Plague

One

They had been driving for ten minutes when Adelaide, in the back of the car, said, 'Look!'

Dr. Petrie had already seen the first distant nickers in his rear-view mirror, but they could have been anything — a burning car, or an isolated house on fire. Now, when he slowed the Torino and turned around in his seat, he could see that the whole southern horizon was growing red with flame, and that the city of Miami was ablaze from stem to stern, like a gigantic ocean liner burning on a rippling ocean of sparks.

'Miami,' whispered Mr. Henschel, sitting next to Dr. Petrie, his rifle in his lap. 'That's the whole damned city of Miami.'

'Do you think they did it on purpose?' Adelaide said.

Dr. Petrie speeded up, heading north on nothing but marker lights. 'I guess they might have done,' he said. 'More likely it was looters and arsonists and untended fires.'

They were all very tired. It was well past one o'clock, and the night was into its weariest and longest hours. Prickles was still fast asleep, in Mrs. Henschel's arms, but the rest of them were too tense and too worried to rest.

'I suppose you realize we might have taken the plague with us,' remarked Adelaide. 'I mean, for all we know, one of us might be infected.'

Dr. Petrie nodded, his face illuminated green from the dials on the instrument panel.

'That's possible, but I think it's unlikely. I've been exposed to the plague more than any of you, and I haven't caught it. Maybe I'm just immune. From what we've seen of the plague so far, it strikes very quickly. If we haven't had it yet, I don't think we're going to get it now.'

'Please God.' muttered Mr. Henschel. 'Yes.' said Dr. Petrie, 'please God.'

They drove in silence for a while. It was early Wednesday morning, before the news of the plague had officially been released by the news media, and all their car radio could tell them was that Spanish or swine flu was still causing some fatalities in Miami and southern Florida. When the radio said that, Dr. Petrie looked up at his mirror. He saw the huge columns of fire that distantly leaped and roared from the hotels along Miami Beach, and wondered, not for the first time in his life, how politicians and newsmen could possibly get away with what they did and said.

He was still pondering on this when Mr. Henschel pointed up ahead. 'I see lights. he said tensely. 'Looks like there's a roadblock up there'.

Dr. Petrie slowed down, and they all peered anxiously into the night. Half a mile up the road, they saw the bright glow of spotlights, and a cluster of cars and trucks.

'Where is this?' asked Adelaide.

'Looks like Hallandale.' said Dr. Petrie. 'They must've pulled the roadblocks back a bit.'

'What are you going to do?' said Mr. Henschel. 'If they stop you, you're finished. They won't let you past.'

By now, they had almost reached the roadblock. It was the National Guard, and they had obstructed the highway with trucks and signs. As they approached in their car, a guardsman in combat fatigue stepped forward with his hand raised. Dr. Petrie slowed down and stopped.

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.

He had two hours of restless dozing, filled with weird and terrifying dreams. The sky was light when he opened his eyes. Mr. and Mrs. Henschel, Adelaide and Pickles were all still asleep. Dr. Petrie lifted himself on one elbow, rubbing his aching eyes, and looked around.

They had company. Beside the car were two unshaven National Guardsmen in uniform and helmets, their eyes hidden behind mirror sunglasses. They were both carrying automatic weapons, and neither looked in the mood for friendly banter.

'How do,' said one of them laconically. He was chewing gum in ceaseless circles.

Dr. Petrie nudged Adelaide, who was lying snuggled up against him. She stirred, and opened her eyes.

The guardsman stepped forward, and looked around their makeshift encampment. 'You folks travelin' north?'

Dr. Petrie didn't answer. Mr. and Mrs. Henschel had woken up now, and they blinked across at him in silent bewilderment.

'It's kind of inadvisable — travelin' north,' said the guardsman, pacing around them.

'Is there a regulation against it?' asked Dr. Petrie.

The guardsman chewed gum for a while. 'Nope,' he said eventually. 'I don't reckon there's no regulation against it.'

'But it's inadvisable?'

'Yep. That's the word. Inadvisable.'

'Well… what do you advise us to do instead?'

The man shrugged. 'It ain't up to me to advise you to do nothing. What you do is entirely your decision. Is this your car?'

'It belongs to a friend.'

'You able to prove that?'

'I don't think so. He's dead. He died of the plague two days ago.'

The guardsman walked slowly back to where his friend was standing.

'Any of you folks sick, or infected?'

'I don't believe so.'

'How about that little girl? She don't look too bright.'

'She has a cold, that's all. A summer cold.'

'Is that right?'

'I'm a doctor. I should know.'

'You're a doctor, huh? How come you ain't helpin' out someplace, 'stead of sleepin' rough?'

Dr. Petrie said, 'I was helping in a hospital in Miami. Last night, it was burned to the ground, along with the rest of the city. There isn't much I can do there now.' The men were not interested.

'Nope,' said the one with the gum, 'I guess there ain't.'

There was a long, awkward silence. Mr. Henschel eventually asked, 'Are you going to let us leave, or do we have to stay here all day?'

'You can leave if you like,' said the guardsman. 'But you don't recommend northwards?'

'Nope.'

'Are the highways blocked off? Is that what's happening?'

Both men nodded. 'The entire state of Florida is in quarantine, friend. You can drive north if you feel like wastin' your time, but I can tell you here and now there ain't nobody gets through the state line alive or dead.'

'That must include you,' said Dr. Petrie.

The guardsman shook his head. 'No way, doctor. Every National Guardsman has been immunized.'

Dr. Petrie frowned. 'Immunized? What do you mean?'

The guardsman mimed a syringe being squeezed into his arm. 'The jab. Ninety-eight percent effective, the doc said.'

Dr. Petrie looked across at Adelaide, and she raised her eyebrows.

'I don't quite know how to say this,' Dr. Petrie said to the National Guardsmen.

'You don't quite know how to say what?

'Well, whatever they've injected you with, it's useless. There is no way of immunizing yourself against this plague.'

The guardsmen placidly chewed gum, and said nothing. 'Have you tried to get back across the state line yet?' asked Dr. Petrie.

'Nope. This is our first turn of duty.'

Dr. Petrie stood up, and brushed down his clothes. 'Well, I'm sorry to say it's going to be your last turn of duty, as well. There is absolutely no way that you can be protected against this disease. We know it's a type of pneumonic plague, but we don't know how it's transmitted, and we don't have the remotest idea how to cure it.'

'Are you pulling my leg?' said the guardsman, frowning.

'I wish I was. I think you've been conned. They needed someone to keep law and order around' here, to stop things going completely berserk, and so they let you think that you were immune. You're not, and that's all there is to it.'

'He's joking,' said the other National Guardsman. 'Don't you take no mind of him, Cal, because he's sure as hell joking.'

'I can show you my medical papers.' He reached into his back pants pocket, and took out his ID. He held it up, and waved it.

'Don't you take one step nearer,' said the National Guardsman, raising his automatic weapon.

Even afterwards, Dr. Petrie couldn't work out what happened next. It was too quick, too illogical and too spontaneous. He didn't see David Henschel go for his rifle, but he guessed that was what happened. The guardsman suddenly swung round and fired a deafening burst of automatic fire towards the trees, and Mr. Henschel said 'Ah!' and fell to the hard ground with a heavy thud like a sack of flour. Two or three bullets caught Mrs. Henschel, and she rolled over, screaming.

Dr. Petrie, instinctively trying to protect Prickles, ducked forward and wrestled the machine-gun from the guardsman's hands. The other guardsman lifted his gun, but Dr. Petrie caught the first soldier around the neck, and pulled him up against himself as a human shield, He waved the automatic rifle in the other guardsman's direction, and snapped, 'Drop it! Drop it, and put up your hands!'

The man hesitated, and then slowly laid his weapon down on the ground. Mrs. Henschel was moaning loudly, while Adelaide bent over her, trying to see if she could help. Prickles stood by herself, still in her red dressing-gown, and howled.

'Turn around!' Dr. Petrie shouted hoarsely. 'Put your hands on your head!'

The guardsman did as he was told. Then Dr. Petrie pushed the first guardsman away from him, and ordered him to do the same. The two of them stood side by side in the road, their hands on top of their heads, and Dr. Petrie stepped forward and picked up the other automatic weapon.

'Now,' Dr. Petrie said, 'if you don't help me, I'm going to blow your heads off. Where's your first aid kit?'

One of the guardsmen said, 'I've got one right here, in my pack.'

'Put your hand in your pack slowly, lift the kit out in plain view, and lay it on the ground.'

The man did as he was told. Dr. Petrie went across and picked it up, keeping the machine-gun trained carefully on his captives. Then he backed up, and knelt down beside Mrs. Henschel. He handed the gun to Adelaide, and told her to shoot without hesitation if either guardsman moved.

Mrs. Henschel was bad. One bullet had hit her in the chest and pierced her left lung. Every time she breathed, bloody bubbles trickled from her dress. Another bullet had hit her in the ear, and the side of her head was sticky with gore. The pain was by now so intense that the poor woman had passed out.

Working as quickly as he could, he dabbed the wounds reasonably clean, and bandaged them with lint.

Prickles was standing close by, watching her father, quiet and red-eyed. She said, 'Is Mrs. Henschel dead, daddy?'

Dr. Petrie tried to smile. 'No, honey, Mrs. Henschel just hurt herself. Don't you worry — she's going to be fine.'

Prickles pointed to Mr. Henschel, curled up in a stain of blood. 'What about him? Is he going to be fine?'

Dr. Petrie sighed heavily and said, 'Mr. Henschel's gone to heaven, I'm afraid. He's dead.'

'Will he come back?' the child demanded.

Dr. Petrie stood up, and took the gun back from Adelaide. He ruffled Prickles' hair. 'No, baby, he won't come back. But wherever he's gone, I'm sure he's going to be real happy.'

'Is he an angel now? With wings?'

Adelaide looked at Leonard with sad eyes. He answered, 'Yes, I expect so. With wings.'

They cleared up their blankets and their few belongings and stowed them in the car. While Dr. Petrie kept the guardsmen covered, Adelaide dressed Pickles in a short blue dress, and sandals. She herself changed into a white T-shirt and jeans, and unpacked a green plaid shirt and white slacks for Dr. Petrie.

When they were ready to leave, Dr. Petrie went over to Mrs. Henschel. She was conscious again, and she was groaning under her breath. He knelt down beside her, and laid a hand on her forehead.

'How do you feel?' he asked her.

'Bad,' she croaked. 'Real bad.'

'Do you think you can travel?'

She coughed up blood, and tried to shake her head. 'Just leave us be,' she said hoarsely. 'You go on and leave us be.'

'Mrs. Henschel — we have to get you to a hospital, if there are any hospitals left.'

She groaned, and shook her head again. 'Just leave us. Dave'll look after me, won't you, Dave?'

Dr. Petrie bit his lip, and looked across at David Henschel's body.

'Mrs. Henschel,' he said gently, 'I can't leave you here to die.'

She coughed more blood. 'Die?' she said. 'Who said anything about dying?'

'You have to realize that you need attention. Dave — doesn't she need attention?'

He paused, and then he said, 'There — Dave says you need attention, too.'

Mrs. Henschel opened her eyes. 'Let me see him,' she said. 'Are you there, Dave? Are you there?'

She tried to raise herself, but then she started coughing, until the blood was splattering the hard ground in front of her.

'I don't feel so good,' she said. 'Just give me a minute.'

She lay back and they waited. The breeze rustled the grove of palms, and the National Guardsmen shuffled their feet uncomfortably on the roadside. The sky was clear blue, and if it hadn't been for the silence and the strange absence of traffic, you would have thought it was a day just like any other.

Later, Dr. Petrie remembered that moment more clearly than almost all others — waiting by the roadside near Palm Bay for Mrs. Henschel to die.

She went without a sound, sliding easily into death. Dr. Petrie thought she was sleeping at first, but then he saw that she had stopped breathing, and that her right hand was slowly opening like a white flower with crumpled petals.

He stood up, and walked around to face the National Guardsmen, pointing his gun straight at them. He was scruffy and unshaven, with dark rings under his eyes, and his clothes still had the creases of the suitcase on them. His hair was ruffled in the morning breeze.

'I ought to kill you,' he told the men. 'I ought to waste you here and now.'

The one who was chewing gum looked up. 'Guess that's your privilege,' he said. 'Seeing as you've got the gun.' Dr. Petrie cocked the weapon and raised the barrel. For a moment, he was almost tempted to shoot them, but the moment didn't last long. His angry bitterness of the previous night had faded with the sun, and he was beginning to see that they were all, soldiers included, tangled up in a situation they could neither control nor understand.

'Just for safety,' he said, 'I want you to walk down the road a couple of hundred yards. Then we're going to drive off.'

The other guardsman said, 'What about our guns? We ain't gonna last long without our guns. Can't you leave them behind?'

Dr. Petrie shrugged. 'You're not going to last long anyway. What I said about those immunization jabs was true. Now, start walking.'

He told Adelaide and Prickles to get into the car. He tossed the automatic weapons on the back seat, and climbed in himself. He started the engine, and they moved off northwards up Route 1, leaving the two guardsmen standing in the road watching them go.

The day was hot and clear. There were one or two other cars on the road, but they kept away from each other, staring suspiciously from their tightly-closed windows. Just outside Melbourne, there were a few hitch-hikers trying disconsolately to pick up lifts, but there were too many bodies lying around the sidewalks and verges to suggest that anyone around there might have escaped infection. It only took one drop of spittle, one breath, to pass the plague on, and Dr. Petrie wasn't prepared to risk the lives of those he loved talking to anyone if he could avoid it.

In the center of Melbourne itself the police and the National Guard had set up another road block. He drove cautiously up to it and stopped.

A heavy-built cop walked up to the car and said, 'Sorry, sir, you're going to have to turn around.'

Dr. Petrie nodded. There was nothing else he could do. There were seven or eight cops and guardsmen surrounding the barricade, and there was no hope at all of forcing a way through there alive. He backed the Gran Torino up, turned it around, and drove southwards again.

They were hungry and thirsty, and the day was growing hotter. The car's air-conditioning was faltering, and the interior was becoming unbearably stuffy. Prickles, lying in Adelaide's arms, looked flushed and sweaty, and Dr. Petrie checked her pulse regularly as he drove. It was probably nothing more than a cold or flu, but he couldn't be sure. Her lips were dry, and she was finding it more and more difficult to breathe.

There was no sign of the two National Guardsmen as they drove back past Palm Bay. Not far from the grove of trees where they had spent the early hours of the morning, Dr. Petrie took a right turn inland, and drove down the dusty, deserted road until he reached Interstate 95. Then he turned north again until he crossed Highway 192, and turned even further inland, towards St. Cloud and Lake Tohopekaliga. This time, they came across no road blocks and no troops, but there were signs of the plague everywhere. Bodies lay by the road, smothered in flies, and cars and trucks were abandoned at every junction and layby.

Around lunchtime, they found a deserted MacDonald's. Dr. Petrie parked outside, and left Adelaide and Prickles in the car while he scouted around with his automatic weapon. There were two bodies in the yard at the back, both crawling with flies, but apart from that the place was empty. They went inside and sat down.

Petrie lifted the counter and went in search of baked beans, milk, cheese and soft drinks. 'The ice cream's melted,' he said, 'but if you don't mind drinking it, you're welcome.'

Prickles was still hot, but she managed to eat a few cold baked beans and drink some milk. Dr. Petrie ate quickly and hungrily, keeping his eye on the empty highway and the surrounding buildings.

'Well,' he said after a while, wiping his mouth. 'It's not exactly the Starlight Roof, but it's nutritious.'

Adelaide gave a tight, humorless smile.

'Is anything wrong? You don't look too happy.'

She waited until she had finished her mouthful of cheese. 'I'm not, if you must know.'

'Why not? Come on, Adelaide, we've had a hard time of it, but that's no reason to give in. If we stick together, we'll get out of this okay, don't you worry.'

'Well,' she said, casting her eyes down. 'I don't think so.'

Dr. Petrie stared at her. 'What do you mean?' he asked. 'I don't understand.'

She looked up. 'You might as well know,' she told him. 'I think that Prickles has the plague. I think we're going to have to leave her behind.'

Prickles blinked listlessly. Her face was crimson with heat and fever, and she was obviously sick.

Dr. Petrie burst out, 'That's impossible. You don't know what you're suggesting.'

Adelaide reached out and held his wrist. 'Leonard,' she said, 'I know it sounds harsh, but it's a question of survival. Like you said before. My survival, and your survival. If Prickles has the plague, we could all die. At least if we find some way of making her comfortable, and leaving her behind, then we could live.'

'That's crazy,' he said. 'You're out of your mind. Prickles is my daughter.'

'Yours and Margaret's daughter.'

He leaned forward. 'Is that it? Is that why you want me to leave her behind? Because she's Margaret's daughter?'

'Oh Leonard, I didn't mean that. I just mean that if we really have to be fierce, the way you said, then we have to be completely fierce. With ourselves, as well as with other people.'

Dr. Petrie didn't know what to say. He stroked Prickles' sticky little forehead, and gave her another spoonful of baked beans.

'Leonard,' insisted Adelaide, 'I don't want to see you die, and I don't want to die myself.'

Dr. Petrie said slowly, 'If you had plague, honey, I wouldn't leave you behind. I won't leave Prickles behind, either.'

Adelaide sighed, and tapped her fingernails on the formica tabletop. 'In that case, I'm going alone. I'm sorry, Leonard. I love you. But I love life better than lost causes.'

Dr. Petrie wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist.

'I can't stop you,' he said hoarsely. 'I love you, too, as a matter of fact.'

'But you love Prickles more?'

He looked at her. He said, 'Don't try and measure my love, Adelaide. It won't work. I've told you I love you, and you should know how much. If you want to leave, I won't stand in your way, but I can't say that I'm glad to see you go. Just be realistic, that's all. Prickles is a six-year-old girl, and she's my daughter, and no father worthy of the name would leave her to die on her own.'

Prickles looked from Adelaide to Dr. Petrie and back again.

'Am I going to die, too?' she asked.

Dr. Petrie put his arm around her. 'Of course not, honey. We're just talking stupid.'

'I don't think we are,' said Adelaide. 'Listen, Leonard, I'm not cold-hearted and I'm not a bitch, but I beg you. Leonard, I love you. I don't know what else I can say. I love you and I want to see you live.'

'Will I be a angel?' said Prickles. 'No, baby, you won't,' Leonard Petrie said. He stood up, and collected his automatic weapon. Adelaide stayed where she was, picking at the few remnants of cheese and pickle on her plate.

'You're welcome to come along,' he said softly. 'I don't seriously think that Prickles has the plague, and I would like to have you with us.'

Adelaide pouted. 'You wouldn't think she had it, would you? You're her dear devoted daddy.'

Dr. Petrie didn't answer. He took Prickles by the hand and led her outside to the car. It was past noon now, and the heat rippled off the concrete car park in heavy waves. They climbed into the car, and Dr. Petrie started the engine. Adelaide stayed where she was, sitting inside the plate-glass window of MacDonald's, her face hidden from view.

He waited, engine turning over, for five minutes. Adelaide stayed at the table, not moving. Prickles said, 'Isn't Adelaide coming, daddy?'

Dr. Petrie wiped the sweat from his face. 'No,' he told her. 'I guess not.'

He released the brake, and moved off across the carpark and up to the highway. He slowed down, and took one last look in the mirror. Adelaide was still inside the hamburger bar, head bent, not even looking their way. He licked his lips, turned on to the highway, and put his foot down on the gas.

They passed Walt Disney World. It was silent and dead — a fairy-tale land that had been stricken by pestilence. The two of them, father and child, wandered around it for almost twenty minutes, looking at the turrets and towers and silent streets. A warm breeze blew from the west, making flags flutter, and waste paper dance across the empty sidewalks. Most grotesque and incongruous of all, a man in a Mickey Mouse head lay dead on the ground, still smiling cheerfully, still bright-eyed and round-eared and happy.

'Why is Mickey Mouse lying down?' Pickles demanded. He took her back to the car.

Adelaide spent nearly an hour preparing herself for her solitary escape from Florida. Around the back of MacDonald's, she found an abandoned Delta 88 with the keys still in it, and a tankful of gas. She drove it around to the front, opened the trunk, and packed it with cans of franks and beans. She also took a couple of MacDonald's coveralls that she found hanging in a closet, in case she needed a change of clothes.

She was almost ready to leave when she lifted her head and listened. At first she couldn't be sure — but then the distant sound became increasingly more raucous and distinct. Half-muffled by the wind, it was the faint ripsaw noise of approaching motorcycles.

Hurriedly, she packed away the last of her provisions. The motorcycle noise grew louder and louder, and soon it was clear that there were five or six of them, and they were traveling fast. She climbed into the car, and turned the key. The starter whinnied, but the motor wouldn't fire. She kept trying, jamming her foot down on the gas pedal, turning the key until at last the starter motor moaned in protest.

The rippling sound of the bikes was so near now that she could hear it even with the car windows closed. Sweat was streaming down her face. Until the motor started, the car's air-conditioning wouldn't work, and she was sitting in a ninety-degree Turkish bath with PVC seats. The first of the motorcycles came roaring around the curve in the road. It was a massive chopper, with extended forks, and it was ridden by a muscular Hell's Angel with dark glasses, wild hair, and a metal-studded jacket. Adelaide opened the car door, jumped quickly out, and made a run for MacDonald's.

The Hell's Angel swung his bike around the car-park in a wide, bellowing circle, followed by four others in formation. Adelaide pushed her way through the front door of the hamburger bar, and tried to shut it. The catch was broken. Desperately, whimpering under her breath, she tried to slide a heavy table across the restaurant and block the doorway.

Outside, the Hell's Angels parked their cycles, switched off their engines, and casually dismounted. They peeled off their jackets, took off their helmets, and then started to walk slowly towards the hamburger bar.

Adelaide tippy-toed hurriedly to the other end of the kitchen and tried the restaurant's back door. It was open. She tugged it ajar, and looked out. She saw the bodies that Dr. Petrie had seen, smothered in flies, but apart from that the back yard looked clear. Behind her, she heard the front door of the restaurant bang open.

Holding her breath, she stepped into the back yard and softly closed the door behind her. Then she crossed the yard as quickly as she could, and went through the gate into the car park at the rear of the buildings. She looked left and right, but there was no one around.

She was just about to circle around the back and see if she could find another car when one of the Hell's Angels, a tall bearded blonde in nothing but filthy jeans and motorcycle boots hung with chains, came running around the corner in front of her.

Adelaide's heart bumped. She turned around and started to run away, her hair flying behind her, along the length of the strip's backyards.

She was almost at the end, and just about to turn the corner, when another Hell's Angel emerged in front of her. Ginger-haired, muscular, in a sweat-stained purple tee-shirt. She turned, and tried to run across the car-park towards the back of some distant houses.

Her vision jolted as she ran. Glaring sunlight, concrete, abandoned cars. And behind her, the heavy loping of two silent men, and the chink-chunk of their chains and their boots. She saw far-away palms and white peaceful-looking homes.

It was the blonde who caught her. For a split-second, she could hear him panting up beside her, and then his hard hand snatched her shoulder, and she tripped and fell sideways on to the hot concrete. He grabbed her arms, dragged her on to her feet, and held her tight. They stared at each other, sweating and panting.

When the blonde had caught his breath, he licked his lips and said, 'Oats at last, Trumbo. Real good oats at last. What's your name, honey?'

Adelaide didn't answer. Her lungs felt scorched from running, and her arm was stinging where she had fallen.

'Silent type, huh?' he said. 'Well, don't you worry, because that's the way we like 'em. Ain't that correct?'

'Trumbo?'

The ginger-haired Trumbo, still gasping for breath, nodded and grunted in agreement. They started to walk her back to MacDonald's. The other three Angels were waiting for them at the back gate, shading their eyes against the harsh sunlight. Adelaide's legs went mechanically one in front of the other.

The Hell's Angels' leader applauded Adelaide as his two cohorts brought her in.

'A nice piece of meat there, gentleman. I couldn't've picked it better myself.'

He came forward and inspected her appreciatively. 'You got a name?' he said mildly.

'Adelaide.'

'That's pretty. I'm the Captain. That's Trumbo there, and the gentleman holding your arm is Fritz. These others are Okey and Sbarbaro. We're a kind of a team, if you understand what I mean.' Adelaide didn't answer.

The Captain said, 'I hope you don't think we're imposing or nothing. I mean, we'd hate to cause you any kind of inconvenience.'

Adelaide looked at him. She tried to speak boldly, but she felt terrified. 'Will you let me go, please?' she said, in a high voice.

'Let you go?' the Captain said, frowning. 'Do you think that's a very good idea?'

'I would like to go,' said Adelaide quietly. 'If you don't mind.'

The Captain shook his head like a worried welfare officer. 'It ain't as easy as all that,' he said thoughtfully. 'Y'see, this disease business, well, it's really changed the way things are. Because the cops have had to help out with the sick people, well, they've all caught this disease business themselves, and now there ain't too many cops left. That means that folks like us, who didn't have to help out, we're left alive. We're left in charge.'

'I just want to go.' Adelaide repeated. She started to cry.

The Captain gently laid his hand on her shoulder. 'Please don't upset yourself,' he said. 'We're going to let you go, all right, but you must realize that we want you to exercise your rights.'

One of the Angels started giggling. The Captain glared at him with mock-disapproval.

'Everyone has rights, my dear,' went on the Captain, in a soothing voice. 'You have the right to say that, yes, you would like to entertain us gentlemen, or that, no, you wouldn't like to.'

Adelaide felt tears sliding down her cheeks. 'What — what's supposed to happen — if I don't?'

The Captain stared. 'The question don't never arise. They all says yes.'

Adelaide stopped weeping and looked at him. A long silent moment passed them by, and miles away they heard the sporadic crackle of rifles.

Finally, she said, 'I don't care what they all say. I say no.'

The Captain nodded equably. 'Okay, then,' he said. 'If that's what you want. It's your privilege.'

He snapped his fingers and it all happened with the well-rehearsed speed and proficient brutality of long practice. Trumbo and the Norseman marched her into the restaurant again, through the kitchen, and pushed her against the wall of the hamburger bar. She stood there, wild-eyed and panting. Then the Captain stepped forward, very close, and grasped the top of her white tee-shirt. She could see the necklace of sweat along his upper lip, and smell his heavy, ox-like odor. His hands were hard and powerful, with big death's-head rings on the middle fingers.

'Last word?' he said gently.

