Plague (22 page)

Holding the
pistol behind his back, he stalked slowly towards the front of the store.

He eased open
the glass door, and looked out into the breezy night. Across the carpark, close
to his station wagon, he saw a huddled group of kids. They were laughing and
hooting and horsing around, and he knew damned well who they were.

He shouted,
‘McManus!
Shark McManus!’
The kids went quiet, and
looked in his direction. He raised the .38 in his right hand, supporting his
wrist with his left, and squinted down the barrel. The kids were all close
together, and they presented an easy target. Edgar, his voice tight, shouted
again, ‘McManus! Stand forward, McManus, and get what’s coming to you!’

The kids
evidently didn’t realize that Edgar was holding a gun, because they started
laughing again, and jeering. Edgar aimed carefully at the tallest figure in the
group, and let out his breath. He fired, and the pistol kicked in his hand.
There was a flat, echoing bang. One of the kids fell to the ground, without a
sound. The rest of them suddenly scattered.

Edgar, holding
his gun
raised
up, walked slowly across the car park
to the fallen youth. The boy was sprawled on his stomach, and there was a wide
pool of glistening blood around his head. Edgar hunkered down and examined him.
The bullet had hit him in the back of the skull, and must have killed him
instantly.

He looked
around. The car park was silent.

Gerry, walking
on tippy-toes for some reason, came up behind him.

‘Mr. Paston-’
he breathed.

‘What is it,
Gerry?’

‘Mr. Paston,
you shouldn’t have!’

Edgar stood up.
‘Shouldn’t have? Did you see what these scum did to my store?

These are scum,
Gerry, and don’t you forget it! He tried to destroy my way of life, and the
only way I could answer that was to try and destroy his! Don’t you forget that,
Gerry!
’

Edgar was
shaking. He still had the gun in his hand, but he didn’t know what to do with
it.

‘Mr. Paston,’
said Gerry, miserably. ‘This isn’t Shark McManus. This isn’t his gang.’

Edgar felt
cold. He looked down at the boy’s body lying on the concrete. The blood kept
spreading, and there was no way to mop it up and return it to his veins.

‘I don’t
understand you. He was laughing. They were all laughing.’

‘They come
around here quite often,’ Gerry said. ‘They don’t mean
no
harm. I know one or two of them. They come around to the store after meetings,
and buy candy.’

‘Meetings?’
said Edgar numbly. ‘What meetings?’

‘Boy scout meetings, Mr. Paston.
They’re boy scouts.’

Edgar stared
down at the body. ‘Boy scouts,’ he whispered, ‘
Well
–
what – I mean – boy scouts?

He was still
standing by the body when the black and white police car came howling into the
car park, lights flashing, and squealed to a stop beside them. The doors
opened, and Officers Trent and Marowitz came briskly across the concrete.

They looked
down at the body. Marowitz said briskly, ‘Is he dead? Has anyone checked?

Edgar said,
‘He’s dead all right. I got him in the head.’

He lifted his
pistol, and handed it silently to Officer Marowitz.

‘It appears he’s
a boy scout.’ explained Edgar. ‘I thought he was a vandal, and I shot him by
mistake.’

Officer
Marowitz looked hard at Edgar for a moment, then at the boy’s body.

‘You shot and
killed a boy scout by mistake?’

‘That’s what I
said.’

‘In that case,’
said Officer Marowitz, with a humorless grin, ‘I had better advise you of your
rights. You’re under arrest, Mr. Paston, for suspected homicide.’

‘Yes,’ said
Edgar. He stepped around the body, and walked towards the police car of his own
accord.

T
hey had been driving for ten minutes when Adelaide, in the back of
the car, said, ‘Look!’

Dr. Petrie had
already seen the first distant nickers in his rear-view mirror, but they could
have been anything – a burning car, or an isolated house on fire. Now, when he
slowed the Torino and turned around in his seat, he could see that the whole
southern horizon was growing red with flame, and that the city of Miami was
ablaze from stem to stern, like a gigantic ocean liner burning on a rippling
ocean of sparks.

‘Miami,’
whispered Mr. Henschel, sitting next to Dr. Petrie, his rifle in his lap.
‘That’s the whole damned city of Miami.’

‘Do you think
they did it on purpose?’ Adelaide said.

