Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4)

by J. Bryan

  Whatever she felt in that moment, she felt it alone. He stood her on her feet, already looking for their next move.

  “The warehouse,” he said, pointing to the long brick building against the western wall of the base. A pair of S.S. guards flanked the door. “There’s a road that forks off toward it. I think there must be a side gate there. Probably safer than trying to go out the front.”

  “If there’s a gate, there will be more guards,” Mia whispered.

  “You stay here,” Sebastian said. A slanted corrugated tin panel stood over the intake vent, blocking rain and snow from above, but also creating a pocket of shadow, further darkened by the coal smoke from the ventilation system’s furnace exhaust. She thought might be able to hide from the spotlights if she kept herself small enough. “I’ll deal with the guards first and signal you when it’s safe,” Seth told her.

  “Are you sure?” she whispered, but he was already running, avoiding the spotlights. She heard a distant clink of metal against concrete, and both guards at the warehouse turned their heads towards it, away from Sebastian’s approach in the shadows. She heard it again, and a third time, and the guards raised their pistols in that direction.

  Mia realized what was happening—Sebastian had pocketed the screws he’d taken from the vent screen, and now he was flinging them, one at a time, to create a distraction for the guards as he approached them in the darkness.

  Sebastian crept up to the warehouse and jumped on the closest guard, stabbing him in the throat with a key grasped between his middle fingers. The other guard turned to see his comrade staggering toward him, blood gushing through the hands at his throat. Sebastian was pushing him forward, using him as a shield while the other guard began shooting. Sebastian shot back, using the pistol from the stabbed guard’s holster. The guard fell to the ground. He’d taken them out, but now every spotlight rushed toward the sound of gunfire and found Sebastian.

  Sebastian crouched low and shoved open the warehouse door, ducking aside as bullets rang out at him. He fired back as he crawled inside.

  Mia shivered as she listened to shouting and gunshots inside the warehouse, unable to see anything within. She did see a number of guards on foot, running toward the warehouse with guns drawn. Sebastian was trapped, and she didn’t know what she could do about it.

  Then Sebastian raced out of the warehouse door, blood-spattered and cackling like he’d lost his mind, leaking from a bullet wound in his side and another that had torn a chunk from his leg. He held a machine gun now, and he blasted a spray at the guards converging on the warehouse, momentarily scattering them.

  He didn’t come back for her, but ran hard toward the front gate, as if trying to attract everyone’s attention. The spotlights followed, and he turned and opened fire at them. He hit one, and it flashed and burst into flame.

  The scattered S.S. men regrouped and chased after him, while more armed guards ran at him from the gate. They shot him up and down from two sides, the bullets chewing him up, and he shot back until he toppled over. The guards surrounded him and kept shooting.

  Mia shuddered. She knew Sebastian could heal fast, but no one could survive what the guards were doing to him, blasting his head and torso with dozens of bullets at close range. He was gone, just like Juliana. Mia was alone, except for the small baby still growing inside her.

  She only saw one option—go to the warehouse and see if she could make it all the way outside. If he’d cleared the way for her, leaving no guards behind, she might have a chance while all the Nazi guards were still distracted, laughing as they kicked his mutilated corpse.

  Mia ran as fast as she could, her footsteps as loud as thunder in her ears. She expected bullets to cut her down at any moment, but she managed to make it inside the dim warehouse.

  She caught her breath as she explored it, stepping over the gunshot bodies of dead guards. She found the enormous, armored steel cargo door, and she trembled as she found the button that activated its system of chains and pulleys. It began to rise, loud and clanking. She didn’t hesitate. The moment she saw a slice of the night outside, she dropped to her hands and knees and crawled under the rising door, her stomach dragging the concrete floor.

  Outside, she found herself on a loading dock. She stood up, ran to the edge, and jumped to the pavement below.

  Mia ran into the woods, out of range of the spotlights. She kept running for a long time.

