The Patron Saint of Plagues

by Barth Anderson

  Stark stared through the chain links at this captured specimen. She represented something so new that she shattered what most Americans conceived of as “future,” representing a new superpower, a new kind of labor force, and an economy so lush that people would surgically alter their optic nerves and frontal lobes to take part in it. Her head twitched as she sat in her cell, looking at things that only she could see. She was speaking, too, but Stark couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  Howell returned with two antique plastic soda bottles filled with water, set one down in front of Stark, and then sat at the table. Stark dealt seven cards each. After the kid took the first hand, Stark felt the rhythm of the game gradually relieving his anxiety. Howell dealt another, after tallying the score.

  “You said your name is Henry David Stark,” came the woman’s voice from her dark cell. She had a Mexican accent and her voice was groggy.

  Stark and Howell looked up from their hands. They stared at the sabihonda as if she might rip the chain links out of the concrete. Perhaps she was even capable of it, for all Stark knew. “Right. I Henry David Stark.”

  “Virologist? CDC? Atlanta? Yes?”

  “Epidemiologist. Epidemiologist.”

  The woman sighed as if annoyed with Stark, or maybe it was exhaustion. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Stark arranged the cards in his hand. “You tell me.”

  “I guess I’d better,” she said, hands flat on her thighs. She took a deep breath as though preparing for a scary dive. Staring somewhere far away, her head twitched. She was whispering in a raspy, clipped voice. Stark could barely make out the words. “And. Toward. Jaunt. Y. Mesa. O. And. Pero. But.”

  Howell watched her for a moment, muttering, “That gives me the creeps.” He picked up the jack of spades. “Goddamn sobby-honda.”

  “Musica. Oval. Otro.”

  Rodriguez’s aphasia, Stark thought, looking at her over his cards. It was a common side effect of early brain wetware recipients, and one of the main reasons Americans had wanted nothing to do with pilones or wetware when the technology first emerged. The wetware formed lesions on the language centers of the brain, scrambling wordbits while uplinking. This woman’s aphasia was different than Rodriguez’s, though: She was stringing together nonsense in two languages.

  “Ella. Llena. Lo. O. And. Which. Ponder. Brujo…”

  Stark briefly wondered if anyone had written a paper on this condition yet, then examined the discard pile.

  “Oatmeal. Boatman. Boleta. Busflight into Houston. Arrived safely. Weitzel reports in. Valesquez confirms. Mierda. Timing is right. These cowboy gananes got big lucky.” Her voice sounded weak, and when she spoke, she rested her head against the back wall of the makeshift cell, as if her words sapped all her energy. “Animales. Timbales. Valleys. Assisted in the dramatic discoveries made at the Borna outbreak with Dr. Joaquin Delgado.”

  When the sabihonda spoke Joaquin’s name, she might as well have touched a cavity in Stark’s teeth. He folded his cards with a snap.

  “Keep playing,” said the kid, sounding like a jaded old man. “She does that just to rattle us.”

  Stark looked down at his cards again. He picked up the seven that Howell discarded. “It works.”

  “Dios.” The woman said, “Roberto wants you to make a flight in less than two hours.”

  Stark glanced at Howell, wondering if he would consider which Roberto she was referring to—Mexico’s Chief of State—but the boy was deciding whether to pick up the whole discard pile or not.

  “Rondo. Average. Detriment. Aleman. Cup.”

  “Knock that off,” Howell shouted at the woman. “You won’t get nothin to eat if you keep that up!”

  Stark grimaced. “You starving her?”

  “Got to. She needs carbos to run her pilone,” said Howell, still making eyes at the discard pile. He said pilone like pea-loan.

  “Who she anyways?” asked Stark. “How’d she wind up in your jail?”

  Howell picked up the whole discard pile and began rearranging his hand. “Kevin caught her outside Houston, near the old Jet Propulsion Lab. Messin with our satellites, probably. I think she must be someone important. The antiaircraft drones stopped shooting at us once we locked her up here.”

  The sabihonda knew his drivers by name. She knew of Joaquin. She referred to Chief of State Cazador as “Roberto.” This woman was not only hooked up, she was seriously connected. “What will you do with her?”

