The Patron Saint of Plagues

by Barth Anderson

  Here comes my sign.

  The smoke unveiled two skyboats circling over the zócalo. Jets of lit gas blasted down into the crowd. The man stood still as thousands of people fanned out through the square. A large woman knocked him down, and he covered his head as a stampede trampled over him. Explosions rattled the ground and his body, and a missile hit the intersection where the man had been standing. Cobblestones, chunks of new pavement, and several people fell on top of him. The concrete under his head quivered.

  Bodies choked the square when he regained consciousness. Long shadows of morning stretched over the zócalo’s carnage and the ancient cathedral was a gutted heap behind a teetering façade. Sirens screamed over riots elsewhere in La Baja.

  Moon-suited teams stacked bodies, dead and dying alike, next to ambulances limned with a Red Crescent, Pan-Islam’s international rescue mission. The man tried to push himself up but his hand was broken, so he fell forward hitting his shoulder on the pavement.

  In susurrant, sliding steps, nearly fifty flagellants in black-leather masks entered the wide zócalo. Haunting in their masks, with zippers up the front of their blank, black faces, they raised their elbows high to deliver blows upon their own backs, sweaty chests thrust forward. A man in a tattered priest’s cowl of Holy Renaissance red and black stepped to the front of the procession, holding a cross like a torch. Vampirically pale and wild-eyed, he stood among the snapping whips and pointed into the smoking cathedral, screaming a mad mix of Spanish and Latin. “Virus y veneno! Virus y veneno.”

  The man understood him.

  “Poison and poison and poison.”

  When the mad chanting stopped, the man leaned on his elbow and crawled up to his feet. He called out in Latin, “I am poison, too! I confess it! I am the virus!”

  The vampire priest gaped, then pulled up his cowl. He lifted his hand and made a cross in the air. “Ego te absolvo!”

  The man cried out in Spanish. “Are you my sign from the Blessed Virgin?”

  The priest nodded fervently. “Yes! We are!”

  A child, or maybe it was a young lady with a flutelike voice, sang the Ave Maria as the procession began winding out of the square. They must be real, he thought. They must be.

  The cross-bearer held out his leather strap and called across the bodies, “It’s your time. Come with us.”

  MONDAY, MAY 16. 8:16 P.M.

  EYES SHUT TIGHT, Domenica prayed on the floor of the abandoned library, sitting on a red seat cushion. Pirate sat atop the oak reference desk about five feet away, behind the camera trained on Domenica’s face. They were alone in this little library, and the keening of sirens swirled outside like hurricane winds.

  Domenica felt hot and trapped. She opened her eyes and looked at her old friend, wondering if he was warm, too. The muzzle of the gas mask the Khazak relief worker had given him was tapping against his chest as he nodded toward sleep.

  Domenica and Pirate had found this place after waiting in vain for a visitation at the “pirate ship.” Pirate’s netcast studio was located on the eighth floor of the Bad Water Commons, an old hotel turned commune near the heart of what was now the hot zone. The little culture surrounding Domenica, which started budding and growing a year ago with Pirate alone, had lately been growing rapidly into an entourage. By the time Big Bonebreaker came stomping into town, she was constantly surrounded by dissident seminary students, Minority Party activists, Hijos de Marcos insurgents, and cast-off nuns loyal to the Vatican. Waiting for the final chapter of the prophecy in the Bad Water Commons, with all the people around her, was the wrong strategy. The Virgin simply didn’t come, no matter how hard Domenica prayed.

  Meanwhile, offgrid street-ojos were contacting Pirate, telling him to get Domenica out of the Commons; they said that as soon as the barricade around the centro histórico hot zone was complete, kill teams in antiviral suits would be sweeping the ancient neighborhood for holdouts. Flagellants and other pilgrims kept interrupting their netcasts, too, hoping to receive a blessing from the Patron Saint of Plagues, as they called Domenica. After the fifth interruption, she had gone downstairs and found the lobby of the Commons crammed with clamp-masked penitents—she decided then and there that it was time to leave the hot zone.

