Alan E. Nourse - The Fourth Horseman (32 page)

"Figures," Carlos said between gulps. "Have you got any figures on those close-in sections that Dingman had his crew working on yesterday?"

"Figures." Jack searched for a computer readout sheet. "Here are some figures, but 1 don't think they really mean very much. The data aren't complete, some stuff missing altogether, and some veiy sketchy so the projections are just as much garbage as the input."

"Well, that figures," Carlos said, and then winced at the inadvertent pun. "Let's see what you do have, all the same."

It had been a day quite indistinguishable from any one of the last six or eight as the situation in the city had deteriorated around them. There was nothing to indicate that this particular night would be different in any particular way from the night before or the night before that, only a steady deepening of the inferno atmosphere in the hot city streets and a tightening of the pressure on the two men and the frightful catch-up-from-behind battle they were trying to direct. The exodus from the city had continued to expand, filling major streets with long wandering files of people, children, animals, carts and rattletraps, blocking traffic on arterials to the point that simple travel from any Point A to any other Point B had become problematical if not impossible. For a full week past the air had been filled with the frantic siren wails of official vehicles of one sort or another trying desperately to get someplace or another fast and generally failing to get there at all; the streets shook from periodic explosions somewhere in the distance, explosions never identified with any specific place or event but steadily increasing in frequency all the same; looting and the roaming of street gangs seemingly motivated by free-floating anger and little else had accelerated with each passing day, first confined to late-night hours, moving into dawn and dusk and finally into broad daylight, preying on whatever stores were there and handy or whatever people wandered by and leaving largely untouched only the health workers identified by their Red Cross armbands. Aside from the wandering refugees, those who moved about at all moved
fast
on foot, lending a sense of frenetic urgency to the overall scene, recognized as urgency about essentially nothing by only a few.

Through it all Carlos and Jack Cheney had been doing the best they could do the best they could do it with the army of workers they still had rallied around them. The supplies had arrived at the beginning of the week, as promised—vaccine and antibiotic—airlifted by army helicopter to the abandoned construction site of a new hotel on the riverfront near Factor's Walk Warehouse 14 and then transported by van to the warehouse itself. There was not as much vaccine in that first shipment as promised, nor as much antibiotic either, there had been a certain inevitable element of attrition en route, but there was enough for them to start working pending the arrival of more— and two days later a small amount more actually did materialize.

By the time the drugs were on hand, Jack and Carlos had completed their field plan for distribution of the precious cargo, subject only to the amount actually available, and they had moved with all the speed their Shoeleather army was capable of. The first of the new vaccine, of course, went to the Shoeleather people themselves-—the medical and nursing personnel and CDC and public-health field workers of all sorts, then to police and other civil-control authorities, to sanitation workers, waterworks personnel and other vital public servants, then finally to food distributors and others who came in necessary contact with the largest numbers of people. Next, with the vaccine remaining from the first shipment, the public-health field workers began vaccinating, en bloc, all of the uninfected people they could find in selected sectors of the city which had demonstrated the lowest infection rate, with preference given to families where infection had not yet struck at all. It made a certain medical sense to try to block the spread of disease into as-yet-uncontaminated areas as an early step in the battle, they knew, but it did not make political sense, since it could easily be construed that they seemed to be favoring the well-to-do suburban areas and avoiding the hardest-hit ghetto areas. For this and other reasons, pains were taken to avoid public discussion of the overall battle plan and to use the public media to direct people to vaccination centers on an apparently random basis: people living on certain streets between specified perimeter avenues were simply instructed to report to such and such a location on such and such a day for protective shots, and that was that. This pattern angered people who misinterpreted it, or seemed always to be missed, especially as word spread that new supplies of medicine and vaccine were coming into the city in enormous quantities, but compliance was high in the areas selected for coverage.

Unfortunately, steadily increasing civil disorder complicated things immensely. "This whole area here is closed for now," Jack would say, pointing to a section on a large street map. "I can't send workers in there even with two or three squad cars for escort. Snipers all over the place, and street gangs roaming around smashing in windows and trashing stores and residential buildings. They work in threes and fours, sometimes on motorcycles, move in fast, hit and run. They'd just as soon hit a squad car as a fat lady in a wheelchair. Not all black, either, lots of them are white, victimizing black neighborhoods. In some places, all the police can do is box them in—there's no way to go in and get them."

For all this, the work of distributing vaccine and drugs had gone on. In some sections field workers would hide out with tenement families overnight in order to work two or three days straight, especially in areas that were hard to reach and dangerous to try to go home from. With the progressive breakdown in sanitary disposal because of street bombings and barricades, the stench of death was heavy in all parts of the city— "But you get used to that, after a while," Jack said. "Something in the brain seems to shut down and you don't even notice it . . ."

Carlos spread his hands wearily. "I know it's not nice, clean work—but at least we're getting there."

"Well, maybe, inch by inch," Jack said dubiously, "but I can't prove it with figures. If we could only have had this stuff a month ago, it could have been different. Now we can only hope to slow it down a little before the whole city explodes. Which it may just do, if this goes on much longer. Don't ask me
how,
exactly—armed warfare in the streets? Hell, it's coming to that already. The police are moaning that they're getting no help, they can't understand why the army doesn't send in paratroops to occupy the place and restore order." Jack gave a bitter laugh. "It's no mystery to me, to send an army into the heart of a plague spot is an excellent way of getting rid of an army, any idiot can figure that out. But the police can't hold down insurrection unaided, so maybe it'll be insurrection. Get a real wild-eyed panic going, mass riots, and there won't be much need for you or me or the Public Health Service."

"But all this aside, Jack, we're still
getting
somewhere," Carlos said again, almost pleading.

