Plague (33 page)

Shark waved his
heavy black police .38. ‘You see?
Fully loaded, too!’

Tammy looked at
Shark and she saw in his eyes the cold concealed threat that even Edgar hadn’t
detected yet. ‘I see,’ she said quietly. ‘In that case, I suppose I’d better
get the children ready.’ Edgar could see she was upset. He reached for her hand
again as she turned to go upstairs. ‘Tammy,’ he said, ‘you have to see that
this is the only way.’ Tammy didn’t turn around.
‘If you say
so, Edgar.’
She went upstairs, and Edgar watched her go, biting his lip.

Shark, tucking
his revolver back in his pants, said, ‘Hey, man, I hope I haven’t caused you
any domestic whatitsname. You know? I may rip off a few stores now and then,
but I aint no homebreaker.’

Edgar shook his
head. ‘I don’t think you could break us up if you tried, Shark. Tammy and me –
well, people say we’re inseparable.’

Shark grinned.
‘That’s cute, man. I love a story with a happy ending.’

It didn’t take
Tammy long to get everything packed. She loaded the Mercury wagon with canned
food, blankets, medical supplies, water, soft drinks and spare clothes.

Shark McManus
kept a lookout for police cars, but the streets of Edgar Paston’s tidy suburb
were silent under the early-morning stars, and the only sign of life was a
neighbor’s curtain, twitching suspiciously as they prepared to leave.

At
three-fifteen, they locked up the house. Chrissie and Marvin, yawning, climbed
into the back of the car with Tammy, while Edgar drove and Shark McManus sat
next to him. Shark kept his revolver resting on his lap. He was behaving
amiably, but he was also making it dear that any interference or argument would
not particularly amuse him. They kept the radio playing in case there was any
news of National Guard blockades or possible escape routes from Jersey.

Every
half-hour, there was a plague bulletin, and a repeated message telling people
what to do if they thought they had plague. The message was sober, but it was
also absurdly optimistic, arid if you didn’t know how terrifyingly quickly the
plague had spread across the Eastern seaboard, you could have been forgiven for
thinking that your pallor, your pains and your chronic diahorrea were nothing
worse than a severe tummy bug. The Pastons and Shark McManus drove through the
pallid night into the early dawn. They were flagged down once by a motorcycle
cop just outside Jersey City, but he seemed more interested in checking Edgar’s
driver’s license than questioning their destination. He looked around the
station wagon a couple of times, and then waved them on. He was obviously tired
out after a night’s duty.

The radio said,
‘Now, it’s important not to let your anxiety about this epidemic prompt you
into ill-considered action. The federal authorities in charge of this situation
say that the best thing you can do – safer for your family and safer for your
neighbors – is to stay home. If you do not have sufficient foodstuffs to last
you – well, simply wave a makeshift flag or banner from your windows, and your
local police department will bring you supplies. Stay at home, folks – it’s the
sensible way, and it’s the safest way.’

Tammy said,
‘They’re bound to stop us and send us back home. Edgar, why don’t we just turn
back? Please!’

Shark McManus
turned in his seat. ‘Of course they’ll stop us. But if we use our noodles, they
won’t turn us back. Now relax, will ya? I have some brainwork to do.’

Tammy said,
‘Edgar – tell him we’re turning back!’

But Edgar said
nothing, and kept on driving through the outskirts of dreary Jersey City –
through the silent, deserted suburbs – with the emasculated obedience of a man
who knows he will never have the courage to argue against a gun.

Shark McManus,
chewing gum noisily and repetitively, directed Edgar through the streets of
Jersey with laconic expertise. It was a dead city of parked cars and windblown
garbage, and the gradually-brightening sky only made its shabbiness look worse.

Tammy sat
there, pale-faced, with dark rings under her eyes, and the two children
silently dozed, with heads lolling against the seat. Tammy was coming along
because Edgar was her husband and she was Edgar’s wife, but – with a strange
kind of internal tension that she had never felt before – she was beginning to
suspect that Edgar was not the man she had once thought him to be.

She even wondered
if he had shot that Boy Scout out of something more than the righteous defense
of property and the American way – out of violence, even, and calculated
hatred. A bond of some sort – an understanding – seemed to have grown up
between Edgar and this hoodlum Shark McManus. She looked at the back of her
husband’s neck as he drove and it looked like the back of a stranger, someone
she didn’t love very much at all.

