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

by Graham Masterton

  The jam was made even more hideous as drivers died from plague at the wheels of their cars. Dr. Petrie saw wives and children mouthing frantic appeals for help through the windows of their cars, but the vehicles were now locked so solidly together that no one could open a car door. Anyway, every family was keeping itself strictly quarantined inside its own cell, and no one would risk infecting himself by going to assist anyone else.

  It was the ultimate experience in American hostility, but perhaps it was also the ultimate experience in American togetherness, too, for the drivers and families who died inside their cars were not left behind or abandoned, but irresistibly pushed forward by the crushing metallic weight of the living refugees behind them.

  Adelaide slept for two hours, and when she woke up she looked a little better. As they bumped and rolled gradually northwards, she made them a lunch of franks and canned mixed vegetables, and they drank Coke and orange juice. Police helicopters flackered noisily overhead, warning drivers who felt unwell to try and pull off the highway. There was no way they were going to be able to halt the exodus of plague survivors, and they didn’t even try.

  Inside the chilled confines of their air-conditioned car, Dr. Petrie and Adelaide and Prickles were shunted northwards in a curious dream. Trees and road signs went past so slowly and gradually that they grew tired of looking at them, tired of reading them. As far as they could see ahead, there was nothing but a wide river of car rooftops, wavering in the afternoon heat. Behind them, the same endless press.

  The convoy’s progress was further hampered by cars that had broken down or run out of gas, and had no way of filling up again. Only the slow-boiling fear of plague kept the immense and agonized jam inching forward. Dr. Petrie saw an old Buick that had immovably seized up being deliberately shunted off the highway by the cars around it. It overturned and rolled down a dusty embankment, with its family trapped inside it. And there was nothing anyone could do to help.

  They began to pick up radio broadcasts. They were faint and crackly at first, and it was plain they were coming from a long distance. Adelaide identified them first. They were news programs from Washington D.C., distorted and faded by the intervening peaks of the Appalachians.

  Eventually, though, they began to gain altitude, and as they did so the radio bulletins became clearer.

  ‘… so far, there have been no reported outbreaks of disease any further north than Wildwood, on Cape May, New Jersey, but more than seventy miles of beaches on Long Island’s south shore were closed just before noon this morning because of sewage that has been washing ashore for the past week. Bathing has been prohibited from Long Beach, practically next door to the Rockaways in Queens, all the way east to the western edge of the Hamptons in Suffolk County.

  ‘Inland, two cases of plague have been reported in Baltimore, and further south the disease has taken a serious grip on Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and parts of Maryland. The President is remaining in Washington against the advice of his aides, but it is understood that he is strictly quarantined, and that a helicopter waits on the White House lawn for possible evacuation measures…

  ‘The Special Epidemic Commission set up yesterday by the President at a moment’s notice has declared New York City a primary quarantine zone, on account of the density of its population and the seriousness of a possible outbreak of plague there… Accordingly, all access to Manhattan Island will be filtered and controlled by paramedic teams, and if necessary the entire island will be sealed off from outside contact…’

  Dr. Petrie switched off. He wiggled his fingers to ease the cramp in them, and said, ‘It looks bad. Maybe we ought to head west. Once we’re through Atlanta, we could head for Birmingham or Chattanooga.’

  Adelaide said nothing. Dr. Petrie swore as the car behind them, a big bronze Mercury, nudged their Delta 88 in the rear bumper for the twentieth time.

  Prickles, who had been dozing on the back seat, opened her eyes sleepily and said, ‘Is it time for Batman?’

  Dr. Petrie shook his head. ‘No Batman tonight, honey. We’re still stuck in all these cars.’

  Prickles stared out of the window, disappointed. ‘Can’t we go home now?’ she asked him.

  Dr. Petrie reached over and took her hand. ‘We can’t go home for a long time, darling. But what we’re going to do is find ourselves a new home. You and me and Adelaide. Isn’t that right, Adelaide?’

  Adelaide turned and looked at him listlessly. ‘Whatever you say, Leonard.’

