Plague (35 page)

‘Hallo!’ he
called. ‘Is there anyone there?’

There was a
long rainswept silence. Across the river, in the murky graveyard of Manhattan,
he thought he heard the brief echoing wail of a siren, but he couldn’t be sure.

He walked up to
the van, and peered into its rain-beaded window. Inside, huddled on the seats,
were five or six policemen, and they were all dead. Dr. Petrie circled around
the cars, holding his rifle at the ready and found a seventh cop, hunched-up
and pale, with his face in a puddle. In his hand was an electric torch which
was still shining. Dr. Petrie stood there in the rain staring at him for a
while, and then he turned around and went back to Adelaide and Prickles.

‘The plague is
here too. They’re all dead.’

‘Oh, God,’
Adelaide sighed.

Prickles said,
‘Is this Unork, Daddy? Can we go there?’

He looked back
at her and smiled. ‘We’re on our way, honey.’

Dr. Petrie
started up the car, and drove around the police van, down the rain- streaked
entranceway to the tunnel. All the lights were out, and it was pitch-black,
hot, and stifling.

The journey
through the tunnel was like a miserable and terrifying ride on a ghost train.
The sound of their car made an uncanny roar, and their headlights cast weird
shapes and shadows. Dr. Petrie had to drive slowly, because of derelict cars
lying wrecked and abandoned, and bodies sprawled on the ground. He had a horror
of driving over a corpse by mistake.

It took almost
half-an-hour of slow driving to get through the tunnel. He was worried that the
car wouldn’t make it. It was now caked with dust and grime and dented from
countless collisions and rough detours. During the long haul north, Dr. Petrie
had begun to wonder if life wasn’t anything but narrow back-roads and rutted
tracks, and the Delta 88’s creaking rear suspension agreed with him.

At last, they
were climbing the tunnel gradient towards Manhattan. They emerged on Canal
Street in steady rain and darkness. Slowing down to five or six miles an hour,
they crept cautiously east towards the Bowery, headlights probing the streets,
looking for any sign of life, or death. The dark city enclosed them like a
nightmarish maze, hideous, threatening and unfamiliar.

They saw the first
bodies 6n the Bowery. There weren’t many, but they lay on the sidewalks and in
the road with their clothes sodden and their eyes staring sightlessly at the
ground.

‘Isn’t there
anyone around anywhere?’ asked Adelaide, looking out into the night.

‘The whole
place seems deserted.’

As they turned
uptown, they began to see a few lights – dim candles burning high up in
apartment-block windows and hotels. They also saw living people for the first
time.

Every
building’s entrance seemed to be locked and patroled by security guards and
vigilantes with torches and guns. On Second Avenue, Dr. Petrie pulled the Delta
88 into the curb and shouted to a man standing outside an office block with a
rifle and a guard dog.

‘Hey! Can you
tell me what’s happening?’

The man raised
his rifle. ‘Scram!’ he snapped back.

‘I just came in
from Jersey!’ shouted Dr. Petrie. ‘I want to find out what’s happening!’

The man waved
his rifle again. ‘If you don’t get the fuck out of here, I’m going to blow your
head off!’

Dr. Petrie
said, ‘Listen...’

The man fired
one rifle shot into the air. It made a booming sound that echoed all the way
down the avenue. Dr. Petrie closed his window, and swung the car away from the
curb as quickly as he could.

As they drove
further uptown, they drove slowly into hell. In the distance, up beyond 110th
Street, there was the rising glow of burning buildings, as white youths
ransacked Harlem and the Spanish ghetto. Even through the rain, there was an
acrid smell of smoke and burning rubber. All around them, white and colored
looters were running wildly through the darkened streets, breaking windows and
raiding stores.

Bodies lay
everywhere – infected by the plague or killed by muggers. Dr. Petrie saw a
black girl lying dead on the sidewalk, her green dress up under her arms. He
saw a young boy of fifteen or sixteen who had fallen face-first on to a broken
store window.

It was the
noise that was the worst. All through the dark canyons of Manhattan there was
the screeching and wailing of sirens, the endless smashing of windows, the
report of gunfire, and a kind of grating roar, like a demonic beast crunching
glass between its teeth, as the panicking population screamed and howled in a
frenzy of destruction and despair.

