Journals of the Plague Years Read online

  In one sense, the people of San Francisco had always been doing the Work of Our Lady, of Saint Max, but in another sense, the legend had never been central here. In San Francisco, the people did the Work of Our Lady to please one another and themselves, not because they believed they were serving the species’ only hope.

  But then I began recruiting an army of Lovers of Our Lady and I did it by proclaiming the glorious truth.

  That the shattered man I sheltered in my rooms was a great scientist and an even greater hero. That he had developed the dreadnaught organism. That through him I had been infected with the gift of life. That I could infect anyone I had meat with with the cure, that anyone I had meat with would also become infectious. That the Plague Years, through Richard Bruno’s instrumentality and at horrible personal cost to himself, were now coming to an end.

  That all we had to do was what we were doing already—love one another.

  There were more skeptics than believers at first, of course. “Bring me your Terminals,” I told them. “Let them have meat with Our Lady. When they’re cured, the whole city will see I’m telling the truth.”

  >

  Walter T. Bigelow

  Satan himself seemed to be speaking through Harlow Prinz when I confronted him, laughing his final laugh, for what the president of Sutcliffe finally admitted under extreme duress was worse, far worse, than what I had originally feared.

  Bruno had been working on some sort of Plague-killer virus. But he had been building it around a Plague variant and something went wrong. He had created instead a Plague variant that mutated randomly every time it reproduced. That was invisible not only to all current tests short of full-scale molecular analysis, but would remain so to anything that could be devised.

  There had been a Condition Black, but only inside the lab, and there were plenty of reports to prove that Sutcliffe had followed proper procedure, as well as a mountain of legal briefs supporting the position that such internally contained Condition Blacks need not be reported to the SP.

  “We had no idea Bruno was infected,” Prinz claimed. “Isn’t that right, Warren?”

  Warren Feinstein, Sutcliffe’s chairman, who had sat there silently all the while with the most peculiar expression on his face, fidgeted nervously. “No…I mean yes…I mean how can we be so sure he was infected…?”

  “The man’s wife and son were infected, now weren’t they, Warren?” Prinz snapped. “You heard the director. Extreme measures must be taken at once to contain this thing!”

  “But—”

  “Wait a minute!” I cried. “Surely you’re not suggesting the man…had meatsex with his wife and…and his son knowing he was infected?”

  “Let’s hope so,” Prinz said. “At any rate, we have no choice but to act on that assumption.”

  “What?”

  “Because if he didn’t…” Prinz shuddered. “If he didn’t, then we may all be doomed. Because if Tod and Marge Bruno weren’t infected sexually, then this new virus has to be what we’ve always feared most—a Plague variant that doesn’t need sexual or intravenous vectors, an ambient version that spreads through the air like the common cold.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “You have no alternative, Mr. Director,” Prinz went on relentlessly. “You must obtain the necessary authority from the president and have San Francisco sterilized at once.”

  “Sterilized?”

  “Nuked. Condition Black procedure, admittedly on a rather extreme scale.”

  “That’s monstrous, Harlow!” Feinstein shouted. “This is going too far! We’ve got to—”

  “Shut up, Warren!” Prinz snapped. “Consider the alternative!”

  Feinstein slumped over in his chair.

  “If this thing is ambient, we’re all doomed anyway, so what’s the difference?” Prinz said in Satan’s cold, insinuating voice. “But if it isn’t, and if Bruno’s spreading it in San Francisco…”

  “You can’t just kill a million people on the supposition that—”

  “Shut up, Warren!” Prinz snapped. “You can’t afford to listen to this sentimental fool, Mr. Director. You’ve got to be strong. You’ve got to do your duty.”

  My duty? But where did that lie? If I had the San Francisco Quarantine Zone sterilized by a thermonuclear explosion, Bruno would be vaporized. And I had to have Bruno live for interrogation before I did any such thing, I realized. I had to know whether he had had meatsex with his wife and son. For if he had, then I would know the virus wasn’t ambient, that there was hope. Then and only then could I have San Francisco sterilized with a clear conscience.

