City of the Plague God

by Sarwat Chadda

  The phone was more than nice—it was a work of art. Then I noticed the alerts on her screen. Lots of them. All with my name in them. “Why am I all over the school message board?”

  Belet snatched back the phone. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Hey! I am worried about it! Why is everyone talking about me? And why do I feel it’s not in a good way?”

  She let me read the posts. “Sorry, Sik.”

  “I’m a biohazard risk?” I read some more. “Zack ended up in the hospital because he caught something from me? The only thing he caught was your boot!”

  On and on the messages went, each one escalating the last. Mama and Baba had been taken away by ambulance because of some unknown disease. The deli had been closed down and sealed off. So far, so true. But then I’d apparently broken out of the hospital in a rabid rampage, and every student with a cough or runny nose was now a suspected plague carrier and being rushed to the doctor. Parents were demanding that the school be closed down and decontaminated. On the other hand, vaccination rates for other diseases had skyrocketed, so it wasn’t all bad news. Just mostly bad news.

  “Fear is a disease, too,” said Belet, taking the phone back. “It spreads fastest of all. We’re going to need to shut it down before it becomes a citywide epidemic.”

  “Guess it’s gonna be homeschooling for me from now on,” I said. “If I have a home, that is.” I felt almost as helpless as my parents lying in their isolation rooms and didn’t know whether to punch someone or cry.

  Fortunately, before I could do either one, I was distracted by our arrival at the masjid.

  “Sikander? Alhamdulillah!” A man in splattered white coveralls stood outside it, apparently taking a break from painting the exterior. He wiped his forehead with a cloth, leaving a gray paint smear across his skin. “Haven’t seen you around here for a while, young man, not even for Jummah prayers. How are you doing?”

  I blushed. It was the imam. He ran the masjid, and my attendance hadn’t been that great for a while. Quite a while, actually. “Salaam, Mr. Khan.” His son Farouk was on a ladder next to him. “Are you redecorating?” I asked.

  “Cleaning up the graffiti,” said Mr. Khan, tugging at his beard. “Some…bad words were painted on our walls. There was some damage, too.” He gestured to the second floor, and I saw two smashed windows.

  Farouk turned and spoke through gritted teeth. “They also threw a pig’s head over the wall. If I knew who did it, I—”

  “We reported it, Farouk,” his father cut in. “Leave it to the police.”

  Farouk snorted, clearly not impressed by his dad’s restraint.

  Mr. Khan shook his head, then smiled. “And you’ve brought a friend, yes?”

  Had I? It took me a moment to realize who he meant. “Oh, yes. This is Belet. We came to help serve lunch.”

  Belet’s face said, We did? but her mouth stayed closed.

  Mr. Khan nodded. “Mashallah. We have a big crowd today.”

  I could already smell delicious foods cooking. “We would have been here earlier, but Penn Station’s shut down because of a water-main break. And they’ve closed the Brooklyn Bridge because of some cracks in one of the towers.”

  Belet arched her eyebrow. “Doesn’t take a lot to paralyze a city, does it?”

  She was sure both things were Nergal’s doing. I was sure it was just life as usual in New York.

  “Farouk and I will join you as soon as we get cleaned up,” said Mr. Khan. “I want to hear about your parents. We are all praying that they will be fit and well very soon.”

  “Inshallah, Mr. Khan,” I said.

  I said a hasty good-bye to him and walked around to the small parking lot at the back of the masjid. Brown picnic tables ran in neat rows along the asphalt, and people lined up at buffet tables with their paper plates, each collecting a pile of food from the cluster of stalls.

  “Best free meal a person can get this side of the Tigris,” I said to Belet. “Curries from our Pakistani brothers and sisters, Sudanese dura, and that whole corner is Malaysian. Baba says his jihad is against bland food.”

  “Do we have time for this, Sik?” she asked.

  “You said you want to be useful,” I pointed out. “And serving others is a great way to take your mind off your own problems.”

  “I knew I’d regret coming,” Belet muttered.

  She and I collected clear plastic water pitchers and moved from table to table to pour.

