The System (Virulent Book 2)

by Shelbi Wescott

  Maxine looked weary and sad.

  Lucy could only think of one thing, her mind wandering to the person she had left behind. “But Ethan—” Lucy started and her mother silenced her by reaching across the table and giving her hand a squeeze.

  “Your father told me that...” her mother’s chin wobbled. She steeled herself and took a sip of coffee. Maxine cleared her throat, “Huck’s plan—” She shook her head, too overcome with emotion to say the words.

  “He’s not going back for Ethan?” Lucy asked plainly.

  Her mother shook her head.

  “But we have to go back!” she snapped, her voice rose above the din. A few heads turned in her direction, their eyes lingering before returning to their meals.

  “Be quiet,” her mother warned.

  Lucy leaned her head close and whispered. “How can anyone like it here? My friend is gone…maybe dead. My brother wouldn’t be allowed to rejoin his family?”

  “It’s worse than that, Lucy,” Maxine lowered her voice too and matched Lucy’s whisper. “No variables. Huck,” she thumbed her finger over her shoulder, “wants no variables.”

  Lucy didn’t understand. Then she felt afraid. Maxine was brazen, it was true; before the Release, Lucy would think her mother was a total embarrassment—her outspoken opinions seeped into every facet of their existence. But how could her mother openly discuss the man who held their fate in his hands without fear or worry? Lucy looked at Huck and his family, ordering their meals, and the people at the other tables a few feet away. She gulped. Their discussion felt dangerous.

  “Should we talk about this here?” Lucy asked her mother.

  Maxine smiled and reached across the table. She took Lucy’s hand in her own and gave it a squeeze. “Your father isn’t entirely certain that our apartment is safe. The Sky Room is loud and busy. Public. And safe.”

  “Mom—” Lucy continued to hold her mother’s hand in her own. “What did you mean? No variables.”

  She drew in a sharp breath and grimaced. “Grant isn’t supposed to be alive. He had exposure to the virus…he isn’t supposed to be here…he’s an unknown variable.”

  Lucy had never known her mother to have trouble spitting things out. She pulled her hands away and placed them in front of her on the table. “Just tell me.”

  “Your father has been instructed to create a second virus. For a second release. To…erase the probability of survivors.”

  The news wasn’t a total shock, but then Lucy understood what her mother had alluded to earlier. “A new virus?”

  Maxine nodded.

  “So, people who were vaccinated previously—”

  “Aren’t safe anymore.” Maxine confirmed the worst news of all: Scott King was working on a new virus that would eventually be used to kill his firstborn son.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Darla and Spencer were the first to sprint out of the den and toward the back; fearless and united, they stumbled out onto the covered porch and then halted in their tracks, scanning the area with guns drawn. Wordlessly Spencer motioned for Darla to take one side of the patio, but before they could fully explore the yard and the surrounding areas, Darla recognized that something was wrong.

  “The food,” she said, her mouth dropping open. “Spencer…where is all our food?”

  Stopping on the steps, Spencer scanned the porch and then swearing loudly, he took a giant leap out onto the lawn and rushed to the side yard. He fired a warning shot up over the open gate, but Darla yelled after him.

  “Don’t fire, don’t fire,” she screamed, running to the side of the patio.

  “Joey!” Spencer called. Then he pointed to Darla, “Tell Joey to grab a gun.”

  She crouched down and looked at the emptiness of the patio—earlier that day they had mountains of the ready-to-eat meals that Ethan’s father had left them, in addition to the other canned goods and non-perishables salvaged from the surrounding neighborhoods. Altogether they had collected over six months of food for the entire group and all of it was gone.

  Darla had suspected someone was squirrelling away food, but Joey had started the nightly inventory and the small disappearances had stopped.

  The shock of the empty porch was almost too much to handle.

  Joey wandered to the porch and whistled loud and low. His face went white and he tapped his foot “How on earth—”

  “Right under our noses,” Darla groaned. “Teddy!” she called back into the house. “Teddy!”

  The child appeared just beyond the screen, pressing his nose against the mesh. “Yes, mama?” Teddy asked, tentative and unsure. He knew that something had gone wrong and he frowned and rocked on the other side of the door.

  She turned to Joey. “Go tell the others what happened…but don’t be all alarmist…can you exude calm leadership? Seriously. Calm, leadership,” Darla commanded. “And meet Spencer out front.”

  With a salute, Joey disappeared back inside as Teddy joined his mother on the porch and Darla, with a furtive look around, put her hands on Teddy’s shoulders and smoothed his curls with her hand.

  “What did the man look like?” she asked Teddy. “Do you remember what the man looked like?”

  Teddy shook his head.

  “Can you remember anything? What he was wearing? Did he say anything to you?”

  For a second, Teddy pondered all the questions. Then he raised a finger, “I remember! He asked me if my mommy was inside.”

  A chill traveled down Darla’s spine. “Good,” she told her son, steadying her voice, and forcing a smile to comfort him. “Anything else?”

  “No. Just…is he a bad guy, mommy?” Teddy asked, wide-eyed.

  Darla kissed Teddy on the cheek. “Yeah, buddy. I think he was a bad guy.”

