Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4)

by J. Bryan

  Sebastian caught up with her. “We...should get Mia out. She’s pregnant, too.”

  “With your baby.” Juliana’s voice remained flat and cold.

  “Yes...but...only because of Alise, I promise! She can cast a spell on you—”

  “I’ve been under her spell before,” Juliana told him. “I killed a man, and I was sad about it. Tonight, I’ll kill a lot of them, and I won’t care. It’s funny how things turn.”

  “Okay...but listen, honestly, I had no desire to be with her, as soon as Alise stopped doping me I got into a fight with Niklaus about seeing you, that’s how I ended up down here.”

  “At least we were on the same floor.”

  “I’m really, really sorry. You don’t know how terrible I feel, how much I wish—”

  “Stop talking.” Juliana inserted the key into the door and pushed it open.

  The two guards at the desk turned with sly smiles on their faces, expecting to see the nurses and their fellow S.S. men. They stood and shouted when he saw the prisoners in gray clothes—Juliana’s hands and dress dripping blood, Sebastian pointing two pistols at them.

  One guard reached for his gas mask on the desk in front of him, while the other reached for the pistol at his belt. Both of them were too slow. Juliana exhaled another writhing swarm of plague spores into their faces, eating away their flesh. Their eyelids, noses, and lips rotted away, and dark hives erupted on their eyeballs and facial tendons. They howled in agony, but they died quickly and toppled over behind the desk.

  Juliana unlocked the door to the outer corridor, then ran to unlock the stairwell door.

  “I didn’t know you could do that,” Sebastian whispered as they ran up the concrete stairs, their footfalls echoing up and down the stairwell.

  “Alise taught me,” Juliana said. “Sometimes being under her spell has its benefits, am I right, Sebastian?”

  Sebastian opened his mouth to answer, then left it hanging open, as if he’d realized there was no good reply.

  The door to the dormitory level opened, and Juliana recognized the doctor who’d examined her during the miscarriage, along with the head of research Dr. Wichtmann, and a pair of younger biologists who worked in the labs.

  “Juliana!” Dr. Wichtmann gasped, looking her over. “You should...you should be resting! We were coming to check on your condition.”

  “He has a gun!” One of the biologists pointed at Sebastian.

  “In all honesty, I have two,” Sebastian replied, raising both of them.

  “Herr Doktor,” Juliana said to Wichtmann, “Allow me to return the kindness you’ve shown me as your guest.”

  She seized his hand and opened her jaws, unleashing death and pain on all of them. They fell to the concrete, their limbs twisting and jerking, their bodies writhing like bugs in poison. Wichtmann himself rolled down the stairs, leaving dark splashes of his decaying, plague-infested flesh and blood behind him like footprints. His balding head cracked against the concrete landing.

  “She’s one floor up.” Sebastian ran up the next flight. Juliana glanced over the dying, bleeding, groaning men, then followed him.

  The door to the maternity level opened onto a spacious area with the guard station at the far side from the stairwell, next to the door to the maternity rooms. The three guards leaped to their feet the moment they saw the blood-spattered prisoners emerge.

  Juliana breathed another cloud of plague spores at them, which thinned and spread out as it drifted across the room. They had plenty of time to draw their weapons, so Sebastian charged at them and opened fire with both pistols, waving the guns back and forth to try and hit all three of them.

  One S.S. guard caught a bullet to the chest, and another was shot in the arm while reaching for his pistol, then in the leg. The third guard, apparently smarter than his co-workers, had ducked behind the desk, gas mask in hand. Scattered plague spores landed on the wounded guard’s face and neck, conjuring bloody lesions, as he dropped out of sight behind the desk.

  Sebastian and Juliana continued running toward the desk, then ducked and squatted in front of it.

  “This is your last chance!” Seth shouted in German. “Come out or die!” He winked at Juliana, then stood and pointed his pistols over the desk. Nothing happened, so he jumped up on the desk and walked across it.

  Bullets fired up at him, and one caught him through the leg. Sebastian toppled to the desk, pulling the triggers on both his pistols, but they were empty.

