Virulent: The Release

by Shelbi Wescott

  “The cheerleader?” Grant asked. He resumed his paper-shooting game. Aim. Shoot. The paper bounced off the rim, the cup toppled over and fell to the floor. He looked at it like he wanted to pick it up, but didn’t move.

  “Yeah, that beautiful, perfect little cheerleader. Who—on top of being the only cheerleader who could pull off stunts—was also like super nice? And she took calculus. Super nice calculus taking cheerleader. Ugh. And she really liked him, you know?”

  “I don’t remember her dating anyone,” Lucy said. Just to say something, anything. Just to be a part of the conversation, but she knew better than to question Salem’s recollection of events.

  “Well, it was like a six month thing. Went right into the summer. Then something happened and they broke it off the next school year. That doesn’t matter. Brittney, true to form, never said anything bad about him. And he dropped the ties and started hanging out with the student council kids and joined yearbook. One day I had to go ask him for a yearbook photo for an article I was writing and I just felt all clammy. Like, well, here’s my chance. But I mean...seriously...Brittney Phillips? I convinced myself that my first crush on him was because I felt sorry for him. But that he was gonna be alright, you know? He survived that first year here, got a hot girlfriend, made some friends. And I wanted to be like, you know, I liked you first. I liked you before. Hey, Patrick. Remember when you would sneak into the band room and play Beatles songs on the piano? I stalked you and would listen. And I kinda fell in love with you. And I’m kinda sorry you’re popular now. Because I kinda, actually, want you all to myself.”

  Salem shrugged and picked at lint on her pants.

  “You never told me about him,” Lucy replied.

  “Yeah, well, I thought you might tell me to go for it,” the corners of Salem’s mouth turned up into a soft smile. “And what-might-have-been is always easier than well-that-was-a-disaster.”

  “The dream is better than the reality,” Grant affirmed.

  “Exactly. But it wasn’t entirely just in my head. He was the coolest kid I ever wanted to be with. And I never told him.” Salem looked to all of them. She sniffed. “Here’s the thing though. He was out there today trying to get into the school with me.”

  Grant and Lucy looked down at the floor—Lucy lowered her upper body to the floor and rested her head on her forearms.

  “One minute, he was there. I saw him and I was going to talk to him. The next minute, gone. Just like that. People moved him out of the courtyard and just dumped him on the grass, like he was garbage. Patrick Miller, the boy I still thought well, maybe, in the future. After college even. Or maybe I could just say, I don’t know, just admit that I liked him. And now it’s not even that I’ll never get to say it. It’s not even that. It’s this idea that he’s completely gone. And I want to remember him. I just keep thinking of everyone who will never be remembered. How sad is that? And there won’t be memorials or funerals or...I mean...they don’t even get their own time to be remembered. Just another body.”

  Lucy felt the tears building. She sniffed and let them fall. “Yeah. I thought that too,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” Salem paused. “It’s just—” her hand went up to her crucifix and she spun it along the chain.

  “I get it,” Grant said. “I understand. Their lives mattered.” There was a long pause and then he added, “Amanda. Amanda Starr.”

  “I knew her,” Salem said and closed her eyes.

  “Yeah. She was my first love. For a whole summer she came to my dad’s farm and we swam in the little creek by my house and we’d ride horses. Then in September, the day before school was starting…she came out to me. She was too embarrassed to tell anyone. She said she always knew since she was little, but that her parents told her she just needed to find the right guy. We talked for hours. It was actually a really good moment. I told her I loved her. And she asked me not to tell anyone. She said she wasn’t ready. That we’d take it to our graves.”

  “I didn’t know that. Amanda was gay,” Salem repeated the news slowly and shook her head. “What else didn’t we know about people? People we saw every day.”

  There was a bit of jealousy in her voice; here was a juicy piece of someone’s life that Salem was not privy too. Something she had missed, that someone else knew. She looked at Grant with adoration and begged for him to keep going. “What else? What do you remember? What were you too afraid to tell someone?”