Adelaide closed her eyes. It was going to happen, one way or another, and neither yes nor no were going to make any difference. The Captain said, 'Okay,' and ripped her T-shirt apart with three savage tugs, baring her breasts.

She tried to protect herself with her hands, but he forced them away, and roughly pulled and squeezed her breasts and nipples.

'Oh God,' she begged him. 'Please don't, please don't.'

He seized the top of her jeans, and tore them open.

She tried to twist away from him, but Okey and Trumbo took hold of her arms, and pinned her against the formica wall while the Captain jerked them down.

When she was completely naked, they stood around and touched her and grinned. All she could do was stare at them, and whimper. It wasn't even worth screaming. She was alone with these animals in a world where no one could hear her, no one could protect her, and no one cared.

The Captain casually unzippered his jeans, and prized his penis out. It was stiff and swollen, and he held it in his hand in front of her.

'Are you ready for the Captain's Special?' he asked her softly.

They pushed her face-down on to one of the tables. Her breasts were pressed against the sticky formica, and her legs were held wide apart. She stared at the floor, at the mosaic pattern of red-and-white, and tried to detach her mind from what was happening and think about something else altogether, like her childhood in Maine, or her mother's kindly face…

He forced himself into her. He seemed enormous, and it hurt so much that she bit her tongue. His hard hands were gripping her thighs, pulling her on to him, and she couldn't do anything but twist and turn and keep her teeth tightly clenched together.

They all raped her, one after the other, and it took an hour and a half. After an hour they didn't even have to hold her down, because she lay there gripping the table-top of her own accord, dulled to everything that they were doing to her. She didn't even hear them leave when it was all over, and she lay on the table until it began to grow dark, her body red and sore, her eyes swollen with unshed tears. One by one the bikes started up, and roared off northwestwards into the gathering night.

A little after midnight, in the first few moments of Thursday morning, Dr. Petrie and Prickles crossed the Suwanne River on 75, not thirty miles away from the Georgia state line. It was a black, cloudy night, like the suffocating inside of a soft velvet bag, and the Torino's air-conditioning had packed up altogether. They drove with the windows open wide, feeling the damp night draft blowing in on their faces.

They had had no trouble with roadblocks or National Guard since they had left Disney World. Through Clermont, Gainesville and Lake City they had seen nothing but deserted houses, corpses covered in black flies, and burning cars. If anyone had been left alive in this part of Florida, they were long gone.

Prickles was still pale and sweaty, but her pulse seemed to have normalized, and her breathing was easier, too. Dr. Petrie was still determined that her condition was nothing more than summer flu. The hurt, if she died now, would be more than he could bear.

He checked his rear-view mirror regularly to see if Adelaide might be following. Just outside Clermont, he had seen a bunch of bikers way behind, but they had turned off west towards Groveland, long before he had got a good look at them. He kept the National Guard automatic rifle propped up on the seat next to him, in case they were ambushed by looters or Hell's Angels or even by police, but north Florida was more like a graveyard than a jungle.

It took him forty-five minutes, driving on marker lights alone, to reach the state line. He saw the floodlights before he saw anything else. Two miles ahead, the highway was illuminated by batteries of powerful lamps, and the surrounding trees and brush were swept by searchlights and torches. It was the National Guard again, imposing their doomed quarantine on a dead state.

He pulled the car over to the side of the road, switched off the engine, and rubbed his eyes. Crossing the state line was going to be a hell of a lot harder than he had expected. By now, he conjectured, all the National Guard contingents which had been ordered to prevent a northward exodus of plague-carrying Floridians must have been pulled back to the border. Florida, with only two dozen major roads connecting it to the main body of continental America, was an easy limb to amputate.

'Prickles,' he whispered softly, 'try and get some sleep. I think we're going to have to wait until morning before we go any further.'

Prickles was almost asleep already, but he had been keeping her awake in case they ran into trouble. All the way from Lake City, he had been singing her nursery songs and half-remembered rhymes, just to keep her alert. He was surprised how many he remembered.

Prickles, sucking her thumb, said sleepily, 'Sing the song about the blanket lady.'

Dr. Petrie coughed. His mouth was dry, and he felt exhausted. 'No, baby, that's enough for tonight.'

'Please, Daddy.'

Dr. Petrie sighed. Then in a hoarse, off-key voice, he began to sing.

'There was an old woman tossed up in a blanket Seventeen times as high as the moon; Where she was going I could not but ask it, For in her hand she carried a broom. 'Old woman, old woman, old woman,' quoth I; 'O whither, O whither, O whither, so high?' 'To sweep the cobwebs from the sky And I'll be with you by-and-by!' Prickles smiled. Her eyelids dropped. In a few moments, she was fast asleep, her breathing quiet and regular. As a last check, Dr. Petrie gently lifted her wrist and timed her pulse. It was normal.

He closed the car windows, leaving only a small gap for ventilation, and settled down to get some rest himself. His neck muscles creaked with tiredness, and he felt unbearably cramped. But after five minutes of restless shifting around, his eyes began to close, and in ten minutes he was asleep, his head bowed over the steering-wheel like a man in prayer.

He was awakened four hours later by a cool dawn breeze flowing into the car. He lifted his head, and blinked. He felt as if his back was clamped in irons, and one of his feet was completely numb. He looked across at Prickles, who was still soundly sleeping, and then he checked his surroundings in the gray first light of another day.

They were closer to the state line than he had guessed, and he could see the barricades across the highway a mile or so in the distance. It was too hazy to see how many National Guardsmen there were around, but he guessed they'd be out in force.

He climbed out of the car and stretched. Then he opened the trunk and took out some of their provisions — some Raft cheese, a packet of crackers, and a can of orange juice. He looked pensively for a moment at some of Adelaide's tennis rackets and shoes strewn hurriedly in the back, but then he closed the trunk and pushed Adelaide out of his thoughts. He had spent the whole of yesterday afternoon worrying about her, and wondering if he ought to go back, but there seemed to be something about the plague that was destroying normal values and normal sentimentality. Perhaps there was too much death around to think about love.

Dr. Petrie nudged Prickles awake, and she yawned and shook her head like a small puppy. They sat in silence, sipping orange juice and eating crackers, and he looked at her, his daughter, and considered what kind of a world he had brought her into. In less than an hour, they were going to try and cross the state line, and that meant that both of them could be shot dead.

'Have you had enough?' he asked her, as she finished her juice.

'I wish I had some toast,' she said, looking at him seriously.

He gave her a small grin. 'So do I,' he told her. 'In fact, I'd do anything for a piece of toast.'

He packed everything away, brushed the crumbs from his crumpled slacks, and then walked along the highway a short distance to see if he could work out how to evade the quarantine barrier. He shaded his eyes against the early sun, but it was impossible to distinguish any signs of life around the National Guard trucks and jeeps and barbed wire. As far as he could make out, the best thing to do would be to leave the Torino where it was, and try to skirt around the barricade to the east, on foot.

Then they could pick up Route 41, and commandeer another car. It would take most of the morning, particularly at Prickles' pace, but it was better than trying to force their way through the barrier in a show of dangerous heroics. Even National Guardsmen shot straight sometimes.

Dr. Petrie went back to the Torino, started it up, and drove it off the side of the highway into a sparse clump of palms. He slung his gun over his shoulder, quickly filled a bag with cans of orange juice and food, and knelt down beside the car to lace up Prickles' walking shoes.

'Do we have to walk?' she asked plaintively. She was looking much better than yesterday, but she was still pale.

'I'm afraid so. You don't want to end up as an angel, do you?'

'No. I don't like angels.'

Keeping to the side of the highway, they began to walk northwards towards the state line. The clouds were gradually fading, and the day was growing hot. A tall man and a small girl, side by side. Their feet crunched over the rough fill beside the road, and Dr. Petrie had to stop a couple of times to winkle stones out of Prickles' shoes.

He was about to leave the highway and strike off northeast when he heard the distant sound of a car, coming up behind them from the south. He turned, and strained his eyes. The sun flashed off a windshield, and the noise came closer. He took Prickles' hand and pulled her as fast as he could, across the gravel and stones, and together they crouched down behind a stack of rusty oil-drums that someone had left beside the road years ago. He put his finger across his lips to tell her to keep quiet.

The car wasn't approaching very fast, but the driver obviously meant to go straight up to the state line barricade, and try to get through. Dr. Petrie wanted to see what would happen — how many National Guardsmen would come out to stop it, and what kind of fire-power they had.

It was only when the car came near and had flashed past their hiding place that he realized who was driving it. It was a dusty Delta 88, and behind the wheel was Adelaide.

'Adelaide!' he shouted, and scrambled out from behind the oil-drums, waving his arms. 'Adelaide!'

She neither heard nor saw him. She kept on driving towards the barricade, and as she approached it, he saw her red brake lights flare. She had pulled up right next to a National Guard truck, and was waiting there.

Dr. Petrie bit his lip, watching anxiously. Minutes passed, and no National Guardsmen emerged from the truck, nor from any of the makeshift command posts that had been set up around it. He saw Adelaide get out of the car and look around.

Five minutes went by, and he understood then what had happened. He walked quickly back to the oil-drums and collected Prickles. Then, picking her up in his arms, he jogged as fast as he could back to the hidden Torino. He climbed in, started the car up, and swung back on to the highway in a cloud of white dust.

He drove the mile up to the barricade and stopped. Adelaide was still standing there, looking around in a strangely dazed way, supporting herself against the side of her car.

He got out, and walked across to her.

She turned. Her face was bruised, and her lips were swollen. Her hair was mussed up and filthy. She was dressed in nothing but a red coverall with MacDonald's embroidered on the pocket. Her eyes stared at him as if she was having difficulty focusing.

'Adelaide?' he said quietly.

He came nearer, and held out his arms towards her. She kept on staring at him like a stranger.

'Adelaide? It's me — Leonard.'

She said nothing.

'Adelaide — what's happened?'

She lowered her eyes. Tears dropped down her cheeks, and stained her red coveralls with damp.

'Oh, Leonard,' she choked. 'Oh, Leonard, I'm sorry.'

He took her arm. She was shivering, in spite of the heat, and she couldn't seem to stop.

'Sorry? Adelaide — what's happened to you? Who's made you like this?'

'I'm sorry, Leonard,' she wept. 'Oh, Leonard, I'm so sorry.'

He said, 'Adelaide — ' But then she dung to him, and cried in great desperate, agonized gasps. She tugged at his sleeves, at his wrists, and wound his shirt in her hands, shaking and trembling with anguish. He couldn't do anything else but hold her, and soothe her, while Prickles sat in the car and watched them both with a concerned frown.

The National Guardsmen were all very young, and they were all dead. The plague had touched them all during the night, and they lay where they had been infected by it. In their bunks, beside their truck, in their command posts.

Dr. Petrie kept Adelaide and Prickles well away while he checked over the barricade and its twenty corpses, and he wound a scarf around his own nose and mouth in case he wasn't as resistant to plague as Anton Selmer had suggested. The whole place was buzzing with glistening flies, and stank of diahorrea and death.

Beside one young guardsman, he found an open wallet with a photograph of a smiling woman who must have been the boy's mother. But this was not a war — the mothers didn't wait at home, fondly smiling, while their sons died on the battlefield. If the mother lived in Florida, she was probably dead, too. Plague did not discriminate.

When he had finished his cursory check of the command post, Dr. Petrie roughly kicked down the wood and barbed-wire barricade. Then he went back to the Delta 88, which he had decided to drive in preference to the Torino. Its air-conditioning worked,' and it had nearly twice as much gas in its tank. He climbed in and started the engine. Adelaide tried to give him a small smile.

'I guess it's no use posting guards against diseases,' said Dr. Petrie. 'Not this disease, anyway.'

'No,' she replied.

Prickles said, 'Why do those men let flies walk on their faces?'

Dr. Petrie looked around. 'They're dead, honey. They're all dead, and because they're dead, they don't mind.'

'I won't let flies walk on my face, even when I'm dead.'

Dr. Petrie lowered his head. He said nothing.

They drove into Georgia in the early hours of Thursday morning, and it was only then that they saw how rapidly the plague had spread. Leonard Petrie kept on 75 towards Atlanta, but even as they drove north-west, away from the polluted eastern shores, they saw suburbs where dead housewives lay on the sidewalks, towns where fires burned untended, abandoned cars and trucks, looted stores, blazing farmland, rotting bodies.

Throughout the long hours of the morning, Adelaide sat silently, her head resting against the car window, saying nothing. Dr. Petrie didn't press her. He could guess what had happened, even if she hadn't told him. He had seen rape victims before, and knew that what she needed now, more than anything, was reassurance.

Dr. Petrie drove fast, and one by one they began to overtake other cars. Most of the stragglers were old family Chewys and Fords, stacked high with belongings. It was almost bizarre what people felt they desperately needed to keep — even to the extent of hampering their flight away from danger. Dr. Petrie saw a Rambler groaning under the weight of an upright piano, and a new Cadillac bearing, with frayed ropes and great indignity, a green-painted dog kennel.

The plague survivors were heading north, heading west. They drove with their car windows dosed tight, and they hardly looked at each other. Pale, tense faces in locked vehicles. As Dr. Petrie overtook more and more cars, the traffic became denser, and the jams became worse. At last, twenty or thirty miles outside of Atlanta, they were slowed down to a crawl, and way ahead of them, glittering in the fumy sunlight like an endless necklace that had been laid across the Georgia landscape, they saw a six-lane jam that obviously stretched the whole distance into the city.

'Oh God,' said Adelaide hoarsely. 'What are we going to do?'

Dr. Petrie stretched his aching back, and shrugged. There's nothing we can do. Maybe there's a turnoff someplace up ahead, and we can try to make it across country.'

The jam was made even more hideous as drivers died from plague at the wheels of their cars. Dr. Petrie saw wives and children mouthing frantic appeals for help through the windows of their cars, but the vehicles were now locked so solidly together that no one could open a car door. Anyway, every family was keeping itself strictly quarantined inside its own cell, and no one would risk infecting himself by going to assist anyone else.

It was the ultimate experience in American hostility, but perhaps it was also the ultimate experience in American togetherness, too, for the drivers and families who died inside their cars were not left behind or abandoned, but irresistibly pushed forward by the crushing metallic weight of the living refugees behind them. Adelaide slept for two hours, and when she woke up she looked a little better. As they bumped and rolled gradually northwards, she made them a lunch of franks and canned mixed vegetables, and they drank Coke and orange juice. Police helicopters flackered noisily overhead, warning drivers who felt unwell to try and pull off the highway. There was no way they were going to be able to halt the exodus of plague survivors, and they didn't even try.

Inside the chilled confines of their air-conditioned car, Dr. Petrie and Adelaide and Prickles were shunted northwards in a curious dream. Trees and road signs went past so slowly and gradually that they grew tired of looking at them, tired of reading them. As far as they could see ahead, there was nothing but a wide river of car rooftops, wavering in the afternoon heat. Behind them, the same endless press.

The convoy's progress was further hampered by cars that had broken down or run out of gas, and had no way of filling up again. Only the slow-boiling fear of plague kept the immense and agonized jam inching forward. Dr. Petrie saw an old Buick that had immovably seized up being deliberately shunted off the highway by the cars around it. It overturned and rolled down a dusty embankment, with its family trapped inside it. And there was nothing anyone could do to help.

They began to pick up radio broadcasts. They were faint and crackly at first, and it was plain they were coming from a long distance. Adelaide identified them first. They were news programs from Washington D.C., distorted and faded by the intervening peaks of the Appalachians.

Eventually, though, they began to gain altitude, and as they did so the radio bulletins became clearer.

'… so far, there have been no reported outbreaks of disease any further north than Wildwood, on Cape May, New Jersey, but more than seventy miles of beaches on Long Island's south shore were closed just before noon this morning because of sewage that has been washing ashore for the past week. Bathing has been prohibited from Long Beach, practically next door to the Rockaways in Queens, all the way east to the western edge of the Hamptons in Suffolk County.

'Inland, two cases of plague have been reported in Baltimore, and further south the disease has taken a serious grip on Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and parts of Maryland. The President is remaining in Washington against the advice of his aides, but it is understood that he is strictly quarantined, and that a helicopter waits on the White House lawn for possible evacuation measures…

'The Special Epidemic Commission set up yesterday by the President at a moment's notice has declared New York City a primary quarantine zone, on account of the density of its population and the seriousness of a possible outbreak of plague there… Accordingly, all access to Manhattan Island will be filtered and controlled by paramedic teams, and if necessary the entire island will be sealed off from outside contact… '

Dr. Petrie switched off. He wiggled his fingers to ease the cramp in them, and said, 'It looks bad. Maybe we ought to head west. Once we're through Atlanta, we could head for Birmingham or Chattanooga.'

Adelaide said nothing. Dr. Petrie swore as the car behind them, a big bronze Mercury, nudged their Delta 88 in the rear bumper for the twentieth time.

Prickles, who had been dozing on the back seat, opened her eyes sleepily and said, 'Is it time for Batman?'

Dr. Petrie shook his head. 'No Batman tonight, honey. We're still stuck in all these cars.'

Prickles stared out of the window, disappointed. 'Can't we go home now?' she asked him.

Dr. Petrie reached over and took her hand. 'We can't go home for a long time, darling. But what we're going to do is find ourselves a new home. You and me and Adelaide. Isn't that right, Adelaide?'

Adelaide turned and looked at him listlessly. 'Whatever you say, Leonard.'

Prickles was satisfied by that answer, but Dr. Petrie wasn't. As Adelaide turned away again, he said, 'Adelaide, love, that's not like you. Not like you at all.'

She kept her face away. Outside, the afternoon shadows were beginning to lengthen.

'What's not like me?' she said, as if her mind were on something else altogether.

'Agreeing with me, just like that. You normally refuse to do what I want, on principle.'

She stared at the floor of the car. 'Well,' she whispered. 'Things change, don't they?'

'Like what?'

'Sometimes you find that refusing doesn't make any real difference.'

He didn't try to touch her. That would come later. Right now, he was intent on getting her to say what had happened. Just explaining it would start the long painful process of exorcism.

'How did it happen?' he asked her, so softly that his words were scarcely louder than breathing.

She raised her head.

'Was it back at the restaurant? At MacDonald's?'

Slowly, she turned to stare at him. Here eyes were glistening with tears.

'You know,' she said, shaking her head. 'How did you know?'

'I am a doctor, Adelaide; and more important I'm a man who loves you, and knows you well.'

The tears rolled freely down her cheeks now. She couldn't say any more, and right now she didn't need to. She leaned her head forward and rested it against Dr. Petrie's shoulder, and cried.

Prickles looked at her with some interest, and said, 'Why is Adelaide crying, Daddy? Does she feel sick?'

Dr. Petrie smiled. 'No, darling, she doesn't. She doesn't feel sick. I hope she's feeling better.'

They saw the huge smudge of black smoke hanging over Atlanta before they saw the city itself. The evening was warm and still, and the smoke was suspended above in spectral stillness. Eventually, as the painful traffic jam edged nearer, they could make out the sparkle of fires in the city's downtown buildings, and they knew that Atlanta was destroyed.

Dr. Petrie turned the radio dial to see if he could pick up any stray news bulletins, but all he could get was howling and static.

'Maybe we could get off the main highway here and try the back roads,' suggested Adelaide. 'This is getting insane.'

Dr. Petrie said, 'I'll try. It looks like there's a turnoff just up there on the left.'

Forcing their way across two solid lanes of blocked-solid traffic was the worst part. It meant holding up other cars, and after a day of inching forward in heat and fumes and sickness, there weren't many drivers who had the patience or the inclination to let them past. Dr. Petrie rolled down his window and made a hand signal, and then just turned the wheel left and crunched into the car beside his.

The driver, a fat redneck with a fat family to match, mouthed obscenities at him. The man didn't open his window, though. He was too frightened of catching the plague.

The redneck gunned his engine and tried to force Dr. Petrie back into his own lane. There was a grinding of wheel-hubs and fenders.

'Let us through!' screamed Adelaide. 'We only want to get through!'

The man wouldn't budge. He sat stolidly in the driving seat, refusing to look in their direction. For five minutes, the two cars crawled along side by side, their fenders scraping and screeching.

After a while, Dr. Petrie sighed impatiently and reached over for his automatic weapon. He lifted it up, and took a bead through his open window at the redneck's head. Then he waited. The man, who was making a point of ignoring him, didn't see what was happening at first. Then his podgy wife nudged him, and he turned and saw the rifle's muzzle fixed on his cranium. He jammed on his brakes so quickly that the car behind shunted into the back of him.

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 air-borne 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 ain't 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 ain't won no medals for patience, and I ain't 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.'

Two

Esmeralda 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.

'Well, well, well,' said Esmeralda. 'If it isn't Charles Thirsty the Third.'

Charles gave a strictly regulated smile. 'Thurston, actually. If we're going to be friends, we ought to get it right.'

Esmeralda, in a dark red smock, was tapping the last hook into the green hessian-covered gallery wall. 'Who said who was going to be friends?' she said, through a mouthful of nails.

'I hoped that we were. You and I.' Esmeralda straightened the painting. It was a vivid gouache of reds and yellows. Charles Thurston stepped forward and peered closely at the label underneath.

'This is a painting of Coney Island?' he said. 'It looks more like Hell on a warm day.'

'Same thing,' said Esmeralda.

She picked up her hammer and toolkit, and walked back towards her elegant white-painted office at the back of the gallery. Charles Thurston followed her, and perched himself on the edge of her desk.

'You're very sure we're going to get along,' said Esmeralda.

'Of course I'm sure. Here's me, the famous art writer, and there's you, the beautiful gallery lady. It's a match made in Heaven, or someplace quite close. Perhaps a suburb of Heaven.'

'Heaven has suburbs?'

'Of course it does. Where do you think the people from Queens go when they die?'

Esmeralda laughed. She found Charles Thurston an inch too elegant for his own good, and an obviously incurable smartass, but there was something about him she really liked. He was, after all, very good-looking, and he gave the impression that when he got a woman into bed, he would lavish a great deal of time and athletic energy on exotic forms of stimulation. Esmeralda liked that.

'Well?' she said, reaching for her chrome cigarette-box. 'Have you come to buy a painting? Bronowski is young and vital and, most important of all, he's still quite cheap.'

'Is that because nobody's discovered him yet, or because he's been discovered and nobody wants him?'

'Don't be so cynical. He's the new wave in gouache. Go on — buy one.'

'If I buy one, will you come out to lunch with me?'

Esmeralda lowered her eyelashes provocatively. 'Is that a condition of sale?' she asked him.

Charles Thurston laughed. 'How much is this young and vital and cheap artist of yours?'

'To you, five hundred.'

Esmeralda didn't look up. This was a favourite test of hers. It immediately weeded out the unsuitable suitors from the genuinely enthusiastic, because if a man wasn't prepared to toss away five hundred bucks for the sake of getting to know her better, then in Esmeralda's opinion he couldn't be really sincere.

Charles Thurston III flipped open his checkbook and scribbled a check with a handmade gold pen. He blew it dry, and passed it over with a flourish. It was for one thousand dollars.

'This is too much,' said Esmeralda, raising an eyebrow.

Charles Thurston shrugged. 'What's the use of buying just one painting? I have a couple of blank spaces either side of my living-room door, and Mr. Bronowski will liven them up nicely.'

He stood up and tucked his pen back in his pocket. 'Perhaps you could show me some more sometime,' he said. 'My bedroom could do with livening up, too.'

Esmeralda smiled. 'I'm afraid Jacob Bronowski is into landscapes — not erotica.'

'We can't all be perfect,' said Charles. 'Now why don't we find ourselves a bite to eat?'

She took off her smock. Underneath she was wearing a simple but beautifully cut blue dress, with a Victorian pendant and lots of bracelets. She brushed her hair, and then pronounced herself ready.

'Have you heard any more about the plague?' asked Charles Thurston, as they rode across town in a taxi. 'Nothing very much. Father's furious about it.'

'Oh?'

'Haven't you read the case of the plagiarized bacteria? Father's sueing some Finnish character in the Federal District Court, but the Finnish character's got himself a sneaky adjournment, on the grounds that all public-spirited bacteriologists should be off fighting the plague.'

Charles Thurston nodded. 'I see. I wondered what you were doing in that district. This plague's pretty serious, though, isn't it? They've got cops on the Lincoln Tunnel and the 59th Street Bridge, and they're turning back everyone with a southern license plate.'

'You're kidding.'

'No, it's true. I saw it myself this morning. They had some guy in a pick-up with a Maryland plate, and they were making him turn right around and go back to Maryland. They said on the news that there's a contingency plan for sealing off the whole of Manhattan.'

Esmeralda crossed her legs.'

'Well, I don't know. It sounds to me like they're exaggerating the whole thing.' Charles Thurston laughed. 'I'm glad someone's optimistic. Especially the daughter of the nation's leading bacteriologist.'

'Step-daughter.'

'Does it make any difference?'

'You bet it makes a difference. Where are you taking me for lunch?'

'There's a unique little bistro I know. The prices are astronomic, but the food's terrible.'

'What's it called?'

'Chez-moi.'

'You mean the same chez-moi that has a couple of blank spaces either side of the living-room door, and has a bedroom that also needs livening up?'

'You guessed,' said Charles Thurston, with a winning smile.

Esmeralda didn't look amused. 'In that case,' she said, 'you'd better get this hack to turn itself around and take me right back to the gallery. I've heard of fast workers, but this is ridiculous.'

'What you're really saying is that you haven't even had time to clear my check.'

'I'm saying, Mr. Thurston, that I'm not a painting. I can't be conveniently bought with a paltry thousand dollars to fill a blank space on one side of your bed.'

'Don't you like me?'

'Like you? I don't even know you.'

Charles Thurston sighed. 'Well, if you want to skip lunch, you can. But at least come and look at it. I've prepared it myself — cold soup, smoked fish, salad, and chilled vintage champagne.'

Esmeralda looked at him curiously. He was very self-assured, and very handsome, and somehow she couldn't imagine him going to the trouble of spending the morning in the kitchen, just to make lunch for a girl he hardly knew. He was either very innocent or very devious, and right now she wasn't quite sure which. But he was intriguing.

'Okay,' she said slowly. 'I'll come and look at it. But that's all.'

The cab dropped them on the corner of a faded but still-elegant street. It was one of those tired enclaves of wealthy old widows who were too set in their ways to move away from encroaching slumdom, and there was a mingled smell of decay and expensive perfume in every lobby.

'This is a strange place to live,' she said, looking around the street.

