Plague

by Graham Masterton

  Dr. Petrie said, 'You can't keep it quiet! The rumours are going around already. Have you seen US 1 and the North-South Expressway? People are beginning to drive out of Miami like rats out of a sinking ship.'

  The sub-editor coughed. 'They won't get far.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Well, you're not supposed to know this, doctor, but you're bound to find out sooner or later. Every route out of Miami is sealed off. The whole city has been in the bag since about midnight last night. The National Guard have orders to stop and detain anyone trying to leave or enter the city limits.'

  'And what about people who insist?'

  'They're detained along with the rest of them.'

  Dr. Petrie rubbed the back of his neck. 'I don't know what to say,' he said wearily. 'I guess you've told me all there is to know.'

  'I just hope you see what we're doing in the right light,' said the sub-editor, with unexpected sincerity. 'I mean, we love this city, and we're real worried about this plague, but if we let the pig out of the sack, this whole place is going to be ripped apart in five minutes flat.

  Especially when people realize that they can't escape.' Dr. Petrie nodded. 'Yes,' he said. 'I should think you're right.' Then he laid the phone back down, and sat there for twp or three minutes with his head in his hands.

  'Well?' said Adelaide. 'What was all that about? Don't keep us in suspense.'

  He took her hand, and squeezed it. 'It appears that we have been taken for mugs. Donald Firenza and his health department have known about the plague since Friday. As soon as they identified it, they sought advice from the federal government, which is probably the real reason that Becker is in Washington. The federal government has covertly sealed off Miami during the night, and is arresting and detaining anyone who tries to get in or out.'

  Dr. Selmer said, open-mouthed, 'They knew? They knew about the plague all along and they didn't warn us?

  'I guess they realized that warnings were futile. This plague kills people so fast, the whole population might have contracted it by now. All they want to do is stop it spreading.'

  'But what are they doing about it? Are they trying to find an antidote? What are they doing about us? They can't just seal off a whole city and let it die.'

  Dr. Petrie drummed his fingers on the edge of Dr. Selmer's desk.

  'No,' he said softly. 'I don't suppose they can.'

  Throughout the afternoon, and into the evening, it became clear that the plague was spreading through Miami and the suburbs like a brushfire on a dry day. Dr. Petrie and Dr. Selmer tried several times to get through to Washington, and to Donald Firenza, but the telephone switchboards were constantly busy. They were aware that four of their plague victims had been telephone operators, so it was likely that the exchange was seriously undermanned.

  They worked hour after hour in the cold fluorescent light of the emergency ward, sweating in their flea-proof clothing, comforting the dying and easing the pain of the sick. Dr. Petrie saw an old woman of ninety-six die in feverish agony; a young boy of five shuddering and breathing his last painful breaths; a twenty-five-year-old wife die with her unborn baby still inside her.

  Ambulances and private cars still jammed the hospital forecourt, bringing more and more people to the wards, even though the regular ambulance drivers had almost all sickened and died. Nurses made makeshift beds from folded blankets, and laid the whispering, white, dying people down in the corridors.

  During a break in his work, Dr. Petrie stood in one of those corridors and looked around him. It was like a scene from a strange war, or some whispering asylum. He rubbed the sweat from his eyes and went back to his latest patient.

  Dr. Selmer looked up from giving a streptomycin shot to a young teenage girl with red hair. 'What's it like out there?' he said hoarsely. 'Are they still coming in?'

  Leonard Petrie nodded. 'They're still coming in, all right. How many do you reckon now?'

  Dr. Selmer shrugged. 'If all the hospitals are coping with the same amount of patients — well, six or seven hundred. Maybe more than a thousand. Maybe even more than that.'

  Dr. Petrie shook his head. 'It's like hell,' he said. 'It's like being in hell.'

  'Sure. Would you take a look at Dr. Parkes? He doesn't seem too well.'

  Dr. Parkes was an elderly physician who used to have a practise out at Opa Locka. Dr. Petrie had met him a few times on the golf course, and liked him. Now, across the crowded emergency ward, he could see Dr. Parkes wiping his forehead unsteadily, and taking off his spectacles.

  'Dr. Parkes?' he said, pushing his way past two part-time trolley porters.

