The System (Virulent Book 2)

by Shelbi Wescott

  Frustrated, Darla shot the doctor a look and then threw her hands up in the air, agitated and defeated.

  “Then it’s settled. Say sayonara to your little self-imposed exile. It’s hard to hide when there are only a handful of us left alive,” Spencer replied swiftly and he turned to walk away. “I’m thinking of a housewarming party in a few days. Save the date,” he added with a smile, and then he walked back down the hallway and out of the house, leaving the doctor and Darla alone with Ethan’s broken, bloodied body.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Brixton, Nebraska

  It was late afternoon when Lucy and Grant rolled into Brixton. Lucy’s heart nearly stopped when she saw the green population sign announcing their arrival: Welcome to Brixton. Population 26. It appeared that the population used to read twenty-seven, but someone had drawn over the seven with a sharpie—broadcasting the loss in crude, broad stroke marks. Beyond the sign was another half a mile of nothingness, flat plains, knee high grass waving, dancing, and welcoming them into the city like a parade.

  When they reached the first set of buildings, Grant rolled the car to a stop, threw open the door, and then swung his foot out on to the dirt, stretching his arms up to the sky.

  Lucy followed behind him, exiting the car and looking around.

  Brixton was a ghost town.

  From their vantage spot, they could see most of the city: A church, a bar, a fire station, a schoolhouse, a general store, a post-office, and a library—beyond that a cluster of houses and a baseball field, and a red grain silo towered to the sky. The store and the bar stood side-by-side along the narrow Main Street.

  That was it; that was the entire city. All of Brixton could fit inside of one-quarter of Lucy’s local mall back home—a sprawling expanse of department stores, pretzel shops, and makeup kiosks. And the dusty town wouldn’t even take up one quadrant of the area. She’d never visited a city this small; a city practically nonexistent. A city of nothingness.

  Lucy couldn’t help but wonder about the people who chose to live their life in a place like this, so far away from civilization, removed from a decent shoe store or coffee shop. What did the people of Brixton do when they wanted to watch a new movie or go out for pizza? She started to feel sorry for the kids who lived here, but then she shook her head, frustrated with herself. It still took too long to realize that movies and shoe stores and nights eating pizza were relegated to the distant past.

  Unless Brixton had been protected from the virus that killed the world, everyone here was gone.

  “This doesn’t look promising, does it?” Lucy asked and she walked over to Grant and stood by him—they took in the flat landscape and the empty buildings. They had the appearance of a movie set facade. She wondered if they walked inside if there would be nothing there but exposed beams and open sky. “There’s no one here.”

  Only the church looked somewhat substantial with its white roof and bell tower and stained glass windows adding color to the landscape.

  “Hey now, don’t get discouraged yet. There’s only one way to find out,” Grant replied and he started to walk forward.

  Lucy remained with one hand planted on the car, her eyes searching everywhere for movement. She hadn’t expected a welcome sign or an army of people waiting for her, but she had expected something—she had hoped for people, for life.

  “You coming?” Grant called to her.

  Without answering, Lucy jogged to catch up. She kept pace with Grant, matching his steps as they meandered down Main Street, where the road fluctuated between paved and unpaved in increments.

  Their heads vacillated between the right side and the left side of the street—storefronts on one side, grass and a boarded up house, the church, and library on the other. When they reached the midway point, they both stopped.

  “Maybe we got all the clues wrong,” Lucy said and she let out a long, slow exhale. “There’s nothing here to see.”

  “Come on,” Grant waved her forward.

  The bar on the main strip sported a huge neon sign out front that read: Carson’s Place. With the power out, the sign looked depressing in the afternoon sun; the fluorescent tubing winding around itself in forced cursive. In the front window, the blinds were drawn tight, but the door was left standing wide open. Grant walked straight to the open door and nudged it open further with his toe before peering inside.

  Lucy, only steps behind him, sidled up to his elbow.