‘Do you know
where it is? The nearest hospital?’ asked Adelaide tensely, her eyes wide with
fear, as they drove across 23rd Street.

Dr. Petrie
nodded. ‘I want to get to Bellevue, on First Avenue. I visited there once
before, and I know one or two of the staff. I just hope to God they’re still
alive.’

Across the
street, they saw a gang of black youths pushing over a Lincoln and setting fire
to it. The fuel tank exploded in a hideous glare, and one of the youths was
drenched in fiery gasoline. The other stood around and laughed as the boy
shrieked and stumbled and tried to beat the fire away from his blazing face.

Adelaide raised
her hand to her mouth and retched. ‘Oh my God, Leonard, it’s unbearable.’

Dr. Petrie
reached over and briefly squeezed her shoulder. ‘Please, darling. We’re nearly
there now.’

Suddenly, he
heard a siren whooping behind him. He looked in his mirror, and a blue and
white police car came flashing and howling down 26th Street, flagging him down
in a tire-slithering curve. Dr. Petrie stopped the car and waited.

Two cops, guns
drawn, climbed out of the police car and walked towards them. Both men wore
respirators and gloves. They stood a few feet away from the Delta 88, and one
of them called out in a muffled voice, ‘Get out of the car!’

Dr. Petrie
opened the door and did as he was told.

‘Hands against
the roof!’ called the cop. Dr. Petrie laid his hands on the wet vinyl.

The rain was
easing off now, but it was still enough to make him feel uncomfortable.

‘Don’t you know
there’s a curfew?’ asked the cop. ‘What are you doing on the streets?’

‘I just came in
from Jersey. I didn’t know about the curfew.’

‘From Jersey?’

‘That’s right.
But we’re not infected. None of us has plague.’

‘What makes you
so sure?’

‘We came from Miami
originally. We’ve been exposed to plague for five or six days, and none of us
have caught it. I’m a doctor. Would you like to see my ID?’

‘Just hold it
up.’

Dr. Petrie did
as he was told. One of the cops shone a torch on the papers, and leaned forward
to read them.

‘Seems okay,’
he told his buddy.

‘Have you had
the plague here long?’ asked Dr. Petrie. ‘I thought you were going to try to
seal the whole city off.’

The cop shook
his head. ‘That’s what we thought, too.
but
it seems
like some nut managed to get through.
Real neighborly, huh?
We had the first calls yesterday evening, and it’s been total panic ever
since.’

‘Does everybody
have to stay off the streets?’

‘It’s for your
own protection, doctor. Ever since the power went out, we’ve had every psycho
and madman out on the streets like bugs crawling out of a drain.’

‘What about the
federal government? Are they helping?’

The cop
shrugged. ‘Who knows? The last I heard, the city of New York was told by the
President to act brave, and go down with all flags flying. Jesus – you can’t
cure it, so what’s the use?’

Dr. Petrie
said, ‘Maybe it can be cured. I’m on my way to Bellevue right now, to talk
about it.’

The cop
holstered his gun. ‘Well, if you can cure it, you deserve to be called a
saint.’

Dr. Petrie climbed
back into his car, and the cop called out, ‘Watch your step around Bellevue.
The medical workers are still out on
strike,
and it
aint exactly a ladies’ coffee morning. You got a gun?’

Dr. Petrie
nodded.

‘Well, take my
advice, and use it. The wild animals are out tonight, and I don’t like to see
innocent people getting
themselves
torn apart.’

The cop was
right about Bellevue. In the dim and unsteady light of emergency generators, a
sullen group of medical workers was picketing the casualty department, and
there was an angry crowd of relatives and parents trying to force their way
through with plague-sick people on makeshift stretchers. Twenty or thirty
ambulances were jammed in the street, and more arrived every moment, in a
deafening moan of sirens.

Dr. Petrie
parked the Delta 88, and helped Adelaide and Prickles out. He collected his
automatic rifle and a couple of clips of ammunition, too, and then locked the
car.

No doubt some
marauding gang would break into it and steal what few possessions they had
left, but they might be lucky.

With Adelaide
carrying Prickles behind him, he pushed his way through the shouting crowds
towards the hospital entrance. One woman with disheveled hair and torn tights
was shrieking at a picket, ‘Bastards! Murderers! You’re all going to hell!’

