Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4) (28 page)

Dr. Wichtmann scribbled more notes. “I have determined that your supernormality may
be genuine.  You will have testing this afternoon.  Until then, you have two hours
lunch and recreation.” He turned away.

“What kind of testing?” Juliana asked, but he left the room without answering.  After
he’d been gone a few seconds, the two nurses raced out the door, casting fearful glances
at Juliana and whispering as they departed.

Juliana quickly dressed herself.  A guard in an S.S. uniform escorted her to the mess
hall, which was still mostly empty because she was early.  She sat alone at the usual
table in the back.  She’d hoped to see Sebastian at lunch, but none of the other test
subjects were here, just a group of S.S. men at the center table.  Three young nurses
arrived, but one of them pointed at Juliana and whispered to the others, and all three
immediately turned and left without eating.

As Juliana was the only female in the room, she drew repeated looks from the S.S.
men eating their early lunch.  It made her uncomfortable, so she hurried through her
beef stew and chunk of bread, then returned to her room.

In the afternoon, she found herself standing alone in one of the big concrete laboratory
rooms, facing a row of six cages, holding six live goats that stared at her with their
creepy eyes.  A video camera whirred, recording her on fat spools of film.  The room
had a high ceiling, like an airplane hangar.  Dr. Wichtmann and several younger scientists
observed her from sealed glass windows far above her. 

“To your right,” Dr. Wichtmann said to Juliana, his voice crackling over an electronic
speaker.    She looked at the row of cages and approached the one on the far right. 
She’d had a sick feeling in her stomach since the moment she’d walked into the room
and seen the animals in their narrow cages. 

“What do you want me to do?” Juliana asked, though she was afraid she knew.  She was
just stalling.

“Touch the first one,” the doctor told her.

“It will get sick.”

“That’s what we want.”

Juliana frowned as she stepped toward the first cage.  The goat stepped toward her
and made a bleating sound. 

“Go ahead,” Dr. Wichtmann ordered. “We have a tight schedule.”

Juliana forced herself to move closer to the goat, but she couldn’t bring herself
to touch it.

“Don’t make me do this,” Juliana said, looking up at the fat doctor in the window.
“There must be something else we can use...like snakes or lizards.  Or spiders, I
can kill spiders.”

“Those are no good for us,” Wichtmann said. “You must do this if you ever want to
gain control of your power.  Is that not your stated purpose in being here?”

I’ll just touch it for a second
, she told herself.
It will heal from that.

Juliana tried to ignore her feelings as she reached through the cage bars and brushed
her fingers lightly across the goat’s back.  The animal squealed and twisted away
from her as bloody blisters erupted along its spine.  The goat turned in circles inside
the cage, kicking its hooves against the walls.  The other goats began echoing its
fearful bleats.

“Very good.” Dr. Wichtmann was looking through binoculars, as were two other scientists,
for a close-up of the goat.   She realized that all these men were frightened of her,
and that was why none of them were down here with her.

“The second stall,” Dr. Wichtmann called out. “Now, you are holding onto the goat
for ten seconds.  I will time.”

“Ten seconds could kill an animal that small.” Juliana looked at the second goat,
who was shaking and trying to escape, alarmed by the cries of the first goat. “Can’t
we at least use animals that are already sick or dying?”

“Other illnesses would only confuse the data,” Dr. Wichtmann insisted. “We must be
certain they begin in good health.  Now, ten seconds.  Now!” All of the faces stared
down at her coldly, making her feel she had no choice.

Juliana forced herself to walk toward the second goat, who squealed and backed away
from her, but it didn’t have very far to travel inside the cage.  She steeled herself,
then reached inside and wrapped her fingers around its hind leg, the farthest she
could get from any of the poor animal’s vital organs.  That would give it a better
chance of surviving, she thought.