'I like it,' said Charles Thurston. 'It reminds me every day that style is never permanent, and that today's lounge lizards are tomorrow's drawing-room dinosaurs.'

They ascended five floors in a dingy wrought-iron elevator that shuddered and groaned at every floor. 'You speak in riddles,' she told him. He smiled. Charles Thurston's apartment was expensively decorated in a clean and rigid Scandinavian style that surprised her. There was plenty of natural stone, plain wood, and glass. Everything was in whites and browns and grays, and the fabrics were all woven wool or leather.

'This doesn't look like you,' she said, sitting down on a soft tan cowhide settee. 'Drink?' he asked her. 'Vodka martini on the rocks, please.' He mixed the cocktails and brought hers over. She sipped it, and it was as cold and uncompromising as everything else in Charles Thurston's apartment. 'Why don't you think it's me?' he asked her. 'You're warm, and this place is chilly. I imagined you living with good Indian carpets and a few well-chosen antiques.'

He walked across to the window. 'I like my backgrounds neutral. The most important things that happen in a room are the people who live and love in it. I don't like to interfere with human beauty by cluttering my living-space with inanimate objects that keep crying out for attention.

'I think you just made that up. I don't believe a word of it.'

He turned back from the window and smiled at her. 'Would you like to see the lunch that you're not going to eat?'

'I'd be delighted.'

He took her hand, and led her into the dining-room.

He had been telling the truth. The table was set for two with stainless-steel cutlery and hand-made Swedish glass and pottery.

'Well,' she said. 'I have to confess I'm convinced.'

Charles Thurston ran his hand through his dark curly hair. 'Won't you just sit and watch me eating mine?' he asked, with a mock-plaintiveness that, for all its obvious artificiality, still appealed to her.

She couldn't help giggling. 'All right,' she said. 'And since I don't like to be rude, you might as well give me just a teentsy piece of fish, and maybe a tiny bowl of soup.'

'And just a thimbleful of champagne?'

She smiled. 'That will do, yes.'

Charles Thurston rang a small bell on the table. Esmeralda hadn't expected that, but then she supposed that a young man of his means would naturally have a servant.

Charles Thurston pulled her chair out for her, and she sat down. He himself sat at the opposite end of the table, shook out his napkin, and grinned at her.

The servant was no ordinary servant. When she walked in with the soup, Esmeralda took one look at her, and then shot a quick quizzical look at Charles to see if his face showed any signs of mockery or amusement. But there was nothing.

She was black, with close-cropped hair and a thin silver headband. She was exquisitely beautiful. Her eyes were deep and vivid, and her mouth ran in sultry curves. She was also extremely tall — at least six feet — despite the fact that her feet were bare. She wore a flowing kaftan that clung, as she walked into the dining-room, around huge firm breasts.

'This is Kalimba,' smiled Charles Thurston, offhandedly. 'Kalimba is what you would call a treasure.'

Esmeralda watched the black girl with widened eyes as she padded out of the room, her bare rounded bottom plainly visible through the diaphanous kaftan. In a small voice, she said, 'I suppose you would, yes.'

They sipped consomme in silence for a moment. Then Esmeralda laid down her spoon.

'Are you trying to tell me,' she said, 'that Kalimba is really your servant? And nothing else?'

Charles Thurston paused with a spoonful of soup half-lifted from his plate. 'I'm not trying to tell you anything.'

'Well, she intrigues me. I mean, she's very beautiful, and very sexy. Are you friends?'

'One has to be friends with one's servants.'

'Don't mock me, Charles.'

'I'm not. Kalimba is everything you say she is. She's beautiful and she's very sexy. She's also a very good cook, she makes beds, she cleans and dusts. Okay?'

Esmeralda frowned. 'I don't know. You baffle me.'

'Why do I do that?'

'Because you're after something and I don't know what it is. Up until I saw Kalimba, I thought it was my body.'

He finished his soup and laid his spoon down. 'You're reacting just like every girl does when she first sees Kalimba. She thinks: Why the hell have I been playing hard-to-get when he's got a woman like that around the place? It throws them off their usual game.'

Esmeralda raised an eyebrow. 'Is that why she's here? As an aid to seduction?'

Charles stood up and poured her a glass of Moet & Chandon 1966. It was well-chilled, and ferociously dry.

'Kalimba is here to serve lunch,' he said simply, with a faint suggestion of a smile.

A few minutes later, Kalimba came back for the plates. There was something about the black girl, silently serving and collecting up food, that was disturbingly erotic. She looked like a fantasy slave girl, with her sullenly pouting mouth and her lowered eyes. Esmeralda couldn't help noticing the way her charcoal-black nipples stood stiff under the flimsy fabric of the kaftan, and somehow it made her feel both aroused and inadequate. She often liked to play the slave girl bit herself with her step-father, but in the presence of the dark and musky and mysterious she felt pale and plain.

The lunch continued. By three, two bottles of champagne were empty, and they were well into their third. Kalimba softly came and went, with coffee and sweets. Esmeralda felt light-headed and unreal, and somehow everything about Charles Thurston and Kalimba was no longer puzzling or threatening, but funny. She laughed at almost every story he told, and when he suggested they go into the living-room, and he put his arm around her, she didn't object in the least.

They drank more champagne, and Charles put on some soft drumming record that mesmerized her with its endless complicated rhythms. They sat on big embroidered cushions on the thick rug, and shared a cigarette, and laughed even more.

'You still confuse me,' she said, taking another sip of her drink. 'I mean — you're a very confusing person.'

'I think I'm very straightforward,' said Charles.

'That's what's confusing about you. You're straightforward, but you're not deep. You're like a rubber tunnel.'

He laughed. 'I'm like a — what? I was never called that before.'

Esmeralda was giggling so much she could hardly explain what she meant. 'Well,' she said, 'just imagine you're driving along and you see a tunnel ahead of you. Very straightforward. But supposing you drive into it, well, you just bounce back out again, because it's rubber. That's what you're like. I think I'm getting someplace with you, but I just bounce back out again. You're a rubber tunnel.'

They laughed and laughed until Esmeralda thought she was going to cry. Then, when they had quietened down, Charles reached over and took her arm and said, 'Esmeralda — do you mind if I lay something on you?'

She was bright-eyed. 'What?'

'Do you dig massage?'

'M-massage?' The idea of it seemed hilarious.

'Listen, I'm serious. Massage can do fantastic things for your inner being. It — calms you down, it brings you closer to yourself. I don't mean your massage parlor stuff. I mean real meditative massage.'

'Who's going to massage me?' she giggled. 'You?'

Charles shook his head. 'No — Kalimba. She's an absolute expert. I mean she's really into it. She's done it for me, and she's given me a whole new slant on myself.'

'Well,' said Esmeralda. 'I don't quite know what to say.'

'Try it. That's all you have to do.'

'I'm not sure.'

Charles checked his expensive wristwatch. 'Look,' he said, 'I have to make a phone call to the coast, and tidy up a few papers. That means that you and Kalimba can have a half-hour to yourselves. You can be totally private.'

'I don't know, Charles. I mean, Kalimba's kind of threatening, don't you think?'

'You only feel she's threatening because you don't know her. She's very warm and understanding. Just let her give you a massage session, and you'll understand.'

The idea of being massaged by Charles Thurston's tall and sultry black lady was quirky, but in the mood she was in, it seemed exciting as well. She giggled, and sipped some more champagne, and then finally said, 'Okay. I've done kinkier things.'

Charles Thurston leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. 'That's terrific,' he said. 'I'll go call Kalimba, and I'll see you later.'

As he stood up, she tugged his hand. 'Charles,' she said. 'If I tell her to stop, she won't be offended or anything, will she?'

'Kalimba? Not on your life. She's a totally sympathetic person. Now, have fun, you hear?'

Esmeralda sat on a cushion cross-legged while Charles left the room. She heard him talking to Kalimba in the kitchen, but the black girl didn't speak once. Maybe she was deaf-and-dumb, or maybe she was just the silent type. Whichever it was, it didn't seem very warm, understanding or sympathetic. Esmeralda drank more champagne, and found she was laughing to herself as she drank.

She sensed Kalimba's presence in the room even before she turned around and saw her. The black girl had a kind of smoldering charisma that she couldn't ignore. Now, the kaftan had gone, and she was nude, except for a thin gold chain around her loins, and gold anklets around her legs.

Kalimba came softly across the room and squatted down beside her. Esmeralda felt odd tingles of sensation trickling up and down her spine, and suddenly she didn't feel like laughing any more. Kalimba's body was inky black, shining and perfumed. It had a sexual warmth that radiated from it and somehow warmed Esmeralda as well.

Without a word, Kalimba opened a jar of scented oil. Then she pointed to Esmeralda's dress, and indicated that she should pull it down over her shoulders. When Esmeralda fumbled, Kalimba took over, and unbuttoned the front of the dress for her, all the way down. Then she gently tugged it down around Esmeralda's waist.

Kalimba knelt down behind her, and Esmeralda could hear her smothering her hands in the scented oil. Then she felt the black girl's long supple fingers around her neck and shoulders, slippery with oil, beginning to flex and caress and soothe her.

Esmeralda, head bowed, felt the gradual warmth and relaxation flow through her shoulders, and closed her eyes. It was the most delicious sensation she had ever experienced, and she couldn't think why the idea of massage had repelled her so much.

She felt Kalimba reach for the clasp of her bra. At first she raised her hands to resist, but the black girl gently held her wrists, and lowered her arms again, and she thought: Why not? She's another woman — an experienced masseuse.

Kalimba's slippery hands kneaded and massaged her back muscles, and all the tension poured away. Then she felt the girl's hands around her breasts, fondling and stroking them. She sleepily opened her eyes, and looked down. The long black fingers were pressing rhythmically into the gleaming white flesh of her breast, squeezing and stimulating them, coaxing and arousing the wide pink nipples into stiffness.

She closed her eyes again. The feeling was so good that she wished it would last forever. She felt Kalimba's own rigid nipples brushing against her bare back as the black girl swayed from side to side, and had a strange urge to massage Kalimba's breasts in return.

Kalimba tugged Esmeralda's dress even further down. Her oily hands massaged the white girl's bottom, her fingertips occasionally brushing her sensitive sphincter. Esmeralda said: 'Mmmm… that's beautiful… ' and she reached down between her own thighs to draw Kalimba's hand against the moist flesh of her vulva.

She never knew how long the massage lasted. It might have been ten minutes, it might have been an hour. She was more than high on champagne, and all the images of that afternoon were crystal-bright, but disjointed.

She remembered Kalimba's tongue lapping insistently between her legs. She remembered holding the black girl's tight-curled head, and kissing her full sensual lips. She remembered seeing a dark glistening flower, with petals that stickily parted to reveal a moist interior. Music, drumming, lips, eyes, fingers, and magical sensations.

She was lying on the floor, wrapped in an Indian blanket, when she woke up. Her mouth felt like used glasspaper, and her eyes were stuck together with sleep. She lifted her head. Her neck ached. She tried to focus, but the room was dim, and outside, the New York sky (was murky metallic green. It felt as if an electric storm was imminent. She looked at her wristwatch and saw it was seven-fifteen in the evening.

Gradually, unsteadily, she managed to stand up. Her head pounded with pain. Still wrapped in the Indian blanket, she padded across the apartment and called, 'Charles? Are you there, Charles?'

There didn't seem to be anyone around. She crossed the dining-room, with a table that was now cleared of all dishes and decorations, and peered into the main bedroom. The bed was neat and unslept in. It was covered in grayish-brown reindeer skin, and on the wall was a painting of snow in Lapland.

She went back into the living-room. She called out again, and at that moment the front door of the apartment opened and Charles walked in, beaming and confident.

'Esmeralda!' he said. 'You're awake!'

She nodded. 'I just woke up. I feel like hell. Why didn't you wake me earlier? I have to be home at seven-thirty. Daddy and I are going out to dinner tonight, and he's going to go crazy if I'm late.'

Charles kissed her. 'That's nothing,' he said. 'So you're fifteen minutes late. That's nothing.'

'What do you mean — 'that's nothing'?' Charles reached in his pocket and produced a small black something, a couple of inches long. Esmeralda tried to focus on it, but couldn't. 'What's that?' she said.

Charles tossed the black something in the air and smartly caught it again.

'This, my lovely gallery lady, is a roll of film. I have just come back from the photo laboratories, where even at this minute they are printing me up sufficient copies for my needs.'

She stood there and stared at him for a long, long time.

'Kalimba and me,' she said dryly.

'You guessed it.'

She dropped the blanket. She didn't care that she was naked. She picked her clothes up from the floor and slowly dressed. Charles Thurston bobbed and fidgeted around, tossing the film from one hand to the other, and saying, 'Well, that's it, isn't it? That's life.'

Esmeralda finished dressing and tugged a brush through her tangled hair. She collected her pocketbook and got ready to leave.

Charles Thurston said, 'Aren't you going to ask what I want? I mean, us blackmailers always want something.'

She paused. 'All right,' she said tiredly, 'what do you want?'

'Isn't it obvious?'

'It might be, but I'd prefer you to spell it out.' He looked at her almost coyly. 'What I want, in return for these highly diverting negatives, is for your father to drop his patent action.'

That was when the reality of the whole day's work fell into place. She looked around the sparse, Nordic apartment and said, 'This is Sergei Forward's place, isn't it? I didn't think it was your style. And what about Kalimba?'

'Not her real name, I'm afraid. A hired gun, so to speak.'

She stared at his handsome, disgusting face. 'You won't take money?' she asked, softly. 'Five thousand to say the film didn't quite come out?'

Charles Thurston shook his head. 'A job's a job, lovely gallery lady. I have a reputation to maintain.'

'I see. How long do I have?'

Thurston looked at his watch. 'It's now seven-thirty. We would like to know how your father feels about the matter in twenty-four hours. Otherwise, every porn magazine in town gets these, along with Scientific American and every journal your father ever wrote for in his whole life.'

Esmeralda ran her hand through her hair. 'Now I understand the adjournment,' she said. 'If Sergei Forward had gone into court today, he would have lost the whole case outright. So he decided to get a little help from his friends.'

'I'm not his friend,' protested Charles Thurston III, as Esmeralda waited for the elevator. 'I just work for him. As far as I'm concerned, he's a cheap Finnish fuck.'

Esmeralda slammed the concertina gates of the elevator and glared at Thurston through the bars. 'Anything's better than being a cheap American fuck,' she snapped, as the elevator took her down.

By Friday afternoon — the same afternoon that Esmeralda spent in Sergei Forward's West 81st Street apartment — the plague zone had officially extended to New Orleans in the south, and with the help of police, National Guardsmen, vigilantes and cadets from summer colleges, it was being held back on a ragged line that stretched northwards to Jackson, Mississipi, Tuscaloosa, Chattanooga, Charleston and Cumberland.

The President had appeared on television at lunch-time and had said 'solemnly, and with a heavy heart' that he had to instruct every American to take up arms to protect the disease-free parts of the nation. That meant anyone from within the plague zone must be shot dead if they attempted to leave it.

'At all costs,' said the President, 'we must contain this threat to our national health and heritage, and urgently seek to find some kind of cure. At the present speed of plague within six weeks.'

A reporter from NEC News asked the President if some people were more susceptible to the plague than others. The President reported that interim figures indicated that adults succumbed more rapidly than children, and that certain groups of workers within the community appeared to be partially or wholly immune. These included some hospital workers, some employees of ConEd, some military and naval personnel, some merchant seamen, some dentists and doctors, and one or two assorted minor professions.

Was there any clue why these people might be less prone to plague? The President said no, but 'our best scientists are working on it.'

The Medical Workers' Union were still on strike, although in some of the worst devastated parts of Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina, there was radio, TV and telephone blackout, and it was impossible to discover what was happening. Even police helicopters were forbidden to take reconnaissance pictures in case the bacillus was airborne to operational height. The nation was locked now in a terrible paralysis of fear, and in spite of strict highway controls and the banning of westward airline flights, thousands of panicking refugees, in cars and-pick-ups and motor-homes, streamed towards the west.

By five o'clock on Friday afternoon, the official estimate of plague dead was seventeen million. Every Atlantic beach was closed from Key West, Florida, to Portland, Maine. The most explosive story of the day, though, was where the plague-infected sewage had originated. It was being suggested by NEC and CBS, and strenuously denied by the New York Department of Sanitation, that the sewage was polluting the Eastern seaboard from an area twelve miles off the Long Island shore.

According to official sources, sanitation barges had left Pier 70 every day for longer than anyone could remember, and dumped untreated sewage into the Atlantic. It was supposed to sink to the ocean floor, and slide, in the form of black viscous ooze, down the shelving incline that would take it out towards the mid-Atlantic.

The New York Department of Sanitation, in a joint statement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, agreed that the sludge was highly infectious, but that it could not have been a breeding-ground for the plague that had ravaged the southern states.

'Ordinary plague, Pasteurella pestis, is one thing,' said a spokesman for the department. 'But there is no scientific way in which ordinary plague could have mutated under the ocean into this particularly virulent and fast-growing form of super-plague.'

The department also denied that the raw sewage on the beaches of Florida and Georgia was anything to do with them. Yes — there had been eccentric winds and tides. But it stretched the credulity to suggest that tides had borne the sewage as far south as Miami.

A CBS reporter asked if it were possible for a message in a bottle, dropped off Long Island at the sewage-dumping spot, to float south as far as Miami. An oceanographer said that, with climatic conditions as they had been, yes. The CBS reporter then asked why, in that case, a lump of human faeces couldn't do the same. The spokesman for the Department of Sanitation gave an answer that became the morbidly popular catch-phrase of the day. 'What you're suggesting,' he snapped, 'is crap.'

Herbert Gaines walked into the conference room at the Summit Hotel with his hands raised like a successful candidate for the New York presidential primary. Flashguns blinked in the crowded entrance, and he had more pictures taken for the press in the space of twenty seconds than he had in the last twenty years. He was wearing orangey panstick make-up to make himself look healthier on color TV, and his white hair was combed into a flowing mane.

'Welcome back, Herbert,' said a fat reporter in a creased blue suit. 'It's nice to have a hero around for a change.'

Beside Herbert Gaines, sticking close, was Jack Gross — all glossy suit and carnivorous teeth. He piloted his figurehead through the throng of pressmen and television cameras, and up towards a red-white-and-blue platform. More flashguns flickered, and Herbert tried hard to keep smiling.

Jack Gross waved his hands for silence. 'Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Jack Gross and I'm the agent for what we call the FTT. Now, does anyone here know what FTT stands for?'

It was meant to be a rhetorical question, but a New York Post reporter said, 'Fart Tunefully Tonight?' There was a general guffaw of laughter.

Jack Gross, his smile a little strained, waved his hands for silence again.

'FTT,' he said, quickly, 'stands for Face The Truth. And Face The Truth is what we call our particular group of dedicated Republican senators and congressmen, all of whom are totally committed to the revival of honest, no-nonsense, straight-down-the-middle politics.'

'Isn't that a contradiction in terms?' asked the lady from Time, sardonically.

'It has been up until now.' said Jack Gross. 'But let's think why American politics has gotten such a bad name. It's gotten a bad name because it's been the province of men who won't Face The Truth. That's what our group is all about. We've decided that no matter how unpalatable or unpleasant the true facts are, we're going to have to face up to them, and speak our minds no matter how unpopular our voice might be.' He lowered his voice, and spoke with intense sincerity. 'Maybe, in the past, refusing to Face The Truth didn't matter so much. But today — right this very evening — America faces a disaster of hideous and unprecedented proportions. The plague has already laid waste our southern states, and the last we heard it was infecting parts of Jersey. We are right up against the wall, ladies and gentlemen, and we can't keep our eyes blinkered any longer.

'The crisis is so serious that an American hero has returned to speak the truth about it. A man whose voice once spoke out on the movie screen for honesty and purity and the preservation of the American way, and who has now emerged from honorable retirement to take up our cause. Ladies and gentlemen — Captain Dashfoot, better known as Herbert Gaines.'

There was a light smattering of, applause. Herbert's movies were still doing the rounds of art houses and late-night TV channels, and most of the pressmen there had seen at least one of them.

Herbert Gaines stood up. With the TV lights on him, he hardly seemed to have aged. He could have dismounted from his Civil War horse just a few moments ago, flushed with success from his famous ride in Incident at Vicksburg. He raised his hand for silence.

'Ladies and gentlemen.' he said, in his rich, deep timbre. 'I never thought the time would come when I would feel it my bounden duty to ride once again in defense of the American people.'

There was clapping, and someone said, 'Dashfoot to the rescue!'

Herbert Gaines smiled ruefully. 'I wish Captain Dashfoot could come to the rescue, but we're shooting from a different script today. Our nation is being scythed to the ground by a foul and terrible disease, and what we need is not lone heroes on horses but quick and effective federal action.

'What we need, ladies and gentlemen, is someone who will speak the truth about this plague. Someone who will tell us where it really originated. They say sewage. All right — but whose sewage? Are any of you infected with plague and hepatitis? Is your sewage infected?'

Herbert grasped the lectern in front of him, and lowered his leonine head.

'What we are saying here today, friends, is unpopular. It's unpopular.' he repeated, raising a rigid finger, 'but it's true. I know it's true, and you know it's true, and I dare any man in the continental United States to prove it ain't so. That sewage — that infected sewage — has come from the bowels of the black man, from the bowels of the Puerto Rican, from the bowels of the shiftless vagrant and the unwashed hippie. Not only have they poisoned our society with their subversive politics and their revolutionary mania, they have actually physically poisoned our American sons and daughters with their excremental filth!'

The sound that went up from the press when Herbert said that was extraordinary. It was a kind of surprised moan, like a dog crushed under a car. A black reporter from The New York Times walked out and slammed both double doors of the conference room, and a young girl from the Village Voice shrieked out, 'You're not a hero, you're a fascist!'

Herbert Gaines, his eyes hard, his hands white, turned in the direction of the girl's voice.

'A fascist?' he said softly. 'Is it the mark of a fascist, to speak the truth? It's true, isn't it, that diseases communicated from the bowels are ripe among black and Spanish peoples in America? It's true, isn't it, that the sewage dumped off Long Island contains the infections of diseased negroes? Because it's no longer inside them, this sewage, does that mean negroes no longer bear the responsibility for the disgusting plague it has caused?' A television reporter said in a quiet but penetrating voice, 'Mr. Gaines, if you're blaming the coloured elements in our society for this plague, what do you suggest we do about it?'

Herbert Gaines turned on him fiercely. 'I suggest this. I suggest we cast out our ineffectual political leaders at the first opportunity, and re-elect men who will keep the black man in his place, and the immigrants where they belong. Out of America.'

Another reporter said, 'Mr. Gaines, this is kind of extreme, all this stuff.'

Herbert Gaines turned his best profile to the cameras. 'Of course it's extreme. This is an extreme situation. It requires quick, decisive and urgent treatment. Face The Truth is the only political group that has faced up to that fact so far, and the only political group who could possibly save this nation from ruination and downfall at the hands of the black man.'

The same reporter said, 'What do you suggest we do? Ship 'em all back to the Gold Coast?'

Herbert Gaines smiled patiently and shook his head. 'Of course not. That would be ridiculous. But I have several suggestions that would finally overcome America's race problem once and for all. First — only black medics and doctors should be assigned to plague hospitals. They started it — they can take the risk of treating it. Second — when the plague has finally been contained, arrangements should be made over a ten-year period for the gradual rehousing of blacks in areas where their unsanitary personal habits do not threaten decent Americans.

'Every American citizen, under the Constitution, has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How can we truly say that we are upholding these rights if we jeopardize the first of them from the word go. An American is entitled to life, ladies and gentlemen, and if the diseased black man is allowed to walk beside him, work beside him, eat from the same plates, sit on the same seats and defecate in the same public toilets, then we have failed to protect his Constitutional rights. We have abdicated our responsibilities as leaders of this great nation.'

A reporter from the Christian Science Monitor said, 'Mr. Gaines, you're not a leader of this great nation. You're an out-of-work actor.'

Herbert Gaines, lit by a flurry of photographers' flashguns, said, 'I am a leader because I speak the truth. You, because you question the truth, are less than a patriot.'

In normal times, Herbert Gaines would have won fifteen seconds' attention on the early evening news. But these were not normal times, and the fact that press and television crews even stayed to listen showed that. As the conference continued, a strange disturbed buzzing filled the room, as if the newspapermen had just discovered some unsettling secret that had been deliberately hidden away from them.

By half-past five, the New York Post was on the street with a headline that ran: BLACKS TO BLAME FOR PLAGUE, claims 'Captain Dashfoot', and that was only the beginning. Herbert Gaines was interviewed seven times that evening on New York and network television, and an almost tangible wave of resentment against the black population made itself felt across the breadth of the American continent. What Jack Gross had calculated exactly right, of course, was that everyone in America, including the President, was looking for someone to blame. Just as Adolf Hitler had successfully blamed the Jews for the financial depression of the 1930s, Herbert Gaines had laid the blame for the plague on the shoulders of the American blacks.

As night fell on New York City, fires broke out in Harlem, and the windows of black stores and restaurants were smashed by marauding gangs of white youths. Friday ended in Manhattan to the wow-wow-wow of fire trucks and the bitter smell of smoke. By midnight, thirty-six cases of arson had been reported, fifty-two cases of wilful damage, and more than a hundred injuries, varying from fractured skulls to knife wounds. Other crimes noticeably decreased, as black whores and muggers played it safe and made a point of staying home. In the early hours of Saturday, Herbert Gaines was driven back to Concorde Tower in the back of Jack Gross' Cadillac. He was exhausted, and he was looking forward to a large brandy and a long sleep. 'You did beautiful,' said Jack Gross. 'In one day, you made more of a hit than Gerry Ford made in three years.'

Herbert rubbed his eyes. 'It seems to me that I've caused nothing but distress and confusion. Even if this whole thing about the blacks were found to be true, there are times when it's kinder not to tell the truth at all.'

Jack Gross grinned. 'Herbert, you're a man of conscience and no mistake. Can I pick you up at three?'

'You mean there's more?'

'Of course there's more. This is just the beginning.'

'Mr. Gross, I tell you quite plainly, I don't want to anymore.'

Jack Gross waved his hand deprecatingly. 'Don't even think that, Herbert. You're just tired. Have a nice rest, freshen yourself up, and then we're off to make a speech to the New York Republicans.'

Herbert Gaines stared at him gloomily. 'And if I refuse?'

Jack Gross smirked. 'You know very well. If you refuse, young Nicky starts singing in the girls' choir.'