The picket was
yelling back, ‘That aint true! That aint the truth! You want your sick looked
after so much, you do it yourself!’

Another man
bellowed, ‘What would Jesus have done! Tell me that! What would Jesus have
done!
’

Dr. Petrie found
himself wedged between a burly picket and a tall black man in a bloodstained
alpaca suit.

He pushed, but
they wouldn’t give way. Finally, he lifted his rifle and prodded the picket in
the back with it.

The man turned
around, sweaty and aggressive, and said, ‘
Who
the fuck
are you pushing, Charlie?’

‘Out of my way!’
Dr. Petrie shouted. ‘Just get out of my
way!’

‘What are you
going to do? Shoot?’ roared the man. ‘You wouldn’t have the fucking nerve!’

Dr. Petrie, afraid
and angry, fired the rifle at the man’s legs. The picket yelled in pain, and
dropped to the ground on one knee.

‘My foot!
Christ! You’ve hit my fucking foot!’ There was
blood spattered all over the ground. The crowds heaved back – swaying away from
Dr. Petrie and the sound of the shot. He roughly pushed Adelaide and Prickles
around the fallen picket, and shoved them in through the cracked glass doors of
the casualty department. A security guard, trying too late to keep them out,
slammed the doors behind them, and bolted them.

‘I’m a doctor,’
said Dr. Petrie breathlessly, holding up his papers.

The security
guard glared at him. ‘A doctor?’ he said.
‘With a gun?’

‘Have you been
out there?’ snapped Dr. Petrie. ‘Have you seen what it’s like?’

‘What do you
want?’ said the guard. ‘Was that shooting out there?’

Prickles was
crying. Dr. Petrie said firmly, ‘I want to
speak to the doctor in charge of the plague. I have some very important
information. Can you call him for me, please?’

The security
guard looked uncertain. Outside, the pickets were hammering on the door. One of
them smashed the glass with a pick-ax handle, and reached in to try and open
the locks.

‘Seems like
you’re in trouble,’ said the security guard. ‘I’m sorry, friend, but I can’t
let you stay here. It’s more than my job’s worth.’ Dr. Petrie lifted his rifle.

Adelaide said,
‘Oh, God, Leonard – no more shooting.’

He didn’t
listen. Still panting for breath, he told the security guard to lay his
revolver on the floor. ‘Now call the doctor in charge of the plague,’ he said
coldly, ‘and make it goddamned quick.’

The security
guard lifted the phone and pushed buttons. Dr. Petrie kept an anxious eye on
the doors while the guard asked the switchboard to connect him with Dr. Murray.
The pickets were systematically thumping their shoulders against the frame, and
one of the top bolts was already hanging loose from its screws.

Eventually,
with a sour face, the guard passed the phone to Dr. Petrie.

‘Dr. Murray?’
said Dr. Petrie. ‘I have to be quick because we have a kind of disturbance down
here. My name’s Dr. Leonard
Petrie,
and I’m a
physician from Miami, Florida. I know a great deal about the plague from
experience, and I also have a theory about treating it. Can I come up and see
you?’

Dr. Murray
sounded elderly and cautious.

‘You say you
come from Miami? I though they were all wiped out down there.’

‘I managed to
escape, with my daughter and a friend. I just arrived in New York, and I really
have to see you.’

‘I’m a busy
man, Dr. Petrie.’

I know that,
Dr. Murray. But this could save hundreds of lives.
Maybe
millions.’

The casualty
department doors were almost off their hinges. The pickets were shouting and
kicking at the wood and glass. Adelaide was clutching Prickles close, and
retreating as far back down the corridor as she could.

‘Dr. Murray?’
asked Dr. Petrie.

There was a
pause. Finally, Dr. Murray said, ‘Oh, very well. But I can only spare you five
minutes. Come up and see me on the fifth floor, room 532.’

Dr. Petrie put
back the phone. Almost at the same moment, the angry pickets burst open the
casualty department doors, and scrambled inside with their makeshift weapons.

Dr. Petrie
lifted his rifle. The pickets held back, but they watched him intently and
closely, and as he stepped away from them down the corridor, following
Adelaide, they stalked after him with hard and humorless faces.

‘Leonard,’ said
Adelaide nervously. ‘Leonard, they’ll kill us.’