'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