Dr. Petrie
speeded up, heading north on nothing but marker lights. ‘I guess they might
have done,’ he said. ‘More likely it was looters and arsonists and untended
fires.’

They were all
very tired. It was well past one o’clock, and the night was into its weariest
and longest hours. Prickles was still fast asleep, in Mrs. Henschel’s arms, but
the rest of them were too tense and too worried to rest.

‘I suppose you
realize we might have taken the plague with us,’ remarked Adelaide. ‘I mean,
for all we know, one of us might be infected.’

Dr. Petrie
nodded, his face illuminated green from the dials on the instrument panel.

‘That’s
possible, but I think it’s unlikely. I’ve been exposed to the plague more than
any of you, and I haven’t caught it. Maybe I’m just immune. From what we’ve
seen of the plague so far, it strikes very quickly. If we haven’t had it yet, I
don’t think we’re going to get it now.’

‘Please God.’
muttered Mr. Henschel. ‘Yes.’ said Dr. Petrie, ‘please God.’

They drove in
silence for a while. It was early Wednesday morning, before the news of the
plague had officially been released by the news media, and all their car radio
could tell them was that Spanish or swine flu was still causing some fatalities
in Miami and southern Florida. When the radio said that, Dr. Petrie looked up
at his mirror. He saw the huge columns of fire that distantly leaped and roared
from the hotels along Miami Beach, and wondered, not for the first time in his
life, how politicians and newsmen could possibly get away with what they did
and said.

He was still
pondering on this when Mr. Henschel pointed up ahead. ‘I see lights.
he
said tensely.
‘Looks like there’s a
roadblock up there’.

Dr. Petrie
slowed down, and they all peered anxiously into the night. Half a mile up the
road, they saw the bright glow of spotlights, and a cluster of cars and trucks.

‘Where is
this?’ asked Adelaide.

‘Looks like
Hallandale.’ said Dr. Petrie. ‘They must’ve pulled the roadblocks back a bit.’

‘What are you
going to do?’ said Mr. Henschel. ‘If they stop you, you’re finished.

They won’t let
you past.’

By now, they had
almost reached the roadblock. It was the National Guard, and they had
obstructed the highway with trucks and signs. As they approached in their car,
a guardsman in combat fatigue stepped forward with his hand raised. Dr. Petrie
slowed down and stopped.

The guardsman
stayed well away from them. He was carrying a sub-machine gun, and he obviously
intended to use it if life got a little difficult. He was only about nineteen
or twenty years old, and his thin face was shadowed by his heavy helmet.

‘Sorry, folks!’
he called out. ‘You’ll have to turn back!’

Dr. Petrie
said, ‘I’m a doctor. I have ID. All these people are clear of disease.’

The guardsman
shook his head.
‘Sorry, sir.
We have orders not to let
anyone through under any circumstances.’

‘But I’m a doctor.’
persisted Dr. Petrie. He held out his identity papers and waved them. ‘I have
to get through on urgent business.’

The National
Guardsman stepped forward a couple of paces and peered at the papers. Then he
stepped back again, and said, ‘Just hold on a moment. I’ll get some
confirmation.’

They waited for
more than five minutes before the young guardsman came back with an officer.
The officer was a tough, grizzle-haired veteran who was obviously enjoying his
new-found responsibilities.

‘Hi.’ called
Dr. Petrie. ‘My name’s Dr. Leonard Petrie.’

The officer
took a look at their car, and walked around it.
Then said,
‘My apologies, doctor, but you’ll have to go back.’

‘Back where?
The whole of Miami’s on fire.’

‘I don’t know
where, doctor, but I’m afraid that’s the order. You have to turn back.’

Dr. Petrie
paused for a while. He looked at the officer and the guardsman, standing twenty
feet away on the spotlit highway, and then he turned and looked at Mr.

Henschel.

‘David.’ he
said, using his neighbor’s Christian name for the first time ever, ‘do you
think you can take the boy?’

‘Quick?’ asked
Mr. Henschel, almost without moving his lips.

Dr. Petrie
nodded. ‘I’ll turn, and drive around them. Take the boy first because he’s got
the most fire-power. Then the officer.’

Quite casually,
Mr. Henschel chambered a round and pushed the bolt of his rifle forward. ‘Ready
when you are.’ he said.