  “Trade her, probably.” The crowd of cards in his hand distracted Howell. “Our Chairman tryin to figure out what she doin in the old JPL. Wants to increase her value. Is it my turn?”

  The sabihonda was looking at Stark again, not up at the ceiling anymore, and the strange litany of nonsense had ceased. “Hey,” said the sabihonda. She scooted her wooden chair up to the chain links. “Hey, Stark.”

  The kid looked over his shoulder at the rifle.

  Stark didn’t want to look at her shiny pupils, so he concentrated on the straight he was building. “What?”

  In Spanish, she said, “You lied to Luther about the typhoid outbreak.”

  Either Howell knew Spanish or he heard the name of his leader. The kid looked at Stark over his big hand of cards.

  Stark smirked, but in Spanish, he asked who said so. “¿Quién diga esa?”

  “Diga Luther,” she told him.

  Stark shook his head, trying to look annoyed, but he wondered how the hell the sabihonda could know about that typhoid-fever lie.

  “Don’t get riled,” said Howell. “She just wants to get us fighting.”

  The sabihonda stared urgently at Stark until he finally relented and looked at her. In Spanish she said, “Luther is checking up on your story. He’s scanning the CDC’s current caseload and he’s determining that no Special Pathogens agents are assigned to San Antonio.”

  Stark felt his cheeks tingle, and suddenly the jail felt even hotter.

  Howell looked at the woman. “What she saying to you?”

  “Ahorita,” the sabihonda said in rapid Spanish, “he is figuring out that there is no reported typhoid fever outbreak anywhere in Texas.”

  Howell turned and threw his bottle of water at the woman. It splashed against the chain links and sprayed the floor. “Never should have given you that spaghetti, bitch!”

  Stark’s eyes felt hot. His shoulders shivered with fear. Maybe the sabihonda was trying to create a distraction, but mentioning typhoid fever had convinced Stark it was time to flee the Opera House, or he’d never get to San Antonio. “Kid.” Stark trembled so hard he had to hold his cards in both hands. “Listen, I want to explain something to you.”

  Howell kept his eyes on the sabihonda. “You shouldn’t listen to her, man. She been usin her hook-up to play us for days. That why we don’t feed her.”

  The woman pressed her long, half-shaved face against the chain links of the cell, hissing like a cat.

  “Both of you, shut up,” said Stark, unnerved by the sabihonda. “Kid, I got to go. I got to get out of here. You got a skyboat or anything I can use?”

  Howell looked anxiously at Stark. “What you talking about? I can’t let you go.”

  “I know.” Stark nodded reasonably. “But you have to.”

  “I oughta just kill her right now, the way she lies and lies.”

  “With your little balls, muchacho?” the sabihonda said. “I don’t think so.”

  Stark pointed a finger at the woman. “Shut up, lady. Kid, look at me. You don’t owe me nothing, but I need you to help me get to San Antonio.”

  “Help you?” Howell laughed, his eyes blazing bright beneath the curls. “Why?”

  “Because of the outbreak in Ascensión.”

  Howell tossed his head back in surprise. “Ascensión?” He said it so it rhymed with attention. “Oh, I get it. You heading there ’cause of that Big Bonebreaker?”

  “Right. If I don’t get to San Antonio in the next couple hours, I’ll miss my flight. And if I miss
that flight, I don’t think those people have a prayer.”

  The kid’s sweet face transformed as anger burned through him. His close-set eyes and narrow chin made him look like a ferret. “Hey, you know, we at war with Mexico. Maybe the rest of America don’t think so, but we been at war nearly my whole life,” Howell said, and his voice broke in indignation. “Whose side you on anyway?”

  Stark said, “Medicine don’t got ‘sides.’”

  Howell said, flat and mad, “War sure does.”

  Stark didn’t want to look at it or even tell himself he knew it was there, but from the corner of his eye, he could see the gun holster bulging under Luther’s plaid shirt beside the desk. “You know how many people have died since the outbreak started? A couple hundred, probably.”

  Howell fanned his cards and began rearranging his hand. “And they say God don’t bless America no more.”

