Moscow, Russia
Day 232
I’m praying in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior like I do every day. Save me. Please God almighty. Take him away from me. Please don’t let him be one of the chosen few. I will be your loyal servant for the rest of my life, both in life and in death, if you will please, let me be free. Why is my husband not dead yet? Please God, kill him.
It has been months. He is still alive. Why? Why him? He beats me every evening. He is the worst kind of man. Katya is growing up in a house that is no place for a child.
The priest looks at me with a frown. It’s probably the black eyes. Or maybe it’s my nose. He did that last Monday. I’ll probably have a bump in it forever now. I liked my nose. I want to tell him they’re not my fault, but he’s already passed me. My husband cannot be immune. It would not be right. Babies and little boys and doctors have died. Good people. It is not right for bad people to survive. It cannot be right.
Life was still and quiet and occasionally terrifying for a long time. Mikhail drank too much, earned too little. I worked in the shop, I kept Katya safe. There were only a few beatings. It was manageable. He made sure to leave my face alone. No need for awkward questions.
Then the rumors started. At first, they were whispers. There was a disease attacking men in Scotland and then England. We wondered if it was poison. There had been killings before, it was possible, wasn’t it? But then the list of countries grew bigger and the news on the TV couldn’t talk about anything else. Sweden. France. Spain. Portugal. Belgium. Germany. Poland. Once it was in Poland I started to panic. What would happen to us? I remember thinking, “How would we survive without Mikhail?” And then I realized how much easier things would be if he just died. Then it didn’t seem so scary anymore.
The first Russian case was reported in mid-December, although everyone says it was here before then. It felt like everyone had been holding their breath, waiting and waiting for the first one and once it had happened, we could all breathe and cry and wail and exhale again. I felt relief that it might reach us soon and terror at what the world would look like.
There has been a surge of domestic violence throughout the spring as the disease ravages Moscow. Not everyone’s husbands are terrible though. My friend Sonya’s husband stayed home with her all the time. He loved her so much. Then he ran away to Siberia to try and escape it. She told me he was crying when he was left but they agreed it was the safest thing to do. She has not heard from him since. Maybe these men think the cold will protect them, the ones who go north. But it doesn’t. The Plague doesn’t care where you go. It will find you.
Mikhail never considered going anywhere. He doesn’t love us enough to want to live. He has stayed and drunk vodka like it’s his dying day, every day.
At first, I was excited. Any day now he will catch it. Any day now he will die. But the days are passing. I am praying and nothing is changing. I can’t leave. He owns the apartment. I don’t earn enough. He would kill me and keep Katya.
Now I am bored of the pain, bored of the bruises, but more than anything I am scared. He must be immune. Almost every man in Moscow has died but Mikhail. He spends every day outside of the house in bars. He is reckless. He touches people, accepts drinks, takes public transportation.
He arrives home, late as always, drunker than usual. I make sure to be in the kitchen when he arrives. It’s worse if I’m in bed. I try to give him a glass of water but he doesn’t like that. I never know what he will accept as help or interpret as an insult. He swipes at me but can’t be bothered to put any weight into it. It probably won’t bruise. He stumbles through to our bedroom, passes out, smelling metallic.
I feel his forehead, praying it will be feverish, but it is cool. He is immune. He is immune. This can’t go on. I have a plan for Katya and me to be safe and leave him behind. I take the thermometer out of the bathroom and some tissues and put them by his bed. What else does a sick person need? A cold washcloth. That too.
I change into my pajamas and lie down next to him. It is time. I take the spare pillow he has abandoned and hold it firmly. I cover his face and push down as hard as I can. He starts to stir and move his arms but I am straddling him now, my knees digging into his sides. Pressing down, down I keep holding it. He stops moving after a while but I don’t know if he’s playing dead. If he’s still alive he will kill me. Hold down for longer. Keep holding.
I stay with the pillow pressed down until the clock shows it is 4 a.m. His chest has not moved for a long time. I do not think he could be pretending now. I take the pillow off and spring away from him just in case. His head lolls to one side. His eyes are unblinking. I let out a whoop and then clasp my hand over my mouth. My neighbor must not hear that kind of thing.
I leave my dead husband—I am now a widow. I prefer that word to “wife.” I will sleep in Katya’s room tonight. My baby and I are safe.
“Come into my bed, Mama,” she says to me sleepily when I open the door to her room. Beside my soft, sleepy girl I lie down and she snuggles into me as I curl up under her covers. For the first time in years I sleep like I did when I was child, knowing I am safe.
I wake up when Katya starts to stir. I tell her to go to the kitchen and make breakfast, everything as it usually is, keep it the same, stay calm. I go through to the bedroom. He is definitely dead. I have thought about this before but now that I must do it, it feels riskier than I had thought. I call the phone number they gave out on the news. The Body Snatchers, everyone calls them. The women employed by the government to take the bodies away and burn them.