  So Grant cozied up, wrapping the fleece blanket around his legs and leaning his head back. “I don’t know…what do I remember?”

  Slowly, slowly, they brought classmates back to life with humor and anecdotes. The spilling of secrets that no longer mattered.

  Lucy contributed when she could, but mostly she listened, feeling heartsick. She wondered what they’d say about her if she had been one of the fallen.

  It was human to want people to remember you; human to want to feel heard. With her last remaining battery life, Lucy opened up her profile page and her fingers hovered over a status update. She typed, slowly: I’m still alive. Then she poised her finger around the send key and contemplated if it mattered if she sent it, if anyone would see it, or if just saying it out loud made it feel like a victory instead of a loss.

  Then Lucy gasped. Just as she was about to exit out, her phone buzzed in her hand.

  She had a text message.

  Lucy’s heart stopped and her veins ran cold. Her hand was almost too heavy to click on the smiling-face icon. That little emoticon so bright and cheery and so full of hope.

  She looked.

  It was from Ethan.

  Ethan was out there and he was alive.

  His message was from mere seconds ago and it just read: “Don’t leave. Stay safe. I’m coming for you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Five days after The Release

  Ethan’s imminent arrival gave Lucy hope and equipped her with temporary patience. She had tried unsuccessfully to send him a text in reply, but the network kept bouncing it back. Out of anger and frustration she just sent a message that said Waiting! both as a battle cry for her frustration and an exclamation of her excitement. Of course, that text slipped away and sent. The last message she could get to him was neither revealing nor warm, and she hoped that Ethan would not think her text was implying she had been anxiously expecting him for two days.

  They all worried about immediate details. How would Ethan find them? How would he navigate Spencer’s supreme desire for a school absent of all other life? And then the most dangerous thought of all—maybe the text had been sent days ago and only now found its way through the fickle network. Then their hope and plans would be futile and in vain, entirely rooted in misconception.

  It didn’t help that it had been three days since Lucy began expecting Ethan. Her phone died not long after the text arrived and Salem and Grant’s phones didn’t last much longer. She was vigilant and aware, but losing confidence that Ethan was safe.

  “Something must’ve happened. It wouldn’t take him this long to get here,” Lucy complained. It was day five. Grant’s baby-face began showing subtle signs of fur as pale blonde whiskers poked up on his chin and under his nose, barely noticeable, but still there.

  It was morning. They assumed. Hours and minutes weren’t important, only daylight and darkness. Spencer periodically marched the halls, which kept them confined to their hideout for extended periods of time. Lucy had ventured to the journalism lab on two occasions to check the Internet and found that sites no longer existed. There was an endless hourglass, in perpetual thinking, never connecting to a world outside. She occasionally ventured to the woodshop to use their makeshift bathrooms, but for the most part, over the past few days, Grant, Lucy, and Salem had stayed hunkered down.

  “Do you think he got here and Spencer shot him?” Lucy asked. “Possible, right?” Sporadic gunfire was now a normal sound and they regarded it with annoyed eye-rolls and when it interrupted naps or sleep and they
growled in frustration. They never assumed Spencer was actually shooting at anything in particular, but they could have been wrong.

  “You’re being paranoid,” Grant said. He clicked a confiscated zippo lighter open, running his thumb over the flint wheel over and over again.

  “Am I?” Lucy paced. “We’ve been shot at.”

  “We don’t know if he wanted to kill you,” Grant replied. The wick erupted into flame for a brief second and Grant closed the lid tight.

  “It takes an hour to walk to my house.”

  “Lucy—” Grant said her name slowly with an undercurrent of warning. “You’ve been having this conversation for days now. Days.”

  Salem, who had been watching Lucy pace, her head moving left and right like she was in attendance at a slow-moving tennis match, stood up and walked to the mini-fridge. Flipping it open, she grabbed a peanut-butter-sandwich and bottled water and she opened the package with an exaggerated rip, the crinkling of the wrapper was the only sound in the tiny space. Lucy’s stomach soured a bit as she watched Salem eat, the smell of peanut butter filling their small room. At first it was welcome nourishment, but now Lucy could barely choke one down.

