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
