Jenny Plague-Bringer

Chapter Thirty-Five



Jenny woke to see activity outside the clear wall of her cell. Men moved furniture and cardboard boxes into the big concrete laboratory outside, while others watched Jenny with their TASER weapons drawn, even though she was trapped in her cell with both airlock doors sealed.

She kept her face blank—a stoic approach was the best way to deal with the seer, she thought, whether his name happened to be Helmut Kranzler or Ward Kilpatrick. She refused to complain or act upset by anything he did, because then she was giving him power over her. Her bathroom nook had clear walls like the rest of her cell, giving her no privacy. She’d first avoided showering altogether, then broken down and done a quick few minutes each week. Now she forced herself to do it every night, after most of the staff had gone to bed, and act like she didn’t care about the cameras or the dark observation windows above. Let them stare at her big pregnant ass if they wanted. She wanted them to know that nothing they could do would bother her.

Jenny heaved herself out of bed, which was becoming more of an effort every day, now that she was six months into her pregnancy. She eased her weight onto her feet. The baby awoke with her, swimming and kicking inside her. Jenny winced each time she felt the tiny girl kick—not out of pain, but out of fear that the baby would somehow kick loose the pox and get herself killed. The amniotic membrane protected the baby before birth—Jenny knew because, at times, she herself had been born wrapped in a caul, and those mothers had not died from giving birth to her.

“I hope we didn’t disturb you, Jennifer,” Ward said. His smile was predatory as he emerged from where he’d been skulking, somewhere behind her bed and out of her line of sight.

She noticed that her breakfast tray had not yet been delivered, which meant no coffee. She needed a cup, but wasn’t going to ask for one.

“You’ve been disturbing me since we met,” Jenny replied.

“Aren’t you curious what we’re building here? It’s quite a little project.”

“I’m sure I’ll find out eventually,” Jenny said. “Then I’ll get bored with it. So let’s just stretch out the mystery for now.”

“You should know, Jenny, that you’re the last to resist,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Everyone else has seen the wisdom of cooperating with us. Tommy, Esmeralda, Mariella...even Seth.”

“Yay for Seth,” Jenny said. She assumed Ward was lying.

“You don’t believe me? He did it for her, Jennifer. For pretty little Mariella. They’ve grown very close these last couple of months.”

Jenny tried to show him nothing. She didn’t want to think about Mariella’s prediction, that she and Seth would ultimately be together, how Seth was destined to be the love of Mariella’s life, that the sex would be amazing, and all that bullshit Mariella had chattered freely about before realizing Jenny and Seth were together. Now Jenny was isolated from everyone, while Seth and the girl were off doing God knew what together...according to Ward, Jenny reminded herself. Jenny would have to lie here alone, feeling her and Seth’s doomed daughter splashing inside her womb, until the inevitable happened.

Maybe it was destiny. Maybe Jenny needed to be sealed off from the world, unable to hurt anyone. Maybe she didn’t deserve a happy life, or love. She was a monster, and would always be a monster, and not even death could save her from it. She came back, and back, and back.

“Does anything look familiar yet?” Ward asked, walking out to where the furniture had been arranged. It looked like they’d built a small bedroom right in front of her cell...her bedroom, she realized. Her own bed, with her own patchwork childhood blanket. Her own bookshelf, her posters on temporary walls made of cork. Her own laundry scattered right on the floor, as if they wanted it identical to the day she’d left it. She realized that it had been at least a year and a half since then, and she was suddenly sick with worry about her father. She’d had no way of getting news from him at all. Clearly, Ward or his people had been to her house.

“We thought you’d feel more at home this way,” Ward said.

“Did you see my father?” Jenny asked.

“Oh, yes. Pathetic little man. He probably survived our visit, but I can’t say I followed up to check.” Ward smiled at her through the thick, clear wall. “Now, our special treat, just for you...”

Two men set up a very tall, very wide projection screen at the far end of Jenny’s reconstructed bedroom. All the lights in the lab dimmed. Images appeared on the giant screen, pictures of Jenny’s victims, kids from school, old people from church...their faces contorted, twisted, ripped apart by deadly infection.

“This is what you are, Jenny,” Ward said. “You are a killer. You’ll never change that. Your nature is to bring death to others. It’s your responsibility, your obligation, that you use it to kill the right people, and not the innocent...”

Jenny pressed her lips together and said nothing, but she couldn’t stop her flesh from turning bleach-white. Inside, she was in turmoil, sick and angry, full of hate for Ward and for herself.

A picture of her mother appeared, the one that had hung on her wall all her life, and she almost cried out in pain. She had killed her mother. She would kill her baby.

“No mercy. That’s what I respect about you, Jennifer,” Ward said, as more pictures of the infected from Fallen Oak took their turns appearing on the screen. “You’ll kill anyone who gets in your way. And there’s a place for that, there’s a use for that, don’t you understand? That’s all I’m trying to show you. Just accept what you are and why you need to work with us. Stop fighting, Jenny. We should all be on the same team.”

Jenny looked from Ward to the grisly images of those she’d killed.

“I don’t do teams, Kranzler,” she said. “I’ve been on too many.”

She expected him to ignore the word Kranzler like he always did, but this time he pounced on it.

“Kranzler, Kranzler,” he said. “It’s interesting, Jenny, that you call me Kranzler. I called a friend in Moscow who has access to a certain deep archive of captured Nazi documents. He found a few details about this place. There was a Nazi general—a Gruppenführer, was the S.S. term—in charge of this base when it was originally built. Can you guess his name?”

