They broke out of the hospital doors and into the warm, neon-lit hospital forecourt. The place was still cluttered with ambulances, but there was noticeably less activity than there had been before. Dr. Petrie's car was still at Margaret's. By now it had probably been stolen, commandeered or towed away. But there was a whole hospital car-park round the side of the building, and they were bound to find a car with its ignition keys left inside.
Adelaide said, 'My God, it's gotten so much worse. Look — there's a couple of bodies over there, by the hospital entrance.'
Dr. Petrie took her arm. 'Don't worry about that. Let's just get the hell out.'
They half-ran, half-walked round to the side of the hospital. The car-park was dark, and shadowed from the street-lights by the fourteen-storey bulk of the hospital tower. Dr. Petrie said: "You take the first row of cars, I'll take the second. Try the driver's door, and see if it opens. If it does, check for keys.'
As swiftly and silently as they could, they went from one car to the other, trying the door-handles. By the time Dr. Petrie had tugged at his twelfth car, he was beginning to wonder if the staff of this particular hospital weren't security-conscious to a fault. Then Adelaide hissed, 'I've got one!'
She was opening the door of a bronze Gran Torino. Dr Petrie skirted around the back of the car that he had been trying to open, and crossed the space in between the rows of parked vehicles. The moment he stepped into the open, a rough voice shouted, 'Hold it right there, buddy!'
He froze, with his hands above his head. A stocky shadow disengaged itself from all the other shadows, and started to walk towards him. In a thin slanting beam of light from one of the hospital windows, Dr. Petrie saw a solid, middle-aged security guard, with a navy-blue uniform, a face as hard as a concrete post, and a revolver. 'I'm a doctor,' Petrie said.
The security guard came up close, and shone a torch in Dr. Petrie's face. 'Then how come you're trying to steal yourself a car?'
'Someone took mine. I have an emergency.'
'You got ID?'
'Sure. It's in my top pocket. Here — I'll get it out for you.'
'Don't you move a muscle.'
The security guard came forward, reached into Dr. Petrie's inside pocket, then tried to open the papers with one hand. As he did so, Dr. Petrie grabbed the man's gun wrist, and tried to twist the revolver out of his grasp. Forcing the guard's arm around in a circle, he jammed his leg behind the man's calf, and pushed him. The man fell backwards on to the tarmac, jarring his knee — but he still kept his grip on the gun.
Dr. Petrie pressed the guard's wrist against the ground, and then trod on it, hard. At last, the fingers opened, and Dr. Petrie snatched the revolver away from him.
The guard cried, 'Don't shoot.' He raised his arms protectively over his face. 'I got a wife with a bad leg.'
Dr. Petrie said, 'I'm not going to hurt you, you dumb ox. Just get up and get the hell out of here.'
The guard got to his feet, and dusted himself off. 'You won't get far, you know," he said, stepping cautiously backwards. 'They got the cops on the lookout for bums like you. All I have to do is call them up, and they've got your number.'
Petrie waved the gun in his direction again. The guard said, 'Hey — I didn't mean it serious. I was joking! You go right ahead.'
Adelaide was watching, tense and fearful, from a few feet away, holding the door of the Gran Torino. Dr. Petrie looked at her, and couldn't see her eyes, only the dark brunette curls of her hair. The guard was shuffling away from them, step by step, holding his hands out in front of him.
As if in a dream, Dr. Petrie fired the revolver twice. The guard yelped like a small dog, and started running away across the car park. Dr. Petrie lifted the revolver in both hands, held it steadily, and fired again. He missed. He fired once again, and the bullet sang mournfully off the fender of a parked car.
Dr. Petrie lowered the gun, and peered into the darkness.
'He got away,' he said, as the smoke drifted away across the car-park.
'You might have killed him," Adelaide gasped. 'You meant to.' She sounded very frightened.
Dr. Petrie put the revolver in his pocket.
'Yes,' he said. 'I meant to. But I didn't.'
They drove out of the car park in silence, and out into the plague-ridden streets of Miami.
