Plague: A gripping suspense thriller about an incurable outbreak in Miami Read online

  ‘Anton,’ he said abruptly. ‘Do you think I could have caught it?’

  Dr. Selmer coughed. ‘Right now,’ he said, ‘it’s difficult for me to say. I’m still waiting for the sputum reports, and that will tell us whether the boy’s throat and lungs were infected. You took the streptomycin shots, though, didn’t you?’

  ‘Sure. Right after you called me this morning.’

  ‘Well, those should help. All antibiotics are useful in plague treatment. If you’ve come into contact with anyone for any length of time, I should make sure that they get shots too. I can get some serum flown in from the West Coast tonight, and we can all get ourselves vaccinated just in case.’

  Dr. Petrie looked at Adelaide, and squeezed her hand reassuringly.

  ‘Anton,’ he said, ‘what should I look for? What symptoms?’

  ‘Leonard – I can’t say. You’ll just have to keep yourself under strict observation. If you have any swelling, or dizziness, or headache get in touch with me straight away. And cancel your clinic for three days. That’s how long plague usually takes to develop.’

  Dr. Petrie felt chilled. ‘Anton,’ he insisted, ‘I have Adelaide and Priscilla with me. I had Esther around me all day. I went to a restaurant for lunch. And what about my patients?’

  ‘I don’t know, Leonard,’ said Dr. Selmer tiredly. ‘It depends on what kind of bacillus mutation we have here. Basically, plague comes in three recognized forms. There’s bubonic plague, which is when you have buboes or swellings in the groin and axilla. Then there’s pneumonic plague, when the bacilli are localized in the lungs – and septicemic plague, when the blood is infected.’

  ‘And you don’t know which one it is?’

  ‘I’m not sure that it’s any one of them. The way it looks right now, it could be a new strain of bacillus altogether. Some kind of super-plague.’

  Dr. Petrie bit his lip. ‘Do we know where the boy picked it up? Isn’t it carried by fleas?’

  Dr. Selmer sounded weary. ‘I talked to the parents, but they say he went out all day Sunday, and he could have been any place at all. He visited some friends, and then went swimming, and then he came home.’

  ‘How about the friends?’

  ‘Oh, we’re having them checked. The police are out now, tracking down the last of them. We’re taking this very seriously, Leonard. I believe we have to.’

  ‘Do you think he might have come into contact with an infected rat, or a squirrel?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ agreed Dr. Selmer. ‘They’ve had three or four outbreaks in California and Colorado recently, and it seems like a few people got bitten by fleas from infected ground squirrels. That might have happened here, but we can’t tell. The way it’s transmitted depends on what type of plague it is.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, bubonic plague is mostly carried by fleas which have bitten plague-ridden rodents, and then accidentally bite people. It isn’t a human disease at all, and humans only get caught up in the cycle by mistake. But that doesn’t make it any less fatal, and the trouble is that a flea which has been infected in October can still pass on plague the following March. What’s more, plague can spread to domestic rats and mice.’

  Dr. Petrie frowned. ‘But can’t one person pass it straight on to another?’

  ‘With bubonic plague, that’s difficult,’ said Dr. Selmer. ‘It doesn’t spread easily from man to man.’

  ‘How about the other plagues? Surely pneumonic plague is catching?’

  Dr. Selmer said, ‘Yes, it is. If you’re suffering from pneumonic plague, you only have to cough in someone’s face, and they’ll almost certainly catch it. It’s the sputum. Plague bacilli can stay alive in dried sputum for up to three months.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Dr. Petrie. ‘Listen – when will you get your final results?’

  ‘Two or three hours, the lab people say. As soon as I know for sure, I’ll warn City Hall and all the health people.’

  Dr. Petrie nodded. ‘Okay, Anton. Keep me in touch, won’t you? And don’t forget to take some streptomycin yourself.’

  ‘Are you kidding? We’re walking around here in masks and gloves and flea-proof clothing. It’s going to have to be a pretty damned smart bacillus to get through to us.’

  Dr. Petrie laid the phone down. Adelaide was looking at him anxiously. On the floor, Prickles was tucking her doll in for the night underneath the armchair, and singing her a lullaby in a small, high voice.

  ‘Did I hear you say plague?’ asked Adelaide.

  ‘That’s right. That boy I picked up this morning, the one who died. He was infected with some kind of mutated plague bacillus. They’re trying to pinpoint it now.’

