Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4)

by J. Bryan

  Inside the house, a man in a ragged t-shirt approached the screen door and looked out. The front door had already been open, indicating a possible lack of any centralized climate control. Ward knew this man could barely afford to get by month to month. He wondered how growing up in such an environment might have shaped Jennifer Morton’s mind.

  “Darrell Morton,” Ward said as he climbed the creaky steps, followed by the two other men.

  “Yeah?” The unshaven man in the dusty jeans looked out at them suspiciously. He was in his forties, but looked older.

  “I’m Special Agent Ward Adams. Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Ward held up the Department of Justice badge, which was only half-fake. Anyone who called up the FBI to ask would be told he was a real agent, though almost nobody bothered to check once they saw the badge. “We just need to ask you a couple of quick questions, and then we’ll get out of your way.”

  The man froze where he stood. He obviously knew exactly why the FBI would be visiting.

  “What’s the trouble?” Darrell Morton asked in a shaky voice.

  “We’re looking into some events that happened here in town last Easter,” Ward said. “Chemical leak from an old factory. Lots of people dead.”

  “Um...” Darrell looked confused. “I don’t know much about that.”

  “We understand your daughter was involved,” Darrell said. “She was among the deceased, is that right?”

  “Yeah. I mean, no. I mean, yeah, she died, but it was in a fire at the old Barrett house. About a year ago.” He was looking away and avoiding eye contact. Lying, and not very good at it.

  “The fire at the Barrett house is also of interest to us,” Ward said. “You see, Mr. Morton, your daughter’s remains were not found. She may still be alive.”

  Darrell’s widened and he took a step back from the screen door. “No, she was there. If she was still alive, she’d be back home. I haven’t seen her since the fire.”

  “That’s our concern,” Ward said. “It’s possible she could have been injured or kidnapped. Perhaps even suffered amnesia. We just won’t know until we piece together what really happened the night of the fire, will we, Mr. Morton?”

  “I don’t want to dredge all this up,” Darrell Morton said. “If she was alive, I’d know it.” He started to close the wooden front door inside the screen.

  Ward opened the screen door and blocked him from closing the inner door.

  “Mr. Morton, if there’s even the smallest chance your daughter is still alive, wouldn’t you want to know about it? I have three kids of my own, and as a parent, I just can’t understand your reaction.” Ward actually had no children, and was not even married.

  “I know what happened,” Darrell said, still trying to close the door as Ward held it open. “Please. You can’t stir up all this.”

  “Mr. Morton.” Ward gave the door a hard shove, swinging it wide open and sending the man stumbling backward into his own house. Darrell caught himself on the arm of a worn old sofa.

  Ward advanced into the house, followed by Buchanan and Avery.

  “Hey, you can’t come in here! This is private property,” Darrell said. “You got to have a warrant.”

  “If you want to be picky about it, yes,” Ward said, moving closer still to the scared man. Ward’s hand eased toward the shoulder holster hidden beneath his coat. It held a rare German machine pistol, the VP70M, a classic piece that had cost him a chunk of money, but he loved it. He rarely got to use it, unfortunately. He had no intention of shooting Darrell Morton today, but country dwellers sometimes had impressive arsenals in their homes, and it was best to be ready for it.

  “Get out of my house,” Darrell said quietly, folding his arms. “Unless you got a warrant.”

  “There is a slight problem with the warrant situation,” Ward said. “You see, we’re not actually from the FBI.”

  Darrell turned and ran toward the hall—probably to his bedroom to grab a firearm, Ward assumed. Ward drew his pistol and fired a three-round burst into the ceiling above Darrell’s head. The man ducked low, slowing enough that Avery and Buchanan had no trouble grabbing him and hauling him back. They turned him to face Ward.

  This was exactly why Ward traveled with two men instead of just Buchanan. Two trained soldiers were capable of restraining just about any normal individual so Ward could concentrate on his own special work.

