Plague (23 page)

There were no
sirens, no fire tenders, and no one sedmed to be attempting to put the blaze
out.

Like travelers
through a strange dream, they drove up North Atlantic Boulevard close to the
ocean. Through the darkness, they could see the white breakers of the polluted
sea. They were all exhausted, and they said very little. Prickles had gone back
to sleep, and was snoring slightly. Mrs. Henschel said it sounded as if she had
a cold.

‘Just so long
as she didn’t catch plague from Margaret,’ said Adelaide. ‘That would be great,
wouldn’t it?
Margaret getting her revenge from beyond the
grave.’

‘Adelaide,’
said Dr. Petrie coldly. ‘She’s dead and that’s that.’

Adelaide was
silent for a while. Then she said, ‘Okay, I’m sorry.’

Just before
dawn, they stopped the car by the side of Route 1 near Palm Bay. They laid out
blankets on the ground, underneath a scrubby grove of palm trees, and slept.

As Dr. Petrie
lay there, feeling the hard stones of the dry soil under his blanket, he heard
insects chirp, and the occasional swish of a passing car. The plague had left
many survivors, but those who had somehow managed to avoid infection were
trying to get out of Florida as fast as they could. What none of them yet knew
was that plague was breaking out all along the coast of Georgia and the
Carolinas, as tides and currents washed a thick black ooze of raw sewage on to
the beaches.

He had two
hours of restless dozing, filled with weird and terrifying dreams. The sky was
light when he opened his eyes. Mr. and Mrs. Henschel, Adelaide and Pickles were
all still asleep. Dr. Petrie lifted himself on one elbow, rubbing his aching
eyes, and looked around.

They had
company. Beside the car were two unshaven National Guardsmen in uniform and
helmets, their eyes hidden behind mirror sunglasses. They were both carrying
automatic weapons, and neither looked in the mood for friendly banter.

‘How do,’ said
one of them laconically. He was chewing gum in ceaseless circles.

Dr. Petrie
nudged Adelaide, who was lying snuggled up against him. She stirred, and opened
her eyes.

The guardsman
stepped forward, and looked around their makeshift encampment.

‘You folks travelin’ north?’

Dr. Petrie
didn’t answer. Mr. and Mrs. Henschel had woken up now, and they blinked across
at him in silent bewilderment.

‘It’s kind of inadvisable
– travelin’ north,’ said the guardsman, pacing around them.

‘Is there a
regulation against it?’ asked Dr. Petrie.

The guardsman
chewed gum for a while. ‘Nope,’ he said eventually. ‘I don’t reckon there’s no
regulation against it.’

‘But it’s inadvisable?’

‘Yep.
That’s the word.
Inadvisable.’

‘Well... what
do you advise us to do instead?’

The man
shrugged.
‘It aint up to me to advise you to do nothing.
What you do is entirely your decision. Is this your car?’

‘It belongs to
a friend.’

‘You able to prove that?’

‘I don’t think
so. He’s dead. He died of the plague two days ago.’

The guardsman
walked slowly back to where his friend was standing.

‘Any of you folks sick, or infected?’

‘I don’t
believe so.’

‘How about that little girl?
She
don’t
look too bright.’

‘She has a
cold, that’s all.
A summer cold.’

‘Is that
right?’

‘I’m a doctor.
I should know.’

‘You’re a
doctor, huh? How come you aint helpin’ out someplace, ‘stead of sleepin’ rough?’

Dr. Petrie
said, ‘I was helping in a hospital in Miami. Last night, it was burned to the
ground, along with the rest of the city. There isn’t much I can do there now.’
The men were not interested.

‘Nope,’ said
the one with the gum, ‘I guess there aint.’ There was a long, awkward silence.
Mr. Henschel eventually asked, ‘Are you going to let us leave, or do we have to
stay here all day?’

‘You can leave
if you like,’ said the guardsman. ‘But you don’t recommend northwards?’

‘Nope.’

‘Are the
highways blocked off? Is that what’s happening?’

Both men
nodded. ‘The entire state of Florida is in quarantine, friend. You can drive
north if you feel like wastin’ your time, but I can tell you here and now there
aint nobody gets through the state line alive or dead.’

‘That must
include you,’ said Dr. Petrie.

The guardsman
shook his head.
‘No way, doctor.
Every National
Guardsman has been immunized.’