Herbert looked out of the car window at the deserted wastes of 43rd Street. He felt desolated and old.

'Very well,' he said, after a while. 'If I have to do it, I suppose I might as well enjoy it. I'll see you at three.'

Kenneth Garunisch, as Friday dwindled into Saturday, was still talking with the officials of Bellevue Hospital. He had chosen Bellevue as his last discussion of the day, because he could walk home up First Avenue afterwards, and he usually felt like a short stroll at the end of a day's work to clear his head.

The cream-painted conference room was thick with cigarette smoke, and the table was strewn with overflowing ashtrays, newspapers, files, gnawed pencils and unbent paperclips. Talks had started at six o'clock on Friday evening, and they were still chasing the same points of principle around and around at midnight, like dogs chasing their own tails.

Garunisch, his tie loosened and his nylon shirt stained with sweat, was lighting one cigarette from the butt of the last, and he had dark circles under his eyes. Dick Bortolotti sat beside him looking waxy and strained. They had both been under tremendous pressure since, they had called the strike, and every available hour of every day had been spent in talks and negotiations and organization. But the Medical Workers were still out, and intended to stay out until they were given a substantial package of pay guarantees and fringe benefits. Ernest Seidelberger, the thin bespectacled Bellevue spokesman, was sitting mournfully at the other end of the table, struggling to light his pipe. He looked more suited for lectures on medieval manuscripts to bored housewives than union negotiations with hard nuts like Kenneth Garunisch, but he had a tedious pedantic way of refusing to give in, ever.

'Mr. Garunisch,' he said wanly, 'I can't repeat often enough that this hospital administration has nothing more to offer your members in the way of pay, bonuses or incentives, unless you can guarantee something special in return. At the moment, all you're offering us is work that they should be doing anyway under our last agreement with you.'

Kenneth Garunisch blew smoke. 'The plague was not mentioned in the last agreement,' he said hoarsely.

Seidelberger nodded his head patiently. 'My dear Mr. Garunisch, no disease is specified in the agreement, and so one can hardly make out a special case for this plague.

I urge you to think again. Your members' action has already accelerated the spread of the plague by two days at least, according to my expert informants, and if you hold out any longer, and the plague reaches Manhattan, we here at Bellevue will be totally unable to cope with it.'

Garunisch was about to answer when there was a rapping at the conference door. A pale-faced young hospital executive walked in, smiled nervously at everyone, and leaned over to whisper something in Ernest Seidelberger's ear. Seidelberger listened for a few moments, his face expressionless, and then waved the young executive away.

Garunisch ground out his latest cigarette. 'Is it something we should hear?' he asked bluntly. 'Or is it privileged information for hospital big-wigs only?'

Seidelberger shook his head. 'It's not privileged, Mr. Garunisch. It's just been on the news. The plague has infected so many people in New Jersey that the state has been declared a quarantine area. Nobody is allowed to enter or leave, and anyone attempting to do so will be forcibly detained by the National Guard.'

One of the hospital negotiators, shocked, said, 'My wife's in Trenton today, visiting her mother! And my children! They're all there! What am I going to do?'

Ernest Seidelberger said, 'I suggest you go home, Rootes. See if you can call your family from there. Meanwhile, I have a last word to say to Mr. Garunisch before we close this meeting.'

Rootes, shaking, gathered up his papers, crammed them into his briefcase, and left. When he had gone, Seidelberger looked steadily at Kenneth Garunisch, and said, 'You know what I'm going to say, don't you, Mr. Garunisch?'

Kenneth Garunisch shrugged. 'I haven't a notion, Mr. Seidelberger.'

'I'm going to demand that you send your members back to work. New Jersey is in quarantine, and that means the plague could, be with us in Manhattan by tomorrow morning this city is going to catch it, Mr. Garunisch, and thousands will die, and it will all be your fault.'

Garunisch's mouth went taut and hard. 'Mr. Seidelberger,' he grated, 'just because you work for a hospital and you wear a white coat, that doesn't mean that you are automatically on the side of the angels. My members, if they deal with plague victims, are going to be doing the next best thing to committing suicide. They will do it, just as they have always done it, but I'm damned if I'm going to allow them to do it without some recognition from the federal government and the hospital authorities. In Japan they paid kamikaze pilots a little bit extra, and gave them a few more privileges, and they did it because they recognized courage and they recognized human sacrifice. My members will give you their courage, Mr. Seidelberger, and they will give you their sacrifice, but they won't give it for nothing.'

Ernest Seidelberger sniffed. 'Fine words, Mr. Garunisch. But not quite accurate. Your members are not prepared to give courage; they're not prepared to give their lives. They're only prepared to sell them, at a price. I suggest to you, Mr. Garunisch, that your medical workers are whores, and that you are their whoremaster.'

Kenneth Garunisch stared at Seidelberger with bulging eyes for a moment, and then laughed loudly.

'In that case, Mr. Seidelberger, we're all whores. We're all getting paid for sitting here. All I can say is, when you get out on the street and strut your stuff, I hope you get picked up by some sex-starved matelot who fucks some sense into that impervious skull of yours. Come on, Dick, let's call it a night.'

Seidelberger sat silent while Garunisch and Bortolotti packed up their cases and made ready to leave. But as they opened the door of the conference room, he turned his clerical profile in their direction and said, 'Mr. Garunisch!'

Kenneth Garunisch paused. 'What is it? Did you finally see sense?'

Seidelberger shook his head. 'No, I have not seen what you so inaccurately call 'sense'. I just wanted to wish you a happy Saturday, and a long life, because the longer your members stay out on strike, the more urgently you will need it.'

Kenneth Garunisch bit his lip, saying nothing. Then he turned on his heel and slammed the door behind him. Outside the hospital, on First Avenue, a warm and grimy summer breeze was blowing from the south-west. The glittering spires of Manhattan were reflected in the oily depths of the East River, and a lone barge chugged upriver towards Roosevelt Island. From the north, they heard the sound of sirens, and there was a strange amber glow in the sky.

A Medical Workers' picket was standing by the hospital entrance, smoking a cigarette. Kenneth Garunisch recognized him — a tough onetime stevedore called Tipanski. He had shoulders as wide as a taxi-cab, and a blue baseball cap.

He slapped Tipanski on the back. 'How you doing?'

Tipanski nodded. 'Okay, thanks, Mr. Garunisch.'

'What time are they relieving you?'

'Two-thirty. Then Foster comes on.'

'Any trouble?'

'Naw. But look at them fires uptown.'

'Fires? Is that what they are?'

'Sure. This Gaines guy says on the tube that the niggers is all to blame for the plague, so the white gangs have been cruisin' up to Harlem and puttin' a torch to every-thin' that burns, and a few things that don't.'

Even as they spoke, a fire chief's car came howling past them.

'Mr. Garunisch,' said Tipanski. 'Is it true what they say about the plague? That it's comin' here? It says on the news there ain't no way they can stop it.'

Kenneth Garunisch looked at the man for a long while, saying nothing. For the first time in his life, he was beginning to feel unable to protect his members. His instincts had always been those of a tough mother henscooping her brood into her wings at the first sign of trouble. But now, just across the Hudson, a different type of peril was growing, a peril that could be carried invisibly in the warm night wind, and could infect them all without any chance of saving themselves.

Kenneth Garunisch felt frightened.

'I guess they'll find some way of stopping it okay,' he said, unconvincingly, 'After all, they can seal Manhattan off like a lifeboat, right? Just close all the tunnels and all the bridges, and presto, we're all safe.'

Tipanski frowned. 'They seem pretty worried on the news, Mr. Garunisch. They even said what to do if you thought you had it.'

'Don't you worry, brother. When the time comes, we can deal with it.'

'Okay, Mr. Garunisch.'

Kenneth Garunisch was about to say goodnight, when he heard footsteps clattering up the sidewalk behind him. Dick Bortolotti said, 'Ken,' in a nervous kind of way, and tugged his sleeve. Kenneth Garunisch turned around.

There were five of them. They were hard-faced and big, and they could only have been off-duty cops. No mugger cuts his hair so neat, nor wears such a well-trimmed mustache. They wore black leather jackets, and they stood around Kenneth Garunisch and Dick Bortolotti so that there was no possible way to escape. 'Are you Garunisch?' said one of them gruffly. Kenneth Garunisch looked from one cop to the other. He was trying to memorize their faces. He kept his arms down beside him, and said, 'What of it?'

'Kenneth Garunisch, the Medical Workers' boss?'

'What of it?'

'Yes or no?'

'Yes. What of it?'

Garunisch had once been a physically hard man but he was too old and slow these days. The leading cop stepped up to him, pulled back his arm, and punched him straight in the face. Garunisch felt his bridge-work break, and he was banged back against the hospital wall behind him. Another punch caught him across the side of the face and fractured his jaw, and then he was kicked in the wrist and the hip.

Tipanski, shouting with rage, tried to attack the cops, but they were too quick and too well-trained. One of them twisted his arm around behind his back, and another one thumped him in the stomach. Tipanski dropped to his knees on the sidewalk, gasping.

Dick Bortolotti got away. He ran down the length of the hospital as fast as he could, crossed 34th Street, and didn't stop running until he reached Second Avenue. He leaned against a building panting for breath, and then slowly and cautiously made his way back to Bellevue. As he crossed back towards the hospital, he had the strangest sensation that everything had changed now, and that life was never going to be the same again. The laws of the jungle had returned, and he was going to have to learn them.

Edgar Paston was lying on his uncomfortable bunk in the jailhouse, reading the weekly Supermarket Report which Tammy had brought him that lunchtime. It appeared that the spread of the plague was hiking up the price of oranges and other citrus fruits, although California growers — in the light of the plague's disastrous effects on the Florida crop — were predicting their most profitable year ever.

Edgar laid down his paper and checked the time from the clock on the flaking wall outside his cell. It was a few minutes past midnight, Saturday morning. He shifted uncomfortably, and yawned. He was exhausted, but he had never been able to get to sleep with the light on, and the cop in charge had refused to switch it off.

He wondered briefly what Tammy was thinking about. She was probably awake, too, lying alone in their quilted double bed under the painting of Yellowstone River in spring, listening to the children breathing in their separate bedrooms and feeling lonesome. The thought of it almost choked him up, and he had to think about something else to stop himself from crying.

He thought, too, about the dead Boy Scout. The cops had questioned him for four hours solid, and they still didn't believe him. The shooting happened again and again in his mind, like a loop of film. He saw himself stepping out of the supermarket door. He saw himself raising the gun. They were laughing — that was the trouble. If they hadn't been laughing, he wouldn't have fired. He saw the dead boy lying on the concrete car park, and someone said, 'Is he dead?'

Edgar was almost dozing off when he heard footsteps. He blinked. The cops were bringing in a new prisoner — he could distinguish voices. Edgar rolled over on his bunk and pretended to be sleeping, in case he got involved in any more pointless conversations. He heard the cop say, 'In here.'

Another voice, younger, said, 'You mean I don't get a cell to myself? What is this?'

'This ain't the Ramada Inn,' said the cop. The cell door unlocked, squeaked open, and then banged shut again. There was a jingle of keys. Edgar kept his eyes shut and faced the wall.

For a while, he heard the new prisoner shuffling around. Then he heard the lower bunk complain as the prisoner sat down on it. Eventually the newcomer stood up again, leaned over him, and shook him by the shoulder. 'Hey man — are you awake?'

Edgar Paston opened one eye. 'I wasn't,' he said Wearily, 'but it looks like I am now.'

'I'm sorry, man. I just thought you might be awake.' Edgar rubbed his face, and sat up painfully. Then he swung his legs over the side of the bunk, and looked at his new cellmate for the first time.

At first, he couldn't believe it. But then he felt his throat tighten, constrict. Just a foot or two away from him, pale and foxy-faced, still methodically chewing gum, was Shark McManus.

Edgar stared at him.

Shark McManus said, 'Do they bring you coffee in this joint?'

Edgar said hoarsely, 'I don't understand.'

'You don't understand what, man?'

'Don't you know who I am?' said Edgar, in a tight voice. 'Don't you recognize me?'

Shark McManus shrugged. 'Sorry, man.'

Edgar said, 'Last night, you and your gang of hoodlums broke into a supermarket out at the crossroads, and wrecked it.'

McManus looked surprised. He screwed up his eyes and said, 'Not me, man. You must've gotten the wrong dude.'

Edgar climbed unsteadily down from his bunk. He faced McManus from only six inches away.

'I don't have the wrong dude, McManus, That store you wrecked was mine.'

McManus chewed steadily for a while, but his chewing became slower and slower, and he finally stopped altogether. He stared at Edgar as if he couldn't grasp what was going on, and he nervously rubbed at the side of his neck.

'You and your kind, you make me sick,' said Edgar, plucking off his spectacles and pacing the floor. He turned on McManus again, 'You're like wild beasts!'

McManus looked uncomfortable. But then he said, in an unexpectedly quiet voice, 'Well, man, you may be right.'

'Right?' snapped Edgar. 'Of course I'm right. You smash, you destroy — you'd kill if you had to. What the hell do you think the world is out there? Some kind of jungle?'

McManus sat down. 'Yes, man,' he nodded. 'You're right.'

Edgar bent over him. 'Don't think you're going to appease me like that. Oh, don't you think you're going to get away with it that easy! If I have anything to do with it, I'm going to make sure that hoodlums like you are torn out of Elizabeth, root and branch. You hear?'

McManus nodded. 'I hear you. I hear you loud and clear.'

Edgar put his spectacles back on and peered at ' McManus close and hard. 'Is that all you can say?' he asked. 'After all that you've done, and all the trouble you've caused, is that all you can say?'

McManus frowned, as if he was thinking, and then gave a small smirk.

'I do have one thing to say,' he said quietly.

'And what's that?'

'It's a question, really. And the question is, if you're so respectable and upright, and if you're going to tear US all out root and whatitsname, then what are you doing in the slammer along with me?'

Edgar stood straight. He took a deep breath. 'Last night,' he said, 'after you wrecked my store, I went after you with a gun.'

'Don't tell me it was unlicensed.'

Edgar shook his head. 'It was licensed, all right. I was going out to find you and I was going to teach you a lesson! The trouble was — '

McManus looked up. 'Yeah?'

'The trouble was — '

Edgar could hardly get the words out. The reality of last night's killing suddenly stuck in his throat like a terrible knotted obstruction.

'You can tell me, man,' said McManus, mock-sympathetically. 'After all, it was me you wanted to shoot.'

Edgar looked grim. 'I went out, and I shot and killed someone I thought was you. It wasn't you at all, and that's what I'm doing here.'

McManus stared at him in disbelief. Then, gradually, a smile began to twitch at the comers of his mouth. He guffawed once, then again, and then he laughed out loud. A sour voice in the next cell said, 'For Christ's sake, can't we get any fucking sleep around here?'

McManus, wide-eyed with amusement, said, 'You wasted someone you thought was me? You really did that? Oh, man, you're beautiful! Tell me who it was!'

Edgar lowered his eyes. 'It was a Boy Scout. I don't know his name.'

'A Boy Scout! Oh, man, you're incredible! Don't you know that? You're just too fucking much! He blows away a Boy Scout, instead of me!'

Edgar thumped his fist against the wall of the cell and roared, 'It's not funny! Damn you — it's not funny!'

McManus stopped laughing and frowned. 'I'm sorry, man. I didn't mean to upset you. But you have to admit it's beautiful.'

'Beautiful?' said Edgar disgustedly. 'Yeah. You know — poetic justice.' Edgar turned his head away. 'If there was any kind of justice in this world, you'd be lying in that morgue, instead of that innocent kid.'

McManus shrugged. 'Come on, man. Don't be so mad. There isn't nothing you can say that's going to bring him back — now is there?'

Edgar didn't answer. He felt as if he had rubbed his face in a bucket of wet grit. Tired, dispirited and anxious.

'I mean — death comes to all of us, in time, doesn't it?' said McManus. 'Especially now.'

He got up off his bunk and walked around the confines of the cell. 'I mean — you and me, we're lucky we're inside here, instead of outside there on the streets. Out there — well, I mean, wow. It could be per-il-usss!' Edgar looked up. 'What do you mean by that?' Shark McManus chewed his gum equably. 'It's the plague, man. How long have you been in here?'

'The plague?'

'It's all over Jersey. Everybody's supposed to lock themselves at home, man, and not go out. They got the National Guard patrolling the state line, and if you try to leave, you get blasted. It's true! I was out there ripping off a short, and that's why they pulled me in.' Edgar Paston stared at Shark McManus for a moment, and then said, 'No — that's nonsense. My wife was here just a few hours ago. She didn't say anything about it. And why haven't the police told me?'

McManus shrugged. 'I don't know. It all happened real quick. They knew they had a couple of sick people in Atlantic City, but then I guess a few people panicked, and kind of brought the plague up this way.'

'But — Tammy!' said Edgar. 'My kids! They're out there!'

Shark McManus didn't look at all fazed. 'Don't worry about it, man. Everybody's out there, excepting us.'

Edgar Paston went to the bars and shouted for the guard.

'Forget it, man,' said McManus. 'This whole joint is practically empty. They got all their guys out on the street, picking up the stiffs. I ain't joking, man. I saw a couple of stiffs myself, out by the crossroads.'

Edgar Paston turned on McManus. 'Kid,' he said, 'if you're fooling me, so help me I'll tear your head off.'

Shark McManus simply smiled. 'I ain't fooling.'

'In that case, we have to get out of here.'

'Why? This is the safest place.'

'What you seem to forget is that my wife and kids are out there.'

'Man — there's nothing you can do. Even if you get back home, they won't let you out of the state.'

Edgar Paston thumped on the bars of the cell. 'That's not the point. The point is that I'm a father, and my family's at risk. I have to be there!'

Shark McManus lay back on his bunk and thought for a while. Edgar shouted a few times, but when the prisoner in the next-door cell finally told him to keep his fucking yapper shut, he went back to his bunk and sat there with a gray, worried face, and kept silent.

An hour passed. Edgar Paston lay on his side for twenty minutes and dozed, but the light still glared in his eyes, and he had the added irritation of Shark McManus' endless whistling. He sat up and scratched his head.

'Are you awake, man?' said McManus.

'Yes, I'm awake.'

'Listen, man — do you really want to get out of here?'

'What do you suggest I do? Tear the cell door down with my bare hands?'

'It doesn't have to be that complicated. If you want to get out of here, I can get you out. But you have to make me a promise.'

Edgar eased himself down off his bunk, and looked at Shark McManus like a man who's found a dead cat under his bed.

'A promise?' he said. 'To you?'

Shark McManus pulled a face. 'It's the only way, man. Either you make the promise, or you stay here.'

'But the whole reason I'm in here is because of you!'

'That's the deal. No ifs or buts or maybes.'

Edgar lowered his head, and sighed. 'What's the promise?'

'All you have to do is take me with you. I need wheels and I need some respectable support. With your image and my know-how, we can get out of Jersey and into Manhattan, and the way they say it on the news, it looks like Manhattan's a kind of a plague-free zone, and they ain't letting anyone catch it.'

'You can really get me out?'

'Sure. Do you promise?'

'Well'

'It's up to you, man. Me, I don't have no family at all. I could sit here forever and it wouldn't bug me.'

Edgar Paston looked serious. 'What you're asking me to do is to go back on everything I think about people like you,' he said quietly. 'I think I'd rather get help from a snake.'

Shark McManus grinned. 'That's settled, then. Now, all you have to do is lie on your bunk and start shaking and sweating and moaning.'

'What the hell are you talking about?'

'Just do it, man. Shake and sweat and moan.' Reluctantly, Edgar Paston climbed up on to his bunk again, and lay back. He made his hands tremble, and started to wail feebly.

Shark McManus looked at him in exasperation. 'I said shake and sweat and moan, man. You're supposed to be sick. You're supposed to be dying. You sound like you didn't do nothing worse than walk into a smelly public toilet.'

Edgar, more convincingly, shouted, 'Ohhh! Oh, God, I'm dying, oh God I Ohhh…!'

That was when Shark McManus yelled for the guard. He didn't call politely like Edgar had done. He screamed 'Guuuaaarrrddd!!' at the highest pitch of his lungs, and straight away the duty cop came running down the corridor with his keys jangling. 'What's all the goddamned noise?'

'Guard,' panted McManus. 'You have to get me out here! This guy's got plague! Look at him — he's dying!' The guard peered anxiously through the bars. Edgar was twisting and groaning and clutching the bedclothes, trying to sound as if he was making his last struggle to fight off a virulent, fast-breeding disease.

His performance was convincing enough to make the guard unlock the cell door, and walk over to take a suspicious look at him. Edgar redoubled his cries and moans, and rolled his eyes up into his head so that only the whites were exposed.

Shark McManus softly stepped up behind the guard and hooked his revolver, pickpocket-style, out of his holster. Then he called, 'Okay, man, the plague's over for now!'

The guard swung around, reaching for a revolver that wasn't there. McManus was holding the gun in both hands, and there was a wan grin on his foxy face.

'Throw your keys down,' he said. 'On the floor, man, and no shit!'

The guard did as he was told. Edgar got down off his bunk, and stood uncertainly beside Shark — a reluctant lawbreaker who found himself increasingly committed to evading justice. He tried to smile reassuringly at the cop, but the cop just glared at him, and said nothing.

They locked the guard in their own cell, and walked swiftly and quietly along the corridor to the stairs.

Upstairs, treading as silently as they could, they found that McManus was right. The police station was almost deserted, except for a switchboard operator who was sitting behind a glass division with his back to them, busily dealing with emergency calls. They crossed the polished lobby, and they were out through the swing doors and into the night before anyone could notice.

'You see,' said McManus, 'it's a piece of cake.'

Edgar said nothing. Now he was out of jail, he felt less inclined to keep McManus with him. But a promise was a promise — and even more persuasive than Edgar's honor was the fact that McManus was now armed. Edgar said, 'This way,' and they began to walk through the night towards the crossroads.

They kept as close as they could to buildings and shadows, but even Edgar doubted if anyone was out looking for them. The night was different — there was a curious atmosphere about it that made him both excited and fearful. He could hear ambulance sirens warbling along the highway to Newark, and there was hardly any traffic around at all. A couple of police cars passed them by, and they squeezed themselves in the doorway of a delicatessen, but the cars were silently speeding on a more important errand, their red lights flashing urgently through the dark.

'How far is your house now?' asked Shark McManus. 'You know that when they start looking, that's the first place they're gonna check up on.'

'Just around the next corner,' panted Edgar. 'That's it — the one with the hacienda ironwork.'

McManus nodded. 'Nice residence, man. Looks like it pays to run a supermarket.'

Edgar glanced at him and said nothing. McManus added, edgily, 'Well, I guess you have to make allowances for accidental damage.'

Edgar rang the door-chimes. There was a long pause, and for a moment he thought that Tammy had gone away, or was lying upstairs dead. But then the light went on in the hall, and she came to the door in her pink dressing gown and curlers.

'Edgar! What's happened? Did they let you out?' Edgar stepped quickly inside the house, hurried Shark McManus in after him, and closed the door. He kissed Tammy, and held her close to him, for a moment too overwhelmed to speak.

'Er — Tammy, this is someone who helped me.'

'Someone who helped you? What do you mean?'

'We just broke out of the jail. The plague is everywhere, Tammy, and they're not even looking for us. We have to get away.'

Tammy was incredulous. 'You broke out? But why?'

'Tammy, we have to get away. Shark says there are bodies in the streets — out at the crossroads. The plague is everywhere. There are people dying like flies.'

'That's true, ma'am,' nodded McManus. 'Flies.' Tammy looked from Shark to Edgar and back again. 'It said on the news it was okay. They said the state was in quarantine, and that nobody was supposed to leave, but it was all right if you stayed indoors.'

Shark shook his head. 'Baloney. I been out on the street and I seen it. This thing kills you like you wouldn't believe. I saw four stiffs on main street alone. I rolled a couple of 'em for jewelery. They must have died instant.' Tammy frowned anxiously at Shark, and said, 'Edgar — is this boy a criminal?'

Shark held out his hand. 'Oh, don't you worry about me, ma'am. I'm strictly from petty larceny. You know — phone booths, that kind of stuff. I just came along with your husband here to help.'

Edgar took Tammy's arm, and gripped it firmly to communicate his tension and his seriousness. 'Darling — this is our only chance. Shark knows the streets, and how to avoid the law. He got me out of jail in about five minutes. I swear it. Apart from that, he has a gun.'

Shark waved his heavy black police.38. 'You see? Fully loaded, too!'

Tammy looked at Shark and she saw in his eyes the cold concealed threat that even Edgar hadn't detected yet. 'I see,' she said quietly. 'In that case, I suppose I'd better get the children ready.' Edgar could see she was upset. He reached for her hand again as she turned to go upstairs. 'Tammy,' he said, 'you have to see that this is the only way.' Tammy didn't turn around. 'If you say so, Edgar.' She went upstairs, and Edgar watched her go, biting his lip.

Shark, tucking his revolver back in his pants, said, 'Hey, man, I hope I haven't caused you any domestic whatitsname. You know? I may rip off a few stores now and then, but I ain't no homebreaker.'

Edgar shook his head. 'I don't think you could break us up if you tried, Shark. Tammy and me — well, people say we're inseparable.'

Shark grinned. 'That's cute, man. I love a story with a happy ending.'

It didn't take Tammy long to get everything packed. She loaded the Mercury wagon with canned food, blankets, medical supplies, water, soft drinks and spare clothes. Shark McManus kept a lookout for police cars, but the streets of Edgar Paston's tidy suburb were silent under the early-morning stars, and the only sign of life was a neighbor's curtain, twitching suspiciously as they prepared to leave.

At three-fifteen, they locked up the house. Chrissie and Marvin, yawning, climbed into the back of the car with Tammy, while Edgar drove and Shark McManus sat next to him. Shark kept his revolver resting on his lap. He was behaving amiably, but he was also making it dear that any interference or argument would not particularly amuse him. They kept the radio playing in case there was any news of National Guard blockades or possible escape routes from Jersey.

Every half-hour, there was a plague bulletin, and a repeated message telling people what to do if they thought they had plague. The message was sober, but it was also absurdly optimistic, arid if you didn't know how terrifyingly quickly the plague had spread across the Eastern seaboard, you could have been forgiven for thinking that your pallor, your pains and your chronic diahorrea were nothing worse than a severe tummy bug. The Pastons and Shark McManus drove through the pallid night into the early dawn. They were flagged down once by a motorcycle cop just outside Jersey City, but he seemed more interested in checking Edgar's driver's license than questioning their destination. He looked around the station wagon a couple of times, and then waved them on. He was obviously tired out after a night's duty.