  “Mr. Morton,” Ward said. “You must know that your daughter is a mass murderer. You must know that she is a potential threat to national security. Your own wife ran away after her birth...or did she run away at all, Mr. Morton? What about that fire at the county hospital, Mr. Morton? A doctor and a nurse both dead. It was twenty years ago, right about the time little Jenny was born...am I right?”

  Darrell just stared at him.

  “I think Jenny killed your wife, didn’t she?” Ward spoke in a lower voice, moving closer to Darrell. “And you hid it. All to protect a baby who would one day grow up and kill your town. And what will she do next, Mr. Morton? How many more people must die? Why do you protect her?”

  “She’s dead,” Darrell said. “There’s nothing I can do.”

  “Don’t lie to me!” Ward punched the man in the mouth, hard enough to draw blood from his lip. “I can’t stand liars, Mr. Morton.”

  “I got nothing else to say to you,” Darrell said. He spat blood in Ward’s face.

  Ward charged as a blind fury descended over him. He pounded on Darrell’s face, then punched him in the stomach. By the time Ward regained his senses, he had Darrell lying on the floor and was repeatedly kicking the man’s ribs with his steel-toed leather loafer, with additional assistance from a chuckling Avery.

  “Stop, stop,” Ward said, shaking his head. “Need him alive. For a few more minutes, anyway.”

  Ward squatted on the floor next to the groaning, bleeding Darrell Morton.

  “We know your daughter is alive,” Ward told him. “We need to know where she is before she kills again. This is your last chance.”

  Darrell blinked and didn’t say a word.

  “All right, Mr. Morton.” Darrell seized both sides of the man’s head and shoved his way inside, ripping through terabytes of the man’s memory. He found the earliest that interested him: Darrell’s wife, Miriam, dying horrifically as she gave birth to Jenny. The doctor and nurse that had ended up dead from Jenny’s touch, too. Darrell setting the place on fire, taking his baby and his deceased wife with him. The wife had been buried under a stone cairn right here, in the woods on the Morton property. Darrell’s struggle to raise his daughter without touching her, using gloves and even ski masks. Like a man caring for a pet scorpion, pouring his love onto something hideous. Pathetic.

  Darrell knew that his daughter had killed a large number of people in town, that she’d faked her own death with the fire, that she was still alive somewhere.

  Unfortunately, Darrell did not know where. He only knew that it was being handled somehow by the Barretts, the rich, connected family of Jenny’s consort, Seth Barrett. The family Ward couldn’t risk disturbing, not while Senator Mayfield remained alive. It made perfect sense, and it was damned inconvenient for Ward.

  Something unexpected jutted out from Darrell’s memories. The night of the riot in Charleston, a young man with dirty blond hair and odd gray eyes had broken into Darrell’s house and attacked him. He’d seized Darrell’s arms and filled him with mind-shattering nightmares. The next clear memory was of Darrell waking up in the hospital and leaving, turning down the recommended psychiatric evaluation, partly because he had neither the insurance nor the money to pay for it.

  The boy had a touch that spread fear. Darrell did not seem to know anything else about him.

  Ward released the man’s head, letting it thump back onto the warped hardwood floor.

  “Watch him,” Ward told his men. He walked down the hall, pulling on a pair of green biohazard gloves, its molecules woven so tightly that even the smallest scrap of a virus couldn’t pass th
rough.

  He passed a bathroom and glanced without interest into the open door of the man’s room. Another bedroom door stood closed. Jenny’s room. Ward turned the handle.

  The room was small, with a single bed, a record player and a box of records. Clothes were spilling out of the dresser drawers and scattered on the floor as if the girl still lived here. A bookshelf held some ragged paperbacks, mostly cheap horror novels and some poetry, as well as homemade attempts at pottery. A picture of Jenny’s long-dead mother on the wall. Faded posters featured old country singers like Loretta Lynn.

  One poster showed The Cure, the sissy English band kept alive by generations of sissy teenagers. Ward snorted, taken back to his teenage years in East St. Louis. He and his buddies had once stomped a few frilly brats outside a Cure concert. Later in life, he’d joined the Army, which he saw as the best way to escape the dying city and do a few important things in the world.

