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

by Graham Masterton

  ‘I just want to go,’ Adelaide repeated. She started to cry.

  The Captain gently laid his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Please don’t upset yourself,’ he said. ‘We’re going to let you go, all right, but you must realize that we want you to exercise your rights.’

  One of the Angels started giggling. The Captain glared at him with mock-disapproval.

  ‘Everyone has rights, my dear,’ went on the Captain, in a soothing voice. ‘You have the right to say that, yes, you would like to entertain us gentlemen, or that, no, you wouldn’t like to.’

  Adelaide felt tears sliding down her cheeks. ‘What – what’s supposed to happen – if I don’t?’

  The Captain stared. ‘The question don’t never arise. They all says yes.’

  Adelaide stopped weeping and looked at him. A long silent moment passed them by, and miles away they heard the sporadic crackle of rifles.

  Finally, she said, ‘I don’t care what they all say. I say no.’

  The Captain nodded equably. ‘Okay, then,’ he said. ‘If that’s what you want. It’s your privilege.’

  He snapped his fingers and it all happened with the well-rehearsed speed and proficient brutality of long practice. Trumbo and the Norseman marched her into the restaurant again, through the kitchen, and pushed her against the wall of the hamburger bar. She stood there, wild-eyed and panting. Then the Captain stepped forward, very close, and grasped the top of her white tee-shirt. She could see the necklace of sweat along his upper lip, and smell his heavy, ox-like odor. His hands were hard and powerful, with big death’s-head rings on the middle fingers.

  ‘Last word?’ he said gently.

  Adelaide closed her eyes. It was going to happen, one way or another, and neither yes nor no were going to make any difference. The Captain said, ‘Okay,’ and ripped her T-shirt apart with three savage tugs, baring her breasts.

  She tried to protect herself with her hands, but he forced them away, and roughly pulled and squeezed her breasts and nipples.

  ‘Oh God,’ she begged him. ‘Please don’t, please don’t.’

  He seized the top of her jeans, and tore them open. She tried to twist away from him, but Okey and Trumbo took hold of her arms, and pinned her against the formica wall while the Captain jerked them down.

  When she was completely naked, they stood around and touched her and grinned. All she could do was stare at them, and whimper. It wasn’t even worth screaming. She was alone with these animals in a world where no one could hear her, no one could protect her, and no one cared.

  The Captain casually unzippered his jeans, and prized his penis out. It was stiff and swollen, and he held it in his hand in front of her.

  ‘Are you ready for the Captain’s Special?’ he asked her softly.

  They pushed her face-down on to one of the tables. Her breasts were pressed against the sticky formica, and her legs were held wide apart. She stared at the floor, at the mosaic pattern of red-and-white, and tried to detach her mind from what was happening and think about something else altogether, like her childhood in Maine, or her mother’s kindly face…

  He forced himself into her. He seemed enormous, and it hurt so much that she bit her tongue. His hard hands were gripping her thighs, pulling her on to him, and she couldn’t do anything but twist and turn and keep her teeth tightly clenched together.

  They all raped her, one after the other, and it took an hour and a half. After an hour they didn’t even have to hold her down, because she lay there gripping the table-top of her own accord, dulled to everything that they were doing to her. She didn’t even hear them leave when it was all over, and she lay on the table until it began to grow dark, her body red and sore, her eyes swollen with unshed tears.

  One by one the bikes started up, and roared off northwestwards into the gathering night.

  A little after midnight, in the first few moments of Thursday morning, Dr. Petrie and Prickles crossed the Suwanne River on 75, not thirty miles away from the Georgia state line. It was a black, cloudy night, like the suffocating inside of a soft velvet bag, and the Torino’s air-conditioning had packed up altogether. They drove with the windows open wide, feeling the damp night draft blowing in on their faces.

  They had had no trouble with roadblocks or National Guard since they had left Disney World. Through Clermont, Gainesville and Lake City they had seen nothing but deserted houses, corpses covered in black flies, and burning cars. If anyone had been left alive in this part of Florida, they were long gone.

