Plague: A gripping suspense thriller about an incurable outbreak in Miami

by Graham Masterton

  ‘You wouldn’t happen to have one of those cans of beer going spare, would you?’ Marowitz asked.

  Edgar stared at him. Marowitz said, grinning, ‘It gets kind of dry, patroling around all evening.’

  Edgar reached into the refrigerator and took out a six-pack of Old Milwaukee. He handed it over, and said flatly, ‘That’s one dollar and eighty-five cents. You can pay at the desk.’

  Marowitz took the pack without a word. He muttered to Trent, ‘Come on, we got more friendly places to visit,’ and walked out. Just by the cash desk, he banged his money down in front of Gerry, and called out loudly, ‘Support your local police department!’

  Edgar watched them drive away, and then went out into the car park to fetch the rest of his canned peaches. The night was growing cooler now, and there was a soft wind from the east. A couple of trucks bellowed past on their way to Jersey City, and one or two cars, but mostly the roads were empty and silent.

  He didn’t realize what had happened at first. But when he reached into the back of the car, he noticed how low down it seemed to be. He frowned, and looked around the side. All four tires had been slashed into black ribbons, and the Mercury was resting on its wheel hubs.

  Edgar stood there for a while, feeling utter frustration and despair. Then he slammed the tailgate angrily shut, locked it, and walked back to the supermarket.

  Gerry was just counting up the day’s takings. ‘What’s wrong, Mr. Paston?’ he asked.

  ‘Someone slashed my tires. I’ll have to take the pick-up. Let’s get this place closed down for the night, and leave it at that.’

  ‘Do you think it was Shark McManus?’

  ‘Is that what they call him? Shark?’

  ‘I guess it was after Jaws. He’s a kind of a wild kid.’

  Edgar almost laughed. ‘Wild? He’s a goddamned maniac. I mean, what kind of a person goes around stealing beer and slashing tires? What the hell’s it all for?’

  Gerry shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Mr. Paston. I guess they get kind of frustrated.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Well, I wish they wouldn’t take their half-baked frustrations out on me.’

  He went to check the cold shelves and the meat, to make sure that everything was kept at the right temperature for overnight storage. Then he swept up the rubbish, while Gerry restocked some of the canned goods. He did everything quickly and superficially, because he wanted to get home. He could always get up early and clean the place more thoroughly tomorrow.

  He was almost finished when he thought he heard a tap on the store window. He looked up, frowning. There was another tap, louder. Then, right in front of his eyes, the huge plate-glass window smashed, and half-a-hundred-weight of glass dropped to the sidewalk with a shattering, pealing sound.

  Edgar ran to the front of the store and stared out into the night. It was silent, and dark. The wind blew fitfully into the store, making price tags flap on the shelves. He crunched across the sea of broken glass, still staring, still searching.

  In the distance, he thought he heard someone laugh. It could have been a dog barking, or a car starting up. But the sound of it was enough to make him shiver.

  Three

  Miami was always quiet in the small hours of the morning, but tonight that silence seemed to be sultry and threatening. As Dr. Leonard Petrie drove through echoing and deserted streets, he sensed in the air the beginning of something new and frightening and strange.

  Two or three cars and an ambulance passed him as he drove downtown. Out on the expressway, lines of traffic still shuttled backwards and forwards from the airport, and trucks and cars still traveled up and down US 1, heading north for Fort Lauderdale or south for the Keys. It could have been any night of any year in Miami. The radio was playing country music from Nashville, and the hotels along the Beach glittered with light.

  Dr. Petrie swung the Lincoln left on West Flagler and 17th. For the first time, he saw the spreading effects of the plague. There were four or five bodies lying on the sidewalk, sprawled-out and motionless in the light of a store window. They looked as if they were fast asleep.

  He drew the Lincoln into the kerb, and got out to take a look. It was a family. A father – middle-aged, with a small mustache; a middle-aged mother; and two small boys, aged about eight and ten. It was so unbelievably odd to see them here, on this warm and normal night, lying dead and pale on the sidewalk, that Dr. Petrie was moved to prod the father’s body with his toe, to see if he were sleeping.

  The father’s hand slipped across his silent chest, and rested on the concrete.

