City of the Plague God

by Sarwat Chadda

  To my amazement, Belet did.

  “That’s better. Your mommy’s gone, boo-hoo-hoo.”

  Belet blanched, and I was too stunned to say anything.

  “So what?” the sword continued. “You want to stay a little girl all your life? Want her to hold your hand while you cross the street and tuck you in at beddy-byes? Ishtar, may Ea bless her, was not that kind of mother. She seized life by the throat and shook it until it rattled. Girl, she lived every moment like it was her last. That’s the kind of goddess she was. And that’s the kind of daughter she raised. Cry now, cry all you want. Then wipe your face and put on some war paint.”

  I grinned. “Thanks, Kasusu. Now—”

  But the weapon wasn’t finished, unfortunately. “Because let’s be honest, Private Clown here hasn’t got a chance against Nergal. Sik’ll go down like the three hundred Spartans.”

  “Hey!” I said, offended. “You’re looking at someone who survived a train wreck.” Though I still didn’t know how.…

  Belet reached over to grab Kasusu’s hilt. “You were at Thermopylae?”

  “Took Leonidas’s head clean off myself,” the sword boasted.

  “Cool,” said Belet. “But have you ever killed a god?”

  Kasusu chuckled. “That’s my girl.”

  They were genuinely fond of each other. It was genuinely weird.

  Belet pulled the sword out of the wall and faced me. “All this talk isn’t moving things forward. We need a plan, no matter how desperate.”

  I showed her the gold lion ring Ishtar had given me. “One desperate plan coming right up.”

  SHINING GOLDEN AND RUBY LEAVES CROWNED the trees. The branches echoed with birdsong, and the paths wound around lush flower beds and between heavy emerald bushes.

  Everything beyond its borders may have been withering away, but Central Park was full of fall’s royal beauty.

  And tents. A few big family dwellings with multiple wings, others just big enough to crawl into, and everything in between. People had raised flags and put up clotheslines between them. They were clustered mainly around the park entrance at Columbus Circle and the busier paths, but some had been set up deeper in the undergrowth.

  “It looks like a refugee camp,” I said.

  “It is.” Belet had wrapped Kasusu in a white pillowcase and tied it across her back, disguising it as…a sword wrapped in a pillowcase. “Thankfully, the blight that’s wiped out the other parks hasn’t hit here. Yet.”

  “It’s as if Central Park is under a protective dome,” I said, still marveling at its lushness. “Unlike the rest of the city.”

  Manhattan was falling apart. The subway system had shut down, traffic had been reduced to a crawl, the skies were dark with massive swarms of insects, and the sidewalks were filled with people wearing surgical masks, hoping they could stay safe from whatever strange germs were contaminating the air. Most of the bridges had been closed due to cracks and fractures. The Lincoln Tunnel had sprung a leak. Times Square had been barricaded off and converted into a temporary CDC—Centers for Disease Control—compound, complete with portable labs. The doctors and scientists were trying to fight back, but unless we found a way to stop Nergal, the city would be his very soon. And if Manhattan fell, the rest of the country—and the world—would follow.

  No pressure.

  I held out the lion ring. “Now what?”

  “It’s a royal seal,” said Belet. “It would have been worn by an official on an important mission, to grant them safe passage through the kingdom.”

  “Kinda like a free pass?”

  Belet grimaced at my comparison. “Kind of.”

  Great. But a free pass to where, exactly? I was already lost. I’d never been able to find my way around Central Park. The paths lead this way and that through a labyrinth of foliage, and one tree looks pretty much like any other to me. I guess I was too urban even for a park.

  “And who do you think the owner of the ring is?” I asked. “I wish Ishtar had told me.…”

  “She said he was in Central Park, so we’ll just have to keep looking until we find him.”

  This was as good a time as any to tell her. “Belet, Ishtar said something else, right before she gave me the ring. She wanted…” What? For me to be Belet’s friend? Ishtar hadn’t needed to ask me that, and I hoped Belet knew that already. “She wanted you to be happy.”

  “How can I be happy? My mother’s dead.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to get her back.”

