The System (Virulent Book 2)

by Shelbi Wescott

  Scott took a step toward the screen and without looking at Huck, said, “How did you get this footage?”

  “You have a lovely family,” Huck replied. “The footage is live. Here, let me show you.” He leaned down to his desk and punched a button on his phone. “Blair, can you patch this line through to Brandon? Thank you.” He paused and then said, “Brandon, hello. Scott King is here. Could you zoom in on the baby? Harper, right? Just zoom in.”

  And the camera on the TV zoomed forward until the screen was filled with his two-year-old daughter’s chubby face. She squealed, although the sound was muted, and Scott felt sick.

  “She’s a cutie,” Huck said and smiled. “I have a granddaughter myself. Children are so joyful and amazing. I’m quite fond of them.”

  “You’re watching my home? My wife and my kids?”

  “We have no other choice,” Huck replied apologetically. Scott looked at him. He was confused by the sadness that permeated the old man’s face. There was guilt in the lines in his forehead and around his eyes; he was tormented, apologetic, but unwavering all the same. “What if you choose to leave? Try to shut our program down? We have to take precautions. There would be consequences…we’ve worked so hard to get to this place and we cannot have the whole thing ruined because we made one single error. One bad call.”

  “Don’t you dare hurt them.”

  Huck nodded. “Sit Scott,” he motioned again for the chair. “Let’s discuss this like gentlemen.”

  Scott’s mouth dropped open. Aghast. “Look. Leave my family out of this. Threatening them won’t make me want to work for you.”

  “If you don’t work for us, that’s fine. We’ll find someone else. We won’t find someone better than you, and that’s the truth, but we can replace you. But you saw the date on our proposal. We’re under a time crunch, especially since our last head scientist is no longer with us.”

  “Is he dead?” Scott asked wide-eyed. “Good God, did you kill him?”

  “Goodness, no.” Huck laughed and he took a long puff. “My colleagues are like family. You’ll see…you will. It’s not what you think. Look, Scott, it’s simple. You work with us and you receive an exceptional advantage. You will get an opportunity to save your family. Think of where your kids will be in four years…that doll right there,” he motioned toward Harper’s smiling face, “will be in kindergarten. Your oldest son, in college. And then one day, the world as they know it will end. They will be heading off to meet friends, walking into a class at school, and…” he lowered his voice to a whisper, sucked on his cigar, blew the smoke outward and said in a cloud of haze: “Extinction.”

  Scott felt his blood run cold.

  “Of course, you can try to save them on your own,” Huck continued. “But if you are with us, their security is guaranteed. You won’t need to worry, fret, ponder if they will have futures…they will have futures. They can fall in love, have children; all the things you want for your children when you hold them as babies…they will get all of that and more. The world we are building is a world of comfort, safety, and progress. What legacy are you leaving for these kids?”

  Scott blinked and waited for Huck’s speech to continue; then he realized Huck wanted a reply. “Oh. A legacy of...” he gulped. “Integrity, I suppose. Love. Honesty. Respect for people and the earth—”

  Huck’s hand flew down to the table and hit the wooden surface with force; the bang echoed in the sparsely furnished room. “This world…this world has none of those things. You are fighting a losing battle! But my world will change that. Don’t you truly want those things for your children?”

  “I—” Scott couldn’t finish; he felt clammy and in shock. There were no camera crews waiting in the wings; no one was going to watch his reaction with a laugh track dubbed over his dumbfounded expressions.

  “So, before you leave today, I want to ask you, Scott King. Are you for the cause?” Huck jammed his cigar into the corner of his mouth and left it there, smoldering.

  “No,” Scott answered instantly. “The cause of murder?”

  “Change. A future. A baby was killed the other day. Shot…in the face…by a family friend while he and the dad did drugs. Did you hear that story? It was on the news. That is just one story, Scott. One story of darkness and evil and sadness. There is fear everywhere and I’m taking it back. I want to live in kindness, honesty, truth. None of that exists in this world. None of it.”

