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

by Graham Masterton

  The shrieking of the crowd filled the lobby with hideous noise – cries of pain and terror, and cries of frustrated fury. They flooded into the reception area trampling over dead and dying bodies, and Ivor Glantz was swept away like a man carried out to sea.

  ‘Back to the stairs!’ bellowed Kenneth Garunisch. ‘Back to the stairs!’

  Dr. Petrie seized Adelaide and Esmeralda by the hand, and pulled them towards the emergency stairs. Kenneth Garunisch pushed them hurriedly through, and Herbert Gaines, whimpering in fright, followed after. Nicholas was hitting at a bloody-faced vagrant with his baseball bat, and just managed to push him away and duck through the door to the stairs before a mob of screaming men reached him, waving clubs and knives. Kenneth Garunisch slammed the door, locked it, and dropped the bolt across it. They heard the crowd bang up against the other side like an avalanche.

  ‘Pappa!’ cried Esmeralda. ‘Where’s Pappa?’

  Kenneth Garunisch reached out and held her arm. ‘Miss Baxter, it was no good. I couldn’t keep the door open any longer.’

  ‘You mean he’s still—’

  ‘He wouldn’t have felt very much, believe me.’

  ‘He’s still out there? You mean he’s still out there?’

  ‘Miss Baxter, it was his own fault! If he hadn’t fired that shot!’

  ‘They’ll kill him!’ screamed Esmeralda, in an almost unbearably high-pitched voice. ‘They’ll kill him!’

  Kenneth Garunisch said to Adelaide, ‘Please – take her upstairs will you? We have to get out of here and lock all these fire doors.’

  ‘You have to let me through!’ said Esmeralda. ‘I have to get him out of there!’

  Garunisch stood firm. ‘Miss Baxter, it’s impossible.’

  ‘I demand that you let me through!’ insisted Esmeralda, suddenly haughty.

  Kenneth Garunisch shook his head. ‘Come on, Miss Baxter, let’s just get out of here.’

  Esmeralda glared furiously for a moment, but then her face softened and collapsed with anguish.

  ‘Oh, God!’ she sobbed. ‘It’s my fault! Oh God, it’s all my fault! He was so good, you don’t even understand!’

  ‘We understand,’ said Herbert Gaines, consolingly.

  ‘You don’t!’ shrieked Esmeralda, off-key and hysterical. ‘He was my lover!’

  *

  They locked and bolted every fire exit up to the ninth floor, and when they were there they took the added precaution of levering open the elevator doors and wedging them with a long gilt settee. The elevators had been switched off by now, but they just wanted to make sure that the furious mob downstairs didn’t get them working again.

  ‘Listen to that,’ said Kenneth Garunisch, leaning over the open elevator shaft.

  Dr. Petrie listened. From the first floor, there was a sound like strange trolls at the bottom of an echoing drain – screams and hoots and cries.

  ‘Did you ever see The Third Man?’ said Garunisch. ‘You remember the scene at the top of the Ferris Wheel? When they looked down at the people below, like dots, and Harry Lime says something like – “would you feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving for ever?” Well, what would you say if one of those animals down there stopped screaming? Maybe Gaines was right. When it comes down to it, just show me one American who gives a fuck about any other American.’

  Dr. Petrie said, ‘I’m a doctor, Mr. Garunisch. I try to give at least half a fuck.’

  Kenneth Garunisch looked at Dr. Petrie narrowly. ‘You think I’m wrong, don’t you? For the strike, and all that?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  Garunisch looked down into the depths of the elevator shaft. The distorted screams and groans continued.

  ‘It matters to me. Dr. Petrie. I stood up for a principle I believe in. If the whole of America has to die for that principle, then I still believe it’s worth it.’

  ‘Even if the principle kills the very people it’s supposed to protect?’

  Kenneth Garunisch turned away. ‘Principles are everything, Dr. Petrie. Without principles, we cease to be living beings.’

  Herbert Gaines came up. His yellow safari suit was smudged with dust, and his leonine hair was sticking up like fuse wire.

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt this debating society, but I think we ought to start barricading our apartments. Maybe we ought to see what food we have available, too, and share it out.’

  Esmeralda, who was calmer now, almost uncannily calm, was sitting at the opposite end of the ninth-floor landing smoking a cigarette.

  ‘We have a whole freezer full,’ she said. ‘Lamb, beef, hamburger, chickens, turkeys, vegetables. I guess we can hold out for months.’

