Plague

by Graham Masterton

  'I don't care! I want to go with you!' she shrieked.

  Dr. Petrie turned around angrily, and was about to rebuke her, but he checked his tongue.

  Esmeralda said, in a quiet voice, 'It's all right. Let her go. I'd rather stay here anyway.'

  Dr. Petrie said, 'Esmeralda — ' But she shook her head and wouldn't look at him.

  'Take her,' she said. 'Go on.'

  Adelaide was mopping her eyes with a handkerchief. Dr. Petrie felt irritated at her outburst, but at the same time he was almost relieved. Leaving Adelaide behind would have given him the familiar tangles of guilt that he had felt about Margaret.

  The trouble with being a doctor, he thought, is that even your lovers become your patients. How can I cause Adelaide the same kind of anguish for which other women come to me to be treated? I'm supposed to cure diseases, not spread them.

  Dr. Petrie sighed. 'All right, then,' he said, almost inaudibly. 'If that's what you want.'

  It took them almost two hours to get themselves ready, and by the time they'd finished, they looked like fat and scruffy astronauts, all wrapped up in quilts and blankets, and tied up with strings and cords.

  Dr. Petrie had bagged Prickles up completely in a duvet, and he was going to carry her on his back. He and Adelaide were both padded all over, with their thick blanket leggings tucked into three pairs of Ivor Glantz's walking socks, and their hands wrapped in gloves and bandages. They had made themselves hoods out of their quilts, covering their faces up completely except for their eyes, which were protected with pieces of nylon mesh cut from a vegetable strainer and safety-pinned into place.

  Dr. Petrie had Kenneth Garunisch's automatic pistol tucked into his belt in case of emergencies, and he carried the precious car keys inside his glove.

  'I'm going to lose pounds,' he said, in a muffled voice. 'It's like a goddamned Turkish bath in this outfit.'

  Kenneth Garunisch handed him the Glantz statistics, securely buckled up in a canvas map case, and shook him by the hand.

  'Don't forget to send back the choppers,' he said with a grin. 'I wouldn't like to think I was going to spend the rest of my life in this dump.'

  Dr. Petrie nodded his quilted head. He was already sweating like a mule inside the blankets, and he wanted to get their escape over as quickly as possible.

  He said goodbye to Nicholas, and to Mrs. Garunisch, and then he padded over to Esmeralda's room.

  She was sitting by the window, looking out over the gray light of later afternoon. Through his mesh facemask, she took on a new softness, and he hardly knew what to say to her.

  She turned, and gave a small smile. 'You look as if you're off to the North Pole,' she said. She came over and took his hand.

  'As soon as I get to someplace safe, I'll have a helicopter back here straight away,' he said.

  Esmeralda put her hands to her face and looked at him gently.

  'Don't worry about me,' she said. 'You have other things to think about. You know, I believe you could do something really great, Leonard, if you ever gave yourself half a chance.'

  He nodded. 'That's what Margaret used to say.'

  'Margaret?'

  'My ex-wife. She's dead now. She died in the plague.'

  'I'm sorry.'

  'Well — I think the only reason she wanted me to realize my potential was so that she could bask in reflected glory.'

  Esmeralda smiled. He couldn't be sure, because his vision was so blurred, but she might have been crying.

  'There's only one sort of glory that counts, Leonard,' she said. 'And that's the glory of survival. You'd better go now. They're waiting for you.'

  He held out his huge swaddled arms, and held her close, then he turned around and padded back into the sitting-room. Adelaide was waiting for him, all wrapped up, and Prickles was nothing more than a big blue bundle on the settee.

  'All right, everybody,' said Dr. Petrie. 'This is it!'

  Kenneth Garunisch and Nicholas helped him to get Prickles on his back. She clung around his shoulders, and they tied her firmly in position with a long leather belt from an old suitcase.

  Nicholas prepared to open the door to let them out. Garunisch and his wife held broom-handles in case the rats rushed in.