  “Oh,” was all Teddy said, but he looked clearly conflicted. “Am in trouble for eating the bad guy’s chocolate?”

  “Not at all.” Darla looked at Teddy and turned his head so she could look in his eyes. “You are not in trouble, Buddy. But it’s time to go inside and stay with Ethan, okay? Don’t come out here again unless mommy calls you.” Darla directed Teddy back into the house and as the screen door shut behind him, she sighed. Such a life for her little man. Then she hopped down into the backyard and bent to examine the grass. As Oregon drifted closer to May, the rain made sporadic appearances and the lawn was still damp, the ground underneath soft. Darla instantly noticed the wheel tracks in the mud next to the lower step—whoever stole the food had to have made several trips. It was an undertaking that seemed suspicious in both scope and execution. The thief was brazen or he was stupid: he would have spirited away wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load right under their noses. It was a feat.

  Although, if it weren’t for Teddy stumbling upon the robbery, Darla supposed they wouldn’t have noticed for a couple more hours. Did the man know their schedules? Was he watching them? Where did he come from?

  It seemed unlikely that anyone from Nebraska would venture all this way to kill them through slow starvation.

  Spencer marched back to Darla through the open gate with Joey on his heels.

  “Wheelbarrow,” Darla said pointing to the tracks.

  “Moron,” mumbled Spencer. “If it was our stash he was after, why take it all at once? If you have the element of surprise, of people not knowing you exist? Why tip your hand? He could have bought himself a week or so…you know that we’d all think Joey was just screwing up the inventory.”

  Joey scrunched his nose. “Hey now,” he challenged, but then he met Spencer’s gaze and shrugged. “Whatever, man.” He bounced anxiously on the balls of his feet.

  “Maybe he’s planning on leaving the area?”

  “He will if he’s smart,” Spencer said. He hacked and spit a mucousy stream of saliva to the ground.

  Joey fidgeted with the gun at his side and looked between Spencer and Darla in turn. “He can’t be far, right? We can find him. Let’s go. Let’s take of
f—a couple of us in each direction.”

  “He’s gone,” Darla said matter-of-factly. “And he has everything we need with him.” She kicked the grass and swore under her breath. They’d survived without devastating hardship—cold meals, no showers—because they had food and water. Now, every day would become about scrounging for sustenance and nothing more; they were about to feel the pain of this existence in the most visceral way possible: hunger. Thirst.

  “In words hardly ever spoken,” Spencer said, “I think Joey’s right. We know these neighborhoods; there’s no way someone took off on foot with all our supplies…and a car or a truck only gets you so far. Any of the major roads are still blocked.”

  “We have to try. That’s everything we have,” Joey whined.

  Darla closed her eyes for a second and then sighed. “He knew the stash was here. Right?” The men nodded. “And he knew we were here. He had a car…that we didn’t hear…”

  “He parked it a block away. Left it running?”

  “How did we not hear that?” She looked to the ground, ruminating on all the ways this was even possible. “Okay. We split up.” She looked up and checked her weapon and then started marching toward the front.

  “Hold up!” Spencer called to her back. “Who’s with who?”

  Darla spun and rolled her eyes. “You two, head west. I’ll head east.”

  “By yourself? You want us to grab Gloria? Ainsley?” Joey asked. He took a step back toward the porch. “The man could be dangerous.”

  She smirked and rolled her eyes. “Please, boys. Please. If he’s dangerous, I’m better off by myself. I don’t have time to find a thief and babysit.” And with that, she jogged out toward the front of the house, her gun drawn, and on high alert for anything that seemed out of place.

  The bodies in the yards were even more disgusting as time passed. Skin rotted away to reveal gelatinous insides, some of which spilled out into pools on the ground. All over the neighborhood the stink of death and rot drifted with the wind; but the King House crew had become accustomed to the smell, and only occasionally did the odor elicit any response. Darla had traversed the neighborhood, the offshoots of the subdivision, many times.

  She knew each unmoved landmark: Car driven into garage at ten o’clock. Body of man in pajamas on upstairs balcony straight ahead. The blue Volvo with the door open would appear on the next block. Right next to the house that burned down, an abandoned fire truck, its lights long dead, still sitting outside. The hose tangled forward and never retracted, the bodies of the firefighters MIA.

  Many of the homes had been searched for supplies. The dead did not need cereal boxes and canned goods. They didn’t need their flashlights or their supplies of Ibuprofen. Darla never judged the homes she raided. A house four blocks away from the Kings sported an obese man who died in his bathtub. Naked and forever at rest in discolored water. Six homes down from the naked man was a beautiful, well-landscaped bungalow that turned out to be owned by a hoarder. Darla didn’t make it five feet into the house before unleashing a terrible avalanche of boxes and paper bags filled with garbage.

  The lives of the dead were not interesting to her. She didn’t care what they were reading when they died. She didn’t care if they were alone or if a family died together. She noticed, but didn’t care, if there were animals left unburied, or tributes to animals who passed before their owners—immortalized for their short lives before anyone realized that they would follow closely behind.

  No, Darla only cared if the dead had something to offer her.

