Plague (34 page)

One of the four
people
who had died of plague on the main street of
Elizabeth, New Jersey, on Friday night, was a 52-year-old insurance salesman
from Hoboken named Henry Casarotto. The pain of his dying had been so intense
that he had bitten his own left hand, and his infected sputum had dribbled on
to his fingers and his red signet ring. His signet ring, New Jersey police
discovered, had been removed by a looter sometime after his death.

They had no way
of knowing that it was now on the right hand of Shark McManus, and so they had
no way of warning the detectives and patrolmen who followed McManus along West
39th Street on Saturday morning that their only possible hope of survival was
to shoot first, and worry about police procedure later.

It was six
minutes after six o’clock, and the plague had arrived in Manhattan.

O
n Sunday afternoon, it began to rain. The temperature dropped six
or seven degrees, and there was a heavy, cloudy wind from the sea. Dr. Petrie
drove northwards up the Atlantic Coast of New Jersey with Adelaide fast asleep
beside him, and Prickles singing softly to
herself
in
the back.

The plague had
stricken New Jersey swiftly and relentlessly, as if the living breath had been
stolen from the whole seven thousand square miles of it in one night.

Bodies lay
prone on the rain-slicked roads, just where they had fallen. Cars and trucks
were abandoned in the middle of the highway, with their drivers sitting like
pallid waxworks behind the wheel. They passed a few other cars, driving
aimlessly through the wet afternoon, but almost every town they came to was
deserted, silent and strewn with bodies.

Leonard Petrie
drove through Perth Amboy at five-forty-five, and calculated on reaching
Manhattan before it grew too dark. The rain lashed against the windshield, and
the tires made a sizzling noise on the concrete highway. He sucked peppermint,
and watched the wipers flopping backwards and forwards – trying to think of
diseases and diagnoses he should have remembered from medical school, just to
keep
himself
from closing his eyes and dropping off to
sleep. Prickles sang, ‘There was an old woman tossed up in a blanket...
Seventeen times as high as the moon ...’

The radio,
strangely, was silent – except for whoops and squeaks and whistles and the
occasional burst of Morse. He had picked up regular broadcasts from New York
stations until about lunchtime, when they had suddenly faded. He had had no
news of the plague now for almost six hours, and no idea if Manhattan Island
had been sealed off, or if it was still possible for refugees to cross the
Hudson and seek-sanctuary.

He felt as if
the whole world had died around them – as if they were consigned to drive for
the rest of their lives down dull, rainy streets of empty cities, searching for
an America that had gone for ever, and could never be found again.

Every now and
then, he saw helicopters beating across the windy sky, and he tried flashing
his headlights at them. One of them had seen him, and had circled noisily
overhead for a few minutes, but then it had heeled away and headed westwards
like all of the others. The plague had made people even more suspicious and
violent and remote than ever before.

Whenever he had
visited New York before, Dr. Petrie had always flown into La Guardia. He
remembered the glittering spires of the Empire State and the Chrysler Building,
and the sparkle of traffic along Roosevelt Drive and the Triboro Bridge
approaches. But now, as the World Trade Towers loomed out of the murky dusk,
and the skyline of Wall Street and downtown Manhattan emerged from the rain
behind them, he realized with a sensation of eerie apprehension that the city
was in darkness. As far as he could see across the choppy black waters of the
Hudson, Manhattan Island was a sinister castle in the sea, with buildings that
stood like pale and ancient ramparts, gleaming dimly through the low clouds and
the teeming rain.

Not a light
winked anywhere.

He pulled the
car to the side of the street and switched off the engine. The sound of rain
pattering on the vinyl roof was the only sound there was in the whole world. Dr.
Petrie rubbed grit from his eyes and leaned his head forward in exhausted
resignation. For the first time in days, he didn’t know what to do, or which
way to turn. Adelaide stirred, and opened her eyes. ‘Leonard?’ she said. ‘What
is it? Why have you stopped?’

Dr. Petrie
looked up. Then he nodded towards the distant skyline. Adelaide blinked her
eyes and peered into the gloom.

‘Leonard ...’
she said. ‘That’s New York! Leonard, we’ve made it!’

She reached over
happily and kissed him. But he gently pushed her away, and pointed out into the
dusk.

