The Jupiter Plague

The large trailer truck must have been doing sixty miles an hour when it hit the barrier, knocking it aside. One of the front tires blew and it began to skid sideways across the roadway, the black bulk of the trailer folding up on the cab of the tractor while all sixteen wheels squealed in agony, brakes locked tight, dragged along and spewing pieces of burned rubber. It crashed into the guardrail on the far side of the road and shuddered to a stop, the cab tilted forward and one wheel hanging into space.

That was all that Sam saw before the mob burst through the gap, unstoppable and victorious. They ignored the soldiers, even the remains of the two who had been caught and crushed like ants by the plunging truck, and rushed headlong down the bridge. Fear drove them on and ahead was freedom.

“They will never get through,” the captain said, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a pained expression. “The New Jersey police have barricaded and blocked the other end of this bridge solidly and are waiting for them. They killed my men — I wish they could get through!”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

“I mean that we have no orders to shoot or defend ourselves, as do the New Jersey police. But there is a ring further away, I don’t know how far out, and they are determined to keep this plague inside of it. They have bulldozed buildings and plowed this ring clear and are putting up barbed wire all along it.” He looked away from his dead men and mastered his anger with a tremulous sigh, and when he spoke again it was with a weary sadness. “And they have orders, I saw them… that anyone who enters the ring and attempts to cross the wire is to be shot.”

There was little sound from the mob now, other than the trample of running feet, as they surged through the opening in the barricade. It was a mile to the other end of the bridge and they needed their breath. Above the thud of their footsteps sounded the whistling flutter of a copter and when Sam looked up he could see the riding lights coming toward them down the river. The pilot must have seen the military copter behind the barricade because he swung out in a circle and began to descend, lifting once when the people streamed by below, then dropping again when the flow lessened and moved away. When the copter entered the glow of the bridge lights Sam saw that it had the Connecticut State Trooper’s insignia on its side.

Rioters were still coming in the gap, though not in the solid mass as at first. The captain pushed his way angrily through them and Sam followed: there would be injuries on the other side of the barricade. As they passed the copter, its blades still swinging slowly, the pilot slid his window open and called down to them.

“Listen, I’m just down from Waterbury and I don’t know this town — can you help me?”

“I’m from Karachi and I know less about it than you do,” the captain said, moving on by.

“Where do you want to go?” Sam asked, glancing around at the same time to see if there were any casualties.

“Bellevue Hospital — do you know where it is?”

“Yes, that’s my hospital. What is it you want there?” For no reason at all Sam had a premonition, a chilling sensation that brushed the length of his spine.

“Delivery to make; can you show me the way to their heliport? I got a dog in the back, a dead dog, all wrapped up in plastic.”

The chill was a cold hand now that clutched at Sam as he threw back the piece of canvas that covered the dog and turned his flashlight down on its body, dimly seen through the many layers of sealed polythene.

But it was not so well concealed that he couldn’t see the raw, ugly, red boils that covered its skin.

9

Darkness filled the laboratory, pierced only by the blue-green light from the TV screen that glowed above the workbench, throwing its ghostly illumination over Sam’s face and accenting even more the lines of fatigue and the dark shadows under his eyes. He looked at the image on the screen and hated it. The jumbled and fearfully twisted rods of Rand’s virus sprawled across the face of the tube, transmitted from the main virology lab, glowing in room after room of the great hospital like some duplicated and demonic icon. Sam yawned and forced his eyes away from it: he should sleep, he was tired enough surely, but sleep would not come. Outside the window a grayness was beginning to seep through the rain that had been falling most of the night. He should have slept. Nita had leaned her head forward onto her arm while they had been talking and just that easily and quickly had been asleep, the wealth of her hair spread out on the table. She breathed lightly, her half-turned face lovely in its composure.

An announcing signal pinged and the scene on the screen shifted and changed, yet did not change. The latticework of thin rods still stretched from edge to edge: the speaker hummed.