Chapter 1
Donald Evans liked to stroll along the lake front in the early morning, watching the white-caps capture the glitter of the rising sun in the east. a half-century earlier, Coaltown had been one of the vital links in the Barge Canal,' once the principal transportation artery between the East coast and the Midwest. Railroads and airlines had changed all that. Now, the waterfront of Coaltown was practically deserted, rickety docks resting shakily on rotting pilings. But the old glamour was still there for Don Evans. He wrinkled up his nose distastefully as an offshore breeze wafted the stench of garbage and sewage to him. He felt the familiar fury rising in him as it always did when he reflected on the folly of irresponsible mankind. Men depleted their natural resources without consideration for future generations. They defiled the nation's natural beauties. They contaminated its waterways with all kinds of filth. Coal-town's own Lake Erie had been crystal-clear and pure enough to drink from not too many years before. Now it was a stinking, muddy sump, teeming with disease. Dr. Evans stooped and picked up a thick stick as two enormous rats slunk out from beneath a pier and squealed at him menacingly. The rats were getting thicker, bigger and bolder with every year that passed. Evans didn't like it. Lately, the hospital's emergency ward had been doing a heavy business in treating rat bites. The victims were mostly the poor kids who lived in the waterfront tenements.
The Coaltown General Hospital was located only a few blocks from Lake Erie. It was small, but one of the most modern hospitals in the area. Evans considered himself lucky to have been chosen as the hospital's first chief of staff. A local boy who had made good, Evans had made a name for himself in a big New York hospital. At 35, he was one of the really brilliant young internists in the country. He could have gone on to much bigger things, but he elected to come back and help the people who had been his friends and neighbors.
When he entered his office, his secretary Louise Pitts greeted him with her customary, languid smile. Louise was a ravishing brunette with a cameo face and the body of a Hollywood love goddess. One lock of gleaming black hair curled over her forehead and partially hid one of her eyes. It gave her a furtive, sensual expression. He often wondered why a girl with her attributes had gone in for low-paying hospital administration work. Once he had asked her, and Louise had answered in her throaty, mocking voice.
"I got this thing for doctors. They send me. Know what I mean?" She punctuated it with a sound like a tigress purring, and chills had climbed up Evans' spine. To his constant dismay, the good doctor found that he could become sexually aroused just by the sounds Louise made. She was a great, shining female animal, and a source of distraction to all of the male members of the hospital staff, single or married. A few times Evans had been tempted to fire the girl, but he could think of no justifiable reason for doing so. Louise was an ace at her job.
"Going to be another hot day," he greeted her this morning when he came into the office.
Louise laughed slyly. "The night was even hotter-at least, for me it was."
Evans ignored the innuendo in her voice and in her dark, merry eyes. Louise had a way of putting a sexual connotation on the most innocent topics. Or was it his own dirty mind that made it seem that way? Undeniably, any young, virile male would be hard put to keep his thoughts away from sex in the girl's vital, vibrant presence. Coaltown might be a one-horse hamlet, but its feminine population was as style-conscious as any group of sophisticated young women to be seen strolling along New York's Fifth Avenue.
Don Evans grew more uncomfortable each month as Louise's hemlines kept going up, up, up, in pace with the latest Italian and French fashions.
His eyes bulged as they took in her latest acquisition, a hip-hugging, white linen skirt that scarcely reached to the middle of her thighs. Louise was a tall, leggy creature, and when she bent over the filing cabinets with her back to him, Evans was helpless to control the rising arc of his desire. His hot gaze traveled up her trim calves, feasted on the dimpled backs of her petite knees, then raced hungrily up her round, tapering thighs. Her skirt was hitched up so high in back that he could see the bare, satiny flesh over the tops of her nylon stockings. He blushed, stifling a terrible urge to sneak up behind her and slip his hand up between those lovely thighs. He shut his eyes to blot out the maddening vision and leaned back in his chair, groaning softly to himself.
