Read Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4) Online

Authors: J. Bryan

Tags: #Occult & Supernatural, #Fiction

Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4) (27 page)

BOOK: Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4)
3.36Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“I didn’t know they gave black belts for that,” Seth said.

“It is only a joke.  But I can teach you, Jenny.”

“It can’t hurt,” Jenny said. “It’ll give me something to do besides watch Seth play
that
Walking Dead
video game.”

“I’m going to beat that game one day,” Seth said. “Watch.”

“I’m sure you will, Seth,” Jenny told him.

“Here.” Seth stepped toward a booth and picked up a plush rabbit, stitched together
from several kinds of material to create a quilt pattern. “We should get this for
him.  Or her.”

“We can probably find some cute Christmas clothes here, too,” Mariella said. “So you’ll
be ready next year.”

“Enough!” Jenny said. “We don’t even know...”  Jenny decided she didn’t want to say
We don’t even know whether the baby will live
, so she fell quiet.

“We have to prepare, Jenny,” Seth said. “We have to believe.  And I’m buying this
wittle wabbit.”  He paid the toymaker.

Jenny shook her head.  She didn’t need the pressure.

“So, lunch,” Seth said. “Are chocolate-covered waffles okay with everyone?”

“Ugh.  Baguette for me,” Jenny said.

“I’ll just have a soup,” Mariella told him, nodding at a chalet that sold both soup
and baguettes.

“You two stalk a place to sit.  I’ll be right back.” Seth headed toward the food vendors.

Mariella approached a wooden bench with carved, cartoony reindeer heads for its arms. 
Three teenage boys sat there, drinking wine and joking with each other, but the beautiful,
smiling Italian girl quickly caught their attention.  She spoke with them in French,
explaining that her friend was pregnant and needed to sit.

The boys fell over themselves to do what she asked.  Mariella waved Jenny over, and
the two of them sat down.  Mariella thanked the group of boys and waved good-bye,
and they reluctantly trudged away.

“Being pregnant does have some advantages,” Mariella told her. “You should enjoy them.”

“They didn’t move because I was pregnant, they moved because you’re pretty,” Jenny
said.

“Boys can be shallow.  That’s something else worth taking advantage of.”

Jenny laughed and shook her head.

Mariella’s smile faded, and a hard look came into her eyes. “So.  You and I were roommates
at a Nazi death camp.”

“You could say that,” Jenny said.

“You gave me the worst dreams last night.  Swastikas, fire, screaming, execution chambers...”

“I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t your fault.” Mariella paused, as if thinking something over. “Juliana. 
Mia.  These names did feel very familiar, when you said them.  So I was Sicilian? 
Have I just been bumming around Italy since the Renaissance?  Or maybe the Roman Empire? 
Don’t I get to travel?”

“I’m sure you do,” Jenny said.

“Is it possible that I could remember my past lives, as you do?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“What is it like, all those memories?” Mariella asked. “It must be like a thousand
voices in your head.”

Jenny laughed again. “Not exactly.  It’s more like...Have you ever had something happen,
maybe you taste something or hear a song, and then suddenly you remember a moment
from your past that you’d completely forgotten?  Like a childhood moment you haven’t
thought about in years?”

“Yes, I know what you mean!”

“It’s like that, when you remember your past lives.  Only lots and lots and lots of
that.  You really can’t remember everything at once.  Just like you can’t remember
your entire lifetime all at once.  You have to focus.  And also...”

“Also what?” Mariella was leaning forward, a hand on Jenny’s arm, intently soaking
up every wood.

“Also, most of it’s not good.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s warfare, murder, deception,” Jenny said. “That’s what our kind love.  The human
race are just pawns to us.  When you find out all the evil you’ve done in the past...it’s
just not good.  It’s hard to separate yourself from that.  You have to learn that
you can change, and not let your past trap you.”

“Warfare, murder, and deception,” Seth repeated, arriving with their food. “Is that
near the cheese chalet?”

“More like the merry-go-round,” Jenny said. “Over and over again, life after life.”