  'Are you ready?' said Nicholas. Dr. Petrie nodded.

  'Okay then — now!'

  The front door was flung open. The rats scrambled at them like a tide of filthy water, squealing with ravenous hunger. As Dr. Petrie stumbled forward with Prickles on his back, urgently pushing Adelaide in front of him, he could see nothing through his facemask but a torrential swarm of furry bodies, filling the hallway and writhing on the stairs.

  They made the first flight down to the fifteenth floor with rats suspended from their quilted shins and hanging from their shoulders. Dr. Petrie kicked the rats around his legs with every other step, and tried to smash them against the walls, but even when they were dead they clung on, until their bodies were pulled away and devoured by more clamoring rats.

  Adelaide, her arms heavy with the rodents, tripped and fell against the stairs. Dr. Petrie, with Prickles on his back, could do nothing more than nudge her. She managed to struggle up to her feet again, turning and twisting herself to try and shake some of the rats off, but all they did was sway on her arms like over-heavy tassels from a curtain.

  They made it down to the twelfth floor with rats all over them, gnawing and tearing at their quilts and blankets, and turning them into shambling man-sized beasts of wriggling brown fur. Adelaide fell again, and Dr. Petrie had to tear rats away from her back to try and reduce their disgusting weight. He was now so overwhelmed by the creatures that he was literally tearing them in half to pull them off.

  It took them a further ten minutes to reach the ninth floor. Dr. Petrie was smothered in sweat, and panting for breath in the foul air. The building's air-conditioning had stopped with the power failure, and the corridors were so soaked in the acrid urine of rats that his eyes smarted and he could hardly make his lungs work. Prickles, clinging to his back, was a muscle-tearing load that he could barely even think about.

  He waded knee-deep through squirming rats towards the fire door to the next flight of stairs. The door was locked — and jammed. Beating rats away from his quilted hood, he forced his way over to Adelaide and shouted, 'It's stuck! I can't get it open!'

  Adelaide stumbled against him. 'You have to!' she screamed. 'I can't take any more! You have to!'

  Dr. Petrie peered around the hallway through his face-mask. The gilt settee was still wedged in the open elevator doors, and he grabbed Adelaide's shoulder and pointed towards the shaft.

  'Can you climb?' he yelled. 'Can you slide down the wires?'

  She shook her rat-decorated head, making their tails swing. 'Leonard — it's nine storeys! I can't!'

  'You'll have to! If you don't, you'll have to go back! Just do what I do!'

  Shifting Prickles higher on his back, Dr. Petrie battled his way through the clinging, tearing rats to reach the elevator doors. He climbed laboriously up on to the settee, and then reached over towards the elevator cables. At the first try, he missed, and for a moment he thought he was going to overbalance. Through his facemask, he could see the dark shaft dropping over 130 feet to the ground.

  Adjusting Prickles' weight, he reached out again. This time, his gloved hand reached the cable. It was slippery with grease, and difficult to cling on to. He reached over with the other hand. His weight made the settee slip a few inches, and he had to pause, stock-still, in case it tipped down the shaft completely.

  Adelaide shrieked, 'Hurry! I can't bear it!'

  Tentatively, Dr. Petrie reached out once more, and this time he managed to grasp the cable with both hands. Sweating and gasping, he pushed himself off the settee, and let his legs dangle in space. He then slid awkwardly down beside the settee, until he was able to curl his legs around the cable below it, and climb down further.

  'Adelaide!' he shouted. 'Adelaide — come on!'

  He co
uldn't wait too long for her. He was barely able to keep his grip on the slippery elevator cables as it was, and Prickles was now an agonizing burden of pain. He tried to kick a few rats from his legs, and two or three of them plummeted down the breezy elevator shaft to the basement, turning over and over as they fell.

  At last, he saw Adelaide, alive with rats, crawling out on to the settee. He saw her peer down the depth of the shaft, and hesitate.

