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.'