At five-thirty
in the morning they stopped. She opened her eyes and realized she’d been sleeping.
They were third or fourth in a line of cars that was being checked by police
and National Guardsmen by the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel.

‘Edgar,’ she
said. ‘What’s happening?’

Edgar didn’t
turn around. ‘Lincoln Tunnel,’ he said flatly. ‘We got as far as here, and we
didn’t get stopped by the cops once. We can thank Shark for that.’

‘That’s right,
ma’am,’ grinned Shark McManus.
‘Right through them
back-streets like rabbits through a warren.
Any time you want to get
yourself out of a jam, just call on Shark McManus, and you’re saved.
Service with a smile.’

Tammy said,
‘They won’t let us through here, whatever happens.’

Shark pointed
across the gray ruffled waters of the Hudson, to the gray spectral spires of
Manhattan. This morning, the city looked like a ghostly mirage of itself -an
oasis of purity in a desert of disease.

‘You see that?’
he said, smiling lopsidedly. ‘That’s where we’re headed, ma’am, and aint nobody
going to stand in our way.’

Two cops in
amber sunglasses strode up to their car and signaled for Edgar to roll down his
window. They looked tired, but tough, and they had four or five armed National
Guardsmen backing them up.

‘Hi, folks,’
said the cop, checking the inside of the car. ‘Can I ask where you come from,
and where you believe you’re headed?’

‘We came from
Elizabeth, New Jersey,’ said Edgar, in a dry voice.

‘And we’re
headed for there,’ put in Shark, nodding towards Manhattan.

The cop looked
thoughtful. Behind him, one of the Guardsmen was yawning.

‘I’m sorry,
folks,’ said the cop, ‘but we have emergency regulations in force right now.

Nobody is
permitted to leave the state of New Jersey, and nobody is permitted to enter
Manhattan.’

Edgar Paston
lowered his head tiredly. ‘What you’re saying is
,
we
have to turn around and go home?’

‘I’m afraid
that’s the message, folks,’ said the cop. Edgar turned to Shark. ‘Looks like we
don’t have any option,’ he said.

Shark shook his
head. ‘Life is full of options, man.’ He produced the police .38 from under the
seat, cocked it, and pointed it straight at Edgar’s head, a half-inch from his
right ear. The two cops quickly stepped back, and drew their pistols.

One of them
called, ‘Hey, George!
Trouble!’ to the National Guardsmen.
The men lifted their rifles, and two of them ran across to the other side of
the road to keep the Pastons covered.

‘Okay, kid!’
yelled one of the cops, in a rough voice. ‘Don’t be a dead wise guy!

Throw the gun
out, and come out of there with your hands up!’

‘Start the
engine, Edgar,’ hissed McManus. ‘What?’ said Edgar
faintly.
‘Start the fucking engine.
Get this heap
moving.’

‘They’ll kill
us.’

‘No, they
won’t. They’re good guys. Now get moving.’

Edgar
hesitantly reached for the ignition keys, and started the engine. Shark
screamed, ‘if any of you guys fires a single shot, this dummy gets it in the
brain! Just one shot, you hear!’

Tammy said,
‘Please – you don’t know what you’re doing!’

‘Of course I
know what I’m doing,’ said Shark. ‘I’m getting us into Manhattan. Now move your
ass, Edgar, or I’ll blow your head off
I
’

Slowly, the
Mercury wagon rolled down the gradient towards the tunnel. Two or three police
and National Guardsmen jogged along beside it, while the rest of them ran back
to their patrol cars, started them up, and tailed the Fastens at a circumspect
distance.

As they entered
the tunnel, a police bullhorn gave them a raucous message, weirdly distorted by
echoes and half-drowned by the draft that blew through the tunnel from the
Manhattan shore.

‘Listen, kid!
Throw out the gun! You don’t have a chance! We
have both ends of the tunnel sealed! You’ll never get away with it! Throw out
your gun and you won’t get hurt!’

Tammy was
sobbing. Chrissie and Marvin sat white and frightened. Only Shark was relaxed.
He held the .38 steadily against Edgar’s head, and chewed gum as casually as if
he were propping up a street corner.

‘Come on,
Edgar,’ he coaxed. ‘Drive a little faster, man.’

