Chương 171: Day One Hundred And Sixty Nine

Dear Diary, I hate boring repetitive shit. What makes it worse? I might not even mind if I were doing the boring repetitive shit with Saffron as company. Or even Marie, though the conversation might get a little 'talking to myself', what with her monosyllabic habits. Shit, at this point I'd take the Menace; she might well get into all kinds of mischief, but at least it wouldn't be boring. So I didn't get any sleep the night before last.

Saffron had us all up and working, including herself, all night long until every Hero and soldier from all four cities had been Assessed clean, after Curing them if need be. At that point her personal job got a little less frantic, since from then on we were the Cure of Last Resort. Of course, at that point I had to head back to Phileo to get the ball rolling there.

The whole Inter-City Council signed both a second copy of the Inter-City Constitution and a writeup of the Emergency Anti-Plague Plan addressed to Headmaster Miles, Marshall duBois, and the rest of the Phileo City Council. There was a little dickering about which of the Academy Healers would head back with me to train others how to spot the disease, and to act as the final Assessor in disputed cases. I mean, I could've just as easily Cured everyone who came to us, but frankly?

I didn't want everyone thinking I stopped the whole fuckin' plague by myself. I've got no problem helping someone who can't help themselves, and the victims of a pandemic plague fall pretty squarely in that spot. Of course, it didn't help that, while Saffron and Doc DeLeon were stationed in the Council tent, which had now become the Curing tent, my posting? Right at the top of the Academy steps. Pretty much right where Rocky's statue lived for a while.

It bugged me that I couldn't remember if it had been moved, or moved then moved back, or what. But then, I'm not sure I ever knew that, so it wouldn't be me forgetting so much as me not knowing in the first place. Sister Siobhan looked up at me from the chair she sat in, leaning over a kettle with a little fire under it. I could barely see her face through the fuzzy edging of the fur hat she wore; when Lancaster heard about her intent to sit next to me at the top of the steps? He insisted she wear his fur coat.

She was kinda swimming in it, since Lancaster was a little taller than me, and Sister Siobhan was a much more 'average sized woman'; maybe four or five inches shorter than me. Not Saffron or Potami short, but enough shorter and smaller that she looked like she'd stolen her big brother's coat.

"Are you certain you don't need anything? A coat? A chair? Something hot from the kettle?" I shook my head, and the side of me facing her tingled. I held back a sigh; it felt wrong to let her worship me in any kind of sense, but her absolute adoration when we arrived in Phileo is the only reason I didn't collapse. I turned my head to look her in the eye and said, "Don't worry about it. Blessing of Loki, who is himself an old school Jotnar. I can feel the cold, but it doesn't really bother me.

Also, if I put a coat on folks wouldn't see this," I ran one hand down the long side of The Dress. I'd spotted more people coming up to us from following the tingles back to their sources than I had by, y'know, just seeing them on the street. This being the second day of quarantine, at the moment my view down the Boulevard was clear, but yesterday the day had been overcast, and they spotted me and The Dress at the top of the steps, backed by the mostly-white façade of the Academy, long before I saw them.

The air smelled like snow, but I really hoped it wouldn't. Standing here in the cold got me a lot of looks; half awed and half veiled scorn, but standing here in a blizzard would just make it worse. Hey Boss? You got any way to calm the fuckin' weather down? Apologies, my Champion, but I have neither divine control of the weather, nor mortal Spells to alter it. In point of fact, I could possibly call on my father's power, but that would inevitably make the storm worse, not better. Fair point. Just figured I'd ask.

For what it's worth, Tabitha Diaz, if it snows, people will have yet another reason to stay inside. True that. Thanks Boss. You're the best. I know. I spotted four Volunteers coming down the Boulevard, walking in a square around somebody in the middle of them. Kinda weird; so far the only guy who'd had more than one escort was a big dude who had such a bad case that he'd barely been conscious. This guy definitely didn't seem that big, and also seemed to walk just fine.

They waved at the base of the steps, then prodded the dude ahead of all four of them. When they got within about ten feet, I called out, "hey, guys. What's up?" The four of them looked at each other, and after a moment one of them looked back at me and said, "our unit caught this guy breaking quarantine. The Cadets there sent them here for you to decide what to do with them." I ran a hand through my hair, wincing a little as it caught in the wind-blown tangles.

