The Patron Saint of Plagues

by Barth Anderson

  Stark kept one hand on the left wall as he walked and stumbled over what seemed like either kites or signs—he figured they were fallen ceiling tiles, but he couldn’t see them. Ain’t never gonna learn to look before you leap, he scolded himself.

  When he reached the end of the hall, Stark stopped. Remembering the map, Stark figured he had reached the intersection of the main hall and the elevator bay. There would be elevators to his immediate left and across the hall, too, directly in front of him. The stairwell he needed was just to the left of the far elevators, somewhere in the blind darkness before him, so he followed the elevator bay, dragging his left hand along the wall. He took a few steps and then his heart dropped away as his hand passed across an empty space. Stark stopped; he couldn’t move. He heard something to his left where the wall should have been. Water dripping far below. A hollow rush of air. Open elevator shaft, he thought, refusing to move forward, as if he might be sucked into this empty shadow.

  What happened to the doors?

  Stark willed himself to move, keeping his left foot shuffling forward and his hand tracing the black emptiness. Another open elevator. Then a third. It felt like someone had ripped the sliding doors out of the elevators’ frames. Why would someone need elevator doors? That thought bred a scarier one. Was someone here, in the hospital, now? His suit’s exhaust pump made a sound like a breathy sigh—a deafening noise in the silent elevator bay. Stark imagined that if anyone else were in Zapata, they would hear him coming long before he heard them. Stark walked past the elevators until he found a doorway with a real live door. He pushed it open and felt the floor beyond with his toe, relieved to find solid ground. He stepped through. The noise of the exhaust pump echoed in a space stretching far above and far below.

  Stark decided he was in the stairwell and found the handrail and steps. His heart lightened and he sighed deeply, walking with more confidence now. The stairwell switchbacked upward and Stark soon found himself at the doorway leading into the second floor.

  He was grateful to find the hallway’s fluorescent ceiling lights still flickering. That bode well for the computer lab: This floor probably had its own generator. Six gaping elevator shafts yawned at him here, too, and Stark realized he was looking at the elevators from which Miguel Cristóbal and his team had emerged while Stark consulted with Pedro Muñoz. That ain’t even a week ago now, Stark thought. He found the conference room where dengue-6 must have been released, an ALHEPA filter fitted over the door. Stark read the panel, MAX QUARANTINE—DENGUE 6 ACTIVE, and, with a violent shudder, imagined the ugly scene on the other side of that door, and backed away.

  Stark took out the hospital map, but in the half-light all he could see was the crazy red line, angling like the letter of an alien alphabet. He held the map so the strobe could illuminate it. The lab he needed was at the other end of this long hall.

  Stark had never been comfortable in hospitals. As an intern, he had spent a lot of time in them, but rarely as a professional epidemiologist. He was a Wisconsin quop boy, accustomed to a very different architecture: cramped quarters, noisy hallways, hot kitchens boisterous with political debate. While Stark appreciated the cleanliness of a hospital, the fact that they housed hundreds of people—doctors, nurses, orderlies, secretaries, patients, babies—while still maintaining a creepy illusion of emptiness felt deeply wrong in the core of his bones. The countless unoccupied rooms and their vacant beds. The unblemished floors that looked as if no human had ever trod upon them. The long corridors that seemed to stretch off into vanishing points. These images came into Stark’s dreams, usually in nightmares, where Stark was a boy, again looking for his grandfather somewhere in the tidy maze of a hospital.

  But Zapata was far worse than any of his recurring nightmares.

  Stark folded the map, put it in the pocket at the small of his back and was about to head down the hallway when he heard something from the stairwell behind him. Or maybe it was from one of the elevator shafts.

  A shushing sound. A whisper, maybe, or a foot sliding on the ground.

  Stark stood stone-still for a long time, straining to hear, but there was nothing more. He could have come armed, but after what happened in Bastrop, Stark never wanted to hold a gun again in his life. He started down the hallway, taking big cartoon steps to keep his hard-soled boots from tapping too loudly on the tiles.

  Then he heard footsteps.

  Stark stopped walking.

