Pestilence (26 page)

The more Beasdale said the more Saracen liked him. Never a great fan of the military mind he was relieved to discern in Beasdale a great deal of common sense and that was a rarer commodity than most people imagined. It did not necessarily come with intelligence and you could not be taught it at university or military academy. It had to be innate.

“Before I hand you over to Doctors Braithwaite and MacQuillan I must just tell you that this will be the last meeting of the emergency committee in its present form.

“Why?” demanded the nurse who had forced Beasdale into admitting that he would use force if necessary.

“It has served its purpose,” said Beasdale. “It makes no sense to have the centre of administration here in the hospital, one of the areas most likely to be affected by the problem.”

“Do you mean you are afraid Colonel?” asked the woman.

Silly cow, thought Saracen.

“On a personal level I suppose you could say that I was Miss?…”

“Williams.”

“Miss Williams. Like most lay people I know nothing at all about plague save for the horror that the word implies. I depend on you and your colleagues to provide me with more realistic information. But my decision has nothing to do with personal considerations. Should the worst happen and God forbid that it does, Skelmore must not be left like a headless chicken.”

“So where will your headquarters be Colonel?” asked one of the civilian administrators.

Beasdale smiled and said, “I am afraid my colleague here has something for you all to sign before I say anything else.” The other army officer took some papers from his briefcase and started handing them out.

“What on earth?” exclaimed someone in the front row.

“The official secrets act,” said Beasdale.

With the formalities over Beasdale said, “Headquarters will be at Skelmore municipal waterworks.”

The sense of anti-climax in the room was unanimous. Beasdale said, “One or two of you here will already know the reason for this. For the rest of you it will come as a surprise to learn that sixty feet below ground at the waterworks there are a series of well equipped chambers designed as a regional seat of government for the area.” Beasdale paused to let the noise die down.

“But surely that sort of thing is for nuclear attack and the like?”

“It does sound a bit overly dramatic I agree,” said Beasdale, “But the powers that be thought that this would be a good opportunity to put the facilities to the test.”

“So we all meet there in future?” asked one of the administrators.

“No, not all,” replied Beasdale. “None of the medical personnel will be permitted to enter the administration centre. Instead my men will install extra communication facilities between the waterworks and the two hospitals so that we can communicate at any time and in complete confidence. There will be no need for any of the medical people to come to the centre. Any questions?”

There were none.

“In that case I will now hand you over to Doctor MacQuillan for a progress report.”

MacQuillan got to his feet and switched on the overhead projector. He placed a transparency on it and picked up the pointer. “This,” he announced is an epimid, short for epidemiological pyramid. It is a chart that records the spread of a disease during an outbreak. As you see we have the patient Myra Archer at the top of the pyramid as the source of the outbreak in Skelmore.” MacQuillan slapped the pointer unnecessarily against the name Myra Archer and then slid it down to the next line. “She in turn gave it to Leonard Cohen and he gave it to Moran, the workman on the site, a nice narrow vertical line, just what we like to see. But yesterday things began to change. Moran not only passed it on to his wife he gave it to a woman he was having a fling with and, more importantly, whom we knew nothing about. This woman gave the disease to her children and another child who happened to be staying in her house and the base of the pyramid spreads out.” MacQuillan swept the pointer horizontally along the screen. “To compound an already worsening situation four of the people who attended the original case have gone down with the disease and none of them have been in quarantine.” MacQuillan added lines to the transparency with a felt tip pen and then returned to the screen to run the pointer all the way along the bottom. He said, “Each of these people has a family, a circle of friends and in three cases a class-room full of contacts. The situation is, to say the least, volatile and this is why the quarantine order was invoked.” MacQuillan invited Braithwaite to take the floor and he did.

Saracen thought that Braithwaite looked tired and drawn as he got to his feet and shuffled to the table. There was little trace of the self assurance, almost arrogance that he had displayed on the previous occasion.

Braithwaite said, “My staff have been working all night to isolate known contacts of the patients admitted to hospital yesterday. We hope that we have got them all in time but we can’t be sure.”

“What exactly do you do when you get to them?” asked Beasdale.

“In the case of families we simply instruct them to say indoors and wait for further instructions. The social services see that they get everything they need in the way of supplies. It’s just a matter of keeping them out of circulation. Our biggest headache of course has been the school. We’ve had to close it and quarantine all the families of children in one particular class.”

“How long will the quarantine be maintained?”

“Eight days. The incubation time for the disease plus a safety margin.”

“So we wait and see.”

“Yes.”

“Supposing any of the contacts do develop the disease. Does that mean we are in real trouble?”

“Not necessarily,” interjected MacQuillan. “It’s rogue contacts we really have to worry about, people that we don’t know about like Moran’s woman friend. These are the people who can spread the disease all over the place before we get to them. If that happens the base of the pyramid will broaden until we can no longer hope to trace and isolate contacts.”

“And if that should happen?”

“Then we close all factories, schools and non-essential shops and tell people to stay home.”

There was a long pause before Saracen asked, “Has the protective clothing arrived?”

“This morning,” replied MacQuillan. “The staff on ward twenty already have it. Everyone else should have it by lunch time.”

“The army too?” asked Saracen.

“My men do have it,” replied Beasdale, “But, as a matter of policy, will not don it unless the situation deteriorates markedly. The sight of soldiers in space suits is not one to encourage public optimism.”

