Adelaide said, 'My God, it's gotten so much worse. Look — there's a couple of bodies over there, by the hospital entrance.'
Dr. Petrie took her arm. 'Don't worry about that. Let's just get the hell out.'
They half-ran, half-walked round to the side of the hospital. The car-park was dark, and shadowed from the street-lights by the fourteen-storey bulk of the hospital tower. Dr. Petrie said: "You take the first row of cars, I'll take the second. Try the driver's door, and see if it opens. If it does, check for keys.'
As swiftly and silently as they could, they went from one car to the other, trying the door-handles. By the time Dr. Petrie had tugged at his twelfth car, he was beginning to wonder if the staff of this particular hospital weren't security-conscious to a fault. Then Adelaide hissed, 'I've got one!'
She was opening the door of a bronze Gran Torino. Dr Petrie skirted around the back of the car that he had been trying to open, and crossed the space in between the rows of parked vehicles. The moment he stepped into the open, a rough voice shouted, 'Hold it right there, buddy!'
He froze, with his hands above his head. A stocky shadow disengaged itself from all the other shadows, and started to walk towards him. In a thin slanting beam of light from one of the hospital windows, Dr. Petrie saw a solid, middle-aged security guard, with a navy-blue uniform, a face as hard as a concrete post, and a revolver. 'I'm a doctor,' Petrie said.
The security guard came up close, and shone a torch in Dr. Petrie's face. 'Then how come you're trying to steal yourself a car?'
'Someone took mine. I have an emergency.'
'You got ID?'
'Sure. It's in my top pocket. Here — I'll get it out for you.'
'Don't you move a muscle.'
The security guard came forward, reached into Dr. Petrie's inside pocket, then tried to open the papers with one hand. As he did so, Dr. Petrie grabbed the man's gun wrist, and tried to twist the revolver out of his grasp. Forcing the guard's arm around in a circle, he jammed his leg behind the man's calf, and pushed him. The man fell backwards on to the tarmac, jarring his knee — but he still kept his grip on the gun.
Dr. Petrie pressed the guard's wrist against the ground, and then trod on it, hard. At last, the fingers opened, and Dr. Petrie snatched the revolver away from him.
The guard cried, 'Don't shoot.' He raised his arms protectively over his face. 'I got a wife with a bad leg.'
Dr. Petrie said, 'I'm not going to hurt you, you dumb ox. Just get up and get the hell out of here.'
The guard got to his feet, and dusted himself off. 'You won't get far, you know," he said, stepping cautiously backwards. 'They got the cops on the lookout for bums like you. All I have to do is call them up, and they've got your number.'
Petrie waved the gun in his direction again. The guard said, 'Hey — I didn't mean it serious. I was joking! You go right ahead.'
Adelaide was watching, tense and fearful, from a few feet away, holding the door of the Gran Torino. Dr. Petrie looked at her, and couldn't see her eyes, only the dark brunette curls of her hair. The guard was shuffling away from them, step by step, holding his hands out in front of him.
As if in a dream, Dr. Petrie fired the revolver twice. The guard yelped like a small dog, and started running away across the car park. Dr. Petrie lifted the revolver in both hands, held it steadily, and fired again. He missed. He fired once again, and the bullet sang mournfully off the fender of a parked car.
Dr. Petrie lowered the gun, and peered into the darkness.
'He got away,' he said, as the smoke drifted away across the car-park.
'You might have killed him," Adelaide gasped. 'You meant to.' She sounded very frightened.
Dr. Petrie put the revolver in his pocket.
'Yes,' he said. 'I meant to. But I didn't.'
They drove out of the car park in silence, and out into the plague-ridden streets of Miami.
They switched on the car radio. It was now just past midnight, into the early hours of Wednesday morning. What they heard on the news and what they saw as they drove through the dark broken streets of the city were so different as to be totally bizarre.
The calm, rich voice of the mayor, John Becker, was reassuring citizens throughout Florida and the United States that the breakdown in communication between Miami and the outside world was 'purely temporary and technical, and in the best interests of all concerned.'
Dr. Petrie glanced across at Adelaide, and shook his head. She smiled him a tight little smile.
Mayor Becker went on, 'This epidemic, which is still awaiting medical analysis, is proving a little more difficult to control than we had originally hoped, and for the protection of residents and folks on vacation, we've had to restrict some of the highway traffic through the city. But we can assure you that there's nothing to worry about, provided you follow a simple safety code and remain at home whenever possible.'
It was while he was saying this that, without warning, the city lights of Miami began to go out. Most of the downtown office buildings and stores were already in darkness, but now the street lights flickered out, and everything electrical dimmed and died. Like stars obscured by the passing of a murky cloud, the bright subtropical city with its glittering strip of hotels and its garish downtown streets was gradually overtaken by a shadowy gloom, as dark and threatening as a primitive jungle.
'I expect it's the power station,' Dr. Petrie said. 'They've got the plague.'
He switched on the car's headlights. The streets seemed wrecked and deserted. Store windows were smashed, and there was garbage and junk strewn all over. Despite the threat of summary shooting, the looters had obviously been out in force. As they turned north on to 95, they saw a small group of blacks running furtively through the shadows with television sets, stereo equipment and records.
Abandoned cars — some with their dead drivers still sitting in them — cluttered the highway. From the height of the expressway, Dr. Petrie and Adelaide could see small fires burning all over Miami in the tropical darkness, and a few buildings uncertainly lit by emergency generators. The whole city echoed with the endless warbling of police and fire sirens, and the crack of spasmodic shooting.
In just over four days, from the first signs of plague in Hialeah, Miami had collapsed into pandemonium. It was like an old painting of hell with lurid flames and demonic shadows; and above everything was the terrible wail of sirens, the smashing of glass and the ceaseless blast of car horns, pressed down by the weight of their dead owners.
Dr. Petrie opened the car window and slowed down for a while, listening and looking in cold disbelief.
'It's like the end of the world,' whispered Adelaide. 'My God, Leonard, it's like the end of the world.'
The stench of burning and the inhuman sounds of a dying city filled the car, and Dr. Petrie wound up the window again. He felt exhausted beyond anything he had ever known before. He had to open his eyes wide to clear them and focus them, and even then he found it difficult to drive through the debris and jetsam that strewed the highway.
They were almost level with Gratigny Drive when he had to pull the Torino up short. The road was entirely blocked by two burning cars. One of them, a Riviera, was already blackened and smoldering, but the other, a Cadillac, still had its tires ablaze, like a fiery chariot from Heaven.
Dr. Petrie opened his car door and got out. The heat was oily and fierce. Shielding his eyes, he went as close to the wrecks as he could, and to his horror, he saw a woman still sitting in the Cadillac — her face was roasted raw, but she was lifting her smoking arm up and down, trying to call out. A lurch of nausea made his empty stomach turn over, and he had to look away.