Gas lamps hissed to life.

Light struck the slab, mak­ing stark the shroud­ed corpse lain there.

Cig­a­rette smoke and fluffy dox­bells fil­tered through the beam, drift­ed from the stag­gered stands of onlook­ers. Dozens of sets of eyes peered onto the oper­at­ing stage, lean­ing eager­ly on nar­row rail­ings. 

A woman in a white smock stepped into the beam. “Good evening,” she said, rolling up the sleeves of her sur­geon’s coat. 

“Good evening, Doc­tor Krolë,” cho­rused the stands. A stu­dent girl in a diener’s apron fol­lowed, bear­ing a tray of imple­ments. Knives, saws, a beaker marked ton­ic.

The girl set down her tray, and, after a motion by the doc­tor, drew away the shroud. Cloth flut­tered, bright under the lamps. A tit­ter of inter­est spilled from above. The revealed fig­ure was nude. Nude, and shack­led to the stone.

A young body, grey in the face. And not ful­ly intact: His ster­num was split, inten­tion­al­ly stayed by clamps to reveal the tho­racic anato­my. And where one foot should be, there was only a splin­tered wreck of bone. On high, shad­owed faces turned, ges­tured with glow­ing cig­a­rettes. Some­one whis­pered. “A sol­dier?”

“Before you become excit­ed,” said Doc­tor Krolë, frown­ing. “The leg wound was by an indus­tri­al shear.” The audi­ence stilled, set­tled.

“He did not bleed out, though. How would you say he died?”

A pale hand rose from the stands. “Yes, Tove?” said Krolë.

“Sep­sis, Doc­tor,” said a mil­que­toast blonde.

“Good. And how can you tell?”

“Pre­ma­ture livid­i­ty in the extrem­i­ties.”

“Quite. What else can we glean from this cause of death?”

The stands thought for only a moment. A palm went up. “Gre­gore?”

A fel­low towards the back spoke up, uneasy. “He was like­ly unmed­icat­ed.”

“Again, true,” Doc­tor. She ges­tured for her diener to take up a scalpel. “Now, while Catrine works, some­one tell me why you all look so right­ful­ly con­cerned.”

There was a soft, wet tear­ing. The diener had begun to cut. Peo­ple watched the scalpel flick­er in her hands, shift­ed uneasi­ly. A hand raised.

“Tove?”

“If he was unmed­icat­ed, that means patho­gen­e­sis may be in effect.”

“You’re right, again. How could we tell if that was the case?”

Tove watched the diener peel back fat­ted flesh. She swal­lowed. “We’d find evi­dence in the lungs.”

The doc­tor nod­ded. “Yes, very good.” She turned to the diener. “Catrine, remove the supe­ri­or lobe, please.”

Catrine pulled a blade over pur­ple tis­sue. She lift­ed a dark lump, hand­ed it over.

With a lancet, Krolë split through the lobe. “We may detect latent plague by the pres­ence of buboes in the lung,” she con­tin­ued, peel­ing the organ open. Black, wet nod­ules shone on the flesh. “These are fruit­ing bod­ies. A mas­sive dis­po­si­tion such as this indi­cates years of infec­tion. This sub­ject had not been exposed to griso­date in some time.”

She set the lobe down. “Plague will have ful­ly matured with­in the bones. There is life with­in this cadav­er. Dis­in­fec­tion is nec­es­sary to pre­vent immi­nent rean­i­ma­tion,” she said, tak­ing up the beaker of grey ton­ic. “What you’re about to see is a learn­ing expe­ri­ence, to be sure... And a warn­ing.”

She upend­ed the beaker over the corpse. It seized, jaw clack­ing, body arch­ing, strain­ing at its shack­les. A plume of rot­ten smoke erupt­ed from the slab, turned the beam of gaslight into an opaque pil­lar of blue-grey. 

 From with­in the smoke, Krolë spoke, watch­ing the thrash­ing grue.

“A warn­ing against what lies with­in us all.”

***

“Don’t like this very much, Scot­loff,” mut­tered Karl. He sniffed in bit­ter air, wiped his nose. “Not many pos­si­bil­i­ties for what could’ve hap­pened to her. I don’t like any of them.”

