ he
said thoughtfully. ‘Y’see, this disease business, well, it’s really changed the
way things are. Because the cops have had to help out with the sick people,
well, they’ve all caught this disease business themselves, and now there aint
too many cops left.

That means that
folks like us, who didn’t have to help out, we’re left alive. We’re left in
charge.’

‘I just want to
go.’ Adelaide repeated. She started to cry.

The Captain
gently laid his hand on her shoulder. ‘Please don’t upset
yourself
,’
he said. ‘We’re going to let you go, all right, but you must realize that we
want you to exercise your rights.’

One of the
Angels started giggling. The Captain glared at him with mock-disapproval.

‘Everyone has
rights, my dear,’ went on the Captain, in a soothing voice. ‘You have the right
to say that, yes, you would like to entertain us gentlemen, or that, no, you
wouldn’t like to.’

Adelaide felt
tears sliding down her cheeks. ‘What -what’s supposed to happen – if I don’t?’

The Captain
stared. ‘The question
don’t never
arise. They all
says
yes.’

Adelaide
stopped weeping and looked at him. A long silent moment passed them by, and
miles away they heard the sporadic crackle of rifles.

Finally, she
said, ‘I don’t care what they all say. I say no.’

The Captain
nodded equably. ‘Okay, then,’ he said. ‘If that’s what you want. It’s your
privilege.’

He snapped his
fingers and it all happened with the well-rehearsed speed and proficient
brutality of long practice. Trumbo and the Norseman marched her into the
restaurant again, through the kitchen, and pushed her against the wall of the
hamburger bar. She stood there, wild-eyed and panting. Then the Captain stepped
forward, very close, and grasped the top of her white tee-shirt. She could see
the necklace of sweat along his upper lip, and smell his heavy, ox-like odor.
His hands were hard and powerful, with big death’s-head rings on the middle
fingers.

‘Last word?’ he
said gently.

Adelaide closed
her eyes. It was going to happen, one way or another, and neither yes nor no
were going to make any difference. The Captain said, ‘Okay,’ and ripped her
T-shirt apart with three savage tugs, baring her breasts.

She tried to
protect herself with her hands, but he forced them away, and roughly pulled and
squeezed her breasts and nipples.

‘Oh God,’ she
begged him. ‘Please don’t, please don’t.’

He seized the
top of her jeans, and tore them open.

She tried to
twist away from him, but Okey and Trumbo took hold of her arms, and pinned her
against the
formica
wall while the Captain jerked them
down.

When she was
completely naked, they stood around and touched her and grinned.

All she could
do was
stare
at them, and whimper. It wasn’t even
worth screaming.

She was alone
with these animals in a world where no one could hear her, no one could protect
her, and no one cared.

The Captain casually
unzippered his jeans, and prized his penis out. It was stiff and swollen, and
he held it in his hand in front of her.

‘Are you ready
for the Captain’s Special?’ he asked her softly.

They pushed her
face-down on to one of the tables. Her breasts were pressed against the sticky
formica
, and her legs were held wide apart. She stared at
the floor, at the mosaic pattern of red-and-white, and tried to detach her mind
from what was happening and think about something else altogether, like her
childhood in Maine, or her mother’s kindly face...

He forced
himself into her. He seemed enormous, and it hurt so much that she bit her
tongue. His hard hands were gripping her thighs, pulling her on to him, and she
couldn’t do anything but twist and turn and keep her teeth tightly clenched
together.

They all raped
her,
one after the other, and it took an hour and a half.
After an hour they didn’t even have to hold her down, because she lay there
gripping the table-top of her own accord, dulled to everything that they were
doing to her. She didn’t even hear them leave when it was all over, and she lay
on the table until it began to grow dark, her body red and sore, her eyes
swollen with unshed tears. One by one the bikes started up, and roared off
northwestwards into the gathering night.