  From the start, Ward had been nothing like the average soldier. He’d seen most of the recruits around him as either idealistic do-gooders or clueless kids, born without Ward’s instinctive understanding of power, or his paranormal edge.

  With a touch, Ward could see anyone’s past. His ability to extract information from anyone had landed him a job with military intelligence. Ward had always employed textbook interrogation tactics as a performance for his commanding officers, but they were just for show.

  He’d also learned he could he advance his career quickly by gathering dirt on his superiors. A well-placed comment or two would make it clear that he knew the officer was embezzling, cheating on his wife, or had a vast collection of boy porn at home.

  He’d gone through Officer Candidate School and quickly scaled the bureaucracy, even gathering secrets on American politicians who were deemed obstacles to national security. He’d taken over the top-secret ASTRIA—where he was able to operate with an unusual lack of oversight, as the agency was both classified and no longer of great interest to the Pentagon—out of a desire to find others like himself. It looked like that choice was starting to pay off.

  Ward marched back up the hall.

  “Pack it up,” he told his two men. “Everything in the girl’s room, every stick of furniture. I want it all for analysis.”

  “You can’t take Jenny’s things,” Darrell protested weakly, from where the two men held him to the floor. “That’s all I got left of her.”

  “So sad,” Ward replied. “Tie him up and stuff him out of the way.”

  “Sir, we might need a van or a truck to move the furniture,” Buchanan said.

  “Then call for one. And nobody goes in there without gloves and a mask. Place is probably crawling with toxins,” Ward told him.

  Ward stepped outside while Avery tied up the man, who was so badly beaten he could barely protest as Avery shoved him into the coat closet.

  Buchanan joined Ward on the front porch.

  “There’s a fourth one,” Ward told him.

  “A fourth paranormal, sir?”

  “Might be the most dangerous of all. His touch spreads fear.”

  “Do we have a name, sir?”

  “Just a face. I’d need a sketch artist to render it. We have a lot to do, Buchanan, but it’s all turning into dead ends down here. We need to talk to the Barretts. Let’s pray God sees fit to let Senator Mayfield die. Until then, we’d better get back to Virginia and crunch what we’ve learned here, get our data miners working. Determine our next step. Now, call someone for me.”

  “Yes, sir.” Buchanan made a call.

  Later, a team arrived with a small truck and full-body hazardous material suits. They picked Jenny’s room clean, taking everything from her bed to the small picture of Jenny and Seth Barrett tucked into the corner of her mirror. Ward wanted to see what a biochemical analysis might reveal, and to find whether Jenny had left him any clues to her next destination.

  When Jenny’s room lay bare, and all the other men had left the house, Ward opened the coat closet door. Darrell Morton, though bound, gagged, bruised, and bloodied, gave him a defiant look.

  Ward cut away the rope from his hands and mouth.

  “Mr. Morton,” he said, “There is no reason you should tell anyone about our visit today. If you do, you will be punished. We’ll be watching and listening from now until the end of your life, which could be very soon, or could be many years from now. Think about that.”

  Ward stood and walked out the door.

  Chapter Ten

  Jenny ate an unspeakably delicious slice of mushroom pizza with a rich, spicy tomato sauce, sitting alone at an outdoor table at L’Oraziano, directly across the street from the high glass facade of the economics school. She had a weird craving to smear a glop of peanut butter on top of the pizza, but she didn’t have a jar handy. As best as she could tell, she was about three months pregnant, and she was starting to feel it.

  Mariella Visconti had not bothered her again, but Jenny had continued thinking about the girl as the weeks passed. It made Jenny uneasy to know that another of her kind might be right here in Paris, one who was searching for Seth and already knew where Jenny lived.

  Jenny was allegedly shopping for Thanksgiving dinner. Of course, in Paris it was just another Thursday, but it would be nice to have something that reminded them of home.