  ‘So have we,’ nodded Garunisch. ‘How about you, Mr. Gaines?’

  Nicholas spoke for him. ‘Oh, we’re fine, too, aren’t we, Herbert? I think our supplies lean a little heavily on ready-made goulasch, but I suppose my digestion can just about stand it. Herbert had one of his cooking jags last month, and goulasch is the only damned thing he can do.’

  Herbert Gaines turned around angrily: ‘What’s the matter with my sole veronique? Or my cous-cous?’

  Nicholas sighed. ‘Oh, Herbert, they’re lovely. Can’t you ever take a goddamned joke?’

  Dr. Petrie took Adelaide by the hand. ‘I suggest we all stay in one apartment. You can lock all your valuables up in your own apartments, but if we all stay in separate places, we’ve lost any means of communication. Supposing the mob gets up here and breaks open your door, Mr. Gaines, or yours, Mr. Garunisch, and you’ve got no way of calling out for help from the rest of us?’

  ‘I think Dr. Petrie has a point,’ said Kenneth Garunisch. ‘We can move beds and food into one condo, and defend it together.’

  Esmeralda stood up. She was white-faced and her eyes were smudges of shadow. She looked like Ophelia, drowning in the weeds.

  ‘If we’re going to do that,’ she said, ‘we’d better use my place. We have a closed-circuit TV on the door – and apart from that, the settee in the den turns into a doublebed.’

  ‘Is that agreed then?’ said Garunisch.

  ‘What about Mr. and Mrs. Blaufoot?’ asked Herbert Gaines. ‘Don’t you think we ought to have a word with them?’

  While the rest of the survivors shifted beds into Esmeralda’s apartment, and carried in food and belongings, Kenneth Garunisch went up to Mr. and Mrs. Blaufoot’s door and rang the bell.

  There was a long pause. Then Mr. Blaufoot said, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me, Mr. Bloofer. Mr. Garunisch from downstairs. Can you open the door?’

  There was another long pause. Then Mr. Blaufoot said, ‘Leave us alone. We’re all right.’

  Kenneth Garunisch sighed. ‘Mr. Bloofer,’ he said leaning against the door, ‘you have to know that a mob of people have broken into the tower. They could be coming upstairs to make trouble. Apart from that, they’ve probably got plague. Now, can you open the door?’

  He heard the locks and bolts being drawn back, and the solid mahogany door was opened an inch. Mr. Blaufoot’s glittering eyes looked out from the darkness.

  ‘Mr. Bloofer? Please?’ said Garunisch.

  Mr. Blaufoot opened the door all the way, and stepped back. Kenneth Garunisch walked into the thick-carpeted condominium, and was surprised to find that it was in darkness. Across the room, sitting in a tall carved chair, Mrs. Blaufoot sat in a black dress, pale and red-eyed.

  ‘Are you folks all right?’ said Garunisch. ‘Is there anything wrong?’

  The Blaufoots were silent. Mr. Blaufoot walked over and stood next to his wife.

  Kenneth Garunisch looked at them uneasily. Then he saw the framed photograph on the small polished Regency table, just in front of Mrs. Blaufoot. He stepped over and carefully picked it up. She looked very much like Mrs. Blaufoot.

  Mrs. Blaufoot said coldly, ‘Put it down, please.’

  Garunisch frowned, but he laid the photograph back on the table. He said huskily, ‘Is this your daughter?’
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  Mr. Blaufoot nodded. ‘Yes, Mr. Garunisch, it is. We heard about her on Sunday morning, shortly before the telephone system went dead. A relative of ours had managed to escape from Florida early in the plague, and he was able to get to St. Louis. This relative had seen her.’

  ‘And is she all right?’ said Garunisch. Then he looked around at the closely-drawn drapes and Mrs. Blaufoot’s black dress, and said, ‘Well no, I guess she’s not. I’m sorry. That was clumsy of me.’

  ‘She’s dead, Mr. Garunisch,’ said Mrs. Blaufoot. ‘She died of lack of medical attention, with bronchial pneumonia. She didn’t even have plague. The medical workers were out on strike, and my daughter died.’

  Mr. Blaufoot added, as if it made any difference, ‘She was going to be a concert pianist.’

  Kenneth Garunisch coughed. He hardly knew what to say. In the end, he muttered, ‘Listen, I’m really very sorry.’