  Then and only then would such an awful decision serve God and not the Devil.

  I had to find someone willing to go into San Francisco and bring Bruno out. But where was I going to find someone crazy or self-sacrificing enough to do that?

  >

  John David

  I was feeling pretty punk when two SPs dragged me into an interrogation room, handcuffed me to a chair bolted to the floor, and then split.

  But I came around fast, you better believe it, when old Walter T. himself walked into the room and shut the door behind him!

  The old meatfucker came right to the point.

  “I’ve been looking for someone very special, and the computer spit your name out,” he told me. “I’ve got a job for you. Interested?”

  “You gotta be kidding…”

  “We’re going to drop you in San Francisco. I want you to bring a man out.”

  “Say what?” Well, shit, brothers and sisters, I could hardly believe my ears. I mean, even in my present Condition Terminal, my ears pricked up at that one. And old Walter T., he sure didn’t miss it.

  “Interested, aren’t you? Here’s the deal…”

  And he told me. An SP helicopter would drop me into San Francisco, where I was to snatch and hold this guy Richard Bruno. Every afternoon at three o’clock they’d have a chopper circle Golden Gate Park for an hour. When I had Bruno, I’d shoot off a Very pistol, and they’d pick me up.

  “What do you want this guy for?” I demanded.

  “You have no need to know,” he told me.

  I eyed him dubiously. “What makes you think I’ll want to come out?” I mean, this dumb meatfucker was gonna throw me into my briar patch, but what could possibly make him believe I’d do his dirty work for him and deliver some poor bastard to the SP? Could he really be as stupid as he seemed? It didn’t seem real likely.

  “Because upon delivery of Bruno you’ll be given a full pardon for all your capital crimes.”

  “Hey, look at me, man, I’ve got maybe a month left anyway.”

  “You can go back into the Legion. As a captain.”

  “As a captain?” I snorted. “Shit, why not a bird colonel?”

  “Why not indeed?”

  “You’re really serious, aren’t you?” Jeez, what a tasty run I could have as a fuckin’ brigade commander. But…“But I’m a goner anyway. What difference is it gonna make?”

  “The Legion is going into Brazil again even as we speak,” he told me. “We can pump you up with the best military pallies and all the coke and speed you can handle. And drop you into Brazil with colonel’s wings at the head of a brigade twelve hours after you deliver Bruno. A short life, but a happy one.”

  “Terrific,” I said, studying old Walter T. carefully. This still didn’t quite add up. He was holding something back, and I had a feeling I wasn’t gonna like it. “But what makes you so sure I wouldn’t prefer to spend that short happy life in San Francisco?”

  Now it was Walter T.’s turn to study me carefully, then shrug. “Because unless you bring Bruno out, that could be a lot shorter than you think.”

  “Huh?”

  “We’re going to drop you into San Francisco anyway, so I might as well tell you the truth,” Bigelow said. “I get the feeling nothing else is really going to motivate you, but this surely will.”

  He told me, and it did.

  Bruno was s
ome kind of genetic synthesizer. He had screwed up real bad and created a new Plague variant that was invisible to all the standard tests and just might be able to spread through the air.

  “So we need to know whether Bruno is infected with something that could be spreading around San Francisco right now, something that we can only hope to stop by…shall we say measures of the maximum extremity.”

  Well, brothers and sisters, I didn’t need any promotion to bird colonel to figure out what he meant by that. “You mean nuke San Francisco, don’t you?”

  “Unless we have Bruno to examine and unless that examination reassures us that he hasn’t been spreading this thing, we really have no alternative…I’ll give you two weeks. After that, well…”

  “You nuke San Francisco with me inside it!”

  Bigelow nodded. “I think I can trust you to do your honest best, now, can’t I?” he said.