  * * *

  The loud, clanking ventilation machinery looked like it hadn’t been upgraded in the intervening decades, though it now sat inside a narrow concrete room instead of raw cave rock. Mariella opened the access panel and found rows of electrical heating coils had replaced the old coal-burning furnace, warming the air before the array of fans pumped it through ducts to the underground rooms.

  Mariella looked up the wide vertical shaft from which fresh, cool air pounded down from the giant fan above. The big vertical duct was now thick with water stains and mildew. No Nazi janitor had been ruthlessly scrubbing it with cleaning chemicals this time around. Unfortunately, this meant the rungs built inside were also slimy, and looked even more slippery than last time.

  “I’ll go first,” Mariella said, leaning her head out to speak to Seth, Jenny, and Esmeralda. She’d gotten them this far safely, using Seth or Esmeralda to help her watch the future. “You’re the one carrying a baby this time, Seth.”

  “I wish they had one of these back in the day,” Seth said, opening a small tool cabinet against one wall. From the array of hand tools suspended by magnetic strips, he picked the two largest screwdrivers and a pair of wire cutters and handed them to Mariella. “Good luck. Watch out for sparks.”

  “I could have used that warning last time, thanks,” Mariella told him.

  They climbed the slippery rungs as fast as they dared, Mariella first, then Seth with the baby in her sling and her head resting against his chest, then Jenny and Esmeralda.

  Equipped with the right tools, Mariella opened the top of the vent much faster than Seth had done in their past life. There were spotlights again, so she waited until one had passed before looking out.

  The yard was in chaos. It looked as though everyone in the base was flooding out through all four exits, probably thanks to the terrified medical staff running and screaming about bombs. Guards were everywhere, too, but they didn’t look very organized. Some of them ran around howling and firing their guns at random, shooting real bullets at whatever nightmarish illusions filled their minds. Some of the other guards fired back. Everyone else was in a panic, trying to get from the low pillbox buildings to the front or side gate without getting shot. Tommy had done his job well.

  Mariella waited for another spotlight to pass, then helped Seth climb out. The baby stirred at the sound of gunfire and screaming, but Seth touched her face and soothed her.

  Jenny and Esmeralda were the first to jump to the ground. Seth went next, his arms around the baby, landing in a squatting position with a painful wince on his face. Jenny and Esmeralda grabbed him from both sides, keeping him steady so he didn’t topple over. Mariella joined them on the ground.

  “I’m not going with you,” Mariella whispered. “I’m going back inside.”

  “You can’t do that!” Jenny told her. “Why would you?”

  “They have so much information on us,” she said. “We have to destroy Ward’s records, or it will be too easy for someone else to pick up the pieces and track us down. He’s a control freak. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the data is right here on site, in the file server room. I don’t think even his superiors know what he’s really doing here.”

  “Ward will still be looking for us,” Seth said.

  “Maybe. You’re going to encounter him again tonight,” Mariella said. “The future’s too uncertain, I can’t see how it will turn out. But maybe you’ll defeat him. Maybe he won’t live.”

  “You definitely won’t live if you go back now,” Seth said.

  “I might,” she said. “You go on w
ithout me. I’ll catch up if I can.”

  “This is crazy,” Jenny said. “You know you have to come with us.”

  “No,” Mariella said. “Jenny, you won’t remember, but I survived last time. I eventually got home to Sicily. The Nazis never came for me again, even though my family took their money—I guess they got busy with other things. I spent years waiting, but nothing happened. I had my baby, Jenny. I got to raise her and watch her grow up, and she gave me six grandchildren. I watched them grow up, too. I lived to be more than seventy years old.” She smiled. “I named her after you, you know. Juliana.”

  “You survived?” Jenny whispered. “I assumed we all died that night.”

  “I made it out, with my little girl, and I had a long life,” Mariella said. “You died to give me that, and I’m going to do my best to give you the same. I owe you.”

  “Please don’t,” Jenny said, clearly fighting back her feelings. “I don’t have many friends.”

  Mariella hugged Jenny tight, then kissed her on the cheek, though it covered her own face with painful sores.

