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

by Graham Masterton

  Herbert Gaines looked up. ‘You were there though,’ he said, in his throaty voice.

  Nicholas was about to say something else, but he stopped and looked quizzical. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Precisely what I say. You were there. Haven’t you seen yourself?’

  ‘Seen myself? I don’t—’

  Herbert Gaines put down the cigarette holder and laboriously got out of his chair. Nicholas watched him uneasily as he walked across to the bookshelves, and took down a large Film Pictorial Annual for 1938. The old man put the book on his desk, and opened it out. Then he beckoned Nicholas over.

  ‘Look,’ he said, pointing with his pale, elegant finger to a large black-and-white photograph. ‘Who does that remind you off?’

  Nicholas took a cursory glance. ‘It’s you. It says so, underneath. “Herbert Gaines plays young Captain Dashfoot in Incident at Vicksburg”.’

  ‘Cretin,’ said Herbert Gaines. He gripped Nicholas by the back of the neck, and forced him over to the large gilt Victorian pub mirror that hung on the wall beside the desk. Then he lifted the open book and held it up beside Nicholas’ face.

  ‘Well,’ said Nicholas. ‘I guess there’s a kind of passing resemblance. But we’re not exactly the Wrigley Doublemint twins, are we?’

  Herbert Gaines let him go, and tossed the annual back on the desk.

  ‘You don’t think so? You don’t even know. The first time I saw you, down in the Village, I felt a sensation like I’d never felt before. At first, I couldn’t understand it. I stared and stared at you, and still I couldn’t grasp what it was that made me stare. Then I saw myself in a bookstore window. I saw myself. And I realized what it was about you that attracted me so much. You, Nicholas, are the spitting image of me, when I was in movies.’

  Nicholas looked uncertain. ‘That’s not why you like me, though, is it? I mean – that’s not the only reason?’

  Herbert Gaines walked carefully back to his chair, and sat down. It looked as if his jumpsuit was filled with nothing more substantial than bent coat-hangers and odd bones. When he. was comfortable, he fixed his gaze on Nicholas again – those deep, disturbing eyes – and he spoke in grave, sonorous tones.

  ‘Nicholas,’ he said, ‘I love you.’

  Nicholas scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment. ‘I know that, Herbert, but—’

  ‘But nothing,’ said Herbert. ‘I love you. Does it matter why?’

  Nicholas lowered his eyes. ‘I guess not. It was just that I wondered if you loved me because I was me, or because, well…’

  ‘Because what?’

  ‘Well, because I was you. I mean – is it me you love, or your old self?’

  There was an uncomfortable silence. Then, unexpectedly, Herbert Gaines nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is me that I love. You are the personification of what I once was, and what I could be once more, if they would give me a chance. That, and that alone, is why I love you.’

  Nicholas stood there, biting his lip. He watched Herbert Gaines for a while, but Herbert didn’t look back. The old actor sat in his Victorian chair, smoking steadily and staring at the floor.

  ‘Well, fuck you,’ said Nicholas.

  Herbert Gaines said nothing.

  ‘Do you think I can take that?’ said Nicholas, his eyes filling with tears. ‘Do you think I can just stand here and take that? What do you think I am? Just one of your goddamned celluloid images? Just one of your old movies? Well, fuck you, Herbert Gaines!’

  Gaines shrugged. ‘Please yourself, dear boy.’

  Nicholas wiped his eyes with his arm. ‘Oh, that’s great, that is. That’s just too fucking neat for words. You spend your whole time sulking and moping like an over-age Shirley Temple, and when I tell you the truth about it, you come out with a charmer like that. Well, I can tell you here and now – I’m packing.’

  ‘Packing?’ said Gaines. ‘What for?’

  Nicholas bent forward and hissed the words at him. ‘To leave you, my withered darling, that’s what for.’

  Herbert caught his wrist. His mouth twitched for a moment as he searched for the words. ‘You leave me, you young bastard, and I’ll break your neck.’

  Nicholas pulled himself away. ‘You might have been a muscle boy in 1936, but there’s not much chunk left on the old bones now, is there, Herbert?’

  He turned and walked towards the bedroom. Herbert Gaines, with a curiously intense expression on his face, heaved himself out of his chair and went after him. Hobbling as quickly as he could, he caught up with Nicholas in the doorway, and snatched at his arm.