Don Evans, you're a no-good lecher, he admonished himself silently.
He thought about his wife, Carta, with confused feelings of guilt and puzzlement. She was cute and blonde and cuddly in bed, and she never denied him the joys of her shapely little body. Evans supposed their sex life was as good as the sex life of any couple who had been married for nine years, maybe even a little better. Naturally, the breathtaking adventure and experimentation of the honeymoon and their first months together was long gone, but they still enjoyed making love, on an average of three times a week. Evans knew he was being unreasonable, but he couldn't help feeling he was in a rut, romantically speaking. There were times when Carla wanted him that he was actually bored. Once he had almost fallen asleep during the foreplay caresses.
He opened his eyes again and feasted them on Louise's heart-shaped buttocks shaping the thin material of her skirt. He could make out the leg bands of her skimpy panties. He groaned again. He would never fall asleep in bed with Louise Pitts, that was for sure! It was equally sure that he would never be in the same bed with the girl either, he reflected sadly. No, Don Evans was a happy, respectable married man, and he would never cheat on his wife no matter how great the temptation.
Louise came over to the desk, replacing the temptation of her legs and buttocks with two equally exciting attractions. Her blouse was cut daringly low in front, and when she leaned over the desk, her large, fruity breasts were bared almost to the rims of their pink aureoles. Evans compelled his eyes to focus on the folder in front of him.
"What's up, Doc?" Louise asked blithely.
He felt his blush deepening. Was it possible, he wondered, that the double entendre was intentional? It was entirely possible, he decided. Louise was an intelligent, sophisticated girl who could be objective about her physical assets. She must be quite aware of the effect that her body exerted on the male animal. like any female, it must give her a sense of power and pride to know that the sight of her undulating hips and bouncing breasts could make strong men grovel in the dust with their tongues hanging out.
"What's up, Doc?" she repeated the question.
"What do you mean?" he asked tersely, expecting her to make some ribald return.
To his relief, she was quite serious. "They brought two cases into emergency this morning, didn't you hear? Doctor Bowles was out by the desk waiting for you to come in. I thought he must have told you about them."
"No, I didn't see him," Evans said. "I came up the back stairs. What did he want to see me for? About the new emergency cases?"
"Yes," she replied. "Doctor Bowles says he's stumped. He can't figure out what's wrong with the patients. High fever, delirium, the whole bit."
Evans frowned. "That covers a lot of territory. Didn't he run the standard tests on them?"
"He was waiting for the lab reports when I saw him last."
At that instant, Paul Bowles burst into the room. He was a thin, blond man with a handsome, ascetic face. The muscles in his gaunt cheeks were constantly twitching when he was wrapped up in a medical riddle. Evans noted that they were twitching vigorously this morning.
"Hi, Paul," Evans said. "Hear you have a problem."
"Yes," admitted the younger man. "I'm really bugged, Don. Male and female, both in their twenties. High fever, extreme swelling of the lymph nodes."
"What else?"
"Some enlargement of the liver and spleen."
Evans pinched his thin, aquiline nose between his fingers thoughtfully. "Got any good guesses?"
Bowles smiled sardonically. "Yeah, it could be bubonic plague."
"That's not funny, Paul," Evans said. He glanced at Louise sitting in profile to him at her desk. She swung around to face him, crossing her beautiful legs slowly. Beneath the short skirt he had a loin-tingling glimpse of the pale, inner rounds of her thighs above the nylon stockings, and a saucy bit of pink lace. Instantly, the aura of foreboding that Bowles' grim joke had cast over him was dispelled. There was more than mere sex involved in the fascination of a woman's body. Lust was a constant surging of the life force. While it was surging, it was impossible to think of death and disease.
Just then his telephone jangled, and he lifted the receiver. "Yes, this is Doctor Evans." As he listened to the voice on the line, an expression of stunned disbelief marked his ruggedly attractive face. He hung up the phone and looked up at Bowles.
