Virulent: The Release

by Shelbi Wescott

  She clamped her mouth down and took a tentative step forward. Then another. Walking to the edge of the roof and peering down on to the parking lot below to the dozens and dozens of deserted cars, dead bodies, discarded backpacks, and other personal items littering the area. It was then Lucy realized the earth was strangely quiet, just like Clayton had said. There were no planes in the sky and no cars rushing down the street. The screams and torment of the survivors from yesterday were all gone. Only a few sporadic sounds remained—a crash, a sudden car alarm—and their appearance was jarring, unexpected, frightening, causing each of them to jump and seek out the source with their hearts pounding with fear.

  She closed her eyes and listened to the wind. From miles and miles away, she heard the distinct sound of a dog barking.

  Then she realized with sadness that she must have imagined it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  They climbed down into the boiler room and out into the small walkway that connected the room with the main hallway. With their hearts racing and their ears trained on the intercom, they moved with cautious precision. And when they rounded the corner to the hall, Grant leading the front, Salem huddled at Lucy’s elbow a few steps behind, they all stopped short and gasped.

  Splayed out on the tile was a dead man. He had brown hair and was wearing a blue button-down shirt, jeans, and a walkie-talkie was still in his hand. A thick key ring with at least fifteen silver keys dangled from a belt-loop. The man still looked like a man, but his skin had a greenish and cloudy quality along his bloated cheeks and extremities, as if he had been submerged in a vat of soured milk.

  This decomposition was not normal. Not even the Ebola virus could arrive without symptoms, kill in minutes, and reduce the body to rotting tissue within an hour. Lucy knew if her father was around, he would be looking at this virus with curiosity, examining it with a scientist’s eye, and she longed for his strength and whatever answers he could give her. Not having him within reach was alarming—she had questions. Who would answer them?

  It was difficult to look away, despite the disgust. Grant coughed into his shoulder and then leaned forward, inspecting and assessing the body. He dropped down and squatted, turned his head away from the stench, and started to reach forward, his eyes watering.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Salem asked.

  With one quick motion, Grant unhooked the silver key ring and swiped it off the belt-loop with a small tug. The keys jangled in his hand and he held them up triumphantly. “Master keys. Locker keys. All keys. This,” he jangled them, “is a treasure.”

  “I wonder why his body was left here,” Lucy said out loud.

  “One of the last adults to get sick, probably.” Salem crossed her arms over her body and looked up and down the hall with nervous, shifty eyes. “Come on, I feel exposed.”

  “Wait,” Grant said and his shot up to the cameras. “Where’s Spencer?”

  They all strained to listen, but the office was quiet.

  Then they heard the ring of a telephone. One long ring, another long ring. Then Spencer answered it—off somewhere in the office, away from the microphone.

  “The phones!” Lucy exclaimed and she reached her pocket, scrambling. Pulling it free, she stared at the screen, waiting for dormant text messages to start pouring through. A beep signaled that she had a message and Lucy clicked on it quickly. Salem’s name popped up. I’m in the building. Journalism room? But that was all.

  “What? What did you get?” Salem asked, leaning over to look at the screen.

  “Just you. From yesterday.” Lucy didn’t even try to mask her disappointment. She dialed Ethan’s number. After five long seconds, the call clicked in. “It’s ringing! It’s ringing!” she said and she took two long strides back down the side walkway toward the boiler room, shoving her left hand over her left ear out of habit, even though there wasn’t any noise to drown out in the background. After four rings, it kicked her to voicemail. Ethan’s voice on the message was bright and chipper—and so clear, like he was standing right beside her. She wanted to cry.

  “Ethan? Ethan. It’s me. I’m at the school. I haven’t left. I’m still here. If you make it here, I’m in the—” the phone kicked her off. Lost signal. Lucy growled and shoved the phone back into her pocket. Salem was looking at her and she tried to smile.

  “He’ll hear it. He’ll get the message,” she encouraged.