  “The disease won’t stop at the Guadalupe River and turn around. It’ll spread through Texas, too, kid.”

  “Shut up about all that,” Howell said. He pointed to the table. “Sit down and play cards, for chrissakes.”

  “Luther won’t come back for you, Estarque,” said the sabihonda, still speaking in Spanish. “He’s going to call here in a couple minutes and tell Howell to lock you up.”

  Stark looked at the phone. It sat on the desk like a bomb with a burning fuse. He felt like his blood was broiling. “I have to get out of here, kid.”

  “You shut up, lady!” Howell said, jumping out of his chair. “Mister, she got Kevin and Luther at each other’s throats yesterday, and they like brothers. She a damn rattler, I tell you what.” He spun and kicked the chain-link wall of her cell.

  As Howell turned away, Stark darted for the desk and the holster on Luther’s chair.

  Howell turned back and realized why the doctor was fumbling with Luther’s shirt. The kid froze and Stark snatched away the shirt, digging at the stiff leather strap of the gun’s holster.

  Howell looked like a bug scurrying in bright light. He started for the card table, as if for cover, then he took three scrambling steps backwards and scooped up his rifle without looking at it.

  Stark drew the gun, a weighty revolver with a boost on the barrel that felt like an anchor in his hands. He had just wanted to scare the kid with it. But with Howell armed too, now, panic took control of Stark’s body.

  Stark and Howell lifted their guns at the same moment and fired.

  But both safeties were on.

  “Dang it!” shouted Howell.

  Stark and Howell struggled with their safeties, barrels still pointed at each other. “Goddamnit. Goddamnit,” muttered Stark.

  The sabihonda shoved her chair straight backwards, and looked back and forth between the blundering men.

  The kid fired first and his shot went into the wall behind Stark, spraying plaster and dust over his back. Stark flinched and fired, and he wished, instead, that he’d held the revolver in the kid’s face, telling the frightened boy to drop his rifle in the loudest, deepest, daddiest voice he could muster.

  But Stark didn’t think of that. He thought of the plane leaving San Antonio in just a few hours, the climbing mortality count in Ascensión, and the riots. Stark fired, and the boost made it recoil hard, flying out of his hand, hitting him in the mouth. Stark and the kid fell backwards.

  “¡Ai, mamacita!” The sabihonda jumped up and pressed herself against the chain links of her cell.

  For a moment Stark couldn’t tell what had just happened. He shivered uncontrollably with excitement and fright. Touching his mouth, Stark looked at the blood on his fingertips, then he scooted across the floor to Howell and looked at the boy’s wound. The bullet had gone straight through the kid’s throat. Stark’s eyes filled; he shook his head in bitter disbelief.

  “Christ, I can’t believe you!” the sabihonda shouted. “Don’t you know how to hold a gun?”

  Stark splayed his fingers and combed them straight back through his hair. “Man, oh man.” He touched his fingertips to his bruised and cut lip, then looked at the revolver. “I—I didn’t think that—” He savagely kicked the gun away as if it were a rat clawing at him.

  “Oye,” the sabihonda said. “Oye, Stark. Get Howell’s keys.” She pointed at the dead man.

  Stark looked back and forth from the gun to Howell to the rifle and back again. Stark couldn’t clear his thoughts, couldn’t stop looking from kid to gun to rifle, kid to gun to rifle, as if his brain were whirling on a nauseating merry-go-round.

  “OK. You got to get a grip,” the sabihonda said, shifting to English. She snapped her fingers at Stark as if he were a distracted dog. “OK? You listening? Oye. You and me want the same thing. Get Howell’s keys and let me out,” she said, speaking each word slowly and succinctly, grabbing his eyes with her own metallic gaze.

  His thoughts spun round Howell’s unplayed rummy hand, as if he and Stark could somehow just back up, start over, and finish the game.

  “Estarque, all I need is something to eat. As soon as I get some food, I’ll get you to San Antonio, I promise.”

  San Antonio. She right. Three o’clock. San Antonio. Stark took a breath and quelled his rising nausea, then reached into Howell’s pocket. “Sorry, kid. I’m really sorry.”

