City of the Plague God

by Sarwat Chadda

  The store was covered in a cloud of orange brick dust that was hard to see through. But it looked like just one wall remained standing.

  I turned toward the howl.

  One of Nergal’s demons had broken through the debris. It was a mangy creature, half dog, half lizard, and the size of a calf. It barged past the panther lamassu, and its claws skittered on the cracked street as it charged straight for me.

  “Belet!” cried Ishtar. She hurled Kasusu toward us in a high arc.

  A lot happened simultaneously—I’ll try to break it down. I grabbed a brick and swung. But I was too panicked and too early and missed the beast’s snout by a second. The sword flashed in the corner of my eye, because the rest of my attention was on the demon as it opened its mouth to chomp off my head.

  Belet leaped.

  She grabbed Kasusu out of the air as the demon’s putrid breath choked me. She spun like a ballerina and slashed downward.

  The demon’s eyes blazed scarlet with bloodlust. It stretched out its neck to reach a little bit farther.…

  Kasusu did the rest.

  The head spun onward as the body collapsed right by my feet. The hind legs scrabbled wildly in the air for a few seconds before the message got through: It was dead.

  Syrup-thick green blood oozed from the stump.

  “Nice,” said Kasusu. “Right between the second and third vertebrae.”

  The last standing wall of the clothing store cracked and tumbled down with a dull rumble.

  Nergal raised his rusty spear as Ishtar spun to face him.

  Belet cried out even as she started sprinting toward her mom, but she didn’t have the strength to throw Kasusu the necessary two hundred feet.

  Nergal tightened both hands around the haft of his spear and roared as he thrust forward.

  The deadly point went straight through the center of Ishtar’s chest.

  Belet screamed.

  The tip tore out of Ishtar’s back. The lamassus roared and abandoned their battles to sprint in to help their mistress, but it was too late. Nergal leaned back, hoisting Ishtar into the air.

  Filled with blind fury, Belet and I charged him.

  The lamassus struck first and Nergal pulled out the spear to defend himself, but he instantly vanished under a mass of frenzied big cats.

  As Belet fought two more demons, I reached Ishtar first. She lay there, tears swelling in her eyes, but there was a smile on her face. “I’m glad Belet has you, Sikander. Defender of the World.”

  “But you’re a goddess,” I said, not knowing what to do. “You can’t die.”

  She laughed, and winced. “I think this proves otherwise.”

  Belet joined us then, just in time to receive Ishtar’s gaze. “Of all my children, I think I might have—”

  We’re told we’re made of stars. That every atom in us originally came from a shining light at the heart of the solar system. With Ishtar it was obvious. She glowed brighter and brighter as she disintegrated back into the starlight she’d been created from.

  Belet knelt down, staring at the empty space.

  The lamassus were flagging. Now that their mistress was gone, they’d lost their will to fight. Nergal threw off the tiger and grabbed the panther around the throat, his massive hand easily encircling its neck.

  I took Belet’s hand. “I’m so sorry, Belet. But we have to get away from here.”

  “I have to fight!” she yelled, squirming in my grip.

  “We’ve lost, Belet! We need to run!”

  She stared at me, her face pale. “Lost?” She sagged as if all her spirit had bled out, and Kasusu dropped from her limp fingers. There was nothing left to keep her going. She’d never failed before, and she didn’t know how to handle defeat.

  I did. “Get up, Belet. You’ve done all you can for now. And don’t forget your sword.”

  Belet looked over at Kasusu. “My sword?”

  Nergal dropped the now-lifeless panther. The surviving lamassus began to retreat, and the remaining demons grew bolder. Nergal turned his gaze in our direction. “Get the boy. Alive. Belet can join her mother.”

  At last, Belet shook herself into action. Grabbing Kasusu, she jumped to her feet, glaring at the plague god.

  “Leave him,” I said, pushing her in the other direction. “This is not the time. Start running.”

  I was surprised when Belet obeyed. She sprinted ahead and vanished around the corner and into the darkness.

  I might have been able to catch up. I could’ve pushed myself a little harder, and the two of us could have raced into Midtown. I wanted to run and run and not look back.

  Then what?