"Shit, I dunno. Dude, what's your name?"

"Peter, ma'am." He sounded pretty beaten already, but I'd done that myself on the regular back in Camden when somebody had me dead to rights. I looked him up and down and said, "okay, Peter. What were you doing out on the street?" With eyes wide he said, "I was just trying to find some food for my family!" One of the Volunteers shook his head.

"We caught him going door to door, trying to sell food out of a sack." I cocked my head.

"What'd you do with the sack of food?"

"The Cadets sent a runner to Drivers with it." I nodded.

"Good call. Was he trying to sell to folks who had been cleared already, or folks who hadn't?" The Volunteer I'd been chatting with heaved a sigh.

"You know how the Cadets are supposed to have one group on each side of a street?" I did not like where this was going.

"Yeah... by the way, what's your name?"

"Frances, ma'am."

"Street sides, Frances." He looked at the stone under my feet and said, "the group on the north side of the street hit a big house that had been split into tenements. Our group, on the south side of the road, was like a block ahead of them when we spotted him crossing the street from one side to the other."

"Mother FUCKER!" I screamed my frustration at the uncaring sky. I turned to Peter, lunged at him, grabbed him by his hair and yanked him off his feet, dragging him up the last few streets and holding him out to Sister Siobhan.

"Sister, Assess this sorry excuse for an attempted mass murderer." He'd been trying to get his feet back under him, and I'd been yanking him or straight up kicking his feet or hands back out from under him while I dragged him. When I mentioned the word 'murder', he stopped trying to regain his footing and stammered, "No! I... I didn't... I couldn't. I didn't hurt anybody!"

While Siobhan, looking a little aghast at my treatment of this walking plague vector, went through the motions of Assess Health, I dragged his face around to mine.

"Listen, you dumb sack of shit. The quarantine is to give us a chance to stop a plague from destroying the city. Without it, we're gonna get sick people mixing with healthy ones, making them sick, who go on to make others sick in turn. Right now you've just cost them, by my estimate, a couple hours work at least. Which means everyone who dies an hour before we could get to them, from now to the end of the fuckin' plague? That shit is on you, asshole."

"But... but..."

"Yeah, I know, you were thinking with your butt. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the hard, cold fact that you've probably killed a dozen people by now." I clenched the hand wound through his hair, and he winced, but didn't say anything else. He started crying, but that was probably like the whole 'just looking for food' story.

"Shut the hell up and let me think."

"Tabitha?" Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"Yes, Sister?"

"He's infected with the Plague." I sighed and looked at the soldiers.

"Gentlemen, line up and let the Sister check you. No fault of yours if you've gotten shit on you escorting this asshole here." I turned back to Peter and hit him with a slightly overpowered Cure. Not that I thought he needed or deserved it, but since he'd had it already, he was one less vector this shit could travel through after I Cured him.

he opened his mouth and I growled, "not a fucking word, or I see if I can throw you onto the Boulevard without hitting the fucking steps before I decide what your sentence is going to be." Boss? Can you do me a solid? I got a mental chuckle, followed by, what did you need, Tabitha Diaz, Champion who would fight a Plague? If I winced a little at that, it didn't stop me asking, do you have some way to track everywhere this asshole has been since the quarantine began?

I know of many ways, but most would require some object tied to him. Is the jackass himself enough of an object? I was thinking a blood or hair sample, but yes, that would do nicely. Once you've got his path, could you send Lyman to guide some Cadets to each building he's visited? Certainly, Tabitha. I looked at Sister Siobhan, said, "I'll be right back," and stepped to Loki's cave. I threw Peter on the floor next to Loki, who asked, "what shall we do with him when I'm done?"

I made sure Peter was looking at me before I said, "I'd say feed him to Mister Slither, but I'd kinda like whatever's left of him to post up as a warning to others. You got a last name, Peter?"

"Peter Pennypack, ma'am."