  “I know how you feel. When Mo died, I couldn’t believe he was gone forever. I had this idea that—somehow—he could come back. But Ishtar’s dead.”

  “As were you—laid out on a cold slab and everything—and yet here you stand. So don’t tell me what can and cannot be done.” Belet’s eyes blazed. “Mother was in the Kurnugi before, and she got out. She can do it again, I know it. There are ways.”

  “Like what?” Maybe, when it came to gods, there was a chance.…

  “Someone can swap places with her,” said Belet. “Someone who loves her enough.”

  I did not like the way she said that. “Ishtar would want you to get on with your life.”

  Belet turned on me. “Like you have? I’ve heard you talking to ‘Mo’ at night. You can’t let him go, either. Why should I be any different?”

  “That’s not the same. I’m not planning—”

  “Shut up, Sik.”

  “Hey! I’m just—”

  Belet grabbed my wrist and jerked me down into a crouch behind a bush.

  The foliage ahead rustled. Someone, or something, sniffed nearby. It snarled, and the sound was neither human nor animal.

  A twig snapped behind us.

  Belet pulled Kasusu from the pillowcase.

  More movement to our left. We were surrounded.

  A man crept on all fours along the path. His gray suit was torn, and his bare feet were deformed, the long toes capped with talon-curved nails. His nose and mouth had mutated into a snout filled with yellow fangs. He lowered his face right into the dirt, snuffling and twitching.

  One of Nergal’s plague dogs. It didn’t take a genius to know who he was tracking.

  I turned as I heard voices arguing. Familiar voices.

  “Though you may have once been my treasure, don’t think this venture is a pleasure!”

  “C’mon, mate! I told you that kid was lying! It’s been you and me always!”

  There was a pause, followed by a long sigh. “Perhaps you are indeed right. That boy has become a blight. We are best companions once more! Let’s have celebrations galore!”

  “That’s more like it!” Idiptu said, then sniffed. “Now let’s have a look at these tracks.…”

  The disgusting duo of Idiptu and Sidana shoved their way into view.

  Wow, they’d grown since I’d seen them last. Both topped six feet, and Idiptu was bloated like a blimp, waddling on his stumpy bowed legs. Sidana was more ratlike than ever, so hunched over that he scurried on all fours when he wasn’t talking. They were cloaked in a haze of flies, and the stench coming off the demons made the nearby leaves curl.

  Belet tightened her grip on Kasusu, her gaze narrowing into laser intensity.

  I grabbed her wrist and shook my head. “There could be others around,” I whispered.

  Sidana jerked his head. “Be quiet, my dear. What did I just hear?”

  Idiptu’s belly rumbled. “Apologies. I’m famished.”

  Belet stiffened, resisting me. Her eyes gave away her intentions. She was filled with pain and wanted to pass it on to others. I gently pulled her back.

  The plague dog bayed.

  “He’s caught a scent!” shouted Idiptu. “He wants us to go…” His head swiveled, and he spotted me. “It ain’t possible.”

  “Time to run,” I said to Belet. “Again.” I barged deep into the undergrowth, pulling her along.

  “By all the demons in hell,” said Sidana. “How can the boy look so well?”


  The park was filled with hideous, pitiful howls as more plague dogs raced after us through the trees. Their eyes shone with fevered madness, and each had a uniquely grotesque, disease-ridden shape. You saw the cruelty in Nergal’s work; each plague dog suffered. But that wouldn’t stop them from tearing us apart.

  “Yallah, Belet!” I yelled when she looked back at our pursuers. “You can’t fight them all!”

  But she wanted to. I knew she craved a glorious final stand. To go out battling against massive odds before, inevitably, being killed, just like her mother had. I gave her a fierce yank. “Now come on!”

  We stumbled on through the ever-thickening foliage, the howls echoing from all directions. My heart pounded so hard I thought it would burst, and I could barely see the path because of the sweat dripping into my eyes.

  Belet came to a dead halt.

  “What?” Then I stopped, too, as the vegetation opened up to reveal a greenhouse. I gasped, and not only because I was trying to catch my breath.