  Without a word, Grant walked into the bar and made a beeline for the blinds. He yanked them upward; the sun spilled in through the streaky window and flooded the area with light, illuminating a swirl of dust particles that floated around their vision. Lucy coughed and waved her hand—the dust danced and swam and settled on the floor.

  With the sun as their light, Grant began to inspect the bar. There were two abandoned drinks on the bar-top—a coffee cup and a brown liquor of some kind. The coffee had hardened to a block of solid sludge and the top was dotted with mold. White and green circles grew on the surface of the former liquid and crawled up the sides of the porcelain.

  The dust on the floor was undisturbed by footprints until Grant’s and Lucy’s own shoes created a pathway of tracks.

  “Totally vacant,” Grant stated the obvious. But he looked perplexed.

  “The virus?”

  “This place has been empty long before that.” He pointed to a bowl of fruit on the counter—formerly bananas, lemons, limes—they were virtually indistinguishable. Each one was merely a lump of green, dusty mold. If Lucy had touched one, it would have disappeared into the air. Cobwebs floated from the ceiling; the mirror behind the bar no longer displayed a reflection—the dirt and grime obscured every inch of its surface.

  “These drinks were left here,” Grant pointed. “And the door was unlocked. There are open bottles on the ledge. They left in a hurry?”

  Lucy felt a shiver crawl up the back of her neck and her arm hair stood on end.

  “I’m going back outside,” she whispered and shuffled back out into the sunlight.

  Without a word, Grant exited the bar behind her and stood on the street with his arms crossed. He looked up and down, his eyes scanning, searching. Then without announcement, he walked into the general store next and Lucy followed at his heels. The store was equally abandoned. Lucy ran her hand over one of the shelves in the fully stocked store. She passed by rows of canned goods, cereal boxes, and two liter bottles of soda.

  “This isn’t right.” Lucy called over the row of untouched supplies. “Unless…everyone here died before they thought about stocking up on things?”

  “Or maybe it’s such a small town that no one thought of looting?”

  “But look.” Lucy ran her hand over the top of a box of rice and held her finger up for Grant to see. It was darkened from the dust.

  “Too much neglect. That box has been there a long time,” Grant said.

  “Right.”

  They left the store and stood once more in the center of the road.

  “I’m confused,” Lucy admitted. “Isn’t there supposed to be something here? Anything? I feel like I should be searching for the next clue maybe.”

  “Your father wouldn’t send us here for another clue,” Grant sighed and ran his hand over his hair. “That’s just mean spirited. No. What we’re looking for is either here…or it isn’t here anymore. Look, Lucy, I don’t think I’d want to stay here tonight and we’re almost out of gas—”

  “No. There has to be something here.”

  “So, Brixton. What are we missing?” Grant spoke into the road. Then he turned to Lucy, and he reached over and nudged her shoulder. “Don’t be discouraged. It’s not like we’ve seen the whole city.”

  “Yes, we have,” Lucy replied and she waved her hand in a sweeping gesture in front of her body. “This is the whole town. There’s no one in the bar or the store. There’s no one coming out to greet us. There are no dead bodies. It’s just like everyone here van
ished.”

  Then Lucy raised her eyes and saw the post office. A wind-torn American flag flapped lazily next to its entrance, and a blue mail bin, covered in dust and mud, sat next to the entrance. She had an idea. “Alright, there’s one thing we can check.” She started walking swiftly toward the brick building; this time Grant followed her. When she reached the post office, she pushed open the single glass door and listened as a tinny bell announced her arrival.

  The Brixton post-office was a single room with a laminate countertop separating the front and the back. Along the far wall were PO boxes and Lucy realized that the townspeople must not have had mailboxes, but rather traveled to this building daily to collect their mail. Its cash register was ancient and the drawer was wide open; stacks of ones and fives, and a single twenty, remained.

  Without fear, Lucy ducked under the counter and waltzed into the belly of the mailroom. Several buckets of unsorted mail remained untouched on a back counter and Lucy reached in and grabbed a letter. The postmark was from two years ago. She tossed it to the side and grabbed another; same postmark date—two years before.