  Nicholas shook himself free. ‘Herbert, it’s no fucking use!’

  Herbert clutched his young lover again. ‘You’re not leaving, Nicky. Not really.’

  Nicholas turned away. ‘What do you want me to do? Stay here and listen to your ramblings about the good old days for the rest of my life, and how fucking wonderful I am because I look just like you used to look, in one of those two dreary old pictures of yours? Jesus, Herbert, I don’t know which is more boring – you or your second-rate movies.’

  Herbert slapped him, quite hard, across the face. Nicholas stared at him, more in surprise than in pain. A red bruise spread across his left cheek. He lifted his hand and dabbed it.

  Without a word, Nicholas punched Herbert in the stomach. Herbert gasped, and collided with the doorjamb. Nicholas hit him again, with his open hand, and he fell to the floor with his nose bleeding.

  Herbert didn’t cry out, didn’t even raise a hand to protect himself. Viciously and systematically, Nicholas punched him in the face and chest, lifting him up each time he dropped to the floor by tugging his pale blue jumpsuit. There were speckles and splashes of blood down the front, and Herbert’s face was a mass of bruises.

  Finally, with his rage exhausted, Nicholas let him fall on to the pink Wilton carpet, and stumbled unsteadily into the bedroom. He collapsed on to the bed, and lay there panting and sobbing, his legs curled up in a foetal crouch.

  After a few minutes, he became aware that Herbert was standing at his bedside, his white hair awry, his jump-suit dark with blood. Herbert reached out with a wrinkled and trembling hand and touched his bare shoulder. Nicholas recoiled.

  ‘Nick,’ whispered Herbert Gaines. ‘Nicky.’

  Nicholas turned his face away.

  ‘Nicky, listen,’ said Herbert thickly.

  Nicholas shook his head.

  ‘Nicky, you still haven’t punished me enough.’

  Nicholas turned, and lifted his head. The handsome, wrinkled face was swollen and red. The bony shoulders were bowed.

  ‘Not enough?’ said Nicholas, unbelievingly.

  Herbert Gaines, the one-time movie hero, dropped to his knees. ‘I have sinned against myself,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I have grown old, and unappealing. You must punish me.’

  Nicholas sat up. He took Herbert’s hand in his, and gripped it tight. ‘Herbert, you mustn’t say things like that. Nobody can help themselves from growing old. And anyway, what’s sixty? It’s when you get to ninety-five that you’ve got to start worrying!’

  Herbert wiped blood from his chin. ‘Sixty is older than twenty. Nick. It’s all my fault. I threw my youth away. Two movies, too much money too fast. They offered me $25,000 for my third picture. I was high on my own conceit. I said $100,000 or nothing.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You know what happened. I got nothing. I was young and headstrong, and I wouldn’t give in. Don’t you think that’s worthy of punishment?’

  Nicholas rested his head in his hands. He felt tired and depressed, and he didn’t know what possible words of comfort he could give. He was a one-time art student, a one-time merchant seaman, and articulating his sympathies didn’t come easy.

  ‘Nicky,’ said Herbert Gaines, ‘you must hit me.’

  Nicholas shook his head. ‘No, Herbert, I can’t.’

  ‘But you must! It’s the only way! The past must punish the future!’

  Nicholas stood up, and
walked over to a painting of a Chinese mandarin on the other side of the room. He looked ancient, and inscrutable, and deeply wise. The youth gazed at his calmness, and wondered how it was possible to live the kind of life where you could smile as calmly and benignly as that, even once.

  ‘Nicky,’ whispered Herbert Gaines again.

  ‘What is it, Herbert?’

  ‘I want you to kill me.’

  Nicholas almost smiled. ‘No, Herbert, I can’t.’

  ‘The police needn’t know. You could drown me in the bath. An unfortunate accident. Only – I couldn’t do it myself. I’m a Catholic.’ It isn’t easy to want to die, and to be afraid of it.’

  Nicholas turned around. He stared at this pathetic, blood-smattered figure, and he shook his head once again.

  ‘I can’t kill you, Herbert. You’re indestructible. You’re in movies, aren’t you? Two magnificent movies. It doesn’t matter if your body is dead, does it? Every time those movies play, you’ll come back to life again.’

