by JL Bryan
The crowd eased back as she took one slow step down after another, keeping her eyes on them. She’d tolerated these people long enough. They had always made her life hell. And tonight they’d taken her only love from her, the only one she could ever love. Then they’d tried to kill her.
And so they were all going to die. Every last one of them.
One of the middle-aged hunters, Gus Lotrie, who worked the meat department at the Piggly Wiggly, raised his deer rifle and fired. The shot tore through her left side, just below her heart, tearing out a lot of meat. She stumbled and fell to her knees. She caught her balance on the step with her hands, but she slumped forward anyway. She wanted them to think the one shot was fatal. It certainly felt fatal. It felt like someone had poured burning gasoline down the left side of her body.
She pictured the swarm of black flies in her gut, always eager to escape and spread the pox. She imagined them sprouting big, sturdy dragonfly wings. She told them they were attracted to human flesh. She told them they were hungry for it.
Jenny pushed herself to her feet, slowly raising her head. The crowd muttered and whispered, trying to figure out what to do.
It felt like a large, invisible hand reached into her back and squeezed her lungs. Her nose and throat swelled. Then coughs racked her body, and she hacked out what felt like a lungful of sand. Grainy black spores spewed out of her and expanded into a cloud, which drifted down to the armed men at the front of the mob. Jenny watched in amazement. She’d never known she could do that, but she seemed to have an instinctive understanding of her powers when survival was at stake.
She’d created airborne Jenny pox.
The men dropped their weapons as coughing fits ripped through them. They sneezed out blood and little gray flecks of brain. One football player, the junior with the flattop who’d made fun of Jenny’s “pancakes” and pretended he was trying to lick his own nipples, way back on the first day of school, looked up at her through bloody eyes. His jaw dropped open, and it kept dropping, the bone splintering away from the rotten skull, the decaying flesh of his face ripping open all the way to his ears.
His jaw bounced off his chest and landed between his shoes. Gurgling, gagging sounds escaped his open throat hole. Then his blood-rimmed eyes rolled back into his head, and he toppled to the ground, his arms and legs kicking out at random.
Jenny had infected the row of armed men at the front, plus several people behind them. These included Police Chief Lintner, the school receptionist Mrs. Langford, and a man in a matching kitten sweater who had to be her husband. All of them lay in a heap, jerking and twisting as the Jenny pox ate through their muscles and nerves, looking like a clump of ants drenched in a good dose of Raid.
Mayor Winder had been near the front with the police, but now walked backward through the crowd along with Mrs. Winder and Cassie. Dr. Goodling still stood in the pickup truck bed, his eyes wide in horror. Clearly, his theological studies had not prepared him for this.
The whole crowd was creeping backward, but nobody wanted to be the first to break and run. All eyes were on Jenny. She snarled back at them.
Jenny reached both her hands behind her neck and found the zipper tab for her Easter dress. She pushed it down as far as she could reach. Then she grabbed both sides of the dress and pulled them out, ripping the dress all the way open. She pushed the torn dress down off her hips, and it puddled on the stairs around her.
She eased her right foot down to the next step, then her left. Only her underwear and bra remained, all of it originally white, but now stained dark red with Seth’s blood. If anyone else tried to grab her, they would die.
She raised her arms high above her head and extended her fingers, as if surrendering. Then she turned her palms inward to face each other, following her instincts, and suddenly she knew this pose was ancient, it had been engraved somewhere on Babylonian clay or Egyptian stone thousands of years ago.
The surface of her skin rippled from her fingertips to her feet, and then dark, bloody sores broke open everywhere. Weeping rashes spread all the way down her legs. Dark lesions bloomed all over her stomach and breasts. Boils opened on her feet and hands. Dark tumors sprouted along her jaw and forehead, distorting the shape of her face. She smiled, and her teeth were coated in blood and thick, black fluid. She felt like she’d just put on the clay mask of her face, the scary one Seth hung on his bedroom wall.
“Come on,” Jenny said to the crowd. “Who else will lay their hands on me? Who’s next?”
