Pestilence (The Four Horsemen Book 1)

  “It is not for me to assume,” the prophet says humbly. At least, he thinks he’s being humble and demure, with his eyes turned to the ground and his head bowed.

  The women are beginning to fidget. I think all of them imagined this exchange going a little differently.

  “And in return?” Pestilence presses. “What do you want in return for these women?”

  I tense. The horseman is not seriously considering this, is he?

  Ezekiel’s eyes rise. They glint with avarice. “I would hope that you might spare us,” His hand sweeps over the sea of people, “your most loyal followers.”

  The horseman’s gaze scrutinizes the crowd. “Hmmm.”

  The prophet looks thrilled at Pestilence’s deliberation.

  Finally, the horseman’s attention falls once more to Ezekiel. “You presume a great deal, holding me up as you have,” Pestilence says, his voice calm.

  Ezekiel’s face flushes.

  “As for the barter,” the horseman continues, his voice hardening, “you wish to give me three humans in exchange for hundreds—do you think me a fool?”

  For the first time since we happened upon him, the prophet is looking a bit unsure of himself. “N-no—”

  “Your women would be nothing more than a hindrance to me,” Pestilence says, talking over him. “As for the rest of your people, you should know by now I cannot save. I can only kill.”

  My skin prickles at his words.

  “If you believe in a God, which you appear to,” the horseman continues, “I would suggest you pray to Him. He’s the only one who can save you all now.”

  Chapter 43

  “I understood Ezekiel’s intent,” Pestilence says, once the prophet and his people are far behind us. “There is much about this world that baffles me, but that did not.”

  So he did understand that the women were meant as sexual offerings.

  And just when the horseman’s gotten a taste for womanflesh …

  Ezekiel must’ve heard whispers that Pestilence kept a captive female, one who didn’t succumb to the Fever. He must’ve thought that if he offered up a few more women, he could arrange for his chosen people to live.

  Bet he thought he was pretty clever too.

  We pass through several successive towns quickly, only stopping once at an outpost so that I can go to the bathroom and Pestilence can swipe a tent and a few other odds and ends.

  Guess we’re camping again tonight.

  And naturally, as the day comes to a close, the heavens decide to unleash yet another torrential downpour. Because camping isn’t shit-sucking enough.

  By nightfall, rain batters outside our tent, and not even the waterproof material is enough to keep it all out. It seeps in from the muddy ground outside and in through the tent’s seems. The flimsy structure shivers and shakes as it gets pummeled.

  The horseman and I are twined together in the darkness.

  “So, this is fun,” I say.

  Pestilence huffs out a laugh. “It isn’t our worst night together.”

  No, technically it’s not. What a depressing thought.

  I can’t see him in the darkness, but his warmth is everywhere.

  “Poor Trixie,” I say.

  He’s still out there. Shortly after we dismounted, Pestilence gave the horse a pat on the flank, and the creature trotted away into the woods.

  “My steed is undying. I assure you, he is fine.” The horseman’s breath brushes against my cheek. “You still haven’t finished reciting that Edgar Allan Poe poem.”

  From this morning? He actually remembers that?

  “You weren’t listening.”

  “I was, though I’m not sure your macabre poet is the type to pen ‘A-holes’ into his poetry.”

  I smile in the darkness, remembering when I went off script to get the horseman’s attention. “Poe has a sassy mouth.”

  “Does he?” I can hear the grin in Pestilence’s voice. “What other well-kept secrets of the universe do you know?”

  “Hmmm,” I pretend to ponder this. “Wednesday is the most underrated day of the week. Hot baths can take away just about any ailment. Phlegm is the most horrible word in existence—not moist, like my mother insists. The world is worth saving, and I want to call you by something other than Pestilence because, despite what you say, names do matter.”

  I hadn’t meant for the conversation to suddenly get deep, or for me to get preachy, but there you go.

  Pestilence stiffens around me. “I do not seek to change you; why must you try to change me?”

  Because you are destroying my world.

  “I can’t change you, Pestilence, only you can do that.”

  “Hear me, Sara: I won’t change.”

  Now it’s my turn to stiffen in his arms.

  He turns us so that he can gaze down at me. “I am merely pretending to be a man, nothing more,” he says. “My body does not need food, nor water, nor sleep, nor all the mysteries of the flesh. I indulge in them because I indulge in you.”

  “Oh, and that’s the only reason?” I say, just a wee bit snidely.

  I mean, give me a goddamn break. He indulges in all those things because he enjoys the taste of food and strong spirits and the feel of his body close to mine. Pestilence may not be a man, but he very desperately wishes to be one.

  “Enough of this,” he says, sharp like a knife. “Do you want to know why it is I wear this crown?”

  I can already tell by his tone that he means to hurt me, to scare me, to remind me of the monster he is. Should I tell him that this, too, is a human trait? How we mortals love to push each other away to protect ourselves from our own pain?

  “I am the first horseman,” he continues, “the one who was tasked with toppling your old way of living. You and your foolish brethren believed you could outpace God. You built and innovated, and in your quest you robbed the earth of its purity and forgot that you all had another master.

  “You all turned your backs on God—yes, even you, dear Sara—and I am here to make you remember.