  Prickles was still pale and sweaty, but her pulse seemed to have normalized, and her breathing was easier, too. Dr. Petrie was still determined that her condition was nothing more than summer ‘flu. The hurt, if she died now, would be more than he could bear.

  He checked his rear-view mirror regularly to see if Adelaide might be following. Just outside Clermont, he had seen a bunch of bikers way behind, but they had turned off west towards Groveland, long before he had got a good look at them. He kept the National Guard automatic rifle propped up on the seat next to him, in case they were ambushed by looters or Hell’s Angels or even by police, but north Florida was more like a graveyard than a jungle.

  It took him forty-five minutes, driving on marker lights alone, to reach the state line. He saw the floodlights before he saw anything else. Two miles ahead, the highway was illuminated by batteries of powerful lamps, and the surrounding trees and brush were swept by searchlights and torches. It was the National Guard again, imposing their doomed quarantine on a dead state.

  He pulled the car over to the side of the road, switched off the engine, and rubbed his eyes. Crossing the state line was going to be a hell of a lot harder than he had expected. By now, he conjectured, all the National Guard contingents which had been ordered to prevent a northward exodus of plague-carrying Floridians must have been pulled back to the border. Florida, with only two dozen major roads connecting it to the main body of continental America, was an easy limb to amputate.

  ‘Prickles,’ he whispered softly, ‘try and get some sleep. I think we’re going to have to wait until morning before we go any further.’

  Prickles was almost asleep already, but he had been keeping her awake in case they ran into trouble. All the way from Lake City, he had been singing her nursery songs and half-remembered rhymes, just to keep her alert. He was surprised how many he remembered.

  Prickles, sucking her thumb, said sleepily, ‘Sing the song about the blanket lady.’

  Dr. Petrie coughed. His mouth was dry, and he felt exhausted. ‘No, baby, that’s enough for tonight.’

  ‘Please, Daddy.’

  Dr. Petrie sighed. Then in a hoarse, off-key voice, he began to sing,

  ‘There was an old woman tossed up in a blanket

  Seventeen times as high as the moon;

  Where she was going I could not but ask it,

  For in her hand she carried a broom.

  “Old woman, old woman, old woman,” quoth I;

  “O whither, O whither, O whither, so high?”

  “To sweep the cobwebs from the sky

  And I’ll be with you by-and-by!”’

  Prickles smiled. Her eyelids dropped. In a few moments, she was fast asleep, her breathing quiet and regular. As a last check, Dr. Petrie gently lifted her wrist and timed her pulse. It was normal.

  He closed the car windows, leaving only a small gap for ventilation, and settled down to get some rest himself. His neck muscles creaked with tiredness, and he felt unbearably cramped. But after five minutes of restless shifting around, his eyes began to close, and in ten minutes he was asleep, his head bowed over the steering-wheel like a man in prayer.

  He was awakened four hours later by a cool dawn breeze flowing into the car. He lifted his head, and blinked. He felt as if his back was clamped in irons, and one of his feet was completely numb. He looked across at Prickles, who was still soundly sleeping, and then he checked his surroundings in the gray first light of another day.

&nbs
p; They were closer to the state line than he had guessed, and he could see the barricades across the highway a mile or so in the distance. It was too hazy to see how many National Guardsmen there were around, but he guessed they’d be out in force.

  He climbed out of the car and stretched. Then he opened the trunk and took out some of their provisions – some Kraft cheese, a packet of crackers, and a can of orange juice. He looked pensively for a moment at some of Adelaide’s tennis rackets and shoes strewn hurriedly in the back, but then he closed the trunk and pushed Adelaide out of his thoughts. He had spent the whole of yesterday afternoon worrying about her, and wondering if he ought to go back, but there seemed to be something about the plague that was destroying normal values and normal sentimentality. Perhaps there was too much death around to think about love.

  Dr. Petrie nudged Prickles awake, and she yawned and shook her head like a small puppy. They sat in silence, sipping orange juice and eating crackers, and he looked at her, his daughter, and considered what kind of a world he had brought her into. In less than an hour, they were going to try and cross the state line, and that meant that both of them could be shot dead.

