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

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Come on, kid, you’re going to be all right. Tell me who shot you, kid. Tell me who shot you.’

  The boy turned his head, his eyes squeezed tight shut. ‘We was – we was going to get out—’ he panted. ‘Me and my friend – we heard there was plague – and we was going to get out—’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We – we took his dad’s old – Buick. We drove up as far as – the turnpike – and they – they sent us back.’

  ‘Who sent you back, kid?’ asked Dr. Selmer.

  ‘National – Guardsmen – sent us – back – said we couldn’t – leave—’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  The boy was biting his tongue so hard that blood was running down his chin. He shook his head desperately, as if he was trying to erase the memory of something that he never wanted to think about again.

  ‘What did you do?’ Dr. Selmer repeated. ‘Did they shoot you?’

  ‘My friend – said – we ought to make a – break – said – they wouldn’t really shoot us. So we – put the gas – down and – tried to get – through. They – they blew off –his whole – they blew off his – they blew off his head—’

  Dr. Petrie laid his arm on Dr. Selmer’s shoulder.

  ‘Leave the kid alone, Anton. We might have guessed they were going to keep us in the hard way. It’s either die here or else die on the city limits.’

  Dr. Selmer nodded bitterly. He called one of his assistants to see to the boy’s bullet-wound, and then he went through to the scrub-up room to wash. Dr. Petrie came with him.

  ‘I’ve been on the emergency wards for a long time,’ said Dr. Selmer, drying his hands. ‘And if there’s one thing that constantly amazes me, it’s how totally callous we Americans can be to each other. Over the past ten years, I’ve had people brought in here who were found bleeding in the street, while dozens of passers-by walked around them. I’ve had women who were raped or beaten-up, while crowds just stood around and watched. And now this. We may be two hundred years old, Leonard, but if you ask me we’re still a nation of strangers.’

  Dr. Petrie was combing his hair. ‘Would you do any different, if you had the federal government’s problem? Wouldn’t you seal off the city?’

  ‘Maybe not. But at least I would let us unlucky rats, caught in our barrel, know what the hell was going on. So far as we know, and so far as the rest of the country knows, this is just a mild outbreak of Spanish influenza.’

  Dr. Petrie said, ‘Has it occurred to you that this might be germ warfare? That the Russians might have started this disease?’

  Dr. Selmer laughed wryly. ‘The Russians didn’t need to, did they? We’ve done a good enough job of it on our own. I don’t know where all this sewage came from, but I’m ninety-nine-per-cent convinced that you’re right. The shit of sophisticated society has come to visit upon us the wrath of an offended and polluted ocean. What a way to go. Poisoned by our own crap!’

  Dr. Petrie said, ‘You’re tired, Anton. Go take a rest.’

  Dr. Selmer shook his head. ‘The rate this plague is spreading, the whole city is going to be dead by Thursday. If I went to sleep I’d miss half of it.’

  ‘Anton, you’re exhausted. For your own sake, rest.’

  ‘Maybe later. Right now, I could do with some coffee.’

  They left the emergency ward and went out into the corridor, stepping over sick and dying people wrapped up in red regulation blankets. A couple of thin and desperate voices called out to the doctors but there was nothing they could do except say, ‘It won’t be long now, friend. Please be patient,’ and leave it at that.

  No treatment could arrest the course of the plague, and most of these people would have done better to stay at home, and die in their own beds. Dr. Petrie found there were tears in his eyes.

  A cop came slowly down the corridor towards them, wearing a bandit neckerchief around his nose and mouth.

  ‘Excuse me, doctors,’ he called. ‘Excuse me!’

  ‘What’s wrong, officer?’

  The cop stepped carefully over an old man who was wheezing and coughing as the plague bacillus clogged his lungs.

  ‘It’s the Chief of Police, sir. He’s been taken real bad.’

  Dr. Selmer looked at him, without moving. ‘So?’

  The cop seemed confused. ‘Well, sir, he’s sick. I thought that maybe someone could come out and take a look at him.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Dr. Selmer asked. ‘Is it the same as these people here?’