“Aye,” agreed Scot­loff. She squint­ed, lift­ed a hand against the white glare of snow. A cab­in stood in the dis­tance. Squat, made of stone, built against a hill­side, thatched roof sag­ging with snow. Its win­dows were dark. No smoke crawled from the chim­ney.

They walked to the cab­in. Karl held a wood­cut­ter’s axe at his side. He shuf­fled his boots in the crunchy snow. “Poor old thing. Liv­ing on her own,” he remarked. “Shame­ful no grand­kids took her in.”

“No good fret­ting,” said Scot­loff. “What will be will be.” She stopped by the hill. Frown­ing, she point­ed to the ground. “Take a look.”

Karl scrunched his mous­tache. “Bloody chick­en­s’re frozen to the ground.”

They advanced to the cab­in’s oak­en door, skirt­ed around a roost­er and white hens frozen, upright. Karl thumped the wood with a woolen mitt. Accret­ed snow shook free of the planks. “Oi, Ol’ Nan. It’s Karl and Scot­tie out here. Just checkin’ in.”

“Karl, don’t kid your­self” Scot­loff grum­bled. She grabbed the door’s latch and jig­gled it. It did­n’t budge.

“Frozen.” She looked at Karl expec­tant­ly. “You want to use that axe, or shall I?” she said. Karl looked mis­er­able. “Oi, nah, I’ll do it,” Karl mum­bled, even­tu­al­ly. He hoist­ed the axe.

Scot­loff stepped back. She tread on a chick­en. She kicked some snow over it.

Karl let into the door with the axe. There was a crack of ice. Boards splin­tered. After a few whacks, the door swung open, crooked in its frame. Karl stepped back, axe held with uncer­tain­ty. Scot­loff stepped up, pat­ted him on the back. “I’ll take it from here.”

She stepped through the door frame. It was dark, save for sun­light from behind her. A cob­ble-brick fire­place opposed the door. Its mouth was dark and cold. Fac­ing it was a wick­er rock­ing chair. A still fig­ure slumped there.

Scot­loff crept to the fig­ure, boots track­ing snow over the creak­ing floor. She crept around the chair, looked down. A white-haired fig­ure slumped there, chin tucked to a bony chest. It stirred slight­ly.

“Mam?”

The fig­ure stirred again, jerk­ing its chin. Scot­loff star­tled, scrab­bled back­wards to the door.

There was a tat­too of thin heels strik­ing the floor, a thin crash as the wick­er chair tum­bled. The fig­ure seized in the dark. Scot­loff heard a wet tear­ing of flesh. Sticky, par­tial­ly-coag­u­lat­ed liq­uid spat­tered against the floor.

Scot­loff stum­bled out the door and into the snow. Karl looked at her with con­cern. “What’s the mat-”

“Plague!” Scot­loff screamed. Point­ing to the cab­in.

Through the door­way scut­tled the twist­ed body of Ol’ Nan, pro­pelled by all four limbs. Frozen sheets of flesh dropped from the twist­ed frame. Slushy grave water gushed over its snap­ping mandible.

Karl raised his axe as the thing bore down upon him.

Plague

Sto­ries lurk in the cul­tur­al mem­o­ry of the Coast. Sto­ries, told by nurse­maids to chil­dren who won’t take their med­i­cine. Sto­ries, whis­pered by those old enough to remem­ber streets over­run by scut­tling dead.

Plague is feared above all oth­er ail­ments. Unlike oth­er dis­eases, it is seem­ing­ly invis­i­ble, inex­orable. ^* Count­less humans are infect­ed. They live with it all their lives. Chil­dren are infect­ed before they are mere­ly a red speck in the womb. 

Folk do not fear it with­in them­selves, though. They fear it in oth­ers, for plague emerges only after death.

In the bones of corpses, plague instills new life. The hon­ored dead are reviv­i­fied, trans­formed into skele­tal grues. ^**

Grues

When a car­ri­er of plague dies, patho­gen­e­sis begins its work. Dor­mant sick­ness awak­ens, spreads, flour­ish­es in the nutri­ent slur­ry of tis­sues begin­ning to rot.

