Pestilence

by Ken McClure

  “The answer must be that we do not have plague rats in Skelmore. They must be confined in some way to one area, the Palmer’s Green site.”

  “But the boy Edwards didn’t live on Palmer’s Green. He came from the Maxton Estate,” said Saracen.

  “Doesn’t mean that he couldn’t have been down at Palmer’s Green for some reason, a delivery boy perhaps?”

  Saracen remembered something. “Edwards!” he said out loud. “Edwards’ treasure!”

  “What?”

  Saracen told MacQuillan about the episode with the glue sniffers and the story of a boy named Edwards who had supposedly found treasure on the Palmer’s Green site. Half way through the explanation Saracen saw the connection with the medallion that Edwards had been wearing when the ambulance brought him in. He gave MacQuillan a quick resume of the legend of Skelmoris Abbey.

  “Then the boy must have discovered the site of the abbey!” exclaimed MacQuillan.

  Saracen agreed and said, “It could have been plague that wiped out the abbey all these years ago and anyone who went near it afterwards. That would account for the legend of the wrath of God. But how could the bug have survived this long?”

  “In the rats,” said MacQuillan. “The bug could live indefinitely in a rat colony and have been passed on down through the centuries.”

  “And if the rat colony had remained isolated from the town until developers moved in on the Palmer’s Green site…”

  “We would have a sudden outbreak of plague,” agreed MacQuillan.

  “But can that really happen?” asked Saracen.

  MacQuillan nodded. “It’s called sylvatic plague,” he said. “There have been several recorded instances in the United States and in China where plague has established itself in a colony of small animals in the wild. It’s not a problem until man moves into their area but when he does you then have the potential for disaster.”

  “So we have to destroy the rat colony,” said Saracen.

  “Not only the rats but their fleas as well. Poisoning the rats isn’t good enough; the fleas will just look for new hosts. Gas is the answer.”

  “We have to find them first,” said Saracen coming down to earth.

  “Can we talk to the boy Edwards?”

  “He’s dead,” said Saracen.

  “How about the glue sniffers?”

  “At the time they hadn’t managed to find out Edwards’ secret but they might have in the interim. It’s our only hope.”

  “I’ll get the army to trace them.”

  “Let’s do it ourselves,” said Saracen. “The addresses will be in the day book.” Saracen checked the book while MacQuillan brought round the car. They set off for the Maxton estate to be stopped twice en route by the army. They showed their identification and received an apology. It seemed that a growing proportion of Skelmore’s population had taken to doing their shopping by night, using bricks instead of Barclaycards. Looting was rife in the town.

  Frith Street was like so many others on the Maxton estate. Walls were daubed with spray paint slogans, ground floor windows were boarded up and gardens grew wild. The whole area breathed resentment and aggression.

  “Number seventeen, this is it,” said Saracen. They drew up behind an abandoned Ford Cortina. They assumed it had been abandoned for it had no wheels.

  “I was brought up in an area like this,” said MacQuillan quietly. “In Glasgow.”

  “A long time ago,” said Saracen.

  “A long time ago,” agreed MacQuillan. They got out the car.

  “Third floor,” said Saracen as they entered the building. The passage stank of urine, so badly that they were forced to hold their breath as long as possible. Saracen managed it to the second floor landing. They found the door they were looking for and knocked. There was no reply. Saracen rapped again and this time was rewarded with shuffling sounds from within. “What do you want?” rasped an angry female voice.

  Saracen said who they were and asked to speak to her son.

  “What’s he done?” demanded the woman. “What did he steal? The little bugger I’ll take his bloody life before he’s much older!”

  Saracen assured her that her son had done nothing wrong and at this point the woman behind the door was joined by a man wanting to know what was going on. “Two doctors from the General,” said the woman’s voice, “They want to speak to the boy.”

  “We don’t want anyone from that place coming here,” growled the man. “Don’t you know what bloody time it is?”

  “It’s very important,” said Saracen, stretching self control to the limit. It’s vital that we speak to your son.”

  MacQuillan and Saracen exchanged glances while they listened to a whispered argument rage on the other side of the door. The woman won and the door was opened. They were ushered into the living room and the woman went to waken her son while the man went back to bed. MacQuillan sat down on a brown plastic arm chair that listed to one side under his weight. Saracen shooed a cat off the sofa where it had been wrestling with a greasy paper that had earlier held fish and chips.

  The woman returned with the boy and picked up the paper. “You do your best to keep the place nice…” she said, baring her teeth in what she felt was a smile.”I sometimes wonder why I bother.”

  “Remember me?” Saracen asked the boy. The boy rubbed his eyes and remembered. “Your pal Edwards died tonight I’m afraid.” The boy remained impassive; his mother made appropriate noises.

  “You told me that Edwards had found treasure on Palmer’s Green and I didn’t believe you,” said Saracen.

  “It was true,” said the boy.

  “I know that now,” said Saracen quietly.

  “Treasure? What treasure?” squawked the mother. Saracen ignored her and addressed the boy again. “Did you ever find out where Edwards found it?” The boy shook his head but Saracen sensed that he was lying. “A lot of people’s lives depend on it,” he said. “I’m not kidding.”