Then the crowd screamed and broke, running away from the courthouse. But it was too late for that. They’d made their choice. Above Jenny, on the relief carved into the courthouse pediment, farmers brought offerings of wheat to the goddess Justice. She was blindfolded, and in one hand, she held a pair of scales.
But in her other hand, she held a sword.
Jenny ran after the crowd.
She reached Coach Humbee first, as the obese man huffed and plodded his way across the street, trailing behind the crowd, which was already spreading across the grassy square. Jenny grabbed a thick fold in the back of his neck, and his skin sizzled at her touch. He howled.
“You let him alone!” Mrs. Humbee turned back and began swatting Jenny with her purse. She was a heavyset woman with a pretty face, an ex-cheerleader who’d taken in a lot of beer since then, and now kept the face preserved in layers of makeup. “You stop it!”
Jenny shoved Coach Humbee into her, knocking Mrs. Humbee to the ground. Her giant husband crashed on top of her. Jenny pushed the pox, trying to pass it through Humbee and into his wife. She needed to know if her power conducted through the people, the way Ashleigh’s had conducted through Seth and into her. The coach howled again, then burbled, as if drowning in his throat, then he was quiet and still.
With a great effort, Jenny rolled Humbee’s corpse onto his back. His face was peeling away into wide, curling strips. Dozens of bloody red polka dots appeared on the white dress shirt stretched over his vast stomach.
Mrs. Humbee tried to crawl away through the dirt with horribly blistered hands. Pustules covered her face. She was infected, but still alive. Jenny would have to push harder next time.
Jenny hurried over and stomped her bare foot onto the back of Mrs. Humbee’s neck, shoving her face in the dirt. She had a quick, bloody seizure before dying.
Jenny saw Dr. Goodling, who’d just told the crowd to kill her, still in the back of Dave Trenton’s pickup. Dave himself climbed in through the driver’s door, and Dr. Goodling sat on the wheel well in the back, looking very pleased to find himself with a ride.
Jenny ran towards Dr. Goodling, and he saw her. He slapped at the rear window of the cab, and Dave slid it open.
“What is it, Dr.—” Dave began.
“Drive! Drive now!” Dr. Goodling shouted.
Dave cranked the truck, and immediately a Kid Rock CD blasted over his sound system. The crowd was everywhere, all over the street, and Dave could only creep slowly along.
Jenny leapt into the truck bed, landing on her feet. She felt fast and nimble now, as small and light and deadly as a single virus cell floating on the breeze.
Dr. Goodling gasped and backed away from her, but she grabbed his tie and pulled him close. She put her left hand on his face and traced her fingers down the center of it, from his forehead to his chin. In the wake of her fingertips, streaks of skin decayed and ruptured open. She grabbed the hair on the back of his head.
“Priest,” she whispered, in the throaty, gravelly voice that only came out of her when she was deep into using her power. “I’m going to kill your family tonight. Especially your daughter.” Jenny laughed. Some part of her delighted in messing with his head. “I came all the way from Hell to collect her.”
Dr. Goodling whimpered. His scalp sloughed off in a bloody tangle, bringing his walnut brown toupee with it. Foamy pink saliva leaked from his mouth.
Jenny shoved him. He landed on his back, his spine slamming across the edge of the truck bed, then
he spilled over and landed in the street.
Jenny looked into the cab, where Dave Trenton still attempted in vain to steer through the crowd. Dave, who’d let them use his phone and truck to trick Seth, then confronted Seth with a rifle when Seth arrived to save him.
She reached through the open window into the cab, and she curled her blistered, leaking fingers around his throat. Dave screamed.
He stomped the accelerator, no longer worrying about the crowd. He ran over people, and the crowd screamed and started running onto the grassy lawn. Dave made a sharp turn, slinging Jenny from one side of the truck bed to the other, but she held onto him. Then he drove up over the curb, onto the grass lawn, alongside the rest of the fleeing mob. The impact on the front tires knocked Jenny’s hand loose, and the following impact on the back tires threw her on her back, banging her head against the floor of the truck bed.
She felt dazed while the truck accelerated. Jenny blinked a few times, hissing at the pain in the back of her head. She pushed up to her hands and knees, then crawled to the cab window. Dave’s head slapped against the driver-side window, blood from his ear smearing against it. His blistered, rotting hand lay across the center armrest. He was dying, or dead, but his foot was still on the accelerator.