The radio said, 'Now, it's important not to let your anxiety about this epidemic prompt you into ill-considered action. The federal authorities in charge of this situation say that the best thing you can do — safer for your family and safer for your neighbors — is to stay home. If you do not have sufficient foodstuffs to last you — well, simply wave a makeshift flag or banner from your windows, and your local police department will bring you supplies. Stay at home, folks — it's the sensible way, and it's the safest way.'

Tammy said, 'They're bound to stop us and send us back home. Edgar, why don't we just turn back? Please!'

Shark McManus turned in his seat. 'Of course they'll stop us. But if we use our noodles, they won't turn us back. Now relax, will ya? I have some brainwork to do.'

Tammy said, 'Edgar — tell him we're turning back!'

But Edgar said nothing, and kept on driving through the outskirts of dreary Jersey City — through the silent, deserted suburbs — with the emasculated obedience of a man who knows he will never have the courage to argue against a gun.

Shark McManus, chewing gum noisily and repetitively, directed Edgar through the streets of Jersey with laconic expertise. It was a dead city of parked cars and windblown garbage, and the gradually-brightening sky only made its shabbiness look worse.

Tammy sat there, pale-faced, with dark rings under her eyes, and the two children silently dozed, with heads lolling against the seat. Tammy was coming along because Edgar was her husband and she was Edgar's wife, but — with a strange kind of internal tension that she had never felt before — she was beginning to suspect that Edgar was not the man she had once thought him to be.

She even wondered if he had shot that Boy Scout out of something more than the righteous defense of property and the American way — out of violence, even, and calculated hatred. A bond of some sort — an understanding — seemed to have grown up between Edgar and this hoodlum Shark McManus. She looked at the back of her husband's neck as he drove and it looked like the back of a stranger, someone she didn't love very much at all.

At five-thirty in the morning they stopped. She opened her eyes and realized she'd been sleeping. They were third or fourth in a line of cars that was being checked by police and National Guardsmen by the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel.

'Edgar,' she said. 'What's happening?'

Edgar didn't turn around. 'Lincoln Tunnel,' he said flatly. 'We got as far as here, and we didn't get stopped by the cops once. We can thank Shark for that.'

'That's right, ma'am,' grinned Shark McManus. 'Right through them back-streets like rabbits through a warren. Any time you want to get yourself out of a jam, just call on Shark McManus, and you're saved. Service with a smile.'

Tammy said, 'They won't let us through here, whatever happens.'

Shark pointed across the gray ruffled waters of the Hudson, to the gray spectral spires of Manhattan. This morning, the city looked like a ghostly mirage of itself — an oasis of purity in a desert of disease.

'You see that?' he said, smiling lopsidedly. 'That's where we're headed, ma'am, and ain't nobody going to stand in our way.'

Two cops in amber sunglasses strode up to their car and signaled for Edgar to roll down his window. They looked tired, but tough, and they had four or five armed National Guardsmen backing them up.

'Hi, folks,' said the cop, checking the inside of the car. 'Can I ask where you come from, and where you believe you're headed?'

'We came from Elizabeth, New Jersey,' said Edgar, in a dry voice.

'And we're headed for there,' put in Shark, nodding towards Manhattan.

The cop looked thoughtful. Behind him, one of the Guardsmen was yawning.

'I'm sorry, folks,' said the cop, 'but we have emergency regulations in force right now. Nobody is permitted to leave the state of New Jersey, and nobody is permitted to enter Manhattan.'

Edgar Paston lowered his head tiredly. 'What you're saying is, we have to turn around and go home?'

'I'm afraid that's the message, folks,' said the cop. Edgar turned to Shark. 'Looks like we don't have any option,' he said.

Shark shook his head. 'Life is full of options, man.' He produced the police.38 from under the seat, cocked it, and pointed it straight at Edgar's head, a half-inch from his right ear. The two cops quickly stepped back, and drew their pistols.

One of them called, 'Hey, George! Trouble!' to the National Guardsmen. The men lifted their rifles, and two of them ran across to the other side of the road to keep the Pastons covered.

'Okay, kid!' yelled one of the cops, in a rough voice. 'Don't be a dead wise guy! Throw the gun out, and come out of there with your hands up!'

'Start the engine, Edgar,' hissed McManus. 'What?' said Edgar faintly. 'Start the fucking engine. Get this heap moving.'

'They'll kill us.'

'No, they won't. They're good guys. Now get moving.'

Edgar hesitantly reached for the ignition keys, and started the engine. Shark screamed, 'if any of you guys fires a single shot, this dummy gets it in the brain! Just one shot, you hear!'

Tammy said, 'Please — you don't know what you're doing!'

'Of course I know what I'm doing,' said Shark. 'I'm getting us into Manhattan. Now move your ass, Edgar, or I'll blow your head off I'

Slowly, the Mercury wagon rolled down the gradient towards the tunnel. Two or three police and National Guardsmen jogged along beside it, while the rest of them ran back to their patrol cars, started them up, and tailed the Fastens at a circumspect distance.

As they entered the tunnel, a police bullhorn gave them a raucous message, weirdly distorted by echoes and half-drowned by the draft that blew through the tunnel from the Manhattan shore.

'Listen, kid! Throw out the gun! You don't have a chance! We have both ends of the tunnel sealed! You'll never get away with it! Throw out your gun and you won't get hurt!'

Tammy was sobbing. Chrissie and Marvin sat white and frightened. Only Shark was relaxed. He held the.38 steadily against Edgar's head, and chewed gum as casually as if he were propping up a street corner.

'Come on, Edgar,' he coaxed. 'Drive a little faster, man.'

Edgar speeded up. He could see the black and white police car, fifteen or twenty yards behind him, with all its lights on. They were going too fast now for the jogging cops and guardsmen to keep alongside, and McManus even found time to wave to them.

'So long, suckers! See you in the city!'

The drive through the Lincoln Tunnel seemed endless. As they went deeper under the Hudson, it seemed to Tammy that it was more like the end of the world than ever. There were tears running down her face, and her hands were tightly clenched in her lap.

Gradually, they perceived the gray light of morning ahead of them, washing wanly down the tunnel gradient. They also saw the police cars pulled across the roadway, and the armed officers waiting for them.

'Okay,' said Shark, 'this is the difficult part. Stay cool and everyone is going to be fine.'

'What do you want us to do?' asked Edgar, in a numb voice.

Shark peered along the tunnel towards the roadblock.

'There ain't no way we're going to smash our way through there, so we're going to have to walk. Just before you get to the roadblock, pull up sharp. Then we all get out of the car at once, and we stroll in a bunch towards the cops, and through. I want you in front, Edgar, and I'm going to have this piece right up against your skull. Then I want the missis and the kids all around me, so none of those police marksmen starts taking pot-shots. You understand?'

Edgar nodded. They were only seventy yards away from the roadblock now. He could see the police squatting down behind their cars, gripping their guns in readiness. The patrol car that had been tailing them all the way through the tunnel edged closer, and its headlights dazzled Edgar in his rearview mirror.

They rolled nearer and nearer the roadblock. The patrol car behind them was almost touching their rear bumper.

'Stop,' said Shark McManus, and opened his door.

There was an echoing silence. Shark beckoned Edgar to shift himself across the front seat, and pulled him out through the passenger door. Then he gripped the back of Edgar's shirt-collar with one hand, and pressed the.38 against his skull with the other.

'Don't anyone move!' he yelled. 'One move and this 'guy gets it!'

Then he snapped at Tammy, 'Come on, ma'am. Get your butt out of that car and stand here.'

Tammy opened her door. It was never recorded what the New York police thought she was going to do, or whether they had any reason to believe she might be armed. But there was a sudden echoing crackle of shots, and the rear windows of the Mercury were smashed into milk and blood. Edgar yelped, and tried to reach the car, but McManus fiercely tugged him away, and kept the gun pressed to his head.

'Don't shoot!' screamed McManus. 'One more shot and I kill him!'

The police held their fire. Awkward, crab-like, holding Edgar tight against him, Shark McManus shuffled towards them. One of the cops raised his gun, but the lieutenant in charge waved him back.

There was silence as Shark McManus and Edgar Paston made their way slowly up the Lincoln Tunnel towards daylight. They were covered every foot of the way, but the police had not yet been given instructions to fire on potential plague carriers, and they let them pass.

'Have them followed,' said the lieutenant impatiently. 'They can't walk around like Siamese twins for the rest of their lives. The minute that kid drops his guard, I want him hit.'

He turned back to the Mercury wagon. A young paramedic was opening the doors, and easing Tammy and the children out. There was blood everywhere. Tammy had been hit in the left breast and left shoulder. Chrissie had been hit in the ear, and Marvin had been hit twice in the chest. They were all still alive, but the doctor was shaking his head and looking pessimistic.

'Do I have to take them back to Jersey?' he asked the lieutenant. 'Those few extra minutes are going to make all the difference.'

The lieutenant shrugged. 'It's the rules, Jack. Nobody gets into Manhattan, alive or dead. I'm sorry.'

'Christ,' said the doctor. 'You shot 'em.'

The lieutenant grunted. 'Sure. But I didn't infect 'em.'

The doctor nodded towards the slowly-disappearing figures of Shark McManus and Edgar. 'What about those two?'

'We'll get 'em. Just stick to what you're good at. Band-Aids and lint.'

Long after Shark McManus and his hostage had disappeared from sight, the police could hear Edgar weeping, his sobs echoing and distorted down the empty tunnel, like the cries of a lonesome seal.

One of the four people who had died of plague on the main street of Elizabeth, New Jersey, on Friday night, was a 52-year-old insurance salesman from Hoboken named Henry Casarotto. The pain of his dying had been so intense that he had bitten his own left hand, and his infected sputum had dribbled on to his fingers and his red signet ring. His signet ring, New Jersey police discovered, had been removed by a looter sometime after his death.

They had no way of knowing that it was now on the right hand of Shark McManus, and so they had no way of warning the detectives and patrolmen who followed McManus along West 39th Street on Saturday morning that their only possible hope of survival was to shoot first, and worry about police procedure later.

It was six minutes after six o'clock, and the plague had arrived in Manhattan.

Three

On Sunday afternoon, it began to rain. The temperature dropped six or seven degrees, and there was a heavy, cloudy wind from the sea. Dr. Petrie drove northwards up the Atlantic Coast of New Jersey with Adelaide fast asleep beside him, and Prickles singing softly to herself in the back.

The plague had stricken New Jersey swiftly and relentlessly, as if the living breath had been stolen from the whole seven thousand square miles of it in one night. Bodies lay prone on the rain-slicked roads, just where they had fallen. Cars and trucks were abandoned in the middle of the highway, with their drivers sitting like pallid waxworks behind the wheel. They passed a few other cars, driving aimlessly through the wet afternoon, but almost every town they came to was deserted, silent and strewn with bodies.

Leonard Petrie drove through Perth Amboy at five-forty-five, and calculated on reaching Manhattan before it grew too dark. The rain lashed against the windshield, and the tires made a sizzling noise on the concrete highway. He sucked peppermint, and watched the wipers flopping backwards and forwards — trying to think of diseases and diagnoses he should have remembered from medical school, just to keep himself from closing his eyes and dropping off to sleep. Prickles sang, 'There was an old woman tossed up in a blanket… Seventeen times as high as the moon… '

The radio, strangely, was silent — except for whoops and squeaks and whistles and the occasional burst of Morse. He had picked up regular broadcasts from New York stations until about lunchtime, when they had suddenly faded. He had had no news of the plague now for almost six hours, and no idea if Manhattan Island had been sealed off, or if it was still possible for refugees to cross the Hudson and seek-sanctuary.

He felt as if the whole world had died around them — as if they were consigned to drive for the rest of their lives down dull, rainy streets of empty cities, searching for an America that had gone forever, and could never be found again.

Every now and then, he saw helicopters beating across the windy sky, and he tried flashing his headlights at them. One of them had seen him, and had circled noisily overhead for a few minutes, but then it had heeled away and headed westwards like all of the others. The plague had made people even more suspicious and violent and remote than ever before.

Whenever he had visited New York before, Dr. Petrie had always flown into La Guardia. He remembered the glittering spires of the Empire State and the Chrysler Building, and the sparkle of traffic along Roosevelt Drive and the Triboro Bridge approaches. But now, as the World Trade Towers loomed out of the murky dusk, and the skyline of Wall Street and downtown Manhattan emerged from the rain behind them, he realized with a sensation of eerie apprehension that the city was in darkness. As far as he could see across the choppy black waters of the Hudson, Manhattan Island was a sinister castle in the sea, with buildings that stood like pale and ancient ramparts, gleaming dimly through the low clouds and the teeming rain. Not a light winked anywhere.

He pulled the car to the side of the street and switched off the engine. The sound of rain pattering on the vinyl roof was the only sound there was in the whole world. Dr. Petrie rubbed grit from his eyes and leaned his head forward in exhausted resignation. For the first time in days, he didn't know what to do, or which way to turn. Adelaide stirred, and opened her eyes. 'Leonard?' she said. 'What is it? Why have you stopped?'

Dr. Petrie looked up. Then he nodded towards the distant skyline. Adelaide blinked her eyes and peered into the gloom.

'Leonard… ' she said. 'That's New York! Leonard, we've made it!'

She reached over happily and kissed him. But he gently pushed her away, and pointed out into the dusk.

'Look again.'

She frowned. 'What's happened?' she said. 'Where are the lights?'

He shook his head. 'They could have had a power failure. It's happened before.'

Adelaide stared at him. There was an uncomfortable silence between them that was prolonged by their mutual refusal to acknowledge what had happened. Finally Adelaide said, 'It's the plague, isn't it? They've caught it here.'

Dr. Petrie nodded. 'Yes,' he said huskily. 'I expect they have.'

'What are we going to do?' she asked. 'Oh God, Leonard, we can't go on running away forever. The plague seems to spread faster than we can move.'

Dr. Petrie coughed. 'I don't know. I just don't know what to do. I suppose in the end we'll catch it like everybody else.'

'We haven't caught it yet.'

Dr. Petrie stared at the dribbles of rain coursing down the windshield. 'I don't know whether that's a blessing or not. What's the use of staying alive when there's nobody else around to make it worthwhile? What does a doctor do when all his patients are six feet underground?'

Adelaide leaned over and kissed him. 'Leonard, you're tired. You've been driving for days. Don't get depressed.'

Quite unexpectedly, Dr. Petrie found himself weeping. It was years since he'd last cried. Adelaide watched him tenderly and said nothing.

'I'm sorry,' he said, blowing his nose. 'That was ridiculous.'

Adelaide shook her head. 'No, it wasn't. You have a lot of things to cry for.'

'It doesn't help solve our problem.'

'It might do. It might stop you from bottling all your feelings up, and turning yourself into a nervous wreck. You've had so much to contend with.'

'I'm a doctor. Doctors don't get sick.'

Adelaide smiled. 'Don't you believe it.'

Prickles, who had been sleeping on the back seat, stirred and yawned. 'Is it time for Star Trek yet?' she said, sitting up.

Adelaide pulled a face at her. 'How can you watch Star Trek in a car?'

'I forgot,' said Prickles, rubbing her eyes. 'I was having a dream I wasn't in a car.'

'Anyway,' said Adelaide, 'having no television is probably the best thing that ever happened to you. All that garbage they put on for kids. And think of your health. Think of all that radiation you get from sitting in front of color TVs. Not to mention the eyestrain.'

Dr. Petrie was just about to start up the car again, but he paused. He turned to Adelaide and said, 'What?'

She was confused. 'What do you mean?'

'What was that you just said?'

'I don't know. Eyestrain, something like that.'

'Before that.'

'Oh, you mean radiation?'

'That's right. Radiation! Radiation from color TVs!'

Adelaide said brusquely, 'I wish you'd kindly explain what radiation has got to do with anything.'

'I don't know precisely,' said Dr. Petrie. 'But do you remember what they said on the radio about certain people being less prone to plague than others? Children was one category, and so were ConEd powerworkers, and doctors.'

'You've lost me.'

'No, it's very simple. That was what I was trying to work out before. I was trying to think why Anton Selmer and I should both escape the plague, even though we were heavily exposed to it. There were one or two other doctors at the hospital, too, who seemed to be immune. Now you mention children, sitting in front of colour TVs.

'How many hours of television does the average American kid watch per day?'

'Don't ask me. Six or seven?'

Dr. Petrie nodded. 'Right — that's a lot of television, and a lot of radiation. And that's what Dr. Selmer and I had in common, and what we've all got in common with certain types of power workers, and others. We were supervising X-Rays, and we must have picked up a mild dose of radio-activity.'

Adelaide thought about it. 'It's a theory, isn't it?' she said. 'I mean, it's better than no theory at all.'

Dr. Petrie started up the car, and they pulled away from the curbside.

'It could be nonsense, but it's the only thing that seems to fit. I mean, if the plague has been mutated into a super-plague, maybe it was mutated by radioactivity. In which case, radioactivity seems to be the only thing that can ward it off.'

They drove through the rain towards the Holland Tunnel entrance.

'Are you going into Manhattan?' Adelaide asked.

Dr. Petrie nodded. 'I guess we have to. They can't have had the plague for very long, and if I've got some kind of theory about curing it, I think I really have to tell someone.'

'But Leonard — '

'What's the matter? Don't you want to go?'

'Leonard, it's not a question of wanting to go. Look at it — it's dark and it's getting darker. That city's bad enough when it has lights. It's going to be a jungle in there. You can't take Prickles into that.'

Dr. Petrie slowed the car and took a long left-hand curve. The rain fell through the light of their headlamps in a careless pattern.

'Adelaide,' he said quietly, 'I don't see that we have any choice. All we have to do is find someplace secure to stay for the night, and then tomorrow we can get in touch with the hospitals. As long as I can tell someone about this radiation theory, we're okay. Then we can leave.'

'Leonard,' said Adelaide, 'I'm frightened. Can't you understand that?'

He glanced at her. 'Don't you think I'm frightened, too?'

'Then why go? We could skirt around New York altogether, and drive up to the Catskills. We could be safe there. You said before that we were going to find ourselves a place to stay until the plague was all over.'

Dr. Petrie nodded. 'I know.'

'Then please, Leonard.'

They had almost reached the tunnel entrance. For a moment he was tempted to turn around, and escape from the plague for good. They could drive upstate, and into Canada, and leave America to the ravages of fast-breeding bacilli and whatever fate was in store for her. But then he shook his head.

'Adelaide,' he said, 'I've only got a theory, but maybe nobody else has put two and two together in quite the same way. Maybe this could help to cure the plague, or slow it down, and if it does that, how can I leave Manhattan with a clear conscience? There are seven million people in this city, Adelaide, and if I only saved a seventh of them, that would be a million people. Can you imagine saving the lives of one million people?'

Adelaide lowered her head. 'Do you think, Leonard, that even one of those million people would stick their neck out to save you?'

'I don't know. That's irrelevant.'

'It's not irrelevant! You're risking your life to save people you don't even know, and who would probably leave you to die in the gutter if it meant putting themselves out. Leonard, you're not a miracle worker, you're not a saint! I know you want to be famous — but not this way! What's the use of being famous when you're dead?'

Dr. Petrie was straining his eyes, trying to see the tunnel entrance. He stopped the car and shifted it into Park.

'It's nothing to do with fame, Adelaide. If anything, it's to do with shame. I ran out on Anton Selmer, and left him to cope with the plague alone. If you really want to know the truth, I'm ashamed of myself. I feel I've betrayed something.'

She looked at him carefully. 'Is that why you tried to shoot that security guard in the car park? Because you were ashamed of yourself?'

'Probably, I don't know.'

'Oh, Leonard.'

They sat in silence for a while, and then Dr. Petrie said, 'If you want to stay behind, darling, you'd better stay. But I've got to go into the city, and that's all there is to it. I love you, you know.'

'Do you?'

He nodded.

'I don't know whether to believe you or not,' she said. She paused, and her eyes were glistening in the darkness. 'But I'll come. It that's what you want, I'll come.'

Prickles interrupted. 'Have we got to that place yet?'

'What place, honey?'

'Unork.'

Adelaide laughed. 'It's New York, not Unork. Yes, honey, we're almost there. Daddy's just going to take a look-see, and make sure this tunnel's okay. Aren't you, Daddy?'

Dr. Petrie grinned. 'Sure. I won't be long. Just hang on in there.'

He took his rifle and climbed cautiously out of the car. It was so wet and gloomy as he walked up to the entrance to Holland Tunnel that he couldn't see what had happened at first. A large armored police van was parked diagonally across the road, and two black and white police cars were parked on the curb. A torch was shining dimly somewhere behind the cars, but Dr. Petrie couldn't see anyone around. Rain spattered into his face and seeped into his shoes.

'Hallo!' he called. 'Is there anyone there?'

There was a long rainswept silence. Across the river, in the murky graveyard of Manhattan, he thought he heard the brief echoing wail of a siren, but he couldn't be sure.

He walked up to the van, and peered into its rain-beaded window. Inside, huddled on the seats, were five or six policemen, and they were all dead. Dr. Petrie circled around the cars, holding his rifle at the ready and found a seventh cop, hunched-up and pale, with his face in a puddle. In his hand was an electric torch which was still shining. Dr. Petrie stood there in the rain staring at him for a while, and then he turned around and went back to Adelaide and Prickles.

'The plague is here too. They're all dead.'

'Oh, God,' Adelaide sighed.

Prickles said, 'Is this Unork, Daddy? Can we go there?'

He looked back at her and smiled. 'We're on our way, honey.'

Dr. Petrie started up the car, and drove around the police van, down the rain-streaked entranceway to the tunnel. All the lights were out, and it was pitch-black, hot, and stifling.

The journey through the tunnel was like a miserable and terrifying ride on a ghost train. The sound of their car made an uncanny roar, and their headlights cast weird shapes and shadows. Dr. Petrie had to drive slowly, because of derelict cars lying wrecked and abandoned, and bodies sprawled on the ground. He had a horror of driving over a corpse by mistake.

It took almost half-an-hour of slow driving to get through the tunnel. He was worried that the car wouldn't make it. It was now caked with dust and grime and dented from countless collisions and rough detours. During the long haul north, Dr. Petrie had begun to wonder if life wasn't anything but narrow back-roads and rutted tracks, and the Delta 88's creaking rear suspension agreed with him.

At last, they were climbing the tunnel gradient towards Manhattan. They emerged on Canal Street in steady rain and darkness. Slowing down to five or six miles an hour, they crept cautiously east towards the Bowery, headlights probing the streets, looking for any sign of life, or death. The dark city enclosed them like a nightmarish maze, hideous, threatening and unfamiliar.

They saw the first bodies in the Bowery. There weren't many, but they lay on the sidewalks and in the road with their clothes sodden and their eyes staring sightlessly at the ground.

'Isn't there anyone around anywhere?' asked Adelaide, looking out into the night. 'The whole place seems deserted.'

As they turned uptown, they began to see a few lights — dim candles burning high up in apartment-block windows and hotels. They also saw living people for the first time. Every building's entrance seemed to be locked and patroled by security guards and vigilantes with torches and guns. On Second Avenue, Dr. Petrie pulled the Delta 88 into the curb and shouted to a man standing outside an office block with a rifle and a guard dog.

'Hey! Can you tell me what's happening?'

The man raised his rifle. 'Scram!' he snapped back.

'I just came in from Jersey!' shouted Dr. Petrie. 'I want to find out what's happening!'

The man waved his rifle again. 'If you don't get the fuck out of here, I'm going to blow your head off!'

Dr. Petrie said, 'Listen — '

The man fired one rifle shot into the air. It made a booming sound that echoed all the way down the avenue. Dr. Petrie closed his window, and swung the car away from the curb as quickly as he could.

As they drove further uptown, they drove slowly into hell. In the distance, up beyond 110th Street, there was the rising glow of burning buildings, as white youths ransacked Harlem and the Spanish ghetto. Even through the rain, there was an acrid smell of smoke and burning rubber. All around them, white and colored looters were running wildly through the darkened streets, breaking windows and raiding stores.

Bodies lay everywhere — infected by the plague or killed by muggers. Dr. Petrie saw a black girl lying dead on the sidewalk, her green dress up under her arms. He saw a young boy of fifteen or sixteen who had fallen face-first on to a broken store window.

It was the noise that was the worst. All through the dark canyons of Manhattan there was the screeching and wailing of sirens, the endless smashing of windows, the report of gunfire, and a kind of grating roar, like a demonic beast crunching glass between its teeth, as the panicking population screamed and howled in a frenzy of destruction and despair.

'Do you know where it is? The nearest hospital?' asked Adelaide tensely, her eyes wide with fear, as they drove across 23rd Street.

Dr. Petrie nodded. 'I want to get to Bellevue, on First Avenue. I visited there once before, and I know one or two of the staff. I just hope to God they're still alive.'

Across the street, they saw a gang of black youths pushing over a Lincoln and setting fire to it. The fuel tank exploded in a hideous glare, and one of the youths was drenched in fiery gasoline. The other stood around and laughed as the boy shrieked and stumbled and tried to beat the fire away from his blazing face.

Adelaide raised her hand to her mouth and retched. 'Oh my God, Leonard, it's unbearable.'

Dr. Petrie reached over and briefly squeezed her shoulder. 'Please, darling. We're nearly there now.'

Suddenly, he heard a siren whooping behind him. He looked in his mirror, and a blue and white police car came flashing and howling down 26th Street, flagging him down in a tire-slithering curve. Dr. Petrie stopped the car and waited.

Two cops, guns drawn, climbed out of the police car and walked towards them. Both men wore respirators and gloves. They stood a few feet away from the Delta 88, and one of them called out in a muffled voice, 'Get out of the car!'

Dr. Petrie opened the door and did as he was told.

'Hands against the roof!' called the cop. Dr. Petrie laid his hands on the wet vinyl. The rain was easing off now, but it was still enough to make him feel uncomfortable.

'Don't you know there's a curfew?' asked the cop. 'What are you doing on the streets?'

'I just came in from Jersey. I didn't know about the curfew.'

'From Jersey?'

'That's right. But we're not infected. None of us has plague.'

'What makes you so sure?'

'We came from Miami originally. We've been exposed to plague for five or six days, and none of us have caught it. I'm a doctor. Would you like to see my ID?'