  Dr. Parkes reached out and leaned against him. 'I'm all right,' he said quietly. 'I just need a moment's rest.'

  'Dr. Parkes, do you want a shot?'

  'No, no,' said the gray-haired old man. 'Don't you worry about me. I'll be all right. I'm just tired.'

  Dr. Petrie shrugged. 'Well, if you say so. You're the doctor.'

  Dr. Parkes smiled. Then he turned away from Dr. Petrie, and immediately collapsed, falling face-first into a tray of surgical instruments, and scattering them all over the floor.

  'Nurse I' Dr. Petrie shouted. 'Give me a hand with Dr. Parkes!'

  They lifted the old man on to a bed, and Dr. Petrie loosened the pale blue necktie from his wrinkled throat. The elderly doctor was breathing heavily and irregularly, and it was obvious that he was close to death. 'Dr. Parkes,' said Dr. Petrie, taking his hand. Dr. Parkes opened his pale eyes, and gave a soft and rueful look. 'I thought I was too old to get sick.' he said quietly.

  'You'll make it,' said Dr. Petrie. 'Maybe you're just tired, like you said.'

  Dr. Parkes shook his head. 'You can't kid me, Petrie. Here — lift up my left hand for me, would you?'

  Dr. Petrie lifted the old man's liver-spotted hand. There was a heavy gold ring on it, embossed with the symbol of a snake and a staff, the classical sign of medical healing.

  'My mother gave me that ring,' whispered Dr. Parkes. 'She was sure I was going to be famous. She's been dead a long time now, bless her heart. But I want you — I want you to take the ring — and see if it brings you more luck than me.'

  'I can't do that.'

  'Yes you can,' breathed Dr. Parkes. 'You can do it to please an old man.'

  Dr. Petrie tugged the ring from Dr. Parke's finger, and pushed it uncertainly on to his own hand. Dr. Parkes smiled. 'It suits you, son. It suits you.'

  He was still smiling when he died. Dr. Petrie covered his face with a paper towel. They had long since run out of sheets.

  Anton Selmer came across, patting the sweat from his face. 'Is he dead?' he asked, unnecessarily. Dr. Petrie nodded.

  'I think I'm becoming immune,' said Dr. Selmer. 'Even if I'm not immune to the plague, I'm immune to watching my friends die. I don't even want to think how many good doctors and nurses we've lost here today.'

  Dr. Petrie fingered the ring. 'It makes you wonder whether it's worth it. Whether we should just leave all this, and get the hell out.'

  Dr. Selmer tied a fresh mask around his face. 'If there was any place to get the hell out to,' he said, 'I'd go. I think we have to face the fact that we're caught like rats in a barrel.'

  The ward doors swung open again, and they turned to see what fresh victims were being wheeled in. This time, it looked like something different. A young dark-haired boy of nineteen was lying on the medical trolley, with his right side soaked in blood. He was moaning and whimpering, and when the amateur ambulance attendants tried to ease him on to a bed, he screamed out loud.

  Dr. Selmer and Dr. Petrie helped to make him comfortable. Dr. Selmer gave him a quick shot of painkiller, while Dr. Petrie cut away the boy's stained plaid shirt with scissors.

  'Look at this,' said Dr. Petrie. He pointed to the fat, ugly wound in the boy's side. 'This is a gunshot wound.'

  Dr. Selmer leaned over the boy, and wiped the dirt and sweat from his face with a tissue. There was asphalt embedded in the youth's cheeks, as if he
had fallen on a sidewalk or roadway.

  'What happened, kid?' said Dr. Selmer. 'Did someone shoot you?'

  The boy gritted his teeth, and nodded. With his face a little cleaner, he looked like the sort of average kid you see working behind the counter at a hamburger joint, or delivering lunchtime sandwiches for a delicatessen.

  'Who shot you, kid?' asked Dr. Selmer, coaxingly, 'Come on — it might help us to make you better. If we know what kind of gun it was, we can find the slug faster.' The boy took a deep whimpering breath, tried to talk, and then burst into tears. Dr. Selmer stroked his forehead, and spoke soothingly and softly to him, like a mother talking to a child.

  'Come on, kid, you're going to be all right. Tell me who shot you, kid. Tell me who shot you.'