"Well, Peter Pennypack, here's what's gonna happen. You're going to do every fucking thing he," I pointed at Loki, "says, and if you impress him enough that he doesn't kill you out of hand or feed you to his snake when he's done? You're going to spend some time in a public pillory, with a sign listing out how many deaths we can attribute directly to you."

"Yes, ma'am! Yes, sir! Yes ma'am!" having prostrated himself before me, Loki, and Sigyn, he wound up facing Mister Slither, who'd wrapped himself around Peter's legs while he was busy kissing ass.

"Yes, sir?" he said before Slither covered his mouth and proceeded to carry him over and hold him, more or less upright, directly in front of where Loki sat in his new chair from Yule.

"Need anything when I come back to fetch what's left of him, Boss?" Loki smiled.

"I'll be sure to let you know if I think of something." He turned to Peter, the smile dropping away to be replaced by a much more chilling look of bemusement as with one hand he pushed two of Slither's coils apart to uncover Peter's belly, the other picking up a glittering knife from the table.

"Let us begin." On that note, I stepped back to the Academy. Sister Siobhan looked at me and said, "only one of the Volunteers is infected," and pointed at Frances. I shook my head, stepped over to Frances, and lay a hand on him saying, "this shouldn't hurt, but it does feel a little weird if it's your first time." He chuckled as I fed the Mana into the Cure Spell, and said, "heh. That's what sheeeeooooomygoddess that's really fuckin' weird. Sorry about the language, Ma'am." I smiled at him.

"No problem. I've even been known to use some foul language myself at times."

"You don't say?"

"No, really. How far were you guys from Drivers'?" Frances shrugged, the gesture made a little odd by the layers of clothing the Volunteers wore to keep the cold off.

"Five minute walk." I pulled him over to the other three, said, 'join hands', and when they did I stepped the five of us to Drivers'.

"We're not going to be walking. Lead on, Frances, as fast as you can." We sprinted about a block, then settled into a run for another nine. I glanced back once to make sure the other three were keeping up with Frances and I, only to have all three of them snap their gaze level the moment my head turned. I suppose at a run it became painfully obvious I'd been out of clean panties this morning. Fuck it, if it kept them running to keep up with the view? It kept them running.

We slowed to a jog when we got within shouting distance of a group of about a dozen Volunteers and two Freshman Cadets. Almost none of the Freshman Cadets knew Cure, but most of them knew Assess, and they'd all been run through a crash course in detecting this particular plague by Sister Siobhan. When I got closer and realized how much the Cadets towered over most of the Volunteers, I realized who was inside of those big poofy fur coats.

"Rider! Rosen! Long time no see! You guys were the one who caught our little would be plague spreader?"

"Peter Pennypack?"

"That's the asshole in question, yeah." I shook my head and looked back down the street; it was obvious which parts they hadn't hit yet; the snow from last night lay smooth and unbroken.

"I got bad news, worse news, one tiny bright spot of good news, and one bit that is good or bad depending on how pissed you are at Peter Pennypack." Rosen looked a little confused, but Rider just sighed and said, "hit me."

"You're going to have to recheck everyone in every building that shit stain piece of human filth got access to since the beginning of curfew. While you're doing that, whoever is doing those tenements is going to need to cover both sides of this street." I thought, quick update for you, Boss, then sent him live feed of my conversation.

"Now, the good news is that I have a close personal friend who is something of a divination expert, who can lead you to exactly which buildings Peter went to. Do you remember Lyman? Guy who came to lunch a couple times with me?" Rider looked baffled, but Rosen said, "slender build, really average looking guy, who still wound up standing out for some reason?"

"Yeah, that's Lyman in a nutshell. You guys are gonna go tell whoever is working the tenements about having to cover both sides of the streets until you're done checking Peter's back trail. Can you handle that?" Rider shrugged.

"We'll tell them you gave the orders, and they can come argue with you if they don't like it. It's not like we won't be working, so I'm guessing it won't be a problem." They'll be waiting for you by the tenement just down the street from here, Boss. At that point, I cut the feed and continued.

"Now, as for Peter, as soon as he's done being the focus for a bunch of divination magic, he's gonna be in a pillory in that open block next to Drivers'." I paused, and Rosen said, "in this weather? That's practically a death sentence, Diaz."