'Just hold it up.'

Dr. Petrie did as he was told. One of the cops shone a torch on the papers, and leaned forward to read them.

'Seems okay,' he told his buddy.

'Have you had the plague here long?' asked Dr. Petrie. 'I thought you were going to try to seal the whole city off.'

The cop shook his head. 'That's what we thought, too. But it seems like some nut managed to get through. Real neighborly, huh? We had the first calls yesterday evening, and it's been total panic ever since.'

'Does everybody have to stay off the streets?'

'It's for your own protection, doctor. Ever since the power went out, we've had every psycho and madman out on the streets like bugs crawling out of a drain.'

'What about the federal government? Are they helping?'

The cop shrugged. 'Who knows? The last I heard, the city of New York was told by the President to act brave, and go down with all flags flying. Jesus — you can't cure it, so what's the use?'

Dr. Petrie said, 'Maybe it can be cured. I'm on my way to Bellevue right now, to talk about it.'

The cop holstered his gun. 'Well, if you can cure it, you deserve to be called a saint.'

Dr. Petrie climbed back into his car, and the cop called out, 'Watch your step around Bellevue. The medical workers are still out on strike, and it ain't exactly a ladies' coffee morning. You got a gun?'

Dr. Petrie nodded.

'Well, take my advice, and use it. The wild animals are out tonight, and I don't like to see innocent people getting themselves torn apart.'

The cop was right about Bellevue. In the dim and unsteady light of emergency generators, a sullen group of medical workers was picketing the casualty department, and there was an angry crowd of relatives and parents trying to force their way through with plague-sick people on makeshift stretchers. Twenty or thirty ambulances were jammed in the street, and more arrived every moment, in a deafening moan of sirens.

Dr. Petrie parked the Delta 88, and helped Adelaide and Prickles out. He collected his automatic rifle and a couple of clips of ammunition, too, and then locked the car. No doubt some marauding gang would break into it and steal what few possessions they had left, but they might be lucky.

With Adelaide carrying Prickles behind him, he pushed his way through the shouting crowds towards the hospital entrance. One woman with disheveled hair and torn tights was shrieking at a picket, 'Bastards! Murderers! You're all going to hell!'

The picket was yelling back, 'That ain't true! That ain't the truth! You want your sick looked after so much, you do it yourself!'

Another man bellowed, 'What would Jesus have done! Tell me that! What would Jesus have done!'

Dr. Petrie found himself wedged between a burly picket and a tall black man in a bloodstained alpaca suit.

He pushed, but they wouldn't give way. Finally, he lifted his rifle and prodded the picket in the back with it.

The man turned around, sweaty and aggressive, and said, 'Who the fuck are you pushing, Charlie?'

'Out of my way!' Dr. Petrie shouted. 'Just get out of my way!'

'What are you going to do? Shoot?' roared the man. 'You wouldn't have the fucking nerve!'

Dr. Petrie, afraid and angry, fired the rifle at the man's legs. The picket yelled in pain, and dropped to the ground on one knee.

'My foot! Christ! You've hit my fucking foot!' There was blood spattered all over the ground. The crowds heaved back — swaying away from Dr. Petrie and the sound of the shot. He roughly pushed Adelaide and Prickles around the fallen picket, and shoved them in through the cracked glass doors of the casualty department. A security guard, trying too late to keep them out, slammed the doors behind them, and bolted them.

'I'm a doctor,' said Dr. Petrie breathlessly, holding up his papers.

The security guard glared at him. 'A doctor?' he said. 'With a gun?'

'Have you been out there?' snapped Dr. Petrie. 'Have you seen what it's like?'

'What do you want?' said the guard. 'Was that shooting out there?'

Prickles was crying. Dr. Petrie said firmly, 'I want to speak to the doctor in charge of the plague. I have some very important information. Can you call him for me, please?'

The security guard looked uncertain. Outside, the pickets were hammering on the door. One of them smashed the glass with a pick-ax handle, and reached in to try and open the locks.

'Seems like you're in trouble,' said the security guard. 'I'm sorry, friend, but I can't let you stay here. It's more than my job's worth.' Dr. Petrie lifted his rifle.

Adelaide said, 'Oh, God, Leonard — no more shooting.'

He didn't listen. Still panting for breath, he told the security guard to lay his revolver on the floor. 'Now call the doctor in charge of the plague,' he said coldly, 'and make it goddamned quick.'

The security guard lifted the phone and pushed buttons. Dr. Petrie kept an anxious eye on the doors while the guard asked the switchboard to connect him with Dr. Murray. The pickets were systematically thumping their shoulders against the frame, and one of the top bolts was already hanging loose from its screws.

Eventually, with a sour face, the guard passed the phone to Dr. Petrie.

'Dr. Murray?' said Dr. Petrie. 'I have to be quick because we have a kind of disturbance down here. My name's Dr. Leonard Petrie, and I'm a physician from Miami, Florida. I know a great deal about the plague from experience, and I also have a theory about treating it. Can I come up and see you?'

Dr. Murray sounded elderly and cautious.

'You say you come from Miami? I though they were all wiped out down there.'

'I managed to escape, with my daughter and a friend. I just arrived in New York, and I really have to see you.'

'I'm a busy man, Dr. Petrie.'

I know that, Dr. Murray. But this could save hundreds of lives. Maybe millions.'

The casualty department doors were almost off their hinges. The pickets were shouting and kicking at the wood and glass. Adelaide was clutching Prickles close, and retreating as far back down the corridor as she could.

'Dr. Murray?' asked Dr. Petrie.

There was a pause. Finally, Dr. Murray said, 'Oh, very well. But I can only spare you five minutes. Come up and see me on the fifth floor, room 532.'

Dr. Petrie put back the phone. Almost at the same moment, the angry pickets burst open the casualty department doors, and scrambled inside with their makeshift weapons.

Dr. Petrie lifted his rifle. The pickets held back, but they watched him intently and closely, and as he stepped away from them down the corridor, following Adelaide, they stalked after him with hard and humorless faces.

'Leonard,' said Adelaide nervously. 'Leonard, they'll kill us.'

Dr. Petrie stopped retreating. He raised the rifle to his shoulder and took a bead on the nearest picket. The men stayed where they were, silent and threatening, but he could sense that they were uncertain.

He said, slowly and loudly, 'You have ten seconds to turn around and get out of here. Then I start shooting, and I don't care what I hit.'

The pickets stayed where they were. For one terrible moment, he thought they were going to call his bluff, and make him open fire. He could feel the sweat running down inside his collar, and his hands were shaking.

'Do you hear me!' he shouted. 'Ten seconds!'

A man with a fire-ax took a pace nearer. Dr. Petrie swung the rifle around and aimed at his head, and the man stopped.

'Eight seconds!'

The pickets looked at each other. One of them said, 'Aw fuck it, we'll get him later,' and threw down his chair-leg. One by one, the others did the same.

Quickly, Dr. Petrie took Adelaide by the arm, and led her down the corridor to the stairs. He didn't trust elevators, with the power the way it was.

'Can you climb four flights?' he asked Prickles. Prickles, white-faced and frightened, gave a nod.

They found Dr. Murray in a cluttered office on the fifth floor, talking on the internal telephone, and drinking black coffee out of a plastic cup. He was a gray-haired, intense-looking man, with big fleshy ears and heavy hornrimmed spectacles.

'Dr. Murray?' said Petrie, putting out his hand. Dr. Murray shook it limply.

'You'd better take a seat,' said Dr. Murray mournfully. 'Just move those papers — there's a chair under there someplace.'

They sat down. Dr. Petrie self-consciously propped his rifle against the side of Dr. Murray's desk, but Dr. Murray didn't register surprise or concern.

'Now,' said Dr. Murray, 'what is it you wanted to see me about?'

'It's the plague,' explained Dr. Petrie. 'It started in Miami, and I saw some of the earliest cases myself, and treated them.'

'With any success?' asked Dr. Murray, dourly.

'None at all. The only thing we discovered was that it was related to Pasteurella pestis, but that it didn't respond to the usual antibiotics or serums.'

'I know that,' said Dr. Murray. 'So what are you trying to tell me?'

Dr. Petrie coughed. 'I'm trying to tell you, Dr. Murray, that even though it's a fast-breeding bacillus with no known antidote — a bacillus that has wiped out almost the entire population of the Eastern seaboard in one week — I haven't caught it.'

'I can see that.'

'You don't understand,' insisted Dr. Petrie. 'I haven't caught it for a reason. My daughter hasn't caught it for a reason. My girlfriend hasn't caught it because she has stayed almost exclusively with us, and we're never going to get it.'

Dr. Murray opened a drawer in his desk, took out a pack of stale Larks, and unsteadily lit one up. He kept the cigarette in his mouth, puffing smoke out sideways like a poker player.

'What you're trying to tell me, Dr. Petrie, is that you know why you, haven't caught it? Is that it?'

'Exactly. We haven't caught it because we've been exposed to radiation. In my case, it's X-Rays. In my daughter's case, color television. I believe now that my daughter did get a mild dose of plague, but because she was kept away from other carriers, she recovered.'

Dr. Murray took off his spectacles. 'I don't understand you, Dr. Petrie. How can radiation possibly have any effect on a plague bacillus?'

'It can have an enormous effect. It's my supposition that, somehow, radiation reached the raw sewage that was dumped off the Long Island coast, and that within the radioactive sewage, the common plague bacillus mutated into a fast-growing and very virulent super-plague. Perhaps further doses of radiation can mutate it further into a harmless form, or slow down its incubation. I don't yet know. I was hoping that you and some of your doctors here could help me find out.'

Dr. Murray thought this over. Then he said, 'Dr. Petrie, I think you have a very interesting notion, there. But what I am not is a research bacteriologist. I am trying to run a metropolitan casualty department here, and at the moment, what with the strike and the plague, I'm not making much of a go of it. What you need is a man who can turn your theory into scientific facts — if it's a theory that's any good.'

'Can you suggest anyone?'

Dr. Murray reached for his desk diary, and leafed through the pages.

'There are two very good men,' he said. 'At the moment, they're both fighting each other in court, as I understand it, over some new technique of theirs. But they both have good reputations, and they're both interested in radioactive mutation of bacilli. Here we are — Professor Ivor Glantz — and Professor Sergei Forward.'

'I've heard of Glantz,' said Dr. Petrie. 'A bit of a lone wolf, if I remember.'

'Brilliant, though,' said Dr. Murray. 'If there's any foundation to your theory at all, he can find it.'

'Where do I find him?'

'You're very fortunate. He lives on First Avenue, in Concorde Tower. He's a rich man.'

'I didn't know research bacteriologists got rich.'

'They do if their fathers are bankers, and they take out a patent on self-aborting bacilli for the brewing industry.

'Ivor Glantz devised the bacillus that made Milwaukee not only famous but extremely profitable.'

'I see. Perhaps you and I are in the wrong branch of science, Dr. Murray.'

Dr. Murray ignored him. 'I can let you have a note to take to Glantz, on hospital paper. They won't let you into the tower otherwise. Right now, they won't let you into any place at all unless you're known.'

'Thank you,' said Dr. Petrie, as the older man unscrewed his pen and scribbled a letter. 'I just hope that we can do something to make your job easier.'

Dr. Murray grimaced. 'There is one thing. When you're up at Concorde Tower, you can take that rifle of yours and make a large hole in Kenneth Garunisch.'

'That reminds me,' said Dr. Petrie. 'Is there another way out of this place? I kind of unsettled the medical workers' pickets on the way in.'

Dr. Murray nodded. 'We'll get you out. Would you care for some coffee before you go? My secretary will make you some next door. Right now, I have to get back to the wards.'

When Dr. Murray had left, they sat for half an hour by the window of his secretary's office, sipping hot coffee and staring out over the darkened city. The windows were soundproofed, but they couldn't keep out the endless howling of sirens, and the crackle of shots. The city was black and shadowy, lit here and there by sparkling orange fires. It looked like a medieval vision of the devil's kingdom; a place where demons and beasts roamed in echoing darkness. Not even the stars looked down on the twentieth-century city that had become, at last, the realization of a fifteenth-century nightmare.

Ivor Glantz had just come out of the shower. He was wrapped up in a white toweling bathrobe, and he dabbed his perspiring forehead with a succession of tissues pulled from a Kleenex box.

'Dr. Petrie,' he said, assiduously gathering up sweat, 'I have to say that I admire your courage. You and your lady, and your little girl.'

Dr. Petrie, shaved and smelling of Braggi, was sitting on the wide cream-colored 1930s settee, with a large Scotch in his hand. For the first time this week, he felt clean and civilized. Prickles had been dressed up in one of Ivor Glantz's pajama jackets and put to bed in the small bedroom, while Adelaide and Esmeralda were talking in the kitchen, and making supper.

'It wasn't courage,' said Dr. Petrie, smiling tiredly. 'Far from it. It was survival. They burned down Miami, and we had to get out,'

'You think they did that deliberately?' asked Glantz.

'Set fire to the city? I don't know. I don't understand the way the federal government have handled this thing from the very beginning. Down in Miami, we were all beginning to feel like sacrificial lambs.'

Glantz smiled. 'You did well to get out of it, anyway. If you want to stay here for a few days, you're welcome. We have our own power in this building, and we're very secure. This block was designed as a maximum-security project. You saw how tight they've got it defended downstairs.'

Dr. Petrie sipped his Scotch. He was suddenly beginning to realize how utterly exhausted he was. He didn't even know if he was going to be able to stay awake for supper.

'Have you thought about my theory?' he asked.

Ivor Glantz nodded. 'Sure. I was thinking about it in the shower.'

'And how does it grab you?'

Glantz tapped ash off his cigarette. 'It grabs me pretty well, if you want to know the truth. It's one of those theories that's wacky enough to work. You see, most epidemic diseases are sparked off by a particular combination of historical and environmental circumstances. Sometimes the circumstances are so absurd and unusual that you could never predict they were going to happen. But we've had all the ingredients for this epidemic in American society for years, and it only took a couple of odd happenstances to get the whole thing going.'

Glantz got up, walked across to the drinks cabinet, and poured himself a large whiskey.

'Ingredient one is plague itself,' he said. 'We have had plague in the United States throughout the twentieth century, and every single year — particularly in the Western states — we suffer plague fatalities. It's endemic in squirrels and rats in the West, and there have beeri cases reported in Florida, as you probably know.

'Ingredient two is the raw sewage — the medium in which plague bacilli were incubating beneath the ocean. The sewage, if you like, was the laboratory in which the bacilli was mutated.

'Ingredient three is the radioactivity. Well — we don't have any proof where the radioactivity comes from, but I can guess that radioactive waste might well be dumped into the ocean from industrial processes, or maybe atomic-powered ships and submarines have offloaded uranium fuel in the area where the raw sewage was lying.

'Given those three ingredients, all it took was an unusual climatic situation, with reverse currents and changeable winds, and the epidemic was served up to us on a plate.'

Glantz sat down again, and puffed his cigarette. 'It's a classic epidemic situation, Dr. Petrie, and that's why I believe your theory is right.'

Dr. Petrie nodded wearily.

'The problem is,' said Ivor Glantz, 'that even if it's right, we have to prove it's right, and even when we've done that, we still have to find a way to communicate our information to the federal government, and make sure they act on it.'

'Is Manhattan completely cut off?'

'As long as the power is out, yes. They were flying helicopters out of here for most of the day, but I should think they've all been commandeered by now. The same goes for boats. And as long as we've got plague in the city, there isn't anyone who's going to fly in here to bring us out.'

'What are we going to do, then?' asked Dr. Petrie. 'It looks like I wasted my time.'

Glantz shrugged. 'I don't think so, Dr. Petrie. I don't have any test facilities here at home, but I can work out the probability graphs and all the mathematics. I guess we can check your theory to the point where we're sixty-five percent sure about it, and I think that should be enough to convince the government. What we need to discover is the critical level of radioactivity which renders the plague harmless, and then we're all set. Anyone who hasn't caught it already could be given a dose of X-Rays, and they'd be protected.'

'What about pregnant women?' asked Petrie. 'We couldn't give X-Rays to them. The last thing we want to do is cure the plague and wind up with a whole generation of deformed children.'

Ivor Glantz shook his head. 'I don't think the dosage is sufficiently high to make it a problem. But we'll check. Once we're reasonably sure, we can get a message to Washington, or wherever the President is hiding himself, and they can do the basic practical research outside of the plague zone.'

'You seem very confident,' said Dr. Petrie.

'I'm not in the least confident,' Glantz replied. 'But it's the only theory we've got, and we might as well make the best of it.'

'Do you think there's a chance?'

'Oh, sure. Of course there's a chance. There is no bacillus in my long and varied experience that can't be destroyed or mutated into complete harmlessness by the correct application of radioactivity. The same goes for humans, if you must know.'

Dr. Petrie finished his Scotch. 'How long will it take?' he asked. 'The mathematics, I mean.'

Ivor Glantz shook his head. 'Hard to say. Two or three days. Maybe less, maybe more.'

'And meanwhile, the whole of New York just dies?'

'I can't help it, Dr. Petrie. As soon as I've eaten, I'm going to sit right down there and start work, and that's a promise. But I can't work miracles.'

Dr. Petrie stood up and walked over to the window. Sixteen floors below, the streets were dark, blind and chaotic. He saw red flashing police lights and ambulances, and the smoke from a smoldering store rising almost invisibly into the rainy night sky.

'I sometimes wish it were true,' he said quietly.

'You sometimes wish what were true?' asked Glantz.

Dr. Petrie let the drapes fall, and turned back into the room. 'In Miami,' he said, 'they used to joke about me and call me Saint Leonard. I just sometimes wish it were true.'

Glantz looked at him oddly.

'Don't worry,' said Dr. Petrie. 'I'm not a religious maniac, and I'm not going out of my mind. But I've spent most of my medical life nursing rich old widows, and now I've suddenly seen that there's so much more to medicine than dishing out placebos to dried-up geriatrics with more money than sense.'

Glantz sniffed. 'Don't knock money,' he said. 'Money makes it easier to have scruples.'

Dr. Petrie rubbed his face exhaustedly. 'I don't know whether I want scruples right now.'

'Have another drink instead.'

Ivor Glantz was pouring Dr. Petrie another large dose of Scotch when Adelaide and Esmeralda came in with a hot egg-and-bacon quiche and a fresh salad. The girls laid knives and forks on the glass coffee table, and they all sat down to eat informally.

'Usually,' said Glantz, 'Esmeralda insists that we eat in the dining-room, with starched napkins tucked under our chins. But tonight we'll make an exception.'

Adelaide said, 'I don't know how we're ever going to thank you for this. It's so bad out on the streets, I thought we'd never get out of it alive.'

'It doesn't take people long to revert to the jungle, does it?' Ivor Glantz remarked. 'You only have to pour a few drinks down most people, and they start behaving like apes. That's how alcohol works. Layer by layer, it anesthetizes your civilized mind, until you're nothing but a caveman. Or cave-woman.'

Esmeralda was slicing quiche. She didn't look up, but handed Dr. Petrie a plateful of food. He smiled at her, because he found her attractive. Her long black curly hair was tied with ribbons, and she was wearing a dark brown satin negligee trimmed with lace and bows. She looked a little pale, but it suited her fine profile. He found himself glancing at the soft mobile way her breasts moved underneath the satin, and her long bare legs.

Adelaide was too tired and hungry to notice. She was looking scrubbed and plain, with no make-up at all, and her brunette hair was tied back in a headscarf. She'd borrowed a pink dressing-gown from Esmeralda, and the color didn't suit her at all. Sexual attraction, thought Dr. Petrie, as he ate his flan, is the unfairest urge ever.

Ivor Glantz washed a mouthful of food down with whiskey. 'To some people,' he said, 'this plague is a blessing.'

Dr. Petrie frowned. 'What do you mean by that? I mean — who could ever benefit from a disaster like this?'

'Oh, you'd be surprised. Our next-door neighbor is Kenneth Garunisch from the Medical Workers' Union. He's been pressing for more pay for his members, because of the dangers of treating plague victims. Then there's Herbert Gaines. You remember Herbert Gaines — the actor? Well, he lives upstairs. He's gotten himself into politics now, and his main plank is that blacks and immigrants have caused the plague, and we ought to vote a right-wing Republican into the White House to get rid of them. Then, of course, there's Sergei Forward.'

Dr. Petrie was puzzled. The way that Ivor Glantz had spoken that name — loudly and vehemently — it had seemed that he was speaking to Esmeralda. But Esmeralda still didn't look up, and carried on eating in silence.

Dr. Petrie said, 'Dr. Murray mentioned him. Isn't he the guy you're — '

'Yes,' said Ivor Glantz. He was still looking at Esmeralda, and not at Dr. Petrie at all. 'He's the guy I'm sueing for infringement of patent. Or at least, I was sueing him for infringement of patent. The plague, among other things, has let him off the hook.'

'You must be pretty galled.'

Glantz turned to Dr. Petrie at last. 'Galled?' he said. 'You bet your ass I'm galled. It's a life's work, right down the river. But that's not the worst part.'

Dr. Petrie glanced from Ivor Glantz to Esmeralda. There was some indefinable tension between them. Esmeralda was still holding her knife and fork, but she wasn't actually eating. Her knuckles were white, and she was staring at her plate as if willing it to disappear into the sixth dimension. Adelaide caught the atmosphere, too, and looked up with a frown.

'The worst part,' said Ivor Glantz, 'was losing a life's loyalty, and a life's love.'

There was a long silence. Then Esmeralda stood up, and took her plate out of the sitting-room and into the kitchen. They heard her scraping her supper down the sink-disposal unit.

'Es!' Ivor Glantz called.

She didn't answer.

'Es!' he called again.

She appeared at the kitchen door. 'I'm not very hungry,' she said. 'I think I'll go to bed.'

Ivor Glantz took a deep breath as if he was about to shout something, but then he changed his mind and breathed out again. Esmeralda went off to her bedroom, and, turning to Dr. Petrie, Glantz said, 'How about one more Scotch, doctor? I'm sure you can justify it on medicinal grounds.'

Dr. Petrie passed his glass. He watched Ivor Glantz unstopper the crystal decanter, and pour the drink out.

'Listen, Professor Glantz,' he said gently. 'I don't mean to be personal, but… '

'But what, Dr. Petrie?'

Dr. Petrie shook his head. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'It's none of my business.'

Glantz handed over his Scotch. 'Of course it's your business. You're a guest here.'

'I didn't mean to pry. It just seemed that, well — '

'I know what it seemed like. Well, it's the truth. I've decided to withdraw my action against Sergei Forward. The reason I've decided to do so is because my stepdaughter is being blackmailed. It appears she was rather indiscreet. That's if you want to put it mildly.'

Dr. Petrie sat back. 'Is that the price? Is that what the blackmailers are asking for? Your withdrawal from the case?'

Ivor Glantz nodded. 'Of course. That's why my stepdaughter was set up in the first place. It was a deliberate ploy by Forward to hit me below the belt. I can tell you something, Dr. Petrie — if ever I lay my hands on that Finnish bastard, so help me I'll tear his lungs out and use them for water wings.'

'Surely it wasn't Esmeralda's fault?' said Adelaide. 'If she was set up, how can you blame her?'

Glantz swigged whiskey. 'I blame her because she got herself drunk and she let them do what they wanted. Not once did she think about me, and what could happen if she got involved in something like that. She lives under my roof, I pay for everything she wears, eats, and wipes her ass with. I bought her an art gallery and two hundred paintings to stock it with. I'm a step-father in a million, and all she can do is get herself squiffy on two glasses of champagne. Do you know, Dr. Petrie, how much that bacteriological process means to me?'

'What do you mean? Financially?'

'Of course, financially! What do you think this is — the Alexander Fleming Home for needy bacteriologists? Dr. Petrie — over twenty years, that process could have brought me, in royalties and dues and industrial licences, something in the region of thirty million dollars.'

Adelaide's eyes widened. 'I see what you're talking about. I think I'd be sore, too.'

Ivor Glantz shook his head. 'I'm not sore, my dear. I'm out of my goddamned mind with rage.'

Shark McManus started moaning again. He was lying curled-up on the cold plastic tiles of a travel agency's second-floor office on Third Avenue, shivering and sweating in the darkness. From where he lay, He could see the legs of a desk, and a waste-paper basket, and a half-open door. He still clutched his.38, but his sight kept blurring, and he was hurting so bad that he didn't even know if he could pull the trigger or not. Pains like red-hot rakes stabbed into his groin and his stomach, and every now and then a scalding squirt of diarrhoea soaked into his jeans.

'Paston,' he whispered. 'You still there?'

Edgar Paston stood by the window, pale-faced and perspiring. In the street below he could see gangs of black youths running and shouting and smashing windows.

'I'm here,' he said quietly. He came across the office and bent over McManus with a serious face. 'How do you feel?'

McManus winced. 'Oh, terrific.'

Edgar said, 'Shark, I have to find you a doctor.'

McManus moaned again, and shook his head. 'Where do you think you're going to find a doctor — out there? I know you, Paston — you're going to go — straight to the cops — and tell them it was me.'

'Shark, you'll die!'

'What the fuck — do you care? I used you — you used me — and your family got wasted.'

Edgar stood straight again.

'I still think I ought to try and find you a doctor. There have to be doctors who wouldn't ask questions.'

McManus almost laughed. But his laughter turned to coughing, and his coughing became gasps of pain.

'Paston — you're such a stupid shit!'

'Don't say that, Shark.'

'Aah… why should you care?' whispered McManus.

Edgar clenched and unclenched his fists. He seemed to be trying to say something that wouldn't quite form itself into coherent words. He wiped his perspiring forehead with his shirt-sleeve, and then he said, 'Shark — '

McManus was moaning. Edgar knelt down beside him, as close as he could, and took his hand.

'Shark, I do care.'

Shark's breath smelled bad, and his face, in the gloomy darkness of the office, looked like a white wax death-mask.

'Shark, I don't want you to die.'

Shark slowly moved his head from side to side.

'Thass… bullshit.'

Edgar Paston leaned over the dying boy and held his face in his hands. Shark's eyes were almost closed, and he was breathing thickly and slowly through his parted lips.

'Shark, listen, I have to tell you this. Please, listen, will you? I have to tell you.'

McManus opened his eyes a little wider and stared at Edgar as if he had never seen him before in his whole life.

'I don't suppose you'll understand,' said Edgar. 'But I have to tell you anyway. I know Tammy and the kids were killed, but you have to believe that I don't blame you. You were trying to help us, Shark, I know that. It was the cops who killed them. You have to understand that I don't blame you.'

