The System (Virulent Book 2)

by Shelbi Wescott

  If she hadn’t been so overwhelmed by everything—the hole in the earth with its fully equipped hospital, drowning in a tank, seeing her parents for the first time in weeks—she might have been functional enough to tell them all of the ways she had pained at their absence. Instead, she said what she could simply and without embellishment.

  “He’s hurt,” Lucy told them.

  Maxine drew in a sharp breath and turned to Scott, her eyes narrowed.

  “Hit by a car. His legs were crushed. When I left, he was fine, but deteriorating…”

  “Good God,” Scott said and he took a step away from his wife and daughter. “I’ll need to…” he trailed off. He took a step toward the door and then a step back toward Lucy. “What else?” he asked her. “Tell us everything.”

  “Huck would send the army off for one of his kids. He owes you the same courtesy,” Maxine said to her husband, speaking over his questions to Lucy. She shifted her attention, even though she still held one of Lucy’s hands. “You tell him. You tell him to send the planes.”

  “Come on, Maxine. You know I can’t just walk in there and make that demand. Not now, anyway.” Her father put a hand on his wife’s shoulder, but she shook him off. Lucy felt embarrassed to be privy to their argument and she tried to shrink away from the conversation.

  “Not now? Then when? You promised. And I don’t take broken promises lying down,” Maxine added. Then she ran her hand across Lucy’s brow and tucked a piece of blonde hair behind her daughter’s ear. “No secrets anymore, Scott.” She said this while rubbing her thumb against the freckles over Lucy’s nose and she smiled. “Didn’t you say that to our kids when we got here? No secrets. We’re a team?” She dropped her voice down to a whisper. “And here is my wonderful Lucy. Oh, Lucy. I missed you.”

  Maxine’s tears dripped freely and Lucy’s heart broke to see her mother in so much pain. She looked between her mother and father.

  Scott ran his hand through his hair and he nodded. “Let’s get out of here,” he instructed. “Come on, girls.”

  “Yes, come sweet one, come,” Maxine cooed to Lucy. “We’ll go home.”

  Lucy looked up and searched her mother’s face. “Home?” she asked. “You call this home?”

  “Home for now,” Scott answered. He put his hand out and Lucy took it; then he pulled her into his side and kissed the top of her head. Scott leaned his lips down to his daughter’s ear and whispered. “You’re a beacon of hope, my darling. Your mother needed hope. I’m so glad you made it.”

  Lucy smiled a tight-lipped smile as her father led her out into the hallway; his hand moving to her elbow as he steered her to the right and down into the dim lights that reflected off of shiny metal walls.

  It was the first time Lucy had seen the insides of this tomb.

  Her eyes grew wide, and her body grew cold and tense.

  “What is this place?”

  Her father clapped his hand on her back. He smiled with renewed enthusiasm; as if someone had flipped a switch. “We are in an amazing place. A scientific marvel.”

  “A cavern. An underground dome,” Maxine echoed a half-step behind them. “Your father is very proud of it.”

  “It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Lucy, just wait. Just you wait.” Scott’s voice rose and changed pitch; it was his tell that he was excited and gaining momentum. “You don’t even know the times I wished I could tell you about this place. How many times I almost let it slip!” He clapped his hands together as they approached an elevator. Sliding his finger across a touch-screen, a light switched from red to green, and from somewhere in the belly of the dome, an elevator began its descent toward them.

  “Is it safe?” Lucy asked in a small voice. She backed away from the doors, but felt her mother’s hand press against her back.

  “Is it safe,” her dad repeated and he scoffed. “That’s the whole point. That was the whole point. You’re safe now. As safe as you will ever be.”

  Scott placed his hands on her shoulders and gave them a squeeze. His eyes were bright and eager—like a child on Christmas morning.

  The elevator doors opened, beckoning them into a sterile metal box.

  And together, as a family, they walked inside. The silent doors sliding shut behind them.