“Oh, sorry, didn’t know we were having a heavy talk.” Seth sat down next to Jenny,
scrunching her in the middle between him and Mariella.  He passed out their food,
which smelled delicious, fresh-baked bread and warm tomato bisque to fend off the
cold.

“Apparently, I’ve been giving Mariella nightmares,” Jenny said.

“Oh, you, too?” Seth asked Mariella, and Jenny nudged him playfully. “No, seriously,”
he said. “All these jumbled memories from the past.  I keep dreaming about them, but
they don’t make any sense.  Like nothing happens in order, it’s just random scenes. 
Real horror-movie stuff, too.”

“I guess I’m helping you remember,” Jenny said. “Mariella, can you see anything else
about Seth’s future yet?”

“I’ll look.” Mariella slipped off a glove and reached across Jenny’s lap to take Seth’s
wrist.  She looked deep into Seth’s eyes.  Seth made faces back at her. “Stop it!”
Mariella snickered, and she closed her eyes instead. “He’s there.  Taking Seth into
the dark.  Everything’s still confused, covered in a fog...But the danger is there. 
He’s coming.”

“How soon?” Jenny asked.

“I still can’t tell.”

“Should we stock up on guns?  What do we do?” Seth asked.

“I don’t think we can buy guns in France,” Jenny said.

“That’s too bad.  In South Carolina, you could practically buy them at the gas station.”

“I can’t say what to do,” Mariella told him. “We can better prepare if we know more
about him.  We all need Jenny’s memories.” Mariella looked at her. “Jenny.  Did you
not say that someone helped you remember your past lives?”

“Alexander,” Jenny said.

“Could you not do this for us?  For Seth and me?  So that we can all be prepared?”

“I don’t know.  We ate these mushrooms, psychoactive mushrooms.  He guided me.  I
couldn’t do that now, with the...baby.”

“But Seth and I could.” Mariella had a pleading look in her eye. “And you could guide
us without taking them.”

“I could try, but I could mess it all up,” Jenny said. “Besides, where are we going
to get magic mushrooms around here?”

“I
am
an art student,” Mariella said, which made Seth laugh. “Tell me what these mushrooms
looked like, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“It’s risky,” Jenny said.  She thought about it for a minute. “But so is knowing that
General Kranzler is coming for us, and not doing anything about it.”

“General who?” Seth asked.


Gruppenführer
Kranzler,” Jenny said. “A general in the Nazi S.S.  Yep.  I’m pretty sure that’s
who’s after us.  The question is: what does he want this time?”

“What did he want last time?” Seth asked.

“Supernormals.  That’s what he called us.  He thought we were on the front edge of
human evolution.  He thought our powers came from our DNA.”

“But they don’t?” Mariella asked.

“They’re in our souls, not our bodies,” Jenny said. “But, like everyone else, Kranzler
tried to fit us into his own myths.  In the ancient world, it was easy, because everyone
believed gods and demigods were everywhere, so we fit right in.  By the Middle Ages,
we had to watch out for witch trials.  But the Nazis were crazy about eugenics—I mean,
they were crazy about a lot of things, but that was their biggest obsession.  So they
saw us in terms of biology and evolution, instead of anything supernatural.”

“But supernatural is more correct?” Mariella asked.

“Definitely,” Jenny said. “So they got more frustrated the more they studied and tested
us...”

“I remember!” Mariella sat up as if she’d been zapped with electricity, and she gripped
Jenny’s hand tight. “I remember...oh, the poor goats.”

“The poor goats,” Jenny agreed.

“What goats?  I think I saw some marshmallow goats at one of the candy chalets,” Seth
said.

“Maybe we should let Mariella tell you,” Jenny said.

“I don’t know that I could remember it all correctly,” Mariella told her.

“I’ll help.  We’ll start by telling Seth what happened after we met.  Just tell what
you remember, and I’ll fill in the rest.”

Mariella drank her hot wine, then closed her eyes and concentrated.

