Plague (27 page)

Dr. Petrie,
steering-wheel in one hand and rifle in the other, crossed the two lanes of
traffic in a couple of minutes. Then he sped the Delta 88 up alongside the main
highway in a cloud of white dust, and took the small rutted turnoff to the
left. The car bounced and banged on its suspension, but soon they were clear of
the traffic jam and driving up the side of a gradual incline, into trees and
scattered housing plots and fields.

Below them,
they now saw in the reddish light of the seven o’clock sun, clouded in fumes
and smoke, the endless glittering chain of the congested highway, and in the
distance, five or six miles to the north-west, the immense shadow that drifted
over Atlanta. They opened the car windows, and there was a rubbery smell of
burning mingled with the fresher smell of the evening woods.

Dr. Petrie
didn’t know if the dirt-track they were following led anywhere, but he was
prepared to drive across fields and streams if he had to. The most urgent need
was to head west, and
outstrip
the plague. As far as
he could make out, they were still well inside the infected area, and until
they escaped it, they were still at high risk from National Guardsmen, looters,
panicking drivers, and the bacillus itself.

It wasn’t long
before he had to switch on the car’s headlights. The sky was darkening into
rich blue through the treetops, and moths were tapping softly against the car’s
windshield. Prickles wag fast asleep in the back, covered with a plaid blanket,
and Adelaide was beginning to settle down to doze.

‘Leonard,’ she
said. ‘I was just wondering.’

‘Hmm?’

‘It’s about the
plague. I was just wondering why you didn’t catch it yourself.’

He shook his
head. ‘I’ve been wondering that myself. I was exposed to so many plague
patients down at the hospital, and I’ve been tired and vulnerable, too. But I
still haven’t caught it. And neither have you.’

‘Oh, with me, I
think it’s just luck,’ said Adelaide. ‘But you, I don’t understand. Dr. Selmer didn’t
catch it either, did he?
Least, not as far as we know.
I mean, you both touched that boy who had it, didn’t you? That boy you treated
on Monday morning?

Surely you
would have caught it from him.’

Dr. Petrie
shifted in his seat. The track was getting narrower now, and he was beginning
to suspect it would turn out to be a dead end. Tree branches were scraping and
flickering against the sides of the car, and he was having trouble making out
which was track and which wasn’t.

‘I’ve thought
about it over and over.’ he said. ‘First of all, I wondered if the boy had a
mild strain of plague that acted as an antidote to the main strain. But then
why did he die? And why did his parents die? And what about all the other
people that Anton and I were looking after? Why didn’t we pick up plague from
them? The only possibility that seems to make any sense is that Anton and I
both did something that immunized us. Some part of our work, something to do
with hospital or medical treatment, made us safe. But don’t ask me what it was,
because I couldn’t guess.’

Adelaide said,
‘I couldn’t guess, either. But whatever it was, or is, thank God for it.’

She reached
over and touched his thigh. ‘Leonard.’ she said. ‘I do love you, you know.’ He
didn’t answer.

‘I know it
doesn’t seem like it sometimes, but I do.’ He turned briefly and smiled at her.
‘It does seem like it, always. Now why don’t you get yourself some rest?’ She
kissed his cheek, and then released the switch on her reclining seat and lay
back to sleep. Dr. Petrie decided to drive on as far as he reasonably could,
and then snatch a couple of hours himself. The track was still just about
visible, and he wanted to put as many miles between the plague and them as
possible.

As he drove, he
thought some more about the curious question of his immunity from plague. It
wasn’t even an ordinary plague, but a fast-incubating breed that attacked the
human system with such speed and ferocity that even a serum would have to be
administered within half-an-hour of infection to have any chance of saving a
patient’s life. Not that any kind of effective serum existed. So how and why
had he and Dr. Selmer escaped it? Maybe if he understood that, he would
understand how the whole epidemic could be slowed down and stopped. And that
would be some medical
coup ...

Was there
another disease which he and Dr. Selmer might have both had in innocuous forms,
and whose bacilli might have resisted the bacilli of super-plague?

