"The plague doctor waited over the canal. The open air carried the alien buzzing to him through the dark, and he knew what swarmed in the piazza. The square was close, but separated by a watery maze.
His mask made it difficult to breathe, and he drew slowly
through its long, sloping beak. It was the mask of battle, and it had been
protecting the doctors of Venice for centuries.
But he was not fighting the plague of his ancestors, the
flesh-eating spots the soldiers brought back from the Thirty-Years’ War. The
plague he fought was eating the city itself.
The locusts were devouring whole neighborhoods, eating
away at the city’s foundation as they gouged down into the Grand Canal. Long
ago, The Virgin had cured the city of its black spots. Now he, Dr. Maurizio
Luchini, saw fit to finish Her work.
He heard footsteps from the alley on the other side of
the bridge. Ducking down behind a mooring pole, he disappeared under his black
cape and waited.
Their foreign speech gave them away though the locusts
wore the costumes of carnevale, just like he did. The doctor studied them as
the insects wandered slowly, stupidly together toward the hive center in the Piazza
San Marco. These two were tall, with white-blond hair. They must have come from
the far north. But really, they were all the same: members of the swarm, called
together by their own putrid stink."
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