Graham Masterton - Plague

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 spot-lit highway, and then he turned and looked at Mr. Henschel.

'David.' he said, using his neighbour’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 Lauderdale, 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. There were no sirens, no fire tenders, and no one seemed to be attempting to put the blaze out.

Like travelers through a strange dream, they drove up North Atlantic Boulevard close to the ocean. Through the darkness, they could see the white breakers of the polluted sea. They were all exhausted, and they said very little. Prickles had gone back to sleep, and was snoring slightly. Mrs. Henschel said it sounded as if she had a cold.

'Just so long as she didn't catch plague from Margaret,' said Adelaide. 'That would be great, wouldn't it? Margaret getting her revenge from beyond the grave.'

'Adelaide,' said Dr. Petrie coldly. 'She's dead and that's that.'

Adelaide was silent for a while. Then she said, 'Okay, I'm sorry.'

Just before dawn, they stopped the car by the side of Route 1 near Palm Bay. They laid out blankets on the ground, underneath a scrubby grove of palm trees, and slept.

As Dr. Petrie lay there, feeling the hard stones of the dry soil under his blanket, he heard insects chirp, and the occasional swish of a passing car. The plague had left many survivors, but those who had somehow managed to avoid infection were trying to get out of Florida as fast as they could. What none of them yet knew was that plague was breaking out all along the coast of Georgia and the Carolinas, as tides and currents washed a thick black ooze of raw sewage on to the beaches.