Was there any kind
of air-borne infection they might have picked up, or some airborne medication
within the hospital? There had to be some common factor between Dr. Selmer and
himself which would provide a clue. But he needed more facts before he could
form a workable theory.

Outside, in the
Georgia woods, it was now pitch-dark. The insistent sawing of insects was loud
and steady, and Dr. Petrie seemed to have driven way out from any kind of
civilization. He didn’t even know if he was going east or west any more. He
decided to stop for the night, and sleep.

He finally
pulled the Delta 88 to a stop under a large sheltering tree. The car’s engine
and hood cooled down with a relieved ticking sound. He switched off the lights,
and climbed out of the car to stretch his legs. The woods seemed very deep and
silent and dark, although far away he could hear the distant rumble of a
passenger aircraft.

It was strange
to think that, outside the plague zone, life was still going on as before, and
that maybe in New York and Chicago and St. Louis, people were getting up and
going to bed as if nothing had happened.

He opened the
back door of the car and made sure that Prickles was tucked in properly. Then
he took off his shoes and got ready to climb back behind the wheel and spend
another uncomfortable night as a guest of General Motors.

There was a
sudden sharp cracking noise, and something zipped through the car’s windshield
and out through the passenger window. Dr. Petrie instantly dropped to the leafy
ground, and groped inside the car for his automatic rifle. Adelaide sat up and
said, ‘Leonard? What’s happened?’

‘Down’ he
hissed, waving his hand. ‘Get your head down. There’s someone out there.’

He reached up
to the steering column and switched on the car’s electrics so that he could
lower the driver’s window. Then, using the driver’s door as a shield, like the
policemen he had seen in TV programs, he lifted his rifle and peered out into
the dark.

There was a
long silence. He heard tree rats scuffling in the darkness, and birds chirping
nervously as they protected their young.

Dr. Petrie
cocked his rifle and strained his eyes. He thought the shot had come from a
large shadowy bush, but he couldn’t be sure. Just to
liven
things up, he fired two shots in the general direction of the bush, and then
listened.

There was an
even longer silence. Then a voice quite close behind him said, ‘Lay your gun
down real slow, and raise your hands.’

Dr. Petrie
cursed himself. All the time he had been protecting himself with his car door
and firing into bushes, his attacker had been softly circling around him. He
put down the automatic rifle and slowly stood up with his hands above his head.

He couldn’t see
his attacker at all. The night was too dark, and the man didn’t move.

‘You come from
th
’ east?’ asked the man, in a Georgia twang.

Dr. Petrie
said, ‘We don’t have disease, if that’s what you mean.’

The man
sniffed. ‘Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. You can’t see disease, can you?

Not in the
night, nor neither in the day.’

Dr. Petrie
said, ‘We’re not doing any harm. We just want to pass right through.’

‘I know you
do,’ said the man. ‘And I aint gonna let you.’

‘Why not?
What’s it to you?’

The man sniffed
again. It’s a lot to me, mister, and it’s a lot to my family and my relatives
and everyone else west of here. This here’s the plague line, right here. Me and
everyone else around here, we formed this vigilante committee, and if’n anyone
tries to cross this plague line, I can tell you that they’re taking their life
into their own hands, because our agreement is that we shoot to kill. All you
have to do is turn around and go back where you come from.’

‘Supposing I won’t?’

‘You will.’

‘But just
supposing I won’t?’

‘Well,’ said
the man patiently, ‘supposing you won’t, then I’ll have to drop you.’

‘And if I drop
you first?’

‘You won’t.’

‘But just
supposing I do?’

There was a
pause. Then, out of the darkness from another direction altogether, a thicker
voice said, ‘Mister, if you drop Harry first, I’ll make damn sure I drop you
second.’

Dr. Petrie
lowered his hands. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I think you win. Can we just spend the
night here? I have a little girl, and I don’t want to wake her up.’

‘Just get the
hell out,’

‘And if I
refuse? No, don’t answer that. You’ll drop me. Okay, we’re going.’ said Harry.

Dr. Petrie bent
down to pick up his rifle. ‘Leave the gun,’ Harry said.