  A police-car came cruising up 17th in the opposite direction, and Dr. Petrie quickly stepped across the sidewalk to flag it down.

  The cop was wearing orange sunglasses, even though it was night-time, and a handkerchief over his mouth, bandit-style.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ Petrie said. ‘I came around the block and saw those people. They’re all dead, I’m afraid. I guess it’s the plague.’

  The patrolman nodded. ‘We’re getting cases all over. Six or seven cops down with it already. Okay, doctor. I’ll call headquarters and notify them about the dead people. Between you and me, though, I don’t think they got enough ambulances to cope. It won’t be long before it’s garbage trucks.’

  ‘Garbage trucks?’ said Dr. Petrie. He was appalled. He looked back across the street, and the family was lying there, pale and still. The children must have died first, and the mother and father died while trying to nurse them. ‘You mean—’

  The cop said, ‘They don’t have enough ambulances, doctor. It’s either that, or we leave them to rot in the streets.’

  Dr. Petrie rubbed his face tiredly. ‘Have you seen many like this?’ he asked the cop.

  ‘A couple of dozen maybe.’

  ‘And what are you supposed to do about them?’

  The cop shrugged. His radio was blurting something about a traffic accident on the West Expressway. ‘We have to report them, that’s all. Those are the orders. Report them, but don’t touch them.’

  ‘And that’s all? No orders to stop people using the beaches, or leaving the city?’

  The cop shook his head.

  Dr. Petrie stood beside the police car for a moment, thinking. Then he said, ‘Thanks,’ and walked back to his Lincoln. He climbed in, gunned the engine, and drove off in the direction of Donald Firenza’s house.

  The more he heard about the health chief’s inactivity, the more worried and angry he grew. If one cop had seen two dozen cases, there must be at least a hundred sick people in the whole city, and that meant a plague epidemic of unprecedented scale. He drove fast and badly, but the streets were deserted, and it only took him five minutes to get out to Coral Gables.

  He had no trouble in picking out Donald Firenza’s house. There were cars parked all the way up the street, including a television truck and a blue and white police car, and every window was alight. He pulled his Lincoln on to the sidewalk and switched off the engine. Over the soft rustling of palm trees and the chirrup of insects, he could hear voices raised in argument.

  He was greeted at the door by a fat uniformed cop with a red sweaty face.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ Petrie said. ‘I just came up from the hospital. Is Mr. Firenza home?’

  The cop scrutinized Dr. Petrie’s ID card. He was monotonously chewing gum. ‘Guess Mr. Firenza’s pretty tied up right now, but you can ask. Go ahead inside.’

  Dr. Petrie stepped through the door. The house was crowded with newspaper reporters and television cameramen, all lounging around with cardboard cups of coffee and cans of beer. It was one of those houses that in normal circumstances was guaranteed to make Dr. Petrie wince. There were coach lamps and sculptured carpets, wrought-iron banisters and paintings of horses leaping through the foamy sea. On one wall was a print of a small girl with enormous eyes, out of which two fat sparkling tears were dropping.

  In the pink-decorated sitting-room, Petrie found Donald Firenza, sitting back in a large plastic-covered easy chair, tal
king to a young reporter from the Miami Herald and a bald man in a bright sport shirt from UPI. Dr. Petrie recognized a couple of friends from the city health department at the back of the room, and he nodded to them briefly. Tonight was not a night for smiles.

  ‘Mr. Firenza?’ he said crisply. ‘I’m Dr. Leonard Petrie. I just came from Dr. Selmer, down at the hospital.’

  Mr. Firenza looked up. He was right in the middle of saying, ‘—all the epidemic deaths we’ve suffered so far have been tragic, but unfortunately they’ve been unavoidable—’ He didn’t look at all pleased at being interrupted.

  ‘Can it wait?’ he said. He was a small, pale-faced, curly-headed man wearing a green turtle-neck sweater.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Dr. Petrie.

  The UPI man turned around in his chair. ‘Is it something to do with the epidemic? Is it getting worse?’

  Dr. Petrie didn’t look at him. ‘I came to talk to Mr. Firenza, not to the press.’

  ‘What’s the latest death-toll?’ persisted the man from UPI. ‘Has it gone above twelve yet?’