 

Chapter Twenty-One

 

Mia, Juliana’s new roommate, showed her around the girls’ dormitory area.  The double
doors at the end of the hall led to a “community room” with comfortable chairs, a
radio, a record player, and sewing supplies.  A side door there opened to their group
bathroom.

They ate in a military-style mess hall, located down a long hall and up a flight of
stairs.  The little buildings up top, it turned out, were just doorways into different
areas of a vast underground complex with many levels.  The walls were rock or concrete,
and the carpeting and cheery colors didn’t reach beyond the girls’ dormitory. 

The diners fell into easily recognizable groups.  The S.S. in their black uniforms
took the largest table at the center.  Scientists and doctors sat along one side of
the room, while nurses and secretaries took the table near the front.  Test subjects
like Juliana and Mia sat at the back.

The food tonight was German, lots of sausages, cheese, and pickled vegetables, with
dark beer to drink.  Juliana and Mia shared a long table with the others from her
hall.  Alise sat at the head, excitedly introducing Juliana to everyone.  She wasn’t
shy about discussing their supernormal abilities, either.

The girls included Vilja, a Swedish girl with extremely pale skin and white-blond
hair, who claimed to see “energy spirits,” which apparently included angels, demons,
ghosts, gnomes, and fairies.  A Polish girl named Roza, whose face was framed by a
thick braid on each side, had what Alise called “far-sight,” the ability to see distant
events as they happened.  There was a small Slavic girl, Evelina, with very dark eyes
and short black hair, who sat apart at the end of the table and didn’t even look up
from her food when Alise introduced her.

“And what does she do?” Roza asked, pointing at Juliana.

“Her touch spreads the plague,” Alise said in a loud whisper, as if confiding a secret
to the entire room.  All the girls leaned back from Juliana.

Thanks so much, Alise
, Juliana thought, but she nodded.

“It’s true,” Juliana said. “You’re perfectly safe as long as you don’t touch me.”

“I don’t think we will forget!” Roza said, looking disgusted.

The conversation was difficult, everyone trying to speak in a patois of German, which
they’d been studying since they arrived, and English, and their own native languages. 
Juliana gathered that they’d each been recruited by agents of the Evolution Congress,
which included scientists, businessmen, and politicians from all over the Western
world.  Evelina, the Slavic girl, did not speak at all, and Juliana wondered whether
she was shy or was just having language difficulties.

Sebastian, Niklaus, and another boy approached their table, but Niklaus continued
on without acknowledging them and sat at a table with the S.S. men.  Sebastian sat
by Juliana and hugged her.  Alise cleared her throat and shook her head, as if affection
shouldn’t be shown here.

The other boy smiled at the girls, and sat next to Vilja.  The ghostly Swedish girl
looked uncomfortable at his grin and shifted away from him.

“Who’s he?” Juliana whispered to Sebastian. “Your roommate?”

“Why would I need a roommate?” Sebastian asked. “There are only three guys on our
hall, and Niklaus has the biggest room to himself because he’s the hallway
fuehrer
.  That means he’s the guy in charge of watching us and enforcing the rules, I think.”

“I see you talking about me,” the boy told them, in accented but fluent English. “What
are you saying?”

“She was just asking who you were,” Sebastian said. “Juliana, this is Willem.  He’s
from, uh...”

“Holland,” Willem said.  He had short blond hair and blue eyes, and he gave off a
nervous energy, fidgeting in his chair, his fingers restlessly tapping.  He kept stealing
glances at Vilja,who ignored him. “They must be growing desperate for subjects, if
they’re looking as far away as America.”

“There don’t seem to be many of us here,” Juliana agreed.

“That’s because we’re only looking for the truly extraordinary,” Alise told them.
“The supernormal.  We’re selective.”

“There just aren’t many of us, are there?” Willem asked. “Supernatural gifts are rare.”

“What is yours?” Juliana asked him.

“I start fires.” Willem gave her a wicked grin.

“With your hands?” Juliana asked.

“With my hands?” He smirked. “Anyone can start a fire with their hands.  I start them
with my
mind.
” He touched the side of his head.