  There were salaams from the benches as people I knew from masjid inquired about Mama and Baba, told me that du’as had been made for their health, and asked if I needed anything. There were a few smiles at Belet, too, as nosy folks tried to meet my “new friend.”

  Among the regular worshippers were many poor and homeless people from the neighborhood. Food united us as much as religion. Gathered there were individuals from all over the world, from all walks of life, come to break bread and say a few prayers together. It made me feel better about things, if only for a brief time. “This place helped my parents when they arrived in America. So Mama and Baba usually bring over a pot or two to pay it forward.”

  “I know about zakat,” said Belet, referring to the obligation to help the needy. “But you said we were going to find Nergal.”

  “My guess is your god of rot will not be hiding in high society. He’ll be among those less fortunate. The ones already struggling.”

  Belet surveyed the diners. “It makes a vague sense, I suppose.”

  Then I spotted a figure at the gate. Small and wearing a patched-up parka that went down to her ankles. She had her hood on, but there was no mistaking her. “There she is.”

  Belet followed my gaze. “Who?”

  “Hey, Ada!” I shouted across the parking lot, waving to get her attention. She looked up abruptly, startled.

  “Let me introduce you,” I said to Belet.

  As we approached Ada, there was a moment when I thought she’d run—she’d done that a couple of times—but then she relaxed…until she saw Belet.

  “Hey,” I said, trying to be as casual as possible. “Been looking for you.”

  Ada stood there, encased in her coat of patches. Some were wallets she had decorated with shiny candy wrappers; others were sequined purses she had found. She had glued, sewn, or pasted them on as outer pockets, and in the sunlight, she shimmered as if dressed in fish scales. Like a crow, Ada liked shiny things, and with them she had transformed her dull, ragged coat into a sparkling work of art. She had never told me her age, but I guessed she was only a couple of years older than me. We all kept an eye on her, but she wasn’t interested in getting too close.

  “Ada is happy to see Sik.” Then she looked over at Belet, wrinkling her nose. “Ada is not happy to see Sik has brought someone…else.”

  “And salaam to you, too, Ada,” I said. “This is Belet. She’s my friend. Apparently.”

  “Salaamu alaikum, Ada.” Belet held out her hand. “It’s good to—”

  Ada looked Belet up and down, clearly not impressed. “Is Belet Sik’s girlfriend? Sik could do better. Much better.”

  “Your friend’s remarkably rude,” said Belet.

  “I like to think she’s refreshingly honest.”

  I steered Ada toward the kebab table. “What do you want, Ada?”

  “It’s Saturday,” she said firmly.

  “One Saturday Special coming right up.”

  I asked old Ali if I could take over for a little while, and after washing my hands, I got behind the grill. Making kebabs is my one and only superpower. I glanced over at Belet. She nodded. “I’ll have one, too.”

  “How hot do you want it?”

  She recognized a challenge when she saw one. “Try me.”

  Ada hovered nearby. “Just make sure—”

  “Relax, Ada.” I flipped over the warming pitas. Ada liked her kebabs a very particular way. I started with the onions.

  And a few minutes later, we sat around a table with a kebab roll e
ach. Belet took a bite, and there was a flicker of shock on her face. She reached for the yogurt sauce. “That’s…quite spicy.”

  Ada nibbled, holding the roll lightly with her fingertips. She ate carefully, taking pains not to let a single piece of lettuce or drop of sauce fall. “Ada wonders if Sik’s friend Daoud will be here tonight. Ada likes Daoud. He gives her a funny feeling in her belly.”

  “That’s just indigestion.” I poured Ada a cup of water and then let her eat in peace. My parents and other adults at the masjid had given up trying to “save” her by getting the authorities involved. She always ended up back on the street. I’d known her for a while now; she came around the deli on Wednesdays—at eight thirty exactly—and Mama would always give her a meal and bag of fruit. Ada usually showed up at the kebab kitchen on Saturdays, but the rest of the week? That was her business.

  “The tomatoes are different,” said Ada, pausing mid-chew.