  Mrs. Blaufoot stared at the screwed-up handkerchief between her bony hands. ‘Sorry isn’t really enough, is it?’ Garunisch shrugged. ‘No, I guess it isn’t. But I am sorry, and there is nothing more I can say. I acted, when I called that strike, according to my lights.’

  Mrs. Blaufoot looked up. ‘In that case, Mr. Garunisch, I hope that your lights soon go out, like ours did.’

  *

  During the night, most of the sixty or seventy people who were huddled together in the lobby of Concorde Tower died of plague. The black floor and the polished mirrors on the walls reflected their painful, grotesque faces as the bacilli swelled their joints and clogged their lungs. Their groaning and whimpering echoed like a terrible chorus of damned souls, but it wasn’t the worst noise. The worst noise was the rustle and scamper of rats – big gray sewer rats – as they scuttled over the sleeping and dying bodies, and gnawed at dead and living flesh alike. Some of the rats sniffed at the locked fire door, which even the angriest rioters hadn’t been able to break down, and some of them poured into the open elevator doors and dropped, with the soft thud of furry bodies down to the basement.

  They scented warmth and they scented food and they began to climb, twisting their way up the elevator cables. The empty shaft echoed with their twittering and squeaking, and the scratching of their claws on the steel wires. Eventually, they reached the ninth floor, where the doors were wedged open by the gilt settee, and they ran out of the elevator shaft and on to the landing. The upper fire doors had been left open, and they wriggled and pattered up the stairs, sniffing at locked apartment doors and over-running floor after floor.

  In three hours, the stairs and landings of Concorde Tower, right up to the roof level, were a scampering mass of ravenous rats.

  *

  Dr. Petrie was deeply asleep when someone touched his forehead. He stirred, and unconsciously tried to brush the hand away. He had been dreaming about Miami, and he thought he had been eating a picnic lunch on the beach with Prickles and Anton Selmer. He opened his eyes, and found himself in the den of Ivor Glantz’s condominium, lying on the settee now converted into a double bed.

  Esmeralda whispered, ‘Sssh.’

  He could see her in the gloom, her face pale and sculptured. She was wearing her black curly hair tied back with a ribbon, and she smelled warmly of Arpège.

  ‘What is it?’ he whispered back.

  ‘Sssh,’ she repeated.

  He looked quickly to one side, and saw that he was now alone in the bed. He had been sleeping with Kenneth Garunisch, while Adelaide and Prickles and Mrs. Garunisch shared the master bed in the main bedroom.

  Esmeralda said, ‘Garunisch couldn’t sleep. He’s in the kitchen, having a smoke and reading a book.’

  ‘He reads books?’ joked Dr. Petrie. ‘You amaze me.’

  ‘Don’t talk,’ said Esmeralda, laying a finger across his lips. ‘Even walls have ears.’

  Without another word, she lifted the bedsheets and climbed in beside him. The bed creaked, and she suppressed a giggle. Then she curled her arms around him, and she was all soft and warm and slithery in her pure silk nightdress.

  ‘We can’t do this,’ hissed Dr. Petrie, in spite of the fact that his body was all too obviously saying he could.

  ‘Don’t talk,’ said Esmeralda. ‘Just remember what I’ve been through and give me a chance.’

  He sat up, and held her wrists. He could see her moist lips gleaming in the dim light of the den.

  ‘Esmeralda, we can’t do this.’

  ‘You’re a doctor, aren’t you?’

  ‘Sure, but—’

  ‘But nothing! If you’re a doctor, you know the importance of therapy after a psychological shock. I don’t want love, Leonard, I just need a few moments’ oblivion!’

  He didn’t release her wrists. ‘Thanks for the compliment,’ he whispered. ‘Now I’m only good for a few moments’ oblivion!’

  ‘You know I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Well, what did you mean?’

  ‘I mean that this is an emergency. A medical and psychological and romantic emergency. For Christ’s sake, Leonard, we could all be dead tomorrow. Don’t you believe in final grand gestures?’

  ‘If I believed in final grand gestures, I’d be lying dead as a door-nail in Miami, Florida.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with us making love?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, kiss me,’ she said, ‘and I’ll show you.’

  He could have resisted. He could have said no. But her long warm thigh moved against his bare leg, and her hand reached down and cupped his tightened balls, and her sexuality washed over him like a wave of drunkenness. He leaned forward and kissed her, and their tongues touched, and their teeth bit.