Dr. Petrie
frowned. ‘Immunized? What do you mean?’

The guardsman
mimed a syringe being squeezed into his arm.
‘The jab.
Ninety-eight percent effective, the doc said.’

Dr. Petrie looked
across at Adelaide, and she raised her eyebrows.

‘I don’t quite
know how to say this,’ Dr. Petrie said to the National Guardsmen.

‘You don’t
quite know how to say what?

‘Well, whatever
they’ve injected you with, it’s useless. There is no way of immunizing yourself
against this plague.’

The guardsmen
placidly chewed gum, and said nothing. ‘Have you tried to get back across the
state line yet?’ asked Dr. Petrie.

‘Nope.
This is our first turn of duty.’

Dr. Petrie
stood up, and brushed down his clothes. ‘Well, I’m sorry to say it’s going to
be your last turn of duty, as well. There is absolutely no way that you can be
protected against this disease. We know it’s a type of pneumonic plague, but we
don’t know how it’s transmitted, and we don’t have the remotest idea how to
cure it.’

‘Are you
pulling my leg?’ said the guardsman, frowning.

‘I wish I was.
I think you’ve been conned. They needed someone to keep law and order around’
here, to stop things going completely berserk, and so they let you think that
you were immune. You’re not, and that’s all there is to it.’

‘He’s joshing,’
said the other National Guardsman. ‘
Don’t you take no
mind of him, Cal, because he’s sure as hell joshing.’

‘I can show you
my medical papers.’ He reached into his back pants pocket, and took out his ID.
He held it up, and waved it.

‘Don’t you take
one step nearer,’ said the National Guardsman, raising his automatic weapon.

Even
afterwards, Dr. Petrie couldn’t work out what happened next. It was too quick,
too illogical and too spontaneous. He didn’t see David Henschel go for his
rifle, but he guessed that was what happened. The guardsman suddenly swung
round and fired a deafening burst of automatic fire towards the trees, and Mr.
Henschel said ‘Ah!’ and fell to the hard ground with a heavy thud like a sack
of flour. Two or three bullets caught Mrs. Henschel, and she rolled over,
screaming.

Dr. Petrie,
instinctively trying to protect Prickles, ducked forward and wrestled the
machine-gun from the guardsman’s hands. The other guardsman lifted his gun, but
Dr. Petrie caught the first soldier around the neck, and pulled him up against
himself as a human shield, He waved the automatic rifle in the other
guardsman’s direction, and snapped, ‘Drop it! Drop it, and put up your hands!’

The man hesitated,
and then slowly laid his weapon down on the ground.
Mrs.

Henschel was
moaning loudly, while Adelaide bent over her, trying to see if she could help.
Prickles stood by herself, still in her red dressing-gown, and howled.

‘Turn around!’
Dr. Petrie shouted hoarsely. ‘Put your hands on your head!’

The guardsman
did as he was told. Then Dr. Petrie pushed the first guardsman away from him,
and ordered him to do the same. The two of them stood side by side in the
road,
their hands on top of their heads, and Dr. Petrie
stepped forward and picked up the other automatic weapon.

‘Now,’ Dr.
Petrie said, ‘if you don’t help me, I’m going to blow your heads off. Where’s
your first aid kit?’

One of the
guardsmen said, ‘I’ve got one right here, in my pack.’

‘Put your hand
in your pack slowly, lift the kit out in plain view, and lay it on the ground.’

The man did as
he was told. Dr. Petrie went across and picked it up, keeping the machine-gun
trained carefully on his captives. Then he backed up, and knelt down beside Mrs.
Henschel. He handed the gun to Adelaide, and told her to shoot without
hesitation if either guardsman moved.

Mrs. Henschel
was bad. One bullet had hit her in the chest and pierced her left lung.

Every time she
breathed, bloody bubbles trickled from her dress. Another bullet had hit her in
the ear, and the side of her head was sticky with gore. The pain was by now so
intense that the poor woman had passed out.

Working as
quickly as he could, he dabbed the wounds reasonably clean, and bandaged them
with lint.

Prickles was
standing close by, watching her father, quiet and red-eyed. She said, ‘Is Mrs.
Henschel dead, daddy?’

Dr. Petrie
tried to smile. ‘No, honey, Mrs. Henschel just hurt herself. Don’t you worry –
she’s going to be fine.’