"Well, sure. As far as curbing the spread of infection is concerned, every day we work has got to be better than the last. But then we have little items like this." Jack dug an Atlanta newspaper out of his briefcase. "Did you see this?"

It was a lower-right front-page headline story, copyrighted by the Philadelphia
Inquirer.

DRUG FRAUD CHARGED
In Washington today officials of the Food and Drug Administration charged an Indianapolis pharmaceutical manufacturer with conspiracy to suppress a new wonder drug which might have saved hundreds of lives during the plague outbreak in Canon City, Colorado, last month if it had been available to fight the deadly infection.

In a complaint filed with the Justice Department, the FDA charged that Sealey Laboratories, a major supplier of antiplague medications, fraudulently substituted large quantities of a less effective, more toxic and highly experimental drug in place of a safer and more powerful agent during the recent Colorado plague battle. According to reliable sources the substituted drug, known only by the code number 3147, was substituted because the company feared it could not protect its patent rights on the more effective drug.

In Indianapolis, John Mancini, Vice-President in charge of production at Sealey Laboratories, categorically denied the charges, citing Sealey's long histoiy of public service in the pharmaceutical industry. . . .

It was all there, the whole stoiy, from beginning to end. Carlos read it through slowly, including details on the back page, then read it again twice more before pushing it aside with a sigh. "So that's the story," he murmured. "Well, of course, it's nothing but an irresponsible heap of crap," Jack said, running his hand through his sandy hair. "Isn't it?"

Carlos shook his head slowly. "I'm afraid it isn't any such thing. I know the woman who tested the first drug in Fort Collins, and she isn't one to get excited about nothing. The drug she tested was great—but the drug they supplied us in Canon City wasn't. It could have been a ringer. I also know this reporter's work, and she doesn't write faiiy tales. She got her facts from somebody who
knew
, and they're just liable to stand up in court."

"Then what are we supposed to do with this 3147 we've got?"

"If it's helping at all, we'll use it, of course. I'll double-check with Ted, but that's what he's going to say. What else have we got? The side effects are nasty, but not as nasty as dying. So we'll use it and pray. And remember, my friend, even you just admitted that we're getting somewhere, however slow. Before the 3147, we weren't. So let's wrap things up here and get busy before, as you so neatly put it, the whole damned place explodes."

It was just past ten o'clock and quite dark outside when they paid their bill and stepped out onto the street. At first they thought a storm had come up as a gust of disturbingly hot air struck them in the face—a hot, dry gust totally unlike the steamy breeze that had kept them both perspiring all day. They looked at each other and then, at the same moment, saw the unnatural pinkish skyglow in the southern sky and an even redder glare to the west and much closer, like some kind of aurora gone mad. Momentarily Carlos saw a tongue of yellow lick up into the red and fall back again and suddenly the air was dense with woodsmoke.

People were running on the street across from them. A group came around the corner past them and Carlos caught someone's sleeve. "What's going on over there? What's burning?"

A large man paused, gestured to the west. "The DeSoto Hilton. A bunch broke in and trashed the lobby and then torched the place. They're shooting the firemen try in' to get close to it, and there's people up near the top that can't get down. Whole east side of Forsythe Park is burning too, and the big houses over on Bull Street—"

The man broke away, and now there were sirens on all sides of them, distant and nearby. Three squad cars roared up Lafayette Street and took the corner south onto Bull with screeching tires. Jack stared at Carlos in dismay. "God, this whole town could go up," he said. "I'd better get over to the Big Hospital-"

Carlos nodded. "And fast, too. But stay wide of Liberty Street, you're bound to get caught in a jam."

"You'd better come too."

"Maybe later. Right now I've got to get to my office and try to find out where my field people are."

Jack darted across the street and through Lafayette Plaza at a run. Carlos watched him a minute, then headed down the street toward the CDC office, watching the glare from the DeSoto Hilton rise and rise. People were running in both directions now to no apparent purpose. At one point Carlos saw a half-dozen men rushing down the opposite side of the street carrying planks and poles and at least one rifle, but he bowed his head and walked swiftly on, keeping to the shadows, and the group went on past without seeming to notice him. He tried to plot the shortest distance possible to the office, taking to alleys and delivery ways between the fine old mansions of the area. Just two blocks from the office building he came out on the street at the very corner of Roanoke Plaza—and then he stopped short, staring in disbelief.

The great mansions surrounding the plaza were ablaze on all sides, some just beginning to burn, others veritable columns of flame. The plaza itself formed a vortex, a chimney of superheated air sucking smoke and flame into the center and hurling it skyward, the foliage on the fine old live-oak trees flaring like a million torches. Cars were stalled on the streets, their tires popped by the intense heat. Two people suddenly burst from one of them and tried to make it at a dead run across the plaza. They stopped a third of the way across, tried to turn back, went down with their clothes blazing and very suddenly were no longer moving.

Carlos felt his face blistering and backed away from the inferno, looked for dark streets and cooler air. After twenty minutes of floundering up alleys and through backyards he finally found his own headquarters building. Lights were blazing in every room, but the building was empty. People had been there, all right; a telephone lay off the hook on a desk, emitting a loud bzzz-bzzz-bzzz-bzzz, and files were torn open and papers scattered all over the floor, but not a single soul there now—

Somewhere outside there were a series of explosions that jarred the very floor under his feet. Carlos sat down, trying to get his mind to focus on what was happening. Instinct screamed at him to get down to a basement room and stand by a phone in case some of his people called in.
And probably fry,
he reflected,
if that fire moves in this direction. And what good would that do, anyway? What will I tell anybody? People will already be looking for any safe exit they can find, wherever they are. And if this fire is really widespread, there won't be any telephone very long anyway. Or any power.
As if to punctuate his very thought, the room suddenly went dark. The lights flickered back on for one abortive moment and then went out altogether.