Edgar ran to the front of the store and stared out into the night. It was silent, and dark. The wind blew fitfully into the store, making price tags flap on the shelves. He crunched across the sea of broken glass, still staring, still searching.
In the distance, he thought he heard someone laugh. It could have been a dog barking, or a car starting up. But the sound of it was enough to make him shiver.
Three
Miami was always quiet in the small hours of the morning, but tonight that silence seemed to be sultry and threatening. As Dr. Leonard Petrie drove through echoing and deserted streets, he sensed in the air the beginning of something new and frightening and strange. Two or three cars and an ambulance passed him as he drove downtown. Out on the expressway, lines of traffic still shuttled backwards and forwards from the airport, and trucks and cars still traveled up and down US, heading north for Fort Lauderdale or south for the Keys. It could have been any night of any year in Miami. The radio was playing country music from Nashville, and the hotels along the Beach glittered with light.
Dr. Petrie swung the Lincoln left on West Flagler and 17th. For the first time, he saw the spreading effects of the plague. There were four or five bodies lying on the sidewalk, sprawled-out and motionless in the light of a store window. They looked as if they were fast asleep. He drew the Lincoln into the kerb, and got out to take a look. It was a family. A father — middle-aged, with a small moustache; a middle-aged mother; and two small boys, aged about eight and ten. It was so unbelievably odd to see them here, on this warm and normal night, lying dead and pale on the sidewalk, that Dr. Petrie was moved to prod the father's body with his toe, to see if he were sleeping.
The father's hand slipped across his silent chest, and rested on the concrete.
A police-car came cruising up 17th in the opposite direction, and Dr. Petrie quickly stepped across the sidewalk to flag it down.
The cop was wearing orange sunglasses, even though it was night-time, and a handkerchief over his mouth, bandit-style.
'I'm a doctor,' Petrie said. 'I came around the block and saw those people. They're all dead, I'm afraid. I guess it's the plague.'
The patrolman nodded. 'We're getting cases all over. Six or seven cops down with it already. Okay, doctor, I'll call headquarters and notify them about the dead people. Between you and me, though, I don't think they got enough ambulances to cope. It won't be long before it's garbage trucks.'
'Garbage trucks?' said Dr. Petrie. He was appalled. He looked back across the street, and the family was lying there, pale and still. The children must have died first, and the mother and father died while trying to nurse them. 'You mean — '
The cop said, 'They don't have enough ambulances, doctor. It's either that, or we leave them to rot in the streets.'
Dr. Petrie rubbed his face tiredly. 'Have you seen many like this?' he asked the cop.
'A couple of dozen maybe.'
'And what are you supposed to do about them?' The cop shrugged. His radio was blurting something about a traffic accident on the West Expressway. 'We have to report them, that's all. Those are the orders. Report them, but don't touch them.'
'And that's all? No orders to stop people using the beaches, or leaving the city?' The cop shook his head. Dr. Petrie stood beside the police car for a moment, thinking. Then he said, 'Thanks,' and walked back to his Lincoln. He climbed in, gunned the engine, and drove off in the direction of Donald Firenza's house.
The more he heard about the health chief's inactivity, the more worried and angry he grew. If one cop had seen two dozen cases, there must be at least a hundred sick people in the whole city, and that meant a plague epidemic of unprecedented scale. He drove fast and badly, but the streets were deserted, and it only took him five minutes to get out to Coral Gables.
He had no trouble in picking out Donald Firenza's house. There were cars parked all the way up the street, including a television truck and a blue and white police car, and every window was alight. He pulled his Lincoln on to the sidewalk and switched off the engine. Over the soft rustling of palm trees and the chirrup of insects, he could hear voices raised in argument.
He was greeted at the door by a fat uniformed cop with a red sweaty face.
'I'm a doctor,' Petrie said. 'I just came up from the hospital. Is Mr. Firenza home?'
The cop scrutinized Dr. Petrie's ID card. He was monotonously chewing gum. 'Guess Mr. Firenza's pretty tied up right now, but you can ask. Go ahead inside.'
Dr. Petrie stepped through the door. The house was crowded with newspaper reporters and television cameramen, all lounging around with cardboard cups of coffee and cans of beer. It was one of those houses that in normal circumstances was guaranteed to make Dr. Petrie wince. There were coach lamps and sculptured carpets, wrought-iron banistairs and paintings of horses leaping through the foamy sea. On one wall was a print of a small girl with enormous eyes, out of which two fat sparkling tears were dropping.
In the pink-decorated sitting-room, Petrie found Donald Firenza, sitting back in a large plastic-covered easy chair, talking to a young reporter from the Miami Herald and a bald man in a bright sport shirt from UPI. Dr. Petrie recognized a couple of friends from the city health department at the back of the room, and he nodded to them briefly. Tonight was not a night for smiles.
'Mr. Firenza?' he said crisply. 'I'm Dr. Leonard Petrie. I just came from Dr. Selmer, down at the hospital.'
Mr. Firenza looked up. He was right in the middle of saying, ' — all the epidemic deaths we've suffered so far have been tragic, but unfortunately they've been unavoidable — ' He didn't look at all pleased at being interrupted.
'Can it wait?' he said. He was a small, pale-faced, curly-headed man wearing a green turtle-neck sweater.
'I don't think so,' said Dr. Petrie.
The UPI man turned around in his chair. 'Is it something to do with the epidemic? Is it getting worse?'
Dr. Petrie didn't look at him. 'I came to talk to Mr. Firenza, not to the press.'
'What's the latest death-toll?' persisted the man from UPI. 'Has it gone above twelve yet?'
Dr. Petrie ignored him. 'Mr. Firenza,' he said. 'I'd appreciate a private word.'
Mr. Firenza sighed, and stood up. 'Excuse me, you guys,' he said to the two reporters. 'I'll be right back.'
He led Dr. Petrie through the throng of police, health department officials and newsmen to a small study at the back of the house. He closed the door behind them and shut out the babble of conversation and argument.
'Sit down,' said Mr. Firenza. 'We've met before, haven't we?'
Dr. Petrie sat down, and nodded. 'Two or three times, at health department meetings. Maybe at dinners once or twice. Perhaps we should've gotten better acquainted.'
Firenza reached for a large briar pipe and proceeded to stack it with rough-cut tobacco. 'I want to tell you here and now that I'm very proud of the way that Miami's doctors are rallying to help.' he said.
'Thank you.'
'However — I don't really think that you picked the subtlest way of breaking into a press conference,' Firenza went on. 'I've just been trying to convince our friends from the papers that this epidemic is containable and isolated.'
'Do they believe you?'
Firenza looked at Dr. Petrie curiously. 'Of course they believe me. Why shouldn't they?'
Dr. Petrie coughed. 'Because it's not true.'
Firenza pushed some more tobacco into his pipe, and then laughed. 'You've been talking to Dr. Selmer, haven't you? I know he thinks this is the end of the world, and that we're all going to get stricken down. I had to remind him that this is Miami, which has more qualified doctors per square inch than almost any other city in the continental United States, and that we have both the finance and the resources to cope with any kind of epidemic.'