A/N: A word on footnotes. First of all, they're fun to write. Next, I formatted them weird because I didn't have any pages to put them at the end of. Or, for that matter, scenes. And I couldn't shrink the font sizes like I wanted. So "footnotes" are indicated by numbers in parentheses following whatever they're referring to, and you jump down to the paragraph immediately below to read said footnotes, such as follows. (0) Apologies for their weird formatting, but hey, had to make them stand out from the main text somehow, and I didn't want to make you all jump to the end of the fic to read the footnotes...
0 (Like so. This is the first footnote. Or, technically, the zeroth. And apparently, zeroth is actually a word. Sounds like the name of a Martian angel.)
The other important matters: this is a one-shot, so no, there'll be no future chapters. As far as pairings go, none are official, but feel free to interpret Pestilence's and Pollution's weirdness in whatever way makes you most happy/comfortable. On a final note, if I have gotten any details wrong, it may well be because I have been making do with clips out of the Amazon preview of Good Omens while writing this fic, due to the fact that I loaned my copy of Good Omens to someone who has not returned it. I feel like I'm in good company. Any historical errors, I blame on Wikipedia, but I tried my best (and feel free to correct me). Please review and let me know what you think!
Bad Medicine
And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer. Revelation 6:2.
He hung out in hospitals. Day cares. Gay bars. Restaurants that had slipped off the health inspectors' radars. Sewage-swamped cities in the aftermath of natural disasters.
He worked hard in the winter. He worked hard in the summer. He worked hard in the fall and spring. He worked hard year-round, really; it was just that he changed his focus seasonally. It kept him in business.
Change with the times or the times will kill you.
That was what he had learned the hard way. That was what he was now taking advantage of. His mistake had been in trying to stick with one product for too long. Take the Black Plague, for example. He'd focused on that one for decades, and it had done wonderfully. But it wasn't that way anymore.
For another example, take smallpox. (1) He had focused on her for... he didn't know how many years. She was his ace, his pride, his favorite. But she, she was long dead. 1979. Requiescat in pace. However... her death was what had made him set his mind on vengeance. Her death had saved him.
1 (Oh, beautiful Variola, how he had loved her. She'd been quite a piece of work. He had a thing for oozing pustules. Illness could take many forms, of course, but few symptoms were as indicative of disease—not just in the sense of "giving dis-ease" but really evoking the nauseating onomatopoeia of the word, dizzeeeezz—as pustules.)
But, before then? He'd almost given everything up when people had started fighting back, with their modern medicine. Their sterilization. Their penicillin. Ohhh, a pox on penicillin and all its antibacterial descendants. He'd thought that was his end. He didn't know how to innovate. He didn't know how to change with the times. He didn't know what to do about a potion that attacked what he was. He had never considered the possibility of such a perfect elixir of life.
And so, Pestilence had surrendered.
His colleagues had tried to talk him out of it, of course. He'd decided on this in the mid-1930s, after penicillin came out, but it had been coming for a while. They spent years trying to get him to change his mind—even after the decision had been made.
He ran into Famine in the early '30s, just after penicillin's appearance, while Pestilence was still in shock. They'd traveled together for a few years, riding in train cars carrying hobos north and south, or hitching rides on half-broken cars carrying families to California. Famine told him not to despair, that even with all of humanity's recent inventions, people, usually poor people, would fall through the cracks and into their hands.
"Why, look at their massive farms in California!" Famine had said. He was very proud of those farms. "And yet people still starve. The farm hands starve. California is producing more food than ever, but with no money to pay for it, they toss baskets upon baskets of food to the ground and let it rot, and the poor starve. I've found a way to keep working, surely there's still a place for you?"
But, Pestilence argued, Famine just got things that he didn't. He understood numbers and statistics and finances; he used money to starve the world. He was one step ahead of humanity, playing their games better than they did, always predicting what would come next and how best to take advantage of it. But Pestilence? He was always playing catch-up, struggling to keep pace with innovations, and at last, falling behind forever. Besides, what did Famine know about what Pestilence was going through?Pestilence got penicillin. Famine got the Dust Bowl. Famine was doing fine.
