Virulent: The Release

by Shelbi Wescott

  It was Grant who approached her, standing next to her knee, waiting for permission to speak or help her up.

  The tone sounded again. This time they had expected it and they calmly waited for the announcement.

  “Ten…Nine…Eight…Seven…Six…Five…Four…Three…Two…One…Zero.” Spencer counted down in a lazy drawl. “So. If I’m the only one standing...” he trailed off. “Or if those of you still here don’t feel a need to coexist.” He spat the word like a curse. “This is where I leave you.” The intercom did not click off, but Spencer got up from his seat, humming an incoherent melody that trailed away and then came back and then trailed away again—they imagined him pacing along the length of the front office—the microphone for the intercom situated on a box at the front secretary’s desk.

  Lucy knew that Spencer couldn’t hear that he was still broadcasting his movements to the school. There was no speaker for the intercom in the office, so there was no way for him to hear himself. It was to their benefit that he could not detect this because it provided them a distinct advantage.

  Students at the school were aware that sometimes the intercom system remained on blast when the people around it thought they had turned it off. Their cheerful and grandmotherly school secretary was most famous for forgetting to shut off the intercom. Once she was overheard calling a particularly rude parent a “douche bag” to a fellow teacher while the intercom still broadcast every word.

  Grant, Lucy, and Salem heard a distinct click of a door opening and then a slam as it shut. Spencer was leaving the main office.

  Then, in the stillness of the school, they heard the rumble. From the security office, Spencer had flipped the gate switch and the metal bars tumbled downward.

  Without fear, they sprang up and ran out of the classroom, Lucy remembered at the last second to shove the doorstop beneath the door before it slammed shut and locked them out. Then they rushed to where the East Wing met the English hall and peered into the openness of the hallway. To their left, they could see the gate hit the magnetic metal locks. Then they braved exposure and wandered down the hallway to their right, peering around the corner only long enough to see that gate shut them in and lock with a distinctive click. Hearts pounding, they scooted back away into the safety of the English hall. Now, unless the gates lifted, they were sealed off from Spencer.

  Lucy looked at the empty floor where the young boy’s body had been that morning. Someone had moved it. Dried blood and vomit remained stained on the tile, but the boy himself was gone. Moved to his final resting place without fanfare.

  And then Lucy noticed something shift in the corner of her eye. Subtle at first, a small twitch, and then a longer sweep: The security camera above them was rotating and scanning the hall. Spencer, sitting in the security office, was on the hunt. Unaware of the camera’s range, Lucy grabbed at Salem and pushed her backward into the wall, then pulled Grant’s shirt.

  “What?” Salem asked in a whisper and Lucy pointed above them. The red light was pulsating and the purr of the lens rotating around was barely noticeable.

  “This complicates things,” Grant mumbled. He watched the camera and took a step. “Wait,” he said. “Wait.” The camera whirred to capture the other end of the hall and they had a second to move—the girl’s bathroom was mere feet away. While the camera could easily capture the bathroom entrance, it was common knowledge that the bathrooms were free from video. Which was why in her four-year tenure as a student, Lucy had witnessed three girl-fights and two drug deals during routine bathroom breaks.

  As the lens scrolled over the top of them, in the second after it could no longer see the bathroom, they bolted and scrambled inside and shut the door, leaning against the back of it, holding their breath and waiting.

  “How will we know if he saw us?” Salem asked.

  “He’d say something,” Lucy whispered. “Call us out on the intercom.”

  “Maybe not,” Grant replied. “Maybe he’d just come for us.”

  Salem moved away from the door and walked over to the mirror. Someone had scrawled, “You are beautiful to someone” in Sharpie on the expanse of wall between the two mirrors above the sink. Salem put her finger on the writing and traced the words. “We’ll hear the gates go up,” she replied. “Simple. He says he sees us or he puts the gates up and comes to get us.”

  “There are three of us and one of him,” Lucy noted. This gave her confidence.

  “But he has a gun,” Grant reminded them.