  A glass ziggurat. I’d seen hundreds of photos of these ancient stepped pyramids, but how could there be one in Central Park without anyone having noticed? Yet there it stood, seven tiers high, reaching far above the tallest trees. There were hundreds of sparkling windows, some panes over a dozen feet in height and width, shining like mirrors in the sunlight as they rose above the canopy. The wrought-iron frame mimicked the weave of vines, decorated with flowers and leaves of green copper. Beyond the glass structure stretched a vast misty jungle. I half expected to see monkeys swinging from the boughs of the massive trees.

  “This is impossible,” I said, craning my neck. I could just make out the summit.

  Belet pointed over to the left. “There’s a door, easier to defend. They can only come at us one at a time.”

  We sprinted over, and miraculously, the door was unlocked. Maybe the staff had already fled.

  The moment we entered, I was smacked by a wave of humidity. Butterflies flitted through the moist air, bigger than any I’d ever seen, and there were flowering plants everywhere. The scent was overpowering, as if there’d been an explosion at a perfume factory.

  The plague dogs arrived on the scene. Two hulking beasts tore through the bushes where we’d stood just seconds before. Then they stopped and looked around, bewildered. Another pack of four half-human beasts bounded along the outside of the ziggurat, barely five feet away from us, but they never even glanced in our direction. Sidana and Idiptu showed up, but instead of peering into the glass, they wandered around aimlessly.

  “Where’d they go?” Idiptu asked. “We had ’em in our sights.”

  Sidana twitched furiously, pulling at his whiskers and grinding his crooked teeth. “How can he be alive, this boy named Sik? It must be magic; it must be a trick.”

  “They can’t see us,” whispered Belet.

  It was more than that. “They can’t see the ziggurat.”

  Apparently, they couldn’t hear us, either.

  “We gotta tell the boss.” Idiptu licked his lips, leaving green slime over them. “But don’t say we lost ’em.”

  The demons hurried off. Howling and snarling in frustration, the packs leaped back into the trees.

  I pulled the royal seal out of my pocket. “Safe passage, just like you said.”

  We explored. The glass ziggurat was its own ecosystem. Hundreds of platforms filled the interior, some supporting no more than a few flower beds, others holding huge ferns and bushes. The thin wrought-iron supports were wrapped in climbing white roses and emerald ivy. Plants blossomed in the thick black earth, sprawling out in all directions while trees—palm, oak, ash, and fruit-bearing ones of every variety—reached up into the misty heights, their branches draped with vines. You couldn’t see farther than fifteen feet before the mist became too thick.

  But I could hear something: a man’s voice.

  “What are you doing here?”

  The plants quivered at the depth of the sound.

  I squinted into the distance but still didn’t see anyone.

  “Hello?” I asked. “Are you the caretaker?” That reminded me: I really did need to go to Mo’s community garden at some point and water our beds.

  “For now.” He emerged from the haze. He towered over us, at least seven feet tall with biceps the size of cannonballs. He wore a pair of stained olive-green overalls without a shirt underneath, and he had a broad utility belt holding pruning shears, twine, a hand rake, and a trowel. A spade rested on his mud-splattered shoulder, and he spun it idly as he gazed down at us. Leaves and twigs were tangled in his thick, wiry black beard.

  “We, uh…had an emergency,” I faltered.

  “There’s no public restroom in here,” the gardener said.

  “Not that kind of emergency,” I replied. Butterflies danced in the air between us as he looked us over, and I learned how an especially small ant must feel when facing a particularly large elephant.

  Belet nudged me with her shoulder. “Ask him about the ring.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  She glared at me, and I realized I was more frightened of Belet than this guy, so I held out the royal seal. “Do you know anything about this?”

  The man picked it up for a closer look.

  He smelled. Not bad, but strongly, of working in soil. There was a heavy earthiness about him, the smell of grass after it has just rained. It was a million miles away from the flat odor of damp city concrete. Maybe my eyes were deceiving me, but I swear the skin of his upper torso was covered with patches of green moss.

  “I haven’t seen this in a long time,” the gardener finally said.