He'd traveled to Europe with Famine to tour a few concentration camps, and they had parted ways. Before splitting up, Famine had presented Pestilence with a book: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, first edition. It was personally autographed to Pestilence. Autographed by Famine, that is, since he was one of the main characters. Famine said that the book had been very recently published, and he thought it might be in the running for a Pulitzer. (2) He thought Pestilence would enjoy it. He was right; it was very comforting. Pestilence himself even had a few appearances in the book.
2 (In fact, Famine was heading back to America to help the Associated Farmers of California protest this wonderful book; it was quite accurate, but if it inspired anyone to take action, that could be quite bad for Famine's business.)
However, he'd made his decision, by that time. When he ran into War in the '40s, he followed her to the trenches—she supplied weapons at the front lines, he took care of soldiers in the medical outposts, and sometimes they met in the middle. War had wondered what the problem was; this changing world was wonderful, filled with opportunities.
"Just look at that," War had said, pointing at a fighter plane, at an armory, at a soldier carrying a large gun. "Look at that, look at that. This is what humans come up with. It's beautiful. They say they hate us, but every step they take helps us along. Trust me, it's out there. You just have to look for ways to use what you've been given. Do you think the Wright Brothers knew their invention would be used to drop bombs? My business is better than ever, I know there's something you can do."
But, Pestilence countered, War was someone—something humans chose to make happen, whereas he himself was something that happened to them. Humans had been trying to refine the art of warfare for centuries. They didn't want to get rid of it, they just wanted to get better at it. They glorified their soldiers and their battle-killed. But in the realm of disease? They honored medics and doctors, the people who fought Pestilence. For every technological innovation that made War's job easier, there was one that made Pestilence's harder. How could War understand what he was going through? Pestilence got penicillin. War got tanks. War was flourishing.
In 1945, War abandoned Pestilence in Japan; he wanted to work on radiation sickness a bit, but she had to go supervise a military coup in Venezuela, and then head to Palestine or Vietnam, she wasn't sure which first. She left Pestilence with a "sayonara," a smirk, and a book. Im Western nichts Neues, the original German printing of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, singed around the edges from when War had rescued it from a Nazi book-burning. She'd been carrying it around for over a decade. In her autographed note to Pestilence, which read almost like a book review, she said she thought it was one of the most accurate and entertaining biographies written about her in ages, and maybe it would cheer Pestilence up, too. She was right; it was hilarious. He especially liked the hospital scenes.
Through all his travels, he saw Death many, many times. (3) Following everything they did, tying up their loose ends. His business was always booming; every living being was his customer. Once, Pestilence had asked him, as a bitter joke, if he couldn't perhaps hasten all the Penicillium fungi to their Maker a bit faster?
3 (Death gave Pestilence a book, too. Probably because he'd heard Famine and War had and didn't want to feel left out. His gift was Der Prozeß, also known as The Trial. He hadn't signed it. But he did manage to get Franz Kafka's autograph. An impressive trick, considering that the book was published a year after Kafka's death. It was a good book, but Pestilence wasn't quite sure why Death had given it to him.)
IT DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT, Death had responded, shrugging. But he had added, IF I HAD KNOWN WHAT TROUBLE IT WOULD CAUSE YOU, I WOULD HAVE SUBMITTED A REQUEST UP TOP FOR PERMISSION TO DESTROY THE FIRST FUNGUS BEFORE IT COULD EVOLVE. EITHER THAT, OR PERMISSION TO HAVE ALEXANDER FLEMING STILLBORN. (4) I WISH I HAD KNOWN. THE BIG MAN OWES ME A FAVOR. That wasn't something to sneeze at, having God owe you a favor, and Death was perhaps the only being in the universe who could claim such an honor. (It was a gross violation of Death's raison d'étre, letting a deceased human come back to life for forty days, no matter whose Son He was.) The fact that Death would have been willing to call in this favor for Pestilence's sake touched him, but it was too little, too late.
4 (Fleming was a regret they all shared. Famine wished he'd cut more of the food supplies to the Western Front while Fleming had been out there; maybe Fleming would have devoted his life to fighting world hunger instead of disease, and Famine could have dealt with that easily enough. War had apologized to Pestilence for not getting a bomb dropped on Fleming. Pestilence regretted not throwing typhus at him.)