  “I am your mortality. I am the ugly truth that your bodies are impermanent, feeble, corrupt. I am the reminder that all men must face a great and fearsome reckoning.” The rain thunders with his voice. “This is who I have always been and will always be—undying, unchanging.”

  He falls to silence.

  “That is such horseshit.”

  I feel, rather than see, his surprise. “You think I’m lying?”

  “You’re acting like you cannot change, but to live is to change, and right now, you are alive. Even though you can’t die, you still walk among us. You love like us, and you feel pain like us.”

  He doesn’t say anything to that, so I plow on.

  “Maybe the world has forgotten God, and you’re supposed to rain down His righteousness, but don’t act like it isn’t a choice. Every time you pass through a city, you choose to infect it. You choose to kill, and no god you stand behind can protect you from that truth.”

  Several seconds pass, the violent patter of rain against our tent the only sound between us.

  “If I am such a monster,” Pestilence finally says, “then what does that make you, who have willingly fallen into my arms?”

  “A fool and an idiot,” I say, “but that’s nothing new.”

  “I will not stop.”

  I could swear he sounds bothered, but I can’t say which part of our conversation got under his skin.

  “And I won’t shut up about it until you do.”

  “You cannot hope to win this,” he warns.

  “If you think this is about winning,” I say, “then you haven’t been listening to me at all.”

  “Hmmm,” he muses, stroking his hand down my arm while he gazes down at me. “You have given me much to think about.”

  Wait, something I said actually got through to him? And just when I’d assumed I’d have more sway talking to a wall.

  “Enough of this for tonight. I want to feel those foolish, wicked lips
of yours on mine and your body beneath me—for such is the price of my companionship,” he says, his breath fanning against me.

  “Awfully optimistic of you to think about getting boned after that little speech of yours …”

  “Boned?”

  “I’ll explain it later.”

  “Good. I’m tired of making war with that mouth of yours.” He leans in. “Show me the other side to living.”

  And so I do.

  Chapter 44

  I should be wary of days like today, when the sun burns bright and the sky is a blinding shade of blue—the kind of day that hurts your eyes and squeezes your heart. It’s the kind of day that, even in the heart of winter, reminds you what summer felt like.

  It’s a fucking liar of a day, and just like all painfully beautiful things, I should know better than to trust it.

  Last night’s campsite is far behind us when Pestilence and I enter our first town of the day, the two of us soaking up the morning sun as we chat.

  “… I heard a noise beneath my sink,” I tell him, right in the middle of my story, “and when I went to check it out, there was not one, but three rats.” I pause dramatically.

  “I don’t understand how this led to the … fire alarm going off,” he says, hesitating a little before repeating the term. I’d only just explained to him what a fire alarm was, and how the one in my apartment escaped the Arrival unscathed.

  “They ran at me!” I exclaim.

  “So?”

  “So?” Rats don’t run at people. Particularly not in an age when people will eat said rats. “So I grabbed a can of hairspray and a match, and I made a flamethrower.”

  No one drives this bitch out of her home.

  At that, the horseman throws his head back and laughs. I stop speaking just so that I can turn in the saddle and stare at him.

  Only Pestilence could outshine the sun.

  “Don’t tell me you tried to hurt the creatures?” he asks when his chuckles die down.

  “You know, that’s real precious coming from you.”

  He starts laughing again, and new life goal: get Pestilence to laugh more.

  “Did it work?” he asks.

  “Of course it didn’t work.”

  That only makes him laugh harder.

  “Well, I didn’t think it was very funny at the time,” I say, but I can’t keep a straight face. It’s impossible when he lights up like this.

  He manages to smother his laughter enough to say, “Isn’t your job to put out fires, not—”

  BOOM!

  My body is violently thrown forward as the world explodes around me. I feel the heat, the terrible, scorching heat, at my back as I tumble through the air. It sizzles against my skin, though Pestilence’s body shields me from the worst of it.

  I slam into the ground, my side flaring in pain at the impact. All around me, sizzling bits of asphalt and dirt rain down, singeing me in a dozen different places.

  I lay on the ground for several seconds, breathing hard as thick smoke billows through the air.

  What the hell just happened?

  On the other side of the road, Pestilence lays pinned beneath Trixie, a pool of blood spreading out from the back of his head. His horse’s body is partially gone, and what remains is bloody and singed.

  I let out a whimper at the sight.

  Pushing my torso up, I begin to drag myself to them, my limbs screaming in protest.

  Some of the road has been blown away, and it’s that, more than Pestilence’s unconscious form or Trixie’s ruined body that makes me realize we just survived an explosion.

  Someone planted a bomb.

  Dear God.

  They come out of the woods as I crawl to the horseman, their forms quiet and sinister. There’s at least a dozen of them, maybe more, and unlike the last ambush, these people don’t bother wearing masks.

  Know they’re going to die.

  They do, however, dress in a similar fashion. Lots of black leather and camo print.

  Gang, my mind fills in.

  Their hate is visceral; it contorts their faces and thickens the air.

  They won’t be like the others.

  I’m not going to survive this.