“Your power doesn’t involve touch?” Sebastian asked.

“He has no power,” said a soft voice at the end of the table.  Evelina, the small
Slavic girl, speaking for the first time.  She didn’t look up from the plate of pickled
vegetables in front of her, though she wasn’t eating, just stirring it with a fork.

“What?” Willem scowled, leaning towards Evelina. “Are you calling me a liar?”

Alise took Willem’s arm and spoke softly to him in either German or Dutch, Juliana
couldn’t tell.  Willem gazed longingly into her eyes, like a small boy falling in
love for the first time.  When she released him, Willem sank back in his seat, wearing
the same kind of goofy smile that had appeared on Sebastian’s face when Alise touched
him. 

Alise saw Juliana looking at her and gave a big smile. “See?  We can all get along
peacefully,” Alise told her.

Juliana looked at Willem, who stared at Alise with his mouth open, starting to drool. 
Juliana realized that Alise’s “happy” power might be more dangerous than it sounded.

“You will all be happy to learn that, in honor of our two new friends from America,
we have obtained permission to use the screening room tonight,” Alise said, and everyone
seemed to brighten at this news. “We’ll watch ‘She Done Him Wrong’ with Mae West and
Cary Grant.”

Juliana and Mia immediately looked at each other and smiled.

“We have selected this film because Juliana expressed an admiration for the actress,”
Alise added, with an extra smile at Juliana.  Juliana smiled back.  Mia must have
mentioned it to Alise, though Juliana wasn’t sure when that might have happened. 
The American movie would certainly help them feel at home.

All of the subjects went to the screening room after the meal.  Alise quietly made
it clear to Juliana that hand-holding and kissing in the darkened room was not allowed. 
Juliana and Sebastian had to sit with an empty seat between them.  Still, Juliana
enjoyed the movie.

Things became much less pleasant the next day.

Juliana’s morning started with a physical examination in a laboratory.  She had to
strip down while a couple of German nurses, not much older than her, weighed her,
measured her, took her pulse, and drew samples of her blood and cut lengths out of
her hair, which they placed into labeled test tubes.  They wore surgical masks and
gloves and acted wary around her, as if they’d been warned about her touch.  Juliana
gave them an extra warning, but she wasn’t sure if they understood.  She was tense
throughout the physical.

Eventually, the doctor entered, and the two nurses moved to the side of the room,
where they stood with their hands folded and backs straight, like soldiers at attention. 
Juliana, sitting naked on the steel exam table, hurried to cover herself with her
arms.  She cast a desperate look at the two nurses, wanting to know whether she could
put her clothes on again, but they didn’t even look at her.

The doctor’s nose was buried in a file folder, and he kept reading for a few minutes
after he entered, saying nothing at all to Juliana or the nurses.  He was a very pudgy
man, balding, with a fat, clean-shaven face but a thick neck beard under his chin
line, like he was trying hard to look eccentric, or desperately wanted to look like
a lion.  His eyes flicked back and forth behind his horn-rimmed glasses as he read.

“Hello?” Juliana finally said to him.

The man glanced up and eyed her coldly. “Yah?”

“Can I get dressed?” she asked.

He grunted and took a pen from the breast pocket of his lab coat. “You are Juliana?”

“Yes.”

“Hm.  Severe infection caused by physical contact—not the only case of transmission
through touch we’ve seen here.” He looked up from the file again. “Background questions. 
Age?”

“Twenty.”

“Any allergies, chronic illnesses, past surgeries, anything at all in your medical
background?”

“No, sir.  I’ve almost never been to the doctor, and I’ve never been sick.”

“Never sick?” He scribbled in his file. “Nothing?  No common cold?  No minor infections
of any kind?”

“No.  Can I get dressed now?”

“Not until exam is over.”

“Do you have a name?” she asked.

“I am Dr. Franz Wichtmann,” he said, sounded impatient. “I am the project director
here.  Tell me about this deadly touch of yours.  How long have you had it?”

