Jenny Plague-Bringer(144)

The response team already filled the corridor, but they were a little disorganized as they parted for the crazed doctors and nurses to pass through them. Tommy wished he’d had the foresight to dress himself in medical scrubs, too, instead of a t-shirt and jeans. It would have helped him blend with the escaping mob.

Instead, the guards in their biohazard masks shouted and raised their machine guns at him.

Tommy breathed deep and exhaled, pushing out the fear from deep inside of him, giving them both barrels, everything he had. He poured all his energy into it. There was no point in holding anything back now—he doubted he had more than a few seconds to live.

The mist of fear flooded the corridor, so dense and dark that the light in the hallway turned deep red, painting everyone and everything the color of fresh blood.

“General Kilpatrick’s orders!” Tommy shouted. “Everyone in a biohazard mask is the enemy! Shoot on sight!”

His shouting brought the attention of all the masked guards, who turned their guns on him. The support guards at the back, armed but without biohazard masks, shouting in fear and opened fire on the rows of guards ahead of them. The body armor and helmets shielded their torsos and heads, but the bullets sliced through their arms and legs. The masked guards began to fall, taken from the rear by surprise, flurries of machine-gun rounds hammering their backs hard enough to crack their ribs through their armor.

Most of the remaining masked guards dropped and swiveled, returning fire and escalating the battle. A couple of them near the front remained focused on Tommy, raising their guns at him.

“Do your worst,” Tommy challenged. He exhaled a last thick mist of red, and then the bullets tore through his arms, stomach, chest, throat, and face, cutting him apart. They kept firing even as the fear-giver rose and looked down on his bullet-riddled body, just a useless slab of meat now.

His life as Thomas White was ended, and he felt satisfied that he’d done his best to pay his debt to the dead-speaker, atoning for his failure to protect her in their last life. He struggled to remain focused on the dimming world of the living, determined to see her get out alive, though he now watched from beyond the grave, unable to give her any more help.



* * *



“What are you doing here?” Alise demanded, slamming open the door. Niklaus sat on his bed, drinking cheap Polish vodka and smoking cigarettes. Though the alarm had been clanging for a few minutes now, he remained where he was, in his undershirt and black uniform trousers, boots propped up on the bed’s flimsy footboard. “Are you deaf?”

“No,” he replied. He swigged vodka and smiled, offering no other explanation for his inaction.

“The supernormals are escaping!” Alise shouted. “We’re finding guards dead of Juliana’s plague. I checked Mia’s room, and it looks like she went with them. They cannot be allowed to escape, Niklaus!”

“Maybe someone will stop them.” He shrugged.

“We need your help! Get up!” She smacked his leg.

“I’m going, I’m going...” Niklaus reluctantly stood and took his time pulling on his belt, his jacket, checking that his pistol was fully loaded. He smirked at himself in the mirror as he put on his cap. It struck him as absurd, the black uniform, the silver skulls and lightning bolts, the twisted red cross on his arm. He thumped the swastika. “What is this thing, anyway? Does anyone know? Besides a big target that says, ‘Shoot me in the arm, snipers!’”

“We don’t have time for your drunken babbling.” Alise took his arm and steered him out into the hallway. “Take care of this, and I’ll give you a nice reward. Don’t you miss me in your bed?”

Niklaus pulled his arm free of her grasp. “We should hurry.”

“You’re right.” Alise began to run, and Niklaus watched her from behind, long golden hair sweeping her slender back in her black S.S. jacket. He thought of how callously she’d killed Evelina, and he forced himself to do the thing he’d been wanting to do for weeks.

Niklaus drew the Luger and aimed it at her back. If she looked him in the eyes, he knew he wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger. It had to be from behind.

He fired a shot into the center of her spine, and she fell and screamed, her legs twisting limply beneath her. He trudged toward her, in no hurry at all. Everyone else would be distracted by the alarms and the escaped prisoners. There was nobody else here on their dormitory level.

She turned her head to look up at him, and her gray eyes, the ones that matched his, were full of pain.

“Why?” she whispered. She lay on her stomach on the floor, paralyzed from the waist down, a pool of blood growing around her.