  This was the third day she’d slipped off to spy on Mariella. So far as she could tell, Mariella had told the truth—she did live in a student apartment building near the Sorbonne, where she attended classes at the Broca Center, the business school, as well as the Saint-Charles Center, which housed the school of art and cinema. Today, she’d come to the economics building, which was far from the rest of the campus. Jenny watched and waited for her to come out.

  If the girl was like her and Seth, then she posed a serious threat. Jenny couldn’t stand not knowing. She had to determine whether the girl had a supernatural touch like her, and what it was, and what the girl’s intentions might really be. Watching Mariella go to class or hang out with other students at cafes and wine bars wasn’t telling her much, unfortunately.

  Jenny had a sense of growing urgency, as if time were short. She tried to pretend that it didn’t have anything to do with the baby growing inside her, or her insane wish that the baby could live, that she and Seth could start a family. Thinking about it only led to pain...but still, she couldn’t help feeling more worried and more alert to danger.

  Jenny decided not to wait any longer.

  She wolfed down her food, to the disgust of two women at the next table, and then hurried out.

  When Mariella emerged from the front door of the building, Jenny just happened to be strolling slowly along the sidewalk, and she just happened to glance up and make eye contact with Mariella. A look of recognition flashed across Mariella’s face, followed by excitement. Jenny acted surprised to see her, then wrinkled her brow as if trying to remember who Mariella was.

  “Have you seen him?” Mariella asked, looking up and down the street. Mariella wore gloves, a long jacket, and a scarf, and most of her hair was gathered into a soft cloth hat. Like Jenny, Mariella bundled up before going out in public.

  “I’m sorry, who?” Jenny replied.

  “The boy. Do you not remember me?”

  Jenny looked at her for a few seconds. “Aren’t you that girl who came by my apartment? Looking for some guy?”

  “That is me.” Mariella’s smile faded as she realized Jenny hadn’t come to tell her she’d found Seth. “How did you find me here?”

  “I was just having lunch.” Jenny pointed across the street. “I was walking by, and I had a feeling that I should stop here. So I did.” Jenny shrugged.

  “Do you get strange feelings sometimes?” Mariella’s voice dropped to a whisper, and she glanced over her shoulder, as if afraid a student or teacher would hear her. “About the future?”

  “I get strange feelings about everything,” Jenny said, and Mariella surprised her by laughing. “Can you see the future?” Jenny asked
. “Does it happen when you touch people?”

  “How could you know this?” Mariella’s eyes widened, and she looked at Jenny’s hands, gloved in powder-blue silk. “We should walk away from the school.”

  They went south down Boulevard de l’Hopital, along a broad sidewalk decorated with stands of trees gone skeletal in late November. The baroque and Art Noveau architecture gave the entire evening a dreamlike atmosphere as the glowing spheres of the streetlamps came to life.

  “Tell me what you know,” Mariella whispered.

  “About what?”

  “About anything. About all of it.”

  Jenny looked at the girl’s earnest face and almost felt sorry for her.

  “You tell me,” Jenny said. “You touch someone, you can see the future?”

  “Just the future of that person, which keeps things fuzzy,” Mariella told her. “And the future can change if you tell them about it, but it rarely does. I see their futures whether they want me to or not. Even if I don’t want to see—that’s why I wrap myself up in public. If I don’t, I’m overwhelmed with glimpses of everyone’s future. And that can be very sad and depressing. But here, I’ll show you.” Mariella took off a glove and reached for Jenny’s hand.

  “No!” Jenny pulled back quickly.

  “I’m sorry.” Mariella smiled. “Not everyone wants to know their future.”

  “Well...that’s true,” Jenny said, taking advantage of the excuse Mariella had just provided for her. “I don’t think I’d want to know.” The exact opposite was true. Jenny was eager to know what lay ahead, especially for the baby. “Can you see your own future?”

  “That’s the most difficult,” Mariella said. “Because, when you see your own future, you react to it in the present, and that changes the future. Over and over. My own is almost entirely a blur. Only a few things stand out clear and strong.”

  “What kinds of things?”