  They didn’t say a word. She pushed him back against the bed, and sat astride him, lifting her glossy silk nightdress around her hips. He reached up and felt her hardened nipples through the slippery material, and she sighed, and kissed his forehead, and raised herself up so that he could socket himself between her thighs. Then she slowly sat down on him, squirming her hips as she did so, so that he felt a massaging warmth rising up him.

  The door of the den was still ajar. They knew that anyone could walk in at any moment. But they made love slowly and relished every sensation it brought, until they couldn’t suppress their urgency any more, and they were panting at each other with bright eyes and expressions of something like pain.

  Esmeralda twitched and shook violently. Leonard Petrie felt something grip him between the legs, and they both achieved the few moments of oblivion they were looking for. Then they were lying side by side, quiet and wet, and even if it wasn’t a final grand gesture it was at least a kind of temporary therapy for traumatized minds that had been through more emotions and horrors than it was possible to take.

  Dr. Petrie kissed her. ‘You’d better go now,’ he said gently. ‘Mr. Garunisch is a fast smoker.’

  Esmeralda cuddled him close, and pressed her lips against his side.

  Kenneth Garunisch, in blue-striped pyjamas, put his head around the door and said, ‘Hey, you two. Don’t hurry on my account. I’m just going to finish this chapter.’

  He was wakened by the sound of a helicopter. He sat up, listening. Esmeralda had long since gone, and Kenneth Garunisch was lying next to him with his face buried in the pillow, snoring. The helicopter noise came and went, as if it was circling around somewhere in the vicinity. He climbed out of bed, tugged on his pants, and went to the window.

  At first, he couldn’t see where it was. The noise of the rotors was bounced off buildings in all directions, and the sky was gray with cloud. But then he saw it turning around the 38-storey United Nations Plaza building, and circling towards Concorde Tower with its blades flickering and its navigation lights shining through the murk.

  Kenneth Garunisch sat up, rubbing his eyes. ‘What’s going on?’ he grunted.

  ‘It’s a helicopter,’ said Dr. Petrie. ‘It’s been circling around here for a couple of minutes. Maybe it’s the cavalry.’

  Garunisch s
wung his legs out of bed and came to take a look. ‘Some hopes,’ he said. ‘They’ve probably just come for a snoop at the doomed survivors.’

  ‘Do you think we ought to wave?’ said Dr. Petrie. ‘There’s always a chance they’re looking for people to rescue.’

  ‘Do what you like,’ said Garunisch.

  The helicopter was really close to the tower now, circling slowly around and shining a powerful light in their direction. It was a small two-seater Bell, with a perspex bubble cockpit. Dr. Petrie waved both hands.

  At that moment, Herbert Gaines pushed into the room, hastily tying his Japanese bathrobe around his waist.

  ‘Is that a helicopter?’ he asked.

  ‘It aint a June bug,’ said Kenneth Garunisch.

  ‘They’ve come!’ said Gaines. ‘They said they’d come, and they have!’

  Adelaide came into the room and took Dr. Petrie’s arm. ‘Leonard – what is it?’

  Herbert Gaines was elated. ‘It’s the people from Washington! They called me on Saturday when the first news of the plague leaked out. They said they’d bring in a helicopter to rescue me! And here they are!’

  ‘Well,’ said Dr. Petrie, looking at Kenneth Garunisch. ‘It looks like politics pay and principles poop out.’

  Garunisch shrugged.

  Herbert Gaines went to the window and flapped his arms about frantically. For a while it didn’t look as if the helicopter pilot had seen him, but then the dazzling searchlight probed into the apartment window, and Herbert Gaines was lit up like an actor on a stage.

  ‘I’m here!’ he shrieked. ‘I’m here! I’m here!’

  They saw the helicopter pilot pointing towards the roof, and then the machine turned a half-circle and rose out of sight. Herbert Gaines, whimpering with excitement, rushed into the sitting-room and pulled on his yellow safari suit. The rest of them watched him in tense silence.

  ‘Well,’ said Herbert, lacing his shoes, ‘I think I’m ready to go!’

  Nicholas, scruffy from sleep and wearing nothing but a dark brown bath-towel, said, ‘Is that it? You’re just going?’

  Gaines stopped lacing his shoe and looked up. Then he cast his eyes around at everybody else, and saw their expressionless, unsympathetic faces, and bit his lip.