  “He has a gun,” Salem repeated.

  “But maybe it’s just for show,” Lucy said.

  As soon as she said it, they heard a second shot as it echoed down the hallway and rang out over the intercom.

  Spencer’s voice yelled and called as he retreated back into the office. “Stop, stop where you are!”

  A group of voices called out, distant at first, but then getting closer to the office.

  “Get him!” someone shouted.

  “Go around! All sides, all sides!”

  There was the sound of breaking glass and then a struggle.

  A mob had moved in and Spencer was shouting, his tone vacillating between wrath and sheer panic.

  “What’s happening?” Salem pushed herself against the bathroom door, as if the fight was bearing down on her, getting closer.

  Grant’s eyes landed on a spot on the bathroom wall, and he stared at it as he listened intently. It was just noise raining down from above; and it was the noise of things falling apart. “Students. Has to be. I think other students are on the attack.”

  One of the voices, female and young, screamed something indecipherable before someone else yelled, “We’re losing Sarahi. She’s down…oh no, help her…Somto…wait! Wait! Don’t…”

  There was another shot and screams. And then they all heard Spencer’s voice clear above them. “Get. Out.” He was breathless and angry. Something scraped along the floor; there was the sound of muffled shouting and doors opening. “Get out!”

  Then: Nothing.

  Each of them paused and then at once they let out long breaths.

  “Why?” was all Salem said, she looked to each of them.

  “This is not good for us,” Grant added. “Any kid is now a potential threat to resources and his life. Was it too much to ask for everyone to just hide?”

  Lucy walked to one end of the bathroom and back—peering into the stalls, with their graffitied walls and dwindling toilet paper supplies. A deserted binder perched precariously against one of the toilets and the wall. There was a picture of a baby taped to the front that reminded Lucy of her binder, which was still in Ethan’s backpack left abandoned in Mrs. Johnston’s classroom. She made a note to retrieve it when it was safe to go in the hall again.

  “There could be others still in the building,” Grant continued.

  Salem’s shoulders slumped. “But maybe they don’t have roof access?”

  “And maybe they do. What do we know?” Grant kept his back firmly planted against the door. His feet fell outward, his toes pointed up. He stared at his shoes.

  “I realize this is neither the time nor the place to announce this, but I have to pee,” Lucy said. She turned to face them and then shrugged.

  “Well, I’m not stopping you,” Salem replied as if the act of urinating annoyed her and she motioned for Lucy to head into a stall.

  Lucy glanced over at Grant. He smiled, his single-dimple appearing in a flash. “I’m definitely not going outside to wait if that’s what you want. I’m not getting shot over girly privacy issues.”

  “I have four brothers. So, I’m not embarrassed to pee in front of you.” Lucy marched into the stall and slammed the door, locking it for good measure. She pulled down her jeans and underwear, careful not to pull them too low so that Grant, if he were so inclined, would notice the bright blue and pink argyle pattern of her undergarments. After a second, Lucy sighed. “Salem...can you turn on the sink water or something?”

  “What? Need inspiration
?” Salem asked and soon the sound of the sink filling with water echoed in the small bathroom and Lucy allowed herself to go to the bathroom—she realized as her bladder released, how much better she would feel and she rested her elbows on the exposed flesh of her thighs and closed her eyes. After she was done, she just sat for a long second. It was a second that belonged only to her.

  Then she felt wetness hit her exposed flesh; a gush of lukewarm water bubbled up, pouring over the sides, spilling at her feet.

  Lucy shrieked and scrambled off the toilet, pulling up her pants and underwear in a quick motion and clawing at the door, yanking it with force. The water had pooled below her feet and Lucy slipped, sliding forward into the side of the bathroom wall; she turned to look as the toilet overflowed—the water was clear at first, and then it turned a murky brown, and it began to spew like a geyser, sending a spray of water and sewage into the stall, drenching the wall and the floor—creating a stream that ran down into the drain in the floor.