  “Fresher, right?” I replied.

  She nodded and continued eating. You had to be careful around Ada. If anything wasn’t exactly right, she’d take off.

  “I need your help, Ada,” I said.

  Ada’s focus remained on her roll. “Is it Sik asking for help, or this Belet?”

  “Both of us. There’s something strange going on, and we wonder if you know anything about it? You are a very observant person, and you…go many places. Did you hear about what happened at our deli?”

  “Ada likes Sik’s parents.”

  “Do you know about anything, Ada? Anything unusual?”

  She hesitated, looking around before speaking. “The stranger arrived thirty days ago.”

  Belet sat up. “Stranger?”

  Ada shivered. “He came by boat, in a shipping container.”

  I looked over at Belet. “Didn’t your mom say Nergal smuggled himself here? Easy to do in a shipping container.”

  “Not easy,” said Ada. “Everyone died.”

  “Died? Who?” I asked.

  “Refugees. Some from Africa. Some from the Middle East.”

  I frowned. “Oh, I think I read about that online. They suffocated, right? Pretty sad.”

  “They didn’t suffocate,” said Ada quietly.

  Belet leaned over the table toward Ada. “How do you know this?”

  Ada shrank back, and her gaze flicked to the gate. She was thinking about running, and if we lost her now, that would be it.

  “Ada, this is really important,” I said quietly while giving Belet a just back off glare. Belet was scaring her, but we needed to learn what Ada knew. “Just talk to us for one minute. That’s all.”

  Ada took a step toward the gate, but I got up, nice and slowly, and stood beside her. “I’m your friend, Ada, but Mama and Baba are in a bad way, and I think this stranger from the ship is behind it. We need to find a way to stop him before more people suffer.” Then I stepped back. “It’s your call, either way. Where’s this container?”

  Ada chewed the inside of her cheek. “Gravesend Dock.”

  “GRAVESEND DOCK. THAT DOESN’T BODE WELL, DOES it?” said Belet.

  No, it did not. I looked around, half expecting to see vultures perched on the lampposts. The dockyard was vast and isolated—the ideal place for, say, a renegade god and his horde of demons to settle in. And if they weren’t there, the container might still hold a clue that could help us find Nergal, something the police might have overlooked because investigating ancient monsters wasn’t part of their job description.

  We stood at a ten-foot-tall chain-link fence. Beyond it lay a city of shipping containers, all part of the Gravesend marine terminal. They formed multicolored skyscrapers, spreading high and wide. Forklifts rumbled along the steel-lined chasms.

  I searched in both directions for an opening in the fence, to no avail. “Guess we’re climbing.”

  While Belet practically flew over the fence, I tore my sleeve getting over, but in only a few minutes we were hiding behind a tower of crates. We needed to keep a low profile—if movies are to be believed, dockworkers have a reputation for punching first and asking questions later, if at all. We sprinted to the first wall of containers. If there were security cameras, we couldn’t see them. Perhaps this was why the human traffickers had picked this dock in the first place.

  The layout was simple: The dock was divided into zones, just like a parking lot. We needed zone 12; we were in 20.

  “I should have brought Kasusu,” said Belet.

  I scanned the direction we were headed in, and we both ducked as three guys walked past. They were big and mean-looking and exactly the type we needed to avoid. “You cannot carry a five-foot sword around New York. Not unless it could disguise itself.”

  “Disguise a sword?” she asked. “Like cosplay?”

  “I’m not saying tie ribbons to it and pretend we’re in a parade, but you said it could change shape. Perhaps it could turn into something smaller? Pocket-size maybe? I don’t know, like a pen or something.”

  Belet laughed. “Now that would be handy.”

  It didn’t take long to find the right container—it was still sectioned off with police tape. Even without knowing what had happened inside, looking at its exterior made my guts churn, like when I was working in the deli late at night and heard something out back.…Never mind. Didn’t need to be thinking about that just then.

  Even Belet looked wary. “You want to go first?”

  “La, shukran,” I replied. “I think we need to get one thing straight: You’re the action heroine. You lead.”