‘Look again.’

She frowned.
‘What’s happened?’ she said. ‘Where are the lights?’

He shook his
head. ‘They could have had a power failure. It’s happened before.’

Adelaide stared
at him. There was an uncomfortable silence between them that was prolonged by
their mutual refusal to acknowledge what had happened. Finally Adelaide said,
‘It’s the plague, isn’t it? They’ve caught it here.’

Dr. Petrie nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said huskily. ‘I expect they have.’

‘What are we
going to do?’ she asked. ‘Oh God, Leonard, we can’t go on running away for
ever. The plague seems to spread faster than we can move.’

Dr. Petrie
coughed. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know what to do. I suppose in the end
we’ll catch it like everybody else.’

‘We haven’t
caught it yet.’

Dr. Petrie
stared at the dribbles of rain coursing down the windshield. ‘I don’t know
whether that’s a blessing or not. What’s the use of staying alive when there’s
nobody else around to make it worthwhile? What does a doctor do when all his
patients are six feet underground?’

Adelaide leaned
over and kissed him. ‘Leonard, you’re tired. You’ve been driving for days.
Don’t get depressed.’

Quite
unexpectedly, Dr. Petrie found himself weeping. It was years since he’d last
cried. Adelaide watched him tenderly and said nothing.

‘I’m sorry,’ he
said, blowing his nose. ‘That was ridiculous.’

Adelaide shook
her head. ‘No, it wasn’t. You have a lot of things to cry for.’

‘It doesn’t
help solve our problem.’

‘It might do.
It might stop you from bottling all your feelings up, and turning yourself into
a nervous wreck. You’ve had so much to contend with.’

‘I’m a doctor.
Doctors don’t get sick.’

Adelaide
smiled. ‘Don’t you believe
it.
’

Prickles,
who
had been sleeping on the back seat, stirred and yawned.
‘Is it time for Star Trek yet?’ she said, sitting up.

Adelaide pulled
a face at her. ‘How can you watch Star Trek in a car?’

‘I forgot,’
said Prickles, rubbing her eyes. ‘I was having a dream I wasn’t in a car.’

‘Anyway,’ said
Adelaide, ‘having no television is probably the best thing that ever happened
to you. All that garbage they put on for kids. And think of your health.

Think of all
that radiation you get from sitting in front of color TVs. Not to mention the
eyestrain.’

Dr. Petrie was
just about to start up the car again, but he paused. He turned to Adelaide and
said, ‘What?’

She was
confused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What was that
you just said?’

‘I don’t know.
Eyestrain, something like that.’

‘Before that.’

‘Oh, you mean
radiation?’

‘That’s right.
Radiation!
Radiation from color TVs!’

Adelaide said
brusquely, ‘I wish you’d kindly explain what radiation has got to do with
anything.’

‘I don’t know
precisely,’ said Dr. Petrie. ‘But do you remember what they said on the radio
about certain people being less prone to plague than others? Children
was
one category, and so were ConEd powerworkers, and
doctors.’

‘You’ve lost
me.’

‘No, it’s very simple.
That was what I was trying to work out before. I was trying to think why Anton
Selmer and I should both escape the plague, even though we were heavily exposed
to it. There were one or two other doctors at the hospital, too, who seemed to
be immune. Now you mention children, sitting in front of color TVs.

‘How many hours
of television
does
the average American kid watch per
day?’

‘Don’t ask me.
Six or seven?’

Dr. Petrie
nodded. ‘Right – that’s a lot of television, and a lot of radiation. And that’s
what Dr. Selmer and I had in common, and what we’ve all got in common with
certain types of power workers, and others. We were supervising X-Rays, and we
must have picked up a mild dose of radio-activity.’

Adelaide
thought about it. ‘It’s a theory, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s better
than no theory at all.’

Dr. Petrie
started up the car, and they pulled away from the curbside.

‘It could be
nonsense, but it’s the only thing that seems to fit. I mean, if the plague has
been mutated into a super-plague, maybe it was mutated by radio-activity. In
which case, radio-activity seems to be the only thing that can ward it off.’

They drove
through the rain towards the Holland Tunnel entrance.