  Scott wiped his brow. He had heard the story of the baby. It was disgusting. Like any parent, his thoughts had gone to his own children and their precious and fragile lives. “There is good too,” he countered, but his voice was weak, quiet. “There is good on this earth.”

  “Not enough good,” was Huck’s assured reply.

  “Why?” Scott asked, his mouth dry. He swallowed and asked again, “Why are you doing this to me?”

  Without a reply, Huck leaned down and grabbed a remote—he pointed it at the flat screen and paused the live feed: the image of Harper froze on the screen with his daughter Lucy a fuzzy blur in the background, still hunched over her phone.

  Then Huck turned and walked right up to Scott. He put a hand on his shoulder. Popping the cigar out of his mouth, he cleared his throat and smiled a toothy grin. “The short answer? For them.” He pointed to the screen. “For the people we love. But in time…I’ll discuss it all in time. You will see how my plan came to be, and why it must happen, and then you will understand that there is no other way. Everyone does, in time. Everyone. So come, Scott.” He started walking toward the door. “Let’s go get some dinner.” He looked back to see if his guest was following. “Are you in the mood for sushi?”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

  Lucy sat among the growing lupines, their purple buds stretching to the sky and swaying in the cool spring wind. From the grassy and flower-covered hill, Lucy admired the towering Grand Tetons in the distance and the still waters of Jackson Lake. She watched the glassy water ripple toward the shore and always—despite knowing that it wouldn’t happen—expected to see a fish jump or a vacationer kayak past. Some earthly expectations were hard to overcome.

  The log cabins of Jackson Lake Mountain Lodge were all empty. There were no dead bodies to move, no smells to overcome, no rotting surprises left to discover around the corner. The virus, unleashed by bioterrorists, claimed the residents of the small Wyoming town before vacation season opened, and so the cabins were the perfect discovery after long days on the road. Each cabin was deceptively rustic on the outside and luxurious on the inside; they offered a welcome respite from travel for Lucy King and Grant Trotter as they made their way from Portland to Brixton, Nebraska.

  The duo had landed their hot air balloon in central Oregon. Grant might have known how to fill the balloon and sail it out and over the congested city and suburbs, and he might have known how to follow the wind, but landing was a skill he had yet to master. Lucy had a fist-sized bruise on her leg that was finally fading to a respectable shade of yellow. and her jammed finger no longer ached. She would have teased Grant about his inability to think through the landing part, but he had looked embarrassed and ashamed after they crawled out of the overturned basket.

  From there: they slept in an empty house, stole a green Toyota Camry with a full tank of gas, and followed the highway all the way into Idaho before stranding themselves right outside of Boise. It was easy to push away the thoughts of what had happened to the world as they drove down nearly deserted back roads and empty towns.

  Grant and Lucy had not seen another living soul since leaving her brother Ethan back in Oregon. Ethan wasn’t alone: he had Darla and her young son Teddy, both of whom he had befriended at the Portland airport amidst the tragedy and chaos of Release Day. While Grant and Lucy had thought of their Oregon contingent often, they knew that Darla, who had worked with industrious diligence to free Lucy from the high school where she had been kept captive, would care for Ethan in
their absence.

  The hardest part was not knowing. So, they trudged forward, focusing on the goal at hand: Nebraska.

  As they moved forward across state lines, in and out of cities, they would occasionally spy a flutter of movement, a shadow dancing across a curtain or something shifting in the corner of their eye, but every search for survivors ended with disappointment. The shadows were from the wind, and the movement just figments of their imaginations. No, the world was quiet; people were gone.

  But reminders of their existence were everywhere.

  When they got to Boise, they saw that the absence of human life was causing more than just empty cities and abandoned vehicles. Pipes had burst, streets were swamped with sewage and debris and, in many places, fires still smoldered. All around them was evidence of those who perished after the Release—evidence of a former life. Even though it had been only two weeks and two days since the world succumbed to terrorism, it felt like years.