  With nothing but a sat camera and a link-blinder, she and Pirate had vacated the studio, despite warnings from overhead cloud-boards telling capitalinos to stay inside behind locked doors. The chaotic streets teemed with Renaissance convoys, Ascensión city patrols, street fighters with red bandanas over their faces, and looters running with whatever they could find (netmonitors, clothing, shovels, pew cushions). But they couldn’t find an exit: Every street that Domenica and Pirate took was barricaded with military checkpoints, hurricane fences, or twenty-foot-high portable walls.

  Pirate figured the way out—as always. He led Domenica through a ransacked jewelry store, downstairs, and through a catacomb of connected basements, splashing through puddles formed by the ancient subterranean tides of the old lake bed on which the city was built.

  Hello, Lake Texcoco, thought Domenica. You’ll never let us forget you, eh?

  When they finally found stairs leading up, they had emerged here, inside a firehouse turned library just a block outside the barricaded hot zone.

  From the basement stairs, Domenica had stared into the library’s calm emptiness and silent stacks of books. The musty scent of moldering paper smelled exotic, surreal. “What if the plague is here and killed everyone already, Pirate?”

  “Then we’re in trouble.”

  A thorough search of the big, one-room building revealed open soda bottles abandoned on tables, high heels parked or forgotten beneath desks, coffee-cup handles aimed at the front door, and sweaters draped over the backs of chairs. A netmonitor was on and tuned to the Holy Renaissance’s emergency channels. No bodies, no blood anywhere in the library. Whatever sad, oldtime paper-book fanatics had been here had wisely fled when given the chance. Pirate shut the windows, spraying them down with a black-plastic sealant that he’d brought with him, and dug the word PLAGUE into the library’s front door with a screwdriver.

  After three hours of prayer, Domenica felt safe. The library, solemn as a sepulchre, reminded her of the Order of Guadalupe’s meditation rooms.

  If only it weren’t so hot in here.

  As she retied her braid, Domenica swallowed in a mouth dry with fear. She was thirsty, too. Both were dengue-5 symptoms, she knew. She tightened the seal of her clamp mask and adjusted her gloves. It didn’t feel like fever. This felt hotter. Dizzying. She couldn’t control the oven of her thoughts as her eyes skittered over the spines of book titles.

  Behind her, Domenica heard a footstep.

  Had someone snuck past the six-foot bookcase she and Pirate had slid in front of the basement door? Domenica kept her head stone still. Her eyes darted to the left, the direction from which she’d heard the footstep.

  “Pirate,” she whispered.

  Pirate’s upper body bobbed slowly with the breath of sleep, and air shushed through his rubber mask’s filter.

  Domenica cocked her head without turning around, listening to the noises behind her. Another step. Fabric brushed the ground. “Pirate!” she whispered again. She’s here. She’s finally come!

  From the corner of her eye, she could see Pirate rousing himself and checking the camera’s uplink, nodding.

  Good. We’re still hot. Domenica rallied her nerve and turned to look behind her.

  The library was dark. Against the wall, someone had stacked towers of magazines from prepilone days. In front of those stacks was a scuffed and scratched oak bench, half-hidden in shadow. The woman in white sat there, hands flat on her thighs, lively brown eyes staring at Domenica.

  Domenica willed herself not to greet the woman. She had made big displays of happiness and joy when these visitations began a year ago, only to have the woman vanish, leaving Domenica with an inconsolable cavity of loss and a piercing headache. Domenica turned back to Pirate, reliev
ed and terrified that she’d actually seen the virgin this time.

  Pirate stiffened as he seemed to note Domenica’s posture. “The vg nodes in?” he asked. The Virgin of Guadalupe has arrived?

  Domenica hissed, “Yes.”

  “Is she speaking to you now?” Pirate asked.

  Domenica turned an ear. She could hear the woman in white listing Nahuatl Indian names behind her. Domenica’s grandmother had used the old tongue too, only when talking to fellow scholars of ancient Mexico, but often enough that Domenica recognized the language when she heard it. She nodded to Pirate with a single urgent ducking of her head, worried that even this subtle movement might frighten away the woman in white.

  Pirate accessed the audio uplink with a tap on the camera. His movements suddenly seemed far away, as if he were outside the library. The room felt heavy, trembling.

