“Of course there are tables.” I stepped to the nearest one, and lifted the dark blanket away. The man beneath was dead. I jumped back, knocking over a wooden pail. A clammy liquid that I refused to name oozed over my foot. I kicked the pail away, watching as it rolled a few feet to collide with the leg of another blanketed table.

A cold draft swept down my neck as I looked around the room again, noticing details about the black mounds that I hadn’t before. Big thick mounds beside small ones, a bare foot sticking from the end, a dark crown too tall for the sheet. No two mounds were alike. Shrouds, I realized. The tables were makeshift coffins. The blankets served as shrouds. Dead men lined the room from wall to wall.

The bustling shadows I’d seen from the street came from the corner, where Hosea and Robin toiled over a few dozen restless bodies, not yet covered. My concern for formalities vanished.

“No table,” I agreed, swallowing. “I’ll take his story first.” I pointed toward Hosea, where a bull of a man with waxy black skin lay. His arm was banded above a gaping wound on his forearm. A tourniquet, I realized. “Quickly, there’s no time to waste.”

As if on cue, the man rolled to his side, and erupted in a fit of coughs. His mouth was sealed behind a black scarf, but his cough deployed in blasts, like a cannon.

I stumbled, surprised anything human could make such a noise. “Obi Solomon,” I whispered.

He gripped the table’s edge. The cords of his arms strained to hold his body steady as he launched another barrage.

“They need cough,” William said, nudging me forward. “The poison in the chest needs come out. Some not so lucky, eh?” He lifted his chin to the right, where a bareheaded woman jerked rhythmically. Her face was uncovered and the pathetic sound of her cough was lost in the harsh boom of the cannon. Unlike the young man, her efforts merely underscored her weakness. At that rate, it was clear, she would never free her lungs of the poison.

“You’re right. We must go there first,” I said, drawn to the woman. I checked the close fit of my mask and hurried over.

The Auntie, Sky

THE AUNTIE, SKY

Everything about her was round and dark. A new moon face with half-moon eyes, no lashes. Her mouth perched between shiny bulbous cheeks. Her cotton shift frayed on the oak slab where she lay, covered in yellow wax cloth. She had no visible marks or tattoos—odd for a worker. Her toes, as bare as her head, were short—ten plump acorns. She opened her mouth to cough again, revealing beautiful white teeth.

“William,” I said over my shoulder. “Her throat is dry; she needs water.”