  Juliana stood in time to see Seth growl and leap on the Nazi guard in the gas mask, who waved a smoking pistol of his own. Juliana ducked as he fired it wildly. She crawled around the desk, and found Seth had pinned the Nazi with his legs and stripped off his gas mask, and was now beating the guard’s head with the butt of an empty pistol, drawing blood from his nose and jaw.

  Juliana touched the guard’s head, killing him fast. She looked toward the guard who’d only been wounded, but he was curled up in convulsions. She killed him, too. Seth dropped his empty gun and took two more pistols from the dead S.S. guards.

  “Everyone must have heard that,” Sebastian said. “It’s probably still echoing in Kranzler’s office. They’re all coming for us.”

  “Then let’s prepare to kill all of them.” Juliana opened the door to the maternity hall. They found Mia in one of the spacious bedrooms, sprawled on a quilted bedspread on a queen-sized bed, next to an empty bassinet with a teddy bear dressed like a German soldier. Her stomach had grown much larger. Her eyelids barely lifted as she saw them, and she gave a drowsy smile.

  “My friends,” Mia said in a drugged voice, half-heartedly waving one hand without raising it from the bed. “I love you both so much.”

  “We’re leaving,” Juliana said. “Get moving.”

  “Leaving? No...Why?”

  “We have to escape,” Sebastian said. “Can you get up?”

  “Hmm, yeah.” Mia’s eyes closed. She was deep in Alise-induced ecstasy.

  “We have to go now!” Juliana took her by the shoulders. Mia’s dress had shifted, leaving one shoulder bare, and Juliana accidentally burned her with her touch. Blisters welled up on Mia’s shoulder and neck, and she hissed and pulled away. She sat up, rubbing the infected area and scowling at Juliana, as if the pain had woken her. Then a flash of recognition crossed her eyes.

  “Juliana!” Mia looked from her to Sebastian, then touched her swollen stomach. “Oh, God. What have I done? Oh, God, Juliana, I’m sorry...I....” She started to weep, covering her eyes. “I’m an awful person.”

  A shrill, clanging alarm echoed through the entire base at a deafening volume.

  “They’re coming for us,” Juliana said. “We have to go. They could be here any second.” The barracks and armory were in the southeast quadrant of the base, while the cellblock and dormitories were on the southwest quadrant, not far away.

  Mia nodded and pushed herself to her feet, ignoring Sebastian’s offered hand. “I’m ready.”

  They hurried out along the corridor, Juliana and Sebastian side by side, Mia protected behind them.

  “They could already be waiting for us outside that door,” Juliana said.

  “Let’s go out shooting, then,” Seth said.

  “Wait, I can look.” Mia grabbed Sebastian’s arm and closed her eyes. “Not yet, there won’t be anyone out there. But a lot of them are coming, we’re going to have trouble.”

  Juliana opened the door and led the way out.

  “The stairs to the exit are just one level up,” Sebastian said, angling toward the stairwell.

  “But there are probably more guards on that exit than any other,” Juliana said. “In case we try to escape. I think we should cut across to the administrative area and use that exit. It’ll be less protected against us escaping.”

  “But the stairs are right there!” Sebastian argued.

  “No, I think she is being smart,” Mia said. “They would expect us to try and leave the same way we entered.”

  “I’m
going up the stairs!” Sebastian insisted, tucking one pistol in the back of his pants. He grabbed Mia’s hand, startling her.

  “You’ll die up there,” she said quickly.

  “Just checking.” He let go of her hand. “So we go right through the center of the base, through the labs, towards the offices and apartments of the people in charge. Is that actually our plan?”

  “Yes.” Juliana began to run. He hurried just behind her, trying to catch up.

  Mia took Sebastian hand’s as they ran.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Keeping us alive.” Mia gripped him tighter as they approached the door to the central corridor. “Two guards coming through there in a second! Juliana, watch out!” She ducked, pulling Sebastian to the floor with her.

  Juliana turned against the wall by the door, tucking herself out of sight as the door opened and two S.S. guards bolted through it, their pistols drawn. Juliana stepped out behind them and exhaled a cloud of her plague, and it ate into the backs of their heads.