"That was the lab," he said. "They've isolated the bug in those new patients. Pasteurella pestis!"
Bowles exhaled loudly. "Good heavens, no!"
"You weren't joking after all," Evans said. "It's bubonic plague."
The phone rang again. Evans lifted it, and the grim expression on his face deepened as he listened. "Emergency ward," he said to Bowles. "Three more of the same just came in. It looks as if we're really in for it, Paul."
Within six hours, the little, inconspicuous town of Coaltown was making headlines across the nation. The count of plague victims had climbed to twenty. Six people were dead. The governor declared martial law in the area. Troops erected roadblocks on every artery leading in and out of the city. Coaltown was, literally, in a state of siege, sealed off from the outside world like a leper colony. Death prowled through the streets and laid his icy fingers on man, woman and child, rich and poor alike. Oddly enough, the sense of doom that gripped the town precipitated a bizarre, hysterical carnival atmosphere. The streets teemed with people, swaggering with the bravado that comes with blind fear. They congregated in bars and on street corners, talking and laughing wildly. Merchants closed their shops. Workers didn't bother to go back to their jobs after the lunch hour.
At the high school, Andy Jensen, a senior English teacher, put his daily class plan aside and launched into a lively discussion about the great plague that decimated Europe in the year 1347.
"The Black Death killed off half the population of Florence," he told his students. "It also inspired a young writer to create one of the greatest classics of literature of all time. Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron."
The class tittered restlessly. Laura Watson, a slender, blonde senior with wide blue eyes, spoke up. "You mean that dirty book they keep under lock and key in the research room?"
Jensen, a tall, husky man of 27, felt his ears prickle warmly. He combed his brown crew cut with his fingers. "Dirty is not the right word, Laura," he said. "It's bawdy and explicit and admittedly preoccupied with sex, but it is true literature." He had observed that the teen-age boys and girls were infected with an excess of nervous energy since the news of the plague had broken. They twisted around incessantly in their seats, and he had a difficult time maintaining discipline. The girls kept crossing and uncrossing their legs, and it had a disconcerting effect on Jensen. Several of them were sitting in postures that were most unlady-like, affording Jensen vistas of bare, nubile flesh that he found impossible to ignore. His gaze traveled up Laura Watson's firm, bare legs, tanned and sleek from the sun. Her short skirt was rumpled high on her thighs. He noticed, too, the way her small, conical breasts strained against the fabric of her blouse. She seemed to be feverish, and the flush on her face spread down her slim throat and over the upper mounds of pink flesh peeping over the blouse's low neckline.
"He must have been a real horny guy," an anonymous male voice quipped. "People dying like flies all around him, but old Boccaccio can't think of anything but sex."
"That's the whole point of the work," Jensen explained. "The idea is that this group of people are on the verge of madness from living with the Black Death night and day. To take their minds off death, they decide to sit around and exchange stories about the subject most removed from death. Life, love, sex. The tales are outrageous and witty, calculated to titillate the humor and libido of any and all who retain any spark of life within them."
A spirited and stimulating discussion ensued, and Jensen was surprised at how many of the young people had read the Decameron, or at least selected, racy portions of it. He was a little nervous at the bold direction some of the remarks took. If the parents could hear their progenies spouting off on sex, some of them would be howling for his blood to the school board. Somehow the prospect didn't worry him very much. Ordinarily, Jensen was a timid, conservative fellow who would have done nothing to imperil his job, but today he felt abandoned and reckless. From his desk, he ogled the girls' legs and thighs with growing excitement.
