Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4) (49 page)

“You’ll be okay,” Jenny said again, hoping that was true.  She looked around to see
if anyone else felt the same awe she did, but the medical staff seemed in a hurry
to finish up and get out.  The doctor was already stitching her up.

“Name?” asked the nurse who stood by the monitors outside her cube, who now held a
digital tablet.

“Name?” Jenny asked, confused.

“The child’s name,” the nurse said, impatient. “For the records.”

“Oh.” Jenny’s mind was a blank.  This was the kind of thing she should have spent
months thinking about and talking over with Seth.  Instead, she’d spent her entire
pregnancy worrying whether the baby would live, and whether Jenny and the baby would
ever escape this place, and whether she would ever see Seth again.

“What will you call her?” Ward asked. “I’m curious myself.”

Jenny scowled at him. “Miriam,” she said.  It had been her mother’s name.

“Last name?” the nurse asked. “Morton?”

Jenny thought about it. “Barrett.”

“Middle name?”

She was at a loss. “Use Morton, I guess.” Jenny watched them lay the baby in an incubator,
which looked like a scaled-down version of Jenny’s own cubic cell. “Can I...see her?”
Jenny asked the nurse.

“You can’t get too close,” Dr. Parker said. “We don’t know whether she has any immunity
to your touch.  From what you’ve told us, it’s doubtful.  Do you understand what that
means?”

“How can we find out?” Jenny asked. “I don’t want to test it by touching her...”

“I’ll see how your blood samples interact, and we’ll go from there.” Dr. Parker nodded
at the nurse, who wheeled the incubator toward the airlock door.  The tiny baby, now
named Miriam, squalled and reached a little hand back toward her mother.

“Where are you taking her?” Jenny asked, trying to sit up, even though the doctor
was still stitching her. “Don’t take her away!”

“It’s for her own safety,” Dr. Parker said. “You should know that better than anyone.”

“But so soon?”

“They’re very vulnerable to disease at this stage.  Their immune system hasn’t developed.”

Jenny nodded—she might hate everyone around her, but she knew Dr. Parker was right
about that. “You’ll be okay,” Jenny said, feeling her throat close up.  She said it
again and again, as if repeating it would make it true, while the nurse wheeled the
incubator away to the steel door set in the concrete wall of the laboratory.  Jenny
could hear the baby cry all the way out the door.

“When do I see her again?” Jenny asked.

“We’ll see,” Dr. Parker replied, not looking at her.

“Can they please bring her back?  Just for a minute?” Jenny asked, but the doctor
only shook her head.  Jenny pulled at her restraints again.  The lower half of her
body was still numb and had just been through surgery, and everyone around her wore
biohazard gear.  She didn’t have a chance of fighting her way out.

Any remaining strength vanished from Jenny’s body.  Her head flopped back on the bed,
and she closed her eyes and let herself cry and cry, ignoring the final flurry of
activity around her, ignoring whatever taunting words Ward said over the intercom. 
Eventually, everyone was finally gone, all the surgical equipment removed from her
cell, and the lights were mercifully dimmed.  Jenny lay in the dark, sobbing and aching
and already missing the baby with all her soul, until the combination of painkillers
and exhaustion finally overwhelmed her and dragged her down into darkness.  She felt
like she was drowning.

* * *

Juliana gradually awoke to the dim, fuzzy world around her.  She felt a light, constant
breeze, and then slowly realized she was moving.

She was strapped the gurney, her dress still soaked in blood.  She’d only been out
for a few minutes.  The Nazi doctors had been extremely stingy with the pain medicine.

Now she rolled down a familiar concrete corridor, attended by two nurses, who wore
surgical masks, caps, and gloves, and two S.S. officers in gas masks who were more
concerned about flirting with the young blond nurses than watching the small, blood-soaked
form of Juliana.  She was firmly strapped to the gurney, and they clearly believed
she was unconscious and badly weakened.  They were only half right.  Juliana quickly
closed her eyes again and remained limp on the gurney.

They rolled on past Juliana’s cell, toward the end of the corridor.  They must have
been taking her to the showers, Juliana reasoned, to wash off all the blood and gore
before depositing her back in the cell for the night.