  The cop nodded. He was only a young kid, thought Dr. Petrie. Twenty, twenty-one. His eyes were callow and uncertain as they looked out from between his bandit mask and his police cap.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Dr. Selmer, ‘don’t you think that if I could cure these people here, I’d have done it?’

  ‘I guess so, doctor, but—’

  ‘But nothing, officer, I’m afraid. I can’t save your Chief of Police any more than I can save these folk. Keep him comfortable, and dispose of the body as quickly as you can when he dies.’

  The cop seemed stunned. He looked around him for a moment at the huddled shapes of the dead and dying, and Dr. Petrie was surprised to find himself feeling sorry for a policeman. He touched the cop’s arm and said, ‘I should get out of here now, son. This place is thick with the plague, and if you hang around too long, there’s a danger you’ll catch it yourself.’

  The cop paused for a while, then nodded again and stepped his way back along the corridor.

  ‘Plague is a great leveller,’ said Dr. Selmer hoarsely. ‘Chief of Police or not, that’s the end of him.’

  ‘You’re in a philosophical mood today, Anton.’

  Dr. Selmer pushed the elevator button and waited while the numbers blinked downward to the ground floor. ‘I think I’m entitled to be,’ he replied bluntly.

  Adelaide was still waiting in Dr. Selmer’s office. She had been trying to call Washington on the phone all afternoon, but it was unrelentingly busy. She made them a couple of cups of instant coffee, and they took off their shoes and relaxed.

  ‘Is it still bad?’ she asked. She sat beside Leonard, stroking his forehead, and he loved the touch and the fragrance of her. It almost made the carnage of the wards seem like a half-forgotten nightmare, and nothing more.

  ‘Worse,’ put in Dr. Selmer. ‘But I guess it can’t go on for ever. Sooner or later, the people who keep on bringing people to the hospital will get sick themselves, and that will be the end of that.’

  Dr. Petrie rubbed his eyes. ‘This whole damned city is dying and we can’t do a thing about it.’

  Adelaide said, ‘I had a priest in here a little while ago.’

  ‘What was he doing?’ asked Dr. Petrie. ‘Hiding from the vengeance of the Lord?’

  ‘No,’ said Adelaide, brushing her brunette curls away from her forehead. ‘He seemed to think that America was getting no more than it deserved. He really felt that we were getting our just desserts for everything. For mistreating the Indians, for inventing the motor car, for suppressing the blacks, for destroying the environment.’

  Dr. Petrie sipped his coffee. ‘I don’t suppose he was willing to intercede with God, and get this whole thing stopped?’

  Adelaide shook her head. ‘If you ask me, the Church will be delighted. If this doesn’t turn a few more millions into true believers, I don’t know what will.’

  The office phone rang. Dr. Selmer answered it, then passed it over. ‘It’s for you, Leonard, Sister Maloney from the emergency ward.’

  Sister Maloney spoke to Dr. Petrie in her careful Irish accent, ‘We have a patient down here who is asking for you by name, doctor.’

  ‘By name? Do you know who she is?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, sir. She’s very sick. I think you’d better come down quickly if you want to see her alive.’

  ‘I’ll be right there.’ He put down the phone, swallowed the rest of his coffee, and collected his green mask and gown.

  ‘Leonard,’ said Ade
laide. ‘Is anything wrong?’

  ‘Sister Maloney says a woman is calling for me. She’s probably one of my regular patients. Why don’t you stay here and force Anton to drink another cup of coffee? At least it’ll keep him out of the ward for five more minutes.’

  Dr. Selmer chuckled. ‘Alone at last, Adelaide! Now we can pursue that affair I keep meaning to have with you.’

  Dr. Petrie closed the office door behind him and walked quickly down to the elevators. There was a strange bustling whisper throughout the hospital, a sound he had never heard before – like a thousand people murmuring their prayers under their breath. He was alone in the elevator, and he leaned tiredly against the wall as it sank downwards to the ground floor.

  The elevator doors slid open, and he was back in hell. The corridors were crowded with moaning, crying people. There were people lying white-faced and shuddering against the walls; people coughing and weeping; people hunched silently on the floor.