  Lucy tossed Grant a small package and he fumbled to catch it against his body.

  “What do you notice?” she asked him. He glanced at the white packaging and shrugged.

  “Someone actually mails things to people in this city?” he asked and then he smiled at his own joke—his single dimple appearing for a moment. Lucy rolled her eyes.

  “Date,” she instructed and pointed.

  Grant looked down and read the postmark himself. “Huh,” was all he said in reply.

  “Is that strange?” she asked.

  Grant nodded, perplexed, and then he set the package down on the counter next to them. “So…everyone in Brixton’s been AWOL since before the attacks?”

  “Seems that way.”

  Lucy peered back into the darkened part of the post office—the rows of unclaimed, unsorted mail that sat in darkness, beyond the sunlight. She tried to see if there was anything more worth exploring. The back part of the building didn’t have windows and it was blanketed in stale, dusty darkness.

  “This place creeps me out,” Grant said and he took a step back toward the exit.

  “This whole town creeps me out.”

  “Maybe it’s something about being around dead people’s mail. I don’t know.”

  “Did you grab our flashlight?” Lucy asked. Back in the dimly lit mailroom she could see several large boxes wrapped with clear packing tape and showing evidence of wear on the corners. She glanced back at Grant; he rested his body against the back part of the counter, his elbows perched behind him on the counter. He shook his head. Lucy turned and took a tentative step into the shadows.

  “What else is there to see?” Grant called after her. “Let’s go. The next empty place awaits our discovery.”

  Lucy thought about heeding Grant’s advice, but she couldn’t help her curiosity; there was a certain voyeuristic allure about this place. Who mailed that package? What was inside? Would the person who mailed it assumed it found its way to the recipient; had they spent two years wondering why no one called to say thank you? Her mind wandered to unclaimed Christmas presents or birthday gifts—or maybe even something more sinister. She also thought about the supplies having already mentally catalogued the canned goods at the store—if Brixton wasn’t the final destination, they would need to restock necessities.

  She took a step further into the blackness of the room. Her eyes adjusted and searched out shapes. Lucy reached the shelving unit and tugged the package down. She rested it against her arms and read the packing label. To Izzy, it read. From a grandma without a return address. She wanted to open it, but Grant’s loud sigh deterred her. Lucy pushed the box back up on the shelf and stepped away.

  “Maybe we could use this stuff,” she called to him.

  “Yeah, sure, okay,” came Grant’s reply.

  She sniffed and turned toward him.

  Then she caught a shape out of the corner of her eye. A flash of fabric, a familiar outline.

  “I think there’s a body back here,” Lucy shouted. Grant stepped away from the counter and craned his neck to look around her.

  “Only twenty-five left to discover, I suppose,” he replied. Grant dug into his pocket and pulled out his lighter. He flipped open the lid and the wick erupted. Then he walked over to Lucy and tried to hand it to her.

  “Why are you making me look at it?” Lucy asked and she crossed her arms.

  “Hey, new rule. You find it, you examine it,” Grant said with a smirk and he pushed the flame forward.

  “No way. We go together,” she said and then she tugged on the corner of his shirt and pulled him forward. He skipped a step and then bumped into her shoulder. Lucy lost her balance and stumbled into the shelving. It jiggled and then settled; none of the boxes spilled to the floor below. She righted herself and cleared her throat, then they started to move.

  Tip-toeing forward, Grant and Lucy shuffled toward the shape. They bent down and Lucy’s breath caught. She thought she was immune to the discovery of bodies, but there was something about the dark and the orange flicker of the lighter, mixed with the unsettling nature of the entire town, that made this particular venture more hair-raising. The body was turned away from them—there was a mass of tangled hair; the body wore a long flower dress and a khaki vest.