  Saracen could see the boy swither. He swallowed hard and prayed that he would make the right decision.

  “Yeah, I know where he got it.”

  Saracen closed his eyes and gave thanks. Almost immediately he had to consider that the boy might be infected like Edwards. “So you have been there too?” he asked.

  “No, the watchman caught us. We went back last night but there was a bulldozer parked over it.”

  “Over what?”

  “The entrance to Edwards’ cave.”

  “A cave?”

  “The treasure cave where Edwards got his stuff.”

  “Where exactly is this cave?”

  The boy told Saracen and he took notes. “That’s exactly what we wanted to know,” he said, getting to his feet. He smiled at the boy and said. “You might just have saved this whole town.”

  The boy’s mother shuffled along behind them to the door. “Excuse me asking,” she said with her bare toothed smile. “I just wondered… will there be any reward attached to this treasure?”

  Saracen and MacQuillan returned to find chaos at the General. Military ambulances were blocking the access roads; engines were running and lights blazing while their drivers collected in small groups near the gates. Saracen found Tremaine who told him, “Ward Twenty is full, the County Isolation Unit is full and both the schools are now full. We have nowhere left to put them.”

  “Then we stop admitting,” said Saracen.

  “That’s what Saithe said but this is awful,” protested Tremaine. “It’s an admission of defeat and you know what will happen if there is no response from the emergency services when they are called out. The minute people find out that they are on their own it will be every man for himself.”

  Saracen nodded grimly.

  “Surely Beasdale must know that,” said Tremaine.

  “Oh I think he does,” said Saracen quietly.

  “Then why doesn’t he get new premises for the sick and bring it volunteer help?”

  Saracen avoided the question w
ith one of his own. “How many do we have out there in the ambulances?”

  “Eighteen. We can’t just send them back,” pleaded Tremaine.

  “We’ll bring them in and keep them in reception for the moment,” said Saracen.

  “But…”

  “It won’t be for long. There will be that many deaths in the next hour but we cannot admit any more.”

  “Then you are admitting defeat too?” asked Tremaine.

  “I am facing facts,” said Saracen. He took Tremaine to one side and told him that there would be no antiserum and why not. Tremaine’s will to argue all but evaporated and he sat down, obviously feeling weak at the news. “But the whole town will be wiped out,” he said distantly.

  “There’s still a chance that it will burn itself out if we can remove the source of the outbreak,” said Saracen.

  “But the Archer woman was the source of the outbreak,” said Tremaine.

  “No she wasn’t,” said Saracen. “They got it all wrong.” He told Tremaine about the real source of the disease.

  “But why has it never happened before?”

  “Because the rat colony was never disturbed before,” said Saracen. “It was only when they started to build the flats on Palmer’s Green that they unwittingly opened up access to the rats.

  “Skelmoris Abbey,” muttered Tremaine. “All these years.”

  “The Curse of Skelmoris,” said Saracen. “It was plague.”

  “Didn’t they burn the place to the ground in the story?” asked Tremaine.

  “I suppose the rats survived in the underground cellars and passages,” said Saracen.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Tremaine.

  “Find the colony and wipe them out.”

  “Claire might be able to help there,” said Tremaine. “She has plans of what the abbey was supposed to have looked like.”

  Saracen agreed that that could prove invaluable when the time was right.

  MacQuillan returned from contacting Beasdale and he and Saracen drove back down to Palmer’s Green. “What did he say when you told him?” asked Saracen.

  “He kept asking about the ‘practical implications’ of the discovery,” replied MacQuillan.

  “I hope you stressed the importance of having uncovered the true source of the epidemic,” said Saracen.

  “Of course,” replied MacQuillan. “But I got the impression that he thinks things might just have gone too far already.”

  Saracen felt a chill at what MacQuillan had said. “But he did agree to help?” he asked.

  “He said he would,” said MacQuillan.

  Saracen looked at the site with his notes in his hands. “That must be the bulldozer over there,” he said to MacQuillan and pointed to a silent, yellow machine near the Western edge of an apartment block. They donned their protective clothing and approached the bulldozer which was parked beside a small concrete bunker. Saracen asked what it was.

  “It covers the air intake for the heating system in the flats,” said MacQuillan with a wry smile.

  Saracen squatted down and peered between the tracks of the vehicle but could see nothing unusual. “Then we’ll have to move it,” said MacQuillan. MacQuillan climbed up on to one of the tracks and looked into the cabin. “The keys are in it,” he reported and climbed inside. The whir of the starter motor gave way to a roar and a cloud of diesel smoke rose into the air as the engine sprang to life. There followed a series of hydraulic jerks as MacQuillan tried a row of levers in turn before finding the gear stick. When he did the machine lurched forward ten or twelve metres before MacQuillan killed the engine and silence returned to the site.

  “I don’t see anything do you?” asked MacQuillan as they both examined the ground where the bulldozer had stood.

  Saracen was about to agree when he did notice something different. “These bricks,” he said. “They have been placed there.”

