Plague (42 page)

They heard the
freezer motor in the kitchen shudder and stop.

Dr. Petrie, who
had been sitting on the settee with Prickles, reading her a story, looked up.

‘Daddy,’ said
Prickles, wide-eyed, ‘
it’s
gone dark.’

Kenneth
Garunisch got out of his armchair and went to try the lights. There was no
doubt that they were dead.

He shrugged and
said, ‘It’s the generator. The goddamned thing’s probably clogged up with
rats.’

Esmeralda,
sitting cross-legged on the floor, said, ‘What are we going to do now? All our
food’s going to spoil. I doubt if we’ve got enough canned stuff to last us a
week.

There are six
of us, right? – seven including Prickles – and I don’t think we’ve got more
than nine or ten cans of meat, and a few dozen cans of fruit. Maybe I should
check.’

‘Jesus,’ said
Nicholas. ‘That’s all we need.’

Kenneth
Garunisch lit a cigarette. ‘I thought you’d be pleased. Now you won’t have to
force yourself to eat Herbert’s goulasch.’

‘Ken -I don’t
think you ought to speak ill of the dead,’ said his wife worriedly.

‘Why not?’ said
Garunisch, blowing smoke. ‘That was what he wanted, wasn’t it?
A glorious fiery plunge from the top of the city’s ritziest
apartment.’

Nicholas
lowered his head and sighed. ‘I don’t know what he wanted, Mr. Garunisch.

He was actually
very kind. Except to
himself
, that is.’

Dr. Petrie put
down the story-book and stood up. ‘I think the most important thing now is to
work out how we’re going to survive. What is it – Tuesday? I guess anyone who
was left on the streets on Sunday will be dead of plague by now. It should be
pretty safe outside as far as looters and muggers are concerned.’

‘What about rats?’
asked
Adelaide.

Dr. Petrie ran
his hand through his hair. ‘I’m not sure about rats. If anything, the rats will
probably have gotten worse.’

‘So what are we
going to do?’ asked Mrs. Garunisch. ‘I mean – those rats are so fierce. I can’t
bear the thought of them.’

‘The water’s
off,’ called Esmeralda from the kitchen. ‘That means we don’t even have
anything to drink.’

‘Plenty of
whiskey,’ said Garunisch wryly, holding up Ivor Glantz’s crystal decanter.

‘Does anyone
here have a car?’ Dr. Petrie asked. ‘A car?’ frowned Garunisch. ‘What the hell
do you want with a car?’

‘Well,’ said
Dr. Petrie, ‘if the rats are really bad, then it’s going to be too dangerous
for all of us to get out of here at one time. It only needs one person to trip or
fall, and the whole party could be put at risk. But if one or two could wrap
themselves up in blankets or something, and make protective helmets to cover
our faces, then maybe we could make it to the basement car park.’

‘Then what
happens?’ said Garunisch. ‘This is a dead city. Where do you think you’re going
to get help?’

‘You have
enough food for two or three days. That’s all it should take to drive out of
the plague zone and organize some kind of airborne rescue. Let’s not kid
ourselves – you’re all wealthy people, and if anyone can get rescued, you can.’

Mrs. Garunisch
furrowed her brow. ‘Supposing we don’t get rescued?’ she said anxiously. ‘What
then?’

Kenneth
Garunisch reached over and took her hand. ‘Gay,’ he said gently, ‘we’ve never
talked like that and we never will. The doctor’s right – we’ve got as good a
chance as anyone.’

Dr. Petrie went
to the walnut sideboard and picked up a heavy sheaf of papers.

‘More important
than any of us, though,’ he said, ‘is this.’

Mrs. Garunisch
peered at the sheaf suspiciously. ‘What’s that?’ she asked sharply.

‘This is the
mathematical work on the plague that Ivor Glantz left unfinished,’ explained
Dr. Petrie. ‘I’m not a research scientist, but I’ve looked through it, and as
far as I’m able to understand, it’s sound. I think that if we can get these
papers to the federal government, we can persuade them to investigate the idea
further, and with any luck at all we could help to stamp out the plague.
Whoever gets out of here will not only have the task of sending help to the
rest, but they’ll have the vital responsibility of delivering these papers to
the department of health.’

‘How do we know
the whole country hasn’t been wiped out?’ said Nicholas. ‘I mean – Jesus – the
whole of New York in three days!’

Dr. Petrie riffled
through the papers of equations and formulae. ‘We don’t know. The last we
heard, they’d managed to hold the plague at the Alleghenies. Maybe the
situation’s worse by now. It probably is.
But if we can get
these papers to Washington in time...
Well, who knows? We might be able
to save the mid-West and the West Coast.’

Kenneth
Garunisch said, ‘Well... that sounds impressive enough. You could have had my
car, but I left the keys in my apartment.’

‘Esmeralda?’
asked Dr. Petrie.
‘How about you?’

‘I left mine
parked on the street,’ said Esmeralda. ‘I expect it’s a total wreck by now.’

Nicholas said,
‘I should think that Herbert’s Mercedes is okay. It’s in the basement. I have
the keys here – he always left them with me.’

Kenneth
Garunisch looked at him appreciatively. ‘Looks like Captain Dashfoot did us a
good turn after all.’