  “I love you,” Mariella whispered, and Jenny let out a sob, then bit her lips to keep the rest inside.

  Mariella said good-bye to Seth, and to the drowsy baby Miriam, and to Esmeralda, and told them to run. After the spotlight passed again, the three of them ran past the crowd that was gathering outside the warehouse, where the base’s employees were demanding to be let out the gate. Jenny and the others continued toward the motor pool area, where they planned to steal a truck.

  Mariella ran the opposite way, toward the helicopter pad. One of the privileges of cooperating with Ward was that she’d been allowed to spend time outdoors each night, though no one was permitted out during the day for security reasons. She’d noticed the helicopter pad and the shed beside it. She hoped the shed held what she needed.

  She ran across the concrete pad, keeping her head low to avoid stray bullets from the crazed guards running around the yard. She reached the shed, but the door was padlocked. She kicked the door, frustrated.

  “Identify yourself!” a voice shouted. A guard in the standard black, insignia-free uniform stood only yards away, leveling an automatic rifle at her. “What are you?” he screamed, dancing around but keeping the gun aimed right at her.

  From his demeanor, Mariella guessed that he was under the spell of Tommy’s fear. She remembered hearing Tommy shout orders to the guards he’d frightened. With their minds clouded by fear, they’d eagerly done what they’d been told.

  “Orders from General Kilpatrick!” Mariella shouted, as Tommy had done. “We have to destroy the base before it falls into enemy hands!”

  The guard gaped at her, then nodded, as if this somehow made sense to him amid the confusion and gunfire.

  “Open this door!” she shouted at him. The guard raised his machine gun, and she winced as he blasted at the door and padlock. There might have been helicopter fuel inside the shed, which made shooting it up a fairly unwise decision. It worked, though, and Mariella kicked in the door.

  She ran inside, looking past the small selection of tools for light helicopter repair. She was disappointed in what she found. She’d reasoned that, since the base was remote, there might be spare fuel on hand for the helicopters that came and went. She’d hoped for some kind of portable tank in which she could carry a few gallons, but there was nothing like that. There was only a single enormous tank, mostly embedded in the ground, with a giant hose on a spool, all of it much too large-scale for her purposes. She looked around desperately for any kind of container, but there was only a bucket with no lid.

  She shook her head and glanced outside the shed to see whether it was safe to leave. She saw her crazed guard standing at attention, protecting her, heedless of the stray bullets that hurtled back and forth across the yard. It gave her an idea.

  Mariella took the end of the hose and walked to the door with it, and the huge spool creaked forward behind her. She told the guard to come inside.

  “I’m taking this,” she said, nodding at the heavy nozzle and hose in her hands. “You stay here. When I yell, I want you to turn on the pump.”

  “Yes, sir,” the guard said.

  “But not until then. I’ll yell ‘Now!’ Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir!” The guard saluted her. He must have been an actual soldier at some point before joining the mercenary outfit that provided the base’s guards. Hale Security, Mariella had heard someone call it.

  Mariella took the hose and ran across the yard, crouched as low as she could. A spotlight crossed her, but at this point she was just one more patch of crazy in the middle of a riot.

  She reached the vent intake from which they’d all emerged, which was almost as tall as she was. She jammed the nozzle of the fuel hose into her belt, then took a running start and jumped, grabbing onto the lip of it, then scrambling her feet up the side, praying the guy didn’t throw the switch too soon, or that he didn’t get distracted or shot before she called to him.

  She lay next to the large fan that she’d disabled, took the nozzle from under her belt, and dropped it into the vertical duct. She kept feeding the hose in as fast as she could, but it was heavy, and so was the spool turning at the far end. When she had a several meters of hose dangling inside the duct, she screamed “Now! Now, now now!”

  The hose instantly fattened as it filled with helicopter fuel. Mariella climbed her way down between the fan blades, then wrapped her arms and legs around the thick hose and slid down it like a fireman’s pole, traveling down several stories in less than a minute, friction burning her hands and peeling away the skin. She grimaced through the pain, hoping that her weight was helping to unwind the hose from the spool.

