Pestilence

48

“Wait.”

Samantha’s heart beat against her ribs like a sledgehammer. She was still young enough that the actual concrete fear of death hadn’t settled over her yet. She’d always been trying to prevent it in others or comforting those who had already lost people. She’d never had time to contemplate her own death. That one day, her life would be extinguished as easily as turning off a light had never entered her mind, until Robert Greyjoy was standing over her a month ago, telling her she was going to die. She had that same feeling again. Fate would flip a switch, and everything she was wouldn’t exist anymore.

She had seen so much death in her life that it didn’t seem tangible. She’d seen entire villages wiped off the face of the earth by a single virus that could barely be seen under the most powerful of microscopes. Samantha had watched hemorrhaging children suffer for weeks in hospital beds with open sores before dying, and it had never dawned on her that it could happen to her. She thought she was immune from it somehow because she was the one taking care of them.

She thought back to a young child in Nigeria who had lost both his parents to Ebola. He had watched them die and had still asked where they were days afterward. His mind had erased that memory because of the acute pain it caused. She wondered if any memories like that were floating around in her mind-things she repressed because she could not face the possibility that life could be nothing more than cruel, random chance.

And, with a gun pointed at her heart, she wondered if she had led the life that she truly wanted.

“Do you need a moment to prepare?” the man asked.

“Would you give it to me if I did?”

“Yes. I’m not a monster.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

He grinned and lowered the gun. “People always ask me why I’ve chosen them. Why they’re going to die. But you didn’t ask. It’s such a funny thing to see people expect good things in their life, that everything will turn out all right. We’re parasites drifting through black space on top of a rock, and people are shocked when bad things happen to them. I think it would be more appropriate if people were shocked when good things happened to them.”

“I wouldn’t want to live that way-without hope.”

“Hope was what was left in Pandora’s box. Maybe people’s lives aren’t meant to have hope.” He was silent a moment and then glanced back to Jane. “She’s quite lovely, even like this. They gave her a sedative after I came in here and she saw the gun. I told them I was her husband. She called out for you.”

Emotion tugged at her, and she swallowed, hoping to keep it down. “Leave her alone.”

“I only take a life when I’m paid or when it amuses me. Taking the life of an unconscious convalescent wouldn’t amuse me, and no one’s paying me to do it.”

“How much are they paying you to take my life?”

“They’re not giving me money. In fact, when my employers get here, there won’t be a use for money anymore.”

“Who are your employers?”

“Unfortunately, you won’t get to meet them, but they’re coming. They’ll be here soon, actually, once my work and the work of others like me across the world is finished.”

“What is your work? Murdering doctors?”

“No. Eliminating resistance.”