  'It's all right!' he yelled. 'Just keep your head, and it's all right!'

  Adelaide put her hand out and tried to reach the cable. The settee groaned and shifted downward again, and she held back. Then she tried to reach out once more, her arms heavy with clinging rats.

  She caught hold of the wire and gripped it.

  'Now the other one!' shouted Dr. Petrie.

  Adelaide paused, then lunged forward to seize the cable. There was a scraping sound, and the gilt settee tilted under her weight. It slid downwards against the wall for a few feet, and then dropped, with a hideous crashing and banging, nine storeys down to the ground. They heard it hit the bottom, and smash.

  Adelaide was clinging tightly to the wires. She was sobbing out loud, and it took Dr. Petrie several minutes to make her hear.

  'Slide down slowly!' he said. 'Hand over hand! Don't go too fast or the wire will burn through your gloves!'

  'I can't!' she wept. 'I'm too frightened! I can't!'

  'For Christ's sake, you'll have to! There's no other way!'

  Burdened with rats, Dr. Petrie began his cautious descent. Every few moments he rested, gripping on to the wire until he felt as if his hands were painfully locked. His face was running with sweat, and his heart felt as if it was grating against his ribcage. He could hear Prickles saying something muffled, and shifting about in her duvet, but there was nothing he could do. He just prayed to God she would try and stay still.

  They reached the eighth floor. Dr. Petrie paused for another rest. He was breathing in coarse whines, and he was beginning to shake and tremble all over. He was just about to start climbing down again when Adelaide said, 'Leonard!'

  'What is it?'

  'I can't — feel my hands!'

  He tried to look up. 'What?'

  'I can't feel my hands!'

  He blinked sweat out of his eyes. 'Try wriggling your fingers!'

  There was a pause. Then she screamed, 'I can't feel them!'

  She must have let go. She dropped past him without a sound, knocking him a glancing blow on the shoulder. He didn't hear anything, not even when she hit the ground. He clung on as tightly as he could, a tattered quilted figure hanging to a wire, and he wept silently as he climbed down floor by floor, one after the other, with his hands bleeding and his body raw with pain.

  It had just been raining. A flat watery sunlight glossed over the wet streets, and reflected from windows and spires. Dr. Petrie drove slowly through the broken debris of downtown Manhattan towards the Holland Tunnel, his hands roughly bandaged on the steering-wheel, his face strained and exhausted. Prickles, her hair damp with sweat, lay on the seat beside him, fast asleep.

  On the back shelf of the car, in its canvas map bag, was Ivor Glantz's work on plague control by irradiation.

  As he drove, Dr. Petrie sang softly, under his breath. The day faded into early evening, and early evening faded into night. He drove through the Holland Tunnel and into Jersey. He drove south-west, across a derelict and deserted continent, towards the distant end of the plague zone, if there was one. It seemed, for a while, that the whole of America was his, and that he and Prickles were the only people left alive.

  It was when he stopped singing that Prickles woke up. She looked at him, in the dun green light of the instrument panel, and he was sweating and pale.

  'Daddy?' she said.

  He didn't answer.

  'Daddy? What's the matter?'

  Dr. Petrie smiled as much as he could. There was a sharp pain in his groin, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could drive. He gradually slowed the Mercedes down, and pulled it in towards the side of the highway.

  He stopped the car and switched off the engine. They were in Delaware, just outside of Wilmington. The night was dark, and there was the sound of insects from the highway verge.

  Prickles said, 'Daddy — are you sick?'

  Dr. Petrie shook his head. He touched her honey-colored hair, and her serious, beautiful, unpretty face.

  'Do you know something?' he whispered. She looked at him attentively. The pains were worse, and he was beginning to feel nauseous.

  'What, Daddy?' she asked, when he didn't say anything more.

  Things seemed to be advancing and receding. Leonard Petrie felt sharp tearing pains start up in his bowels.

  He stared at Prickles and said quietly, 'You will never forgive us for this.'

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