  On the floor, Sebastian raised his pistols in case he needed to shoot them anyway, but the two S.S. men crashed to the floor with the back halves of their skulls eaten away.

  Sebastian stood, and Mia stood behind him and embraced him. She lifted his shirt and pressed her hands against his stomach.

  “Stop cuddling!” Juliana shouted.

  “I’m healing,” Mia said. “Some of your...whatever that was hit me. How did you do that?”

  “I just imagine that I’d like to see everyone in the room dead,” Juliana replied. She looked closer and saw the small, dark sores fading from Mia’s hands and arms.

  She turned and ran through the door, momentarily indifferent to whether they followed her or not, feeling a flash of hate for both of them. Even though Alise had entranced them, Juliana couldn’t help how she felt.

  At the moment, all she wanted to do was kill. She ran up the central corridor of the base, hoping to see Kranzler or Alise, the plague boiling and blistering all over her.

  “There is a guard station ahead!” Mia warned, clasping hands with Sebastian as they ran, trying to catch up with Juliana. “Juliana, be careful!”

  Juliana realized she’d miscalculated. She was accustomed to moving one level below where they were, and she’d expected to reach the wide corridor between the big concrete laboratory rooms. Instead, on this level, they were approaching the observation deck from which Kranzler and Wichtmann had watched the experiments.

  She stopped and turned. With the alarm clanging and echoing, there was no point in whispering. “Mia, how many of them? Where?”

  Mia closed her eyes and explained the layout of the guard station next to the large double doors to the observation deck, and predicted where each guard would be sitting. “I keep seeing us getting killed here,” Mia added.

  They spoke quickly to work out their attack. Juliana went first, blowing out the thickest, darkest cloud she could muster, taking out the guards who hadn’t put on their gas masks. She fell flat on the floor and rolled aside, making herself as small and difficult a target as possible. The cold darkness inside, the thing driving her forward despite her pain and exhaustion, seemed to know all about fighting, as if she carried the experience of many battles inside her.

  Two of the guards had already strapped on their masks, so Sebastian had to shoot them. He rounded the corner after Juliana, knowing exactly where to point his pistols, killing the guards before they had time to see him and register that he was there. Mia followed, touching Sebastian’s neck.

  “We’re safe for a minute,” Mia announced. “Then the guards from the barracks are going to come up behind us, with gas masks and machine guns.”

  “Then we’re going to charge through these doors onto the observation deck,” Juliana told her.

  Mia squeezed Sebastian’s hand again. “Nobody there is wearing gas masks.”

  “Good.” Juliana smiled, then approached the double doors and flung them open.

  The observation deck was in a panic, people shouting questions at each other, talking on phones, trying to find out what was happening. Heads turned at the sight of Juliana in her bloody dress—scientists, typing pool ladies, and a cluster of S.S. officers at the center of the room. Frightened whispers spread as it became clear that the guards outside had been defeated.

  Juliana spotted Kranzler standing behind his desk, smoking a cigar and glaring at her, flanked by more S.S. officers.

  “What do you want?” Kranzler growled, not appearing particularly shocked that she’d managed to escape the cellblock.

  “I want to go home,” Juliana said. “But you’ll come after me if I leave. Won’t you?”

  “You’re free to leave,” Kranzler told her. “No one will stop you. I’ll give the order.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s the truth.” Kranzler sat down at a desk in front of a pile of paperwork. “Go ahead.”

  Juliana looked at the frightened faces in the room. The S.S. men had their hands on their pistols, waiting for Kranzler’s order.

  She walked deeper into the room, watching people shuffle back from her on either side, bumping against the windows overlooking the labs. Kranzler’s Nazi officers stood where they were, watching her closely.

  Juliana was badly tempted to look back over her shoulder and see what Sebastian and Mia might be doing, but she didn’t want to spoil the impression that she was alone.

  “Why did you do this, Kranzler?” Juliana asked. “All of this?”