  Nergal’s demons had our scent, and most had twice our number of legs. They’d capture us easily and tear Belet to pieces, just to get to me.

  I couldn’t let that happen to her.

  I slowed down, stopped, and raised my hands. “I surrender.”

  The demons crowded around me. No longer the entire fourteen—the battle had taken its toll—but I was disappointed to see that Idiptu and Sidana were still alive. Sidana doffed his top hat. “The master wants a word, my dear.” Then he grinned. “And it will hurt you much, I fear.”

  “END OF THE LINE,” JOKED IDIPTU AS HE DROPPED me in the dirt. Demons were perched all around me on derelict equipment and abandoned train cars like the audience of a gladiatorial match. They watched me with hungry eyes and frothing mouths. I counted ten injured survivors out of the original fourteen. But four dead demons were nothing compared to one dead goddess. Nergal had come out way on top.

  The ground shook as a distant rumble increased in volume and the wreckage around us vibrated. A moment later, a freight train thundered past on the other side of the broken fence that separated the tracks from this junkyard. The air was split by the shriek of the heavy iron wheels, which threw spinning sparks over the rails as one car after another rattled past.

  Where was I? It was nighttime and Manhattan glistened to the west not far away, so I was in Queens. That meant I was in Sunnyside Yard, the massive, sprawling labyrinth of tracks that led into different train routes and across the entire country.

  The demons had dragged me underground after I’d surrendered. I’d been pushed and shoved through dark subway tunnels with the monsters howling and snapping at my heels the whole way. I’d heard trains and seen the flashing lights of engines on nearby tracks, but our tunnel had held only rusty tracks and broken cars. Nergal had secret access to the entire city. No wonder the transportation system was collapsing.

  The plague god himself squatted on a throne made of old, stripped-down locomotives. He groaned as his demons licked his wounds. Flies nestled over patches of his dried blood, feeding happily. His eyes fluttered, the raging yellow now dimmed.

  One of the demons, a mangled-looking mix of crow and man, crouched beside him and offered a dead rat. “You need to eat, my lord. Come, feed on this fresh—”

  Nergal, ignoring the rat, grabbed the demon by the throat. “Yes…eat…” he muttered. He opened his mouth.

  The crow demon thrashed his wings and squawked as the god’s jaw cracked open wider and wider. Nergal’s oily black tongue caressed his face.

  I couldn’t help but stare, even though I knew what was about to happen. I recognized Nergal’s look—I’d seen it before on the faces of a thousand famished customers.…

  The other demons laughed and jeered as feathers flew and Nergal shoved the struggling crow man in. He still kicked his scaly feet even as Nergal’s throat bulged to grotesque proportions.

  “Bite, snap, slurp, and crunch!” chanted Sidana. “Here comes a bird for the master’s lunch!”

  Other demons ran up to help force the meal down. The crow demon wasn’t giving up, and Idiptu had to beat him in with his fists until, with a puff of black feathers, he disappeared all the way into Nergal’s belly.

  My list of Most Disgusting Things Ever had a new number one.

  The demons cheered. They replayed the devouring, mocking the
ir companion’s struggles with malicious delight. Pain and suffering were their amusements.

  Now there were nine of them left.

  I stood up and brushed the dirt off my clothes. “Well, here we are. What do you want?”

  Nergal’s cloak of flies buzzed with fury. Hornets circled me, and shiny bluebottles buzzed in my face. I tried to ignore them and not swallow any.

  Nergal’s mucus-filled eyes blinked slowly. “You know what I want, boy.” Then he glanced down at his forefinger, crawling with flies, and popped it in his mouth and sucked the buzzing insects off. A few fled through the holes in his cheeks; the rest he mashed up and swallowed.

  Yuck. “Need some bug repellent? Maybe a better diet?”

  Nergal and the demons weren’t the only inhabitants here. Stray dogs pawed at overturned trash cans and torn garbage bags, scrounging for leftovers. They were mangy, some with patchy fur, others bare, their pink bodies swollen with deformities. One had a fifth leg hanging uselessly from its hip, and another had no ears, just a pair of holes. One caught my gaze and snarled.

  I froze. It wasn’t a dog. It was a man wearing a torn fur coat. His eyes blazed with rabid anger.