‘Are you going
into Manhattan?’ Adelaide asked.

Dr. Petrie
nodded. ‘I guess we have to. They can’t have had the plague for very long, and
if I’ve got some kind of theory about curing it, I think I really have to tell
someone.’

‘But Leonard...’

‘What’s the
matter? Don’t you want to go?’

‘Leonard, it’s
not a question of wanting to go. Look at it – it’s dark and it’s getting
darker. That city’s bad enough when it has lights. It’s going to be a jungle in
there.

You can’t take
Prickles into that.’

Dr. Petrie
slowed the car and took a long left-hand curve. The rain fell through the light
of their headlamps in a careless pattern.

‘Adelaide,’ he
said quietly, ‘I don’t see that we have any choice. All we have to do is find
someplace secure to stay for the night, and then tomorrow we can get in touch
with the hospitals. As long as I can tell someone about this radiation theory,
we’re okay. Then we can leave.’

‘Leonard,’ said
Adelaide, ‘I’m frightened. Can’t you understand that?’

He glanced at
her. ‘Don’t you think I’m frightened, too?’

‘Then why go?
We could skirt around New York altogether, and drive up to the Catskills. We
could be safe there. You said before that we were going to find ourselves a
place to stay until the plague was all over.’

Dr. Petrie
nodded. ‘I know.’

‘Then please,
Leonard.’

They had almost
reached the tunnel entrance. For a moment he was tempted to turn around, and
escape from the plague for good. They could drive upstate, and into Canada, and
leave America to the ravages of fast-breeding bacilli and whatever fate was in
store for her. But then he shook his head.

‘Adelaide,’ he
said, ‘I’ve only got a theory, but maybe nobody else has put two and two
together in quite the same way. Maybe this could help to cure the plague, or
slow it down, and if it does that, how can I leave Manhattan with a clear
conscience?

There are seven
million people in this city, Adelaide, and if I only saved a seventh of them,
that would be a million people. Can you imagine saving the lives of one million
people?’

Adelaide
lowered her head. ‘Do you think, Leonard, that even one of those million people
would stick their neck out to save you?’

‘I don’t know.
That’s irrelevant.’

‘It’s not
irrelevant! You’re risking your life to save people you don’t even know, and
who would probably leave you to die in the gutter if it meant putting
themselves out.

Leonard, you’re
not a miracle worker, you’re not a saint! I know you want to be famous – but
not this way! What’s the use of being famous when you’re dead?’

Dr. Petrie was
straining his eyes, trying to see the tunnel entrance. He stopped the car and shifted
it into Park.

‘It’s nothing
to do with fame, Adelaide. If anything, it’s to do with shame. I ran out on
Anton Selmer, and left him to cope with the plague alone. If you really want to
know the truth, I’m ashamed of myself. I feel I’ve betrayed something.’

She looked at
him carefully. ‘Is that why you tried to shoot that security guard in the car
park?
Because you were ashamed of yourself?’

‘Probably, I
don’t know.’

‘Oh, Leonard.’

They sat in
silence for a while, and then Dr. Petrie said, ‘If you want to stay behind,
darling, you’d better stay. But I’ve got to go into the city, and that’s all
there is to it. I love you, you know.’

‘Do you?’

He nodded.

‘I don’t know
whether to believe you or not,’ she said. She paused, and her eyes were
glistening in the darkness. ‘But I’ll come. It that’s what you want, I’ll
come.’

Prickles
interrupted. ‘Have we got to that place yet?’

‘What place,
honey?’

‘Unork.’

Adelaide
laughed. ‘It’s New York, not Unork. Yes, honey, we’re almost there.

Daddy’s just
going to take a look-see, and make sure this tunnel’s okay. Aren’t you, Daddy?’

Dr. Petrie
grinned. ‘Sure. I won’t be long. Just hang on in there.’

He took his
rifle and climbed cautiously out of the car. It was so wet and gloomy as he
walked up to the entrance to Holland Tunnel that he couldn’t see what had
happened at first. A large armored police van was parked diagonally across the
road, and two black and white police cars were parked on the curb. A torch was
shining dimly somewhere behind the cars, but Dr. Petrie couldn’t see anyone
around. Rain spattered into his face and seeped into his shoes.