  Dr. Petrie ignored him. ‘Mr. Firenza,’ he said. ‘I’d appreciate a private word.’

  Mr. Firenza sighed, and stood up. ‘Excuse me, you guys,’ he said to the two reporters. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  He led Dr. Petrie through the throng of police, health department officials and newsmen to a small study at the back of the house. He closed the door behind them and shut out the babble of conversation and argument.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Mr. Firenza. ‘We’ve met before, haven’t we?’

  Dr. Petrie sat down, and nodded. ‘Two or three times, at health department meetings. Maybe at dinners once or twice. Perhaps we should’ve gotten better acquainted.’

  Firenza reached for a large briar pipe and proceeded to stack it with rough-cut tobacco. ‘I want to tell you here and now that I’m very proud of the way that Miami’s doctors are rallying to help,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘However – I don’t really think that you picked the subtlest way of breaking into a press conference,’ Firenza went on. ‘I’ve just been trying to convince our friends from the papers that this epidemic is containable and isolated.’

  ‘Do they believe you?’

  Firenza looked at Dr. Petrie curiously. ‘Of course they believe me. Why shouldn’t they?’

  Dr. Petrie coughed. ‘Because it’s not true.’

  Firenza pushed some more tobacco into his pipe, and then laughed. ‘You’ve been talking to Dr. Selmer, haven’t you? I know he thinks this is the end of the world, and that we’re all going to get stricken down. I had to remind him that this is Miami, which has more qualified doctors per square inch than almost any other city in the continental United States, and that we have both the finance and the resources to cope with any kind of epidemic.’

  ‘Is that your considered opinion, or is that the story you’re telling the press?’ Dr. Petrie asked.

  ‘It’s both.’

  ‘Have you been down to the hospital within the last hour?’

  ‘No, of course not. I’ve been up here. This is where we’re doing all the planning and the organization. I get constant reports from all over, and the police and the hospitals are keeping me up to date with every new case.’

  ‘So you know how many people have died?’

  Firenza looked at him narrowly. ‘Yes, I do,’ he said, in a slow voice. ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘I’m not getting at anything. If you know how many people have died, how come this city isn’t already in quarantine? When I drove here, I saw people lying dead on the sidewalks.’

  Firenza struck a match and began to light his pipe. ‘There are more people lying dead on the sidewalks in New York City, my friend, and they don’t even have an epidemic there.’

  Dr. Petrie frowned. ‘Mr. Firenza,’ he said, ‘that is completely irrelevant. We have a serious epidemic disease on our hands right here in Miami, and it’s up to us to do something about it.’

  Firenza crossed his little legs. ‘We are doing something about it, doctor. We have all the medical people on call that we need. But you don’t think that a medical officer can only concern himself with medicine, do you? It’s just as important for me to protect Miami’s interests as a city as it is for me to protect the health of its citizens.’

  Dr. Petrie stared at him. ‘You mean – what you’re telling the press – it’s all to protect the city’s business?’

  ‘Partly. It has to be. You think I want panic in the streets? What we have here is a very tragic, very unfortunate incident. But it’s no more than an incident. The last thing we want is for people to get hysterical.’

  Dr. Petrie looked up. ‘In other words, you don’t want them to cancel their holidays?’

  Firenza caught the tone of his voice. ‘Look here, Dr. Petrie, I don’t quite know why you’re here, but I have a serious job to do and I don’t appreciate sarcasm.’

  ‘Dr. Selmer has a serious job to do, too. He has to stand there and watch people die.’

  ‘He’s getting all the back-up he needs. What more does he want?’

  ‘He wants to be sure that this epidemic doesn’t spread. We have a general idea of how it started. All that raw sewage that’s been piling up on the beaches in the past couple of days has polluted the water and the sand. Somehow, the plague bacillus has been developing inside the sewage, and anyone who’s gone down on the beach or swum in the ocean has caught it.’

  Firenza puffed his pipe. ‘You’ve got proof?’ he said shortly.

  ‘I don’t think it needs proof. Every plague victim we’ve come across went swimming over the weekend or early yesterday morning.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything. Sixty percent of the population goes swimming over the weekend.’

