The village chief’s face, creased like weathered pine bark, pressed against the telephone receiver. Static hissed through the line, mingling with his labored, rasping breaths—a broken bellows stuffed with smoldering straw.
“What?!” His voice scraped upward, sharp as shattered glass. Fingers clenched the receiver bone-white, veins bulging like earthworms beneath his sun-leathered skin. “Plague?! The… the county? Confirmed?!”
Faint, frantic shouts crackled through the static, carrying the acrid stench of panic. The chief’s eyes bulged, pupils clouded like stagnant ponds reflecting only slivers of torchlight, the rest drowned in leaden, suffocating dread.
He swallowed thickly, a glob of phlegm catching in his throat. “Seal… seal the village! Now! Alert every household! No one…”
The w