“The same goes for my men,” said Chief Superintendent Carradyce.

The meeting broke up and people began filing out of the lecture theatre until there were only a handful left; Saracen was among them. He leaned forward in his seat and rested his elbows on the wooden rail in front of him while he looked at MacQuillan’s epimid which was still up on the screen. MacQuillan noticed him and came over. “Well, what do you think?” he asked.

“You’re the expert,” Saracen smiled. “What do you think?”

MacQuillan kept his voice low. He said, “There are too many imponderables to be able to say with any certainty what is going to happen. We are riding a roller coaster that isn’t secured to the rails. Whether we stay on or fly off is entirely in the lap of the gods.”

“Maybe we should co-opt a vicar?” said Saracen.

“Or an astrologer,” replied MacQuillan.

Saithe closed the door of the lecture theatre and said to the members of the General’s staff who had stayed behind, “Is there anything we should discuss before we go about our duties?”

“Admission arrangements for plague cases,” said Saracen. He made his suggestion about the room below ward twenty.

“Sounds eminently suitable,” said Saithe. “What is it being used for at the moment?”

Saracen told him and voiced his one qualm about the suitability of the stairs for stretcher bearers.

“There’s no problem. They are wide enough,” said Jenkins, the hospital secretary, a small, dapper man with gold rimmed spectacles and a penchant for wearing shirts with collars in contrasting colours. Today’s was dark red with a pristine white collar.

Saithe asked Jenkins to see to the room’s conversion. MacQuillan asked about ambulance access.

“That’s partly the reason for choosing it,” replied Saracen. “It fronts on to the courtyard; ambulances can drive right up to the door.”

“What about ambulance crews?”

“Two crews have volunteered for special duties and have been equipped with respirator suits. Two vehicles have been taken out of routine service and will be used exclusively for the emergency. They will be decontaminated after every call.

“Sounds fine,” said MacQuillan getting to his feet to leave. “Up to the number of cases that two ambulance crews, two vehicles and a handful of volunteer nurses can deal with…”

Saracen returned to A&E and phoned Jill on ward twenty. He had to try twice before he finally got through and asked to speak to Staff Nurse Rawlings.

“Who is speaking?”

Saracen recognised the voice; it was Sister Lindeman. I might have known it, he thought, Lindeman in the thick of things as usual. “It’s James Saracen Sister,” he said.

“One moment Doctor.”

“James?”

“Hello, how are you?” Saracen asked softly.

“Not so good. It’s all so hopeless,” replied Jill. “There’s so little we can do for them.”

“How is Nurse Travers?”

“Mary died two hours ago.”

“God I’m sorry. You really shouldn’t be on duty.”

“There’s no point in sitting around moping about it when I can be more use up here. I just wish there was something more positive we could do other than try to make people more comfortable while they wait to die.”

“They’re all bad then?”

“Without exception. The three kids died in the early hours of this morning then Mary died and the others will die before nightfall. If there are no admissions today the ward will be empty by tomorrow. All dead.

“What are the duty arrangements for the nurses?”

“We have divided into two twelve hour shifts. We have been given our own quarters in the side rooms outside ward twenty where we can watch television and play Scrabble. You know the sort of thing.”

“I’ll come up later on.”

Jill paused before saying, “That’s probably not a good idea.”

“Why not?” said Saracen.

“As yet you haven’t been exposed to the disease. In the interests of what could conceivably happen in this town perhaps we shouldn’t take any silly chances?”

Saracen had to agree reluctantly that what Jill said made sense. “Take care,” he said softly.

“You too.”

No new cases were notified in Skelmore that day or during the night following and, while it was judged too early for optimism, the atmosphere at the medical committee meeting in the morning was certainly more relaxed. MacQuillan erased the names of the dead from his epimid chart and, more importantly, did not have to add any new ones. Beasdale sounded pleased when Saithe made his report and asked if this was a sign that they might be getting away with it.

“Too soon to say,” replied Saithe.

There had been stories of occasional arguments between Skelmore people and the military on the outskirts of town but it had not gone beyond a little name calling. For the most part the quarantine order had been accepted with good humour and the forbearance that the British extend to what they regard as government folly. ‘Bloody daft if you ask me,’ they would say but they were smiling when they said it.

Saracen took time off to have dinner with Alan Tremaine and his sister for the new housemen in A&E had proved themselves to be reliable and knowledgeable enough to be left on their own, albeit with the instruction that they call Saracen at the first sign of trouble; Tremaine’s flat was well within bleeper range.

Claire Tremaine greeted him with a drink and a tirade against the officialdom that had prevented her from visiting London to ‘recharge her batteries.’ “Being stuck in Skelmore is going to drive me mad,” she maintained.

“C’mon. You know you love it,” her brother teased.

Claire took the bait. “Love it!” she exclaimed. “My friends get jobs in Greece, Egypt, Colombia and I end up digging in the rain in Skelmore! Yugh!”

Saracen smiled and asked her how her work was going.

“It’s not,” she replied. “We are beginning to think that the map might be some kind of fake. We haven’t found a trace of the legendary abbey.”

“Where did the map come from?” asked Saracen.

“A librarian at Oxford found it between the pages of an old book that was part of a bequest to the university.”

“What a marvellous story,” said Saracen.

“It would be more marvellous if we actually uncovered something,” said Claire.

“Give it time sister dear. Patience was never your strong point.” said Alan Tremaine. Claire made a face at him.