Edgar speeded
up. He could see the black and white police car, fifteen or twenty yards behind
him, with all its lights on. They were going too fast now for the jogging cops
and guardsmen to keep alongside, and McManus even found time to wave to them.

‘So long,
suckers! See you in the city!’

The drive
through the Lincoln Tunnel seemed endless. As they went deeper under the
Hudson, it seemed to Tammy that it was more like the end of the world than
ever. There were tears running down her face, and her hands were tightly
clenched in her lap.

Gradually, they
perceived the gray light of morning ahead of them, washing wanly down the
tunnel gradient. They also saw the police cars pulled across the roadway, and
the armed officers waiting for them.

‘Okay,’ said
Shark, ‘this is the difficult part. Stay cool and everyone is going to be
fine.’

‘What do you
want us to do?’ asked Edgar, in a numb voice.

Shark peered
along the tunnel towards the roadblock.

‘There aint no
way we’re going to smash our way through there, so we’re going to have to walk.
Just before you get to the roadblock, pull up sharp. Then we all get out of the
car at once, and we stroll in a bunch towards the cops, and through. I want you
in front, Edgar, and I’m going to have this piece right up against your skull.
Then I want the missis and the kids all around me, so none of those police
marksmen starts taking pot-shots. You understand?’

Edgar nodded.
They were only seventy yards away from the roadblock now. He could see the
police squatting down behind their cars,
gripping
their guns in readiness. The patrol car that had been tailing them all the way
through the tunnel edged
closer,
and its headlights
dazzled Edgar in his rearview mirror.

They rolled
nearer and nearer the roadblock. The patrol car behind them was almost touching
their rear bumper.

‘Stop,’ said
Shark McManus, and opened his door.

There was an
echoing silence. Shark beckoned Edgar to shift himself across the front seat,
and pulled him out through the passenger door. Then he gripped the back of
Edgar’s shirt-collar with one hand, and pressed the .38 against his skull with
the other.

‘
Don’t
anyone move!’ he yelled. ‘One move and this ‘guy gets
it!’

Then he snapped
at Tammy, ‘Come on, ma’am. Get your butt out of that car and stand here.’

Tammy opened
her door. It was never recorded what the New York police thought she was going
to do, or whether they had any reason to believe she might be armed.

But there was a
sudden echoing crackle of shots, and the rear windows of the Mercury were
smashed into milk and blood. Edgar yelped, and tried to reach the car, but
McManus fiercely tugged him away, and kept the gun pressed to his head.

‘Don’t shoot!’
screamed McManus. ‘One more shot and I kill him!’

The police held
their fire. Awkward, crab-like, holding Edgar tight against him, Shark McManus
shuffled towards them. One of the cops raised his gun, but the lieutenant in
charge waved him back.

There was
silence as Shark McManus and Edgar Paston made their way slowly up the Lincoln
Tunnel towards daylight. They were covered every foot of the way, but the
police had not yet been given instructions to fire on potential plague
carriers, and they let them pass.

‘Have them
followed,’ said the lieutenant impatiently. ‘They can’t walk around like
Siamese twins for the rest of their lives. The minute that kid drops his guard,
I want him hit.’

He turned back
to the Mercury wagon.
A young paramedic was opening the
doors, and easing Tammy and the children out.
There was blood
everywhere. Tammy had been hit in the left breast and left shoulder. Chrissie
had been hit in the ear, and Marvin had been hit twice in the chest. They were
all still alive, but the doctor was shaking his head and looking pessimistic.

‘Do I have to
take them back to Jersey?’ he asked the lieutenant. ‘Those few extra minutes
are going to make all the difference.’

The lieutenant
shrugged. ‘It’s the rules, Jack. Nobody gets into Manhattan, alive or dead. I’m
sorry.’

‘Christ,’ said
the doctor. ‘You shot ‘em.’

The lieutenant
grunted. ‘Sure. But I didn’t infect ‘em.’

The doctor
nodded towards the slowly-disappearing figures of Shark McManus and Edgar.
‘What about those two?’

‘We’ll get ‘em.
Just stick to what you’re good at.
Band-Aids and lint.’

Long after
Shark McManus and his hostage had disappeared from sight, the police could hear
Edgar weeping, his sobs echoing and distorted down the empty tunnel, like the
cries of a lonesome seal.