Death also did his best to try to persuade Pestilence to reconsider. THINK OF ALL YOU HAVE DONE. THINK OF ALL YOU COULD STILL DO. YOU DON'T NEED TO THROW IT ALL AWAY, Death had said. I KNOW THAT YOUR RETIREMENT AS A HORSEPERSON OF THE APOCALYPSE DOES NOT MEAN RETIREMENT FROM ALL YOUR DUTIES, BUT WE WILL NOT BE THE SAME WITHOUT YOU. YOU WERE HERALDED WITH US—THE FIRST AMONG US—IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION. WE FOUR HAVE MADE UP AN UNBREAKABLE QUADRUMVIRATE FOR MILLENNIA. A HUMAN CANNOT NAME THREE OF US WITHOUT AUTOMATICALLY FILLING IN THE FOURTH. DEATH, WAR, FAMINE—AND YOU.
Pestilence had gently corrected him, "Death, War, Famine... and Pollution."
He had met his future successor in the 1800s, just as Pollution was beginning to rise, just as Pestilence was beginning to fall. He was everything Pestilence needed to be but wasn't. He was savvy to the ways of the human world—not cleverly calculating like Famine, but possessed of an instinctive understanding, an ability to glide about factories and steamships and railroads and know what to do without needing a scientific comprehension of what he was doing. He was in a line of work supported, not combated, by technological innovation—his was not specifically cultivated like War's line of work, but it was an inevitable and essential byproduct of technology, ever-strengthening as technology evolved. Pestilence had met Pollution in one of the world's earlier coal mines; Pestilence had been there for the black lung, Pollution had been there for the coal itself.
Pollution wasn't all that new, for what he was—that is, a potential Horseman. If the Four Horsepersons could be compared to knights, then there had been dozens of squires through the millennia. Just because the Four Horsepersons were supposed to be irreplaceable didn't mean it wasn't wise to have replacements lined up anyway. Pestilence had mentored Poison for a century or two, before she got the hang of it and started hobnobbing with political circles. Dehydration had once challenged Famine to a duel, but instead they'd decided to go out for a drink and a bite to eat. War used to have a fan club consisting of such entities as Battle, Brawl, Skirmish, Fracas, Kerfuffle, Brouhaha, and Really Damn Big Explosions.
But Pollution was the first one who had really struck Pestilence as something special. There was a freshness about him, a glistening, raw, undiluted and unrefined freshness. While Pestilence, War, and Famine certainly enjoyed being what they were and doing what they did (and while Death simply was), Pollution was uncontrollably in love with his job. He was bubbling over with ebullience, overflowing with enthusiasm. Pollution was infatuated with pollution. Pestilence had never seen anything like him.
His excitement was contagious. When the miners had gone home for the day, Pestilence and Pollution had stayed behind in the mines to talk. Pollution had gushed about coal, how beautifully its dust smeared into a thick sweaty film on human skin, how its scent burned your nostrils and stuck deep in your lungs. It was so, so magnificent. Pestilence had been mesmerized by his enthusiasm. When the miners came back to work the next morning, they found two pallid men sitting together in the dust, one sweating feverishly and the other perspiring greasily, filthy with coal dust that plastered their wet skin gray—babbling excitedly about the future of carcinogens.
Pestilence had been very, very impressed, and he'd shared these views with his colleagues. Death had said Pollution wasn't giving him many special customers yet, but the youth had potential. Famine had looked over Pollution's work and said that he was certainly on the right track to make it big. War had dismissed him, saying that he was just a new way to make people sick, and wasn't that already Pestilence's territory?
It was. But he hadn't seen Pollution as a threat.
In fact, his existence was a relief. If Pestilence hadn't known about Pollution, he would not have even considered retiring. However, he knew that he wasn't the best person for the job, because he now knew who the best person was. He wasn't leaving the Horsepersons without their fourth member; he was simply handing the reins to someone else who was more than qualified for the position.
He made that decision more than fifty years after the first and last time he had met Pollution: he had sent a notice to God of his retirement and his appointment of Pollution, and Heaven had taken care of the rest, spreading the news to the other Horsepersons. Pestilence had not informed anyone besides the current Horsepersons of his deliberations until after his decision had been made. He hadn't even warned Pollution.
They didn't run into each other again until the end of World War II, while Pestilence was in Japan for radiation sickness. It was a rather new disease, but Pestilence wasn't that proud of it; it wasn't him. Besides, he felt, Pollution could have come up with the same thing, and done it much better.