  MacQuillan could see what Saracen meant. Bricks were hardly out of place on a building site but the six lying within a one metre area were the only ones on this side of the site. Someone had placed them there but for what purpose? Saracen moved them to one side and brushed at the dirt with his hands. Almost immediately he knew that he was on the right track because his fingers touched wood. MacQuillan helped him clear away the top layer to reveal a square block of chip board. Saracen prised it up and found a hole. “Well, well,” he said. “Edwards’ cave.”

  “We’ll need torches.”

  “Beasdale’s men should be here soon.”

  A car drew up but it was not the army; it was Claire Tremaine. “Alan rang. I’ve brought the plans.”

  “Thanks but it’s early days,” said Saracen. “All we’ve found is a hole in the ground.”

  “I could help,” said Claire. “After all, holes in the ground are my speciality.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Saracen.

  Claire put her hand on Saracen’s arm and said, “Please James, you know how much this means to me.”

  “Did you inform your boss about this?” asked Saracen.

  “No…there wasn’t time,” said Claire, taken by surprise at Saracen’s question.

  “And being the first person in your team to find Skelmoris Abbey will do your career no harm at all,” said Saracen accusingly.

  “All right, I admit there’s something in what you say,” conceded Claire.

  An army LandRover arrived in a cloud of dust and interrupted them. Beasdale was in it. “I thought I had better come down and see for myself what was going on,” said Beasdale. He was speaking to Saracen but his eyes were questioning the presence of Claire Tremaine. Saracen realised this and introduced Claire. “Miss Tremaine is an archaeologist; she’s an expert on the abbey of Skelmoris and has agreed to help us with the excavations,” he said. Saracen saw the look of gratitude in Claire’s eyes and the questioning look in MacQuillan’s.

  “Perhaps we can talk in the site office,” said Beasdale. “Just Doctor Saracen,” he added when MacQuillan and Claire showed signs of following. Saracen felt uncomfortable but there was no time to dwell on it. Beasdale closed the door behind them and said, “I’ve had Dr MacQuillan’s views on this new discovery now give me yours.”

  “I’m sure they coincide,” said Saracen.

  “Tell me anyway. I want a second opinion.” Beasdale smiled at his intended medical allusion.

  “When we wipe out the source of the epidemic it will start to burn itself out.”

  “But everyone will be dead by then,” said Beasdale.

  “Not everyone,” said Saracen firmly. “A lot but not everyone.”

  Beasdale adopted a pained expression as if what he had to say was difficult. “I don’t think you understand Doctor,” he said quietly.

  “Understand what?”

  “My position.”

  “Tell me,” said Saracen though he feared that he would not like the answer.

  “I believe that the situation in Skelmore will be out of control within seventy two hours if I let it.”

  “How so?”

  “Any policing operation, civil or military, depends on the co-operation of the majority. When it becomes generally known in Skelmore that the emergency services have broken down and that people are being left to die in their houses we will no longer have that co-operation. There will be an uprising and people will attempt to leave the town in large numbers. Under these conditions some would undoubtedly succeed and spread an incurable plague. I cannot allow that to happen.”

  Saracen swallowed and said, “The disease has survived for centuries in these rats. If we don’t find the colony and wipe it out the chances are that it will survive any ‘misfortune’ that should befall Skelmore. Afterwards, of course, the colony might have to look for a new home…”

  Beasdale’s face took on the hint of a smile. He said quietly, “All right Doctor, you have made your point. Find your colony, destroy it. I’ll give you every assistance I can. The only thing I cannot give you is
time.”

  Saracen nodded and said, “I understand.”

  Beasdale got up and put on his cap. “I’ll leave a small detachment to help with the excavation,” he said. Keep me informed.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Claire spread out the plans on the table in the site office and said, “After the fire little was reported to have been left of the abbey itself but it’s likely that the cellars and vaults survived. As you can see they were quite extensive.”

  “And we know that there must be at least two outlets,” said MacQuillan.

  “We do?” said Claire.

  “The one the rats used before the excavations gave them a new one here on Palmer’s Green.”

  “Of course.”

  “Our immediate aim is to estimate the size of the labyrinth. Once we know that we can work out how much gas we are going to need to destroy the inhabitants, fleas and all.”

  The talking was over and it was time to examine the entrance hole on Palmer’s Green. The three of them put on protective clothing, Claire’s having been provided from one of the two army Land-Rovers standing by. MacQuillan issued a warning. “If we should come across any rats, back off, give them room. On no account come between them and their escape route.” He looked at Claire and Saracen in turn to verify that his point had been taken.

  “Let’s get started,” said Saracen. He removed the wooden cover that the boy Edwards had fabricated to safe-guard his find and shone his torch inside the hole before dropping down and examining the walls. Once more his hands touched wood. This time a piece of chipboard had been wedged into the side wall. He levered it out and handed it to MacQuillan who put it to one side.

  “Can you see anything?” asked Claire as Saracen bent down to peer through the opening with the aid of the torch.

  Saracen grunted. He could see that he was standing on the roof of an arch that spanned a stone passage below. There was a two metre drop to the floor. He told the others.