  ‘Is it dangerous?’

  Dr. Petrie went across and picked up his drink. He took a long, icy swallow of chilled white rum, and briefly closed his eyes.

  ‘All diseases are dangerous, if they’re not treated promptly and properly. I’ve taken a couple of shots of antibiotics myself, but I think you and Prickles ought to have the same. Plague will kill you if it’s left untreated, but these days it’s pretty much under control.’

  ‘Are you sure? I mean—’

  Dr. Petrie shrugged. ‘I can’t be sure until the experts are sure. But I wasn’t close to that boy for very long, and the chances are that I probably haven’t caught it.’

  Adelaide sat down. She watched Prickles playing for a while, and then said, ‘I just find it so hard to believe. I thought plague was one of those things they had in Europe, in the Middle Ages. It just seems so weird.’

  Dr. Petrie sat on the arm of the settee opposite. Unconsciously, he felt he ought to keep his distance. There was something about the word Plague that made him think of infection and putrescence and teeming bacteria, and until he knew for certain he was clean and clear, he didn’t feel like breathing too closely in Adelaide’s direction.

  He sipped his drink. ‘I was reading about it the other day, in a medical journal. We’ve had plague in America since the turn of the century. We’ve still got it – particularly in the west. They had to lift the ban on DDT not long ago, so that they could disinfect rats’ nests and ground squirrels’ burrows. Don’t look so worried. It’s just one of these things that sounds more frightening than it really is.’

  Adelaide looked up, and gave him a twitchy smile. ‘Plague. The Black Death. Who’s frightened?’ she said softly.

  Prickles was shaking her doll. ‘Dolly,’ she said crossly, ‘are you feeling giddy again?’

  Dr. Petrie smiled. ‘Is dolly feeling sick, too?’ he asked. ‘Maybe she needs a good night’s sleep, like you.’

  Prickles shook her head seriously. ‘Oh, no. Dolly’s not tired. Dolly doesn’t feel like going to bed yet. Dolly’s just feeling giddy.’

  Dr. Petrie looked at his little daughter closely. Her hair was drawn back in a pony-tail, and her profile was just like his. When she grew up, and lost some of that six-year-old chubbiness, she would probably be pretty. Margaret, when he had first married her, had been one of the prettiest girls on the north beach.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if dolly’s feeling giddy, perhaps dolly would like some nice streptomycin.’

  Prickles frowned. ‘No, dolly doesn’t want any of that. Dolly doesn’t like it. She’s just feeling giddy, like Mommy.’

  Dr. Petrie stared at Prickles intently. ‘What did you say?’ he asked her. He said it so sharply that she looked up at him with her mouth open, as if she’d done something wrong.

  He knelt on the floor beside her. ‘I’m not angry, darling,’ he said. ‘But did you say that Mommy was giddy?’

  Prickles nodded. ‘Mommy went swimming, and when she came back she said she felt sick, and the next day she was giddy.’

  Dr. Petrie leaned back against the settee. The creeping sensation of anxiety was spreading all over him.

  Adelaide, her face pale, said, ‘Leonard… you don’t think that Margaret…?’

  Dr. Petrie stood up. ‘I don’t know,’ he said
hoarsely. ‘What worries me is how many other people have caught it. I think I’d better get down to the hospital and find out what’s going on.’

  ‘Is Mommy all right?’ said Prickles, frowning.

  Dr. Petrie forced a smile, and laid a gentle hand on his daughter’s pony-tail.

  ‘Yes, honey. Mommy’s all right. Now – don’t you think it’s time that dolly went to bed?’

  Prickles sighed. ‘I suppose so. She has been very giddy today. Do all dollies get giddy? All the dollies in Miami?’

  Dr. Petrie picked Prickles up in his arms, and held her close against him. The doll was made of lurid pink plastic, with a shock of brassy blonde nylon hair. He examined it closely, and then pronounced his diagnosis.

  ‘I think that dolly’s going to get better. And I don’t think that all the dollies in Miami will get giddy. At least—’

  He couldn’t help noticing Adelaide’s anxious, attractive face.

  ‘At least I hope not,’ he finished quietly, and laid his daughter down.