They switched on the car radio. It was now just past midnight, into the early hours of Wednesday morning. What they heard on the news and what they saw as they drove through the dark broken streets of the city were so different as to be totally bizarre.
The calm, rich voice of the mayor, John Becker, was reassuring citizens throughout Florida and the United States that the breakdown in communication between Miami and the outside world was 'purely temporary and technical, and in the best interests of all concerned.'
Dr. Petrie glanced across at Adelaide, and shook his head. She smiled him a tight little smile.
Mayor Becker went on, 'This epidemic, which is still awaiting medical analysis, is proving a little more difficult to control than we had originally hoped, and for the protection of residents and folks on vacation, we've had to restrict some of the highway traffic through the city. But we can assure you that there's nothing to worry about, provided you follow a simple safety code and remain at home whenever possible.'
It was while he was saying this that, without warning, the city lights of Miami began to go out. Most of the downtown office buildings and stores were already in darkness, but now the street lights flickered out, and everything electrical dimmed and died. Like stars obscured by the passing of a murky cloud, the bright subtropical city with its glittering strip of hotels and its garish downtown streets was gradually overtaken by a shadowy gloom, as dark and threatening as a primitive jungle.
'I expect it's the power station,' Dr. Petrie said. 'They've got the plague.'
He switched on the car's headlights. The streets seemed wrecked and deserted. Store windows were smashed, and there was garbage and junk strewn all over. Despite the threat of summary shooting, the looters had obviously been out in force. As they turned north on to 95, they saw a small group of blacks running furtively through the shadows with television sets, stereo equipment and records.
Abandoned cars — some with their dead drivers still sitting in them — cluttered the highway. From the height of the expressway, Dr. Petrie and Adelaide could see small fires burning all over Miami in the tropical darkness, and a few buildings uncertainly lit by emergency generators. The whole city echoed with the endless warbling of police and fire sirens, and the crack of spasmodic shooting.
In just over four days, from the first signs of plague in Hialeah, Miami had collapsed into pandemonium. It was like an old painting of hell with lurid flames and demonic shadows; and above everything was the terrible wail of sirens, the smashing of glass and the ceaseless blast of car horns, pressed down by the weight of their dead owners.
Dr. Petrie opened the car window and slowed down for a while, listening and looking in cold disbelief.
'It's like the end of the world,' whispered Adelaide. 'My God, Leonard, it's like the end of the world.'
The stench of burning and the inhuman sounds of a dying city filled the car, and Dr. Petrie wound up the window again. He felt exhausted beyond anything he had ever known before. He had to open his eyes wide to clear them and focus them, and even then he found it difficult to drive through the debris and jetsam that strewed the highway.
They were almost level with Gratigny Drive when he had to pull the Torino up short. The road was entirely blocked by two burning cars. One of them, a Riviera, was already blackened and smoldering, but the other, a Cadillac, still had its tires ablaze, like a fiery chariot from Heaven.
Dr. Petrie opened his car door and got out. The heat was oily and fierce. Shielding his eyes, he went as close to the wrecks as he could, and to his horror, he saw a woman still sitting in the Cadillac — her face was roasted raw, but she was lifting her smoking arm up and down, trying to call ou
t. A lurch of nausea made his empty stomach turn over, and he had to look away.
Adelaide called out, 'What is it? Can we get past?'
Dr. Petrie shouted back, 'Stay there! Just stay there!'
He took the security guard's revolver out of his pocket, held it tight in both hands, and hoped to God that he wouldn't miss. He inched as close to the blazing car as he could, and then fired. The woman jerked sharply back into her ruined seat as if he had kicked her. She disappeared in a torrent of rubbery smoke.
Dr. Petrie climbed back into the Gran Torino.
'Was there someone in there?' Adelaide asked quietly.
He nodded, and laid the gun on the parcel shelf. For some reason, the killing seemed to have purged something within him; to have quelled his broken nerves. Maybe it was because, for the first time since Mr. Kelly had woken him up on Monday morning, he had been able to act, to do something positive.
'Honey — I'm going to have to ram my way through there.' he said. He twisted around in his seat, and backed the car up thirty or forty yards. He stopped. 'All you have to do is hold tight.'