  Grant had positioned himself directly beneath a speaker in the hallway; his head upturned, his eyes squinting.

  “Who could he possibly be talking to?” Grant said as Salem and Lucy joined him, stepping around the dead janitor in the process.

  “Family?”

  “No. He’s angry. Can you hear the tone?”

  Grant was right. The conversation happening halfway around the school and just out of range of their intercom was not a happy one. Spencer’s voice raised and lowered, with growing levels of intensity.

  Occasionally they heard a snippet.

  “I will control that. Only me,” Spencer had snapped once. Then a few seconds later, “No. I will not help. But we can talk.” Lucy, Grant, and Salem exchanged puzzled glances.

  Then there was nothing. A lost signal, an angry hang-up, they could only speculate what ended the discussion and who was on the other end of it. But they now heard Spencer opening and shutting drawers and files with a fury, shouting to himself as he went: “No. My school. My rules.”

  Salem lowered her head from looking at the ceiling and scowled. “I don’t like this.”

  Grant took one look at the camera. “Me neither, but while we know where Spencer is…” he pointed to the red light blinking at them, “let’s get what we need and go.”

  The three of them bolted into the cafeteria—running together against the wall; trying to stay on the outskirts as much as possible, crawling behind tables and using stacked benches for cover. Out of all the areas in the school, the cafeteria was most covered with cameras. Every corner boasted a device—sometimes several—and there were limited blind spots. Ducking behind a metal food cart, the trio the scooted to the back of the cafeteria, where the industrial refrigerators hummed.

  None of them had entered the kitchen before and they stood in awe of the prep area and the pantry, the freezers, and the endless rows of stainless steel pots and pans. Sterile and polished, everything gleaned brightly.

  “I never actually thought any cooking happened in this kitchen,” Grant mused. “Like these have to be just for show.” He pinged a hanging saucepan with a flick and drew back, rubbing his nail.

  Lucy walked over to the walk-in freezer and unlatched it, opening the door wide—a cloud of cold air billowed up at her as she walked inside. She was instantly freezing as she rummaged around boxes of frozen peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwiches, the kind with the crusts removed, all the ingredients jammed into a bread pocket. The frozen options were limiting: Meat patties, chicken nuggets, pre-cooked French fries, burritos. Lucy didn’t know how they would cook the frozen items or if there was some cooking rule on letting a frozen meat patty defrost in a refrigerator for an unspecified amount of time. That was a question for a mom or the Internet and neither of those things were readily available.

  “Take what you can carry,” Lucy instructed the others.

  A drawer near the back yielded industrial size garbage bags and Grant handed one to each of them so they could start collecting food. They flipped them open, spreading the top wide and started filling it with anything that could be stored, consumed, and transported with ease. Salem grabbed milk cartons and sandwiches and then she turned her attention to a metal rack that held small bags of pretzels and corn chips.

  “What about the fresh stuff?” Salem asked, palming an orange.

  Grant shook his head. “Too risky.”

  “How long does it take to get scurvy?” Lucy asked.

  “Like sailors or whatever?” Grant shrugged. “Months?”

  Salem dropped the orange back into the crate. She
took a few steps and opened up a refrigerator and examined the shelves stocked from top to bottom with juices and water in plastic bottles. She smiled and started dumping then two at a time into her bag.

  The bags began to drag on the floor, heavy from an abundance of food, snacks, and bottled water.

  “This should last us. What a goldmine,” Grant said excitedly.

  “A statement that has never been said about a school cafeteria in the history of school cafeterias,” said Salem. She hauled her bag over her shoulder and started to walk forward, hunched over from the weight.

  “I wish we could get into the vending machines,” Lucy said. “Swedish fish and red vines, chocolate chip cookies, and peanut butter cups.”

  Spencer’s voice erupted above them, the cafeteria speakers echoing in the empty space. They jumped and it reminded them that their time was limited. Each heaving their loot, they began to work their way back to the boiler room—taking slow and deliberate steps, like cartoons figures tip-toeing away from a snoring enemy.

