Plague Read Online Free PDF Page B

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