  The plague had taken both the rich and the poor. There were elderly widows, tanned by years of Florida sun, dying in their diamonds and their pearls, There were waitresses and mechanics, shop assistants and chauffeurs, hotel managers and wealthy executives. Anyone who had swum in the polluted ocean was dying; and anyone who had talked to them or touched them was dying, too.

  Dr. Petrie, grim-faced, stepped carefully through the plague victims, and pushed open the door of the emergency ward. Sister Maloney, wearing a big white surgical gown and a surgical mask, was waiting for him.

  ‘Where is she? Is she still alive?’

  ‘Only just, doctor, I’m afraid. It won’t be many minutes now.’

  Dr. Petrie put on his gown and mask, and followed Sister Maloney into the crowded ward. He had to squeeze his way past the bedside of a 24-year-old policeman called Herb Stone, who was now in the final stages of sickness. His face was gray, and he was muttering incoherently.

  Sister Maloney, forging through the patients like a great white ship, brought Dr. Petrie at last to a bed in the corner. A woman was lying on it with dark circles under her eyes, clutching a soiled blanket and shaking with uncontrollable spasms.

  Dr. Petrie leaned forward and looked at her closely. He felt a long, slow, dropping feeling in his stomach. The woman opened her eyes and blinked at him through the glare of the ward’s fluorescent light. ‘Leonard,’ she whispered. ‘I knew you’d come.’

  ‘Hallo, Margaret,’ he said quietly. ‘Are you feeling bad?’

  She nodded, and tried to swallow. ‘I’d sure like a drink of water.’

  ‘Sister? Could you get me one please?’ Dr. Petrie asked.

  Sister Maloney steamed off for him, and Dr. Petrie turned back to his former wife.

  ‘Where’s Prickles?’ he asked. ‘Is she safe?’

  Margaret nodded again. ‘I left her with Mrs. Henschel, next door. She’s all right, Leonard. She didn’t catch anything.’

  ‘You can’t be sure.’

  Margaret looked at him for a while. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t be sure.’

  ‘Is there anything you want me to do? Are you comfortable?’

  ‘It hurts a little. Not much.’

  He reached out and took her hand. He could hardly believe that, less than two years ago, he had lain side by side in bed with this same woman, that he had kissed her and argued with her, and that he had actually given her a child. He remembered her in court, in her severe black suit. He remembered her on the day that he had walked out, red-eyed and crying by the front door. He remembered how she had looked on the day they were married.

  ‘Leonard,’ she said, stroking the back of his hand.

  ‘Yes, Margaret?’

  ‘Did you ever love me?’

  Dr. Petrie turned away and stared for a long time at the wall.

  ‘You can’t ask me that, Margaret. Not now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I would probably lie. Or worse than that, I might even tell you the truth.’

  ‘That you did love me, or that you didn’t?’

  He felt her pulse. She was fading fast. She was being taken away from him like a Polaroid photo in reverse, each detail gradually melting back to blank, unexposed, featureless film.

  ‘How do you feel now?’ he asked her.

  ‘You’re changing the subject.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m trying to treat you like a doctor treats a patient.’

  ‘Leonard, didn’t you ever love me? I mean – really, really love me?’

  He didn’t answer. He looked at her dying, and held her hand, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t know at that moment what the true answer was.

  ‘Leonard,’ she said, ‘kiss me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kiss me, Leonard.’

  He saw that she was almost dead. Her eyes were glazing, and she could barely summon the breath to speak. Her head was slowly sinking towards the rough blanket on which she lay, and even the shudders of plague had subsided in her muscles.

  There was no time to decide whether to kiss her. Instead, he pulled the blanket over her face.

  Sister Maloney, busy with a sick boy, said, ‘Has she gone. Dr. Petrie?’

  Dr. Petrie nodded. ‘Yes, sister. She’s gone.’

  As he passed by, Sister Maloney laid a hand on his sleeve. Her sympathetic green eyes showed above her surgical mask.

  ‘Was she someone you knew rather well, Dr. Petrie?’