A little after
midnight, in the first few moments of Thursday morning, Dr. Petrie and Prickles
crossed the Suwanne River on 75, not thirty miles away from the Georgia state
line. It was a black, cloudy night, like the suffocating inside of a soft
velvet bag, and the Torino’s air-conditioning had packed up altogether. They
drove with the windows open wide, feeling the damp night draft blowing in on
their faces.

They had had no
trouble with roadblocks or National Guard since they had left Disney World.
Through Clermont, Gainesville and Lake City they had seen nothing but deserted
houses, corpses covered in black flies, and burning cars. If anyone had been
left alive in this part of Florida, they were long gone.

Prickles was
still pale and sweaty, but her pulse seemed to
have normalized, and her breathing was easier, too. Dr. Petrie was still
determined that her condition was nothing more than summer flu. The hurt, if
she died now, would be more than he could bear.

He checked his
rear-view mirror regularly to see if Adelaide might be following. Just outside
Clermont, he had seen a bunch of
bikers
way behind,
but they had turned off west towards Groveland, long before he had got a good
look at them. He kept the National Guard automatic rifle propped up on the seat
next to him, in case they were ambushed by looters or Hell’s Angels or even by
police, but north Florida was more like a graveyard than a jungle.

It took him
forty-five minutes, driving on marker lights alone, to reach the state line.

He saw the
floodlights before he saw anything else. Two miles ahead, the highway was
illuminated by batteries of powerful lamps, and the surrounding trees and brush
were swept by searchlights and torches. It was the National Guard again,
imposing their doomed quarantine on a dead state.

He pulled the
car over to the side of the road, switched off the engine, and rubbed his eyes.
Crossing the state line was going to be a hell of a lot harder than he had
expected. By now, he conjectured, all the National Guard contingents which had
been ordered to prevent a northward exodus of plague-carrying Floridians must
have been pulled back to the border. Florida, with only two dozen major roads
connecting it to the main body of continental America, was an easy limb to amputate.

‘Prickles,’ he
whispered softly, ‘try and get some sleep. I think we’re going to have to wait
until morning before we go any further.’

Prickles was
almost asleep already, but he had been keeping
her awake in case they ran into trouble. All the way from Lake City, he had
been singing her nursery songs and half-remembered rhymes, just to keep her
alert. He was surprised how many he remembered.

Prickles,
sucking her thumb, said sleepily, ‘Sing the song about the blanket lady.’

Dr. Petrie
coughed. His mouth was dry, and he felt exhausted. ‘No, baby, that’s enough for
tonight.’

‘Please,
Daddy.’

Dr. Petrie
sighed. Then in a hoarse, off-key voice, he began to sing.

‘There was an
old woman tossed up in a blanket Seventeen times as high as the moon;
Where
she was going I could not but ask it, For in her hand
she carried a broom.
‘Old woman, old woman, old woman,’ quoth
I; ‘O whither, O whither, O whither, so high?’

‘To sweep the
cobwebs from the sky
And
I’ll be with you by-and-by!’
Prickles smiled.

Her eyelids
dropped. In a few moments, she was fast asleep, her breathing quiet and
regular. As a last check, Dr. Petrie gently lifted her wrist and timed her
pulse. It was normal.

He closed the
car windows, leaving only a small gap for ventilation, and settled down to get
some rest himself. His neck muscles creaked with tiredness, and he felt
unbearably cramped. But after five minutes of restless shifting around, his
eyes began to close, and in ten minutes he was asleep, his head bowed over the
steering-wheel like a man in prayer.

He was awakened
four hours later by a cool dawn breeze flowing into the car. He lifted his
head, and blinked. He felt as if his back was clamped in irons, and one of his
feet was completely numb. He looked across at Prickles, who was still soundly
sleeping, and then he checked his surroundings in the gray first light of
another day.

They were
closer to the state line than he had guessed, and he could see the barricades
across the highway a mile or so in the distance. It was too hazy to see how
many National Guardsmen there were around, but he guessed they’d be out in
force.