So it was no surprise that Pollution had reached Japan first, long before Pestilence arrived. When he found him, Pollution was wandering about the outer edges of Hiroshima's ground zero, watching plants wilt and die, in a sort of dazed, happy trance. But he had snapped back to attention when he saw Pestilence. And they had stared at each other for a long, long time.
They talked about many things. Pestilence told him everything he might need to know about being a Horseperson, and quite a few things he probably didn't need but might find useful anyway. He told him about everything he himself was doing, in case Pollution wanted to borrow some of it and expand on it. Pollution had listened attentively to it all, with a sad look in his glazed eyes. He asked Pestilence what he would be doing now.
Pestilence said he didn't know. Possibly the same thing he had always done. He was the only Pestilence, and he still had a job to do—he just wasn't doing it well enough to meet the standards of the Four Horsepersons. Pollution would be able to do a much... better—
And then something happened to Pestilence that he had never experienced before, in his many thousand years of life. He had gotten too choked up to speak. He'd tried to cough to cover the fact that he had a lump in his throat, but, perhaps ironically, Pestilence was no good at faking sick. Pollution said nothing about it.
He simply stepped closer to Pestilence, and closer, and embraced him. Chest pressed to chest, thighs to thighs, cheek to cheek. Pestilence wrapped his arms around Pollution as well, tightly, so that their ribs almost fit together like zipper teeth. He didn't know which of them started shivering first.
"Thank you," Pollution whispered into his ear. It wasn't an empty formality. This was true gratitude: Pollution's voice trembled with appreciation, with thankfulness for this opportunity. He was no longer a squire. He was a true knight. His voice trembling even more—he sounded almost as choked up as Pestilence—he hissed, "I'll never be as good as you."
When they parted ways, Pestilence left first, nauseous, his eyes running with burning tears and his nose dripping with thick mucus. Pollution stayed behind, breathing hard as if the air were too dense, eyes red and irritated, his cheeks streaked with oily trails.
Pestilence's retirement did not come easily for anyone.
Even so, he knew he had made the right decision. Pestilence was defeated, worthless, outdated. Last century's threat. He had nothing left to contribute. He continued fiddling with his old diseases—influenza, the common cold—but he couldn't come up with anything new. The only innovations he had any hand in were a few joint endeavors with Pollution, and in all those cases, Pollution had sought him out first, wanting to work with him. Pestilence had been honored that Pollution asked; Pollution had been honored that Pestilence agreed.
But Pestilence was all washed up. His time was long gone. It was all that damn penicillin's fault. Within a few decades, all of Pestilence's bacterial diseases would be gone. Tuberculosis, tetanus, strep, staph, gonorrhea, cholera, even the Black Plague... And so many others. He'd be left with his viruses. And even they, he was sure, would be eliminated, sooner or later.
However, he hadn't expected humanity to start in quite so soon. And on smallpox, on his beautiful Variola...
That had been too much, even for him. The death of Variola made him angry, a fury he hadn't felt for millennia.
This? This had nothing to do with his position as a Horseperson, former or otherwise. This had nothing to do with his formal duties as Pestilence. This had nothing to do with Heaven or Hell, the Plan or Armageddon. This was personal.
That had been when he started to fight back.
Pestilence had never stopped working. Every year, he introduced new diseases, new strains of old ones, just to keep busy. But it had been a long time since he had last pushed. It had been decades since he'd last worked on an epidemic worthy of the history books. It had been ages since he'd worked on one of Biblical proportions.
And so he grabbed at one of his random tiny projects, nearly a century old, a minor sexually transmitted disease he'd never planned on spreading beyond a few monkeys and a few primitive villages. And he tweaked it and tweaked it and worked it and improved it, made it the best he could. It had to be a virus, so that their damnable penicillin couldn't touch it. It had to be a slow killer, one that could infect its victims and grow into an unstoppable menace before they even felt its symptoms. It had to be one that mutated fast, evolving faster than humans and their vaccinations could ever hope to keep up. (5) This one would not go down as Variola had. And worst of all, the disease itself wasn't even the killer. No, it just destroyed a human's defenses. It opened up the body to every other transmittable disease Pestilence had in his arsenal. This disease was a Trojan Horse, invading Troy and slaughtering the guards, then flinging the gates wide open and leaving the inner sanctums defenseless and so fragile that a sneeze could bring the city down. It was Pestilence's last, furious, frantic, desperate hurrah.