Never before had he ever looked upon his feminine charges as females whom he could lust for, and who might lust for him. This new mood he was experiencing made him see the girls in an entirely different light. They were mature, female animals with full breasts and thoroughly developed sexual capabilities. He wondered how many of them had tested these capabilities. His attention focused on Laura Watson. He had always thought she was the cutest girl in the class with her upturned nose and short, unruly blonde hair that fit her delicate head like a golden cap. She had wide, sensual lips. Suddenly, he ached to taste them. He ached to slip his hands inside her blouse and coddle her little breasts. He ached to caress those tender, virginal thighs. Or were they virginal? Desire throbbed in his loins with embarrassing insistency. He almost gasped aloud as the girl uncrossed her legs, and, for a delicious instant while her thighs were parted, the delightful mysteries of her young womanhood were hidden from him only by the merest wisp of sheer rayon. He slumped in his chair as the bell rang.
"Class dismissed," he said.
Laura Watson took her time about leaving. She opened her pocketbook and took out her comb and lipstick. When those tasks had been completed, she stood up and stretched her arms over her head. Her breasts stood up high and pointed. Jensen's hand trembled as he picked up his pen. Then she tucked in her blouse and smoothed down her skirt. The teacher was fascinated by the way her slim fingers touched her thighs, hips and buttocks. It was as if she were caressing them. She turned toward him and smiled.
"That was one of the best sessions we've ever had, Mister Jensen," she said.
"I'm glad you found it stimulating," he said, "Stimulating, yes." Her color deepened, and her blue eyes were sparkling. "That Decameron must be hot stuff. Once when I was younger, my girl friend who works in the school library let me see a copy. It didn't make much sense at the time. I'd like to read it again."
Jensen laughed. "Why don't you do that and write a term report on the book?"
"I might do that." She licked her lips with a wet, pink tongue. "You don't have a class next period, do you, Mister Jensen?"
"No, I'm going back to my office to correct papers."
"Could I come with you for a few minutes? I'd like to discuss the Decameron a little more and get an idea of what you'd want me to write about."
"Certainly." Jensen's heart was beating wildly as he gathered up his papers and books.
On the way along the hall, her hip kept bumping against his hip. Perspiration beaded his forehead. What he was thinking was sheer madness! He had to muster all of his will power to keep from putting his hands on her right there in the corridor.
J must be losing my mind! he told himself, but his lecherous imagery could not be daunted. Although the class bell had rung, students were still milling about outside their classrooms, oblivious to their screaming teachers.
"This is wild!" Laura said, her voice breathless with excitement. "You'd think the world was coming to an end."
"That's something of what we all feel," he admitted, "here in Coaltown. Bubonic plague is no laughing matter."
"I suppose not." She looked up at him with a sly smile. "Boccaccio and his friends could laugh about it though, and tell witty stories. Maybe that's what will happen here in Coaltown. We'll have all kinds of orgies."
Jensen laughed nervously.
"You know, it's funny," she went on, "this plague business makes you feel queer inside. All those people dying. Maybe you and I will be next, who knows? It makes you want to kick over the traces, doesn't it? Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die "
"Let's hope not," Jensen said. As they passed a section of lockers, his eyes flared at the sight of a boy and girl embracing in a dim corner at the back of one of the rows. While he kissed her, the boy had one hand on her buttocks, and his fingers were working her skirt up the backs of her thighs. They passed out of view just as the edge of her panties came into sight.
Beside him, the blonde girl giggled. "See what I mean?"
Jensen felt as though his head would burst from the pounding pressure inside his temples. He was intensely aware of every nerve-ending in his body, the scorching heat in his loins. He wanted to tear off his clothing, let the air at his tortured flesh. He tried to smother the erotic feelings with thoughts of his dear wife and of the baby girl that had been born to them less than a year ago. It was no use. Visions of heaped-up corpses set ablaze with oil kept intruding, as in the old painting he had seen depicting the horror of the Black Death. He saw his wife and child atop the pile of dead. And, in the background, he saw a male and female writhing in sensual embrace. They were Laura and himself.
When they were inside his office, he shut the door and leaned against it. The girl frowned. "Are you okay? You look so pale, suddenly."
"It's nothing," he said. "I was thinking about what you said before. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die."