  They climbed back up the metal ladder embedded into the boiler room wall and pushed open the small square on the ceiling that allowed them roof access. Then they skipped and ran back to the skylight in the East Wing, keeping their bags hoisted on their backs as they slid down the opening, their feet blindly searching for the ladder, kicking this way and that until the wooden steps materialized and guided them back down to safety. Then Grant carried the ladder down and shoved it up against the wall and slid the tables away as well. The skylight still offered a wayward outsider entrance, but they still hoped the long drop on to the tile floor was enough of a deterrent.

  Without a word, they meandered across the hall like weary roommates arriving home from a shopping trip. Grant swung the door wide, the girls sliding inside as he fumbled for the light. Lucy dropped her grocery bags and walked to the far corner. She sat down on one of the small red couches, her bag between her legs, and she opened it wide, rummaging around, counting and assessing.

  Her cracker breakfast left much to be desired and Lucy couldn’t resist the thought of thick peanut butter and sweet jelly; she grabbed a sandwich, still partially frozen, and began to gnaw on it, succeeding in breaking off pieces of bread and hardened jelly between her teeth, and she rolled it around her mouth, warming it with her tongue.

  As if she had reminded each of them that they were hungry, Grant and Salem also descended upon the bags like a pack of wolves. They crouched over their plundered food and began to eat it on the spot. Grant opened a bag of pretzels and a water bottle and Salem downed a bottle of juice, each of them depositing their garbage in the corner.

  “We’ll dump our garbage next door,” Lucy suggested. “Grab a bag and then lock it up in the wood shop or something.”

  Grant dangled the keys. “This might help,” he replied. “Locker keys.”

  “Nice,” said Salem, making a grab for them, but Grant whisked them out of her reach.

  “What do we need?” Lucy asked. She surveyed the room again. They had two small couches and a big leather chair, a small wooden desk with the coffee maker, a half-empty bookshelf, a large built-in cupboard with paper cups, a stack of computer paper, and a box of old t-shirts advertising a canned food drive from six years ago.

  She turned to Grant. “I want a classroom key. I want my backpack.” Grant wiggled a key free and slapped it into her upturned palm.

  “I’ll open all the lockers in a section and we can go through them piece by piece. Save anything essential, right?” Grant asked.

  They nodded.

  They made the trek down to the English hall. Lucy let herself into Mrs. Johnston’s room and went straight to Ethan’s backpack, slipping it up over her shoulder, holding on to the strap tightly. More than anything, Lucy wanted to be reunited with her pictures. She looked around the room and assessed the familiar quality of it. Everything now seemed so foreign, so strange, and so empty. Pausing by Mrs. Johnston’s desk, she scanned the pictures, the notes from students and the ungraded papers.

  She hoped that Mrs. Johnston made it home. Hoped that her family was waiting; hoped that she had water and food and a plan. Some people deserved a happy ending, Lucy thought. And Mrs. Johnston was one of those people. She stopped for a second and opened up Mrs. Johnston’s desk drawers. She nabbed a bottle of ibuprofen, but couldn’t find anything else of use—various office supplies, a thank you note, a tube of lipstick, and a nail file. She left the remaining detritus undisturbed.

  When Lucy exited the room, she saw Grant opening lockers wide with the key and Salem swooping in to plunder. They worked as a team, standing side-by-side, yanking and pulling, flipping things over and tossing it to the ground.

  It felt so wrong. But it was also so necessary.

  Maybe the items in the lockers were important, but these were still artifacts of someone else’s life, tucked away for them to discover and judge. Within minutes Grant and Salem were tittering over some of their finds: Packs of condoms, a locker turned shrine for some overly auto-tuned pop star. Salem unearthed a collection of phones and music devices, treasure trove of technology, stuffed in a shoebox under unused textbooks and half-eaten sandwich.

  Grant spun to Lucy. “Hey, I unlocked a row over there,” he pointed to a section that included Lucy’s own locker. “Want to start on those?”