  A lonely whistle sounded from the stairwell behind him. Two notes, one high, the next lower, like someone whistling for a dog. Stark looked over his shoulder but he couldn’t see anyone emerging from the stairwell. He stood still as a deer, but he couldn’t hear very well over the sounds his suit made: the pump’s hiss, the pressure gauge’s quick waltz of clicks, the constant creak of the plastic coverall. But there it was, another footstep. Then more whispering. He couldn’t discern words but the tone was definitely conversational.

  Question?

  Response.

  Agreement.

  Someone was following him. The voices fell quiet and all Stark could hear was his suit. Spooked out of his skin, he ran down the hall and when he reached the computer lab, he ducked inside and listened at the door.

  I should not have done this! he told himself. I should not have come here! He was an idiot to come without a flashlight or a gun, without a guard, without a team of twenty or thirty bodyguards to protect him. He decided Roberto Cazador was the smartest man in the world to call up foreign armies before coming into the hot zone. Stark picked up the nearest object that he might use as a weapon, a computer keyboard, then flattened himself against the wall by the door. His brain kept repeating those two sentences until they danced into a crazy little rumba rhythm in his brain. I-should-not-have done THIS!

  I-should-not-have come HERE! He waited, listening, computer keyboard held like a plank, ready to brain anything that entered the room.

  When no plague-infected monsters leapt into the computer lab, Stark swallowed his fear and slid away from the wall. The hallway outside was still empty. Hospitalophobia gettin the better of me, he decided. He watched for a few more minutes, then cautiously turned his attention to the task of starting up a computer. The lab was full of terminals, and grounded strips blinked red. Looters had taken chairs, desks, even doors, but they had left the computers on the floor. Stark supposed that in pilonecentric Mexico, computers weren’t much more than filing cabinets that broke down more easily.

  Stark put down his keyboard-club and went to the nearest terminal, flicking it on without a problem. The system ran a virus check, which made Stark laugh humorlessly, then its screen read, El sistema se funciona bien. The system is operational. Backup generators had protected these computers from any surges during the riot’s blackouts. Stark found the dengue files from icons on the desktop, and when he found the storage of files dated May 14 and May 15 (the last files available), Stark removed the memboard from his thigh pocket, whispered his name to it very quietly, and winced at the series of loud wake-up tones. He looked over his shoulder: Still, no one in the hallway. Then he plugged the memboard into the terminal.

  YOU ARE REQUESTING BLACK LETTER FILES.

  PLEASE ENTER YOUR HOLY RENAISSANCE ID CHIP TO CONTINUE.

  Stark entered his Task Force ID code, hoping it would work or this ghastly excursion would be for nothing. A moment later the Ministry of Health logo appeared on screen. On a template so bright that Stark jumped, the computer read:

  WARNING. CONDITIONAL ACCESS GRANTED.

  THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH IS NOW BEING ALERTED TO YOUR REQUEST.

  PLEASE WAIT.

  Stark knew there were no fiber-optic connections to Zapata’s records. Would they have secret connections for the sole purpose of ratting on intruders like Stark? He glanced back at the doorway, still nothing, then looked back at the computer monitor, shifting his weight from one foot to the next. He had to get to a bathroom soon. The suspense was excruciating.

  ACCESS GRANTED. MINISTRY OF HE
ALTH ALERTED.

  Stark started in fright, but immediately began downloading files like a thief shoving silverware into a swag bag. He took all the dengue cases from the first two days of the outbreak, then pulled up a searcher and downloaded any case file or document that contained the word “dengue.” After that, he took patient records and interviews, nursing staff reports, pathology reports, phlebotomy reports, and Pedro Muñoz’s letter of dissent to Zapata Hospital’s administration. He even took a document labeled “Grandmother Muñoz’s Tripe Soup” from the Staff Epidemiologist’s personal file. It would take a while to download it all, but Stark didn’t want to risk needing anything once he fled the hospital.

  Just then, from the hallway outside the computer lab, a man called in singsong Spanish, “Where are you, you little fucker?”