  Belet didn’t disagree. Humility was not part of her personality. “So what does that make you?”

  “The comic sidekick.”

  She gave me her “arched eyebrow” glance. “But you’re not actually funny. Or even mildly amusing.”

  “Ouch. I give you a compliment, you give me a verbal kick to the face. We are gonna have to seriously review your people skills when all this is over.”

  Even though it was only mid-afternoon, zone 20 was draped in shadow, and deserted. Nobody wanted to be around here, and that made life easier for us as we made our way to the container doors. While the other containers were brightly colored and marked with company logos, this one was black with big patches of orange rust. It was as if the metal itself was diseased.

  Once we were there, I was not at all interested in looking inside. But Ada had sent us here for a reason, so…

  Belet wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?”

  A sharp whiff burned my nostrils. “Cleaning fluid. Industrial-strength.”

  The rusty hinges cried as we dragged the doors open wide enough to slip through. The acidic stink of the fluid hit hard, stinging my eyes and attacking the back of my throat. I hauled the door wider to get some fresh air in there.

  Smartphone flashlights on, we looked in.

  Empty. Empty, empty, empty.

  Except for the ghosts.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine the refugees, huddled together with their meager belongings. Desperate families hoping they’d made the right decision to leave their war-torn homes and everything they knew for the wild gamble of a better life here, in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

  Mo had worked with a few refugee families, helping them get settled in New York. He’d told me all about human traffickers who offered to deliver people to the safety of the West—for a price. How much had these poor victims paid to spend months living in this steel box?

  I heard Mo in my head: They came here to start afresh, and this is how it ended.

  The left corner had been scrubbed spotless. I tried not to imagine the bodies.

  This is just the beginning, Yakhi. Nergal’s out there, planning something terrible.

  The smell of disinfectant was stronger in the back. The cleaning crew must have used gallons of it. It had stripped the paint off a portion of the metal floor.

  I remember when we fled Iraq. I was only allowed to bring one toy with me. It was a monkey. I wonder what toys these childr
en had with them.

  “Shut up!” I snapped.

  Belet looked at me. “Pardon?”

  “Sorry. Just talking to myself. The fumes are getting to me, I guess.”

  “Look,” said Belet, beaming her flashlight on the walls.

  “Ya Allah.” They were covered in scratches, but they were too neat and regular to be random. I looked closer and realized what they were—words. Cuneiform. It didn’t have the glamour of Egyptian hieroglyphs—it was made up mostly of dashes—yet it was from these marks that history had officially begun. But cuneiform was found in museums, displayed in glass cases and preserved as something precious, not scratched into a steel slaughterhouse. This was graffiti, scrawled at all angles and in different sizes, the lines overlapping each other, as if the writer had been so filled with fury he couldn’t stop himself from attacking the metal. There had to be thousands of words crisscrossing the walls, even the ceiling.

  “Can you read it?” I asked Belet.

  “There’s so much.…” She swept her light from corner to corner. “Wait a minute. It’s all the same thing, only in different languages—ancient Sumerian. Akkadian. Babylonian, Assyrian…All the cultures from Mesopotamian history that used cuneiform. Just two words, over and over again…”

  “Which two?”

  “‘Gilgamesh lied.’”

  “Lied about what?”

  Belet passed the light over the wall from side to side. “It doesn’t say.”

  I’d grown up with the tales of Gilgamesh—there had to be hundreds. About fighting demons and monsters, saving princesses, and going on adventures with his best bud, Enkidu. Until a few days ago, I’d always assumed they were fairy tales. I’d never taken them literally.

  Belet got down on her knees to look more closely at the bottom corner of a wall. “Wait a minute—there’s something else here. Just a few lines. Strange. I think it’s a rhyme.”

  “In cuneiform? What does it say?”

  “Let’s see.…” She cleared her throat as if doing a classroom recital. “‘There is much goodness to savor, as mortals have so much flavor. Kidney from the Ivory Coast tastes best when it is served on toast, but my—’” Belet covered her mouth. “The rest is really disgusting.”