Plague by Graham Masterton

going to
get it ourselves.’
    ‘We’re not? I
always thought doctors and nurses were first-line casualties with plague.’
    ‘Maybe they
are. But it was nine o’clock this morning when you came into contact with David
Kelly, wasn’t it? And are you sick yet? I came into closer contact than you,
and I’m okay. Perhaps we’re going to get lucky, and stay alive.’
    ‘I still think
you ought to call Firenza. Tell him again how bad this is.’
    Dr. Selmer
shrugged. ‘It’s not that he doesn’t believe me. It’s his reputation. I don’t
think he wants to be known as the health official with the highest mortality
rate in the history of Florida.’
    ‘That’s
absurd,’ said Dr. Petrie.
    ‘You think so?
Go and talk to him yourself. Meanwhile, you can do me a favor.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Tell this
guy’s wife that he’s gone. Her name’s Haskins. She’s waiting by the water fountain,
just down the corridor.’
    Dr. Petrie
lowered his head. Then he said, ‘Okay,’ and went back to the wash-up room to
take off his mask and robe. He glanced at himself in the mirror as he
straightened his jacket, and thought that he looked tall, tired, handsome and
helpless. Maybe Margaret had been right all along. Maybe it was futile, caring
for rich and hypochondriac old ladies. Maybe his real work was here, in the
thick of the blood and the pain, the failing hearts and the teeming bacteria.
    He opened the
door and peered down the crowded corridor. Mrs. Haskins was standing on her own
– a gray-haired woman in a cheap brown print dress, holding a plastic carrier
bag with her husband’s clothes and shoes in it. She seemed oblivious to the
bustle of medics and porters, as more and more sick people were wheeled swiftly
into the hospital. Outside, as the doors swung open, the ambulance sirens
echoed through the warm night streets of Miami. Mrs. Haskins, alone by the
water fountain, waited patiently.
    Dr. Petrie
walked across, and took her arm. She looked up at him, her eyes pink with
tiredness and suppressed tears.
    ‘Mrs. Haskins?’
    ‘Yes, sir. Is George all right?’
    Dr. Petrie bit
his lip. In a few short words, he was going to destroy this woman’s whole
world. He almost felt like saying nothing at all, prolonging her suspense. At
least she would believe her husband was still alive. At least she would have
some hope.
    ‘George was
very sick,’ said Dr. Petrie softly.
    She nodded. ‘I
know. He was taken bad right after his lunch. He took his swim in the morning,
and then he came back and was taken real bad.’
    ‘He took a
swim? Where?’
    ‘Where he always does. Off the beach.’
    Dr. Petrie
looked at the woman’s weary, work-lined face. First it was David Kelly, and
he’d taken a swim. Then it was Margaret, and she’d taken a swim. Now it was
George Haskins. And all along the beaches, raw sewage was floating in from the
Atlantic Ocean. Poisonous, virulent, and seething with
diseased bacteria.
    ‘Mrs. Haskins,’
he said simply, ‘I’m sorry to tell you that George is dead.’
    Mrs. Haskins
stared at him. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said.
    ‘George died,
about five minutes ago.’
    She frowned,
and then looked down at her carrier bag. ‘But he can’t have. I’ve got all his
clothes in here.’
    ‘I’m sorry, Mrs.
Haskins. It’s true.’
    She shook her
head. ‘No, that’s all right,’ she said, with an attempt at brightness. ‘I’ll
just wait here.’
    ‘Mrs. Haskins...’
    He was
interrupted by the public address system. ‘Dr. Petrie, telephone please. Dr. Leonard
Petrie, telephone.’
    He held Mrs.
Haskins’ hand. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he told her. ‘You just wait there, and
I’ll be right back.’
    Mrs. Haskins
smiled blandly, and agreed to wait.
    Dr. Petrie
pushed his way past trolleys and anaesthetic cylinders, nurses and porters, and
made his way to the phone outside the emergency ward. He picked it up and said,
‘This is Dr. Petrie. You have a call for me?’
    ‘Hold