  Then the other toilets followed suit by gurgling and belching up waste and water. Salem and Grant sprang up and huddled together on a tile near the door while the water crept slowly toward them. But every time Lucy tried to move, she would slip and tumble back down into the wetness. When the water calmed down to a mere trickle, the explosion subsiding, Lucy regained her footing and stood sopping wet in the middle of the bathroom. Her jeans clung to every inch of her skin, scraping along the inside of her thigh like a razor as she took a step forward. She lifted her arms up and watched the water drip with a repetitive plop-plop-plop to the floor.

  Salem cried out, “Oh no, Lula!”

  She wanted to laugh—her instinct encouraged her to let out a giggle. Embarrassment usually garnered this type of response; she wanted to laugh and blush while she wished for reprieve. Her pants were still unbuttoned and she reached to fasten them, but as she looked up she saw Grant and Salem huddled in the bathroom corner, close together, pushing themselves as far away from the water as physically possible. Lucy stifled her smile when saw the fear in their faces.

  Lucy took a step toward them, her shoes swishing.

  “No, Lucy, wait,” Grant said and put up his hand. “Just wait.”

  The water was contaminated.

  The water was poison.

  They stared at her as if she were already dead.

  CHAPTER TEN

  They stood there for a long moment and then Lucy lowered her arms a bit, feeling the weight of her clothes pull her body toward the floor. The intercom right above her broadcast the banal sounds of an empty office. Then they heard a door click and Spencer started to hum again. Not happy, jaunty humming, but a focused and intense hum. There was an edge to his musical interludes, a hardness to the melody that seemed entirely for show.

  It unsettled her.

  Lucy opened her mouth to speak to Grant and Salem, but as she opened her mouth, she saw Salem flinch and draw back and place her hand immediately on Grant’s arm with her long fingers wrapped around his biceps. Grant regarded Salem’s grip for just a second and Lucy saw his eyes flit to his arm and then back up at her, as though even among the tragedies of the day, he was still aware of being touched by the opposite sex.

  “No,” Lucy replied to a question that hadn’t been asked. “No. This is not the way it’s going to happen.”

  Grant took a tentative step forward, “How do you know it’s not contaminated?”

  “I don’t!” Lucy answered him and her eyes locked in on his. “But we’ve been around the dead all day. All day! All of us, all day, and we’re still here.”

  “We’re allowed to be worried,” Salem said in a small voice.

  Lucy’s eyes flashed to her friend; she swallowed hard and blinked back tears. “Worried for me?” Her eyes flashed. “Or worried for you?”

  When Salem didn’t answer, Lucy bit her lip and nodded. “Right. So, we’re all just still alive because we haven’t been exposed yet? The bioterrorists polluted our water, our food supply, our air and we just lucked out?”

  “I don’t know how it works,” Salem’s hand still held on to Grant. Lucy took a giant step forward, her legs stiff. “We just don’t know.”

  “Fine,” Lucy tore off her shirt, exposing a thin white camisole beneath. She balled it up tightly and then tossed it into the sink. Bending down she held the heels of her swollen canvas sneakers and slipped out of them too, picking each one up individually and throwing them over to the wall. One hit the wall and bounced back, and it landed on its side, empty and ownerless.

  Then she walked right past them, while Salem buried her head into Grant’s armpit and cowered as if she were expecting Lucy to hit her, and stormed out into the empty hallway.

  Waddling, Lucy walked to her locker and opened it without taking her ears off of the hum, which was now some bizarre arrangement of a familiar Mozart Waltz, and as she approached it, her eyes zeroed in on the camera—the red light was still blinking, but the angle of its lens was abandoned in the other direction. She knew that the cameras were live-feed only. There was a master record of the camera feed, but it was a convoluted series of tapes and buttons and memory cards. Spencer would figure out how to watch the recordings eventually, but they were safe for a small, limited, finite amount of time.

  She knew about the camera’s issues with recording because last year she had been an unwitting helper in Anna’s quest to recover a stolen cell phone. Over an hour she wasted in that tiny security office, the bumbling men scrambling over the camera system struggling to locate the right disk that recorded the right hallway during the right time. It was a total mess and eventually the effort and Anna’s prized possession were relegated to paperwork and nothing more.