Prickles pointed
to Mr. Henschel, curled up in a stain of blood. ‘What about him? Is he going to
be fine?’

Dr. Petrie
sighed heavily and said, ‘Mr. Henschel’s gone to heaven, I’m afraid. He’s
dead.’

‘Will he come
back?’ the child demanded.

Dr. Petrie
stood up, and took the gun back from Adelaide. He ruffled Prickles’ hair.

‘No, baby, he
won’t come back. But wherever he’s gone, I’m sure he’s going to be real happy.’

‘Is he an angel
now?
With wings?’

Adelaide looked
at Leonard with sad eyes. He answered, ‘Yes, I expect so.
With
wings.’

They cleared up
their blankets and their few belongings and stowed them in the car.

While Dr.
Petrie kept the guardsmen covered, Adelaide dressed Pickles in a short blue
dress, and sandals. She herself changed into a white T-shirt and jeans, and
unpacked a green plaid shirt and white slacks for Dr. Petrie.

When they were
ready to leave, Dr. Petrie went over to Mrs. Henschel. She was conscious again,
and she was groaning under her breath. He knelt down beside her, and laid a
hand on her forehead.

‘How do you
feel?’ he asked her.

‘Bad,’ she
croaked.
‘Real bad.’

‘Do you think
you can travel?’

She coughed up
blood, and tried to shake her head. ‘Just leave us be,’ she said hoarsely. ‘You
go on and leave us be.’

‘Mrs. Henschel
– we have to get you to a hospital, if there are any hospitals left.’

She groaned,
and shook her head again. ‘Just leave us. Dave’ll look after me, won’t you,
Dave?’

Dr. Petrie bit
his lip, and looked across at David Henschel’s body.

‘Mrs.
Henschel,’ he said gently, ‘I can’t leave you here to die.’

She coughed
more blood. ‘Die?’ she said. ‘Who said anything about dying?’

‘You have to
realize that you need attention. Dave – doesn’t she need attention?’

He paused, and
then he said, ‘There – Dave says you need attention, too.’

Mrs. Henschel
opened her eyes. ‘Let me see him,’ she said. ‘Are you there, Dave?

Are you there?’

She tried to
raise herself, but then she started coughing, until the blood was splattering
the hard ground in front of her.

‘I don’t feel
so good,’ she said. ‘Just give me a minute.’

She lay back
and they waited. The breeze rustled the grove of palms, and the National
Guardsmen shuffled their feet uncomfortably on the roadside. The sky was clear
blue, and if it hadn’t been for the silence and the strange absence of traffic,
you would have thought it was a day just like any other.

Later, Dr.
Petrie remembered that moment more clearly than almost all others – waiting by
the roadside near Palm Bay for Mrs. Henschel to die.

She went without
a sound, sliding easily into death. Dr. Petrie thought she was sleeping at
first, but then he saw that she had stopped breathing, and that her right hand
was slowly opening like a white flower with crumpled petals.

He stood up,
and walked around to face the National Guardsmen, pointing his gun straight at
them. He was scruffy and unshaven, with dark rings under his eyes, and his
clothes still had the creases of the suitcase on them. His hair was ruffled in
the morning breeze.

‘I ought to
kill you,’ he told the men. ‘I ought to waste you here and now.’

The one who was
chewing gum looked up. ‘Guess that’s your privilege,’ he said.

‘Seeing as you’ve got the gun.’
Dr. Petrie cocked the weapon
and raised the barrel.

For a moment,
he was almost tempted to shoot them, but the moment didn’t last long. His angry
bitterness of the previous night had faded with the sun, and he was beginning
to see that they were all, soldiers
included,
tangled
up in a situation they could neither control nor understand.

‘Just for
safety,’ he said, ‘I want you to walk down the road a couple of hundred yards.
Then we’re going to drive off.’

The other
guardsman said, ‘What about our guns? We aint gonna last long without our guns.
Can’t you leave them behind?’

Dr. Petrie
shrugged. ‘You’re not going to last long anyway. What I said about those
immunization jabs was true. Now, start walking.’

He told
Adelaide and Prickles to get into the car. He tossed the automatic weapons on
the back seat, and climbed in himself. He started the engine, and they moved
off northwards up Route 1, leaving the two guardsmen standing in the road
watching them go.

The day was hot
and clear. There were one or two other cars on the road, but they kept away
from each other, staring suspiciously from their tightly-closed windows.