  Lucy gave pause to the instructions; she took a long look at Grant and Salem’s tag-team duo. Right then, Salem shrieked as she pulled out a pair of bright pink thong underwear and held it between her pointer and thumb fingers and she tossed them at Grant, who sidestepped away from them as if they contained the virus. The chumminess bothered her, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. She couldn’t command them all to stay morose and depressed, it wasn’t healthy. It was fine to smile, find distraction, but still Lucy couldn’t escape how tactless the playfulness felt.

  Stewing, Lucy walked over and pulled the first door open wide, letting it crash a little louder than she might have wanted. Then she went to the next, then the next, and then the next: Garbage, books, binders, chewed-down pencils, magnetic mirrors. Love notes from boyfriends, girlfriends, lunch bags, rotten fruit. The more lockers she searched, the more she realized how unsurprising the items were. When her classmates were reduced to things in a locker, they were impossible to differentiate from one another.

  She stopped and leaned her head against one of the doors. It moved under the pressure and she could feel the metal digging into her forehead.

  “Find anything? Salem called to her. Then without waiting for an answer, “Oh, gross…Grant…look at this one…”

  Lucy raised her head from the door and sighed. She went to the next locker and rummaged through the usual assortment of items. Then she shoved a paper bag out of the way and realized that it didn’t budge. She picked it up, unnerved by the heaviness, and looked inside. It was then she caught the shiny flash of silver and the black handle. Roaming around at the bottom of the bag was a handful of copper bullets, clinking against each other.

  In the background, Grant and Salem expressed amusement and intrigue over someone’s large collection of American flags. They found a small pill bottle filled with Vicodin and high-fived at the find.

  Lucy reached into the bag and took the gun in her right hand, and she let the bag fall to the floor where it fell to her feet. It was a revolver, like the cowboys in Westerns used to shoot. She examined it, rolling her hand over and she noticed the tremors in her fingers. She had never held a gun before, never felt the weight of it against her skin. Lucy recalled, with embarrassment, when her mother first dropped her off at Salem’s house for a play date, she took Mrs. Aguilar aside and asked brusquely if they had any guns in the house. “No. Of course not,” Mrs. Aguilar had answered in return, her face struggled against showing her offense. Only then did Maxine leave Lucy, kissing her for a second too long on the forehead and whispering instructions to call if she got homesick.

  They did not own guns. Her father did not hunt.

&
nbsp; And here she was, holding this gun and wondering—what did it mean? Why was it here?

  Hidden in a lunch bag, with bullets.

  Who did it belong to?

  Lucy pondered the danger of it all, and she tried desperately to place a person at this locker mere feet from her own. Who opened it? Who sat under it in the morning? Had she ever been in danger?

  But then the realization poured over her: Whoever brought this gun to school was likely dead now. Their intentions—to intimidate a bully, self-harm, bragging rights to friends—didn’t matter anymore. She pondered putting it back in the locker and shutting it back up, burying it under a geometry book and gym socks, hidden out of sight. Then Lucy realized that this could be a blessing. She spun and held the gun resting in the palm of her hand.

  “Sal? Grant?” Lucy called, aware of the rise in the timbre of her voice. “I found something,” she said and turned to her friends.

  “Is that a—” Grant started and he took a step. Sal turned around. She was holding a giant fleece blanket in one hand and a bulk container of hand-sanitizer in the other. She opened her mouth to speak, but then her head snapped quickly to the right.

  They all heard the clank and rumble of the gates as they moved upward, unhooking from their magnetic bases. They were exposed. Lucy’s eyes darted to the camera and it was trained directly on them.

  “The intercom is off,” Grant shouted and he scrambled forward to collect the items he had set aside. “We didn’t even notice…dammit…we didn’t even notice!”

  Spencer had spotted them. He had been watching them and he knew they were there; knew they were hiding. But more disturbingly, he knew they had a gun.