  ‘Have you had enough?’ he asked her, as she finished her juice.

  ‘I wish I had some toast,’ she said, looking at him seriously.

  He gave her a small grin. ‘So do I,’ he told her. ‘In fact, I’d do anything for a piece of toast.’

  He packed everything away, brushed the crumbs from his crumpled slacks, and then walked along the highway a short distance to see if he could work out how to evade the quarantine barrier. He shaded his eyes against the early sun, but it was impossible to distinguish any signs of life around the National Guard trucks and jeeps and barbed wire. As far as he could make out, the best thing to do would be to leave the Torino where it was, and try to skirt around the barricade to the east, on foot.

  Then they could pick up Route 41, and commandeer another car. It would take most of the morning, particularly at Prickles’ pace, but it was better than trying to force their way through the barrier in a show of dangerous heroics. Even National Guardsmen shot straight sometimes.

  Dr. Petrie went back to the Torino, started it up, and drove it off the side of the highway into a sparse clump of palms. He slung his gun over his shoulder, quickly filled a bag with cans of orange juice and food, and knelt down beside the car to lace up Prickles’ walking shoes.

  ‘Do we have to walk?’ she asked plaintively. She was looking much better than yesterday, but she was still pale.

  ‘I’m afraid so. You don’t want to end up as an angel, do you?’

  ‘No. I don’t like angels.’

  Keeping to the side of the highway, they began to walk northwards towards the state line. The clouds were gradually fading, and the day was growing hot. A tall man and a small girl, side by side. Their feet crunched over the rough fill beside the road, and Dr. Petrie had to stop a couple of times to winkle stones out of Prickles’ shoes.

  He was about to leave the highway and strike off northeast when he heard the distant sound of a car, coming up behind them from the south. He turned, and strained his eyes. The sun flashed off a windshield, and the noise came closer. He took Prickles’ hand and pulled her as fast as he could, across the gravel and stones, and together they crouched down behind a stack of rusty oil-drums that someone had left beside the road years ago. He put his finger across his lips to tell her to keep quiet.

  The car wasn’t approaching very fast, but the driver obviously meant to go straight up to the state line barricade, and try to get through. Dr. Petrie wanted to see what would happen – how many National Guardsmen would come out to stop it, and what kind of firepower they had.

  It was only when the car came near and had flashed past their hiding place that he realized who was driving it. It was a dusty Delta 88, and behind the wheel was Adelaide.

  ‘Adelaide!’ he shouted, and scrambled out from behind the oil-drums, waving his arms. ‘Adelaide!’

  She neither heard nor saw him. She kept on driving towards the barricade, and as she approached it, he saw her red brake lights flare. She had pulled up right next to a National Guard truck, and was waiting there.

  Dr. Petrie bit his lip, watching anxiously. Minutes passed, and no National Guardsmen emerged from the truck, nor from any of the makeshift command posts that had been set up around it. He saw Adelaide get out of the car and look around.

  Five minutes went by, and he understood then what had happened. He walked quickly back to the oil-drums and collected Prickles. Then, picking her up in his arms, he jogged as fast as he could back to the hidden Torino. He climbed in, started the car up, and swung back on to the highway in a cloud of white dust.

  He drove the mile up to the barricade and stopped. Adelaide was still standing there, looking around in a strangely dazed way, supporting herself against the side of her car.

  He got out, and walked across to her.

  She turned. Her face was bruised, and her lips were swollen. Her hair was mussed up and filthy. She was dressed in nothing but a red coverall with MacDonald’s embroidered on the pocket. Her eyes stared at him as if she was having difficulty focusing.

  ‘Adelaide?’ he said quietly.

  He came nearer, and held out his arms towards her. She kept on staring at him like a stranger.

  ‘Adelaide? It’s me – Leonard.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Adelaide – what’s happened?’

  She lowered her eyes. Tears dropped down her cheeks, and stained her red coveralls with damp.

