Graham Masterton: Plague

'Can you climb?' he yelled. 'Can you slide down the wires?'

She shook her rat-decorated head, making their tails swing. 'Leonard — it's nine storeys! I can't!'

'You'll have to! If you don't, you'll have to go back! Just do what I do!'

Shifting Prickles higher on his back, Dr. Petrie battled his way through the clinging, tearing rats to reach the elevator doors. He climbed laboriously up on to the settee, and then reached over towards the elevator cables. At the first try, he missed, and for a moment he thought he was going to overbalance. Through his facemask, he could see the dark shaft dropping over 130 feet to the ground.

Adjusting Prickles' weight, he reached out again. This time, his gloved hand reached the cable. It was slippery with grease, and difficult to cling on to. He reached over with the other hand. His weight made the settee slip a few inches, and he had to pause, stock-still, in case it tipped down the shaft completely.

Adelaide shrieked, 'Hurry! I can't bear it!'

Tentatively, Dr. Petrie reached out once more, and this time he managed to grasp the cable with both hands. Sweating and gasping, he pushed himself off the settee, and let his legs dangle in space. He then slid awkwardly down beside the settee, until he was able to curl his legs around the cable below it, and climb down further.

'Adelaide!' he shouted. 'Adelaide — come on!'

He couldn't wait too long for her. He was barely able to keep his grip on the slippery elevator cables as it was, and Prickles was now an agonizing burden of pain. He tried to kick a few rats from his legs, and two or three of them plummeted down the breezy elevator shaft to the basement, turning over and over as they fell.

At last, he saw Adelaide, alive with rats, crawling out on to the settee. He saw her peer down the depth of the shaft, and hesitate.

'It's all right!' he yelled. 'Just keep your head, and it's all right!'

Adelaide put her hand out and tried to reach the cable. The settee groaned and shifted downward again, and she held back. Then she tried to reach out once more, her arms heavy with clinging rats.

She caught hold of the wire and gripped it.

'Now the other one!' shouted Dr. Petrie.

Adelaide paused, then lunged forward to seize the cable. There was a scraping sound, and the gilt settee tilted under her weight. It slid downwards against the wall for a few feet, and then dropped, with a hideous crashing and banging, nine storeys down to the ground. They heard it hit the bottom, and smash.

Adelaide was clinging tightly to the wires. She was sobbing out loud, and it took Dr. Petrie several minutes to make her hear.

'Slide down slowly!' he said. 'Hand over hand! Don't go too fast or the wire will burn through your gloves!'

'I can't!' she wept. 'I'm too frightened! I can't!'

'For Christ's sake, you'll have to! There's no other way!'

Burdened with rats, Dr. Petrie began his cautious descent. Every few moments he rested, gripping on to the wire until he felt as if his hands were painfully locked. His face was running with sweat, and his heart felt as if it was grating against his ribcage. He could hear Prickles saying something muffled, and shifting about in her duvet, but there was nothing he could do. He just prayed to God she would try and stay still.

They reached the eighth floor. Dr. Petrie paused for another rest. He was breathing in coarse whines, and he was beginning to shake and tremble all over. He was just about to start climbing down again when Adelaide said, 'Leonard!'

'What is it?'

'I can't — feel my hands!'

He tried to look up. 'What?'

'I can't feel my hands!'

He blinked sweat out of his eyes. 'Try wriggling your fingers!'

There was a pause. Then she screamed, 'I can't feel them!'

She must have let go. She dropped past him without a sound, knocking him a glancing blow on the shoulder. He didn't hear anything, not even when she hit the ground. He clung on as tightly as he could, a tattered quilted figure hanging to a wire, and he wept silently as he climbed down floor by floor, one after the other, with his hands bleeding and his body raw with pain.

It had just been raining. A flat watery sunlight glossed over the wet streets, and reflected from windows and spires. Dr. Petrie drove slowly through the broken debris of downtown Manhattan towards the Holland Tunnel, his hands roughly bandaged on the steering-wheel, his face strained and exhausted. Prickles, her hair damp with sweat, lay on the seat beside him, fast asleep.

On the back shelf of the car, in its canvas map bag, was Ivor Glantz's work on plague control by irradiation.

As he drove, Dr. Petrie sang softly, under his breath. The day faded into early evening, and early evening faded into night. He drove through the Holland Tunnel and into Jersey. He drove south-west, across a derelict and deserted continent, towards the distant end of the plague zone, if there was one. It seemed, for a while, that the whole of America was his, and that he and Prickles were the only people left alive.

It was when he stopped singing that Prickles woke up. She looked at him, in the dun green light of the instrument panel, and he was sweating and pale.

'Daddy?' she said.

He didn't answer.

'Daddy? What's the matter?'

Dr. Petrie smiled as much as he could. There was a sharp pain in his groin, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could drive. He gradually slowed the Mercedes down, and pulled it in towards the side of the highway.

He stopped the car and switched off the engine. They were in Delaware, just outside of Wilmington. The night was dark, and there was the sound of insects from the highway verge.

Prickles said, 'Daddy — are you sick?'

Dr. Petrie shook his head. He touched her honey-colored hair, and her serious, beautiful, unpretty face.

'Do you know something?' he whispered. She looked at him attentively. The pains were worse, and he was beginning to feel nauseous.

'What, Daddy?' she asked, when he didn't say anything more.

Things seemed to be advancing and receding. Leonard Petrie felt sharp tearing pains start up in his bowels.

He stared at Prickles and said quietly, 'You will never forgive us for this.'