  Nergal followed my gaze and smiled. “My plague dogs. Are they not beautiful?”

  “You turned people into…that?” I tried not to vomit. “Why?”

  “Because I can.” He furrowed his brow. “You do not see the beauty, do you? You have spent too long basking in Ishtar’s light.”

  Nergal laughed, then erupted into a chest-racking coughing fit, bending over double in agony until it passed. He looked around, eyes wide with confusion, muttering in a language I didn’t understand. Who was he talking to? He reached out for something, or someone, then seemed to wake. He shook his head.

  Despite the fear infiltrating every atom of my body, I felt—very briefly—some pity for the ugly god. He was old, sick, and lonely, his mind wandering to long-faded days of glory and adoration.

  “You should go home,” I said.

  “Home? When my business here is not yet finished?” He drew himself to his full height, and my pity now felt completely misplaced. He was still a god, and I was, as the phrase went, just a puny mortal. “Now that Ishtar is gone, there is no one left to oppose me.”

  “Someone will,” I replied.

  He laughed. “Oh, you have heroes in this day and age? Pray, name one.”

  A person who would dare go up against a giant, disease-ridden immortal? Okay, no one immediately sprang to mind.…

  Nergal’s laugh descended into a hacking cough. As he wiped the bloody spittle from his mouth, the god gazed at me. “Humans no longer have any heroes to protect them. None of the caliber of the legends of old, like Gilgamesh.”

  “Ishtar said you were glorious once, like him. What happened?”

  Nergal slammed his fist into the iron. “I am glorious still! Do you not know who raised humanity out of the quagmire of the Dark Ages?”

  “Let me guess.…You’re gonna say it was you?”

  He beat his chest. “Indeed! With my plague! Half of Europe was decimated by the Black Death, forcing society to evolve! If not for that, you would still be digging for roots, a serf forever bound to your master.”

  “Yeah, villains always think they’re doing things for the greater good.”

  “I am the lord of decay, of plagues, of mental illness, and of rot. And it is from these things that we become greater than we were before. As we decay in the soil, do we not nourish it? As plants rot, does not the garden grow? And who can distinguish genius from madness? Boy, you do not see what is plain in front of you.”

  “I certainly see plenty of insanity.” I’d been so terrified for so long, I’d come out on the other side. I was surrounded by demons and standing only a few feet away from a god of disease, and yet I could stare him in the eye without flinching. Had I gone insane, too?

  As he clambered stiffly off his perch, his pain was obvious. Everything he touched corroded and flaked. The dense iron of the locomotive rusted from his mere presence, and the paltry patches of grass shriveled and died under his feet. Nergal corrupted everything. “So many people in this city…So much filth and pollution, just below the surface. All it needs is a little stirring to bring it bubbling out of every gutter and drain. The people are ripe, boy—ripe for squeezing. And then we shall let their foulest thoughts and deeds pour out. And from that a new world will blossom.”

  His gaze drifted to the glowing Manhattan skyline. Hunchbacked, he dragged himself over to me, and despite his size, we were eye-to-eye. “Where is it, boy? The treasure your brother stole?”

  “Mo never stole anything. Not from anyone. He even shared his tips with me.”

  Nergal growled. “It is unwise to defy a god.”

  One of the demons cackled. “A plague, my lord. One that boils his spleen and rots his lungs.”

  “No, no, no,” whispered another, one with a slimy reptilian face. “Infest him, sire, with maggots in his flesh and spider eggs in his eyes. Put larvae inside here”—it tapped its forehead—“so he can hear them buzzing as they grow.”

  “BZZZZ! BZZZZZZ!” said the fly-faced demon, rising a few feet on its stubby wings with excitement. “BZZZZZZZZ!”

  The others clapped and hollered, “Yes, my lord! What Tirid said!”

  Nergal smiled, wrapping his fingers around my collar. “Tell me, or I shall contaminate every cell in your body. Though I do think Tirid’s suggestion is fine indeed.”

  “Let go of me!” I struggled hopelessly. “And Mo didn’t steal anything!”

  “Liar!” roared Nergal. “It is here! It has to be!” He dangled me like a rag doll. “My patience runs thin.”