Dr. Petrie
leaned out of the car window. ‘We’re just leaving.’ he said to the guardsmen,
‘We’ve decided to turn back.’

Adelaide whispered,
‘Leonard – please don’t kill them. Look at him – he’s only a boy.’

Dr. Petrie
turned and looked at her. ‘Adelaide, we have to. If we don’t we’re all washed
up. There’s no other way of getting through. Now just sit still and keep your
head down.’

Dr. Petrie
released the handbrake, and slowly turned the Gran Torino around. As he did so,
Mr. Henschel lifted his rifle and rested it across Dr. Petrie’s shoulders,
aiming out of the driver’s window towards the two National Guardsmen.

‘Now,’ said Dr.
Petrie quietly, as he swung the car around in a tight curve. ‘They’re off
balance – now!’

As the car
screeched around them, the guardsmen turned to follow its progress, and as it
curved behind them they were momentarily left unprotected, with their weapons
pointing the opposite way. Mr. Henschel squeezed off one shot, then another,
then another. Dr. Petrie felt the rifle jolt against his shoulders, and one of
the spent cartridges rolled into his lap. He kept the car turning in a circle,
faster and faster, and as the two guardsmen crumpled to the ground, he forced
his foot down on the gas, and steered the Torino straight for the wooden bar
that obstructed the road.

With a heavy
bang, the car toppled the barrier and skidded off northwards into the night.
They heard four or five isolated shots being fired in their direction, but
after a few minutes there was nothing but the sound of the car, and the wind
that rushed past the open windows.

‘Guess they’re
pretty thin on the ground,’ said Mr. Henschel. ‘Otherwise they’d have chased us
something rotten.’

Dr. Petrie
wiped his sweating forehead against his sleeve. ‘Nice shooting, David. I think
you got us all out of trouble there.’

Adelaide said,
her voice quavering, ‘We may be forced to do it, Leonard, but we don’t have to call
it nice.’

Dr. Petrie
didn’t answer for a while. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry Adelaide, but I think we
must all be quite clear what we’re up against. Until we get clear of the
quarantine area, we’re going to be treated like diseased rats. Their orders are
quite explicit.

Don’t let
anyone through, and if anyone tries to get through, kill them.’

‘What do you
mean?’ Adelaide asked.

Dr. Petrie
glanced around. ‘I mean quite simply that if we want to survive, we’re going to
have to behave the way they’re behaving. We have to be vicious, and we have to
be quick. Don’t worry – they won’t have the slightest compunction about
shooting us.’

Mr. Henschel
was reloading his rifle, ‘
You’re
right, Leonard. It’s
them or us. And I don’t care what anyone says – I don’t want it to be them, if
that’s the odds.’

The shooting
had woken up Prickles. She started to cry for her mother, and they drove in
painful silence for a while until Mrs. Henschel calmed her down.

‘Mommy’s gone
for a little vacation,’ she murmured soothingly. ‘But look – Daddy’s here.
Daddy’s going to look after you now.’

Adelaide said,
‘Oh, God. You know, if anyone had told me last week that this was going to
happen, I wouldn’t have believed them. God, it’s like a nightmare.’

Leonard
remained silent. It was one thing to explain to the others the need for crude
survival, it was quite another to have to actually carry it out. To coldly be
prepared to kill.

They were
approaching the outskirts of Fort Lauder-dale, and so far they had seen no
other traffic, and no sign of National Guardsmen. Dr. Petrie, with nothing but
marker lights to steer by, had to strain his eyes into the darkness to see if
there were any obstructions on the road, and his head was beginning to pound.
Adelaide passed him a can of warm Coke from the back seat, and he swigged it as
he drove.

The power
supply was out at Fort Lauderdale, too. The town was dark and deserted.

Abandoned and
burned-out cars were strewn all over the streets, and here and there they could
make out huddled bodies lying on the sidewalks and in store entrances. A few
dim and flickering lights still burned in private houses and hotel rooms, like
the lamps of cave dwellers in a primitive and hostile age, but the town was
overwhelmingly silent, and from as far away as Route 1 they could hear the
sound of the Atlantic surf.

Not far from
the beach they saw a large building on fire, with dim gray smoke rising into
the velvety night sky. Mr. Henschel guessed it was the Holiday Inn Ocean-side.