  Through the carousel of his thoughts, Stark remembered some other words.

  She got Kevin and Luther at each other’s throats.

  Stark stared up at the sabihonda, as she watched him with eagerness in her disfigured face. He wanted to trust her but she was so alien that he shivered when he looked at her. “What your name?”

  She said, “Rosangelica.”

  It was hard to get the accent right. “Rose—Rosan—?”

  “Rosangelica. Emphasis on the hell.” She stuck her hand through the wide chain links, offering to shake. “Rosangelica Catalina de San Clemente.”

  Her extended hand was like a tentacle in Stark’s eyes. He didn’t want to touch it. She a damn rattler. “What were you doing at the JPL, Rosangelica?”

  Just then, the phone on Luther’s desk buzzed.

  Stark listened to the buzz as if it were a reminder.

  Rosangelica gave him a look that said, See? That’s Luther. I told you the truth.

  With no choices left, Stark dug in the boy’s pocket until he found the key chain, then he put it in the sabihonda’s waiting hand.

  MONDAY, MAY 16. 12:56 P.M.

  AS SOON AS the cell door rattled open, the sabihonda grabbed her grimy jacket and sprinted for the jail’s exit.

  The kid had been right about her all along, Stark figured. She had no intention of getting him to San Antonio. The desk phone was still buzzing but he couldn’t look away from the bullet hole in the kid’s throat.

  A moment later Rosangelica appeared at the door, holding a loaf of homemade bread and a bowl of what looked like leftover spaghetti noodles. Her straight black hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she stared pointedly at the phone. “Answer it.”

  Stark looked at her in fear. “Me?”

  “You think they’ll talk to me?” She pointed at the phone with her fork. “Answer it. ¡Ahorita!”

  Stark put his hand on the receiver and gathered a long, catching breath. Then he picked up the phone and listened.

  “Hello?” came Luther’s voice.

  “It me. Stark.”

  “Dr. Stark? Where Howell at?”

  Stark looked helplessly at the sabihonda and shook his head slowly.

  Luther’s voice was an insectlike buzz from the receiver. “Hello? You okay, Doc?”

  “Just hot,” said Stark, resting a hand on his sizzling brow and looking down at the dead boy on the Opera House floor. “Howell went to get us some lemonade.”

  “Well, I’ll wait. I got to tell him something.”

  Stark’s brain shut off. He couldn’t think of anything else to satisfy Luther so he gently hit DISCONNECT and set the receiver down on the desk.

  Rosangelica watched him, incredulous, fo
rk looped with noodles held before her face. “No. You didn’t just hang up on Luther.”

  “Yes!” he shouted. In a seizure of anger, he swiped phone, weapons, specs, pictures, and barco diagrams off the desk with both arms. He swore a long line of profanities and kicked the desk as hard as he could, knocking it into the jail’s stone wall. “I hung up, I hung up, I hung up, I hung up!”

  The sabihonda nodded. “All right. Get it out of your system,” she said reasonably, slurping noodles as if his reaction was to be expected.

  Stark ran to the door and stood there looking out at the long barren street stretching toward the Colorado River. War drones buzzed over the flat, western horizon beyond—Stark could see the air boiling in the distance. He could have said that Howell went to take a cold bath. That he wasn’t feeling well. That he was outside with some visitors. He could think of a thousand lies now that he was off the phone. Stark rubbed his neck. The day was so hot that the sky felt yellow. He imagined Luther and the giant Kevin speeding toward the Opera House. “How long till they get here? Do you know that?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out, but I need to eat first,” Rosangelica said, casually tearing into a slice of bread and tapping her forehead with an index finger. “Carbos.”

  Stark stood in the doorway and watched her eat in the dark jail. String seemed to jump beneath the skin of her temple making her look like a bogey from a childhood dream.

  The sabihonda glanced down at Howell’s body and spoke around a mouthful of bread. “You saved me, you know that? Princess Organismo Cibernetico in my ivory tower, and all that? ¿Estás un caballero in shining armor, sabes?”

  Stark turned away and stared at the war drones’ heat devils shimmering.