  I wasn’t getting anywhere, and he was ready to do…whatever Tirid was buzzing about. It took me a few seconds to appraise my situation. I was alone, surrounded by cannibal demons, at the mercy of a god, far from home, and without so much as a fork for a weapon. Against all this I had…what, exactly?

  A lifetime of customer service experience?

  Not just any customers, but the most impatient, demanding, and critical on the planet: New Yorkers.

  And maybe that might be enough.…

  I waved my hands in front of him. “Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. You win.”

  Nergal’s eyes narrowed, but he let me go.

  I hit the ground hard. I got up slowly, taking a good look around. My chance of survival was bleak, verging on nonexistent. There was a hole in the chain-link fence that separated us from the rails and the long lines of empty cars. If I could get through it, I’d find a million hiding places and maybe, just maybe, get away. But the distance from here to the fence was blocked by a host of demons.

  I needed their help if I was to escape.

  You have to be a master psychologist to run a deli. Hundreds of people come through your door each day, each wanting something different and all demanding they get it first, believing their needs are the most important in the world. My job, day in and day out, was to make every one of them believe they would get exactly what they wanted. In short, I needed them to trust me.

  If I got this wrong, it wasn’t just a one-star review on Yelp; it was a fast trip down Nergal’s feather-lined gullet.

  I coughed and loosened my collar. “In…in a minute. I think I swallowed a fly.” I looked over at Tirid. “Maybe a relative of yours?”

  One of the other demons laughed. Tirid spun around. “BZZZZZZZ!”

  Another demon, a pustule-covered man with waxy skin, snarled back at Tirid. “Come on, then, try it and I’ll swat you.”

  This was my chance.

  “It’s no good.” I coughed again and looked over at Idiptu, giving a helpless shrug. “Hand it over.”

  Idiptu frowned. “What?”

  I faced Nergal, my face the perfect mask of openness and honesty. “He took it the night you attacked the deli. He said he’d kill me if I told anyone, but I guess I’m more afraid of you. Totally terrified, to be honest.”
<
br />   Rat-faced Sidana turned on his companion. “Idiptu, could these words be true? I thought there were no secrets between me and you!”

  I laughed. “Secrets? He’s got plenty. Ever since…er…”

  Sidana stared. “How long do you plan to hold that against me? You said you didn’t want dead Roman for tea!”

  “Yeah, the Roman thing,” I said hastily. “He and…Tirid are…you know.”

  Tirid joined in. “BZZZZZZZ!”

  “Just hand it over!” I yelled at Idiptu.

  Idiptu whirled this way and that. He didn’t know who to face first: the stunned Sidana, the buzzing Tirid, or Nergal, who was slowly turning his massive frame toward the squat, bowler-hatted figure.

  Idiptu threw himself to his knees. “It’s not true, my lord! The mortal’s lying.”

  I smirked. “If I’m lying, how did I know about the Roman?”

  “BZZZZZ!”

  Sidana snarled at the fly demon. “I have had it with your lies. And your many roving eyes.”

  They were demons. They fed on hate, jealousy, and betrayal. The cracks were all there—I had just widened them a bit more. Only their fear of Nergal held them together. But at this moment, with half of them mauled from the fight with Ishtar’s lamassus, and Nergal bleeding from a dozen wounds, tempers were bubbling out of control. Under more normal circumstances, the god could have commanded them with a snap of his fingers, but not tonight.

  I laughed loudly as I looked over at Idiptu. “You were right about Sidana. That rhyming does get irritating real quick.”

  Sidana screamed as he dived at Idiptu. Fly-faced Tirid joined in, his wings slapping another demon, who bit at them. Soon all nine demons were tearing and clawing at each other. Nergal stared in bewilderment, his shouts falling on deaf ears.

  And I ran. Around them and through the hole in the fence.

  Empty passenger cars, graffiti-covered boxcars, and lifeless engines packed the yard. I had dozens of tracks to cross before I’d hit a concrete barrier. Beyond that was freedom.

  The tracks under my feet rattled as a stark white light suddenly bathed the darkness. I jumped just before the locomotive roared past, its wheels shrieking as one car after another rumbled by.