‘Prickles,’ he whispered softly, ‘try and get some sleep. I think we’re going to have to wait until morning before we go any further.’
Prickles was almost asleep already, but he had been keeping her awake in case they ran into trouble. All the way from Lake City, he had been singing her nursery songs and half-remembered rhymes, just to keep her alert. He was surprised how many he remembered.
Prickles, sucking her thumb, said sleepily, ‘Sing the song about the blanket lady.’
Dr. Petrie coughed. His mouth was dry, and he felt exhausted. ‘No, baby, that’s enough for tonight.’
‘Please, Daddy.’
Dr. Petrie sighed. Then in a hoarse, off-key voice, he began to sing,
‘There was an old woman tossed up in a blanket
Seventeen times as high as the moon;
Where she was going I could not but ask it,
For in her hand she carried a broom.
“Old woman, old woman, old woman,” quoth I;
“O whither, O whither, O whither, so high?”
“To sweep the cobwebs from the sky
And I’ll be with you by-and-by!”’
Prickles smiled. Her eyelids dropped. In a few moments, she was fast asleep, her breathing quiet and regular. As a last check, Dr. Petrie gently lifted her wrist and timed her pulse. It was normal.
He closed the car windows, leaving only a small gap for ventilation, and settled down to get some rest himself. His neck muscles creaked with tiredness, and he felt unbearably cramped. But after five minutes of restless shifting around, his eyes began to close, and in ten minutes he was asleep, his head bowed over the steering-wheel like a man in prayer.
He was awakened four hours later by a cool dawn breeze flowing into the car. He lifted his head, and blinked. He felt as if his back was clamped in irons, and one of his feet was completely numb. He looked across at Prickles, who was still soundly sleeping, and then he checked his surroundings in the gray first light of another day.
They were closer to the state line than he had guessed, and he could see the barricades across the highway a mile or so in the distance. It was too hazy to see how many National Guardsmen there were around, but he guessed they’d be out in force.
He climbed out of the car and stretched. Then he opened the trunk and took out some of their provisions – some Kraft cheese, a packet of crackers, and a can of orange juice. He looked pensively for a moment at some of Adelaide’s tennis rackets and shoes strewn hurriedly in the back, but then he closed the trunk and pushed Adelaide out of his thoughts. He had spent the whole of yesterday afternoon worrying about her, and wondering if he ought to go back, but there seemed to be something about the plague that was destroying normal values and normal sentimentality. Perhaps there was too much death around to think about love.
Dr. Petrie nudged Prickles awake, and she yawned and shook her head like a small puppy. They sat in silence, sipping orange juice and eating crackers, and he looked at her, his daughter, and considered what kind of a world he had brought her into. In less than an hour, they were going to try and cross the state line, and that meant that both of them could be shot dead.
‘Have you had enough?’ he asked her, as she finished her juice.
‘I wish I had some toast,’ she said, looking at him seriously.
He gave her a small grin. ‘So do I,’ he told her. ‘In fact, I’d do anything for a piece of toast.’
He packed everything away, brushed the crumbs from his crumpled slacks, and then walked along the highway a short distance to see if he could work out how to evade the quarantine barrier. He shaded his eyes against the early sun, but it was impossible to distinguish any signs of life around the National Guard trucks and jeeps and barbed wire. As far as he could make out, the best thing to do would be to leave the Torino where it was, and try to skirt around the barricade to the east, on foot.
Then they could pick up Route 41, and commandeer another car. It would take most of the morning, particularly at Prickles’ pace, but it was better than trying to force their way through the barrier in a show of dangerous heroics. Even National Guardsmen shot straight sometimes.
Dr. Petrie went back to the Torino, started it up, and drove it off the side of the highway into a sparse clump of palms. He slung his gun over his shoulder, quickly filled a bag with cans of orange juice and food, and knelt down beside the car to lace up Prickles’ walking shoes.
‘Do we have to walk?’ she asked plaintively. She was looking much better than yesterday, but she was still pale.
‘I’m afraid so. You don’t want to end up as an angel, do you?’
‘No. I don’t like angels.’
Keeping to the side of the highway, they began to walk northwards towards the state line. The clouds were gradually fading, and the day was growing hot. A tall man and a small girl, side by side. Their feet crunched over the rough fill beside the road, and Dr. Petrie had to stop a couple of times to winkle stones out of Prickles’ shoes.
He was about to leave the highway and strike off northeast when he heard the distant sound of a car, coming up behind them from the south. He turned, and strained his eyes. The sun flashed off a windshield, and the noise came closer. He took Prickles’