  Well, what could I say to that? Only one thing, brothers and sisters. What I told old Walter T. next.

  “I want the coke and the speed and the pallies right now. All I can carry.”

  “Very well,” he said. “Why not? Anything you need.”

  “I don’t have any choice, now, do I?”

  “None whatever.”

  If I hadn’t been cuffed to the chair, I would have ripped off the old meatfucker’s arm and beaten him to death with it. But even then, I had to admire his style, if you know what I mean. Turn the bastard’s card black, and old Walter T. would have been right at home with us fellow zombies.

  >

  Linda Lewin

  After the marks started to fade from terminal cases and black-carders started proving out blue on the simple tests the underground docs put together, the word began to spread faster, and so did the dreadnaught, and the Lovers of Our Lady began to spread the good news on their own in the streets and bars of San Francisco.

  One day a delegation came to me and took me to a rambling old house high on a hill above Buena Vista Park that they called the House of Our Lady of Love Reborn. They installed me in quarters on the third floor and they brought Richard with me.

  There I was surrounded by the Lovers of Our Lady. And so was Richard. He was surrounded by people who cared for him, who loved him, who knew what heroic deeds he had done, and at what terrible cost. Slowly, far too slowly, he began to react to his surroundings, to mutter haltingly of his guilt and despair. But he still refused to join in the Work, for he found the mere thought of sex loathsome, no matter who offered themselves to him, including myself.

  And the Work itself, though proceeding apace, was going far too slowly. How long did we have before the outside world learned the truth? Months? Weeks? Days? And what would happen then? Indeed, might it be in the process of happening already?

  What I needed to do was infect all of San Francisco with the dreadnaught, so that when the outside world finally intruded, it would be presented with the truth and its massive proof as a glorious fait accompli—an entire city, a Quarantine Zone once completely black, now entirely free of the Plague.

  Once, long before most of the people here were born, San Francisco had experienced a magical few months that was called the Summer of Love, a legend that still lived in the myth of the city.

  So I conceived the notion of a Week of Love, a celebration of the dreadnaught and a means of quickly spreading it to all, a carnival of sex, a citywide orgy, a festival of Our Lady of Love Reborn.

  And perhaps via such a manifestation and celebration of what he had brought back into the world, Richard too might be reborn back into it…

  >

  John David

  The pallies they shot me up with before they dropped me in San Francisco didn’t seem to do much good, but the speed and coke sure did, brothers and sisters. I might look like Condition Terminal on its last legs, but I was riding high and burning bright on the way out, you better believe it!

  I expected San Francisco to be weird and wild, something like TJ before the SP moved in on us, but this was something else again, weird for sure, but not exactly this zombie’s idea of wild.

  The city was like something out of an old movie—clean, and neat, and like you know quaint, like some picture postcard of itself, and I found I could have just about any kind of meat with anyone I wanted to just by asking for it, even looking like I did.

  There were plenty of terminal zombies like me walking around and plenty more outrageous faggots, but these people were like so damned sweet and kind and nicey-nice to us on the way out it made me want to puke. I mean all this peace and sympathy sex and love pissed me off so bad I just about wanted to see Wimp City nuked, if you know what I mean.

  But not, of course, with me in it!

  Bigelow had it covered. I had no choice at all. I had to get my crumbling ass in gear and get my mitts on Bruno, on my only ticket out.

  >

  Dr. Richard Bruno

  I can hardly remember what it was like inside that place of darkness or even precisely how and when I began to emerge from it. First there was a soft warm light in my cold blackness, and then I slowly began to take notice of my surroundings.

  I was living in an ancient Victorian house high on a hill in San Francisco, a place that was known as the House of Our Lady of Love Reborn. Linda Lewin was living there with me, and I knew that she had been caring for me through my long dark night. As had many others. For this was a house of love and hope. It was a kind of brothel, and a kind of church, and what was being spread here was my dreadnaught virus. And all those who came and went here loved me.