She heard the squeal of the bathroom door opening, felt the bump as they crossed the
threshold to the shower room, which was just another concrete-slab room with a few
nozzles in one wall.

Juliana summoned up the demon plague within her, growing boils, cysts, and bloody
pustules all over her body.  With years of practice in her carnival act, she’d developed
great control over how and where the plague appeared on her skin.  She made sure that
every inch of herself looked as repulsive and malignant as possible, raw swollen skin
leaking diseased fluids—except for her face, which she kept pristine.

She heard the four people around her make disgusted sounds.  The nurses begged the
S.S. men to unstrap Juliana and lay on her on the floor for them, but the men snorted
and refused, though they wore thick leather gloves.  They made the nurses agree to
drink with them later, and then they loosened Juliana’s straps.

Juliana’s eyes opened.  The guards stood at the head of the gurney, on either side
of her, while the nurses were at her feet.  She’d had months to study the gas masks,
to imagine the fastest way to grab the strap and loosen it from their necks.

One of the guards saw her eyes open, and he pointed and shouted.  Now Juliana let
the ugliest, most repugnant combination of dripping boils, festering sores, and leprous
ulcers erupt all over her face.  A nurse screamed, and everyone made sounds of disgust. 
While her face distracted them for a few seconds, she reached up with both hands,
ripped loose their straps, and touched her plague-filled fingertips to their throats. 
She imagined a dense, angry cloud of tiny black flies chewing through their skin.

Blood dripped out from their loosened masks, splattered Juliana’s fingers.  One guard
collapsed, and the other pulled away from her, only to stagger back into a concrete
wall and slide down, leaving a streak of dark blood above him.

The nurses screamed and ran.  Juliana’s first instinct was to let them go, but then
she realized they would only go alert all the guards.  She wouldn’t have enough time
to escape.

She filled her lungs with the dank air of the prison showers and breathed out a long
stream of dark spores toward the nurse’s retreating backs.  They made it to the doorway
before the plague caught up with them, eating through their hair and scalp and bone. 
The both stumbled and fell to the floor, their heads bursting open like rotten pumpkins,
leaving puddles of infected bones and brains.

Juliana eased her way off the gurney and landed unsteadily on her feet.  Her balance
was poor, and her body already felt strained to the breaking point...but there was
something else rising inside her,   dark, ancient, and cold.  Something eager for
righteous killing.  Something that delighted in death.

She knelt by the guards, ignoring the gore that dripped from their bug-eyed masks. 
One of them had a thick ring of keys, which he’d probably borrowed from the cellblock
guards at the desk outside the corridor so they could put Juliana back into her cell. 
She took the keys, along with the two Luger pistols from the dead guards’ holsters.

Juliana stepped her bare feet over the decaying spill from the nurses’ ruptured heads.  
She stalked up the corridor, opening the door panels to look into each cell.  Most
were empty.  She felt renewed anger when she saw the fading red stains on Evelina’s
floor and wall.  The girl had been gentle and quiet, her voice through the vent providing
Juliana’s only companionship for weeks of pregnancy.  They had simply decided that
her race was now too much of an inconvenience, and so they’d killed her.  Juliana
hoped she would see Alise on the way out, so she could leave her pretty face contorted,
swollen, and lifeless.

Sebastian was the only other prisoner remaining on the hall.  He took in a sharp breath
when she opened his door, wearing her blood-soaked gray dress.  He ran to embrace
her, and the plague sores on her skin faded slowly.

“Juliana!  What happened?  Are you hurt?” Sebastian asked.

“The baby’s gone,” Juliana said.  Her voice was flat, without a spark of emotion. 
All that remained inside her was a cold, endless darkness. “Our baby.  Now we’re leaving. 
You take these, I don’t need them.” She held out the two pistols.

“Our baby?” Sebastian held her tight, his voice full of grief.  She felt nothing.
“Oh, God, no...Alise only told me a few weeks ago.”

“There are at least two guards at the desk outside,” Juliana said. “If they’re wearing
their gas masks, you shoot them.  If not, I’ll kill them.  It’ll be quieter.”

“We’re leaving right now?”

“Anyone who gets in our way dies.”

He gave her a look of shock, tinged with a little fear.  She stepped out of his cell
and began walking up the corridor towards the heavy door at the end, keys in her hand.

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.