  Prickles was satisfied by that answer, but Dr. Petrie wasn’t. As Adelaide turned away again, he said, ‘Adelaide, love, that’s not like you. Not like you at all.’

  She kept her face away. Outside, the afternoon shadows were beginning to lengthen.

  ‘What’s not like me?’ she said, as if her mind were on something else altogether.

  ‘Agreeing with me, just like that. You normally refuse to do what I want, on principle.’

  She stared at the floor of the car. ‘Well,’ she whispered. ‘Things change, don’t they?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Sometimes you find that refusing doesn’t make any real difference.’

  He didn’t try to touch her. That would come later. Right now, he was intent on getting her to say what had happened. Just explaining it would start the long painful process of exorcism.

  ‘How did it happen?’ he asked her, so softly that his words were scarcely louder than breathing.

  She raised her head.

  ‘Was it back at the restaurant? At MacDonald’s?’

  Slowly, she turned to stare at him. Her eyes were glistening with tears.

  ‘You know,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I am a doctor, Adelaide; and more important I’m a man who loves you, and knows you well.’

  The tears rolled freely down her cheeks now. She couldn’t say any more, and right now she didn’t need to. She leaned her head forward and rested it against Dr. Petrie’s shoulder, and cried.

  Prickles looked at her with some interest, and said, ‘Why is Adelaide crying, Daddy? Does she feel sick?’

  Dr. Petrie smiled. ‘No, darling, she doesn’t. She doesn’t feel sick. I hope she’s feeling better.’

  *

  They saw the huge smudge of black smoke hanging over Atlanta before they saw the city itself. The evening was warm and still, and the smoke was suspended above in spectral stillness. Eventually, as the painful traffic jam edged nearer, they could make out the sparkle of fires in the city’s downtown buildings, and they knew that Atlanta was destroyed.

  Dr. Petrie turned the radio dial to see if he could pick up any stray news bulletins, but all he could get was howling and static.

  ‘Maybe we could get off the main highway here and try the back roads,’ suggested Adelaide. ‘This is getting insane.’

  Dr. Petrie said, ‘I’ll try. It looks like there’s a turnoff just up there on the left.’

  Forcing their way across two solid lanes of blocked-solid traffic was the worst part. It meant holding up other cars, and after a day of inching forward in heat and fumes and sickness, there weren’t many drivers who had the patience or the inclination to let them past. Dr. Petrie rolled down his window and made a hand signal, and then just turned the wheel left and crunched into the car beside his.

  The driver, a fat redneck with a fat family to match, mouthed obscenities at him. The man didn’t open his window, though. He was too frightened of catching the plague.

  The redneck gunned his engine and tried to force Dr. Petrie back into his own lane. There was a grinding of wheel-hubs and fenders.

  ‘Let us through!’ screamed Adelaide. ‘We only want to get through!’

  The man wouldn’t budge. He sat stolidly in the driving seat, refusing to look in their direction. For five minutes, the two cars crawled along side by side, their fenders scraping and screeching.

  After a while. Dr. Petrie sighed impatiently and reached over for his automatic
weapon. He lifted it up, and took a bead through his open window at the redneck’s head. Then he waited. The man, who was making a point of ignoring him, didn’t see what was happening at first. Then his podgy wife nudged him, and he turned and saw the rifle’s muzzle fixed on his cranium. He jammed on his brakes so quickly that the car behind shunted into the back of him.

  Dr. Petrie, steering-wheel in one hand and rifle in the other, crossed the two lanes of traffic in a couple of minutes. Then he sped the Delta 88 up alongside the main highway in a cloud of white dust, and took the small rutted turnoff to the left. The car bounced and banged on its suspension, but soon they were clear of the traffic jam and driving up the side of a gradual incline, into trees and scattered housing plots and fields.

  Below them, they now saw in the reddish light of the seven o’clock sun, clouded in fumes and smoke, the endless glittering chain of the congested highway, and in the distance, five or six miles to the north-west, the immense shadow that drifted over Atlanta. They opened the car windows, and there was a rubbery smell of burning mingled with the fresher smell of the evening woods.