5 (Yes, Pestilence knew how evolution worked. He'd read Darwin's work; it had been one of those scientific advances that had cowed him, that had made him hang his head and admit he could never keep up with humans—but now he would use it against them.)
He hadn't expected it to work so well.
In the mid-'80s, Pestilence received a letter, Burger Lord's logo stamped on the return address, and contained inside was a page-long excerpt from a research article, talking about the connection between promiscuous sex and the spread of HIV/AIDS. Famine's precise handwriting scrolled across the top of the page, reading simply: Bravo! You have taught humanity to literally screw itself over. Are you sure you don't want to return? Pestilence had smiled, and kept the letter—he still had it—but he hadn't responded.
It had taken an act of near-blasphemous impudence on the part of the human race before Pestilence had cared enough to actually do his job the way he should have been doing it all along. He had made a work of art out of HIV/AIDS, but that didn't amount to a whole lot in the long run. He hadn't been the Horseman he should have been. He hadn't earned the right to return.
Pollution was really the one for the job, Pestilence was sure. The fallout from the nuclear weapons convinced him of that. As did oil spills, junk yards, the ozone hole, global warming, cancer, smog, and a thousand different things. Not even refrigerators were safe. Not even thermometers were safe. Not even paint was safe. Everything humanity did had Pollution's touch in it. Pestilence couldn't possibly work that hard. Pollution couldn't possibly stop.
Pestilence had personally visited Chernobyl, hoping to catch Pollution there and offer his congratulations. Pollution had found Pestilence first, and caught both his hands to spin him around in dizzy delight. "Needles!" he had raved. "Medical needles infected with AIDS! Oh, isn't it glorious!" He thought everything was wonderful. He deserved to be a Horseperson.
If Pestilence had known how badly Armageddon was going to turn out, he would never have let Pollution be part of it.
Compared to this, the burning rage he'd felt on behalf of smallpox was like a firelighter compared to a flamethrower.
And he should have been there. He could have been there. Just before Armageddon, he had received a package: a bow, and a note saying, If you're free: come and see. He hadn't come. He hadn't thought it his place to. If he had been there, maybe he could have saved them. Maybe he could have saved even one of them.
Pestilence should have been in Pollution's place. Pollution was too young. He'd had too much potential. He'd had a bright, beautiful future. He didn't deserve to die.
THEY AREN'T EXACTLY DEAD, Death told him, the day after the aborted Armageddon. I WOULD KNOW. I DIDN'T TAKE THEM. He pointed out at the lake. SEE? THAT DUCK IS HUNGRY. THAT'S FAMINE.
"You're feeding it."
AND SOON, IT WILL BE HUNGRY AGAIN. Death tossed the duck a crust. AND AFTER THAT, I WILL TAKE IT.
The duck didn't seem perturbed enough by this revelation to stop eating the offered crust.
THE POINT IS, THEY MAY NOT BE CORPOREAL, BUT THEY STILL EXIST.
Pestilence shook his head. "It isn't the same," he said dully, staring at his bow, held limp in his hands. He had no quiver, but he did have a backpack, slung over one shoulder. It held three autographed books, a letter, and a few lumps of coal. The only worldly possessions of Pestilence. "Maybe pollution still exists, but Pollution doesn't."
Death didn't argue with that. Instead, he pointed at an empty glass bottle, lying in the dirt.
Almost without thinking , Pestilence crushed it, and ground it into the dirt. The shards dug into the dirt, cutting the tiny roots of grass and weeds. They would slice up the flesh of any creatures that dared run barefoot over this patch of dirt, and they would be too small to ever pick up entirely. It was nothing, but at least it was something.
"I'll never be as good as you," he murmured to the pollution.
He turned his back on the lake. "Where are the other three?" he asked. "And I don't mean 'IN THE MINDS OF MAN.' Where are they really?" He knew it wouldn't be anywhere good. And it wasn't.
THEY'RE WITH GOD NOW, Death said. He meant it literally. (6)
6 (At that moment, War was in a royally pissed mood, and demanding that God explain what the Hell was up with His grand ineffable plan and the end of the world and Armageddon and that Antichrist and most importantly, why hadn't she gotten to blow up the world? He just smiled at her like He knew something she didn't. Because He did.)
"You don't think you'd be able to call your favor in...?"
KILLING A FUNGUS IS ONE THING, Death said. RESURRECTING A HORSEPERSON IS ANOTHER.
