Chapter Text
Long before Pestilence was forced into early retirement by the advent of penicillin and vaccinations, he enjoyed taking his work on the road (or on the water, as it were today). He was heading up a river called the Mississippi, to a place called New Orleans, Louisiana. Bringing new diseases to a port city was always exciting, but there was something special about this one at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Pestilence stood at the bow, his long, stained coat flapping behind him. He breathed in the fresh air and exhaled disease, savoring the taste as if it were a fine wine. A buzzing in his ear told him he wasn’t the only one ready to see the city appear around the next bend.
“Not long now, my friends.”
For a few centuries he had been experimenting with mosquitoes, and they had proven marvelous little helpers in spreading his current disease of choice: yellow fever. And in New Orleans, a city below sea level and surrounded by swampland, where they couldn’t even bury the dead because the water table saturated the ground just a few feet down?
Why, it was perfect. A perfect partnership.
The French Quarter came into view at last, and there at the center stood St. Louis Cathedral.
What a beautiful place for a funeral, he thought.
Yes, Pestilence believed he and his swarm of friends would enjoy themselves in the Crescent City.
......
The next few years treated Pestilence well. He regularly worked overtime in the summer months, but he so enjoyed filling the mausoleums in the city’s cemeteries that he hardly minded. He might have stayed a few more years if he thought the now-endemic yellow fever would fizzle out without him, but before the next summer surge he was on a boat leaving as he had come.
The person he knew would continue his work? A holy man by the name of Father Richard Head.
Father Richard had arrived in New Orleans a few years before Pestilence. He quickly rose through the ranks of the church using his debonair charm and passion for ridding the city of heathens, sinners, and sodomites. He was prepared to do anything. He just needed a sign.
Then the epidemic hit, and the angels came to him. They brought with them a plan. And the young, healthy priest dropped to his knees and thanked the Lord for this opportunity to remove this sinful stain from his city, to transform his divine words into mighty deeds.