  Stark stood up straight. His head twisted about frantically looking for another exit, then realized there was no other way out of the lab. He picked up the memboard. It was still downloading. THREE MINUTES UNTIL TRANSFER IS COMPLETE, read the screen. His instinct was to leave the memboard, or better, rip it out of the main dock and run. He looked back at the door-less entrance. Stark was standing in full view if anyone passed. Terrified beyond the ability to react, his brain retreated into its little rumba rhythm again.

  Footsteps shuffled toward the gaping doorway. “Are you in the computer lab?” said the singsong voice.

  Then that lonely, two note whistle again.

  Stark felt a quick, warm trickle down his left thigh before he could control himself.

  Two young men appeared at the doorway. They were desperate-looking fellows, wearing wet bandanas over their faces and oven mitts on their hands. Both wore smoke-stained Sanborn’s restaurant uniforms. One carried a makeshift spear made from a broken lamp stand. The other carried a wide set of pretty gauze drapes serving as a net.

  The thing that Stark focused on, more than their crazed dress, was the fact that both had native dark skin. They’re indígenas, thought Stark. Indígenas alive in the hot zone.

  When they saw Stark, standing there like the statue of an astronaut, the men threw themselves back against the far wall of the hallway. “¡Chinga!” swore the drapery man. “¡Ejércitos de la luna!”

  Stark realized they were hunting, and whatever the net man meant by armies from the moon, they apparently weren’t expecting to find a suited intruder in the computer lab. The absurd irony of it rinsed away Stark’s fear. Two Native Mexican men in the hot zone, wearing nothing more than bandanas and oven mitts, faced with an immune norteamericano wearing a state-of-the-art antiviral suit. “Soy un médico,” said Stark.

  “¿Un médico? Ridículo.” The lampstand spear-carrier ducked his head as he pushed himself away from the wall. “¿Qué haces en este hospital?”

  The tu form of address that the man used could have implied anything from friendship to insulting familiarity, but Stark was glad he’d used it. It broke the tension. “I’m looking for information that I need to help stop Big Bonebreaker.”

  “¿Sí?” said the spear-carrier. “Haltará el plago nadie pero Dios.”

  Stark smiled. “Then I hope I can help God stop it.”

  The spear-carrier liked that answer but the drapery-net-man didn’t trust Stark. He looked ready to scream and finally tugged at his friend’s arm. “Vámanos, flaco, vámanos.” Then he could not stand it anymore and ran off down the hallway.

  Before turning and following his friend, the spear-carrier said, “Onare a Santa Domenica, la patrona de los plagos. Ahora ella está la sola quien escucha Jesuchristo.” Then he crossed himself and vanished from the doorway.

  Stark remained at the doorway until he couldn’t hear their footsteps anymore. Then he returned to the memboard and waited for it to finish downloading. Outside the hospital, he could hear the two men shouting to each other as they ran down the street.

  Pray to Saint Domenica, the Patron Saint of Plagues, the man had said. She’s the only one Jesus listens to now.

  A strange noise filtered down the hallway as Stark disengaged his memboard from the computer. He stuffed it into his lugall, then walked to the lab entrance and listened. It came from the elevator shaft.

  A clarinet.

  It was a whimsical little tune, like a Jewish wedding song. Stark took his memboard and walked slowly toward the music. When he reached the elevator bay on this floor, he stopped and cocked his ear toward the dark, yawning shaft. The clarinet warbled. The hallway lights flickered.

  Then the music stopped.

  In the caesura came a bellowing scream, man or woman, Stark couldn’t tell, but it was wrenching. When the scream ceased, the clarinet started playing again. Stark leaned into the elevator shaft and shouted, “Hello? Do you need help?”

  The clarinet music stopped again.

  After a long pause, a measured voice called down, “Yes, I need some help. Please, come up here.”

  Stark didn’t like the sound of the voice. It sounded healthy, calm, and rational—not the screamer’s voice. “Where are you?” Stark called.

  The sound of footsteps echoed in the shaft. The man’s voice was closer, calling directly into the shaft. His voice went from neutral to plaintive. “We’re on the seventh floor. We need help. Hurry!”

  Oh my God, thought Stark, remembering the floor plan of the hospital. Surgery is on the seventh floor He didn’t understand what was happening up there, but he wanted no part of it. Stark edged toward the stairwell.