  ‘Nicky,’ said Herbert wretchedly, ‘I need to be punished.’

  ‘You are being punished,’ said Nicholas, quietly. ‘Every day of your miserable life, you’re being punished. You don’t need me to do it. Only one thing will ever let you off the hook, Herbert, and that’s the end of civilization. When there are no more people to go to the movies, and the last picture-house closes down, that’s when you get your freedom.’

  Herbert lowered his head. In a scarcely audible voice he said, ‘If that’s true, Nicky, then I pray God that civilization comes to an end before I do.’

  Nicholas walked back and rested his hand on Herbert’s shoulder.

  ‘The way things are going these days, God might even grant your wish. Now, let’s go and get you cleaned up, hey?’

  *

  Across the hallway, in apartment 109, Kenneth Garunisch was the only person in Concorde Tower who was concerned about the plague. He was sitting at his cluttered desk, trying to fix his necktie, watch television, and talk to his union attorneys on the telephone, all at the same time. He spoke with the steady relentlessness that had earned him the nickname of ‘Bulldozer’, and he was angry.

  ‘This thing broke out last night, Matty. How come they only told me this morning? Because I have a right to know, that’s why! What do you mean, emergency? I don’t care what they call it.’

  Through the open hatch in the sitting-room wall, he could see his wife, Gay, in the kitchen, fixing cocktail snacks with their black maid, Beth. She was warbling Strangers in the Night as she popped little curled-up anchovy fillets on to crackers and cream cheese. Beth, silent and fat, was peeling prawns.

  ‘You’d better believe it, Garunisch said, in his hectoring voice. ‘I got a call from two of my guys at the hospital. Plague, that’s what they got. The Black Death.’

  He put his hand over the receiver and sighed. He was a short, stocky, bullet-headed man with an iron-gray crew-cut. His eyes were pale and uncompromising, and there was a prickly roll of fat at the back of his neck. He spoke with a monotonous harshness, like the retreating sea dragging pebbles down the beach. He was Germanic and hard-bitten, and he was president of the Medical Workers’ Union – a union he had started himself in 1934, with four other hospital porters from Bellevue – and which was now a powerful, nut-cracking international with a billion-dollar fund and a two and a half million membership.

  ‘You hear that? Plague. They don’t know what kind, and they’ve got people dying like flies. So how come I only found out this morning?’

  Gay stuck her heavily-lacquered blue-rinsed curls through the serving hatch.

  ‘What did you say, Ken? Did you say something?’

  Kenneth waved her away. ‘I was talking to Matty. They got some kind of plague in Miami. Can you believe that?’

  Gay, with her head still stuck through the hatch, blinked her eyes as if she was trying to work out whether she could believe it or not. Finally, she said, ‘What’s plague?’

  Kenneth ignored her. His attorney was asking him what he intended doing about Miami.

  ‘What do you think I’m going to do? I want to protect my members. If my members have to handle people with plague, they’re gonna catch it themselves, right?’

  His attorney guessed that was right.

  ‘In which case,’ went on Garunisch, ‘I suggest you call the health department down at Miami and tell them it’s double time or nothing, and all hospital workers got the right to refuse to handle plague cases, without penalization, recrimination, or loss of benefits.’

  His attorney was silent for a while. Then the lawyer suggested that under the circumstances, union action might be construed as taking immoral and unfair advantage of a medical emergency.

  ‘Listen,’ grated Garunisch, ‘you just get on to that telephone to Florida, and you tell those health folk that if they want my members to risk their lives, they’re gonna have to pay for it. I don’t want no arguments, and I don’t want no fuss. Now do it.’

  He clamped the receiver back on the phone, and shook his head. ‘Immoral and unfair advantage,’ he repeated, sarcastically. ‘You get some underpaid Cuban hospital porter to risk his life, and you don’t expect to pay him no more? Immoral and unfair advantage, my ass.’

  Gay popped her head through the hatch again. ‘Did you say something, Ken?’

  Garunisch stood up and walked over to the kitchen, tying up his necktie as he went. It was a very lurid necktie, with purple flowers and greenish spots. It had been an expensive gift from Gay.

  ‘Was that something serious, dear?’ said Gay, rinsing her hands. ‘You look awful sore.’

