Bring Out Your Dead

"Bring out your dead!"
The raw silence of the street at the dead of night was torturous, the only accompanist to the lonesome plague doctor in the dead of night the crackling of open braziers, the chirping of crickets and the steadily growing pile of dead bodies he pushed on his rickety old cart.
"Bring out your dead!"

The night was still and dark, not even the barest sliver of light granted to him by the moon, for not even that celestial body could bear to look upon him on this night, surrounded as he was by the bodies of the dead, enveloped in their smell and shrouded in the residue of their passed souls, gone to whatever hell they had been condemned to by the God who had brought unto them this foul pestilence.

That was to say, if this world was not already that hell, death to the illness a sweet release to a beautiful new world.
The creak of a window pierced the silence of night, the unmistakable sound of a chamber pot being emptied informing him why exactly it was that some foolish soul had dared expose the sanctity of their home to the foulness of the street.
A pair of rats scurried across the street ahead of him, their forms silhouetted briefly by the orange light of the fire before they vanished.
His only live companions on this godforsaken night, he mused with a huff of humour, though it was terrifying that his mind could come to rationalise such things as cause to laugh, however brief his moment of respite from the dull monotony of depression and sadness had been.

A slight breeze wafted across the street, the braziers flickering for a moment as the dry, musty air in which they burned was disturbed. The man himself allowed himself to bask in it for the brief moment that it washed over him, the sweaty warmth of the summer's night briefly banished from the thick robes he wore over his form and the mask which covered his face.
Mother Nature, it seemed, was in a merciful mood, for the breeze sustained.
The drapes of the landlord's windows fluttered in the gusts that propagated from that steady flow of air. Flames flickered more enthusiastically than ever he had seen them do, and as all good things do, at their moment of greatest brightness and ferocity, they died.

Just as suddenly as it appeared, the wind vanished, the town bathed in a harsh darkness.
He was at the mercy of God.
"Bring out your dead!"
He was not met by the customary response.
Squinting at the door, he was met by the shocking lack of the red cross that seemed to adorn the door of every house in that neighbourhood, the badge of honour worn by the rare family untouched by the disgusting pestilence.

God favours these folk he thought to himself as he passed, no small feeling of jealousy buzzing away at the back of his mind as he scowled at that clean door of a clean house before his mind silenced his heart's reaction, his feet moving and his arms straining as he moved towards the next set of houses, mind too preoccupied with petty thoughts of envy to care that he was moving in the absence of all light.

That was his first mistake.

A door opened to his right, the dim light of a candle peeping through the open doorway and illuminating the hand which held it, dark and scarred, possibly from work in the farms.
A particularly attached relative, then, he rationalised, pausing expectantly that the person might dispose of the body themselves, internally steeling himself for the emotional display that was inevitably to come, turning his back in some small display of respect; privacy in the poor sod's final moments with a loved one.
Moments passed, and still no sound was made. No sobbing, no tortured wails pleading for happiness in the life beyond this one, no prayers to what might or might not have been on some rose-tinted higher plane that life might some day become as it once was, with no stain of this foul disease on the memory.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, bony fingers digging into the saddle of his shoulder and alerting him to the completion of the person's task.
In the dim light of the candle, he saw a small gathering of folk around the cart.
Big family he mused, taking the long, leather-gloved handles of his cart and preparing to set off again.
The cart, however, was impossibly light.
It most certainly did not bear the burden of some fifty dead bodies as it had mere moments ago.
The bodies…
Were gone.

Backing away a few staggered paces, he searched frantically for light, some vague semblance of sight in the suddenly terrifying darkness.
They said everything was more daunting, more visually stimulating at night, sharp edges and glimmers of light like knives, shadows like the bony limbs of the dead and vengeful reaching out to drag you into the pit of torment behind them.
Never did he imagine that such might truly become the case, as the crowd refused to budge.