He licked his lips. Then he shifted the car into 2, and stamped on the gas. The back tires screeched and slithered as they fought for traction on the concrete, and then the Torino bellowed forward — straight towards the two smoking wrecks.
There was a heavy smash, and for a moment Petrie thought the car was going to roll over. But he forced his foot harder on the gas, and their car gradually shoved the black carcass of the Riviera, its buckled hubs scraping and shuddering on the road, right to the edge of the expressway. Then Dr. Petrie backed up a foot or two, turned the wheel, and drove the Gran Torino over broken glass and oil and litter until they were clear. The car gave one last snaking skid, and they were driving north again.
'Are you all right?' asked Dr. Petrie.
Adelaide brushed back her hair. 'I bruised my knee when we collided, but that's all. I'm okay.'
Dr. Petrie checked his watch. 'Another two or three minutes, and we'll be there. Then we can try and get out of this godforsaken place.'
They drove without talking for a moment or two, and then Adelaide said, 'Was it a man or a woman?'
Dr. Petrie frowned. 'Was what a man or a woman?"
'In that burning car. I just wondered.'
He rubbed at his left eye. The road was dark and confusing, and he had to swerve to avoid an abandoned police car.
'It was a woman,' he said baldly. "Does it make any difference?'
'I don't know. I got the feeling you needed to kill someone.'
He glanced across at her. 'What made you think that?'
'It was the way you fired at that security man. He wasn't doing anything. He was just doing his job. Somehow, you looked as though you really needed to kill him.'
She was right, but Dr. Petrie could no more analyze his reactions than she could. It was connected with his present sense of helplessness as a doctor, with the need to protest, however ridiculously, against the outrage that was sweeping through his city. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I guess I'm just tired and frustrated.'
They didn't say anything more until they had driven through the dark suburbs of North Miami Beach up to Dr. Petrie's former house. He pulled the Gran Torino up to the kerbside, and climbed out. With Adelaide he walked across the grass to the house next door. It was a pink Spanish-style ranchette, called El Hensch, and owned by the Henschels. There was a bright gas-light burning in the living-room, so Dr. Petrie assumed his erstwhile neighbors were at home. He rang the doorbell, and it played The Yellow Rose of Texas.
The frosted-glass door opened half-an-inch. Dr. Petrie saw one bespectacled eye and the muzzle of a.38 revolver.
'Who's that?' said David Henschel. 'You get along out of here before I put a hole through ya.'
'Mr. Henschel,' said Dr. Petrie. 'It's me. Leonard Petrie. Used to live next door — remember? I've come for Prickles.'
There was a pause, then Dr. Petrie heard Gloria Henschel saying, 'David — open the goddamned door, will ya? It's Dr. Petrie. I seen him through the upstairs window.'
After a lot of rattling of chains and locks, the door was opened. Dr. Petrie took Adelaide by the arm and stepped inside. Mr. Henschel, a fat, fiftyish man with a check shirt and a pot belly, opened the living-room door for them.
On the living-room table was a butane camping lamp. It made the room seem like a dazzling religious grotto. Pickles was lying on the red velvet-style settee, with her thumb in her mouth, and her long honey-colored hair tied back with a pink ribbon. She was holding a worn-out teddy bear with a peculiarly maniac smile on its face, and she was wearing a red dressing gown and one red slipper.
Dr. Petrie knelt down on the floor beside her, very quietly, and watched her sleeping. Her cheeks were flushed, but she didn't look as if she had contracted plague. He ran the tip of his finger down the middle of her forehead, and down the small curve of her nose. Adelaide came up behind him, and put her arm around him.
He looked up. 'She's beautiful, isn't she?' he said, shaking his head — a proud father who couldn't believe that his luck was real.
Mrs. Henschel came into the room in a dazzling yellow bathrobe and pink-rinsed hair in curlers. She looked like a giant canary.
'Dr. Petrie,' she crooned. 'Well, it's been a long time! Have you come to stay awhile? You know you're welcome.'