  From Boise, they walked, bicycled, hiked, and eventually found two more cars with enough gas to get them across state lines. When they drove into the Yellowstone National Park and stumbled upon the Jackson Lake Mountain Lodge, Lucy and Grant knew they had to rest. Road weary and hungry and struggling with basic hygiene, the empty cabins beckoned them.

  What was planned as a single overnight recouping of energy turned into a three-day spiritual and emotional renewal. Nebraska was calling them, but the beautiful snow-capped mountains, late-night fires in the comfort of king sized beds, and lazy mornings by the lake were exactly what they needed. The resort town appealed to them most of all because it was easy to forget the world was empty. The reminders of death and destruction were few and far between: dead fish and dead birds, not dead people. Although finding dead people wasn’t as alarming as it had been when the virus first broke out. In larger cities and smaller towns, they regarded the dead like any other inanimate object: fire hydrant, mailbox, body.

  The shells of people who were once living, breathing, alive, were just part of the landscape of their changed lives and nothing more.

  Lucy heard footsteps behind her, and she grabbed a single lupine in front of her and ran her hand over the stock, stripping it of flower petals. She loved the way the stalk felt against her hand, the rough bumps against her skin. Without turning, she picked at the fallen purple petals and cleared her throat. “I left you a note on the counter…I didn’t want to wake you,” she said.

  Grant sat down beside her and nudged her in the side with his elbow. “You don’t have to leave me notes. It’s not like you’re ever going very far. I think I can probably figure it out on my own.”

  She smiled at him and looked outward toward the lake. “I always leave notes when I’m going out. My momma taught me well.”

  Stretching his legs out in front of him and leaning back on his elbows in the grass, Grant looked over at her and examined her profile, the backdrop of Yellowstone behind her. “It’s beautiful here.”

  “It is,” she replied.

  He reached out without looking and tried to grab a flower, but he missed. His hand brushed against Lucy’s leg and she didn’t flinch away. His closeness no longer affected her like it might have before the Release; they just existed, two parts of a whole—two people on a mission, working together. They enjoyed sitting like this, in silence, one of the most beautiful places in the world enveloping them into a feeling of safety and peace. If they left here, they would lose that. If they left here, they would have to admit that the world had ended. Sometimes it was nice to forget.

  “Okay, my turn. I’ve thought of one.”

  Lucy smiled. “Male or female?”

  “Male.”

  “TV or movies,” she asked.

  Grant looked above at the clouds and squinted, thinking. “Mostly movies. Some TV. Before he got big.” Grant couldn’t contain a subtle smirk. Lucy caught the intonation and rolled her eyes.

  “You gave too much away…I swear. Pop culture is my party trick. You won’t ever win.”

  “You think you know already? That’s like three clues. That could almost be everyone in Hollywood.”

  “Tom Hanks,” Lucy answered and she crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Whatever. You’re right. I gave it away…no need to show off,” he replied and he tossed a handful of grass at her, but the wind carried it off before it could land. They settled into silence; the Guess-Who game, a variant on twenty-questions that they played during their car rides, ending anti-climatically. Then Grant sighed, and he dropped his voice down to an almost whisper. “We’ve been here three days.”

  “I know.”

  Lucy didn’t want to look at Grant and see the pressure to leave this place in his eyes. She knew if she saw him, saw his brown eyes and the eagerness, that she would stomp back to the cabin, pack her bag, and climb back behind the wheel of their third vehicle—some silver hatchback that still smelled like cigarette smoke and fast food—and drive straight to Nebraska without a second thought. But something was keeping her rooted in this place; a certain type of contentment that only the wilderness could provide.

  Grant never pressured Lucy to make decisions. He never blindly conceded to her wishes either, and he didn’t storm forward with his own agenda. Even when Lucy wished that Grant would just take control, he refused. She admired his maturity while simultaneously feeling aggrieved that it required her to be mature, too. It would have been easy to fall into some angst-ridden teenage moodiness. Discovering your father may have helped plan the extermination of the human race wasn’t an emotional picnic. Here though—sitting among the flowers and the mountains—reality seemed more beautiful, less dark.