The crossroads behind him was lit to some small extent, as it always was in order to allow carriage drivers to navigate well, and to avoid death for reasons that could reasonably be avoided, however rare it was that folk tended to travel past the set of the sun.
God bless that watchman, who had doubtlessly lit the junction after the lights had been extinguished.

On a second thought, that may have been the worse outcome, for he might not have been quite as terrified as he found himself, had he not seen the faces of his pursuers.
Skin, pale and rotten like bread gone stale, hung loose over quivering bones which had lost the strength they had once possessed in life.
Eyes, dead as the bodies in which they were housed, gazed unseeingly down the road, no alertness within them that had once been their indicator of life and intelligence.
Their muscles were stretched and weak, such a condition reflected in the short, staggered movements of the bodies they controlled, like puppets on loose strings which trudged up the street towards him.
"RUN!" he exclaimed, hysteria creeping into his voice. "RUN, PLEASE!"
His voice, however, was neither expected nor welcome in the peaceful slumber of the residents of the village.
"Piss off back to whence you came, Plague Doctor," one irate woman snarled in reply, blissfully ignorant in her beautiful delusion of safety in her comfortable bed.
That, however, was not to last long, as screams punctured the peace of night.
"AWAY, BEAST OF SATAN!"
"HE HAS COME FOR ME!"
Exclamations of panicked fear formed a cacophony; an orchestral composition of torture to which he was seemingly the only auditor. An opera of violence was being enacted before him as the sleepy town which once he had deemed home became a place of chaos.
A shrill cry pierced the wall of noise, snapping his head to the right and his gaze shooting skywards as he saw the lithe form of a woman forced out of a window, thrown out like some rusted farm tool mere moments later.
The sound of her impact against the rough ground of the street was enough to force him to lose his final meal of the day.
He cared not; after all, what was one more cause of disgust on a night such as this one?
On advanced the horde which had, mere moments ago, been the occupants of his cart.
Bring out your dead indeed.

Ragged breathing to his right drew his attention to the fallen form of the woman, a faint rise and fall of her injured chest just visible in the dim lighting he had available to him.
He could not leave her to the fiends, could he?
No, never in a million years, if it was deemed that he had so long to live.
Nobody deserved such a fate.
With trembling yet impossibly gentle arms, he held her to himself, taking care not to jostle her as he moved away.
Surely safety existed somewhere beyond the borders of this town, claimed by Satan as it was?
Further ahead of him, he saw people.
There was safety in numbers, he knew, and so towards them he went, their bloodied limbs and red faces, flushed from the exertions of flight, informing him of their vitality and normalcy.
"OUT OF TOWN, FRIENDS, LET US FLEE!"
If only such could ever be the case.

From the borders of the town appeared a light; a flame borne by a man in the same uniform as he had been clad.
He rode in a chariot drawn by horses of bone, rotten eyes staring birdlike at the small group of survivors.
"I greet you, mortals," it spoke, for it was truly a thing, and not a being of human conception.
Its voice was rough, like the cough of one with horrific pneumonia, and it was a sinking feeling in his gut which told him what it was exactly that they were confronted with at this moment.
"I am Pestilence. I am your escape."
Cloaked arms of rotten, decayed flesh spread wide in a twisted gesture of welcome, and blackened, maggot-infested teeth flashed in a dirty smile.
"Join me, children, and be safe."
Creatures of the night crowded around them, hordes of the horseman's legions as far as the eye could see.

He fell to his knees.

A/N
Sol attempting to write horror...
I blame Discord.
Yeah, not quite the same Trojan War stuff as normal, but it's something I wrote, and here it is.
Once more, readers of my other currently live story - In the Light of a Waning Moon, I can only apologise for the delay in posting the next chapter; I am 2.5k words in, but there's a big battle to write, and it's not quite clicking at the speed I'd quite like it to. It will come, I just ask for your patience while it does.
That being said, if you haven't read that (or indeed, the other, complete, story I've written; Even in the Darkest of Times, I'd direct you in their direction, and ask they you give me the small favour in return of a review letting me know what you think.
Until next time, then,
Sol