  ‘Oh, Leonard,’ she choked. ‘Oh, Leonard, I’m sorry.’

  He took her arm. She was shivering, in spite of the heat, and she couldn’t seem to stop.

  ‘Sorry? Adelaide – what’s happened to you? Who’s made you like this?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Leonard,’ she wept. ‘Oh, Leonard, I’m so sorry.’

  He said, ‘Adelaide—’ But then she clung to him, and cried in great desperate, agonized gasps. She tugged at his sleeves, at his wrists, and wound his shirt in her hands, shaking and trembling with anguish. He couldn’t do anything else but hold her, and soothe her, while Prickles sat in the car and watched them both with a concerned frown.

  The National Guardsmen were all very young, and they were all dead. The plague had touched them all during the night, and they lay where they had been infected by it. In their bunks, beside their truck, in their command posts.

  Dr. Petrie kept Adelaide and Prickles well away while he checked over the barricade and its twenty corpses, and he wound a scarf around his own nose and mouth in case he wasn’t as resistant to plague as Anton Selmer had suggested. The whole place was buzzing with glistening flies, and stank of diarrhoea and death.

  Beside one young guardsman, he found an open wallet with a photograph of a smiling woman who must have been the boy’s mother. But this was not a war – the mothers didn’t wait at home, fondly smiling, while their sons died on the battlefield. If the mother lived in Florida, she was probably dead, too. Plague did not discriminate.

  When he had finished his cursory check of the command post, Dr. Petrie roughly kicked down the wood and barbed-wire barricade. Then he went back to the Delta 88, which he had decided to drive in preference to the Torino. Its air-conditioning worked, and it had nearly twice as much gas in its tank. He climbed in and started the engine. Adelaide tried to give him a small smile.

  ‘I guess it’s no use posting guards against diseases,’ said Dr. Petrie. ‘Not this disease, anyway.’

  ‘No,’ she replied.

  Prickles said, ‘Why do those men let flies walk on their faces?’

  Dr. Petrie looked around. ‘They’re dead, honey. They’re all dead, and because they’re dead, they don’t mind.’

  ‘I won’t let flies walk on my face, even when I’m dead.’

  Dr. Petrie lowered his head. He said nothing.

  They drove into Georgia in the early hours of Thursday morning, and it was only
then that they saw how rapidly the plague had spread. Leonard Petrie kept on 75 towards Atlanta, but even as they drove north-west, away from the polluted eastern shores, they saw suburbs where dead housewives lay on the sidewalks, towns where fires burned untended, abandoned cars and trucks, looted stores, blazing farmland, rotting bodies.

  Throughout the long hours of the morning, Adelaide sat silently, her head resting against the car window, saying nothing. Dr. Petrie didn’t press her. He could guess what had happened, even if she hadn’t told him. He had seen rape victims before, and knew that what she needed now, more than anything, was reassurance.

  Dr. Petrie drove fast, and one by one they began to overtake other cars. Most of the stragglers were old family Chevvys and Fords, stacked high with belongings. It was almost bizarre what people felt they desperately needed to keep – even to the extent of hampering their flight away from danger. Dr. Petrie saw a Rambler groaning under the weight of an upright piano, and a new Cadillac bearing, with frayed ropes and great indignity, a green-painted dog kennel.

  The plague survivors were heading north, heading west. They drove with their car windows closed tight, and they hardly looked at each other. Pale, tense faces in locked vehicles. As Dr. Petrie overtook more and more cars, the traffic became denser, and the jams became worse. At last, twenty or thirty miles outside of Atlanta, they were slowed down to a crawl, and way ahead of them, glittering in the fumy sunlight like an endless necklace that had been laid across the Georgia landscape, they saw a six-lane jam that obviously stretched the whole distance into the city.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Adelaide hoarsely. ‘What are we going to do?’

  Dr. Petrie stretched his aching back, and shrugged. ‘There’s nothing we can do. Maybe there’s a turnoff someplace up ahead, and we can try to make it across country.’