Plague (39 page)

Mr. and Mrs.
Blaufoot hadn’t shown up, and it didn’t look as if they were going to.

Kenneth Garunisch
had appointed himself chairman. He had a louder and harsher voice than anyone
else. He sat in his biggest armchair, with a beer and a pack of cigarettes, and
he
formally
declared the meeting open.

Herbert Gaines
immediately raised his hand to speak.

‘Mr.
Garunisch,’ he said, ‘I do believe we’re all wasting our time. The time we
should have acted was days ago, when we were first threatened by this epidemic.
Instead – in spite of my own personal warnings – everybody sat back and let it
happen.’

Kenneth Garunisch
sucked at his cigarette. ‘With all respect, Mr. Gaines, I don’t think that two
or three racialist speeches on television could have done anybody any good. In
fact, I contend that last night’s looting and rioting can be pretty largely
laid at your door.
You,
and your right-wing pressure
group. Preaching intolerance isn’t going to get us any place at all.’

‘I don’t think
that locking ourselves away in this ivory tower is particularly tolerant,’ retorted
Gaines. ‘Perhaps we ought to be more democratic about it, and invite all those
plague-ridden people in.’

‘Plague is
nothing to do with democracy!’ snapped Garunisch. ‘The only thing we can afford
to consider here is our own survival!’

‘I’m afraid I
agree with that,’ said Dr. Petrie. ‘I’ve seen what the plague has done, all the
way from Florida, through Georgia and Alabama and the Carolinas, and there is
no way that any of us can let ourselves come into contact with people who might
have contracted it. We have to keep those street-level doors closed at all
costs, and if we can’t do that, we’re going to have to build second-line
defenses on the stairs.’

‘This is
absurd,’ said Herbert Gaines. ‘We’re making the same mistake we made last week.
We sat on our butts and let it happen. If you ask me, the only possible answer
is to get out there and drive those people away. If necessary, kill them.’

Nicholas looked
up. ‘Herbert,’ he said quietly. ‘You can’t mean that.’

Herbert Gaines
turned on his youthful lover with a set, angry face. ‘Maybe I wouldn’t have
meant it before, but what the hell does it matter? If you preach speeches at
people, they go off mindlessly and slaughter each other. If you don’t preach
speeches, they’re so careless and stupid that they might smother themselves in
their own excrement and die of disease.’

Dr. Petrie
said, ‘Mr. Gaines...’

Herbert Gaines
waved him into silence. ‘Just listen to me for a moment,’ he said hotly. ‘When
I made those political speeches last week, I didn’t believe a single word I was
saying. Not one word. I stood up there and I mouthed whatever my political
friends told me to mouth.

‘I did it
because they were threatening me – or rather, they were threatening Nicholas. I
suppose you could call me a physical
coward,
and a
moral coward as well, but I did it, and I’d like to know how many people
wouldn’t have done the same.

‘The insane
thing was that people actually paid attention to what I was saying. The
television and the newspaper reporters actually took me seriously. People
actually went up to Harlem and burned down stores and houses. My God, they say
that people get the politicians they deserve, and they do. If I can stand up
and speak poisonous crap like that, and the American people are prepared to
believe me, then I can only say that they must have won this plague in some
kind of celestial competition. This plague is America’s prize for stupidity,
crassness, arrogance, prejudice and intolerance.’

Herbert Gaines
sat down. There was a long uncomfortable silence. Nicholas reached out and took
Games’ hand and gave it a slight, almost imperceptible squeeze. ‘Okay, Mr.
Gaines,’ said Kenneth Garunisch at last. ‘You’ve made your point. But what we
need to talk about now is survival, not divine retribution.’

‘What do we
have in the way of guns?’ asked Esmeralda. ‘If these people do break in, we’re
going to need them.’

Dr. Petrie
said, ‘We have a rifle and two handguns. Not much ammunition. We can’t rely on
them for long. We have a baseball bat and plenty of kitchen knives if it comes
to hand-to-hand stuff.’

Adelaide asked,
‘If these people have got the plague, won’t they die anyway, after a few hours?
Surely if we can hold out for a day or two, they’ll all be dead?’

‘The girl’s
right,’ said Garunisch, ‘The only problem is, that’s a pretty fierce mob out
there, according to what the super says. The plague may get them before they
get us, but we ought to be prepared in case things work out different.’

‘I vote we go
down and take a look at them,’ said Esmeralda. ‘At least we’ll know what we’re
up against.’