‘It’s only a
two-seater,’ said Nicholas. ‘There’s a kind of small contingency seat at the
back, but you couldn’t travel for very far in that.’

Kenneth
Garunisch opened the cigarette box on the table and took out the last of Ivor
Glantz’s cigarettes. ‘In that case,’ he said, striking a light, ‘I suggest that
Dr. Petrie goes, and takes his daughter along with him. Prickles would fit in
the back – wouldn’t you, Prickles?’

Prickles nodded
shyly.

Dr. Petrie
said, ‘No – this has to be fair. I suggest we draw straws, and give everybody a
chance.’

Garunisch
pulled a face. ‘Don’t talk dumb. Supposing Gay draws it. How’s she going to get
out of this goddamned rat-infested building, drive all the way to Washington,
and then convince the federal department of health that she’s found a way to
cure the plague? Gay couldn’t convince the Mother’s Union that fish paste
sandwiches are better value than bagels and lox.’

‘Ken,’ said
Mrs. Garunisch, hurt.

Garunisch put
his arm around her. ‘Don’t take it the wrong way, Gay, but it’s true. Dr. Petrie
has to go. It’s his idea, anyway. Can you imagine me trying to sell it? You
know what they think of me in Washington right now.
Or
Nicholas here, in his sailor suit?’

‘There’s still
a spare seat,’ said Dr. Petrie.

Adelaide,
sitting next to him, looked up. She frowned, and said, ‘But surely...’

‘That’s true,’
said Garunisch, interrupting her. ‘We can draw lots for that. Esmeralda – do
you have any drinking straws?’

‘Of course,’
said Esmeralda, and went into the kitchen to fetch them.

Adelaide tugged
gently at Dr. Petrie’s sleeve. He turned around.

‘Leonard,’ she
whispered. ‘I thought that...’

He put his
finger to his lips. ‘Don’t worry. Whatever happens, you’ll be okay.’

‘But I want to
go with you!’

He laid his
hand over hers. ‘Darling – we’re all in this together. We all have to take the
same risks. Trying to get out of here is going to be far more dangerous than
staying. If you ask me, Herbert Gaines didn’t even make it upstairs.’

‘That’s not the
point!’

‘Sshh,’ he
said. Esmeralda had come back with the straws. She handed them to Dr. Petrie
along with a pair of kitchen scissors.

‘Okay,’ said
Garunisch. ‘Cut them to different lengths, and whoever draws the longest straw
gets to
go
. Agreed?’

Dr. Petrie
trimmed the straws. Keeping his back turned, he arranged them in his hand. Then
he walked over and offered them to Nicholas.

Nicholas
plucked one out quickly, with his eyes shut. ‘It’s a short one,’ he said, ‘I
know it is.’

He held it up.
It was.

Dr. Petrie
moved across to Kenneth Garunisch. The old union leader thought for a while,
rubbing his chin, and then he carefully picked the straw in the middle. It was
longer than Nicholas’ straw, but it was still short. He shrugged, and twisted
it up.

Mrs. Garunisch
was next. She was dithering and anxious. She didn’t actually want to pick the
longest straw, because she preferred to stay with her husband, but she knew how
insistent he was on playing by the rules. If she picked it, he would make her
go.

She pulled one
out. It was short. She let out a big puff of relief.

Adelaide looked
across at Esmeralda. ‘Her first,’ she said to Dr. Petrie.

Dr. Petrie
shook his head. ‘I’m going around the room clockwise,’ he said.

Adelaide lifted
her eyes and stared at Dr. Petrie for a long moment. He stared back, sadly.
They say that a woman can always sense when a man no longer wants her, and he
wondered how it showed. He wondered, too, when he had stopped wanting her. It
hadn’t happened all at once, and it was nothing to do with Esmeralda. What had
happened last night had been no more than a human attempt to feel something
after so much
misery.

Maybe the whole
experience since the beginning of the plague had changed him, and made him come
to terms with what he really was and what he wanted to be. It seemed to him now
that Adelaide was part of a life that had become remote and irrelevant. Like
tennis, and swimming, and Normandy Shores Golf Club.

‘Pick,’ he said
softly, holding out the two remaining straws.

Adelaide
picked.

Dr. Petrie held
out the last straw to Esmeralda. She didn’t look at him – simply took it, and
held it up.

Esmeralda’s straw
was fractionally longer than Adelaide’s.

‘There you go,
then,’ said Kenneth Garunisch loudly. ‘That settles that!’

Esmeralda stood
up. She kept her eyes downcast, and she said simply, ‘I’ll get my things
together.’

Adelaide
shrieked out, ‘You won’t!’

Dr. Petrie held
Adelaide’s shoulder. ‘Darling, it was a fair draw. I can’t do anything about
it. We had to decide somehow.’

‘I’m left
behind while you’re going,’ said Adelaide. There were angry tears running down
her cheeks. ‘You didn’t have to pick a stupid straw!’

‘Come on, now,’
put in Kenneth Garunisch, ‘I thought we’d decided all that!’

‘Well, decide
again,’ snapped Adelaide, the tension of all she had been through giving her a
note of desperation. ‘Leonard is my fiance and that’s all there is to it.

Would you go
without your wife?’

‘Adelaide,
you’ll be safer here.’

‘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 in-audibly. ‘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.’