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

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.”