  “Pestilence.” I try to call out to him, but my voice is too hoarse from pain and smoke.

  Even though he can’t possibly hear me, he slowly swivels his face to mine from where he’s pinned.

  His eyes are full of fear.

  For me, I realize, as the men close in on us.

  The group doesn’t bother going for me first. Instead, they cluster around Pestilence. Deftly, they lift Trixie off of him, and for a moment, it almost looks like they’re saving him from being crushed to death, but I know better. People are not nearly so altruistic when it comes to the horsemen.

  One of them holds a pump-action shotgun at his hip, pointing it at Pestilence.

  Again my horseman’s gaze goes to me before moving to the people that surround him. “Spare my—”

  BOOM!

  The shotgun goes off, the cartridge blasting away Pestilence’s face.

  A shocked scream rips from my throat.

  Someone breaks off from the group. A woman, I realize. She steps up to me and cocks her head, inspecting me like a bird would a worm. Whatever she sees, it causes her to frown.

  With a swift kick, she slams her booted foot into my temple, and the world melts away.

  Chapter 45

  I wake with a groan. My head feels like it has its own heartbeat.

  I try to reach up to touch my temple, but my wrists are secured behind my back. My legs, too, are bound at the ankles, pinning me in place. I blink away the last of my confusion.

  Someone’s propped me up against a tagged building, the paint weathered away. A few people linger next to me, but most are gathered around a nearby telephone pole.

  I squint at them, trying to figure out what’s going on. It takes me several seconds, but I finally make out the bloody body they’re all staring at.

  Pestilence.

  A burly man is tying him to the base of the telephone pole, the rope wrapped a dizzying number of times around the horseman’s ruined form. At Pestilence’s feet are piles of firewood.

  Pestilence’s face is nearly gone and most of his back must be burned away from the explosion. If he were mortal, the horseman would be dead five times over, and tying him up would be pointless. The fact that these people are restraining him means they know he can’t die.

  Someone besides me finally learned the terrible truth.

  And now these people are using it against him.

  I let out a hopeless cry.

  Once the man finishes securing Pestilence to the telephone pole, the nails and hammers come out.

  Even as they bring the items up to his body, I can’t comprehend what they’re going to do; my mind won’t let me. It’s only when they hammer the first nail into Pestilence’s skin that I understand.

  They mean to crucify him.

  Pestilence’s body gives a jerk from the pain. A second nail quickly follows the first and then a third and a fourth. His body shudders again and again.

  I begin to scream, and once I start, I find I can’t stop.

  In my line of business, I’m used to seeing compassion, sacrifice. I’ve seen men hospitalized because they ran into a burning house to rescue a dog. I’ve seen neighbors empty their pantries and open their homes to victims because they wanted to help people in need. I’ve seen so much goodness. My job always showed me that even in the worst of circumstances, humans can be their very best. We as a people are good. We are.

  So it’s all the more shocking to me to see this side of human nature. The cold, cruel side of it. So shocking that the only word that comes to mind is inhuman.

  Several people assist in crucifying Pestilence while the others stand by, content to watch their comrades torture my horseman.

  I scream myself hoarse, begging for them to stop.

  “This cunt actually cri
es for the bastard,” someone nearby me says, nodding in my direction.

  One of the men comes up to me, a shotgun slung over his shoulder. Crouching in front of me, he peers at my face for a second, then backhands me.

  I hear Pestilence’s garbled roar as my head whips to the side.

  “Fuck me, Jesus, this thing really doesn’t die.”

  I roll my head back to face the man in front of me, my cheek throbbing from the hit. It’s just one more pain to add to the rest.

  “Stop hurting him,” I whisper. My face is wet, and that’s the first I realize that this entire time, I’ve been crying.

  The man in front of me squints, taking in my tears. “I think we got ourselves here a couple. The horseman and his human whore.”

  I stare miserably at him. It’s a terrifying sight, looking into the eyes of someone who thrives off of violence and hate. For all of his carnage, Pestilence never enjoyed himself.

  “Tell me girl, how many times did you have to fuck that thing before he decided to keep you?”

  Someone else calls out. “Maybe we should have a taste—see what’s so special about her pussy.”

  A woman shouts, “I’m not going to stand here while you all fuck her. Keep to the plan, Mac.”

  Mac, the man in front of me, looks over his shoulder at the woman with annoyance.

  Sliding his shotgun off his shoulder, Mac pulls out a wicked looking knife from his belt. He grabs the bindings at my ankles and begins to saw through them.

  “Try kick me girl,” he says under his breath, “and I’ll make sure everyone here enjoys that cunt of yours.”

  Kicking him is tempting, but my legs are far too weak to do any real damage.

  Once he’s cut away the ties, he grabs his gun and rises to his feet.

  “Move,” he commands, giving my calves a kick. He jerks the barrel of his shotgun to a vague section of the road about fifteen meters away.

  Forcing my injured legs under me, I rise to my feet, then limp down the street, Mac at my back.

  I’ve only taken ten or so steps when he kicks me to the ground. In the distance, I hear laughter, and beyond that, an agonized moan.

  Pestilence. Apparently he has enough line of sight and good enough vision that he can see what’s going on.