Plague: A gripping suspense thriller about an incurable outbreak in Miami

could climb into the back. Adelaide said, ‘Hi, Prickles. How are you, darling?’ and Priscilla replied, ‘Okay, thanks.’
Dr. Petrie shut his door, started up the engine, and turned the Lincoln around.
‘Did you have to wait out there long?’ he asked Priscilla.
‘Not long,’ the child answered promptly. He knew that she never liked to let her mother down.
‘What happened to the cookie monster?’ he asked. ‘Did Mommy throw it away?’
‘It was a mistake,’ said Prickles, with a serious expression. ‘Cookie fell into the garbage pail by mistake, and must’ve gotten thrown away.’
‘A mistake, huh?’ said Dr. Petrie, and blew his horn impatiently at an old man on a bicycle who was wavering around in front of him.
*
They had chicken and pineapple from the Polynesian restaurant, and then they sat around and watched television. It was late now, and the sky outside was dusky blue. Prickles had changed into her long pink nightdress, and she sat on the floor in front of the TV, brushing her doll’s hair and tying it up with elastic bands.
Right in the middle of the last episode of the serial, the telephone bleeped. Dr. Petrie had his arm around Adelaide and his left leg hooked comfortably over the side of the settee, and he cursed under his breath.
‘I should’ve been an ordinary public official,’ he said, getting up. He set down his glass of chilled daiquiris, and padded in his socks across to the telephone table. ‘At least ordinary public officials don’t get old ladies calling them up in the middle of the evening, complaining about their surgical corsets. Hallo?’
It wasn’t an old lady complaining about her surgical corset – it was Anton Selmer. He sounded oddly anxious and strained, as if he wasn’t feeling well. As a rule, he liked to swap a few jokes when he called up, but tonight he was grave and quiet, and his voice was throaty with worry.
‘Anton?’ said Dr. Petrie. ‘What’s the matter? You sound upset.’
‘I am upset. I just came back from the bacteriological lab.’
‘So?’
‘It’s serious,’ said Dr. Selmer. ‘What that kid died of – it’s really, genuinely serious.’
Dr. Petrie frowned. ‘Did you finish the post-mortem?’
‘We’re still waiting for the last tests. But we’ve discovered enough to kick us straight in the teeth.’
‘You mean it’s not tularemia?’
‘I wish it was. We found minor swellings in the joints and the groin area, and at first I thought they could have been symptoms of lymphogranuloma venereum, or some other kind of pyogenic infection. The kid had a lung condition, and we were working on the assumption that the swellings might have been associated with a general rundown of health brought on by influenza.’
Adelaide looked questioningly across the room. Prickles, busy with her doll’s coiffure, didn’t even notice. On the TV screen, the hero was mouthing something in garish color, a million light-years away from disease and infection and nine-year-old boys who died overnight.
‘Well,’ said Dr. Petrie, ‘what do you think it is?’
Dr. Selmer said evasively, ‘We carried out a pretty thorough examination. We took slides from the spleen, the liver, the lymph nodes and bone marrow. We also took sputum samples and blood samples, and we did bacteriological tests on all of them.’
‘What did you find?’ asked Petrie quietly.
‘A bacillus,’ answered Dr. Selmer. ‘A bacillus that was present in tremendous numbers, and of terrific virulence. A real red-hot terror.’
‘Have you identified it?’
‘We have some tentative theories.’
‘What kind of tentative theories?’
Dr. Selmer’s voice was hardly audible. ‘Leonard,’ he said, ‘this bacillus appears to be a form of Pasteurella pestis.’
‘What? What did you say?’
He could hardly believe what Anton Selmer had told him. He felt a strange crawling sensation all over his skin, and for the first time in his medical career he felt literally unclean. He had dealt with terminal cancer patients, tuberculosis patients, Spanish influenza and even typhoid. But this—
Adelaide, seeing his drawn face, said, ‘Leonard – what is it?’
He hardly heard her. She came over and he held her hand.
In a dry voice, he said to Anton Selmer, ‘Plague? Are you suggesting that it’s plague?’
‘I’m sorry, Leonard, but that’s what it looks like. Only it’s worse than plague. The bacterial samples we have here are not identical with any known profile of Pasteurella pestis. They certainly don’t correspond with the 1920 records – which is the last time we had an outbreak of plague in Florida. The bacilli seem to have mutated or developed into something more virulent and faster-growing.’
Dr. Petrie looked at Prickles, squatting innocently in front of the television in her pink nightdress. Supposing he had picked it up himself, when he was carrying David Kelly? Supposing—
‘Anton,’ he said abruptly. ‘Do you think I could have caught it?’
Dr. Selmer coughed. ‘Right now,’ he said, ‘it’s difficult for me to say. I’m still waiting for the sputum reports, and that will tell us whether the boy’s throat and lungs were infected. You took the streptomycin shots, though, didn’t you?’
‘Sure. Right after you called me this morning.’
‘Well, those should help. All antibiotics are useful in plague treatment. If you’ve come into contact with anyone for any length of time, I should make sure that they get shots too. I can get some serum flown in from the West Coast tonight, and we can all get ourselves vaccinated just in case.’
Dr. Petrie looked at Adelaide, and squeezed her hand reassuringly.
‘Anton,’ he said, ‘what should I look for? What symptoms?’
‘Leonard – I can’t say. You’ll just have to keep yourself under strict observation. If you have any swelling, or dizziness, or headache get in touch with me straight away. And cancel your clinic for three days. That’s how long plague usually takes to develop.’
Dr. Petrie felt chilled. ‘Anton,’ he insisted, ‘I have Adelaide and Priscilla with me. I had Esther around me all day. I went to a restaurant for lunch. And what about my patients?’
‘I don’t know, Leonard,’ said Dr. Selmer tiredly. ‘It depends on what kind of bacillus mutation we have here. Basically, plague comes in three recognized forms.