‘Now wait a
minute,’ Dr. Petrie protested. ‘If I’m going to go back into the plague zone,
I’m not going without this.’

‘Leave it!’

Dr. Petrie
remained where he was for five or six frozen seconds, half-bending towards the
rifle. He screwed up his eyes and peered into the night for the slightest
giveaway of Harry’s whereabouts. The other vigilante didn’t matter so much,
because if Dr. Petrie ducked down behind the car he would be out of his firing
line.

Harry said,
‘Come on, mister. Leave the gun and get your ass out of here. I aint won no
medals for patience, and I aint going to win one now.’

Dr. Petrie saw
a glint. It could have been the side of a pair of spectacles, or the buckle of
a pair of dungarees. Whatever it was, it was enough. He dropped to the ground,
snatched his rifle, rolled over in a flurry of leaves and fired a burst of
three shots exactly where he had seen the glint.

A scatter gun
went off with a deep boom, and one side of the Delta was torn and spattered
with pellets. Dr. Petrie wriggled under the car on his elbows, and fired again
– a random arc of bullets that may or may not have hit something.

There was
silence again. He quickly elbowed his way out from under the car, tossed the
rifle inside, and climbed in himself.

Adelaide said,
‘Are you all right? Did you hit them?’ He started the engine, backed the car
wildly into the woods, swung it around and put his foot down. The scatter-gun
went off again, and the Delta 88’s rear window was turned to milky ice. Dr.
Petrie drove fast and wild, and thumped heavily into two or three roadside
trees before he considered it safe to switch on his lights.

Adelaide sat
up. Only her reclining seat had saved her from the first bullet, which had passed
through the car in a diagonal line.
Prickles was
awake, but she was so tired that she wasn’t even crying. She, too, was unhurt.
The scatter-gun had ripped the
car’s
outside skin, but
hadn’t penetrated the soundproofing inside the doors, or the vinyl upholstery.

‘Did you hear
what he said?’ asked Dr. Petrie tersely.

‘About the vigilantes?’

‘Exactly.
It looks like they’ve drawn a plague line down the
Appalachians, and anyone who tries to cross it gets killed. Maybe they’ve even
got themselves federal backing.
The way this situation’s been
handled, who can tell?’

‘What are we
going to do?’

‘I guess we
could try to cross someplace else, but the chances of getting through in a car
must be pretty remote. Maybe we ought to try our luck in the north. Try and get
into New York City. If we stick to the back roads, it could take us two or
three days, but if they’re going to make it a secure quarantine area, it’s
worth a try.’

Adelaide rubbed
her eyes tiredly. ‘Let’s do it then. Let’s just get someplace where we can stop
and have a bath and eat a decent hot meal. If I don’t get out of these clothes
soon, I’m going to stink like a skunk!’

Dr. Petrie
grinned at her through the darkness.
‘Me too.
But
then, skunks seem to fall in love just like the rest of us, don’t they, so
what’s wrong with smelling like one?’

Adelaide
settled down to sleep again, trying to make herself comfortable in the jolting
car.

‘Leonard,’ she
said, ‘I’ll give you a hundred good reasons. But not right now.

Tomorrow.’

When it was
scarcely dawn, and the car was still silvered with the cold breath of the
night, they drove quietly out of the Georgia woods and back towards the main
highway. They were low on gas, and Dr. Petrie’s first priority was to find a
filling station. Then, tanked up and refreshed with sleep, they would make the
long and complicated back-road haul to New York City.

Adelaide was
yawning. ‘Do you think we’ll make it?’ she asked him.

Dr. Petrie
pulled a face.
‘Maybe, maybe not.
It depends how far
the plague has spread. Half of the time, though, I feel more frightened of the
people than I do of the plague.’

She looked
serious for a long while. Then she said, ‘Yes. I know what you mean.’

E
smeralda was arranging the last paintings in her Marek Bronowski
exhibition when Charles Thurston III strolled into the gallery. He was looking
very Fifth Avenue, in a lightweight suit of cream-colored mohair and a big
floppy hat. He took off his sunglasses and stood back from the wall,
ostentatiously admiring the pictures.