  Dr. Petrie didn’t know if the dirt-track they were following led anywhere, but he was prepared to drive across fields and streams if he had to. The most urgent need was to head west, and outstrip the plague. As far as he could make out, they were still well inside the infected area, and until they escaped it, they were still at high risk from National Guardsmen, looters, panicking drivers, and the bacillus itself.

  It wasn’t long before he had to switch on the car’s headlights. The sky was darkening into rich blue through the treetops, and moths were tapping softly against the car’s windshield. Prickles was fast asleep in the back, covered with a plaid blanket, and Adelaide was beginning to settle down to doze.

  ‘Leonard,’ she said. ‘I was just wondering.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘It’s about the plague. I was just wondering why you didn’t catch it yourself.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve been wondering that myself.

  I was exposed to so many plague patients down at the hospital, and I’ve been tired and vulnerable, too. But I still haven’t caught it. And neither have you.’

  ‘Oh, with me, I think it’s just luck,’ said Adelaide. ‘But you, I don’t understand. Dr. Selmer didn’t catch it either, did he? Least, not as far as we know. I mean, you both touched that boy who had it, didn’t you? That boy you treated on Monday morning? Surely you would have caught it from him.’

  Dr. Petrie shifted in his seat. The track was getting narrower now, and he was beginning to suspect it would turn out to be a dead end. Tree branches were scraping and flickering against the sides of the car, and he was having trouble making out which was track and which wasn’t.

  ‘I’ve thought about it over and over,’ he said. ‘First of all, I wondered if the boy had a mild strain of plague that acted as an antidote to the main strain. But then why did he die? And why did his parents die? And what about all the other people that Anton and I were looking after? Why didn’t we pick up plague from them? The only possibility that seems to make any sense is that Anton and I both did something that immunized us. Some part of our work, something to do with hospital or medical treatment, made us safe. But don’t ask me what it was, because I couldn’t guess.’

  Adelaide said, ‘I couldn’t guess, either. But whatever it was, or is, thank God for it.’

  She reached over and touched his thigh. ‘Leonard,’ she said. ‘I do love you, you know.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘I know it doesn’t seem like it sometimes, but I do.’

  He turned briefly and smiled at her. ‘It does seem like it, always. Now why don’t you get yourself some rest?’

  She kissed his cheek, and then released the switch on her reclining seat and lay back to sleep. Dr. Petrie decided to drive on as far as he reasonably could, and then snatch a couple of hours himself. The track was still just about visible, and he wanted to put as many miles between the plague and them as possible.

  As he drove, he thought some more about the curious question of his immunity from plague. It wasn’t even an ordinary plague, but a fast-incubating breed that attacked the human system with such speed and ferocity that even a serum would have to be administered within half-an-hour of infection to have any chance of saving a patient’s life. Not that any kind of effective serum existed. So how and why had he and Dr. Selmer escaped it? Maybe if he understood that, he would understand how the whole epidemic could be slowed down and stopped. And that would be some medical coup…

  Was there another disease which he and Dr. Selmer might have both had in innocuous forms, and whose bacilli might have resisted the bacilli of super-plague? Was there any kind of air-borne infection they might have picked up, or some air-borne medication within the hospital? There had to be some common factor between Dr. Selmer and himself which would provide a clue. But he needed more facts before he could form a workable theory.

  Outside, in the Georgia woods, it was now pitch-dark. The insistent sawing of insects was loud and steady, and Dr. Petrie seemed to have driven way out from any kind of civilization. He didn’t even know if he was going east or west any more. He decided to stop for the night, and sleep.

  He finally pulled the Delta 88 to a stop under a large sheltering tree. The car’s engine and hood cooled down with a relieved ticking sound. He switched off the lights, and climbed out of the car to stretch his legs. The woods seemed very deep and silent and dark, although far away he could hear the distant rumble of a passenger aircraft. It was strange to think that, outside the plague zone, life was still going on as before, and that maybe in New York and Chicago and St. Louis, people were getting up and going to bed as if nothing had happened.

