Jenny Plague-Bringer

Chapter Fifty-One



The hilly woods behind the Morton house in Fallen Oak were soaked in cool, green sunlight falling from the lush summer canopy overhead. Jenny walked the overgrown path with the baby cradled in her arms. Tiny Miriam gazed around at trees and boulders with huge, fascinated eyes.

Rocky loped along the trail beside Jenny, swishing his big blue-mottled tail. In her absence, Rocky had overcome his skittish ways to become the sort of dog who lay snoring under the kitchen table most of the day. He’d been excited to see her, jumping up to lick her hands and face. He certainly didn’t live in fear of people anymore.

The baby started crying, for the thousandth time that day, as Jenny pushed through thick, mossy growth and into a tiny meadow. She gazed at the cairn of stones that marked her mother’s grave. Small, bright wildflowers sprouted through the rocks.

“Hi, momma,” Jenny said. The baby cried louder. Jenny sat on a low, heavy oak limb and touched the baby’s face, whispering to her, and the baby settled. It was strange to Jenny, touching someone in a way that comforted instead of killed.

“I thought you’d want to see her,” Jenny said. “I named her after you. She’s so pretty, isn’t she? I think she looks like you.” Jenny bit her lip, listening to a red-winged blackbird singing in the tree above her. It was a sound that always made her think of long, blissfully slow summer afternoons.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” Jenny said to her mother, “But I think maybe you can. If things as wicked as me live on and on, life after life, after all the evil things I’ve done...I think people must live on, too, somewhere. I don’t know if you come back here or not, getting born again. Maybe you do. If I keep going after death, then you must, too.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry for ending your life like I did. You could have had a good, long life if it wasn’t for me. I’m sorry.” Jenny didn’t bother hiding her tears. There was no one to see her. “I also want you to know that you’re the last. I know how to keep it inside now. I don’t have to hurt anybody else.”

Above her, another blackbird sang, joining the first.

“Your record collection’s gone,” Jenny said. “All my stuff’s gone, too, my pictures of you. Ward took them all, and that whole base collapsed from the fire, so it’s all burned and buried. Mariella really wrecked the place.” Jenny shook her head. “It was good to have a friend for a while, a real friend who understood me. I wish you could have met her. I wish I could have met you.”

Jenny sat for a while, listening to the birds sing and feeling the baby doze in her arms.

“I don’t know what we’ll do now,” Jenny said. “I’d be happy to just stay here awhile. The town’s gotten spooky with everybody gone, but I always liked ghost towns. I want to get a good camera and take pictures of everything falling apart, flowers growing up through the cracks in the streets. I think it’s pretty. Sad, but pretty, too.”

Jenny stood up, startling the blackbirds into flight. Hundreds of them launched from the trees around her, as if they’d all been hiding, listening quietly.

“Bye, Momma,” Jenny whispered. The flapping birds startled the baby awake, and she began crying.

“It’s okay,” Jenny told her, holding her close as she walked back up the trail. “Everything’s gonna be okay now.”


“Oh, let me see that baby!” June squealed. She set her Miller Lite, snug in its vintage Jimmy Buffett beer cozy, on the picnic table and reached out her arms. Jenny handed little Miriam over to her. “Ain’t you just the most precious thing?” June asked the baby.

Jenny joined her dad, who was turning the ears of corn roasting on the grill, next to the ribs he’d been smoking all day.

“Yard looks good,” Jenny said. Since June had moved in, she and Jenny’s father had tamed part of the back yard, moving her father’s junked old appliances and pinball machines closer to the shed and concealing them behind white lattice screens. The cleared area had the picnic table, lawn chairs, and grill, plus shrubbery and flower beds by the house, wind chimes by the back door, a chipped stone birdbath under the shade of an old maple.

“Probably shoulda had it this way when you were little,” her dad said.

“I liked the dangerous rusty object theme, too.”

“Bet they didn’t have this over there in France.” He brushed a homemade mustard concoction onto the ribs. “Carolina sauce.”

“They sure didn’t. And don’t even ask about grits and cornbread.”

He laughed and looked at her. Jenny put an arm around him, and he automatically stiffened up, still not used to the idea of her touching anyone. Then he relaxed and hugged her around the neck, kissing her head.

“You sure you’re going to be okay?” he asked in a low voice. “Ain’t nobody out there looking for you?”

“They already sealed and buried the original Homeland Security investigation,” Jenny said. “The people who captured us this time are...well, we dealt with them. My friend Mariella said she thought the general wasn’t telling his superiors what he was really doing, they thought he was just doing some card-reading experiments or something. She would know best, she pretended to work with him for months.” Jenny paused, thinking about her lost friend, then shook her head. “I looked up ASTRIA on the net. They were just a joke Cold War agency, looking for UFOs and Russian psychic spies. I don’t think anyone knew what Ward was really doing out there. And now it’s all destroyed.” Jenny shrugged. “We could get by for a long time with nobody bothering us, maybe. It’s not like we’re on the FBI’s Most Wanted list or anything.”

“If you think you’re okay.” Her dad didn’t sound entirely convinced, but he’d always worried too much.

“Running and hiding didn’t help,” Jenny said. “We tried that already. Might as well be where we want to be.”

“Well, you’re both welcome to stay here as long as you want,” he said. “I don’t guess Seth’s house is an option, since there ain’t nothing left but a brick or two, and it’s federally condemned and all.”

“We’d have to bring a tent,” Jenny said.

“Found them!” Seth walked out of the house with plastic cups, which he sat out on the table and filled with iced tea. Jenny took a cup. It was frigid and sweet, just what she needed after her walk in the woods.

“When are you going to have another one?” June asked Seth, while smiling at the baby in her lap. “How many you gonna have? Four? Five?”

“Um,” Seth said. “So, those ribs look great, huh?”

They ate outside at the table, leaving little Miriam in her car seat, where she seemed happiest. They ate the smoky ribs and corn, cole slaw, cornbread, green beans cooked with fatback. Jenny truly felt at home.

Later, Seth and Jenny walked out to the driveway to watch the sunset burn down through the trees. Seth held little Miriam against his shoulder, humming to her.

“You think we ever get to go where they go?” Jenny asked, watching the light fade. “After we die, I mean?”

“Where everyone goes, you mean? All the normal people?”

“Yeah. We can find each other between lives, just floating around out there in empty space, but where does everyone else go? Somewhere different? Do you think we’ll ever get to move on? Like in some future lifetime, after you die, you’re not just waiting and watching between lives, but there’s someone there to meet you...or a door to someplace else where we’ve never been...”

“I guess we’ll see,” Seth said. “I don’t want to go anytime soon.”

“Me, neither.” Jenny kissed the Miriam’s cheek, which only seemed to annoy the baby.

“Do you think she’s like us?” Seth asked. “Will she have some strange power she can use to terrorize us when she’s a toddler?”

“I hope not, for her sake,” Jenny said. “I hope there’s nothing supernatural about her at all.”

She looked up at Seth, his kind blue eyes, his strong arms holding their small child. She felt so much love for them she thought she might burst. She was grateful that she got to be with him until the end of time.

She rose up and kissed him softly on the lips.

“I love you,” Jenny said. “Forever.”


The End