  Salem paused, mid-bite and then she rushed back over to the fridge and sat on her haunches, legs folded under her. She began to pull out the food with both hands and sorting it into three piles. When she was done with the contents of the fridge, she moved to the garbage bags, adding whatever bags of chips or granola bars they had left. She worked with determined efficiency—pull, stack, sort—her jaw still working her breakfast.

  “What are you doing?” Grant asked.

  Salem, mouth full, glanced sidelong at him. “I am seeing,” she answered.

  “Seeing what?” Lucy spat, angry that her own issues were temporarily ignored and invalidated.

  “Food,” was all Salem said. She took the three piles of sandwiches and waters, juices and thawing chicken nuggets, yogurt squeeze tubes, and then counted. She looked to the trio wide-eyed. “If we eat three meals a day and drink 2 bottles of water a day…this will last us…only three more days.” She sat back, and then sprang up, reached for Ethan’s backpack and started rummaging through it, tossing out Lucy’s books in distracted ambivalence.

  “Stop,” Lucy said and when Salem ignored her, she put her hand out, touching her friend on the shoulder. “Stop!”

  Then Salem’s hand landed on what she was looking for—a yellow thin-tipped highlighter—she walked back to the food and marked it: L, S, and G. After branding their piles, she stood up and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Wait, wait, wait. Wait a second,” Grant said. “But you already ate a sandwich this morning and Lucy and I haven’t had anything. So, that isn’t even. And you ate three bags of the popcorn last night when I didn’t have any. So, it’s not like we’ve been equitable until now. Why the sudden concern over fairness?”

  “I’m not concerned with fairness,” Salem replied, her hand still hovering over the sandwiches. “I’m concerned about eating. And making sure we can eat. And here,” she hoisted herself up and walked over to her half-eaten sandwich, broke off two pieces and handed them to Grant and Lucy. “Fine. Now we’re even,” she said.

  Lucy handed her piece to Grant and walked over to the couch and plopped herself down; she grabbed a thick chunk of her hair and began to spin it around her pointer finger. It was oily and slick. She caught a whiff of her own body odor and turned her head away.

  “There’s no more food. Don’t you get it? We’re trapped in here. This is all we have. So, your pile is your pile. You can eat it all at once or ration it out. But your pile is your pile.”

  Lucy looked to her stack of food and then to Salem, wondering what nightmares Salem had encountered in the dark to wake up so changed and rattled. They each had their share of waking up mid-scream. As time passed, they got closer to each other every evening, sleeping in a mass on the floor, pulling each other close for warmth and comfort. The room was suffocating and small, but the people of history had often waited for the world’s atrocities to end while hiding in small attics, basements, and closets.

  They would be fine.

  Ethan was coming.

  They would be fine.

  Lucy wished she could convey this mantra with enthusiasm to her colleagues in waiting. In an act of boredom, she reached into Ethan’s book bag and pulled out the copy of Fahrenheit 451. She read the first line. She read the line over and over fifty or more times before moving on to the next section. The words floated before her—her eyes scanning those six simple words before she moved to the next part.

  But she couldn’t get her brain to focus. Lucy shut the book on her finger. The room had been silent for too long; Salem’s sullen expression made Lucy furious.

  “Come on, I can’t let it go. Ethan is out there!” Lucy said on the verge of tears. “And I don’t feel like any of you give a rat’s ass about it.”

  “Salem would like to carve up a rat’s ass into three perfect proportions for dinner,” Grant quipped unsmiling and then ducked as an empty water bottle careened toward his head.

  “You think he wants to get us out? Maybe he wants in,” Salem said. “You haven’t thought of that, have you?” She leaned her back against the wall and slid down, resting her elbows on her knees. “Then I’ll have to reconfigure the food.”