Jenny looked ahead through the windshield. The two-story brick building, home to the Five and Dime, rushed toward her at a frightening speed.
Jenny turned and crawled to the tailgate. She kicked it down, then rolled off the back. She smacked into the sidewalk, just one second too late to land in the grass.
Behind her, Dave’s truck flew across the street, jumped up the curb on the far side, and smashed into a dusty, whitewashed shop window framed in brick. The engine died and, thankfully, so did the Kid Rock CD.
Jenny looked the other way, into the square. Her short truck ride had put her ahead of the mob, and now they were running towards her. Jenny smiled.
She pulled herself up, rocking unsteadily on her bare feet. She stepped into the grass and spread her arms wide, as if ready to embrace them all.
People at the front of the crowd saw her, but when they tried to stop or turn back, they got trampled by the people behind them.
Jenny took a deep breath, then hacked out another dense cloud of grainy spores. They spread out over the mob. The spores were drawn to people’s eyes, noses and mouths, like a handful of iron filings thrown among magnets.
The front half of the group collapsed, coughing and puking up blood and gore as their skin blistered. The rest of the people trampled over them as they pushed forward, not understanding that they were charging towards the danger instead of away from it.
Jenny ran to meet the rest of the mob, skipping over the screaming infected people writhing on the ground. She spotted Ashleigh’s mother and grabbed both her hands.
“Die quick,” Jenny whispered, her voice deep. “Everybody dies.”
Bloody sores split open all over Mrs. Goodling’s arms. Her face blistered and decayed—except, oddly, her forehead, nose, and chin, which were mostly plastic. They managed to stay smooth and intact, like pieces carved from a mannequin, while the rest of her face corroded.
Jenny released one of Mrs. Goodling’s hands and pushed her back into the crowd. Jenny held onto Mrs. Goodling’s other hand and pumped into it, spreading the pox through her, deep into the remaining mob, skin to skin. They screamed and cursed as leprous ulcers bulged out through their faces, and bloody blisters appeared all over their heads.
Earl McCronkin approached Jenny with his pistol raised in his right hand, which shook a little. He aimed it at Jenny’s head.
Jenny dodged under his arm, then grabbed his forearm with both hands and squeezed tight, willing the pox to eat it up. He howled and pulled back from her. His desiccated right arm came apart at the elbow, and he fell backward into the twitching, groaning, bleeding crowd. Jenny was stuck holding his forearm and hand, his fingers curling and wiggling even as the pox ate through them like acid. She threw it to the ground in disgust.
She grabbed one person after another, trying to push the pox all the way through the mob. A small group broke and ran away across the lawn, towards a gray Cadillac sedan parked on the street. Mayor Winder, Mrs. Winder, and Cassie. Jenny was not going to let them escape. She ran after them, feeling like she was gliding, her feet barely touching the grass blades.
She reached Mrs. Winder first and seized the back of her neck.
“Help!” Mrs. Winder screamed. Blood and loose teeth fell from her mouth. “Hank, she got me!”
Mayor Winder looked at her, looked at Jenny, then continued what he was doing, which was unlocking the door to his car. He clearly had no intention of going back for Mrs. Winder, and neither did Cassie, who jumped into the passenger door and screamed at her father to hurry. He pulled the door open, the keys still hanging in the lock.
Jenny threw Mrs. Winder’s corpse aside and leapt onto Mayor Winder. Her knees landed in the center of his chest, knocking him backward. He sprawled on his back across the pavement, and Jenny pinned his arms with her shins.
“You’re supposed to protect us,” Jenny whispered. She pressed both her hands down on his face, and he convulsed beneath her, dark fluid bubbling at his lips. “You’re a bad mayor.”
She kept pressing her hands down, until his face caved in like a rotten pumpkin.
A car door slammed beside her. Cassie had snatched the keys and closed the driver door. She cranked the engine, and Jenny sprang to the Cadillac and slapped her hands against the closed window. Cassie cringed, her face stark white and terrified, then she punched the accelerator. Jenny stumbled back as the Cadillac screeched away down the street. Cassie had escaped.