I try to sound sad and shocked. They arrive a few hours later. I have made sure to cry a little to make it believable. I assumed they would ask me some questions about the illness and when he died but they just ask for his name and SNILS number. I recite them and watch in disbelief as they pick up his body, put it in a bag and leave with only a short sentence: “I’m sorry for your loss.”
If I had known it would be this easy, I would have killed him months ago.
ARTICLE IN THE WASHINGTON POST ON JUNE 30, 2026
“Women at War: The Chinese Civil War Unmasked”
by Maria Ferreira
I wish I could take credit for an extraordinary feat of journalistic talent, and say I painstakingly researched the Chinese Civil War, carefully built up relationships with its key actors and managed to convince one of its rebel leaders to trust me enough to be interviewed.
It didn’t happen like that. Fei Hong, the rebel leader based in Chengdu, e-mailed me. I replied to her e-mail and set up a FaceTime call fully expecting it to be a prank. It wasn’t. What can I tell you, sometimes Chinese rebel commanders make this job really easy.
I can see the accusations that I’m being used as a mouthpiece for a villainous woman, intent on violence, from a mile away. To that, I answer, I might not have had to fight hard for this interview but I’m still a journalist. I have, to the extent possible, researched Fei’s claims and where they are impossible to confirm or rebut, I’ll say so.
When she appears on my screen—the picture startlingly clear—I’m assessed coolly. It’s clear, before Fei Hong has said a word, that she’s a powerful woman.
We exchange brief pleasantries and I ask her the most expansive, first question I can think of. “Why did you want to talk to me?” What follows is an edited transcript of my conversation with Fei.
FEI: You’re the “Plague” journalist. With you, our story will have the most reach.
MARIA: Whose story is this? Who do you refer to when you say “our”?
FEI: I only speak for the United Democratic Alliance of Chengdu. But the Communist Party tries to make it appear to the outside world like there is far more distance between rebel groups than exists. Mostly we have the same goal: democracy.
[Note: Fei refers to the Communist Party, which reports say is now divided and has an increasingly shaky grasp across the country. Technically, the Communist Party still comprises the government of the People’s Republic of China.]
MARIA: Is that your only goal?
FEI: It is the first thing we need to achieve. Everything else will flow from that.
MARIA: What’s your background? How did you end up where you are?
FEI: I studied law at the University of Cambridge. My parents have always been anti-Communist activists. They passed messages on at mahjong meetings. I grew up knowing things had to change. When the Plague started I got home in time. I have been involved in the Chengdu rebellion since the beginning, in January 2026.
MARIA: Why is this rebellion surviving when no previous rebellion has?
FEI: Because the army and the government are formed of men. They died or are dying. The rebellion is only formed of women. Once we know who is immune, men may be able to join, but in the meantime it is just women. We are safe. We can continue to fight. The Plague is burning everything to the ground and we will rebuild it, better, different.
MARIA: What do you say to the allegations of the government that rebel groups across China are engaging in extreme violence?
FEI: They are lies formed by the few men, and women, who remain in government. This is a different kind of civil war than has ever existed. For the first time, rape is not a tool in this war. Guns can’t be used senselessly because there aren’t enough surviving soldiers to fire them, and we stormed military bases overwhelmed by the Plague. Four months ago, I met with nine other rebel leaders. Some of us are fighting with one another but we maintained a brief twenty-four-hour window of peace to agree we would not use violence unless absolutely necessary to defend ourselves. We have seen men wage war since the dawn of time. Nobody wins the wars men fight.
MARIA: What will happen to China, and what do you want to happen to China? Is it too big to be led as you want it to be, as a democracy?
FEI: China as it used to be doesn’t exist anymore. It will splinter—it is already fractured. We are fighting now over the different pieces but we use different weapons. We use cyber weapons, we use messages of persuasion. The population will not be led blindly by fear so whoever wins will have power and people on their side.
MARIA: Are you trying to persuade one of the four independent states to help you?
[Note: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Macau declared themselves as independent states in quick succession in April 2026. Reports say that swift, decisive action from rebellious government officials who teamed up with powerful businessmen in a number of near-bloodless coups quashed any possibility of counter-rebellion from the local populations. Elections have been implemented and economic stability promised.]
FEI: They will stay out of the war. They have chosen a different path. If the four independent states stay that way, there is a possibility that the rest of China can form itself into something better.
MARIA: When do you think the war will end?
FEI: Soon. The army will just keep dying. The Communist Party will continue to weaken. Women won’t die, won’t go anywhere. We’ll win.