Flares exploded in the distance. The pink glare illuminated the surreal brown ceiling of clouds, the surreal light revealing the 79th Street bridge. Feeling her way along the stone wall, Francesca located the 150-year-old niche and stairwell. Reaching for the iron gate, she was shocked to find it padlocked. “No… no!” Francesca yanked hard on the shiny new combination lock, unable to free it from its rusted hardware.
The roar of the military vehicles grew louder, drawing Patrick Shepherd from his stupor. He was leaning against a stone wall covered in ivy. Through a haze of pain, he gazed at the ten-year-old brown-skinned girl perched three steps above him. He blinked away tears, unsure if what he was seeing was real.
Hovering over Dawn Patel was a spirit. The luminescent blue apparition appeared to be playing with the girl’s braids as it whispered into her ear.
Pankaj Patel ushered the pregnant woman aside, his right hand wielding a rock.
“Dad, wait, you’ll only jam it. Let me, I can do it.” The girl grabbed her father’s wrist, attempting to stop him from smashing the lock.
“Dawn, we don’t have time—”
“Let the girl try.”
All heads turned to Patrick, who was now standing on wobbly legs.
“Go ahead, kid. Open the gate.”
Dawn slipped past her father. She spun the tumbler several times, her ear to the lock as she slowly turned the numbered dial, the spirit clearly guiding her.
Headlights appeared behind them, the military vehicles within a hundred yards.
With a metallic click, the lock’s shackle miraculously popped open.
“You did it!” Pankaj hugged his daughter.
“No time for that.” Francesca pushed the iron gate open, its rusted hinges squealing in protest. Carefully, the pregnant woman made her way down a winding set of stone steps to 79th Street and a white Dodge Caravan, parked on the street below.
Paolo saw his wife and hurried to assist her. “What happened? Are you all right?”
“We’re being chased. Get in the car and drive — wait for the others!”
Manisha and her husband helped Patrick down the steps, followed by Dawn and Virgil. They climbed inside the van, Paolo accelerating east into the darkness, using only the parking lights to guide him through the 79th Street tunnel.
The two military Hummers skidded to a halt by the 79th Street bridge. Receiving instructions through the communicator in his mask, Major Downey quickly located the concealed stairwell leading down to the 79th Street Transverse. “Damn it all!”
The iron gate was sealed shut… as if it had been welded in place.
Lost Diary: Guy de Chauliac
The following entry has been excerpted from a recently discovered unpublished memoir, written by surgeon Guy de Chauliac during the Great Plague: 1346–1348.
(translated from its original French)
I am infected with sickness.
Perhaps I thought God had other plans for me, that He would keep me safe so I might tend to his flock. Perhaps he has stricken me with plague so that I might better understand the malady? Regardless, I remain bedridden and weak, the fever a constant companion. The carbuncles (Author’s Note: buboes) have sprouted red below my left armpit and, more alarming, within the crease of my genitalia. I have not yet begun spitting up blood, but I can detect the beginning of a strong stench in my sweat.
An observation to whoever discovers this diary after my death: It seems there may be two variations of the mortality. The more severe was clearly prevalent in winter, the victims usually dying within two to three days. The second type, a warm-weather variation (?) appears to allow its victims time to linger. It appears I am blessed with the latter… or condemned.
Awoke to church bells and singing in the streets. Was it a wedding? My own funeral? Delirious, I summoned my servant, who delivered the bad news — the Flagellants have arrived in Avignon.
Dressed in soiled white cloaks and bearing large wooden crosses, these troupes of religious zealots move from village to village seeking to cure the Great Mortality through self-inflicted penance. Armed with thorn-covered whips and iron spikes, they publicly flog themselves in order to earn salvation from a wrathful God, transforming Christianity into an almost erotic spectacle of blood.
And how the people do follow! In an era dominated by plague, pestilence, and corruption, fear has replaced sanity, allowing the self-righteous to impose their idiocracy upon Avignon’s surviving populace. The zealots expel the priest from his church and drag the Jews from their homes… burning them alive.
I was wrong. It is evil that rots humanity, plague merely our salvation.
Dying hard, I grow ever envious of those who perished in winter.
Fever. Abdominal pain worsening. Bouts of chills. Cannot eat. Bowels… diarrhea, traces of blood. Death close now. Clement absolved my soul before he abandoned Avignon.
Let the Reaper come…
(end entry)
Seventh Circle
The Violent
“I thought the universe was thrill'd with love, whereby, there are who deem, the world hath oft been into chaos turn'd and in that point, here, and elsewhere, that old rock toppled down. But fix thine eyes beneath: the river of blood approaches, in the which all those are steep'd, who have by violence injured. ‘Oh, blind lust! Oh, foolish wrath! Who so dost goad us on in the brief life, and in the eternal then thus miserably o'erwhelm us.”
The cloak over her head paralyzed. It constricted each breath. It turned her blood into lead. Her body became a corpse, supported beneath each arm and carried away into oblivion.
Down the basement steps. Dragged by the two MPs.
Leigh Nelson’s heart jumped as punk rock music suddenly blared from speakers, the Ramones’ “Blitzkreig Bop” assaulting her inside the black hood. She twisted against unseen foes forcibly pressing her body down upon a hard surface, her head angled lower than her feet.
“Oh God oh God, please don’t do this! I swear I had nothing to do with that woman!”
She kicked blindly at powerful hands that restricted her legs, her assailants duct-taping her ankles to the backboard. When they taped down her chest, the terrified physician and mother of two expelled a bloodcurdling scream into the black hood.
Hey ho, let's go… shoot ’em in the back now—
A hand pinned her skull to the board while raising the hood above her mouth and nose.
What they want… I don't know. They're all revved up and ready to go—
In the frightening darkness in the dank basement in her worst nightmare a thousand light years from home, the suddenness of cold water poured into her upturned nostrils sent the bound woman into a full-body convulsion. Liquid suffocation. No breath to hold or release. The terror a hundred times worse than drowning in an ocean or pool.