  ‘Yes – but mostly in private pools. All the victims went for a swim in the ocean.’

  ‘I still find that hard to believe, Dr. Petrie. We’ve had raw sewage wash up on the beaches a couple of times before, and each time it’s proved neutral.’

  ‘Have you tested this sewage?’

  ‘The health department didn’t consider it necessary,’ Firenza replied firmly.

  Dr. Petrie stared at him. ‘Mr. Firenza,’ he said, ‘am I hearing things? We have a dozen people dead of plague down at the hospital, and thirty or forty, maybe more people sick. We have beaches ankle-deep in sewage. Don’t you think that, between the two, there’s just the shadow of a probable link?’

  Firenza shrugged. ‘You’re a doctor. You ought to know the danger of jumping to conclusions.’

  Dr. Petrie sucked in his breath in exasperation. ‘Mr. Firenza, I came here to ask you to close down the beaches. Not ask – insist. We have some kind of disease on our hands that’s spreading faster than any disease we’ve ever come across before. People are dying within three to four hours of first catching it. Unless you want the whole population of Miami dead or dying within a couple of days, I suggest you act pretty fast.’

  ‘Oh, you do, do you?’ sneered Firenza. ‘And just how do you suggest that I shut down twenty miles of beach without setting off the biggest hysterical exodus in American history?’

  Dr. Petrie stood up. He was very tired, and he was angry. ‘I think it’s far better to set off an hysterical exodus of living people, than it is to shovel them up unhysterically when they’re dead.’

  Firenza almost grinned. ‘Dr. Petrie,’ he said. ‘You have a fine turn of phrase. Unfortunately, you’re reacting like all of your breed when you’re faced with genuine diseases instead of old people’s hypochondriac complaints. Real diseases frighten the pants off you. For once, you’ve got to do some real medical work, instead of prescribing sugar pills and syrup for rich and bad-tempered old ladies. Come on – admit it – you’re scared.’

  Dr. Petrie’s face was strained with suppressed fury.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, in a shaking voice. ‘I’m scared. I’m scared of a disease that kills people off like b
ugs down a drain, and I’m scared of you.’

  Firenza stood up, too. He was nearly a foot shorter than Dr. Petrie.

  ‘I suggest you go get yourself some rest,’ said Firenza. ‘In the light of day, the whole thing is going to look a lot less scary. I’m not saying that the situation isn’t serious. It is, and I’m treating it as a medical emergency. But that’s no reason to disturb the whole city, to cause unnecessary distress and anxiety, and to kill off the proceeds from a vacation season that’s only just started. If we quarantine this city. Dr. Petrie, we’ll destroy our business-folk, and our ordinary men and women, just as surely as if they’d gotten sick.’

  Petrie looked at him for a long while, then slowly shook his head.

  Mr. Firenza said, ‘I promise you, and I promise Dr. Selmer, that if this epidemic gets any worse by tomorrow noon. I’ll bring in the Dade County Health Department, and seek some federal help if we need it. Now – is that to your satisfaction?’

  There was a long, awkward silence. Dr. Petrie opened the door of the study. ‘I don’t know what to say to you, Mr. Firenza. If you won’t listen, you won’t listen. Maybe I should go straight to the mayor.’

  ‘The mayor’s in Washington, for two days.’

  ‘But he knows about the epidemic, surely?’

  He’s heard about it, on the news. He called me, and I told him it was all under control, and to stay put. All I can say, Dr. Petrie, is that it’s up to the men of healing like you and Dr. Selmer to prove me right.’

  Dr. Petrie turned away. ‘If it didn’t mean a terrible loss of life,’ he said bitterly, ‘I’d do anything to prove you wrong.’

  He called Dr. Selmer from the phone-booth on the corner of the street, and told him what had happened. Selmer sounded frayed and worried, and on the point of collapse.

  ‘Doesn’t he have any idea how bad it is?’ asked Anton Selmer. ‘I’ve had fifteen more deaths since you left. I’ve had three nurses and two doctors down with it, and it won’t be long before I get it myself.’

  ‘Of course you won’t. Just like you said, you and I are probably immune. Maybe it was contact with David that did it, or maybe we’re just lucky.’