  Her list finished, the woman in white fidgeted behind Domenica, shifting sandals soled with tire treads. She wanted Domenica to look at her, the nun imagined, but Domenica would not do so until invited. Any misstep in the woman’s mysterious protocol could end the visit.

  “Little lamb,” came the Virgin’s deep, melodic voice. “Such a lovely little lamb, I’d know you anywhere by the smell of your brow and hair. Do you believe me?”

  Domenica’s heart urged her to look at the woman, but she kept her eyes trained somewhere between Pirate and the woman, gazing off into the corridors of books. “You’re so kind to me. Thank you, mamacita.”

  Yearning filled the woman’s voice. “I would do anything for you. Anything. That’s a mother’s curse. You’ll never be a mamacita, so you’ll never experience this great love I feel for you.”

  Domenica never deflected her praise or called herself unworthy as the sisters in the Order of Guadalupe had urged her to do. If she ever demurred, the Virgin departed and the headache came, so Domenica had learned not to question or doubt, but to accept the marvel of the woman in white.

  “Look at me, lamb, let me see that beautiful face.”

  Domenica pivoted on her rump and commanded herself to look the Virgin in the eye. The woman was small and elderly, with a deeply wrinkled face, and heavyset like the matronly women of Domenica’s own family. She wore a white gauze dress that fell to her thick ankles, with a whiter neckline and short sleeves that showed her upper arms. The dress was perfect, un-creased, and made her skin look almost black. The woman’s eyes twinkled as if Domenica were an adorable three-year-old and the sight of her filled the Virgin with delight.

  Domenica knew that from a certain point of view the quaint construction of her mind was being flicked aside during these visitations. Oh, but to feel the glory of the woman in white, no matter who or what she was. No crass, grumbling human deserved this blessing, let alone Domenica with all her shortcomings. The woman in white adored Domenica, though Domenica didn’t understand why. Domenica shushed herself. Accept it. She has accepted you. Accept it.

  Her emotions a torrent of awe and gratitude, love and confusion, Domenica began crying. She couldn’t help it.

  Pirate stood and handed Domenica a box of tissues from the reference desk. “Tell me if you need anything, Domenica.”

  Domenica dabbed her nose and looked at him quickly, long enough to say I’m fine with her eyes.

  “Listen,” said the Virgin.

  Domenica looked back, the woman’s dress—a fire of white in the shadows.

  “Listen, I said.”

  Domenica bowed her head.

  “I have something to tell you.” The charming mama face fell, and the Virgin’s voice became weighty. “There is something—in here with me. It isn’t—” she looked about suspiciously at the dark library, “one of us.”

  Domenica had learned months ago not to question or request clarification. Either the woman would explain herself further without prompting or Domenica would simply be left to interpret the message on her own, though paraphrasing helped. Domenica said, “It isn’t one of you.”

  “No, lamb, he isn’t one of … us.” The woman in white stood, still looking about as if she’d heard something frightening in the library. She lifted her left hand, and Domenica could see she was holding a white egg. The Virgin held it as if she meant to toss it to Domenica, then cupped her right hand over the egg. “I have been doing some research. I haven’t understood everything. But now I see—there’s someone in here that doesn’t belong.” Then the Virgin began listing names again in her clucking, throaty Nahuatl.

  “Are you all right?” Pirate asked Domenica.

  Domenica whispered without looking at him, “The prophecy is starting.”

  The woman in white squatted and the fabric of her dress stretched between her knees. She placed the egg in front of her on the ground and she looked at Domenica. She struggled to her knees and knelt in front of the egg. “A second conquest—trickery—Hitler and Cortés reborn, dressed as an Aztec ancestor. But he isn’t one of us and now—he’s in here with me.” The woman in white whispered, “But listen: I have a fighter—for every foe.”

  Domenica was about to paraphrase when the woman in white opened her mouth wide, making a little smacking noise. A hiss came from her throat. Her eyes flashed white as the irises rolled upward into her head and she screamed, “Get it out! Get it out! Get it out! Get it out!”

  The Virgin stood and began trembling. She quivered hard as if someone were shaking her from behind. She spread her hands and her eyes darted from side to side. “Stop. Don’t touch. Don’t put that in your mouth. Take your medicine,” she said, as though surrounded by mischievous children. “Don’t shake hands. Chew with your mouth closed. Wash your face! Don’t kiss that man! He doesn’t belong! Stop that, all of you! I said get away from each other!”