The office was so dark that it was impossible to tell if Shark McManus was listening or not. He quivered from time to time, and whimpered, but he didn't answer.

Edgar Paston was crying now. 'Shark,' he said, 'I got it all wrong. I didn't understand. Don't you see? I got it all wrong because I was dead and you were alive. I didn't recognize you for what you really were. Shark, you've got your youth. Look at me. How old do you think I am? Shark, I've never had a youth! It was school, and then it was college, and then it was Tammy and the kids and work. Christ, Shark, you've got freedom and love and confidence and everything, and all I've got is a useless dreary stupid supermarket!

Shark McManus, after a few moments, seemed to smile. He managed to raise one limp hand and touch Edgar's tears.

'Paston,' he croaked. 'You're such a stupid shit.'

'For Christ's sake, don't say that.'

'I have to say it, man. It's true.'

Edgar Paston sat up. His voice was unnaturally high, and in an odd way he was almost hysterical.

'God!' he shrieked. 'Can't you see how much I envy you?'

McManus was in less pain now. He gave a few breathy chuckles, and rolled his head to one side.

'Paston,' he whispered. 'I don't want to be envied by you. I think I'd prefer to die.'

Edgar got to his feet, and automatically brushed the dust from the knees of his pants.

'Well, that's too bad,' he said impatiently. 'That's just too bad because I'm going to go right out there and find you a doctor. You're going to get well again and then we'll see. Give me the gun.'

'Paston,' said Shark, 'you're out of your head. You can't go out there.'

'Give me the gun, Shark.'

Edgar bent over and caught hold of McManus' wrist. Shark was too weak to resist him, and he gave up the.38 without a struggle.

'Okay now,' said Edgar, forcefully. 'I'm going out there and I'm going to find you a doctor. Give me an hour. If I'm not back after that time — well… '

'Can I die then?' asked Shark McManus. 'Am I allowed to?'

Edgar leaned over and patted him on the cheek.

'You are not to die,' he said tenderly.

Shark nodded. 'Okay, then. I won't.'

Edgar took the gun and left the office. He walked along the landing to the concrete staircase that led down to the street. As he reached the top step, he heard an unexpected scuffling noise, and he paused. He peered into the darkness, and he could have sworn that he saw something moving. He wished he had a torch.

Feeling his way down step by step, with his hand against the rough concrete wall, he came to the next turn in the stairs. He heard the noise again. There was a high-pitched squeaking, and the patter of feet.

'Rats,' he said to himself. 'Oh, Jesus!'

He descended the next few stairs cautiously. The rats scuttled down ahead of him, and he could see their eyes reflecting the dim light from the open street door. He managed to reach the sidewalk, kicking a couple of rats aside, and it was only then that he realized how many there were. The office building was teeming with rats, and so were the streets. Disturbed by the chaotic violence and looting, frightened by fires, aroused by the smell of dead bodies, they were rising from the sewers and electrical conduits of Manhattan in a gray tide.

Edgar ran across Third Avenue and turned down 52nd Street. Now he was out in the open, his confidence was shaken. It was menacing and strange, and the fires that burned through the drizzling rain cast enormous shadows. He had no idea where he could find a doctor, and he peered hopelessly at all the signs and nameplates he saw.

From Third Avenue, he reached Lexington Avenue. Uptown, he could see immense fires blazing. Whole blocks were alight. Downtown, it was all darkness and savagery. He crossed the street and walked quickly towards Park Avenue, panting hard and clutching his pistol tight.

He didn't see them until he had turned the corner. There were eight or nine of them — marauding black teenagers with clubs and knives and razors. They had raided three hotel bars on the East Side, and they were fiercely drunk. The day before, white hoodlums had come up to Harlem and thrown gasoline bombs in their neighborhood stores and their houses, and they were out to fix honkies and nothing else.

Edgar raised the.38.

'Don't you come a step nearer, or I'll shoot!'

The black kids jeered and laughed. Edgar, holding the pistol in both hands, aimed directly at a silhouetted head.

It went through his mind like an action replay. The supermarket doorway. The laughter in the car park. The shot. One of the kids fell to the ground, without a sound. The rest of them scattered. 'He's dead all right. I got him in the head.'

And while his finger froze on the trigger, a tall black boy in green jeans ducked under his line of fire and stabbed him straight in the face with a broken gin bottle. The glass sliced into his cheeks and mouth, and he dropped the gun on to the sidewalk in a slow-motion twist of agony.

They cut his face up first. He felt knives in his eyes. Then one of them grappled his wet, petrified tongue, and they sliced it off with a razor. The last thing he felt before he died, in a hideous burst of agony, was the broken bottle they forced, laughing, into his rectum.

Shark McManus died that night, too. As he lay on the floor of the office, helpless and weak and soaked in diarrhoea, the rats came scampering in. He was so close to death that he scarcely felt them running over him, and at one moment he thought of the kitten his father had given him when he was six, and he opened his arms to embrace the scuttling gray tribe that bit at his flesh and turned his hands into raw bloody strings.

'Paston?' he said hoarsely.

There was no answer — He heard a squeaking, pattering noise that he didn't understand.

'Paston?' he said again.

No answer.

'Paston?'

After the hideous chaos of the night, the morning was gray and silent. The rain stopped, and a smeary sunlight filtered across the East River and into the broken streets. Uptown, fires still burned in Harlem, and the black carcasses of buses and cars were littered all over the streets of the midtown hotel district, smoldering and smashed. The sidewalks were glittering with powdered glass, and amongst it, like frozen explorers caught in a strange kind of snow, were the bodies of plague victims and riot casualties.

One or two police cars patroled the streets slowly and cautiously, driving over rubble and bricks and debris. The cops all wore respirators and goggles, and were heavily armed. There were still a few stray looters around, and they had orders to shoot to kill.

The rats were still in evidence — swarming into abandoned delicatessens and restaurants, and over the corpses that lay huddled up in every street.

Every office block and apartment building was locked and guarded and under siege. But even if the residents were able to keep out the looters and most of the rats, they couldn't protect themselves from the plague. During Monday morning, the fast-breeding bacilli brought painful death to thousands of New Yorkers, transmitted by minute specks of infected saliva. It only took a word of encouragement to pass the plague on, or the touch of a hand in friendship.

Some people died slowly, in prolonged agony, while others succumbed in two or three hours. By midday, almost seventeen thousand people were dead, and several apartment buildings had become silent, pestilent mortuaries. As the People collapsed, the rats scurried in, devouring food and flesh in a suffocating orgy of self-indulgence.

Other people, trapped in elevators since Sunday by the power failure, began to collapse from exhaustion, thirst and lack of air. There was no one to rescue them, and they died in a squalid confusion of darkness and urine.

In the subways, imprisoned in darkened trains, people moaned and cried and waited for the help that would never arrive. Old people and invalids sat in their apartments in front of dead televisions, waiting for nurses who didn't dare take to the streets. Drug addicts, shivering and sweating, haunted the Lower West Side looking for fixes.

Dr. Petrie, up on the sixteenth floor of Concorde Tower, stared down at the city for almost an hour. Adelaide and Esmeralda had taken Prickles to meet the Kavanagh children on the floor below, and Ivor Glantz was locked in his study, laboriously working out the mathematical probability of destroying the plague with radioactive rays. Dr. Petrie drank coffee and tried to relax. He had slept badly, with nightmares of travelling and suffering and violence, but he felt better than yesterday. He was just wondering how long they could survive on the sixteenth floor, without food supplies, or any guarantee that their water or power would hold out.

He was going to pour himself another cup of coffee when there was a rap at the door. He walked across the sitting-room and switched on Ivor Glantz's closed-circuit TV. The building super was standing outside, looking agitated. Dr. Petrie opened the door.

'Hi,' said the super. He remembered Dr. Petrie from the night before, when they had banged on the glass doors of Concorde Tower and shouted to be let in. He was a thin, nervous man with greasy hair and a neatly-clipped mustache. 'Can I come in?'

'Sure. Professor Glantz is working right now, but if it's urgent — '

The super worriedly chewed at his lip. 'It's getting pretty serious, to tell you the truth. I got assistants going round the whole building, informing everyone.'

'What's the problem?'

'Well,' said the super, 'we got quite a crowd outside. You know — people who were caught on the streets when the power went off. They want us to let them in, and they've started cracking the front doors already.'

'How many are there?'

'Well, it's hard to tell, maybe a couple of dozen. I took a look off the roof, and the same thing's happening to other condos, too. I guess quite a few people got caught out last night, and now they want to get back inside.'

'You can't let them in — you know that, don't you?' Dr. Petrie said. Even if they're residents, they may have plague. This whole apartment building could be wiped out in an afternoon.'

'Well, yes, sir, I know that. But I was tryin g to figure how to keep them out. They're smashing down the doors, and some of them have guns.'

There was another knock at the door. Dr. Petrie turned around, to see a stocky, bristle-headed man standing in the doorway, wearing a turtle-neck sweater, plaid pants and bedroom slippers. His face was bruised, and he had a magnificent black eye.

'I hope I'm not interrupting you people,' said the man. 'But I was thinking we ought to get together and have ourselves a pow-wow.'

'Good morning, Mr. Garunisch,' said the super.

'My name's Kenneth Garunisch,' said the new arrival, walking in and holding out his hand to Dr. Petrie.

'How do you do. I'm Leonard Petrie. Dr. Murray at Bellevue said I should blow a hole in your head.'

Kenneth Garunisch chuckled. 'That sounds like Murray, all right. Are you a doctor, too? I guess I'm not too popular with doctors. What's the matter, Jack? You look like you ate something that disagreed with you.'

The super nodded. 'I was telling this gentleman here, Mr. Garunisch. We got a pretty mean crowd of people down on the street, and they're trying to break their way in.'

Kenneth Garunisch took out a cigarette and lit it. 'You got top security locks and doors down there, haven't you? That should keep 'em out.'

'For a while, I guess. But they look like they want to get in real bad.'

'Do you want some help?' asked Kenneth Garunisch. 'I have an automatic, and some rounds.'

'I've got this rifle here,' said Dr. Petrie, pointing to the automatic weapon he had left in Ivor Glantz's umbrella stand.

Kenneth Garunisch said, 'I think we ought to get ourselves together and form a defense plan. Is Professor Glantz around? Maybe we can rope him in, too.'

'Wait there,' said Dr. Petrie. 'I'll go see.'

He walked across to Ivor Glantz's study and rapped gently, on the door. There was a pause, then Glantz said, 'Come in!'

The study was dense with cigarette smoke. The walls, papered in dark brown art-deco wallpaper, were covered in graphs and diagrams and illustrations of radiography equipment. Ivor Glantz was bent over a large walnut desk, with a slide-rule, log tables, dividers and a cramful ashtray. His shirt was crumpled and stained with sweat, and he was frowning at columns of figures through a thick pair of reading glasses.

'How's it going?' asked Dr. Petrie.

'Slow,' said Glantz. 'This problem has to have fifteen million permutations. Without a computer, it's like trying to write the Bible in two days.'

'Do you think it's going to take you that long?'

Ivor Glantz took off his spectacles. 'Two days, you mean? Not a chance. It's going to take longer. The trouble is, I don't have any expert help. I need someone to double-check these figures, and give me some different angles and ideas. This could take months.'

'Then do you think we ought to take the theory straight to Washington, and let them work it out?'

Ivor Glantz shook his head. 'It wouldn't wash. If we turned up in Washington with that kind of theory, they'd laugh in our faces. They don't have any bacteriologists on the government payroll with any imagination or style, and this theory would sink into the swamp of professional jealousy like a goddamned brick.'

'But there are lives at stake, for Christ's sake! We have people dying in thousands!'

Ivor Glantz stood up. 'Dr. Petrie,' he said, 'I know people are dying but it's no use. What you forget is that Washington, right at this moment, is being inundated with theories and ideas and schemes for stopping the plague. Some of them good, some of them mediocre, and some of them totally crazy. Unless we can substantiate this theory with figures, it's going to wind up in some minor scientist's in-basket, and it probably won't see the light of day until the tricentennial, if there's anybody left alive to dig it up.'

'You sound pretty cynical,' Dr. Petrie said.

Ivor Glantz nodded. 'I am cynical. If you think that big business is a cut-throat game, you ought to try science. It's a second-rate scramble for recognition, and honors, and as much money as you can milk out of as many foundations as possible. That's why we have to waste our time here working out thousands of figures, and letting millions of Americans die.'

Kenneth Garunisch poked his head around the door. 'Is this a private harangue or can anyone join in?'

Ivor Glantz grinned tiredly. 'Hi, Mr. Garunisch. I was just sounding off about scientific ethics. You've met Dr. Petrie?'

'Sure. Listen, Professor — do you think we can get some of our neighbors together for a council of war? Jack the super says there are people outside on the streets, trying to break their way in. I think we ought to work out some plan of defense.'

Ivor Glantz sighed. 'Mr. Garunisch,' he said, 'I have to do a month's work in a couple of days. I don't think I have time for councils of war. I don't need defense, I need a first-class assistant bacteriologist.'

Kenneth Garunisch pulled a face. 'I don't think I'm going to be able to oblige you there, Professor. But let's say you're busy. I'll ask Herbert Gaines and that Bloofer guy. If I need your help — can I call on you?'

'Surely. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, it's back to the slide-rule.'

Four

At five that afternoon, in Kenneth Garunisch's mock-Colonial apartment, the residents of the sixteenth and seventeenth floors of Concorde Tower held a council of war. They were going to talk about self-protection, food and survival, and then their elected representative was going to speak to a meeting of representatives from all the other occupied floors. Mrs. Garunisch had made some rather clumsy cold-beef sandwiches, because her cook Beth had been out on the streets last night, and although Mrs. Garunisch didn't know it, Beth was lying dead and posthumously raped in a side doorway of Macy's.

Herbert Gaines was there, incongruously dressed in a yellow safari suit, and looking nervous. Nicholas sat beside him, in a sailor sweater and jeans and rope sandals, as sullen as ever. Adelaide sat possessively close to Dr. Petrie on the big floral settee, and Esmeralda sat by herself, elegant and cool in a white pleated 1930's suit. Prickles was allowed to sit in the corner, drinking coke and reading a picture book. Mr. and Mrs. Blaufoot hadn't shown up, and it didn't look as if they were going to.

Kenneth Garunisch had appointed himself chairman. He had a louder and harsher voice than anyone else. He sat in his biggest armchair, with a beer and a pack of cigarettes, and he formally declared the meeting open.

Herbert Gaines immediately raised his hand to speak.

'Mr. Garunisch,' he said, 'I do believe we're all wasting our time. The time we should have acted was days ago, when we were first threatened by this epidemic. Instead — in spite of my own personal warnings — everybody sat back and let it happen.'

Kenneth Garunisch sucked at his cigarette. 'With all respect, Mr. Gaines, I don't think that two or three racialist speeches on television could have done anybody any good. In fact, I contend that last night's looting and rioting can be pretty largely laid at your door. You, and your right-wing pressure group. Preaching intolerance isn't going to get us any place at all.'

'I don't think that locking ourselves away in this ivory tower is particularly tolerant,' retorted Gaines. 'Perhaps we ought to be more democratic about it, and invite all those plague-ridden people in.'

'Plague is nothing to do with democracy!' snapped Garunisch. 'The only thing we can afford to consider here is our own survival!'

'I'm afraid I agree with that,' said Dr. Petrie. 'I've seen what the plague has done, all the way from Florida, through Georgia and Alabama and the Carolinas, and there is no way that any of us can let ourselves come into contact with people who might have contracted it. We have to keep those street-level doors closed at all costs, and if we can't do that, we're going to have to build second-line defenses on the stairs.'

'This is absurd,' said Herbert Gaines. 'We're making the same mistake we made last week. We sat on our butts and let it happen. If you ask me, the only possible answer is to get out there and drive those people away. If necessary, kill them.'

Nicholas looked up. 'Herbert,' he said quietly. 'You can't mean that.'

Herbert Gaines turned on his youthful lover with a set, angry face. 'Maybe I wouldn't have meant it before, but what the hell does it matter? If you preach speeches at people, they go off mindlessly and slaughter each other. If you don't preach speeches, they're so careless and stupid that they might smother themselves in their own excrement and die of disease.'

Dr. Petrie said, 'Mr. Gaines — '

Herbert Gaines waved him into silence. 'Just listen to me for a moment,' he said hotly. 'When I made those political speeches last week, I didn't believe a single word I was saying. Not one word. I stood up there and I mouthed whatever my political friends told me to mouth.

'I did it because they were threatening me — or rather, they were threatening Nicholas. I suppose you could call me a physical coward, and a moral coward as well, but I did it, and I'd like to know how many people wouldn't have done the same.

'The insane thing was that people actually paid attention to what I was saying. The television and the newspaper reporters actually took me seriously. People actually went up to Harlem and burned down stores and houses. My God, they say that people get the politicians they deserve, and they do. If I can stand up and speak poisonous crap like that, and the American people are prepared to believe me, then I can only say that they must have won this plague in some kind of celestial competition. This plague is America's prize for stupidity, crassness, arrogance, prejudice and intolerance.'

Herbert Gaines sat down. There was a long uncomfortable silence. Nicholas reached out and took Games' hand and gave it a slight, almost imperceptible squeeze. 'Okay, Mr. Gaines,' said Kenneth Garunisch at last. 'You've made your point. But what we need to talk about now is survival, not divine retribution.'

'What do we have in the way of guns?' asked Esmeralda. 'If these people do break in, we're going to need them.'

Dr. Petrie said, 'We have a rifle and two handguns. Not much ammunition. We can't rely on them for long. We have a baseball bat and plenty of kitchen knives if it comes to hand-to-hand stuff.'

Adelaide asked, 'If these people have got the plague, won't they die anyway, after a few hours? Surely if we can hold out for a day or two, they'll all be dead?'

'The girl's right,' said Garunisch, 'The only problem is, that's a pretty fierce mob out there, according to what the super says. The plague may get them before they get us, but we ought to be prepared in case things work out different.'

'I vote we go down and take a look at them,' said Esmeralda. 'At least we'll know what we're up against.'

'I second that,' said Dr. Petrie, raising his hand. Esmeralda looked across and smiled at him.

Herbert Gaines said, 'I vote we go down there and shoot them while there's still time.'

Garunisch stared at Gaines heavily. 'Mr. Gaines,' he said, 'let's just take this thing one step at a time, shall we?'

'I think Pappa would like to come.' put in Esmeralda. 'If you can wait a couple of minutes, I'll go and fetch him.'

Eventually, armed with Dr. Petrie's rifle, two automatics, and Nicholas' baseball bat, they all, with the exception of Prickles, collected at the top of the service stairs and began the long descent to the street. The power was still working, but none of them wanted to trust the elevators. Ivor Glantz, who had reluctantly left his mathematics for half-an-hour, was puffing and gasping by the time they had reached the thirteenth floor.

'Don't you worry, Professor Glantz,' said Dr. Petrie. 'The return journey is even more fun.'

'Fun my ass,' growled Glantz. 'I'll be lucky to come out of this alive.'

It took them twenty minutes to reach street level. The lobby was wide, spacious and glossy, with a veined black marble floor and walls clad in smokey mirrors. There were luxuriant potted palms, and a lingering scent of expensive perfumes.

The front doors of Concorde Tower were of thick tinted glass, and almost fifty feet wide. The initials CT were engraved in the glass in elegant Palace script. There was a set of inner doors of the same heavy glass, but they hadn't been fitted with the same security locks as the outer ones, and they probably weren't capable of holding an angry mob back for very long.

Dr. Petrie held Adelaide's arm. Outside the front-doors, pressed against the glass like distorted creatures in a gloomy vivarium, was a crowd of almost a hundred people. They screamed soundlessly at the building super and his five uniformed security men, who stood nervous but unmoving with billy-clubs in their hands. The crowd's fists pounded against the armoured windows. They were trying to break them with bricks and hammers and chunks of loose rubble, but so far they had only succeeded in cracking two of the doors, and badly scratching a third.

Kenneth Garunisch went over to Jack, the superintendent, 'How long do you think those doors can keep 'em out?'

'It's hard to tell,' said the super. He tried to keep his eyes averted from the men and women who were shrieking insults and obscenities at them from only inches away, their faces and hands squashed white and flat against the glass.

'A couple of hours? A day? How long?' prodded Garunisch.

The super shrugged. 'It depends. I've seen a few of 'em go down. I guess they got the plague out there pretty bad. But there's always more. What I'm worried about is if they find a tow-truck, and get a chain through those door-handles.'

'All right, Jack,' said Garunisch. 'If it looks like they are going to get in, don't hang around to fight 'em off. They won't be feeling very friendly towards you, so hightail it to the stairs and lock the fire door. Then keep climbing those stairs until you reach the first occupied floor — that's seven, isn't it? — and lock the fire doors all the way.'

'Okay, sir. I got you.'

Ivor Glantz came across to Dr. Petrie and touched his arm. For some reason, he was looking pale.

'Are you okay?' asked Dr. Petrie. 'You look a little sick. Is your heart all right?'

'I thought I saw someone,' whispered Ivor Glantz. 'Someone I know — out there.'

'Out there?' said Adelaide. 'Maybe it was someone who usually lives here, and they've been trying to get back in.'

Ivor Glantz shook his head. He left Dr. Petrie and Adelaide and walked towards the glass doors of Concorde Tower like a man who has seen a vision. Only a foot away from him, the silently-shrieking crowd were thumping harder and harder at the windows, and knocking chips of glass away with hammers and bricks.

Dr. Petrie was horrified and fascinated at the same time. Ivor Glantz stood there staring at the crowd, his arms hanging limply by his side, while the crowd were furiously howling and shrieking and battering at the glass.

Esmeralda suddenly said, 'Oh, my God.'

Dr. Petrie turned. 'What is it?' he asked her. 'What's wrong?'

'Oh, my God,' breathed Esmeralda. 'Just look.'

Right in the forefront of the shrieking crowd was a tall pale man with a bandage around his arm. He was staring at Ivor Glantz wild-eyed, and shaking his head from side to side in almost epileptic fear. The sight of this man had transfixed Ivor Glantz, and he seemed incapable of moving.

'It's Sergei Forward!' said Esmeralda. 'It's the Finnish man that father's been fighting in court! Oh, my God, they've got to let him in!'

Dr. Petrie took her arm, 'They can't. If they open those doors just an inch, then we won't stand a chance. They'll all get in. They'll kill us.'

'But don't you see,' said Esmeralda. 'If we let Sergei Forward in, he can help Pappa with his work! We could finish it in days instead of weeks! Pappa desperately needs help — and look, Sergei Forward could do it!'

Esmeralda ran over to her step-father, but Ivor Glantz turned away as if he hadn't even seen her. He walked unsteadily back to Dr. Petrie, and held out his hand.

'Professor Glantz?' said Dr. Petrie.

Ivor Glantz said, 'Give me a rifle.'

Dr. Petrie held back. 'I'm sorry, Professor.'

Glantz reached out and twisted the automatic weapon out of Dr. Petrie's grasp. His eyes were bright and feverish, and he almost seemed to be snuffling in rage.

'Professor Glantz — you can't do that! Professor Glantz!'

Dr. Petrie tried to snatch Ivor Glantz's sleeve, but Glantz pulled away, and he waved the rifle towards him.

'Get away!' he said harshly. 'Just get away!'

He turned back towards the window, and raised the rifle in his hands. The people who were pressed against the glass could see what he was going to do, but there was such a crush of people behind them that they couldn't escape. They simply opened their mouths in fear and screamed soundless screams. Sergei Forward appeared to be paralyzed with terror, and he could only stand there and watch, his hands pressed against the glass, as Ivor Glantz aimed at his face from only two or three inches away.

'Christ!' bellowed Garunisch. 'Stop him! Someone stop him!'

Jack the super made a half-hearted attempt at a football tackle, but Glantz stepped back and smacked him away. Before anyone else could move, he had lifted the rifle again and fired into the glass.

The whole door collapsed outwards in huge slices. Nearly quarter of a ton of reinforced glass sheared into hands, faces, upraised arms, and broke on the ground outside with a horrific flat ringing sound.

The shrieking of the crowd filled the lobby with hideous noise — cries of pain and terror, and cries of frustrated fury. They flooded into the reception area trampling over dead and dying bodies, and Ivor Glantz was swept away like a man carried out to sea.

'Back to the stairs!' bellowed Kenneth Garunisch. 'Back to the stairs!'

Dr. Petrie seized Adelaide and Esmeralda by the hand, and pulled them towards the emergency stairs. Kenneth Garunisch pushed them hurriedly through, and Herbert Gaines, whimpering in fright, followed after. Nicholas was hitting at a bloody-faced vagrant with his baseball bat, and just managed to push him away and duck through the door to the stairs before a mob of screaming men reached him, waving clubs and knives. Kenneth Garunisch slammed the door, locked it, and dropped the bolt across it. They heard the crowd bang up against the other side like an avalanche.

'Pappa!' cried Esmeralda. 'Where's Pappa?'

Kenneth Garunisch reached out and held her arm. 'Miss Baxter, it was no good. I couldn't keep the door open any longer.'

'You mean he's still — '

'He wouldn't have felt very much, believe me.'

'He's still out there? You mean he's still out there?'

'Miss Baxter, it was his own fault! If he hadn't fired that shot!'

'They'll kill him!' screamed Esmeralda, in an almost unbearably high-pitched voice. 'They'll kill him!'

Kenneth Garunisch said to Adelaide, 'Please — take her upstairs will you? We have to get out of here and lock all these fire doors.'

'You have to let me through!' said Esmeralda. 'I have to get him out of there!'

Garunisch stood firm. 'Miss Baxter, it's impossible.'

'I demand that you let me through!' insisted Esmeralda, suddenly haughty.

Kenneth Garunisch shook his head. 'Come on, Miss Baxter, let's just get out of here.'

Esmeralda glared furiously for a moment, but then her face softened and collapsed with anguish.

'Oh, God!' she sobbed. 'It's my fault! Oh God, it's all my fault! He was so good, you don't even understand!'

'We understand,' said Herbert Gaines, consolingly.

'You don't!' shrieked Esmeralda, off-key and hysterical. 'He was my lover!'

They locked and bolted every fire exit up to the ninth floor, and when they were there they took the added precaution of levering open the elevator doors and wedging them with a long gilt settee. The elevators had been switched off by now, but they just wanted to make sure that the furious mob downstairs didn't get them working again.