Her pretty face had lost its childish, elfin look. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, her nostrils flared, her lips were full and pouting. "That story I read in the Decameron," she said. "I still don't understand it. Maybe you could explain it."
"Which one was it?" Jensen sat down in his desk chair.
Laura hoisted herself up onto the desk, facing him. He could have reached out and touched her bare legs, so long and lithe and tanned. Her skirt rode high on her thighs, and her knees were parted carelessly. His feverish eyes probed the soft, warm valley between her rounded thighs, straining to glimpse what lay beyond the shadows further underneath her skirt. He sprawled in his chair, no longer making any effort to hide his lust.
The young girl read it in his eyes and in his posture. She had indulged in adolescent petting and tumblings in the back seats of cars with boys her own age. The nature of the male animal's passion was no mystery to her. She liked to touch and to be touched. On a few wonderful occasions, she and a boy would bring each other to fulfillment. Laura had never gone all the way with a boy, but she would frequently lash her body into a state of burning excitement, conjuring up images of herself and some favorite boy friend doing the real thing.
Sitting in Jensen's private office with the door closed, sexual excitement teased her body to a high pitch she had never experienced before. A fiery pin-wheel spun madly inside her belly. She felt as if little, furry mice were scampering on soft feet up and down the hot insides of her thighs. Her breasts were swollen and smothered inside the tight bra.
"This story you don't understand?" he reminded her.
She cleared her throat. "Yes, it was about this monk and this innocent young girl. She had wicked thoughts and desires, so she came to the monk to confess and to ask his help in atoning for her sinful feelings. The monk told her that she would have to put the devil in hell. She asked him how to do it, and you know what the lecherous old guy did? He made her take off her clothes, and then he took off his clothes. 'This is the devil' he said, pointing to himself. And then he pointed to her and said, 'this is hell.' So he showed her how to put the devil in hell."
Ordinarily, Jensen would have been mortified hearing this ribald little tale from a young girl student. Today he was excited and titillated.
"What don't you understand about it?" he asked with a leer. He could see all the way up to her pink panties now.
Laura giggled. "I don't understand how that kid could have fallen for such a corny line."
Jensen took a deep breath. "Because she wanted to fall for it, that's how. Just as thousands of girls these days fall for equally corny lines. They fall because they want to!"
She squirmed on the desk, causing her short skirt to pull back higher on her bare thighs. "Want to what?"
"This!" He fumbled with his clothing.
His sudden wanton action hit the girl like the shock of cold water. She had been enjoying the game immensely up until now, the teasing game that all nubile females play with eager young males. She enjoyed exciting the male, enjoyed being desired. In her limited experience, however, male desire had been a vague phenomenon sensed but not seen in the dark. This was something else again. This was in broad daylight, and Jensen was an adult male, her own teacher! The spectacle of his stark, bold lust took her breath away. She shivered as he reached out and placed his hands on her knees. She was fascinated and repelled at the same time. His face was purple and contorted with desire. His voice was thick.
"Let's put the devil in hell, Laura," he said.
She pictured it in her mind, and her virgin flesh constricted defensively. It must hurt awful! she thought, intimidated by the force of his surging virility.
On the other hand, the feel of his hard, strong fingers stroking her thighs filled her body with weak, helpless pleasure. His hands slid up her tapered flanks, underneath the skirt. They caressed her quivering belly through her panties. Sly fingers slipped inside the leg bands of her panty legs. Her body stiffened, and her head jerked back. A strangled moan of rapture escaped her lips.
Her body and will were mesmerized by his stroking fingers. She didn't object when he began to work her panties down over her hips and thighs. He pulled them over her knees and down over her ankles and feet. He drank in her golden, untouched beauty like a thirsty man in the desert who has stumbled on a verdant oasis. He kneeled beside the desk and cradled her hips in his arms, drawing her body toward him. His lips teased the warm, pliant flesh of her belly. It quivered and twitched under his kisses like a nervous bird. She was uttering unintelligible noises and thrashing about on the edge of the desk. Her thighs gripped his head like a vise.