He climbed out
of the car and stretched. Then he opened the trunk and took out some of their
provisions – some Raft cheese, a packet of crackers, and a can of orange juice.
He looked pensively for a moment at some of Adelaide’s tennis rackets and shoes
strewn hurriedly in the back, but then he closed the trunk and pushed Adelaide
out of his thoughts. He had spent the whole of yesterday afternoon worrying
about her, and wondering if he ought to go back, but there seemed to be
something about the plague that was destroying normal values and normal
sentimentality. Perhaps there was too much death around to think about love.

Dr. Petrie
nudged Prickles awake, and she yawned and shook her head like a small puppy.
They sat in silence, sipping orange juice and eating crackers, and he looked at
her, his daughter, and considered what kind of a world he had brought her into.
In less than an hour, they were going to try and cross the state line, and that
meant that both of them could be shot dead.

‘Have you had
enough?’ he asked her, as she finished her juice.

‘I wish I had
some toast,’ she said, looking at him seriously.

He gave her a small
grin. ‘So do
I
,’ he told her. ‘In fact, I’d do
anything for a piece of toast.’

He packed
everything away, brushed the crumbs from his crumpled slacks, and then walked
along the highway a short distance to see if he could work out how to evade the
quarantine barrier. He shaded his eyes against the early sun, but it was
impossible to distinguish any signs of life around the National Guard trucks
and jeeps and barbed wire. As far as he could make out, the best thing to do
would be to leave the Torino where it was, and try to skirt around the
barricade to the east, on foot.

Then they could
pick up Route 41, and commandeer another car. It would take most of the
morning, particularly at Prickles’ pace, but it was better than trying to force
their way through the barrier in a show of dangerous heroics. Even National
Guardsmen shot straight sometimes.

Dr. Petrie went
back to the Torino, started it up, and drove it off the side of the highway
into a sparse clump of palms. He slung his gun over his shoulder, quickly
filled a bag with cans of orange juice and food, and knelt down beside the car
to lace up Prickles’ walking shoes.

‘Do we have to
walk?’ she asked plaintively. She was looking much better than yesterday, but
she was still pale.

‘I’m afraid so.
You don’t want to end up as an angel, do you?’

‘No. I don’t
like angels.’

Keeping to the
side of the highway, they began to walk northwards towards the state line. The
clouds were gradually fading, and the day was growing hot. A tall man and a
small girl, side by side. Their feet crunched over the rough fill beside the
road, and Dr. Petrie had to stop a couple of times to winkle stones out of
Prickles’ shoes.

He was about to
leave the highway and strike off northeast when he heard the distant sound of a
car, coming up behind them from the south. He turned, and strained his eyes.
The sun flashed off a windshield, and the noise came closer. He took Prickles’
hand and pulled her as fast as he could, across the gravel and stones, and
together they crouched down behind a stack of rusty oil-drums that someone had
left beside the road years ago. He put his finger across his lips to tell her
to keep quiet.

The car wasn’t
approaching very fast, but the driver obviously meant to go straight up to the
state line barricade, and try to get through. Dr. Petrie wanted to see what
would happen – how many National Guardsmen would come out to stop it, and what
kind of fire-power they had.

It was only
when the car came near and had flashed past their hiding place that he realized
who was driving it. It was a dusty Delta 88, and behind the wheel was Adelaide.

‘Adelaide!’ he
shouted, and scrambled out from behind the oil-drums, waving his arms.
‘Adelaide!’

She neither
heard nor saw him. She kept on driving towards the barricade, and as she
approached it, he saw her red brake lights flare. She had pulled up right next
to a National Guard truck, and was waiting there.

Dr. Petrie bit
his lip, watching anxiously. Minutes passed, and no National Guardsmen emerged
from the truck,
nor
from any of the makeshift command
posts that had been set up around it. He saw Adelaide get out of the car and
look around.

Five minutes
went by, and he understood then what had happened. He walked quickly back to
the oil-drums and collected Prickles. Then, picking her up in his arms, he
jogged as fast as he could back to the hidden Torino. He climbed in, started
the car up, and swung back on to the highway in a cloud of white dust.