"What about a trade?"
I AM NOT GOING TO TRADE YOU FOR POLLUTION.
Pestilence stood silently for a moment. There was his last hope, crushed. All of Pollution's wonderful potential... gone from the world forever. Not to mention Famine and War. Sure, starvation and conflict and general filthiness would continue unabated, but there would be no intelligence designing these calamities, no higher being guiding and shaping them, giving them form and function, giving them purpose.
But, there was still Pestilence.
And he knew how a blighted crop could starve a nation. He knew how two societies could turn on each other if one thought the other bore a plague. He knew how a single industrial accident could poison people half a world away.
Once more, he set his mind on vengeance.
If Variola had inspired him to create HIV/AIDS, then his fallen colleagues would inspire an epidemic that would do even worse than the Great Flood.
Perhaps the Four Horsepersons would start the Apocalypse after all.
Pestilence clutched his bow so tightly, his hands started shivering. "The Four Horsepersons," Pestilence said, his voice trembling, "will ride again."
Death tossed another chunk of bread into the water. HOW'S THAT?
"I will reform them. New members. Replacements." He stared off into the distance, an apoplectic look in his glazed eyes. "Better than—no, not possibly better than—but, as close to the originals as possible."
I SEE, Death said politely.
"Maybe," he continued, throwing out ideas as they came to him, "maybe even all male this time, so that we can just call ourselves Horsemen without having to deal with this Horsepersons nonsense."
THAT'S HARDLY AN EQUAL-OPPORTUNITIES WAY OF GOING ABOUT THINGS, IS IT? (7) Death asked. WHAT IF YOU FIND A QUALIFIED WOMAN, WILL YOU TURN HER DOWN BECAUSE SHE'S FEMALE?
7 (The original Horsepersons all came at the issue of gender rather differently. Pestilence and War were less progressive, Famine and Death were more. Every once in a while, Pestilence was fond of introducing a disease that only hit one of the sexes, and then maybe branching it out to the other over time; and War affected everyone equally, but tended to focus more on the men at the start of things. Famine and Death treated the sexes perfectly equally. Pollution, meanwhile, might not have even known the sexes existed and probably wouldn't have cared much if he had.)
"Well, no," Pestilence said, only slightly deflated. "But it's a thought. And we'll still have the Four Horsepersons again. And—"
MOTORCYCLISTS.
"What?"
WE DO MOTORCYCLES NOW. POLLUTION'S IDEA, AND WE ALL VOTED FOR IT. WE'RE THE FOUR MOTORCYCLISTS OF THE APOCALYPSE, Death said. I SUPPOSE THAT TAKES CARE OF THE HORSEPERSONS VERSUS HORSEMEN ISSUE.
"Well." Pestilence processed that. "I don't do motorcycles," he said lamely. "It can be the Three Motorcyclists and One Horseman. Or maybe the Four Riders." Then again, if it were Pollution's idea, it couldn't be too bad... "It doesn't matter! The point is. The point is, the end of the world will come. And this time, the Four Whatever will not simply be responding to it. We will not be sitting around, waiting for it to happen. Waiting for the trumpets to sound so we can ride out and start it all off. Waiting to see what the rest of the world does before we do anything, letting Heaven, Hell, and humanity control us. All this time, it's been so that we have to understand them to affect them, we have to adapt to their technology, we have to keep up with their innovations—enough of that. I am tired of playing catch-up with humanity."
Death was beginning to get the feeling that Pestilence had stopped thinking about Armageddon all together, but didn't interrupt.
"We are Horsemen of the Apocalypse," Pestilence said, figuring he didn't have to deal with the Horseperson nonsense since War wasn't present. Nor would she ever be again. "We should be the ones deciding what road humanity takes—stampeding down our chosen routes and having them chase us to catch up! Why should we have our actions determined by their bloody farms and bombs and—and—that accursed, wretched, damnable penicillin!"
He'd shouted so loudly that the covert agents ringing around the lake had stopped conspiring and turned to stare at him, and a nightingale in a nearby tree promptly stopped singing in surprise. Pestilence glared at the bird, and then he got a nasty, vile, gruesome idea, and then all of the sudden the nightingale didn't feel very well and decided to go find somewhere else to sit and sing. In fact, it felt so unwell that, in its confusion, it would by some accident land and sing in Berkeley Square, becoming the first nightingale to ever do so.