  Floor B. Pod 6. Room 8. A silver plaque screwed into place right above the peephole read: The King Family – Scott, Maxine, Ethan, Lucy, Galen, Malcolm, Monroe, Harper. CL 1. Lucy reached out her hand to touch her name and Ethan’s name. How strange to see it there, so plain and organized. Carved into the metal before the Release; an optimistic statement of faith that the Kings would arrive to this place together.

  She looked to her mother, whose eyes looked away from the plaque and the reminder that they were still an incomplete family.

  Scott King opened the door. As he swung the door wide, Lucy peered into the first room. It was dark, windowless, brown walls with low ceilings, and a spattering of light in the form of low-wattage bulbs burning in sconces along the walls, casting pools of white upward and creating shadows in the corners.

  “Go on,” Maxine whispered.

  “Our little apartment,” Scott added.

  Lucy looked between her parents and then peered inside the room again. All Lucy could think was that they had to leave their beautiful house, with a backyard, sun, and windows and move themselves into a cramped and dark space no bigger than a hotel suite. She had not known what to expect when they reached Nebraska, but this was not it.

  Tentatively, Lucy stepped inside. But it took no longer than a second for her to want to back right out again; the room smelled stale—fresh air pumped in through vents in the ceiling, but it was artificial, dry. The furniture was stiff and old; perhaps Huck’s interior designers had fashioned the apartments with the leftovers of some consignment shop.

  She stood in a small foyer. Inside a wicker box was a collection of shoes. Tennis shoes of varying sizes and one small pair of glittered slip-ons.

  Harper.

  The moment she thought the name, the dark apartment was flooded with light. Bright track lighting along the ceiling flickered on and out from behind couches and chairs, her siblings poured, yelling and screaming, “Surprise! Welcome home, Lucy!” Even Galen, his adolescent demeanor grounded in perpetual disdain of his entire family, couldn’t help but rush forward and greet his sister with a warm embrace.

  Absorbing the affection from her siblings overwhelmed Lucy. She closed her eyes and let them attack her with pats and kisses; she collapsed to the floor and Harper climbed into her lap.

  “Daddy said you were coming soon,” Harper said. “Daddy said you and Ethan were coming.”

  “Is Ethan here too?” Malcolm cried out with excitement.

  Maxine swooped in and began peeling off her children, chastising them for intruding upon Lucy’s space, but Lucy didn’t mind it at all. She sat on the floor motionless, still holding Harper, finding comfort in the child’s small frame and the way she fit like a puzzle piece into the crook of Lucy’s arm.

  “We talked about that,” Maxine said with authority. “Ethan’s not here.” Then after a beat, she added, “Yet.”

  “Wanna see our room?” Monroe asked.

  “Wanna see the Center? Wanna go swimming?” Malcolm cried.

  “It’s actually pretty cool here,” Galen told her with a shrug.

  “Why did you stay behind?” Harper whispered.

  Lucy looked at the faces of her brothers and sister, her eyes wide, a pain in her chest growing and throbbing. And then she began to cry. She put Harper on the floor and scrambled to her feet. She spun this way and that—looking at the foreign furniture, her family in clothes she didn’t recognize. Her breath began to grow noisy and ragged. From somewhere next to her, she heard her mother say her name in a warning tone. She caught a glimpse of her father, leaning against the wall. Lucy couldn’t tell if he was worried for her or for himself, and she wanted to scream; her desire to r
un, flee, escape was powerful. She burst away from her congregating family and toward the door. Bypassing outstretched hands and calls of worry.

  All she had wanted for weeks was to see her mother and father and brothers and sister again. All she had dreamed about and pined for was to find them alive and wanting to see her too—the entirety of her family waiting with baited breath for her triumphant return. Of course, she had been worried to find them dead, worried to find them gone.

  But this was something else entirely.

  She had found them changed, altered, different. They felt foreign to her, as if these people were merely impersonators of her family and not the real thing.

  She reached the door before her mother could grab her and she flew out into the hallway. Right and left were identical: huge metal doors flanked either end. And the hallway was dotted with doors, like theirs, with silver plaques broadcasting the names of tenants.

  “Lucy King,” Maxine called down the hallway—saying her name with the clipped cadence someone reserved for disobedient preschoolers. “You will return to this room immediately.”

