The Last Nightingale Read Free Page A

almost back here when it—”
    “We need a man with your strength!”
    “I'll do whatever I—”
    “Most of the City Jail inmates are still under the building! We've opened a passage down to their cells. Check ‘em out one by one. If they're dead, leave them. Any that are injured too bad to work, leave them, too. Round up everybody else at gunpoint and march ‘em all down to Portsmouth Square!”
    “Portsmouth Square? Sir, that's a long way from—”
    “Shoot any man who breaks ranks!”
    “Sir, there are already fires. Maybe we could draft the prisoners to work the hoses?”
    “What are they going to
do
with the hoses, Sergeant? Use ‘em to beat the flames out?”
    “What?”
    “A runner from the waterfront just came up—every water main in the city is busted. There's not gonna
be
any water for these fires. But you can bet there'll be bodies to deal with. There are exactly two graveyards on this peninsula, and both of them are full. So you march those men down to Portsmouth Square and start digging trench graves!”
    The chief grabbed Blackburn by the lapels and drew him close enough to blast him with a hoarse whisper. "We've got
plague
down in Chinatown, you understand me? And now the rats will be coming up out of every busted sewer line! Think about that, will you? You want to know how important this is—even though we've only got one motorized patrol car, it's not gonna do anything but ferry bodies down to you. That means our rescue work is all gonna be on horseback or most likely on foot, hear me? Just so you can get the bodies we send you into the ground, fast as you can.”
    The chief dropped his voice again. "And make sure to cover them too deep for the rats. We can rebury everybody later. Somewhere off the peninsula. Oakland, maybe.”
    Blackburn felt a flicker of worry that Dinan had gone over the deep end. "Chief, if you mean the Black Death, I've never heard about any plague in San Fran—”
    “You weren't
supposed
to hear!" the chief bellowed. He forced his voice back down to a croaking whisper,
"Nobody
was, except a few of us! We've been hoping that those few cases that have come up were brought directly in, but that the plague itself isn't really here. Nobody knows for sure. And now you can keep quiet about it too, or I swear I'll bury you right along with the—”
    “Yes, sir! I'll go right now!”
    “You sure as hell will if you want to stay upright, Sergeant! And mark me, now—these inmates, tell them you've got orders: If any man even
looks
like he might try to run, you're gonna
shoot him down).”
    Blackburn hurried to comply. But there was hardly time to get down into the cell area and holler for the attention of the captive men before the next big aftershock struck, thirteen minutes after the initial wave.
    Just when he announced to the inmates that he had a proposition that could get them out of their cells, the earthquake rolled through with a force that dropped all of them to the floor. The basement area was claustrophobic, making this second quake feel much more powerful than the first. Blackburn was sure that if it didn't subside within twenty or thirty seconds, the rest of City Hall would collapse into the basement and make a grave for all of them.
    Luck gave them a nod; this shock wave faded quicker than the first, and when he was able to pick himself back up and peer through the dust, he realized that his sales pitch to the men could not have had a better opening. He saw the same death panic in their eyes that he had felt inside of himself. There was no need to use force. He asked for volunteers and got a general show of hands.
    They all smelled the thickening smoke.
    He and his two officers were so heavily outnumbered that they had to move with great care in hooking up their chain gang. It usedup valuable time to get the men organized by height, for equal stride length, and then shackled into teams on long leg bindings improvised with sections of wagon harness. The sun was