Jenny turned back to the dispersing clumps of mob. She saw Dick Baker, lawyer and realtor, stumbling with Bret Daniels, the father of Darcy Metcalf’s baby. They were both infected, trying to hold each other up as they limped along. Middle-aged women from the Women’s Steering Committee and their husbands, crawled along after them, coughing and sneezing.
She spotted Neesha, squatting alone and bewildered near the center of the lawn, abandoned by her friends. Jenny walked toward her. The grass died under Jenny’s feet, leaving dead white footprints in the grass behind her.
“Neesha,” Jenny hissed.
Neesha looked up, her mouth wide in shock, eyes full of tears.
“I tried to stop them,” Neesha said. “I told Ashleigh she was going too far. She wouldn’t listen to me!” Her voice turned into a wail.
“Next time, try harder.” Jenny laid her hand on Neesha’s head as if blessing her. Neesha didn’t resist, and she shriveled and died instantly. Jenny kicked her squatting corpse onto its side.
Jenny turned to the escaping group led by Dick Baker. She sucked in a gut full of air, then blew a thick cloud of spores at them. They toppled over, writhing, their skin breaking and blistering.
Jenny blew her pox toward each of the four corners of the square, infecting the remaining few who were still trying to escape.
Jenny walked among the fallen. She found those with lighter infections, and those who had only been trampled by the mob. She lay a bare foot on each face until they were dead.
In the street in front of the courthouse, she did the same to those who’d been hit by Dave’s truck. Among them, she found Shannon McNare, who bled from the corner of her mouth and had a bent spine. Dave had driven right over her.
“Jenny,” Shannon breathed. “I’m sorry.”
“Shut up,” Jenny said.
“No, it was…” She gasped for air. “Ashleigh. She tricked me. She said she loved me.”
Jenny knelt in the street beside her. A grain of pity had formed inside her, murking up the righteous clarity of her fury. It bothered her.
“That’s Ashleigh,” Jenny said. “That’s why I’m going to kill her. You have to die, too, Shannon. If Seth was here, he could heal you. But you get me instead. That’s your fault.”
“Seth was good, wasn’t he?” Shannon br
eathed. “A good person?”
“Yes, he was.”
“He was from God. I knew it. I knew it before…Ashleigh tricked me…”
“You have to go now, Shannon,” Jenny whispered.
“Will you…” Shannon’s chest hitched, and more blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes glazed. “Will you kiss me good night?”
Jenny looked at her. The girl was losing her mind. She nodded.
Jenny kissed Shannon’s cheek. Shannon sighed, her lips kissing at the air, and then her face ruptured open into three rotten slices, filled with pestilence and decay.
Jenny stood up as a cool breeze passed through town, and her long black hair streamed over her face. It was very quiet with everybody dead. The square smelled like rotten meat. She tasted blood on her lips—her own, Shannon’s, countless other people’s.
There was a little more to do tonight, while she was still on her rush. Jenny stepped onto the road that led west out of town, and she started to walk.
Behind her, more than two hundred plague-infested bodies littered the square.
Jenny limped through the woods. Her left leg, and everything on her left side below the gunshot wound, had turned stiff and hard. She stumbled over a thick tree root and caught herself on a trunk.
Root and branch, she thought. That’s what Dr. Goodling had said. Rip out the evil, root and branch. Jenny had hacked away all the branches. There was still the root to deal with.
Jenny was past tired, past exhausted, into delusional hallucination territory. She’d turned it up and poured it out, and now there was nothing left. Almost nothing. She would push it out one more time, for Seth, even if it killed her.
She urged herself forward. She climbed over a barbed wire fence and found herself in a cow pasture. She stayed very wide of the slumbering herd.
She eventually emerged into Ashleigh’s subdivision. She limped down the middle of the street, passing through the stark white circles under the streetlamps. Sweat, blood and gore matted her hair into clumps and coated her from her face to her feet. Her skin was turning gray. Her ribs were unusually prominent, her stomach sunken, as if she’d burned up all the fat in her body, and some of the muscle, too. She looked like a walking corpse, and she felt like one. It didn’t matter. She didn’t need to last much longer.