  He opened the back door of the car and made sure that Prickles was tucked in properly. Then he took off his shoes and got ready to climb back behind the wheel and spend another uncomfortable night as a guest of General Motors.

  There was a sudden sharp cracking noise, and something zipped through the car’s windshield and out through the passenger window. Dr. Petrie instantly dropped to the leafy ground, and groped inside the car for his automatic rifle. Adelaide sat up and said, ‘Leonard? What’s happened?’

  ‘Down,’ he hissed, waving his hand. ‘Get your head down. There’s someone out there.’

  He reached up to the steering column and switched on the car’s electrics so that he could lower the driver’s window. Then, using the driver’s door as a shield, like the policemen he had seen in TV programs, he lifted his rifle and peered out into the dark.

  There was a long silence. He heard tree rats scuffling in the darkness, and birds chirping nervously as they protected their young.

  Dr. Petrie cocked his rifle and strained his eyes. He thought the shot had come from a large shadowy bush, but he couldn’t be sure. Just to liven things up, he fired two shots in the general direction of the bush, and then listened.

  There was an even longer silence. Then a voice quite close behind him said, ‘Lay your gun down real slow, and raise your hands.’

  Dr. Petrie cursed himself. All the time he had been protecting himself with his car door and firing into bushes, his attacker had been softly circling around him. He put down the automatic rifle and slowly stood up with his hands above his head.

  He couldn’t see his attacker at all. The night was too dark, and the man didn’t move.

  ‘You come from th’ east?’ asked the man, in a Georgia twang.

  Dr. Petrie said, ‘We don’t have disease, if that’s what you mean.’

  The man sniffed. ‘Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. You can’t see disease, can you? Not in the night, nor neither in the day.’

  Dr. Petrie said, ‘We’re not doing any harm. We just want to pass right through.’

  ‘I know you do,’ said the man. ‘And I aint gonna let you.’

  ‘Why not? What’s it to you?’

  The man sniffed again. It’s a lot to m
e, mister, and it’s a lot to my family and my relatives and everyone else west of here. This here’s the plague line, right here. Me and everyone else around here, we formed this vigilante committee, and if’n anyone tries to cross this plague line, I can tell you that they’re taking their life into their own hands, because our agreement is that we shoot to kill. All you have to do is turn around, and go back where you come from.’

  ‘Supposing I won’t?’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘But just supposing I won’t?’

  ‘Well,’ said the man patiently, ‘supposing you won’t, then I’ll have to drop you.’

  ‘And if I drop you first?’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘But just supposing I do?’

  There was a pause. Then, out of the darkness from another direction altogether, a thicker voice said, ‘Mister, if you drop Harry first. I’ll make damn sure I drop you second.’

  Dr. Petrie lowered his hands. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I think you win. Can we just spend the night here? I have a little girl, and I don’t want to wake her up.’

  ‘Just get the hell out,’ said Harry.

  ‘And if I refuse? No, don’t answer that. You’ll drop me. Okay, we’re going.’

  Dr. Petrie bent down to pick up his rifle. ‘Leave the gun,’ Harry said.

  ‘Now wait a minute,’ Dr. Petrie protested. ‘If I’m going to go back into the plague zone, I’m not going without this.’

  ‘Leave it!’

  Dr. Petrie remained where he was for five or six frozen seconds, half-bending towards the rifle. He screwed up his eyes and peered into the night for the slightest giveaway of Harry’s whereabouts. The other vigilante didn’t matter so much, because if Dr. Petrie ducked down behind the car he would be out of his firing line.

  Harry said, ‘Come on, mister. Leave the gun and get your ass out of here. I aint won no medals for patience, and I aint going to win one now.’

  Dr. Petrie saw a glint. It could have been the side of a pair of spectacles, or the buckle of a pair of dungarees. Whatever it was, it was enough. He dropped to the ground, snatched his rifle, rolled over in a flurry of leaves and fired a burst of three shots exactly where he had seen the glint.