  “Then you know who it belongs to?” I asked eagerly.

  “Yes. Me,” he said.

  “You?” Okay, I was not expecting our emergency backup plan for saving the world to include a gardener, even one the size of a house.

  Belet didn’t care about being polite. “We were sent by Ishtar.”

  “And who might you be?” the man asked.

  “I am Belet, daughter of Ishtar,” she said.

  “I’m Sikander Aziz, son of restaurant owners. Best falafel in town.”

  “Sik has a condition,” Belet added. “He can’t die. I think.”

  The man arched a bushy eyebrow. “Interesting condition.”

  “Can you help us?” I asked.

  The guy pulled a rosy apple from a nearby tree and polished it on his dirty overalls. “I no longer meddle in the affairs of the gods, and they do me the same courtesy.”

  “But Nergal killed my mother!” snapped Belet. Tears swelled in her eyes as she confronted him. “We have to stop him! People are suffering!”

  He offered her the apple. “People suffer when gods go to war.”

  Belet slapped the fruit out of his hand, and it spun into the undergrowth. She didn’t say anything, but her glare was worth a few thousand words, all of them furious.

  What was it with her? She had to pick a fight with everyone.

  I decided to intervene before this giant swatted us with his shovel. “Ishtar was counting on you to help us, Mr.…”

  “Gilgamesh,” he said. “Just call me Gilgamesh.”

  “YOU?” I ASKED. “THE GILGAMESH?”

  “Yes.”

  “The king of Uruk, demon-slaying, monster-wrestling, and questing-for-immortality Gilgamesh?”

  “I suppose. In my younger days.”

  I felt as though a thousand tons had just been lifted from my shoulders. We had found the greatest hero in the world! The greatest hero ever! Everything was going to be okay.

  Gilgamesh caught sight of Belet’s sword. “I see you brought Kasusu. How’s life, my old friend?”

  Light rippled along the blade. I think that was its version of a joyful smile. “A constant battle, milord. Just how I like it. And I’m looking forward to working with you again.”

  Gilgamesh chewed the tip of his mustache, then gestured over his shoulder. “I was baking. Come and eat.”

  Now, that
wasn’t what I’d expected to hear from history’s most legendary warrior, but I was still hungry from my time of being…not alive, so I followed him.

  Belet did, too, grilling him along the way. “You were supposed to have died. Everyone knows the story.”

  Gilgamesh smirked. “Oh? And which story is that? Is that the one where I try but fail to gain immortality and die after many years a sadder, wiser man?”

  “Er…yes.” If you knew any story about Gilgamesh, that was the one.

  “Good,” replied Gilgamesh. “That’s exactly what I wanted the world to think.”

  The middle of the ziggurat was more untamed jungle than greenhouse. There were weeds among the roses, and vegetables grew beside fruit trees planted so close together they’d become entangled. The smell was overwhelming, a mixture of sweet perfume and damp decay. Mo would have loved it.

  “Stay on the path,” warned Gilgamesh. “It’s easy to get lost in here—it’s bigger than it looks.”

  We arrived at a small clearing with palm trees arching overhead. A circular table with three stools around it was set with plates, glasses, napkins, and desserts. The centerpiece was a tall vase filled with exotic flowers of vivid, electric blue.

  “You were expecting company?” I asked.

  Gilgamesh smiled and offered us seats. “I may be retired, but I’m not a hermit. Not quite yet.” He picked up a platter with thick slices of cake on it. “Try this. Sugar-free and a hundred percent vegan.”

  “Bismillah…” I recited, looking over the choicest slices before picking a wedge plump with sweet dates and nuts. “Nice.”

  He poured out rose water as we sat down. We picked our way through the treats, each one more delicious than the last. Belet began reluctantly but was soon piling her plate high with cookies, tarts, and slices of cake.

  Gilgamesh gazed around him. Now that I was sitting across from him, I could see that his eyes shone with starlight. How had I missed it before?

  “All that time I spent in palaces, clad in silks and gold, not realizing that true riches come from the soil,” he said. “All that time I wasted making war when I could have been growing beautiful things.”