  *

  It was nearly midnight when the black and white police patrol car turned the corner from Washington Avenue into Dade Boulevard, cruising up the warm, deserted streets at a watchful speed. At the wheel, in his neat-pressed shirtsleeves, sat 24-year-old Officer Herb Stone – a thin-faced cop with a dark six o’clock shadow and a pointed nose. Beside him, eating a hot dog out of a pressed cardboard tray, sat his buddy, 26-year-old Officer Francis Poletto, a chunky, tough-looking young police athlete with a face like a pug.

  ‘I almost broke my ass laughing,’ Poletto was saying, with his mouth full. ‘The guy gets on the water-skis, the boat starts up, and the next thing I know, they’re pulling him right across the bay underwater. He climbs out, coughing and spluttering, and he says, “Well, that’s great for a start – now teach me how to do it on the surface!” Laugh? I broke my ass.’

  Herb Stone grinned politely, and left it at that. He liked Poletto, and there were a couple of times when he’d been glad of Poletto’s rough-house style arrest. But Stone was quiet and academic, and hoped to make it through to detective school, and promotion.

  Poletto, on the other hand, liked to keep in touch with the streets, and the tough cookies who hung around the beaches. He was hard and dedicated and had once shot a hippie in the left arm.

  They stopped at a red light, and waited at the empty junction. Crickets chirruped in the grass, and palms rustled drily in the soft night air. Herb Stone whistled tunelessly under his breath. Poletto munched. The radio said something indistinct about a traffic violation on Tamiami Trail.

  Just as they were about to move off, a second-hand silver Pontiac came swerving across the junction in front of them, bouncing unsteadily on its springs, and roared off down Alton Road. Stone looked at Poletto and Poletto looked at Stone.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Poletto, screwing up his cardboard hot-dog tray. ‘This might be the only action we get all night.’

  Herb Stone switched on the siren, and the police car squealed and skittered around the corner and bellowed off after the speeding Pontiac. They saw its crimson tail-lights vanishing down Alton Road in the direction of MacArthur Causeway, swaying erratically from one side of the road to the other.

  ‘Drunk,’ snarled Poletto. ‘Drunk as a fucking skunk.’

  Herb Stone, tense and sweating, closed the gap between the speeding Pontiac and the warbling, flashing police car. In a few seconds, they were close enough to see the dark shape of the driver, hunched over his wheel. Herb tried to nudge the police car up alongside the Pontiac and force him over, but the Pontiac slewed from kerb to kerb, tires squealing and suspension banging at every turn.

  Suddenly, the Pontiac driver slammed on his brakes. Herb, dazzled by the red glare of the fugitive’s tail-lights, went for his brake-pedal and missed it. The black and white police car smashed noisily into the back of the silver Pontiac, knocking it sideways into the kerb. Herb stamped on the brakes and stopped savagely.

  ‘You’re supposed to chase him,’ said Poletto bluntly. ‘Not smash the ass off him.’

  The two officers climbed out of their car and walked across to the Pontiac. Poletto unbuttoned his top pocket and took out his notebook.

  ‘Okay, Charlie,’ he snapped. ‘What’s all this, Death Race 2000?’

  The driver didn’t answer. He was middle-aged, with rimless glasses, and he was sitting upright in his seat like a wax dummy. His face was a ghastly and noticeable white.

  Herb stepped up closer and saw that his eyes were closed. He had gray, close-cropped hair and a check working man’s shirt. He looked respectable, even staid. He was shivering.

  ‘Do you think he’s okay?’ asked Herb uncertainly. ‘He doesn’t look too well to me.’

  Poletto shrugged. ‘Herb – if you’d drunk as much as this guy, you wouldn’t look too well, neither. Okay, Charlie, out of the car.’

  The man didn’t open his eyes, or stir, or say anything. He just sat there shaking, pale and beaded with perspiration.

  ‘Come on, wise guy,’ ordered Poletto, and wrenched open the dented car door. He was about to reach in, but he stopped himself. He pulled a contorted face and said, ‘Jesus H. Christ.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Herb. Then, before Poletto could answer, he smelled it for himself. It was so rank that he almost felt sick.

  ‘I think he’s ill. Frank,’ said Herb. ‘Get an ambulance, will you, and the wreck squad, and I’ll pull him out of there.’