  She landed hard on her ass inside the metal cavity from which the array of fans sucked fresh air away into different rooms inside the base. She climbed out of the access panel, which they’d left open, pulling the heavy, full hose with her. She peeked out the maintenance door, then dragged the hose into the hall with her, sweating and straining with the effort.

  She walked along the hallway in the direction of the northeast quadrant, where the administrative offices and private apartments were. When the hose would go no further, she opened the nozzle all the way.

  It jumped out of her hands like an enormous live snake, snapping back and forth among the walls and ceiling as it gushed out fuel, filling the hallway with an acrid petroleum odor. The fuel flooded the narrow back corridor, rising high enough to glug away through low vents near the floor, spreading through the ducts of the facility’s air system.

  Mariella, dripping with fuel, cautiously made her way out to the front of the clinic and looked over the bleeding bodies left from the firefight Tommy had set off among the guards. She took a heavy automatic rifle from one of the bodies, thinking she might need it.

  With no one to touch, she couldn’t see into future, but it sounded like most of the facility had evacuated. Occasionally, she heard incoherent shouting and screaming, as if she were deep inside some amusement-park haunted house. The voices drew closer and closer.

  Her heart pounding, she reached the administrative quadrant and made her way to the lowest level. Here, the fuel poured out from the air vents and had already pooled ankle-deep on the floor, since it could drain no lower.

  She approached the file server room, where the door was sealed airtight, protecting the racks of servers inside from the rising flood of fuel. Mariella intended to change that.

  She tried the security guard’s access card a few times, but the lock didn’t open. She backed up, raised the automatic rifle at the door, and squeezed the trigger. The gun kicked her hard as she fired, and its nose lifted up and up, making her shoot higher and higher. She released the trigger, pointed the gun at the foot of the door, then held it down again, letting the gun strafe the door as it rose under its power.

  When she’d emptied the ammunition, Mariella ran to the wreckage of the door and used the gun as a club to bash it
all the way open. She stepped into a freezing-cold room lined with quietly humming hardware. The fuel flooded in with her.

  She pulled and pushed the servers free, knocking them over into the rising fuel. She heard boots sloshing their way toward her, along with shouting voices.

  Mariella turned to see three guards approaching her with automatic rifles like the one she’d taken.

  “Raise your hands! Stay where you are!” one guard shouted. Not one thing had gone right for her so far, so it wasn’t a terrible surprise that she’d just lost her slender chance of escaping and setting the fire from outside.

  Mariella raised her arms, with a cigarette lighter concealed in her left hand. Her mother had always told her that smoking would kill her.

  “Go on and shoot me, then,” Mariella said, and she flicked the lighter. Her fuel-soaked fingers ignited, and the fire quickly engulfed her and filled the room. She screamed, and the guards mercifully shot her dead before the flames swept out to consume them all.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Jenny, Seth, and Esmeralda started towards the fenced motor pool by the front gate, intending to steal transportation, but the trucks there came to life, including an apparently empty armored personnel carrier, and charged toward the front gate, the drivers callously running over anyone who got in the way.

  “That’s not going to work,” Jenny said, watching all the available vehicle charge toward the gate, which opened for them. The panicked crowd poured out on either side of the trucks, everyone desperate to leave before the rumored bombs exploded.

  “Looks like we’re walking,” Seth said. He rearranged his shirt, pulling the baby sling inside. The tiny girl cooed against his skin, her eyes closed.

  “That kid can sleep through anything.” Esmeralda shook her head.

  They joined the general exodus of people through the open front gate, Jenny in her hospital gown, Seth and Esmeralda in their stolen scrubs. Nobody paid attention to them, despite the baby bulging from under Seth’s shirt. If any of them did recognize Jenny, they were wise enough to keep their mouths shut. Everyone seemed focused on saving their own necks. Jenny definitely liked it that way. Maybe they wouldn’t need to hurt anyone else tonight.