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