It felt so unwell that it would eventually pass on from its unwell feelings. But not before making some other birds feel unwell, which would make even more birds feel unwell, which would go on and on over years and years as a virus mutated and mutated and finally culminate in the beginning of an epidemic, an epidemic that would start thousands of miles east of that first nightingale; and then it would spread to humans. It would progress slowly for a few years, but if they weren't organized enough to counter it, if they couldn't adapt faster than it mutated, soon, it would overrun them. It would kill billions.
And Pestilence already had other thoughts, other poisons he could share. This one, he'd call bird flu. He was already thinking of another he might call pig flu, or something like that; he had used influenza before, true, his last big influenza epidemic had been back in 1918, but humanity hadn't found a way to stop it yet, had they? He could use it again, and again. If they found a way to stop it, he'd make something new. He didn't need to worry about every petty little pill humanity tried to throw at him!
Of the original Four Horsepersons, he had been entrusted with the bow and the crown. He had been sent forth to conquer. He should have been doing just that all along, conquering humanity. He should not have let himself be cowed by their innovations and their technology that he couldn't keep up with—what need had he to understand their shiny new machines and the magic they called science? Famine changed with the economy, War evolved with the weapons, but Pestilence operated on a level below and above human civilization. Damn humans, damn civilization, damn medicine, and damn penicillin a thousand times over. Pestilence had been created to conquer. He had been chosen to wear the crown.
If he had been fulfilling his duty, conquering humanity—perhaps his colleagues would not have been defeated. If he had been wearing the crown chosen for him, perhaps Pollution would not have fallen with that crown upon his head.
WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO FIND THEM?
"Come again?" Pestilence asked, jerked out of his regrets.
THREE NEW RIDERS TO ACCOMPANY YOU, Death clarified.
Pestilence wondered that himself. "You're still one," he pointed out.
OH, THAT'S RIGHT, Death said. NEARLY FORGOT. (8) ALL RIGHT, YOU'VE GOT ME, I SUPPOSE.
8 (Death always was the outsider of the group. Being a Horseperson/Motorcyclist of the Apocalypse was rather like working in a Burger Lord. Perhaps this was a full-time career with no hope of advancement for the man at the drive-through window, the boy with the mop, and the girl working the cash register, but the guy way in the back humming to himself as he flipped burgers thought of it more as a day job to pass the time between more important gigs.)
"So I only have to find two more," Pestilence said. He realized he had no idea where to start. "Do you know any candidates?" They were always around, the squires to their knights.
As it happened, Death did.
Pestilence left the park.
Even though it was nowhere near cold and flu season, everyone who visited the park that day—except for Death, Pestilence himself, and the angel and demon pair that showed up later—caught pneumonia.
Elsewhere in the world, people continued to shoot each other, starve innocents, and contaminate the environment. And—this is the important bit—they did it of their own free will, all by themselves, with nobody there to make them do it.
It was enough to make Pestilence sick.
He visited a hospital. A man was there with a broken leg and various other injuries due to a motorcycle accident involving a rain of fish the night before. At least, that was his story. Nobody at the hospital believed it, because nobody at the hospital remembered anything about the fish, because no human remembered a thing about the aborted Armageddon, so they were making plans to move the man to the psychiatric ward.
However, Skuzz was no longer a human; he was a potential Horseman.
"Who are you?" Pestilence asked, whispering to Skuzz in his hospital bed. The doctors hadn't noticed as Pestilence slid in; they saw him so often that he was nearly invisible.
"Who, me?" Skuzz gave Pestilence a belligerent look. "Skuzz."
Pestilence stared at him. Shouldn't his name be something a bit more terror-inducing than "Skuzz"? "No, your real name."
His belligerent look got worse. "Who wants to know?"
"I do," he hissed. His breath stank with rot and bile—not of death, but of dying, which at times was infinitely worse.
Skuzz shrank back. "Clancy," he confessed. "Clancy Tupper. But nobody calls me that. It's just Skuzz."
Clearly, he didn't understand the question. "No," he said. "Your true name. What are you?"
"What?"
"I am Pestilence. You met my four friends last night. On their way to the end of the world."
Skuzz's eyes were widening.
"What's your name?"
