With Adelaide carrying Prickles behind him, he pushed his way through the shouting crowds towards the hospital entrance. One woman with disheveled hair and tom tights was shrieking at a picket, ‘Bastards! Murderers! You’re all going to hell!’
The picket was yelling back, ‘That aint true! That aint 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 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