Dr. Petrie looked at his watch. It was 12:35. 'I'm sorry, Gloria,' he said. 'I've come to collect Prickles, and then we're getting out of here.'
Mr. Henschel frowned, 'Getting out? You mean, leaving town?'
'Sure. Don't you know how bad it is?'
'How bad what is?'
Dr. Petrie felt like a time-traveler who has accidentally stepped into the past.
'The plague. The epidemic. The whole of Miami is sick with plague.'
Mr. Henschel looked suspicious. 'Plague?' he said. 'You mean — like sickness? I heard on the television there was flu, and that forty or fifty people was dead, but that's all. We haven't been out of the house today, this is my week off work.'
'Is that all they've been saying on television?' Adelaide asked. 'Forty or fifty dead?'
'Sure. They said it wasn't nothing to worry about.'
Dr. Petrie sat down on the edge of the settee where Prickles slept. 'I'll tell you how much it is to worry about.' he told them. 'Margaret died of this sickness just an hour or two ago, and she's just one of thousands.'
While the Henschels stood there, barely able to grasp what he was telling them, he explained the raw facts about the plague, and how long it was going to be before fire or bacilli were going to destroy the Miami way of life for ever.
As he spoke, he saw the growing desperation and terror in their faces, and he understood for the first time why nobody from city hall or Washington had considered it prudent to let them know before.
'I'll get my rifle,' said David Henschel, his voice unsteady. 'I'll get my rifle and I'll blast my way out of this town, even if I die trying.'
'Mr. Henschel,' said Dr. Petrie, as the old man went for the door.
'What is it?'
'I'm afraid you probably will.'
'I probably will what?'
'Die trying.'
Mr. Henschel stared at him balefully for a moment, and then without a word, went off to fetch his gun.
Four
Kenneth Garunisch eased himself back into his big Colonial armchair and took a swig from his ice-cold beer. Pulling his necktie loose, he propped his feet up on the Colonial coffee table. It had been a hard, long night, and he felt as if he had been beaten up by three Polish muggers in a Turkish bath.
The lavatory flushed, and Dick Bortolotti came out, wiping his hands on a towel.
'Is there any of that beer going spare?' he asked, coughing.
'There's a six-pack in the icebox,' growled Garunisch. 'I couldn't face any breakfast.'
'What time is it?'
Garunisch peered at his watch. 'Five-forty-five.'
Bor
tolotti came back with a beer and sat down next to him. There was a large-scale map of Florida and Georgia on the coffee table, and it was marked in several places with red felt-tip pen. During the night, Garunisch, apart from the US Disease Control Center and the federal government, had been one of the best-informed people on the spread of the unstoppable plague. His members in hospitals all the way up the East Coast had been reporting outbreaks as they happened, and although he didn't yet know that Miami had been completely sealed off by National Guardsmen, he did know that the hospital system there had virtually collapsed.
'What are they saying on the television news?' asked Bortolotti.
'They're still making out that it's swine flu or Spanish flu or some other kind of flu. But they're having to fess up that it's getting worse. They can't hold the lid on this thing for ever.'
'Did you try your guy at The Daily News?'
'I just came off the phone. He says there's a hundred percent media cooperation with the federal government. It's not as voluntary as it looks, though. The White House is apparently ready to do some kind of deal over their interpretation of secrets bill. If the press and the TV boys play ball, the government will ease off their legislation.'
Dick Bortolotti swallowed beer, and grinned wryly. 'Sounds just like the politicians I know and love.'
Kenneth Garunisch opened his cigarette box and lit a cigarette. 'Don't worry about it. The most important thing is protecting our members. Apart from that, I think we can squeeze some future guarantees and emergency pay scales out of the health people. This may be a serious situation, but it's an ill illness that brings nobody any good.'
'You kidding?' Bortolotti asked.
Garunisch blew smoke noisily, and nodded. 'I'm kidding that this whole goddamned business doesn't bother me, because it sure as hell does. But there's no future in being squeamish. If we can't force some favorable negotiations out of this little baby, then we don't deserve to be wearing long pants. Take a look at this map.'
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