‘I second
that,’ said Dr. Petrie, raising his hand. Esmeralda looked across and smiled at
him.

Herbert Gaines
said, ‘I vote we go down there and shoot them while there’s still time.’

Garunisch
stared at Gaines heavily. ‘Mr. Gaines,’ he said, ‘let’s just take this thing
one step at a time, shall we?’

‘I think Pappa
would like to come.’ put in Esmeralda. ‘If you can wait a couple of minutes,
I’ll go and fetch him.’

Eventually,
armed with Dr. Petrie’s rifle, two automatics, and Nicholas’ baseball bat, they
all, with the exception of Prickles, collected at the top of the service stairs
and began the long descent to the street. The power was still working, but none
of them wanted to trust the elevators. Ivor Glantz, who had reluctantly left
his mathematics for half-an-hour, was puffing and gasping by the time they had
reached the thirteenth floor.

‘Don’t you
worry, Professor Glantz,’ said Dr. Petrie. ‘The return journey is even more
fun.’

‘Fun my ass,’
growled Glantz. ‘I’ll be lucky to come out of this alive.’

It took them
twenty minutes to reach street level. The lobby was wide, spacious and glossy,
with a veined black marble floor and walls clad in smokey mirrors. There were
luxuriant potted palms, and a lingering scent of expensive perfumes.

The front doors
of Concorde Tower were of thick tinted glass, and almost fifty feet wide. The
initials CT were engraved in the glass in elegant Palace script. There was a
set of inner doors of the same heavy glass, but they hadn’t been fitted with
the same security locks as the outer ones, and they probably weren’t capable of
holding an angry mob back for very long.

Dr. Petrie held
Adelaide’s arm. Outside the front -doors, pressed against the glass like
distorted creatures in a gloomy vivarium, was a crowd of almost a hundred
people. They screamed soundlessly at the building super and his five uniformed
security men, who stood nervous but unmoving with billy-clubs in their hands.
The crowd’s fists pounded against the armoured windows. They were trying to
break them with bricks and hammers and chunks of loose rubble, but so far they
had only succeeded in cracking two of the doors, and badly scratching a third.

Kenneth
Garunisch went over to Jack, the superintendent, ‘How long do you think those
doors can keep ‘em out?’

‘It’s hard to
tell,’ said the super. He tried to keep his eyes averted from the men and women
who were shrieking insults and obscenities at them from only inches away, their
faces and hands squashed white and flat against the glass.

‘A couple of hours?
A day?
How
long?’ prodded Garunisch.

The super
shrugged. ‘It depends. I’ve seen a few of ‘em
go
down.
I guess they got the plague out there pretty bad. But there’s always more. What
I’m worried about is if they find a tow-truck, and get a chain through those
door-handles.’

‘All right,
Jack,’ said Garunisch. ‘If it looks like they are going to get in, don’t hang
around to fight ‘em off. They won’t be feeling very friendly towards you, so
hightail it to the stairs and lock the fire door. Then keep climbing those
stairs until you reach the first occupied floor – that’s seven, isn’t it? – and
lock the fire doors all the way.’

‘Okay, sir. I
got you.’

Ivor Glantz
came across to Dr. Petrie and touched his arm. For some reason, he was looking
pale.

‘Are you okay?’
asked Dr. Petrie. ‘You look a little sick. Is your heart all right?’

‘I thought I
saw someone,’ whispered Ivor Glantz. ‘Someone I know – out there.’

‘Out there?’
said Adelaide. ‘Maybe it was someone who usually lives here, and they’ve been
trying to get back in.’

Ivor Glantz
shook his head. He left Dr. Petrie and Adelaide and walked towards the glass
doors of Concorde Tower like a man who has seen a vision. Only a foot away from
him, the silently-shrieking
crowd were
thumping harder
and harder at the windows, and knocking chips of glass away with hammers and
bricks.

Dr. Petrie was
horrified and fascinated at the same time. Ivor Glantz stood there staring at
the crowd, his arms hanging limply by his side, while the crowd were furiously
howling and shrieking and battering at the glass.

Esmeralda
suddenly said, ‘Oh, my God.’

Dr. Petrie
turned. ‘What is it?’ he asked her. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Oh, my God,’
breathed Esmeralda. ‘Just look.’