  Terrified, Domenica kept her head bowed, watching from beneath her brows.

  The Virgin’s eyes went haywire with anger, and her voice carved through the room. “Diseases of the conqueror, I know them all, but not this one. I’ll burn everything in my path. I’ll kill the Spaniard this time. Don’t let him in my cell. I’m rallying my forces and I’ll destroy the city to kill the invader. To kill what was hatched in my own land, I’d kill my own children, kill myself. Do you believe me? Say if you do!”

  “I believe you!”

  The Virgin raised one hand. Domenica could see a spray of age spots on her wrist. The woman in white held this pose for a long time, eyes closed as if calming herself. Then she bent over to pick up the egg. She said, “I’m using all my forces to keep the disease away from you, Chana.”

  Domenica straightened as though cuffed under the chin. She felt her throat constrict around that name. “Mama?”

  “And this is the last time that I will come to you.”

  Her heart seemed to press against the back of her throat. “No!” Domenica said, her voice a croak. Why did she call me that? Domenica shook her head so frantically that hair threaded free from her braid. “No, mamacita, Mexico needs you!”

  The egg vanished. The woman in white straightened her dress and sat down on the bench. Suddenly, the room was filled with smells of the High Sierras, the most comforting smells of home for Domenica: sage, horses, dry grass, hay. Sturdy Catholics formed the tight farming community in which Domenica was born and raised, mountain campesinos who hated the sinful capital, who went to church with or without the admonitions of the Holy Renaissance. It calmed Domenica to smell stewed meat in a fragrant guisado. Fried cactus. The smoky-chocolate smell of mesquite and the warm aroma of corn tortillas.

  Domenica frowned and pressed her fingertips into her shut eyes. Wait. What is this? she thought. I wasn’t raised on a farm. I was raised in Mexico City. What is this?

  Mesquite smoke. The grassy whiff of manure.

  The woman in white shook her head as if to keep Domenica from fussing. “You are yourself, Chana. Don’t be deceived by the lies of false priests. Have I ever guided you in the wrong direction? ¿No yo estoy aqui que—?”

  Domenica folded her hands and beseeche
d the Virgin, “¡No te vayas, mamá, no te vayas! ¡Te faltaremos—!”

  “¡—soy que tu Madre por siglos y siglos, Chanacita?”

  Domenica didn’t care about assurances, nor did she care about the consequences of questioning the Virgin. She couldn’t stand it that the woman in white was calling her by the wrong name before abandoning her forever. Domenica shouted, “Why are you calling me that, mama?”

  “Shh, Chana, shh. I am right here. I am right here.”

  That corner of the library fell in to total blackness. Domenica looked over her shoulder at Pirate, wondering why he had doused the candles, but she could see that they burned with long, straight flames. Domenica whipped her head back to the wooden bench.

  The woman in white was gone.

  A tight, pinching sensation over the bridge of her nose seemed to drive straight into Domenica’s skull. “Oh no.” She covered her forehead with her palm as a shaft of pain shot through her head. Domenica fell forward. “Why?”

  Pirate was immediately at her side. “Domenica! What is it? What’s wrong?”

  The swoon of pain disoriented her. She opened her eyes and winced, unable to remember where she was in the astounding pain.

  “Are you hot? Are you thirsty?” demanded Pirate, holding her shoulders in his big grip.

  “Yes.”

  His voice became more urgent. “Domenica! Look at me! Are your limbs sore?”

  “I don’t have Big Bonebreaker, Pirate,” said Domenica annoyed, fatigued. “It’s the headache I get when I ask too many questions.”

  Pirate made a pillow with the seat cushion and urged her to lie down. Domenica lifted her hand to show him he was crowding her and he backed off. She peered at the camera, her lids like oyster shells closing over the dark pearls of her eyes. The camera was still aimed at her, and the uplink light was red. She wondered how many people could watch her in the midst of this outbreak.

  “Mexicanistas,” she said to the camera, “I have the promised message from the Virgin. It is her last message. She says she will not come again to me.”