  Garunisch reached over to pilfer a smoked-salmon canapé. ‘It’s just the usual,’ he said, with his mouth full. ‘They got some kind of epidemic down in Florida, just like the Spanish influenza, and they’re expecting the porters and the drivers to handle the patients without any compensation for extra health risk.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ said Gay. She was a small, busty woman with wide-apart eyes. ‘Supposing they caught it? Sup posing their children caught it?’

  Garunisch looked around the expensive, glossy. Colonial kitchen, with its antique-style tables and chairs. It still gave him a sense of justice and satisfaction, this condominium. For the first time in his life, he owned a luxurious home, decorated just the way that he and Gay had wanted, and he could turn around to all those capitalist palookas who had tried to crush him, and grind him and his union out of existence, and he could raise two rigid fingers.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said absent-mindedly. ‘Supposing their children caught it.’

  Gay said, ‘Beth, haven’t you finished those prawns yet? We still have the fondant frosting to make.’

  Beth peeled as quickly as her fat fingers would allow. ‘I don’t have too many more now, Mrs. Garunisch. Just as soon as I’m through, I’ll make that frosting.’

  ‘Well!’ said Gay Garunisch, turning back to her husband. There was a pleased little smile on her face. ‘Our first social event at Concorde Tower! Isn’t it exciting?’ Kenneth looked up. He was miles away. ‘It’s terrific. Gay. I just wish we didn’t have this plague business hanging over our heads. It really kind of worries me.’

  ‘It’s not hanging over my head,’ said Gay. ‘I don’t even know what it is.’

  Garunisch took another canapé, and pushed it into his mouth whole. ‘Plague is a deadly epidemic disease,’ he mumbled, spitting out crumbs. ‘They used to have it back in the Middle Ages. These days, it’s pretty much under control. But, you know, people can die when they get it, and that’s serious. The news said that thirty or forty people were already dead.’

  Gay Garunisch was taking off her apron. ‘Thirty or forty’s not many,’ she said, looking for the pepper. ‘Why, more people die in a single plane crash.’

  Garunisch looked at her patiently for a moment. He loved her, but he sometimes wondered how she could be so totally impervious to everything that went on around her. She lived in her own self-con
tained world of cocktail parties and celebrity luncheons, and the real events of America escaped her attention.

  ‘Plane crashes,’ he said, very gently, so that he didn’t sound sarcastic, ‘are not catching.’

  The doorbell rang. The chimes were a copy of the bells of Amory Baptist Church, which used to ring outside Mrs. Garunisch’s home when she was a little girl. Beth looked up from her prawn-peeling, but Kenneth moved to get it.

  He opened the door with a fixed grin on his face, and welcomed his first visitors. It was Mr. and Mrs. Victor Blaufoot, from the apartment above theirs. They had met in the elevator just the other day, and Kenneth, in an expansive mood after successful overtime talks, had invited the Blaufoots along to their condo-warming.

  ‘Mr. Bloofer, isn’t it?’ said Garunisch, showing them in. ‘Would you like something to drink?’

  ‘Blaufoot,’ corrected the guest. He was neat and small, in a shiny blue mohair suit, with gold-rim spectacles, and a large nose. Mrs. Blaufoot was even smaller, in a dark green dress and a fur stole.

  Kenneth Garunisch laughed. ‘I’m sorry. I’m usually terrific with names. This is my wife, Gay.’

  There was a lot of hand shaking and uncomfortable laughter. Then they all stood there and looked at each other.

  ‘I hope we’re not early,’ said Mrs. Blaufoot. ‘The truth is, we don’t have very far to come.’

  They all laughed some more.

  ‘You’ve certainly made your place look different,’ said Mr. Blaufoot, looking around. ‘I don’t think that any of the other apartments have been done like this. It’s – it’s – well, it’s very different.’

  ‘It’s a genuine replica,’ smiled Gay Garunisch, pleased. ‘It’s just like the old colonial farmhouse at Trenter’s Bend, Massachusetts. Right down to the patterns on the drapes.’

  Mrs. Blaufoot laughed nervously. ‘You must be the only people on First Avenue with an authentic early-American farmhouse.’

  Kenneth Garunisch, grinning, put his arm around his wife. ‘We were thinking of having ourselves a farm, too, but they don’t allow cows in the lobby.’