  Slowing down, Lucy put her hand against the metal walls and felt the coolness against her skin.

  “This must be very difficult,” her father called down to her from their doorway. He had his hand on his wife’s arm, presumably to prevent her from flying down toward Lucy and dragging her back by force.

  Always the voice of reason—always the ying to her mother’s yang. Always entering conversations with calmness and clarity, with doses of humor.

  A door five feet away from Lucy opened a crack. Peeking out from behind the frame was a girl her own age with long black hair combed around her shoulders. She stared at Lucy a long time, unblinking. She was dark and beautiful and for a brief second Lucy thought of asking to come inside; then she shook the notion free and realized that no one in the System could be trusted. Lucy stared back, until the girl offered her a sad smile and shut the door; the click echoing down the hall.

  “Grant,” Lucy said. Then she turned back toward her parents and raised her voice. “I want Grant.” She felt the futility of her desire as she said his name; and she was filled with such longing and sadness. Lucy hit her fist against the metal and then drew her hand to her side, cradling it against her stomach.

  It felt so wrong to explore this place without him. She wanted her parents. Now she wanted Grant. Nothing would feel whole again.

  Maxine shook off her husband’s grip and walked into view. She put her hands on her hips, her legs wide. Then Harper sneaked around their father and clambered up to Maxine, hanging on her pants leg, and staring down at her sister.

  “There are some things beyond our control,” Maxine said. “But we will discuss it when you come back.”

  “Come inside,” Scott added.

  “No,” Lucy said and she felt like she was going to throw-up. “I want to see him. He deserves to be with us. It’s not fair.” She wiped her eyes.

  “I have waited for you! Cried for you every night.” Maxine called as she took two giant steps forward, lumbering under the added weight of Harper’s body. “I will not lose you. Do you understand me?” Her voice trembled with rage.

  The metal doors at the end of the hall closest to Lucy slid open. And Lucy saw one of the armed guards from before enter and stand at attention across her escape path. With her mother and father at one end and the guard at the other, Lucy knew she was trapped.

  “He’s my friend. He doesn’t deserve this. I brought him here. Don’t you understand? I brought him here! It’s my fault. It’s my fault.” Unsure of what to do next, Lucy fell to the floor in the hallway, her back against the wall, her legs splayed out in front of her. After a moment, she tipped herself over and let her body shake against the ground. Then she felt hands lift her up and hold her. As if she weighed nothing at all, her father picked her up off the ground and cradled her in his arms.

  “No Lucy,” her father said. “It’s my fault. Don’t waste time blaming yourself. Blame me. Blame me, child.”

  Tears stained her father’s shirt and Lucy couldn’t stop them from flowing. She cried for her lost friend, her confusion, and her shift in expectations. Lucy wanted to tell him this; wanted to say something, anything, but she found herself mute. Slobbering and hiccupping into her father’s chest.

  He shifted and turned past Maxine, hushing her impending storm with a single look. Then walking right past the twins and Galen, huddled and whispering where Lucy had left them, he took Lucy into a bedroom and shut the door with his foot, the slam echoing behind him. There he set Lucy down on a bed. It was fully made—its comforter smooth, and there were three floral accent pillows. He deposited her down and Lucy curled herself into a ball.

  “You left me,” she said.

  It was the first thing that came to mind to say.

  Her father buried his head in his hands for just a second. “Lucy…” he paused and then stopped. He tried to rub her back, but she pulled away.

  “I don’t want to leave my friend. We were a good team. We fought hard to be here. Can’t you see that?”

  “Okay,” Scott replied. “But—”

  He sighed. Rubbed his temples. And then he simply said, “Okay.”

  “Who are these people? They tried to kill me, Dad. Don’t you see? They tried to kill me and they are going to kill Grant. You have to stop them, please? I’m begging you. Stop them.”

  His face went ashen and he looked to the floor.