While skin and vis­cera are left to spoil and bloat, plague takes hold of mus­cle, gris­tle, and mar­row. Black buboes pro­lif­er­ate, burst from the lungs. They wind ten­drils into the porous meat of bones, sprout from fibrous con­nec­tive tis­sue. All the while, the affect­ed corpse appears per­fect­ly, innocu­ous­ly dead.

The line between corpse and grue is abrupt: A grue acquires new life with­out warn­ing, sud­den­ly ener­vat­ed by the speed of the dead, by the thin black gris­tle it makes of the host’s con­nec­tive tis­sue. ^† Its mode of loco­mo­tion is uncouth. Devoid of human grace, it lunges and scrab­bles, falling into a scut­tling gait like that of a bee­tle, or a hunched, crow­like shuf­fle.

A grue will want for some­one to bite. The clos­est human being. It will leap, bit­ing at the face and neck. It knows the weak places of the body.

Those who sur­vive an attack, who are mere­ly bit­ten, do not die by their wounds, but by the tox­ic nature of the grue-bite. Fresh grues, still clad in their suit of swing­ing, bloat­ed car­cass, are most infec­tious, spew­ing grave water. But old grues, naught but black skele­tons, are strongest. Both spread plague. Griso­date is essen­tial in the treat­ment of such wounds, in either case.

If it can­not find some­one to bite, a grue will find a place to hide. A swamp. A pud­dle. The larder. The gap under your doorstep. Some place where it might leap out and nab some­one by the ankle. Grues are apt to hide togeth­er, despite pos­sess­ing no out­ward means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

A fresh grue is a liv­ing skele­ton sleeved in rot. What­ev­er flesh it still pos­sess­es is spoiled and spare. The putre­fac­tion bur­bling with­in it erupts as grave water, adding a sep­tic ele­ment to its bite.

An old grue is anoth­er mat­ter. It is plague dis­tilled, devoid of excess flesh. Its resem­ble a cord­ed, black skele­ton wound in wiry sinews, burst­ing with nod­ules and buboes. 

today

Plague, as it exists today, is frag­ile­ly con­tained.

After cen­turies of pub­lic health efforts, the avail­abil­i­ty of griso­date ton­ic in met­ro­pol­i­tan areas has made grues a rel­a­tive­ly uncom­mon hor­ror. †† The last epi­dem­ic occurred in Fir­lund in 3.388. Few wish to relive a time where death by dis­ease was so ram­pant that grues ran unhin­dered in the streets. ‡

Among the best pub­lic health efforts meant to com­bat plague is cre­ma­tion. Coastal folk (Firls, espe­cial­ly) are apt to burn their dead. A North­ern funer­al is a cau­tious, solemn affair, car­ried out with enough hur­ry to ensure safe­ly while main­tain­ing respect for the deceased. Only the Alagóri­ans, claim­ing some need to main­tain the human form in prepa­ra­tion for Par­adise, are pos­sessed of the hubris to bury the dead.

Regard­less of bur­ial prac­tice, all peo­ples know plague. In every Coastal tongue, the word for grue is the same. It is this awful noun which gives the tongue of the Firls a par­tic­u­lar adjec­tive: Grue­some.

Notes

This one’s had a few rewrites. (If only to fix bro­ken back­links and foot­notes.)

Plague began as a notion designed to ensure the bur­ial of dead adven­tur­ers. It has­n’t real­ly done that. Rather, it has spawned some new the­mat­ic lev­el of body hor­ror. 

There’s this dis­ease in the air, and it’s in every­one. You could see it, but only if you had eyes in your lungs. Thus, all you are left with is anx­ious dread and the desire to drink a lot of ton­ic.

Also, I have been asked if plague is viral. It is not. Unlike our own Black Death, the plague of the Coast is fun­gal. Remem­ber the fruit­ing bod­ies. The blob­by pho­tos in this arti­cle are those of slime mold.

Anoth­er thing, relat­ed to some­thing I’ve been asked: Notably, mice are unaf­fect­ed by plague. They have their own ill­ness­es to con­tend with. Humans are, from the knowl­edge of cur­rent schol­ars, the only crea­ture to be affect­ed. This has raised a mild hys­te­ria in a por­tion of the South­ern pop­u­la­tion, who sup­pose that human­i­ty, weak­ened by plague, will die out, leav­ing mice to inher­it the world.