"Which is why I want you two to keep track of how much time checking his back trail takes. From now until the end of the plague, any time you find a dead body that would have been a live, curable person if Peter hadn't pulled his bullshit? I want you to add another mark to the tally board I'm gonna put next to his fuckin' pillory, because each and every one of them is a death he fuckin' caused by being a greedy asshole." Rider let out a whistle.

"You gonna do that to everyone who breaks quarantine?" I shrugged.

"Depends why they're breaking it. Some poor bastard breaks quarantine to bring me his dying kid? I'm probably gonna Cure the kid, check and cure him if need be, hand his kid to the Maenads to watch over then put him to some hard labor until the end of the plague, because everybody who isn't sheltering in place has to have a fuckin' job to do if we're gonna get this done. Somebody like Peter, who's trying to make a fuckin' profit off of a plague?

Especially after we post Peter out in the town square for everybody to see? I'm gonna have to get creative with those motherfuckers." Nobody responded to that. We all sat there just breathing for a bit. Them with steam coming out their mouths, me trying to get myself out of 'shove this motherfucker's head up his own ass' mode. When I'd counted to twenty in my head, I looked around the group.

"You all know what you need to do?" Rider and Rosen nodded, the rest called out some variation of 'yes, ma'am'.

"Then get to it." I stepped back to the top of the Academy steps. Only to find a line of six patients, each escorted by a Volunteer, except the guy waiting fifth in line; his Volunteers carried him, one with a grip on his legs, the other with a grip under his arms. The dude was white as a sheet, and blood and mucous stains covered his shirt. As I walked toward the line, a coughing fit bent him double, and I heard things breaking as he literally coughed himself to death.

Some part of me that I don't want to admit to wanted to let him. He'd just be the first in a long list of bodies at Peter Pennypack's feet. But that's not who I am. Who I want to be. I may have thousands of deaths to my name, but none of them would be someone I could have saved, but didn't. Fury raced through me at the thought of what Peter had done, and a single word slipped from my lips.

"Stop." Everything froze in place. In my wireframe world, I saw coughing man's soul being torn from his body by his own lungs. I walked over, pushed it back in, and in rapid order Stabilized him, Cured him, then Healed him. Then some part of me that I try not to recognize reached out and passed through him, sweeping like five pounds of blood, mucus, and bone splinters out of his body and onto the steps. I exhaled, and time and light came back.

The guy who had been coughing his life away a moment before looked up at me. I reached out a hand, and he took it as the two Volunteers with him set him on his feet. He tried to drop to his knees, but I held him up, pulled him in for a quick bro-hug, then turned to Sister Siobhan.

"How are the Volunteers looking?"

"All of them need Curing, I'm afraid." I nodded, then turned back to the guy who kept trying to go to his knees. I met his gaze and said, "I gotta get to Curing these folks before they wind up as bad off as you were. Think you can keep yourself upright and off the cold fuckin' steps until I'm done that?" He stood despite himself, saying, "Yes, holiness." I rolled my eyes and started for the head of the line.

"All of you being Cured; since whatever building you quarantined in has been checked, you'll have the option of Volunteering to help with the process of stopping this plague, or going back into quarantine to shelter in place until we're done. I'm afraid we don't have the manpower to let people change their minds about sheltering in place, but we've already had a few Volunteers go back into quarantine because they just couldn't take it.

But if you do Volunteer, you'll be able to go see your people, once, to let them know you've been Cured and you're helping out. Everybody got that?" At a murmured chorus of 'yes', interspersed with a few coughs, a hack, and an abortive upchuck from one of the Volunteers who had stepped in the pile that came out of coughing man's lungs, I stretched a little, nodded to Sister Siobhan, and turned to the dozen people still waiting for cures.

"Line up. It's time for me to get to work." Y'know? As much as I might bitch about it? I think I actually like this work more than what I did on the battlefield before Yule. No real moral dilemmas, just 'see sick person, make them not sick, rinse and repeat several hundred thousand times'. Fuck. I just made it boring for myself. Again. Dumb Bitch, thy name is Tabitha. I heard that, Goofus Maximus. Ah, shit. Now I'm in real trouble.