  “Really? You’re still just worried that we might run out of peanut butter and jelly? What the hell is wrong with you? My brother is alive and you can’t even pretend like you’re happy about it. Screw you, Salem. If you don’t want to leave when Ethan gets here that’s on you. But me? I’m out of here. And guess what, when I’m gone, you and Grant can split the food pile. Have an extra bag of Cheetos. Merry Christmas.”

  “Lucy—” Salem started to say, her eyes wild. Then she stopped herself and put a hand up. “Never mind. Just never mind.” And with that Salem stood back up, marched over to a chair where the classroom keys were resting, grabbed them, and stormed out of the room. Grant and Lucy listened as Salem unlocked the journalism lab door and went inside, the second door shutting behind her.

  “I can’t handle her drama today.” Lucy tucked the book under her leg and kept twirling her hair.

  “That might have been a little harsh,” Grant replied, he scratched the top part of his scalp and grimaced apologetically.

  “Wait,” Lucy looked at him. “Which one of us was too harsh? My brother is coming for me. He is.” And she didn’t know if she believed it or if she just wanted to believe it.

  It took a while for Grant to answer and when he did, he changed the subject. “What does it feel like?” he asked, not looking at her, his eyes wandering to the door and then to the carpet.

  “What does what feel like?”

  “I don’t mean anything by it. I just want to know. Ethan…he’s alive…to the best of our knowledge.”

  Then everything clicked all at once; the last pieces of the jigsaw sliding into place. “Oh.”

  “I’m not being passive-aggressive,” Grant replied. But maybe he was a little. Or he was tactfully steering her toward the truth. “It’s just...you know...it’s like we were all sitting around playing our lottery numbers. And you won.”

  Lucy didn’t say anything. Color and heat rushed to her cheeks.

  “What did I win exactly?”

  “A survivor.”

  “Oh, come on,” Lucy tried to calm herself down and she tried to push the seeping defensiveness away. “Your dad could still be—”

  “No. He’s not. My dad is a coward. He didn’t really care for me. I mean, not really. He made it mighty clear that I was just a burden to him. If the virus didn’t get him, I bet he took his own life…without a single thought about me. But hey…at least he’s consistent. Didn’t care about me from day one, why start now?”

  “I’m sorry.” But Lucy didn’t know what she was apologizing for: Ethan being alive or Grant’s father being dead.

  “It’s hard,” Grant continued,
“not to be hurt that you have something we don’t.”

  They sat without speaking, Lucy resisting the urge to spill out her defenses. She sighed shakily and swallowed.

  “It’s not like...you know...we...me,” he quickly corrected, “wanted you to have lost everything too.”

  “I get it,” Lucy said kindly. And she did. She could understand the jealousy and bitterness, the anger. “But you’re right. You were all right. Maybe he’s...maybe the message was from that first morning and he’s gone now too. Maybe I’m chasing a phantom. But—”

  “But,” he cocked one eyebrow, “maybe he’s not gone.”

  “I can’t help but hope,” Lucy answered, willing herself not to cry.

  Grant sighed and crawled over. Hesitating, he put an arm over her shoulders. “We don’t want to take away your hope,” Grant said in a whisper. “It’s envy.”

  “I should go to Salem,” Lucy said and rose on her haunches, but Grant put a hand on her knee and kept her from rising the full way.

  “Nah, just let her be by herself,” he told her and Lucy listened. She settled back down on the floor and eventually stretched her whole body out on the ground, staring at the ceiling. She saw her book and grabbed it, flipping through the pages, her arms stiff above her, just flipping, flipping, not really reading, but scanning the words, taking in bits and pieces.

  She noticed a phrase and it caught her off guard. Spilling from the page some character asked another character about the life before. It was an interesting concept. Some day, maybe, people would wonder: What was life like before the virus? Before the virus. The world wasn’t always demolished, broken, and full of fear, she wanted to scream. Lucy let these words and ideas percolate through her.

  “I’ve read that book,” Grant said. He was leaning against the couch now, his eyes closed.

  “Uh-huh,” Lucy responded. “Mrs. Johnston gave it to me. To read on my trip.”