  The man’s voice came again. “Where are you?”

  Stark entered the stairwell and tromped downstairs without pausing to listen.

  A moment later, a door slammed open somewhere above him. Then footsteps resounded as someone flew down the steps after him.

  Stark ran blind down the long, dark hall, bashing into the ceiling tiles or kites or whatever they were, almost falling. When he’d burst through the reception area and into the fully lit street, Stark ran to the store, located his ’cycle and jumped aboard. While he feebly yanked at the key, spinning it in the ignition, he looked back at Zapata and saw a figure skidding to a halt in the shadowy atrium. Stark saw the person from a safe distance, in the blaze of the midday Mexican sun, but that did nothing to still his hammering heart.

  The figure was holding a clarinet in one hand and something long and sharp in the other.

  A moment later, Stark was roaring down Venezuela, throttle opened. A moment after that, he was coming about over Zapata Hospital and sailing back to the sanity of La Alta.

  FRIDAY, MAY 20. 3:02 P.M.

  HIS NAKED WAIST wrapped in a scratchy, white towel, Stark was sitting on a plastic-covered couch when Isabel arrived with a fresh pair of boxers and pants for him. She stood in the blood screening room’s air lock, appraising him with droll eyes.

  “Don’t say anything, Bela,” Stark said.

  “I’m glad you called me. This is quite an opportunity,” she said dryly, “seeing you like this.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what? Make fun of a celebrity doctor for wetting himself?” she said. “I wouldn’t dream.”

  The bloodwork technicians glanced at Isabel as she entered the lab; but their faces were blocked by their helmets, so he couldn’t tell if they were laughing at him. Stark pretended to be absorbed with the memboard that held all the Zapata information he’d stolen. He was absorbed with the memboard. “I had a temporary lapse. OK?”

  Plopping his clothes in a stack on the sofa beside him, Isabel said, “Not quite ready for big-boy pants, eh?”

  They hadn’t spoken since yesterday, so Stark was relieved to hear Isabel’s invectives. He didn’t know if that meant she was considering the recoding project, but the lighter mood was welcome—especially after what he had just seen in Zapata.

  “Come on. These might be symptoms you’re suffering from,” Isabel said, her professional voice taking over and shifting to Spanish. “¿Qué pasó?”

  “It’s not a symptom,” sighed Stark, humiliated at discussing h
is “accident” in Zapata. “I took a skycycle over to Perimeter Clinic Seven. I—uh—wasn’t used to driving it.” He glanced at her with sheepish eyes. He hated lying, even white-lying, to Isabel; it made him feel like all the death around him was creeping closer, especially after their heated words yesterday. He couldn’t wait to be alone with Isabel, to show her what he had found in Zapata’s computer banks. He needed her, especially her, to see what he had seen. “How much longer until we get my blood results?” Stark asked the assay technician.

  “You’re the one who insisted on a complete assay, Doctor. Just a few minutes more.” The technician, for whatever reason, had taken an immediate dislike to Stark.

  Isabel looked Stark over, curious. “Everything all right at clinic seven?”

  “Fine. As far as I can tell. I’m just pregnant, that’s all.”

  Isabel laughed. “What?”

  Stark meant to say tengo verguenza (I’m embarrassed) but lapsed and chose the easy cognate, estoy embarasado, a novice Spanish speaker’s mistake. He was rattled.

  Isabel lowered her eyebrows, smiling. “Are you all right?”

  He wasn’t all right. No. He had gone to Zapata to find patient zero and instead had found something so outrageous that he could barely fit it in his brain. In English, Stark stammered, “I’m embarrassed. Embarrassed. ¿Comprendes, novia? I just—I have a lot on my—oh, here.” Stark shoved his memboard at her. He couldn’t hold it back any longer. Sitting on the Zapata data was like being dealt something ominous, aces and eights, the dead man’s hand, but he didn’t have the fortitude to maintain a poker face.

  At that moment, an orderly arrived with a new Racal-plus suit. Stark had asked for his other one to be thoroughly cleaned with antivirals.

  Isabel smiled broadly at his discomfort. “Pobrecito.”