It shrieked as the dark blisters spread up its leg and across its torso.  The skin
of its face bubbled and burst, blood trickling down across its small, wooly chest. 
It slammed its head repeatedly into the wooden wall beside it, leaving smears of blood
thick with lumps of rotten flesh.  Its lower lip rotted away, revealing its lower
teeth as they sank into the black, mushy remains of its lower jaw, like stones sinking
into a swamp.

“Time!” Dr. Wichtmann called.  Juliana immediately released the goat, and it collapsed
on its hindquarters.  The leg she’d held had broken apart like a rotten sponge, and
now the three-legged goat flailed helplessly on the ground, squealing in agony.

“I’m sorry!” Juliana whispered to the thrashing goat. “I wish I could take it back. 
I wish I could...Sebastian!” she screamed up to Dr. Wichtmann. “Sebastian needs to
heal this animal.  Where is he?”

“
Nein
,” Dr. Wichtmann replied.

“Please!” Juliana called.

“We must study the disease to understand it,” Dr. Wichtmann told her. “This is necessary.”

Juliana tried not to cry at the sound of the wailing, plague-ravaged goat.  While
she’d never been sick from any disease, she now had to fight her desire to throw up
in front of everyone.  She needed this test to end.  She wished she’d never agreed
to it.

“And now the third goat,” Dr. Wichtmann said. “This one, thirty seconds.”

“It won’t live!” Juliana said.

“Now,” Dr. Wichtmann said. “Thirty seconds.”

Juliana bit her lip as she eyed the third goat, its eyes rolling in terror at the
screams of the other two.  She forced herself to reach for it, and this time she grabbed
it around the neck, thinking to make the animal’s death as quick and merciful as possible.

She imagined the demon plague pouring out of her hands like a swarm of poisonous black
flies, burrowing straight toward the center of the goat’s brain.  It bleated, and
blood poured from its eyes, mucus and brain fluid from its mouth.  Its head fell apart,
and the portion of the neck she held in her fingers rotted away.

The headless goat fell to the floor of its cage with a sickening splatter sound. 
A wave of dark sores rippled across its front legs and abdomen, but stopped halfway
along its body, because the goat was dead.  Its back half still looked perfectly healthy,
except for the blood slowly seeping its way through the goat’s fur.

Juliana stepped back, shaking, with bits of deteriorating skull and brain dripping
from her bloody fingers.  She looked at Dr. Wichtmann and shook her head.  She didn’t
want to do it again, and three more goats remained. 

“That is enough,” Dr. Wichtmann said. “The other three goats are controls.  You may...”

Another scientist tapped Dr. Wichtmann’s shoulder and pointed.  A small group of S.S.
officers appeared in the window beside the scientists, led by a man with poison-green
eyes and close-cropped hair the color of burnt copper.  His face was all hard slabs,
and his colorless lips pressed together, almost too small to see.  His black military
cap had a small eagle and a skull and crossbones on the front, and he had oak leaves
on his lapel, signifying some kind of rank.  Two younger men in black uniforms stood
a step behind him. 

Dr. Wichtmann saluted the man with his palm out and conversed with him in German. 
Then Wichtmann turned toward Juliana. “This is Group Leader Kranzler, the man in charge
of the base.  He wishes to inspect the results of your test,” Wichtmann explained.

Kranzler looked down at her, and then he and the two S.S. men stepped back from the
window.  Less than a minute later, the laboratory door opened, and Kranzler marched
inside, right toward Juliana.  The two men who accompanied him followed very slowly,
as if they were afraid to go near her like everyone else.  Kranzler’s eyes bored into
her as he approached, and he did not look scared at all.  He looked like he meant
to crush her in one of his large fists.

He stopped to look her over, then looked at the goats.  The first one had stopped
panicking and gone into a kind of shock.  The second lay on its side, groaning and
vomiting as it died.  The third lay completely still, its head just a lumpy, dark
puddle on the cage floor.

Kranzler surveyed them carefully, then spoke to Juliana in German.