  “You must know by now.” Kranzler indulged in his cigar, smiled as he exhaled. “To identify surpernormal humans, those far ahead on the evolutionary curve. To study them. To breed them. To improve the human race.”

  “Is that what you’re trying to do?” Juliana slowed her approach, expecting the S.S. officer to start firing at any moment. “And what did you learn about me?”

  “The same as the others who have true powers,” Kranzler said. “Sebastian, Mia...It transfers through touch. It is not biological or chemical in nature. It defies all known physics.” He looked her over. “You and I might have more in common than you know. We should be on the same side. We should work together for the advancement of the human race. The Reich will raise up humanity, purify our race of all impurities, and push us forward into the future. You could be a powerful tool in the Fuehrer’s arsenal, Juliana. The other supernormals are amusing, sometimes useful. But you...yes, you are like a goddess of death. Your power shows great potential.”

  Juliana stopped in place, chewing her lips, as if considering it. “Do you mean this? Even though I’ve killed some of your guards?”

  “Your remarkable ability to kill is precisely what I admire. You would be lavishly rewarded. No more prison cells or dormitories for you. Your value is far beyond that.”

  “I do have a question, Gruppenführer,” she said. “Alise used her power on me, though she cannot touch me.” Juliana wished Alise were in the room, but there was no sign of her or Niklaus. “She was able to form strange pink spores and blow them through the air. Do you think I could do that? Would you know?”

  “That’s exactly what I believe.” He stood, approaching her now, a broad-shouldered man who towered over her, with a swastika on his black sleeve. “With time...with help and training from me...you could be far more powerful. You could destroy armies. Let me guide you. Let me be your teacher. I have a great knowledge about it, drawn from my own personal experience.” He stared at her carefully. “As I said, we are more similar than you think. Like you, I have a supernormal touch.”

  Juliana watched him raise his hand and open it. She decided it wasn’t worth the risk of waiting to find out what it might be, if he was telling the truth. If he did have a supernatural power, she would deny him the chance to use it against her.

  She exhaled the dense plague she’d been building up inside her. After using it so often, she was developing better control over the airborne plague. She imagined one of the en
dless flocks of blackbirds she’d seen as she traveled the South with the carnival, a river of cawing black shapes that flowed from horizon to horizon. The first time she’d seen one, she’d stood mesmerized as countless thousands of them crossed the sky. The flock had taken almost an hour to pass.

  She directed her plague like the river of blackbirds, swirling around the heads of Kranzler and the other officers, attacking their eyes first. They drew their pistols automatically, screaming in pain, and a few fired blindly in her direction.

  The Nazi officers howled and covered their red, rotting faces with swollen, ulcerous hands. The plague flowed thicker around them, streams of it burrowing bloody tunnels into their faces and chest. Kranzler and the other officers fell dead, their faces eaten open all the way to their throats.

  Juliana looked around at all the remaining people in the room while the plague spores floated in a swirling cloud above Kranzler’s festering corpse. They stared back at her.

  Juliana exhaled again, and the cloud of spores expanded rapidly, beyond her control now. The airborne plague filled the room, and dozens of people collapsed to the floor, coughing up blood. Their scalps and skin sloughed off as they clawed over each other, desperate to escape through one door or the other, shrieking and groaning.

  She finally looked back. Sebastian was proceeding cautiously into the room, a pistol in each hand, but nobody was interested in challenging him now. Mia clung close to his back, hands under his shirt again, using his touch to protect her from the cloud of plague eating away at the slowly dying crowd of Nazis.

  Those closest to Juliana were already dead, while those farthest away, by the windows, were slowly sinking to the floor, moaning as their flesh crumbled, crackled, and peeled from their bones. The demon plague had spared no one.

  “More guards will be here soon!” Mia shouted. “Gas masks, machine guns...”

  Sebastian closed the doors through which they’d entered and latched a security bar in place.

  “That won’t hold them long.”

  “Let’s find their exit,” Juliana said. She turned and led the way again, through the double doors. To her left was the clinic and pharmacy area for the base. To her right, the suite of offices from which Kranzler and his cohorts had ruled the base, and she went that way.