“Saracen examined the twelve-year-old boy who was only semi- conscious and in great distress. He knew within seconds what the problem was. “He’s the second,” he said almost inaudibly as his throat tightened.
“The second what?” asked Tremaine.
“He’s the second case of bubonic plague I’ve seen today.”
Saracen phoned MacQuillan as soon as the patients were confirmed and waiting transfer to the school for hospitalisation. The twelve year old boy who was too ill to be moved would remain at the General.
MacQuillan sounded as if he would rather not have been told when Saracen broke the news. “No ideas at all?” asked Saracen.
“I suppose you could argue that the boy contracted the bubonic form and then gave his family pneumonic plague but as to how he himself became infected I simply don’t know.”
“But if we don’t find out we could lose the whole town,” hissed Saracen, afraid of being overheard.
“Yes,” said MacQuillan.
Saracen was taken aback at MacQuillan’s apparent complacency. He also thought that MacQuillan sounded a bit strange. “Are you all right?” he asked.
MacQuillan answered the question with a snort.
“Have you heard from Porton?”
“You had better come over.” The phone went dead.
“James!” came Tremaine’s cry from the reception area and Saracen hurried back to see what the matter was. He found that one of the women patients had gone into a coughing spasm. Bloody sputum frothed up from her lungs like lava from a volcano and her back arched in agony making it difficult for Tremaine to keep her steady on the trolley. Saracen did what he could to help but the spasm continued until the woman’s body suddenly went rigid, her eyes opened wide as if in disbelief and her head finally fell back in death. The soldiers took her away.
Saracen and Tremaine cleaned the mess off the front of their suits before returning to the boy patient to find him delirious and clutching at something round his neck. Saracen thought at first that it was a door key but it turned out to be some kind of medallion. He removed it and looked at it briefly before handing it to Tremaine while he dealt with the boy. It was rectangular, about five centimetres in length and had a simple design on it woven round the letter ‘S’.
Tremaine was surprised at how heavy it was. “This is very old,” he said.
“Is it,” said Saracen without much interest.
“In fact, I’ve seen this motif somewhere recently. Now where was
it …”
Saracen had ensured that the boy was more comfortable before calling ward twenty with a request that the boy be admitted there rather than be taken on to the school. He took the opportunity to ask about Lindeman.
“She’s very low, it can’t be long.”
“It was on Claire’s desk!” said Tremaine.
Saracen, who was washing his hands, could not think for a moment what Tremaine was talking about. “What was?” he asked.
Tremaine continued to look at the medallion in his hand and said, “There was a picture in one of her books on Skelmoris of this motif.”
“I think you must be mistaken,” said Saracen.
“No, I’m sure of it.”
“Right now we have two cases of bubonic plague to concern us. I’ve got a feeling they hold the key to this nightmare.”
“But this might be important,” Tremaine insisted. “One of these cases had this round his neck. It might be some kind of a lead. Why don’t you drop it off at Claire’s place on your way home and see what she says?
“All right.” conceded Saracen. He had no wish to see Claire but was too tired to argue. “But first I’m going to see MacQuillan.”
Tremaine dropped the medallion into disinfectant and swirled it around for a while before rinsing it under the tap and handing it to Saracen who slipped it into his pocket.
MacQuillan had his back to Saracen when he came into the room. Saracen coughed and he turned slowly to reveal the fact that he had a glass in his hand and, by the look in his eyes, had had quite a bit to drink already. Saracen looked at him quizzically.
“Drink?” said MacQuillan with a humourless smile. Saracen shook his head. “What did Porton Down say?” he asked.
MacQuillan looked at him for a long moment before saying, “The antiserum we’ve all been waiting for … it’s not coming.” He drank deeply from his glass.
“What the hell do you mean it’s not coming?” demanded Saracen in a hoarse whisper.
MacQuillan smiled bitterly and said. “There is no antiserum; there will be no antiserum. They say that the Skelmore strain is so poorly antigenic that it’s no use at all in antibody production. They can’t make an antiserum; they can’t make a vaccine. Finito.”
Saracen sank slowly into a chair. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered.
“In my experience he’s usually busy when you need him,” said MacQuillan.
Saracen ignored the comment. Drunken cynicism he could do without. “We’ll just have to ride the storm until it burns out then,” he said.
“It’s not going to ‘burn out’,” said MacQuillan quietly. “That bastard bug has won just as it always did.”
“If we get help from outside and keep our nerve we can still beat it,” said Saracen. “We can’t just give up hope.”
MacQuillan shook his head as if listening to a child tell him that the earth was flat. “There is no hope,” he said. “It’s over.”
Saracen sensed that there was more than cynicism behind MacQuillan’s last comment. “What do you mean?” he whispered.
MacQuillan drained his glass and refilled it. He said, “There will be no help from outside because none will be requested. The bug is immune to everything that medicine can offer. Its epidemiology is all wrong and we are helpless. Beasdale knows this so there will be a reversion to traditional methods.”
“What ‘traditional’ methods?” asked Saracen aggressively but the aggression was born of fear.
“Fire,” replied MacQuillan.
Saracen’s head reeled as he realised what MacQuillan was inferring. “You must be mad!” he accused. “Do you know what you are suggesting?”
“Beasdale will have his orders to carry out if things get out of control and that is now the case.”
“But you cannot seriously believe that he will destroy the town. Christ! This is England in 1990.”
MacQuillan’s silence told Saracen that he did not retract anything. He started to pace up and down the room, occasionally shaking his head in unwillingness to believe what he had heard. “It’s obscene!” he protested. “It’s immoral! It’s…”
“Practical,” said MacQuillan.
“But how can they just wipe out a whole town?”
“I told you. Fire.”
“Fire?”
“Oh I don’t mean soldiers running around putting torches to houses. I mean modern fire, scientific fire, liquid fire, all consuming chemical fire.”
“How do you know this?” demanded Saracen.
MacQuillan’s Scots accent had become more pronounced in drink. “Might I remind you, laddie, that I don’t work at Woolworths.”
“So you work at Porton Down, the defence establishment.”
“Defence! That’s a laugh. Have you noticed? Everyone is defending. No one ever offends so if no one is offending what the hell is all this defence for?” MacQuillan found his own philosophy hilarious.
“How do you know?” insisted Saracen.
“Contingency plans. There are contingency plans for this sort of situation. The strategy is to contain and