“
Gruppenführer
Kranzler would like to know why the second one dies more slowly, when its wounds
extend all over its body.  The third goat died before the infection fully spread,”
one of the younger S.S. men translated.  Both of them remained near the door, ready
to run away.

Juliana shrugged. “I guess I concentrated it.  Like a cannonball.” She pressed her
hands together, in case that made anything clearer.

Kranzler listened to the translation, then muttered in German.  The other S.S. men
laughed, followed quickly by the scientists above.

“What did he say?” Juliana asked the translator.

“He says, the Reich no longer needs an army.  We can simply place you alone on the
battlefield.”

“I would not recommend it,” Juliana told him.  Kranzler himself laughed when he heard
the translation, and everyone hurried to join in.  Then he spoke to her at length.

“The
Gruppenführer
wishes to convey his great joy at having such a valued guest as you,” the translator
said. “He asks whether your accommodations have been pleasant, or whether you lack
for anything.”

Juliana could have said that she didn’t want to kill any more animals, but she didn’t
think her opinion would matter much.  She realized that this man held the true power
here, and he was trying to decide how he might use her.  The thought made her more
than a little uneasy.  His face was like iron...despite what his assistant said, he
did not look like a man feeling great joy, or deeply concerned about her comfort.

“Tell him my accommodations are fine, thank you,” Juliana said, eager to escape Kranzler’s
powerful, penetrating gaze.

Kranzler touched the brim of his hat, then crisply turned and walked away, followed
by his two assistants, who quickly closed the door behind them.

“This test is concluded,” Dr. Wichtmann announced when the S.S. men had left the lab.
“We will study the results and design more for you tomorrow.  Leave now and return
to your room.”

* * *

Juliana scrubbed and scrubbed herself in one of the four sinks in the bath area on
her hall, but she couldn’t quite erase the taint of red from her hands.  The animals’
dying shrieks kept echoing inside her skull, tormenting her.  She didn’t know if she’d
ever felt so horrible or hated herself so much.

She wanted to simply curl up on her bed and speak to no one, but she learned that
every evening during the week, the girls had to meet in the community room for “culture
hour,” to be led by Alise, since she was their hall
fuehrer
.

Alise sat on the deep, comfortable couch in the girls’ community room, flanked by
Roza, the Polish girl with the large braids, and Vilja, the Swedish girl so ghostly-pale
she seemed on the verge of fading out of existence.  The three of them had also made
chocolate cookies and an apple-cider punch in the community room’s small kitchen corner,
and these now sat on the card table in the middle of the room.

The three blond girls formed a kind of clique, from which Juliana’s roommate Mia seemed 
excluded.  Evelina, the short, dark Slavic girl, was all but ignored by the group. 
She sat in a chair in the corner, while Juliana and Mia sat in rocking chairs next
to each other.  Juliana thought it was silly to have cliques based on hair color,
but that almost seemed to be the idea.  In that case, Juliana and her long black locks
properly belonged with Evelina instead of Mia.

“First, some good news,” Alise announced. “We will no longer be herded into the mess
hall with everyone else.  Instead, we subjects will have a private dining room on
our own level!  They’ll send the food down by dumbwaiter, and we’ll just send our
dishes back up.”

“It’s because of her, isn’t it?” Roza looked at Juliana, with a smile that wasn’t
particularly friendly. “They’re scared of her.  They don’t want to get contaminated.”

“Roza, let’s try something original and be nice to the new girl,” Alise said, touching
Roza’s arm.  The look in Roza’s eyes immediately softened, and she turned to gaze
lovingly at Alise.

“If you want,” Roza breathed.

“Good.  Now, Juliana, since you’re new, allow me to explain cultural hour, my favorite
hour of the day,” Alise told her. “It is my job to instruct you in German language
and history, so we can all speak and understand each other better.  We also study
proper female arts, such as sewing...” She indicated the sewing machines. “Or we read
from the great German writers, or listen to true German music.”