When he felt he had brought her to the proper degree of receptivity, he stood up and removed her skirt and her blouse. She opened her eyes and smiled at him as he unsnapped her brassiere and freed her firm, pointed breasts. Gently, he gathered her into his arms and sat down in his chair.
She recoiled at the insistent thrust of him between her thighs. "Don't!" she told him. "I'm a virgin."
He buried his face between her breasts, murmuring, "Eat, drink and be merry, remember?" He took one of the hard little nipples in his mouth and positioned her so that she was straddling his lap.
Pain knifed through her flesh. "No!" she gasped. "I don't want to. Only this way."
He felt her slim hands on him. It was delightful, but Jensen was no adolescent boy. His demands were not BO simply satisfied. He pushed her hands away and thrust against her impatiently.
"It only hurts for a second," he assured her.
"Cut it out!" she said angrily. She tried to break away, but he held her tightly against him.
Her pain and anger swelled as he stormed the citadel brutally. "You louse!" she screamed. Her clawed fingers slashed down on both sides of his face, raking his cheeks from temples to jawline.
"Hellcat!" he hissed and tried to grab her hands. One of her fists smashed into his nose, blinding him with pain. Blood jetted out of his nostrils, spraying her breasts and belly bright crimson. He lashed out at her wildly with his powerful arms. An open-handed blow caught her on the side of the head, knocking her off his lap. She sprawled on the floor like a rag doll, stunned, lying face down. The vision of her naked buttocks, plump, pink and inviting sent his lust spiraling upward again.
He was seized by an old impulse that he had refused to indulge in all the years of his married life. Sometimes when he and his wife were making love, he felt a strong compulsion to turn her over his knee and spank her. He would always stifle the urge guiltily. But now, the compulsion was indomitable.
He lifted the stunned girl off the floor and draped her face down across his knees. Her round buttocks reared high in the air, delightfully vulnerable. His face smarted where she had scratched him. Droplets of blood from his injured nose fell onto the smooth, pink flesh of her buttocks. Jensen was excited in a way that lifted his spirit to heights he had never enjoyed before. Trembling with pleasure, he hit her smartly with the palm of his right hand. Shocked out of her daze by the blow, Laura bucked and kicked her legs.
"Lemmegol" she howled.
Her resistance enhanced his enjoyment. The sight of his hand print on her round cheeks put him into a delicious frenzy. He hit her again, a slap that rang out like a pistol shot. Her pretty rump convulsed in agony.
"Oh! Oh!" she whimpered. "Please stop!"
He rained blows on her buttocks and thighs until her tender flesh glowed fiery red. The girl had no conscious recollection of when the change began. It was an abrupt, sudden thing. One minute her body was racked with torment. The next, the tendrils of fire that licked at all of her tender parts assumed an entirely different guise. The blood pounded fiercely in her breasts and belly and loins. Pain and pleasure fused in a delirious cataclysm of ecstasy.
With superhuman strength, she pulled away from him and rolled onto the floor. Lying back, braced on her elbows, her legs widespread in abandon, she glared up at him. Her eyes glowed with animal hunger. Her pointed breasts reached up at him, swelling with her frantic breathing. Her round belly heaved, and her thighs quivered.
"Hurry up!" she implored him. "I want it so bad, I can't stand it!"
Snorting like a conquering bull, he fell upon her fiercely. The pain of her first mating was nothing to compare with the exquisite pleasure that followed in its wake like the shock wave of a tremendous explosion. All of the demons that had crouched in the dark labyrinths of Jensen's mind for years broke free like a flock of squealing bats whipping out of a subterranean cave at sunset.
All over Coaltown that day, men and women were casting off the shackles of civilization that had constrained their emotions and desires all of their lives. In the wake of the first plague, a second plague was spreading over the city. The new plague was, perhaps, far more dangerous than pasteurella pestisl