  Then Scott stood up. “You’ve had a shock,” he said weighing his words. “It’s reasonable to be upset and confused.” He walked to the bedroom door and put his hand on the knob. “But let’s get something clear here, Lucy. When I heard that you had missed the flight. When I heard that you and Ethan weren’t at home…when I begged them to wait, to stop, to go get you from the school…and they didn’t? Then my worst fears were realized. That I sacrificed everything to save you and it wouldn’t matter.”

  “You did this to us,” Lucy mumbled without accusation. She shook, like she was freezing, her limbs quivered against the bedspread and she was unable to stop them.

  “I did this for you.”

  She didn’t turn to look at him; instead she kept her eyes fixated on a framed picture of a tree—a towering oak in the center of a huge field, a piece of nature that didn’t exist down here in this place. Its image was unsettling; like a piece of hotel art, trying to trick you into believing you were somewhere, anywhere, other than where you actually were.

  “Then it is true. You helped unleash this virus. That killed our friends. Family. Everyone. You did this.” Even Lucy was scared at how she let the indictment fall so matter-of-factly. She closed her eyes for one brief moment and the image appeared of Salem’s body in the ground, heaped on Leland Pine’s wife: One direct and one indirect victim of her father. She couldn’t look at him without seeing what he had done. Her dead classmates. Him. The bloated bodies they encountered in Portland and beyond. Him. Salem. Him.

  “What you said is not untrue,” Scott answered her. His voice felt far away. “But it’s not the truth. Do you understand?”

  Lucy didn’t answer. Instead, she closed her eyes and wished for the shaking to stop.

  There was a knock on the bedroom door and her father opened it a crack and peered out at the disruption.

  “They brought a note for you,” Maxine said tersely. “They’re calling you in.”

  “In a minute,” Scott answered.

  “Send a note to Huck that you are going to spend time with your daughter. Work can wait.”

  Scott didn’t answer her. He waited a beat and shut the door. Lucy pictured her mother on the other side of the wooden barrier seething and waiting. The blankets felt nice against her skin and Lucy had no desire to move from this spot.

  “I want you to listen, Lucy. I want you to listen to me,” he said. He stepped away from the door and back toward her body, still curled into a fetal position. �
��I raised you to be a good scientist. A good researcher. Ask questions, understand the world around you, don’t take anyone’s answer at face-value. Right? Haven’t I? Isn’t that what I’ve always said?”

  Lucy nodded weakly.

  “This is no exception, then.” Scott sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned on his knees. While he was bending over, Lucy stole a glance. He too had planned for the joyous welcome—he had hoped to find his little girl, still turning to him for all the answers, intact and willing to carry on like before the Release. “That’s all I can give you now. Just…don’t jump to conclusions. And whatever you do,” he lifted his head and Lucy didn’t have time to look away; her eyes locked with this. “Whatever you do,” he repeated, “don’t punish your mother for this.” His tone turned steely and threatening. “You have no idea what she’s been through. She doesn’t deserve your disdain.”

  And with that lecture, Scott King rose and walked to the door. Lucy still stared into the space her father had occupied only seconds earlier. “Wait,” she whispered, her throat dry. Scott paused and turned to her; he looked at his daughter with concern and compassion.

  “Yes?” he asked in a quick breath, hopeful.

  “Save him,” Lucy said without looking at her dad. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t say you can’t. I know you can save him. I know it’s up to you. And if you don’t,” she paused and lifted her eyes and narrowed them, “I’ll never forgive you.”

  Scott King sighed and frowned. Then he turned without replying and left her alone.

  “Chocolate milk and a granola bar?”

  Lucy cracked open an eye and saw her thirteen year-old brother Galen standing by her bedside. He looked down at her and held up the goodies for her to see.

  Her eyes were swollen from the crying. Her face felt tight with dehydration and when she smiled at her brother, her dried tears stretched along her skin. She took the milk—in a plastic cup—and sat up to take a sip. She ached and felt dizzy; Galen put a tender hand on her arm and the touch felt odd, unlike him, and out-of-place. Unsure of how to respond to his brotherly compassion, Lucy shied away from the touch and, after downing the entire drink, reached her hand out for the granola bar.