  “I don’t want to rush you—”

  “Us,” she corrected and shot him a sideways glance. “It doesn’t have to be just my decision.” He was staring right at her and she turned back to the lake and kept her eyes trained straight ahead. Nebraska—the idea of it—seemed dark and far away. It was only an eight-hour drive, and there was the potential that her family was close, but when Lucy thought of what she’d find there, the comforts of their log cabins seemed safer. And safe was good.

  “Yes, it does,” Grant replied with a half-smile. “It really does.”

  Lucy reached out and grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. She couldn’t begin to verbalize how grateful she was that Grant understood the enormity of this last leg. And she couldn’t admit to him that she was losing her nerve.

  In the end, she had championed the trip, relished the idea of storming into the great unknown. There was an exhilaration born from the adventure, but they’d been on the road long enough that the novelty had worn off; now, with the truth so close, she longed for Oregon and Ethan and mornings of fixing Teddy breakfast and helping him discover the chapter books of her early childhood—Little House on the Prairie or anything with Ramona Quimby or The Boxcar Children, CS Lewis or Roald Dahl.

  If her family was safe, they would have come for her. The fact that they hadn’t should have been a clue. Her heart tugged her back toward the known.

  Grant seemed to sense the trepidation in her silence. He lowered himself to the ground and then tucked his arms under his head.

  They sat like this several times over the past few days. Grant sprawled out staring at the sky, Lucy tucked up, knees to chest, shedding the flowers of their petals.

  “We can’t stay here forever,” Grant said.

  “You have to admit it’s tempting,” Lucy replied.

  “Come on, Lula,” he admonished kindly, using her best friend Salem’s moniker for her. It was endearing and sad all wrapped up into one. They had been there together when Salem succumbed to the virus, and the images haunted Lucy every time she closed her eyes.

  “I think we give it another night. Just one more? Sit by the fire, make a good meal. And I want to know it’s our last night. I want to enjoy it. I don’t know what lies ahead…and I want to have one good, big, night.”

  �
�We’ll be in Nebraska by tomorrow, then?” Grant asked, his eyebrows raised.

  She shuddered. Then shrugged. And finally nodded.

  “Hey, I get it,” Grant said. “And I don’t blame you,” he added. “But—”

  “I know,” she interrupted him. “I know. Tomorrow.” Giving them a time frame made it real and tangible; in twenty-four hours she would be in a different state and searching for her family.

  Grant didn’t move from the ground. “Did you travel much? As a kid?” he asked, sensing her discomfort and changing the subject. “Have you ever been here…before everything?”

  “Yellowstone?” Lucy asked, and then she shook her head. “We didn’t travel too much.” Traveling with six kids was a nightmare; all promises of joyous family vacations ended in disaster and yelling. Once they had gone to Disneyland, but it was in the pre-Harper era, as Lucy was embarking on her first year of junior high. The twins cried the entire plane trip and Galen never stopped talking; once they arrived, Ethan and Lucy kept trying to pretend like they were spending the day by themselves. They migrated ten steps forward, backward, or to the side, assuming the identities of older teens enjoying a day of independence. Once, Maxine called to them to join them in a line, and Ethan yelled back, “Stop talking to us! Creep.”

  How much she had longed to be free from her embarrassing family during that particular vacation. Many of their Disneyland pictures captured Lucy’s pre-teen angst perfectly; pouty lips, crossed arms, nary a happy thought in sight. Ethan whispered in her ear while they climbed aboard Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, “It’s not like we even need them for anything. I know how to get back to the hotel. We should ask to split up.” The request was met with icy glares and too-loud lectures about the importance of family.

  “Someday I’ll be dead and you’ll wish you enjoyed Disneyland with me,” Maxine had said to Lucy with an extended finger, her voice loud enough to solicit bemused smiles from passersby.