  “Dr. Feelgood,” they all called me. Not the creature who had brought his wife and son to death, but the man who had brought love back into the world.

  “You’ve grieved long enough, Richard; Marge and Tod are gone, and they deserve your grief,” Linda told me. “But you’ve also done a wonderful thing, and that deserves your joy. Come join the party now. See what they died for. See what you’ve brought back into the world! This is the Festival of Our Lady of Love Reborn, but it’s the Festival of Dr. Feelgood, too.”

  And she and the Lovers of Our Lady took me on a tour of San Francisco, on a tour of the carnival, on a tour through an erotic wonderland out of long-lost dreams.

  The whole city was partying—in the bars and the parks and the streets. It was Mardi Gras, it was the feast of Dionysus, it was the Summer of Love, it was beautiful madness. Everyone was drunk and stoned and deliriously happy, and people were making love, sharing meat, openly everywhere—in apartments, in bars, right out on the streets.

  They were celebrating Love Reborn in the very act of creating it. They were celebrating the end of the Plague Years as they brought it to an end with their joyful flesh.

  “Do you understand, Richard?” Linda asked later, back at the house of Our Lady of Love Reborn. “Marge and Tod are dead and they never lived to see what they died for, and that’s a sad thing, and you’re right to mourn. But they didn’t die in vain, they died to help you bring love back into the world, and if they’re watching from somewhere, you can know they’re smiling down on you. And if they’re not, if there’s no God or Heaven, well then, we’re all we’ve got, and we can only take shelter in the living. Do you understand?”

  “I’m not sure, Linda…” I murmured.

  “Then let me help you to begin now,” she said, holding me in her arms. “Come take shelter in me.”

  And, hesitantly at first, but with a growing strange peace in my heart, a warrior’s peace, a peace that had become determination by the time we had finished our lovemaking, I did.

  And afterward, I understood. Marge and Tod were gone and nothing I could do would bring them back, and that was a terrible thing. The Plague Years had in one way or another made monsters and madmen of us all, we had all been trapped into grievous mistakes, fearful, and frustrated, and loathsome acts, and nothing we did now could change that either. We had all been victims, and perhaps the lives of all of us who lived through the Plague Years could never be made whole.<
br />
  But that dark night was ending and a new day was dawning, and we, and I, had to act to give it birth and protect it into its full maturity. My personal life had died back there in San Francisco Bay with Marge and Tod and I had nothing left but my duty to the Hippocratic oath.

  And vengeance.

  Nothing I could do would ever bring my family back or entirely erase my guilt in their deaths. But I could take my vengeance on Prinz, on Feinstein, on the Sutcliffe board, I could do my part in seeing to it that their worst fears were realized, that the dreadnaught virus they had sought to destroy spread far and wide, saving suffering humanity while it destroyed the Sutcliffe Corporation in the process.

  Thus would my part in the twisted nightmare of the Plague Years end with the ultimate perverse yet joyful irony:

  Just and loving vengeance.

  So tomorrow I will go forth into San Francisco and join the Week of Love. And tonight I am sitting here in the House of Our Lady and writing my story in this journal, which is now concluding. When it is finished, it will be sent to the president, to the head of the Federal Quarantine Agency, to the news services, to the television networks. Before you let them act against us or tell you that this is all an evil lie, demand that they go in and test the populace or at least a good sample for Plague. That’s all I ask. Know the truth for yourself. Tell others.

  And I promise it will set all of you free.

  >

  John David

  I had good photos of Bruno, but you ever try tracking down one guy in a city of a million? Especially in a city that seemed to have gone completely apeshit. Everyone seemed to be drunk or stoned. People were having meat everywhere right out in the open, in the streets, in the parks, in alleys. Half-dead as I was, they were still shoving their meat even at the likes of me, babbling a lot of crazy stuff about how they were saving me from the Plague, as if anything could help me now!