  Lucy knew that an old pair of yoga pants and a tight leopard print exercise shirt, from her first semester PE class and purchased by her mother, who had no sense of style, were stuffed down under the weight of unused textbooks and discarded papers. When she felt the soft fabric hit her fingers, she grabbed and yanked, sliding them out, and catching anything that fell in the process. Her eyes scanned the hall. Grant and Salem were still holed up in the bathroom, no doubt discussing her septic state. Grant, perhaps, bringing up his undead theory to her and bravely volunteering to be the one to attack Lucy with the wire cutters from metal shop if the need arose.

  Maybe turning into a flesh-eating monster wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. For a juicy moment she realized the idea of attacking her friend and burying her teeth into her arm or leg sounded deliciously evil. She wondered if Grant and Salem really were going to avoid her until they knew if she was infected. It seemed childish and born of irrational fear. Or maybe it was rational fear; maybe their decision was smart and cautious. Either way, it hurt. Then she let the thoughts slip away and slammed her locker shut, the echo bouncing down the hallway. Arguments between close friends were always riddled with personal hurt. Salem, out of all of them, probably had the most exposure to the virus—she arrived from a diseased house and was outside among the infected. Those barbs could have stung, and she wanted them to sting, but she would have never said it out loud to her friend. What good would it have done?

  Living would have to be her giant middle finger to them both.

  With the clothes in her hand, Lucy walked slowly back to the journalism room and once she was alone, she shed her jeans and her underwear, and pulled the stretchy black fabric of the pants over and up her legs. She took off her bra for good measure and put on the tank top. Then she sat with her back against the couch, her knees drawn up to her chest, and waited. Goosebumps prickled her skin.

  Her toes were cool on the tile.

  She concentrated on her body. Did she feel sick? What would it feel like? Did people know they were about to die or did it just happen suddenly? If it happened to her, would she have time to say goodbye?

  Lucy found a discarded hoodie with their school mascot on it and used it as a blanket. She stretched along the couch and listened to the background noise of the office. Sh
e felt her brain pulling her body toward sleep and she resisted. The room was getting darker and she realized she didn’t even know what time it was now. Her phone was still in her jeans pocket and it was possibly wet and beyond repair. While her thoughts spun with worry, all her energy left her body and Lucy couldn’t even bring herself to check if the phone had survived the flood.

  She closed her eyes. Her body sunk into the cushions of the couch.

  Sleep claimed her.

  Her eyes snapped open.

  The room was bright and light.

  Lucy tried to sit up, but her body resisted, pulling her back down into the comfort of the fabric. The inside of her mouth was dry and she smacked her lips together and swallowed. It hurt to swallow and she needed water.

  Lucy was totally disoriented, forgetting where she was and what had happened to her in the past twenty-four hours. She reached out to silence her alarm clock and felt nothing but air where her bedside table was supposed to be. She tried to tug her comforter around her body, but the fabric slid off and wouldn’t cover her shoulders or reach her feet.

  “Mom?” she called and then she cleared her throat and sat up. Rubbing her eyes, she looked around and recognized the journalism room and her brain began to make sense of their surroundings. Tossing the flimsy Spartan-themed sweatshirt to the floor, she put her feet on the tile. For a moment she sat with her head in her hands as her stomach growled, and she put her hand over it to silence it.

  It didn’t take long to reconnect to her reality. She was in the journalism lab at school and she had been sleeping on the couch, there was a hole in the roof, and outside the world was dying. She was cold and shivering, hungry and confused, and to make matters worse, she was alone.

  Grant and Salem were not asleep in a corner of the room and they were not awake and waiting for her. If they even came back to the room that evening and had seen her sleeping, she didn’t know, but they weren’t there now and the anxiousness and heaviness in her chest felt oppressive and unmanageable. The terror of day two was here and Lucy woke up abandoned.