  The boy turned his head, his eyes squeezed tight shut. 'We was — we was going to get out — ' he panted. 'Me and my friend — we heard there was plague — and we was going to get out — '

  'What happened?'

  'We — we took his dad's old — Buick. We drove up as far as — the turnpike — and they — they sent us back.'

  'Who sent you back, kid?' asked Dr. Selmer. 'National — Guardsmen — sent us — back — said we couldn't — leave — '

  'So what did you do?'

  The boy was biting his tongue so hard that blood was running down his chin. He shook his head desperately, as if he was trying to erase the memory of something that he never wanted to think about again.

  'What did you do?' Dr. Selmer repeated. 'Did they shoot you?'

  'My friend — said — we ought to make a — break — said — they wouldn't really shoot us. So we — put the gas — down and — tried to get — through. They — they blew off — his whole — they blew off his — they blew off his head — '

  Dr. Petrie laid his arm on Dr. Selmer's shoulder. 'Leave the kid alone, Anton. We might have guessed they were going to keep us in the hard way. It's either die here or else die on the city limits.' Dr. Selmer nodded bitterly. He called one of his assistants to see to the boy's bullet-wound, and then he went through to the scrub-up room to wash. Dr. Petrie came with him.

  'I've been on the emergency wards for a long time,' said Dr. Selmer, drying his hands. 'And if there's one thing that constantly amazes me, it's how totally callous we Americans can be to each other. Over the past ten years, I've had people brought in here who were found bleeding in the street, while dozens of passers-by walked around them. I've had women who were raped or beaten-up, while crowds just stood around and watched. And now this. We may be two hundred years old, Leonard, but if you ask me we're still a nation of strangers.'

  Dr. Petrie was combing his hair. 'Would you do any different, if you had the federal government's problem? Wouldn't you seal off the city?'

  'Maybe not. But at least I would let us unlucky rats, caught in our barrel, know what the hell was going on. So far as we know, and so far as the rest of the country knows, this is just a mild outbreak of Spanish influenza.'

  Dr. Petrie said, 'Has it occurred to you that this might be germ warfare? That the Russians might have started this disease?'

  Dr. Selmer laughed wryly. 'The Russians didn't need to, did they? We've done a good enough job of it on our own. I don't know where all this sewage came from, but I'm ninety-nine-per-cent convinced that you're right. The shit of sophisticated society has come to visit upon us the wrath of an offended and polluted ocean. What a way to go. Poisoned by our own crap!'

  Dr. Petrie said, 'You're tired, Anton. Go take a rest.'

  Dr. Selmer shook his head. 'The rate this plague is spreading, the whole city is going to be dead by Thursday. If I went to sleep I'd miss half of it.'

  'Anton, you're exhausted. For your own sake, rest.'

  'Maybe later. Right now, I could do with some coffee.'

  They left the emergency ward and went out into the corridor, stepping over sick and dying people wrapped up in red regulation blankets. A couple of thin and desperate voices called out to the doctors but there was nothing they could do except say, 'It won't be long now, friend. Please be patient,' and leave it at that. No treatment could arrest the course of the plague, and most of these people would have done better to stay at home, and die in their own beds. Dr. Petrie found there were tears in his eyes.

  A cop came slowly down the corridor towards them, wearing a bandit neckerchief around his nose and mouth. 'Excuse me, doctors.' he called. 'Excuse me!'

  'What's wrong, officer?'

  The cop stepped carefully over an old man who was wheezing and coughing as the plague bacillus clogged his lungs.

  'It's the Chief of Police, sir. He's been taken real bad.'

  Dr. Selmer looked at him, without moving. 'So?'

  The cop seemed confused. 'Well, sir, he's sick. I thought that maybe someone could come out and take a look at him.'

  'What's wrong with him?' Dr. Selmer 'asked. 'Is it the same as these people here?'

  The cop nodded. He was only a young kid, thought Dr. Petrie. Twenty, twenty-one. His eyes were callow and uncertain as they looked out from between his bandit mask and his police cap.

  'Well, then,' said Dr. Selmer, 'don't you think that if I could cure these people here, I'd have done it?'

  'I guess so, doctor, but — '

  'But nothing, officer, I'm afraid. I can't save your Chief of Police any more than I can save these folk. Keep him comfortable, and dispose of the body as quickly as you can when he dies.'