  Poletto screwed up his nose. ‘Rather you than me, buddy boy. That guy smells like a goddamned drain.’ Poletto went across to the police car, reached inside and picked up the mike. Herb heard him calling for an ambulance. Taking a deep breath he pushed open the Pontiac’s door as wide as he could, and tried to get his hands under the driver’s armpits. The man murmured and mumbled, and feebly pushed Herb away. But then he sagged and collapsed, and Herb dragged his heavy body out of the diarrhoea-filled driving seat, and laid him on the road.

  The man whispered something. Poletto, coming back from the police car, said, ‘What’s he chirping about? Is he sick, or what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Herb. He knelt on the road beside the feverish driver, and put his face as close as he could to the sick man’s mouth. He never did understand what the man was trying to say, but he remembered the spittle that touched his cheek as the man’s lips whispered those last, incomprehensible words.

  In the distance, they heard the ambulance siren. Herb lifted the man’s head from the concrete road and said gently, ‘Don’t worry, mac. You’re going to be all right. They’ll take you away, and you’re going to be fine.’

  *

  Dr. Petrie reached the hospital a little after twelve. He was surprised to see that the casualty reception area was crowded with ambulances and police cars, and even a couple of Press cars. All the lights were on inside the building, and people were running backwards and forwards with medical trolleys and blankets.

  He parked the Lincoln on the road and walked across to the hospital doors. A shirt-sleeved policeman said, ‘Sorry, friend. This is off limits.’

  Dr. Petrie reached into his white linen jacket and produced his identity card. ‘I’m a doctor. I came down here to see Anton Selmer. He’s in charge of emergency. Say – what goes on here?’

  The policeman examined the identity card suspiciously. ‘Are you sure you’re a doctor? You don’t look like a doctor.’

  Dr. Petrie raised his eyebrows. ‘What’s a doctor supposed to look like? Marcus Welby, MD?’

  The policeman shrugged, a little embarrassed, and handed the card back. ‘I guess it’s okay,’ he said, ungraciously. ‘Seems like they’ve got some kind of epidemic around here. They just told me to keep people out. Through there.’

  ‘I know the way,’ Petrie said, and pushed through the swing doors into the brightly-lit hospital corridors.

  There was obviously some kind of panic in progress. The corridors were lined with trolleys, all waiting to collect patients fr
om the ambulance bay; and there were nurses and doctors everywhere, bustling around with medical report sheets, diagnostic kits and bundles of sheets and robes and plastic gloves.

  He reached Dr. Selmer’s office and rapped on the door. A nurse answered it, wearing a cap and mask, her forehead glistening with perspiration.

  ‘Yes? What is it?’

  ‘I’m Dr. Leonard Petrie. I came to see Dr. Selmer. I thought I could help.’

  ‘Just hold on there. Don’t come inside. He won’t be a moment.’

  Dr. Petrie was about to say something else, but the door was shut firmly in his face. He shrugged, and leaned up against the corridor wall to wait for Dr. Selmer. As he stood there, a medical trolley was rushed past, with a young woman lying on it. Her face was deathly white, and she was shivering and trembling. A young doctor came hurrying in the other direction, calling out for a nurse to bring him some blankets and antibiotics.

  It was ten minutes before Anton Selmer appeared. He came out into the corridor, freckled and ginger and worn out. He managed a weak smile as he pulled off his cap and mask, and let out a long, exhausted sigh.

  ‘Hi, Leonard. Glad you could make it.’

  Dr. Petrie inclined his head towards the door of the emergency ward. ‘How long have you been in there?’

  ‘All day,’ said Anton Selmer, rubbing his eyes. ‘It looks like it’ll be all night, too.’

  ‘Is it the plague?’

  Dr. Selmer scratched his head tiredly. ‘We’ve had twenty-eight more cases since eight o’clock. They’re picking them up all over the place. We’ve had a bar-tender, a supermarket manager, two cops and four ambulance crew. We’ve even had a hooker. They come from all over town. Most from the south – Coral Gables and South Miami. But two or three from Hialeah, and some from the Beach.’

  Dr. Petrie stepped back to let a trolley rattle past. ‘What about treatment? Are they responding?’

  Dr. Selmer didn’t look up. ‘Five of them are dead already. Two were dead on arrival. We’ve tried streptomycin, tetracyclines and chloramphenicol. We even tried aureomycin, in case the bacilli were resistant to streptomycin. I’ve brought in plague antigens from Tampa, and I’m having serums made up from avirulent strains flown in right now from Los Angeles.’