'Listen to that,' said Kenneth Garunisch, leaning over the open elevator shaft.

Dr. Petrie listened. From the first floor, there was a sound like strange trolls at the bottom of an echoing drain — screams and hoots and cries.

'Did you ever see The Third Man?' said Garunisch. 'You remember the scene at the top of the Ferris Wheel? When they looked down at the people below, like dots, and Harry Lime says something like — 'would you feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving for ever?' Well, what would you say if one of those animals down there stopped screaming? Maybe Gaines was right. When it comes down to it, just show me one American who gives a fuck about any other American.'

Dr. Petrie said, 'I'm a doctor, Mr. Garunisch. I try to give at least half a fuck.'

Kenneth Garunisch looked at Dr. Petrie narrowly. 'You think I'm wrong, don't you? For the strike, and all that?'

'Does it matter?'

Garunisch looked down into the depths of the elevator shaft. The distorted screams and groans continued.

'It matters to me, Dr. Petrie. I stood up for a principle I believe in. If the whole of America has to die for that principle, then I still believe it's worth it.'

'Even if the principle kills the very people it's supposed to protect?'

Kenneth Garunisch turned away. 'Principles are everything, Dr. Petrie. Without principles, we cease to be living beings.'

Herbert Gaines came up. His yellow safari suit was smudged with dust, and his leonine hair was sticking up like fuse wire.

'I'm sorry to interrupt this debating society, but I think we ought to start barricading our apartments. Maybe we ought to see what food we have available, too, and share it out.'

Esmeralda, who was calmer now, almost uncannily calm, was sitting at the opposite end of the ninth-floor landing smoking a cigarette.

'We have a whole freezer full,' she said. 'Lamb, beef, hamburger, chickens, turkeys, vegetables. I guess we can hold out for months.'

'So have we,' nodded Garunisch. 'How about you, Mr. Gaines?'

Nicholas spoke for him. 'Oh, we're fine, too, aren't we, Herbert? I think our supplies lean a little heavily on ready-made goulasch, but I suppose my digestion can just about stand it. Herbert had one of his cooking jags last month, and goulasch is the only damned thing he can do.'

Herbert Gaines turned around angrily: 'What's the matter with my sole veronique? Or my cous-cous?'

Nicholas sighed. 'Oh, Herbert, they're lovely. Can't you ever take a goddamned joke?'

Dr. Petrie took Adelaide by the hand. 'I suggest we all stay in one apartment. You can lock all your valuables up in your own apartments, but if we all stay in separate places, we've lost any means of communication. Supposing the mob gets up here and breaks open your door, Mr. Gaines, or yours, Mr. Garunisch, and you've got no way of calling out for help from the rest of us?'

'I think Dr. Petrie has a point,' said Kenneth Garunisch. 'We can move beds and food into one condo, and defend it together.'

Esmeralda stood up. She was white-faced and her eyes were smudges of shadow. She looked like Ophelia, drowning in the weeds.

'If we're going to do that' she said, 'we'd better use my place. We have a closed-circuit TV on the door — and apart from that, the settee in the den turns into a double-bed.'

'Is that agreed then?' said Garunisch.

'What about Mr. and Mrs. Blaufoot?' asked Herbert Gaines. 'Don't you think we ought to have a word with them?'

While the rest of the survivors shifted beds into Esmeralda's apartment, and carried in food and belongings, Kenneth Garunisch went up to Mr. and Mrs. Blaufoot's door and rang the bell.

There was a long pause. Then Mr. Blaufoot said, 'Who is it?'

'It's me, Mr. Bloofer. Mr. Garunisch from downstairs. Can you open the door?'

There was another long pause. Then Mr. Blaufoot said, 'Leave us alone. We're all right.'

Kenneth Garunisch sighed. 'Mr. Bloofer,' he said leaning against the door, 'you have to know that a mob of people have broken into the tower. They could be coming upstairs to make trouble. Apart from that, they've probably got plague. Now, can you open the door?'

He heard the locks and bolts being drawn back, and the solid mahogany door was opened an inch. Mr. Blaufoot's glittering eyes looked out from the darkness.

'Mr. Bloofer? Please?' said Garunisch.

Mr. Blaufoot opened the door all the way, and stepped back. Kenneth Garunisch walked into the thick-carpeted condominium, and was surprised to find that it was in darkness. Across the room, sitting in a tall carved chair, Mrs. Blaufoot sat in a black dress, pale and red-eyed.

'Are you folks all right?' said Garunisch. 'Is there anything wrong?'

The Blaufoots were silent. Mr. Blaufoot walked over and stood next to his wife.

Kenneth Garunisch looked at them uneasily. Then he saw the framed photograph on the small polished Regency table, just in front of Mrs. Blaufoot. He stepped over and carefully picked it up. She looked very much like Mrs. Blaufoot.

Mrs. Blaufoot said coldly, 'Put it down, please.'

Garunisch frowned, but he laid the photograph back on the table. He said huskily, 'Is this your daughter?'

Mr. Blaufoot nodded. 'Yes, Mr. Garunisch, it is. We heard about her on Sunday morning, shortly before the telephone system went dead. A relative of ours had managed to escape from Florida early in the plague, and he was able to get to St. Louis. This relative had seen her.'

'And is she all right?' said Garunisch. Then he looked around at the closely-drawn drapes and Mrs. Blaufoot's black dress, and said, 'Well no, I guess she's not. I'm sorry. That was clumsy of me.'

'She's dead, Mr. Garunisch,' said Mrs. Blaufoot. 'She died of lack of medical attention, with bronchial pneumonia. She didn't even have plague. The medical workers were out on strike, and my daughter died.'

Mr. Blaufoot added, as if it made any difference, 'She was going to be a concert pianist.'

Kenneth Garunisch coughed. He hardly knew what to say. In the end, he muttered, 'Listen, I'm really very sorry.'

Mrs. Blaufoot stared at the screwed-up handkerchief between her bony hands. 'Sorry isn't really enough, is it?'

Garunisch shrugged. 'No, I guess it isn't. But I am sorry, and there is nothing more I can say. I acted, when I called that strike, according to my lights.'

Mrs. Blaufoot looked up. 'In that case, Mr. Garunisch, I hope that your lights soon go out, like ours did.'

During the night, most of the sixty or seventy people who were huddled together in the lobby of Concorde Tower died of plague. The black floor and the polished mirrors on the walls reflected their painful, grotesque faces as the bacilli swelled their joints and clogged their lungs. Their groaning and whimpering echoed like a terrible chorus of damned souls, but it wasn't the worst noise. The worst noise was the rustle and scamper of rats — big gray sewer rats — as they scuttled over the sleeping and dying bodies, and gnawed at dead and living flesh alike. Some of the rats sniffed at the locked fire door, which even the angriest rioters hadn't been able to break down, and some of them poured into the open elevator doors and dropped, with the soft thud of furry bodies down to the basement.

They scented warmth and they scented food and they began to climb, twisting their way up the elevator cables. The empty shaft echoed with their twittering and squeaking, and the scratching of their claws on the steel wires. Eventually, they reached the ninth floor, where the doors were wedged open by the gilt settee, and they ran out of the elevator shaft and on to the landing. The upper fire doors had been left open, and they wriggled and pattered up the stairs, sniffing at locked apartment doors and over-running floor after floor.

In three hours, the stairs and landings of Concorde Tower, right up to the roof level, were a scampering mass of ravenous rats.

Dr. Petrie was deeply asleep when someone touched his forehead. He stirred, and unconsciously tried to brush the hand away. He had been dreaming about Miami, and he thought he had been eating a picnic lunch on the beach with Prickles and Anton Selmer. He opened his eyes, and found himself in the den of Ivor Glantz's condominium, lying on the settee now converted into a double bed.

Esmeralda whispered, 'Sssh.'

He could see her in the gloom, her face pale and sculptured. She was wearing her black curly hair tied back with a ribbon, and she smelled warmly of Arpege.

'What is it?' he whispered back.

'Sssh,' she repeated.

He looked quickly to one side, and saw that he was now alone in the bed. He had been sleeping with Kenneth Garunisch, while Adelaide and Prickles and Mrs. Garunisch shared the master bed in the main bedroom.

Esmeralda said, 'Garunisch couldn't sleep. He's in the kitchen, having a smoke and reading a book.'

'He reads books?' joked Dr. Petrie. 'You amaze me.'

'Don't talk,' said Esmeralda, laying a finger across his lips. 'Even walls have ears.'

Without another word, she lifted the bedsheets and climbed in beside him. The bed creaked, and she suppressed a giggle. Then she curled her arms around him, and she was all soft and warm and slithery in her pure silk nightdress.

'We can't do this,' hissed Dr. Petrie, in spite of the fact that his body was all too obviously saying he could.

'Don't talk,' said Esmeralda. 'Just remember what I've been through and give me a chance.'

He sat up, and held her wrists. He could see her moist lips gleaming in the dim light of the den. 'Esmeralda, we can't do this.'

'You're a doctor, aren't you?'

'Sure, but — '

'But nothing! If you're a doctor, you know the importance of therapy after a psychological shock. I don't want love, Leonard, I just need a few moments' oblivion!'

He didn't release her wrists. 'Thanks for the compliment,' he whispered. 'Now I'm only good for a few moments' oblivion!'

'You know I didn't mean that.'

'Well, what did you mean?'

'I mean that this is an emergency. A medical and psychological and romantic emergency. For Christ's sake, Leonard, we could all be dead tomorrow. Don't you believe in final grand gestures?'

'If I believed in final grand gestures, I'd be lying dead as a door-nail in Miami, Florida.'

'What's that got to do with us making love?'

'I don't know.'

'Well, kiss me,' she said, 'and I'll show you.' He could have resisted. He could have said no. But her long warm thigh moved against his bare leg, and her hand reached down and cupped his tightened balls, and her sexuality washed over him like a wave of drunkenness. He leaned forward and kissed her, and their tongues touched, and their teeth bit.

They didn't say a word. She pushed him back against the bed, and sat astride him, lifting her glossy silk nightdress around her hips. He reached up and felt her hardened nipples through the slippery material, and she sighed, and kissed his forehead, and raised herself up so that he could socket himself between her thighs. Then she slowly sat down on him, squirming her hips as she did so, so that he felt a massaging warmth rising up him. The door of the den was still ajar. They knew that anyone could walk in at any moment. But they made love slowly and relished every sensation it brought, until they couldn't suppress their urgency any more, and they were panting at each other with bright eyes and expressions of something like pain.

Esmeralda twitched and shook violently. Leonard Petrie felt something grip him between the legs, and they both achieved the few moments of oblivion they were looking for. Then they were lying side by side, quiet and wet, and even if it wasn't a final grand gesture it was at least a kind of temporary therapy for traumatized minds that had been through more emotions and horrors than it was possible to take.

Dr. Petrie kissed her. 'You'd better go now,' he said gently. 'Mr. Garunisch is a fast smoker.'

Esmeralda cuddled him close, and pressed her lips against his side.

Kenneth Garunisch, in blue-striped pyjamas, put his head around the door and said, 'Hey, you two. Don't hurry on my account. I'm just going to finish this chapter.'

He was wakened by the sound of a helicopter. He sat up, listening. Esmeralda had long since gone, and Kenneth Garunisch was lying next to him with his face buried in the pillow, snoring. The helicopter noise came and went, as if it was circling around somewhere in the vicinity. He climbed out of bed, tugged on his pants, and went to the window.

At first, he couldn't see where it was. The noise of the rotors was bounced off buildings in all directions, and the sky was gray with cloud. But then he saw it turning around the 38-storey United Nations Plaza building, and circling towards Concorde Tower with its blades flickering and its navigation lights shining through the murk.

Kenneth Garunisch sat up, rubbing his eyes. 'What's going on?' he grunted.

'It's a helicopter.' said Dr. Petrie. 'It's been circling around here for a couple of minutes. Maybe it's the cavalry.'

Garunisch swung his legs out of bed and came to take a look. 'Some hopes,' he said. 'They've probably just come for a snoop at the doomed survivors.'

'Do you think we ought to wave?' said Dr. Petrie. 'There's always a chance they're looking for people to rescue.'

'Do what you like,' said Garunisch.

The helicopter was really close to the tower now, circling slowly around and shining a powerful light in their direction. It was a small two-seater Bell, with a perspex bubble cockpit. Dr. Petrie waved both hands.

At that moment, Herbert Gaines pushed into the room, hastily tying his Japanese bathrobe around his waist.

'Is that a helicopter?' he asked.

'It ain't a June bug,' said Kenneth Garunisch.

'They've come!' said Gaines. 'They said they'd come, and they have!'

Adelaide came into the room and took Dr. Petrie's arm. 'Leonard — what is it?'

Herbert Gaines was elated. 'It's the people from Washington! They called me on Saturday when the first news of the plague leaked out. They said they'd bring in a helicopter to rescue me! And here they are!'

'Well,' said Dr. Petrie, looking at Kenneth Garunisch. 'It looks like politics pay and principles poop out.'

Garunisch shrugged.

Herbert Gaines went to the window and flapped his arms about frantically. For a while it didn't look as if the helicopter pilot had seen him, but then the dazzling searchlight probed into the apartment window, and Herbert Gaines was lit up like an actor on a stage. 'I'm here!' he shrieked. 'I'm here! I'm here!'

They saw the helicopter pilot pointing towards the roof, and then the machine turned a half-circle and rose out of sight. Herbert Gaines, whimpering with excitement, rushed into the sitting-room and pulled on his yellow safari suit. The rest of them watched him in tense silence.

'Well,' said Herbert, lacing his shoes, 'I think I'm ready to go!'

Nicholas, scruffy from sleep and wearing nothing but a dark brown bath-towel, said, 'Is that it? You're just going?'

Gaines stopped lacing his shoe and looked up. Then he cast his eyes around at everybody else, and saw their expressionless, unsympathetic faces, and bit his lip.

'Well… yes. I mean, yes!'

'What about me?' said Nicholas. 'You're just leaving me here? And what about all these other people?'

Herbert Gaines lowered his eyes. 'Nicky,' he said, 'the helicopter only has room for one. You saw that it's a two-seater. I can't take anybody with me.'

Garunisch coughed. 'Couldn't we draw lots?' he said gruffly. 'Or maybe one of the ladies should go instead?'

'Listen,' said Gaines, almost desperate, 'it's up there now! It's waiting! It won't wait for ever!'

Garunisch examined the floor. 'You're an old man, Mr. Gaines,' he said harshly. 'You're an old man and you've had a long life. Now, supposing one of these young ladies went instead of you. Or what about Nicholas here? He's a good friend of yours. Don't you think enough of Nicholas to give up your place in that chopper, and let him live?'

Herbert Gaines stood up.

'They sent the helicopter for me,' he insisted. 'The only reason it's here is because of me. The party needs me, and that's why they've taken the risk. What do you think they're going to say if that thing flies all the way back to Washington with Nicky aboard? Do you think they've spent all that money, and wasted all that energy, just to educate a half-educated faggot who can't even cook?'

Nicholas stared open-mouthed at Herbert as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

Garunisch grunted. 'It that's how you feel, Mr. Gaines, perhaps you'd better just get the hell out. I don't think any of the rest of us would like to stand in the way of your cowardice, seeing as how it's so pressing.'

Gaines said, 'Look — as soon as I get to Washington — I'll make sure they send another helicopter back — a bigger one — for all of you — '

Garunisch flapped a hand at him. 'Don't bother. You might strain your brain trying to remember to do it, and we'd hate to see that happen.' Adelaide said, 'Mr. Gaines?'

Herbert Gaines was buttoning up his safari suit and making for the door. 'Yes?' he said.

Adelaide didn't answer at once. Not until Herbert Gaines had turned around and looked at her. 'I saw your movie once, Mr. Gaines.'

Herbert Gaines' mouth twitched. 'My dear, the helicopter's waiting — I really can't — '

Adelaide said, 'I like the line when Hannah Carson says to Captain Dashfoot: "Oh, you brave, brave, honorable man, would the world were all like you."'

Gaines paused. In a quiet voice he said, 'My dear, you've got a regrettably good memory.'

He stood at the door, his hand on the latch, so obviously striking a tragic theatrical pose that Nicholas said, 'For Christ's sake, Herbert, just fuck off.'

Herbert Gaines lifted his lion-like head. 'I will send more helicopters,' he said, in his richest voice. 'I promise you that upon my life.' He opened the door.

He was so involved in his melodramatic pose that when the rats rushed at him, their heavy bodies thumping against the half-open door, he was taken completely by surprise. The rats leaped and jumped at him, and more of them scuttled into the apartment and disappeared under the makeshift beds and into the drapes. Dr. Petrie ran across the sitting-room and banged himself against the door so that it slammed shut. He crunched four or five rats in the door-jamb, and they squealed and writhed, with blood running out of their narrow noses. Adelaide and Esmeralda and Mrs. Garunisch, panting with fright, picked up cushions and brooms and chased after the rats that had managed to get into the apartment.

Herbert Gaines had a rat swinging from his sleeve. He flapped at it uselessly until Kenneth Garunisch picked up a heavy cigarette lighter from the table and knocked the rat away. Then he stepped on its head and killed it.

'Oh, Mother of God,' gasped Gaines. 'Oh, Mother of God!'

'Well, darling,' said Nicholas, turning to Herbert Gaines. 'So much for your helicopter now.'

Herbert Gaines was shaking. 'I'm still going!' he said. 'Don't think that a few rats can stop me!'

'A few?' said Dr. Petrie. 'Did you see how many there were? The whole building must be thick with them!'

Herbert Gaines said, 'It won't wait, you know! The helicopter won't wait!'

Kenneth Garunisch was helping his wife to corner the last stray rat and beat it to death. He came over to Herbert Gaines with blood on his hands. Behind him, Mrs. Garunisch had suddenly gone into a burst of hysterical weeping, and Esmeralda was trying to soothe her.

'Mr. Gaines,' he said, 'you're crazy. If you go out there, you won't last two minutes. Those rats are fierce and they're hungry. I've come up against them before, when I was a kid, and I've seen a man have half his nose bitten off. That was just one. There must be hundreds out there.'

Dr. Petrie looked at the old actor and said, 'It's no use, you know, Mr. Gaines. You might as well admit it.'

Herbert Gaines looked up at the ceiling. Just a few storeys above him, perched impatiently on the roof, was his means of escape, his way to a glittering political destiny.

Kenneth Garunisch said, 'Power's an attractive thing, Mr. Gaines, ain't it? You've tasted it now, haven't you, and wasn't that taste good?'

Herbert Gaines stared at him. 'I don't know what you mean. I have to go, that's all. They sent the helicopter and I have to go.'

He paced urgently across the room. Then he said, 'Fire! That's it! They don't like fire!'

'Mr. Gaines,' said Garunisch, 'what the hell are you talking about?'

'It's true!' said Gaines. 'You can always fight them with fire! It's in that movie — River Boat! Now, where's that Variety we brought down with us? Nicky — where is it?'

Nicholas, sulking, didn't even answer. Herbert Gaines fumbled around in his touzled bed until he found the paper. He rolled it up, and brandished it around. 'This, my friends, will be my salvation!' He picked up the table lighter that Garunisch had used to kill the rat, and he flicked it. Then he carefully applied the flame to the edge of Variety, until the paper was burning like a torch.

Dr. Petrie stepped forward, but Kenneth Garunisch reached out and held his arm.

'Let him go, doctor. Just help me make sure that no more rats get into the place. You can't stand between a man and his destiny, even if you think he's a shit.'

Dr. Petrie said, 'But it's insane! He won't last a minute out there!'

'That's his problem. He wants to go.' Nicholas, standing next to them, nodded his head. 'You're right, Mr. Garunisch. Herbert's a born martyr. You'd have to kill him to stop him killing himself.'

Herbert Gaines was making sure that the copy of Variety was well alight. Then he went to the door, and held it in front of him.

'You wait till they see this!' he said triumphantly. 'This'll sort them out!'

Dr. Petrie and Kenneth Garunisch positioned themselves behind the door so that they could slam it shut the second that Herbert Gaines had gone through. The room was already smokey and filled with black wisps of ash, but Herbert had his paper burning well now, and was ready to go.

He opened the door, waving the blazing Variety in a wide fluttering arc. The rats went for his legs like gray greasy torpedoes, but the flames were enough to keep them from jumping at his face and throat.

Kicking three or four rats away, Dr. Petrie shut the door again, and locked it.

Herbert had three flights of stairs to go to reach the roof. The first flight wasn't too bad, because he managed to knock most of the rats away from his legs, and his paper was still burning. Halfway up the second flight, with his heart pounding and his sixty-year-old lungs beginning to feel the strain, he started to falter. The flames abruptly went out, and he was left with nothing but a half-burned Variety to beat off the most vicious animals he had ever seen.

The third flight was the beginning of his Calvary. The rats were hanging on to his arms now, and biting into his back arid his sides. His legs were thick with them, and he could feel their teeth in his thighs. He kept his hands over his face and stumbled up blindly, but they still leaped up at him and bit into his fingers, until his hands were gloved in rats.

The agony of it was enormous. He couldn't even cry out, unless they bit into his mouth, and there was already a huge brown sewer rat dangling from the soft flesh under his chin. He tried to keep his mind above the pain, above this dreadful cloak of biting, squeaking creatures, and firmly concentrated on the roof — the roof — and his wonderful helicopter.

He had to take one hand away from his face to open the door to the roof. His arm seemed to weigh hundreds of pounds, and it was swinging with rats like the fence round a trapper's cabin. One of the beasts launched itself at his cheek, and he lost precious seconds hitting it away.

The helicopter pilot was a 36-year-old veteran called Andy Folger. He was checking his watch impatiently when the roof door opened, and the first thing he did was start up his engine and get his rotors turning. He cast a quick eye over the fuel reading, and then reached over to open the opposite door of the cockpit. The quicker he got this mission over, the better he was going to like it.

He heard a muffled screaming noise, and he turned. He had a feeling in his stomach like an elevator dropping thirty floors in ten seconds. Folger stared at the hunched heap of wriggling gray fur that was moving towards him. He couldn't understand what he was seeing at first, and when he did, his mind almost blanked out.

He didn't see the rats that ran out of the open door to the stairs, and scuttled across to his helicopter. He reached over to close the cockpit door again, and one of them leaped up and bit his hand. He banged the rat against the side of the cockpit, but it clung on, and while it clung on, another rat jumped into the helicopter, and another.

He beat the animal away from his hand, revved the engine, and pulled back the stick. The helicopter's rotors whistled faster and faster, and the Bell lifted off from the rooftop and circled away towards the north.

Three rats scurried around the cockpit, and one of them jumped at Folger's face. He tried to smack it away, but then another rat nipped at his arm.

The helicopter went out of control. Wrestling against twisting rats and a bucking control stick, Andy Folger saw the horizon turn upside down, and the buildings of First Avenue swivel all around him. He saw streets — sky — buildings — streets — and then the helicopter fluttered and twisted and plummeted eighteen storeys. It fell on to the glass roof of a supermarket and exploded in a hot spray of fire that rolled upwards and burned itself out.

On the top of Concorde Tower, Herbert Gaines neither saw nor heard. His mind was still somewhere inside that costume of rats, but it was dwindling very quickly, and was soon to be gone.

Sometime during the afternoon, the power from their generator died. They were sitting quietly around the apartment, and the lights suddenly dimmed and went out. 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 fiancé 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 inaudibly. '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.'

He nodded. 'That's what Margaret used to say.'

'Margaret?'

'My ex-wife. She's dead now. She died in the plague.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Well — I think the only reason she wanted me to realize my potential was so that she could bask in reflected glory.'

Esmeralda smiled. He couldn't be sure, because his vision was so blurred, but she might have been crying.

'There's only one sort of glory that counts, Leonard,' she said. 'And that's the glory of survival. You'd better go now. They're waiting for you.'

He held out his huge swaddled arms, and held her close, then he turned around and padded back into the sitting-room. Adelaide was waiting for him, all wrapped up, and Prickles was nothing more than a big blue bundle on the settee.

'All right, everybody,' said Dr. Petrie. 'This is it!'

Kenneth Garunisch and Nicholas helped him to get Prickles on his back. She clung around his shoulders, and they tied her firmly in position with a long leather belt from an old suitcase.

Nicholas prepared to open the door to let them out. Garunisch and his wife held broom-handles in case the rats rushed in.

'Are you ready?' said Nicholas. Dr. Petrie nodded.

'Okay then — now!'

The front door was flung open. The rats scrambled at them like a tide of filthy water, squealing with ravenous hunger. As Dr. Petrie stumbled forward with Prickles on his back, urgently pushing Adelaide in front of him, he could see nothing through his facemask but a torrential swarm of furry bodies, filling the hallway and writhing on the stairs.

They made the first flight down to the fifteenth floor with rats suspended from their quilted shins and hanging from their shoulders. Dr. Petrie kicked the rats around his legs with every other step, and tried to smash them against the walls, but even when they were dead they clung on, until their bodies were pulled away and devoured by more clamoring rats.

Adelaide, her arms heavy with the rodents, tripped and fell against the stairs. Dr. Petrie, with Prickles on his back, could do nothing more than nudge her. She managed to struggle up to her feet again, turning and twisting herself to try and shake some of the rats off, but all they did was sway on her arms like over-heavy tassels from a curtain.

They made it down to the twelfth floor with rats all over them, gnawing and tearing at their quilts and blankets, and turning them into shambling man-sized beasts of wriggling brown fur. Adelaide fell again, and Dr. Petrie had to tear rats away from her back to try and reduce their disgusting weight. He was now so overwhelmed by the creatures that he was literally tearing them in half to pull them off.

It took them a further ten minutes to reach the ninth floor. Dr. Petrie was smothered in sweat, and panting for breath in the foul air. The building's air-conditioning had stopped with the power failure, and the corridors were so soaked in the acrid urine of rats that his eyes smarted and he could hardly make his lungs work. Prickles, clinging to his back, was a muscle-tearing load that he could barely even think about.

He waded knee-deep through squirming rats towards the fire door to the next flight of stairs. The door was locked — and jammed. Beating rats away from his quilted hood, he forced his way over to Adelaide and shouted, 'It's stuck! I can't get it open!'

Adelaide stumbled against him. 'You have to!' she screamed. 'I can't take any more! You have to!'

Dr. Petrie peered around the hallway through his face-mask. The gilt settee was still wedged in the open elevator doors, and he grabbed Adelaide's shoulder and pointed towards the shaft.

'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.'