  The cop seemed stunned. He looked around him for a moment at the huddled shapes of the dead and dying, and Dr. Petrie was surprised to find himself feeling sorry for a policeman. He touched the cop's arm and said, 'I should get out of here now, son. This place is thick with the plague, and if you hang around too long, there's a danger you'll catch it yourself.'

  The cop paused for a while, then nodded again and stepped his way back along the corridor.

  'Plague is a great leveller,' said Dr. Selmer hoarsely. 'Chief of Police or not, that's the end of him.'

  'You're in a philosophical mood today, Anton.'

  Dr. Selmer pushed the elevator button and waited while the numbers blinked downward to the ground floor. 'I think I'm entitled to be,' he replied bluntly.

  Adelaide was still waiting in Dr. Selmer's office. She had been trying to call Washington on the phone all afternoon, but it was unrelentingly busy. She made them a couple of cups of instant coffee, and they took off their shoes and relaxed.

  'Is it still bad?' she asked. She sat beside Leonard, stroking his forehead, and he loved the touch and the fragrance of her. It almost made the carnage of the wards seem like a half-forgotten nightmare, and nothing more. 'Worse,' put in Dr. Selmer. 'But I guess it can't go on for ever. Sooner or later, the people who keep on bringing people to the hospital will get sick themselves, and that will be the end of that.'

  Dr. Petrie rubbed his eyes. 'This whole damned city is dying and we can't do a thing about it.' Adelaide said, 'I had a priest in here a little while ago.'

  'What was he doing?' asked Dr. Petrie. 'Hiding from the vengeance of the Lord?'

  'No,' said Adelaide, brushing her brunette curls away from her forehead. 'He seemed to think that America was getting no more than it deserved. He really felt that we were getting our just desserts for everything. For mistreating the Indians, for inventing the motor car, for suppressing the blacks, for destroying the environment.' Dr. Petrie sipped his coffee. 'I don't suppose he was willing to intercede with God, and get this whole thing stopped?'

  Adelaide shook her head. 'If you ask me, the Church will be delighted. If this doesn't turn a few more millions into true believers, I don't know what will.' The office phone rang. Dr. Selmer answered it, then passed it over. 'It's for you, Leonard, Sister Maloney from the emergency ward.'

  Sister Maloney spoke to Dr. Petrie in her careful Irish accent, 'We have a patient down here who is asking for you by name, doctor.'

  'By name? Do you know who she is?'

  'I'm afraid not, sir. She's very sick.
I think you'd better come down quickly if you want to see her alive.'

  'I'll be right there.' He put down the phone, swallowed the rest of his coffee, and collected his green mask and gown.

  'Leonard,' said Adelaide. 'Is anything wrong?'

  'Sister Maloney says a woman is calling for me. She's probably one of my regular patients. Why don't you stay here and force Anton to drink another cup of coffee?

  'At least it'll keep him out of the ward for five more minutes.'

  Dr. Selmer chuckled. 'Alone at last, Adelaide! Now we can pursue that affair I keep meaning to have with you.'

  Dr. Petrie closed the office door behind him and walked quickly down to the elevators. There was a strange bustling whisper throughout the hospital, a sound he had never heard before — like a thousand people murmuring their prayers under their breath. He was alone in the elevator, and he leaned tiredly against the wall as it sank downwards to the ground floor.

  The elevator doors slid open, and he was back in hell. The corridors were crowded with moaning, crying people. There were people lying white-faced and shuddering against the walls; people coughing and weeping; people hunched silently on the floor.

  The plague had taken both the rich and the poor. There were elderly widows, tanned by years of Florida sun, dying in their diamonds and their pearls, There were waitresses and mechanics, shop assistants and chauffeurs, hotel managers and wealthy executives. Anyone who had swum in the polluted ocean was dying; and anyone who had talked to them or touched them was dying, too.

  Dr. Petrie, grim-faced, stepped carefully through the plague victims, and pushed open the door of the emergency ward. Sister Maloney, wearing a big white surgical gown and a surgical mask, was waiting for him. 'Where is she? Is she still alive?'

  'Only just, doctor, I'm afraid. It won't be many minutes now.'