  “It doesn’t smell,” Grant noted and Lucy realized he was right. The odoriferous victims of the virus had become commonplace and impossible to escape. Rotting flesh, the stink of melting organs and decomposing flesh, replaced other smells; their noses had adjusted to the shift, especially in larger cities, but Grant was right—and Lucy only now realized it: the town didn’t stink.

  Lucy leaned over and touched the dress and the body rolled backward to the floor with a small crash and a rattle; the hair sloughed off and fell to the floor, exposing a white skull. She let out a small scream and her hand flew over her mouth to stifle it. This body was a skeleton. Its jaw hung open, all the teeth were intact, but there were gaping holes where this person’s nose and eyes used to be. The khaki vest had a small patch on it that read “Brixton Post Office” but the clothes looked tattered and moth-eaten. Around the skeletal ankles were white socks and the body was still wearing its orthopedic shoes.

  Grant moved their light up and down the bones. Then his hand stopped at the skull. He took his free hand and reached over and stuck his pointer finger into a dime-sized hole near the temple.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” Grant noted and he popped his finger back out. “Plot twist. She didn’t die of the virus.”

  “Shot?”

  “Execution style.”

  “And left undiscovered? In the middle of an unlocked post-office?”

  Grant stood up and flipped off the lighter. The darkness enveloped them and Lucy let her eyes adjust. Then she felt Grant’s hand on her shoulder and she fumbled around for his hand, letting him help her up off the ground. Then still holding on to him, they walked back toward the light in front. Lucy and Grant ducked back under the counter and then out to the road, leaving the skeleton behind them.

  “So, let’s get this straight,” Lucy started, squinting at the sudden brightness. “The whole city of Brixton disappears. Leaves mugs and drinks and cash unattended. They vanish.”

  “Except they didn’t vanish,” Grant said, his eyes scanning the town, his brows furrowed as he scanned each building. “They were murdered.”

  “The whole world’s been murdered,” Lucy pointed out and she put her hands on her hips and tried to follow Grant’s gaze. “And one dead person in a post-office doesn’t mean that everyone died that way.”

  “You wanna bet?” Grant asked and he snapped his head back to her.

  “Not particularly.”

  “But you admit that there’s no one here. Right?”

  Lucy shrugged.

  Grant started walking back down the middl
e of the street, bypassing the library and heading toward the church and its bell tower.

  “Where are you going?” Lucy called after him.

  He turned and pointed toward the church. “I want to find the rest of the bodies.”

  Grant’s instinct was mostly right. Inside the church they found five more skeletons. All with bullet holes in their temples. Two of the remains were in a pew; at one point they might have been sitting side-by-side, but as their bodies withered down to just the bones, they now slumped together at an odd angle; one skull resting on the other in a perpetual state of embrace. Lucy picked up a hymnal and flipped open the pages. Each row was outfitted with a Bible and a hymnal and a collection of offering envelopes. Layers of dust covered everything—the fabric on the pews, the bones, the floor.

  Another skeleton was crumpled near a wooden pulpit. Two more huddled together in a baptismal. Lucy and Grant found a small spiral staircase off to the side of the sanctuary; they climbed it, taking the steps slowly, feeling their way. The door at the top opened up to the bell tower. From there, they could see their car and each and every building in Brixton. Everything was silent and void of life. In the distance, they saw the rolling Sand Hills.

  They climbed back down and exited the church.

  Maybe they’d never know the details, but the broad story of what happened to Brixton was clear: Each and every person in this small town had been systemically wiped out with a single bullet to the brain. Lucy didn’t want to venture into the single-room schoolhouse next to the church and she begged Grant to just leave it be, but Grant would not be deterred. He pushed open the doors and stood for a long moment, counting with his finger. Then he shut the doors and met Lucy back down the steps.

  “Four little ones. Two adults. That’s half the town. I bet if we searched every house and every building we’d find everyone.”

  “No. I don’t want to. And I don’t understand.”

  “It doesn’t look like these people were hiding…it must have happened fast,” Grant noted.