Right in the
forefront of the shrieking crowd was a tall pale man with a bandage around his arm.
He was staring at Ivor Glantz wild-eyed, and shaking his head from side to side
in almost epileptic fear. The sight of this man had transfixed Ivor Glantz, and
he seemed incapable of moving.

‘It’s Sergei
Forward!’ said Esmeralda. ‘It’s the Finnish man that father’s been fighting in
court! Oh, my God, they’ve got to let him in!’

Dr. Petrie took
her arm, ‘They can’t. If they open those doors just an inch, then we won’t
stand a chance. They’ll all get in. They’ll kill us.’

‘But don’t you
see,’ said Esmeralda. ‘If we let Sergei Forward in, he can help Pappa with his
work! We could finish it in days instead of weeks! Pappa desperately needs help
– and look, Sergei Forward could do it!’

Esmeralda ran
over to her step-father, but Ivor Glantz turned away as if he hadn’t even seen
her. He walked unsteadily back to Dr. Petrie, and held out his hand.

‘Professor
Glantz?’ said Dr. Petrie.

Ivor Glantz
said, ‘Give me a rifle.’

Dr. Petrie held
back. ‘I’m sorry, Professor.’

Glantz reached
out and twisted the automatic weapon out of Dr. Petrie’s grasp. His eyes were
bright and feverish, and he almost seemed to be snuffling in rage.

‘Professor
Glantz – you can’t do that! Professor Glantz!’

Dr. Petrie
tried to snatch Ivor Glantz’s sleeve, but Glantz pulled away, and he waved the
rifle towards him.

‘Get away!’ he
said harshly. ‘Just get away!’

He turned back
towards the window, and raised the rifle in his hands. The people who were
pressed against the glass could see what he was going to do, but there was such
a crush of people behind them that they couldn’t escape. They simply opened
their mouths in fear and screamed soundless screams. Sergei Forward appeared to
be paralyzed with terror, and he could only stand there and watch, his hands
pressed against the glass, as Ivor Glantz aimed at his face from only two or
three inches away.

‘Christ!’
bellowed Garunisch. ‘Stop him! Someone stop him!’

Jack the super
made a half-hearted attempt at a football tackle, but Glantz stepped back and
smacked him away. Before anyone else could move, he had lifted the rifle again
and fired into the glass.

The whole door
collapsed outwards in huge slices. Nearly quarter of a ton of reinforced glass
sheared into hands, faces, upraised arms, and broke on the ground outside with
a horrific flat ringing sound.

The shrieking
of the crowd filled the lobby with hideous noise – cries of pain and terror,
and cries of frustrated fury. They flooded into the reception area trampling
over dead and dying bodies, and Ivor Glantz was swept away like a man carried
out to sea.

‘Back to the
stairs!’ bellowed Kenneth Garunisch.
‘Back to the stairs!’

Dr. Petrie
seized Adelaide and Esmeralda by the hand, and pulled them towards the
emergency stairs. Kenneth Garunisch pushed them hurriedly through, and Herbert
Gaines, whimpering in fright, followed after. Nicholas was hitting at a
bloody-faced vagrant with his baseball bat, and just managed to push him away
and duck through the door to the stairs before a mob of screaming men reached
him, waving clubs and knives. Kenneth Garunisch slammed the door, locked it,
and dropped the bolt across it. They heard the crowd bang up against the other
side like an avalanche.

‘Pappa!’ cried
Esmeralda. ‘Where’s Pappa?’

Kenneth
Garunisch reached out and held her arm. ‘Miss Baxter, it was no good. I
couldn’t keep the door open any longer.’

‘You mean he’s
still ...’

‘He wouldn’t
have felt very much, believe me.’

‘He’s still out
there? You mean he’s still out there?’

‘Miss Baxter,
it was
his own
fault! If he hadn’t fired that shot!’

‘They’ll kill
him!’ screamed Esmeralda, in an almost unbearably high-pitched voice.

‘They’ll kill
him!’

Kenneth
Garunisch said to Adelaide, ‘Please – take her upstairs will you? We have to
get out of here and lock all these fire doors.’

‘You have to let
me through!’ said Esmeralda. ‘I have to get him out of there!’

Garunisch stood
firm. ‘Miss Baxter, it’s impossible.’

‘I demand that
you let me through!’ insisted Esmeralda, suddenly haughty.

Kenneth
Garunisch shook his head. ‘Come on, Miss
Baxter,
let’s
just get out of here.’

Esmeralda
glared furiously for a moment, but then her face softened and collapsed with
anguish.