“Do I have to?” Jenny asked.

“Helmut Kranzler. The name you keep calling me.”

“What else came up in these files?”

“First, explain yourself. Why call me that name?”

Jenny shrugged. “You already know. You were Kranzler. You brought us all here before, believing we were some kind of highly evolved humans. It was a Nazi eugenics program.”

“A Nazi?” Ward snorted. “You’re calling me a Nazi?”

“Exactly. And here we are again, doing it all again.”

“How did it end last time?”

“The only way it could have.” Jenny gave him a thin smile. “Perhaps those old files will tell you. They should. You wrote them yourself.”

Ward looked her over, but he fell silent, and she knew he couldn’t figure out how to proceed. “Enjoy your entertainment,” he finally said as he walked away.

The lights in the lab turned all the way out, leaving her in darkness except for the glowing images on the screen. Ashleigh’s parents, Neesha Bailey, Mayor Winder and Cassie. Screams sounded over the intercom, startling her. They went on and on, like some kind of sound effects CD for a haunted house, accompanying the scenes of agonizing death that kept playing in front of her.

She sat down and closed her eyes, but it was impossible to scrub away the pictures, or to block out the shrill screams. Ward wasn’t going to break her down this way, she told herself. He didn’t know even a fraction of what she’d done—the plagues she’d inflicted on Athens and other ancient cities, the horrors she’d performed for evil monarchs in the age of the Black Death...

Strangely, the one to which her mind kept straying was only a single man, lashed to a hospital gurney, whom she’d killed in cold blood because the love-charmer had told her to. It was hard to believe that she’d once been enthralled to Ashleigh, worshiping her as she’d seen so many sycophants do in so many lives...though the charmer’s name hadn’t been Ashleigh then, it had been Alise.


Juliana had been up all morning, practicing for the moment when Alise would walk through her door. Her roommate Mia was gone, had been gone all night without warning. Juliana didn’t know whether Mia had escaped or something terrible had happened to her. Alise would be the person to ask, but if Mia had run away, Juliana wasn’t going to be the one to point it out. Juliana would want her friend to have plenty of time before anyone starting searching for her.

Alise finally entered, all smiles as usual, as if she hadn’t just forced Juliana to murder a man the day before.

“Good morning!” Alise said, her gray eyes full of cheer. “I thought we could go to breakfast together. And good news! Gruppenführer Kranzler says he wants me to spend the day with you. Lots of tests for you to do!”

“No more people,” Juliana said. “No more animals, either. I’m not killing anyone else.”

“Juliana.” Alise tsked her tongue. “We’ve already talked about this. Let’s not start over. Here, I know just what you’ll need to feel better.” She took a deep breath.

“No! Don’t you ever use your power against me. You’re not going to trick me again, Alise.”

“It’s not a trick,” Alise said. “It’s something to make you happy, a sign of my deep love for you...and, I hope, the love you feel for me, too...”

“It’s false love. That’s your power.”

“How can love be false if it feels true?” Alise began to blow out the pink dandelion-petal drops of power that would fill Juliana with love and affection for her.

“Stop it!” Juliana backed away from her, but Alise only blew out a thicker cloud, moving closer with a wicked smile.

“You love me!” Alise insisted.

Juliana fought back the only way she could. She took a deep breath, then exhaled the demon plague, as she’d been practicing. She’d reasoned that if Alise could send her power across through the air, then she might be able to do the same.

The plague blew out of her like a swarm of tiny black flies, dark spores that spread out as they traveled, swelling up to fill the room. They engulfed the pink spores Alise had blown out, successfully blocking them as she’d intended, but they traveled on, landing like dark cinders on Alise’s face, neck, and hands.

Alise screamed and staggered back as tiny lesions stippled her flesh, oozing black and blood. She slammed the door as she ran out of the room, and she screamed all the way down the hall.

Juliana panicked—she hadn’t meant to unleash so much, and she was lucky she hadn’t killed Alise. The cloud of spores spun in the room around her. She wondered if she could take them back in when she was done, so they wouldn’t accidentally harm anyone. She took a deep breath, and the entire cloud flowed back inside of her, like thousands of tiny flies returning to nest in the cells of her body.

Alise returned in less than a minute with a gang of six armed S.S. guards, all of them wearing gloves, their faces hidden behind bug-eyed gas masks. They seized Juliana, bound her hands in front of her, and gagged her before hauling her out of her room.

As they carried her down the hall, and then through a locked door and down two flights of steps, Alise stalked behind them, shouting at Juliana in English to make sure she understood. Alise’s face was pockmarked with little dark boils where the demon plague had touched her.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” Alise screamed. “Do you know who I am? Who my father is? Do you know how often I’ve stood in the crowd, helping to fill everyone with the proper love of the Fuehrer while he spoke? Do you know how the Party has grown since my father sent me to Berlin? Do you know about the private gatherings I had, inviting Party officials to breed with the finest stock from the League of German Girls? They all know who I am. I am everything here, and you are nothing!”

The guards laid Juliana on the floor of a concrete cell with a narrow cot. She didn’t struggle, and they removed her bonds before backing away and slamming the thick wooden door. Alise’s hideously infected face looked in at her through the small, barred window set into the door.

“You will never come near me again,” Alise said. “Consider this your maternity ward. Congratulations, whore, you’re pregnant.” She slammed the panel outside the window, leaving Juliana in darkness.

Juliana worked the gag out of her mouth and ran to the closed window.

“What?” she shouted. “What did you say?”

She heard the distant sound of Alise cackling as she departed down the hall.