Skuzz swallowed hard. "Well, when you put it that way," he said. "For a while, I thought I'd be Embarrassing Personal Problems. But then No Alcohol Lager seemed better, but they wouldn't let me be that so I went with Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Really Good Thumping, but then All Foreigners Especially The French seemed like a better idea, but I didn't like that, so I changed it to Treading in Dogshit, and then I hit this pile of fish and thought that was worse so I decided to be People Covered In Fish, but by the time I woke up I didn't like that, and now..." He looked slightly puzzled. "And now... I guess I'm Things Going Wrong Because You Tried To Do Something Different And It Backlashed On You."
Pestilence's first thought was that Skuzz—pardon, that Things Going Wrong Because You Tried To Do Something Different And It Backlashed On You—was an idiot.
But... moronic as his name was, wasn't it what had happened to Pestilence?
He wondered what Things Going Wrong Because You Tried To Do Something Different And It Backlashed On You's story was, to come up with a name like that.
"So... you want to be one of the Four Riders of the Apocalypse, Things Going Wrong Because You Tried To Do Something Different And It Backlashed On You?" Pestilence asked.
He flinched away from Pestilence. "Oh no, that's all right, you can keep it!" he said. "I figure you lot have got all you need anyway—"
"There are two openings."
"Oh." He considered that. "Really? Are... are you offering?"
"On a trial basis," Pestilence said, leaning in close to his new recruit's face. "I'll mentor you; I've mentored potential recruits before. But you have to do two things in return."
"I don't have to sell my soul, do I?"
The Horsepersons didn't have souls, per se. "No."
"Then what is it?"
"First, change your name."
"What's wrong with my name?" demanded Things Going Wrong Because You Tried To Do Something Different And It Backlashed On You.
"Our names have to be one word long," Pestilence lied.
"Oh." The temporarily nameless potential Horseman thought about that. "Well, what's available?"
Pestilence thought back. This name wouldn't just describe a Horseman, sitting on him like a name tag; it would define him, changing who he was. He would be his name, because his name was what he was.
And Pestilence got to name him. What did he want his new Horseman to be?
"Retaliation," he said. Yes. That was what he wanted.
"All right. Retaliation. I like it." Retaliation nodded in acceptance. "Wossit mean?"
"Basically the same thing as you said before," Pestilence said. "Except with a bit of revenge thrown in."
Retaliation grinned broadly at that. Already, his eyes were beginning to change. His earlier belligerence now came back as a glowing resentment inside his pupils, a resistance to everything that would push against him, an urge to push back. When the time came, Pestilence thought, perhaps Retaliation should get War's sword.
"I really like it," he said. "But what all am I getting revenge for?"
"Everything."
"Yeah? All right. Who against?"
"Everyone. The entire human race."
Something human in his eyes sparked up at that, resisting this new order; but the retaliation in Retaliation resisted right back, pushed right back, and pushed his humanity down and down. Soon, it would disappear entirely. Even if he didn't become an official Horseman, he would never be Skuzz again. "Sounds exciting," he said. "So what's the second thing I got to do?"
"Teach me to ride a motorcycle."
Pestilence was going to conquer the world, with a crown on his head and a bow in his hand, and he didn't want to wait to do it. He had waited for millennia for Armageddon to come; this time, he wasn't going to follow the rules. He was going to make Armageddon show up, and he was going to make it happen as fast as possible. And a motorcycle was faster than a horse. Besides, it was worse for the environment.
All over the world, war, famine, and pollution would continue without War, Famine, and Pollution to guide them. But the world was not undirected. Global progress began twisting away from taking action and became a game of reaction, of revenge and punishment, and sooner or later it would escalate to something devastating. Even nature seemed to be getting in on the game. Everything humans did had always had consequences, but now, the consequences seemed sentient, as if they had chosen to show up because of what humanity did. They were the most abstract consequences, it almost seemed absurd that the causes could yield those effects, but the results were undeniable. Because humanity used cars, ice caps melted. Because humanity used drugs, narcoterrorism spread. Because colonialism had happened, children starved.
Because humanity used so much damned penicillin, deadly bacterial diseases evolved a resistance.
Yes, Pestilence would survive. And he would thrive. And he would conquer. And he would avenge his colleagues, whom he had turned his back on when they had most needed him. And he would avenge Pollution, whom he had sent to Armageddon like a white lamb to the slaughter.
He would change; he would mutate; he would evolve; he would survive.
You had to change with the times, or the times would kill you.
End