  Dr. Petrie took a deep breath, and looked around him. ‘No, sister, she wasn’t. I didn’t know her well at all.’ It was not a callous denial, it was the truth. There were parts of Margaret he had understood thoroughly, and hated – but there was so much, he realized now, that he had not known at all.

  Afterwards, as he walked back down the crowded corridor towards the elevators, he felt oddly calm and numb. He didn’t feel happy; he had never, in his bitterest moments, wished Margaret dead. But now the problem had been taken out of his hands by chance, and by Pasteurella pestis. He was free at last.

  A nurse came up to him and touched his arm. She was a small, pretty colored girl. He had seen her around the emergency wards before, and even toyed with the idea of asking her out for a drink.

  ‘Doctor Petrie?’ she said.

  He looked at her. ‘Yes, nurse?’

  She lowered her eyes. ‘I don’t know how to say this. It sounds ridiculous.’

  He looked at her steadily. Like every nurse in the hospital, she had been working for hours without a break, and all around her, she had seen doctors and interns and sisters dying on their feet. She was tired, and her black face was glossy with perspiration.

  ‘Why not try me?’ he asked huskily.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I heard a rumor.’

  ‘What kind of a rumor?’

  ‘My brother’s friend works for the Miami Fire Department. It seems like he told my brother they’ve been given special orders. The firemen, I mean. They’ve been told to get ready for some big blazes.’

  Dr. Petrie felt a cold sensation sliding down his spine.

  ‘Some big blazes?’ he said. ‘What did he mean by that?’

  ‘I don’t know, doctor,’ said the nurse. She still didn’t look up, and her voice was barely audible. ‘I guess they mean to burn the city.’

  Dr. Petrie let the words sink in. I guess they mean to burn the city. It was a medieval way of dealing with an epidemic, but then, all things considered, they were faced with a medieval situation. For the first time in a hundred years, they had a raging disease on their hands that modern medical treatments could neither suppress nor deflect.

  He reached out and gently lifted the nurse’s chin. ‘I’m not going to pretend I don’t believe you,’ he said, ‘because I’ve seen enough of this administration’s tactics to believe it could be true. You might as well know that Miami has been thrown to the wolves. The city is surrounded by National Guardsmen, and there’s no way out.’

  She held his hand for a moment, and then nodded. ‘I guessed they would do t
hat,’ she said simply.

  They stepped back for a moment while a medical trolley was pushed between them, carrying a shivering middle-aged woman in a soiled white summer coat.

  ‘Well,’ said the colored nurse. ‘I suppose I’d better get back to work.’

  Dr. Petrie said, as she turned, ‘You could try to escape, you know. You could ran away.’

  She looked back. ‘Run away? You mean, right out of Miami?’

  ‘That’s right. Right out of Miami.’

  ‘But there are people here who need me. How could I leave my patients?’

  ‘Nurse,’ said Dr. Petrie, ‘you know and I know that they’re all going to die anyway. You don’t think that anything you can do will prevent that?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ she said, without hesitating. ‘But it’s my duty to stay with them, and do whatever I can. It’s only human.’

  Dr. Petrie said, ‘You know that you’ll die yourself, don’t you?’

  She nodded.

  He didn’t say anything else – just looked at her, and thought what a waste it was. She was young and she was black and she was pretty, and she had everything in the world to stay alive for. Now, because of some crass and destructive official bungling, she was going to die.

  ‘Doctor,’ she said quietly, ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

  He looked away, but she stepped up to him again and laid her hand on his arm.

  ‘Doctor, we’re all human here. We’re nothing special – just ordinary people. I want to stay because that’s my choice, but maybe you want to go. Doctor, you don’t have to seek my approval to do that. You only have to walk right out of here, and take your chance.’

  ‘I have a daughter,’ he said, in a trembling voice.

  The nurse smiled, and shook her head. ‘There’s no reason to make excuses. Not to me, nor anyone. Just go. Doctor Petrie.’

  He bit his lip, then turned away to the elevators. The last he saw of the colored nurse was her forgiving, resigned and understanding face, as the elevator doors closed between them. There are some people, he thought, whose devotion makes everything else around them seem tawdry and irrelevant.