“All my life.”

“Have you ever harmed a person with it?”

Juliana hesitated.

“You can be honest,” Wichtmann said. “All is confidential.”

“I have, but only when they attacked me first,” Juliana told him.

“Have you ever killed anyone with your touch?”

Juliana hesitated again, looking down at her bare feet.  Her whole body seemed pale
and sick under the harsh surgical lights overhead.

“We are scientists, not police,” Wichtmann reminded her. “And we are not even in your
country.  We are here to promote human evolution, and we have no wish to put our test
subjects in prison.  If we are to study your situation, we must have the facts.”

“Again...it was only when they attacked me.”

“Then you have killed human beings with your touch?” His eyebrows were raised, but
he seemed more curious than horrified.

“Dr. Wichtmann, I grew up on the streets, alone,” she told him. “Sometimes, a man
would see a vulnerable young girl and attack.  I had no choice but to protect myself.”

“How many?”

“How many?” she asked back.

He sighed. “How many men have you killed, Juliana?”

“I don’t know, I try to block it out...Five?  Seven?”

“Five or seven?”

“Yes.”

He noted this down. “Does your power spread only through touch?  Can it become airborne?”

“No, I don’t think so.  It’s only happened through my touch.”

“Hm.  And is your touch harmful to nonhumans?  Animals, plants?”

“Animals, definitely.  Plants resist it better...but if I stand on a patch of grass
too long, it will eventually turn brown and die.”

“How long does it take to kill a person or animal?”

“If I just touch them, they usually get away with an infection that fades in time. 
If I hold on for a minute, they’ll die.” Juliana squirmed nervously.  His questions
made her feel even more exposed than she already was. “I try not to kill people, honestly! 
Sometimes I can just threaten them away.”

“And people believe your threats?  What do you tell them?”

“I don’t have to say much.  I just...” Juliana held out her arm, and dark sores opened
from the crook of her elbow all the way to her fingertips.  They spread up to her
neck, then ruptured open along one side of her face, turning her eye the color of
diseased blood.  One of the nurses in the corner screamed. “You don’t really have
to tell people not to touch you, if you look like this.”

Dr. Wichtmann gaped, then pulled his surgical mask from his neck up to his face. “Are
you certain it isn’t airborne?”

“I’ve worked at a freak show for years, showing these things off to crowds in a small
room at the back of a tent,” she told him. “No one’s ever gotten sick, or I would
have stopped doing it.”

“You can exhibit symptoms at will?” Wichtmann asked.  He wrote much faster now, his
eyes bugging behind his glasses.

“Sure.” Infected wounds and blisters opened all over her body, turning her into a
mass of disease and gore.  Both the nurses gasped at the sudden transformation, as
did Dr. Wichtmann, who took an extra couple of steps back from her, even though he’d
kept a good distance between them since he’d arrived. He turned his head and barked
orders at the nurses in German.

One of the nurses crossed her arms and shook her head, but the second nurse grabbed
the first one’s arm and pulled her along.  They reluctantly approached Juliana and
took samples of the dark fluid and blood leaking from her sores, the inflamed cluster
of pustules on her cheek, the sticky bile that leaked out through the leprous decay
of her stomach.  They took what seemed like an endless series of photographs.

“Does it cause pain?” Dr. Wichtmann asked.

“I guess it’s a little itchy.”

“Not for you, I mean for others.”

“Oh.  I think so. They usually kind of hiss and pull away, and then they have lesions
wherever I touched them.”

“And you can make them heal at will, too?”

“I can heal myself.” Juliana’s disease symptoms closed and vanished, leaving traces
of blood and other fluids here and there on her skin. “I can’t heal anyone else, though.”

BOOK: Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4)
3.36Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

An Imprudent Lady by Elaine Golden
Raisin the Dead by Karoline Barrett
Village Centenary by Miss Read
Red Gardenias by Jonathan Latimer
Where Love Begins by Judith Hermann
Blind Faith by Ben Elton
Vintage Stuff by Tom Sharpe