The Diktatura believes Dr. Joseph Euge has given it the ultimate weapon. His mutant virus spreads with terrifying efficiency, yet carefully chosen loyal citizens appear immune while criminals and political enemies die. To the men controlling the country, the explanation seems obvious. The disease itself has confirmed that their enemies are defective, and now biology can accomplish what armies and secret police never could.

Euge knows the evidence tells another story. Experiments with mice reveal that immunity can disappear when an animal is trapped, threatened, or surrounded by frightened companions. As the government prepares to unleash RM4 beyond its borders, Euge watches its leaders mistake correlation for moral proof. Once war begins, the conditions surrounding the disease change everywhere at once. Robert Abernathy builds the tension around one horrifying possibility: the weapon may become strongest precisely when people understand what it can do.

Robert Abernathy was born in 1924 and published science fiction from the early 1940s into the 1950s. His work appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, Planet Stories, Science Fiction Quarterly, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Galaxy Science Fiction, Imagination, and Fantastic Universe. Righteous Plague originally appeared in the May 1951 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly. Other Abernathy stories include The Canal Builders, The Dead-Star Rover, Strange Exodus, The Rotifers, Axolotl, Single Combat, Junior, and Grandma’s Lie Soap.