  Scanning the street, Darla saw nothing out of the ordinary. Nor did she hear a car or a truck. The distinct roll of an engine was absent. She ambled in the open, unafraid, for she was convinced that the new owner of their non-perishable supplies would not be stupid enough to stay where he could be found.

  She checked each vehicle with her memory. Black mini-van at green house, unmoved. Red truck at tan house. Unmoved.

  Then Darla stopped.

  A rumble. White noise, but distinct. A car was running and from somewhere relatively close. The strange noise called to her and she tried to place it. Darla wandered through a yard, waltzing past an uncovered boat, the house with the open slider, the family of four all together in one of the back bathrooms, like they were hunkering down for a tornado instead of a virus. She emerged on one of the next streets over and scanned the familiar landmarks.

  Darla froze.

  She looked down at the ground and then back up again, as if the truck with its small utility trailer attached to the hitch was just a figment of her imagination. Four houses down, the truck idled. It couldn’t be real. But there it was—the door on the trailer raised up halfway and the inside fully stocked with their stolen food. Opening and closing her mouth like a fish, shocked that it would just be sitting here out in the open, Darla adopted a steady stance and brought her right arm straight out in front of her; her gun trained at the back of the trailer.

  Then she lowered her gun and took three giant steps to the side to get a better look. Darla’s mouth dropped open and she let out an involuntary gasp of surprise.

  “You’ve got to me kidding me,” she scoffed. And then she felt like a fool for not thinking of it sooner. How had they not assumed it before? How could the possibility have eluded them? “Of course.”

  Written in swoopy letters across the side was: From Up Above Tours. Beautiful Adventures Daily.

  From inside a two-story house, Darla saw a rustle of curtains, and so she waited. After a few more minutes, a tall man emerged carrying a case of beer and nothing else. He whistled as he walked, moving his small haul with ease, and unaware that he was being watched. It was easy to see the resemblance even from a distance—the same sandy-blonde hair, the same lumbering gait. He sported no gun that Darla could see and she knew that shooting at him would be like firing upon a sitting duck.

  Still, the duck stole their food.

  She was conflicted.

  The man tossed the beer into the back of the utility trailer and then closed the door, taking the time to latch it closed. Then as he started to walk back to the bed of the truck, Darla took long strides forward. Still, he had not noticed her. Darla realized that she was not dealing with a brave mastermind; she was fairly certain this overlooked member of their community was just an inept thief.

  “Hey!” Darla finally called after him, unwilling to let him climb into his truck without acknowledgment of her appearance.

  He halted and then turned. His eyes locked into Darla’s and he looked like he was about to pee himself as he registered her gun and her slow approach.

  “You have some things that belong to me,” she called and her voice echoed down the street. Me me me me.

  He brought up his right hand and waved once in reply.

  Darla took her free hand and waved once back. “Yeah, okay,” she whispered to herself. “Whatcha gonna do now, huh?”

  Before she could shout at him again, the man scrambled into the cab of his truck, put the car into drive, and screeched off down the street. The trailer swung and bobbed as he made his hasty escape, barely missing parked cars and mailboxes. Darla merely stood and watched him flee—he took a hard right, and then gunned it down the next street over. His panic was evident in the erratic escape, the noise of his truck fading into the distance.

  She smiled.

  He was heading home.

  And she was pretty certain that he would be confident they couldn’t find him there.

  Except, she knew exactly where he lived.

  Clicking the safety on her gun, Darla slipped it into the holster, and stood in the street for a long, reflective minute, before turning back around and walking with quickened strides back to the King House.

  It was going to be a strange afternoon.

  Ethan made a face. And Spencer looked confused. Only Joey seemed to sense Darla’s excitement.

  Darla had called the troops together in the den and relayed
what she experienced.

  “Wait, wait,” Spencer said, raising his hand. “You know this guy?”

  “No,” Darla said, exasperated. “Grant…the kid you kept locked up in your school with Ethan’s sister? The one who went with her to Nebraska? Pretty sure this is his dad. Looked just like him and was driving the trailer we pulled a giant deflated hot air balloon out of.”

  “Why didn’t you just shoot him?” Spencer asked. “Easiest way to get our food back.”

  “I didn’t want to shoot him,” Darla snapped. “He wasn’t hostile. I know where he lives. Maybe we can avoid killing the small population that is left. Just a simple thought. Besides, I got the impression he wasn’t a threat. If he’s not dangerous, then he’s just stupid.”

  “Great,” Ainsley said from the corner. “He and Joey can be buds. We can hum the Benny Hill theme song whenever they try to do anything together.”

  “The Benny Hill song?” Ethan asked from the corner.

  Ainsley looked at Ethan and rolled her eyes, “You know, Yakety Sax? That bumbling anthem that always plays when clowns are pouring out of a clown car…or during a clip-show when they show a montage of people getting hit in the balls?”

  “I’m so glad you guys think so highly of me,” Joey chimed in.

  Doctor Krause moved the conversation back on track. “What’s your plan, then?” She moved herself over to Ethan and attempted to do a round of vitals, but Ethan swatted her away; defeated, she sat down on the side of the couch next to him and waited. She looked between everyone and said, “Well?”

  “Ambush. We’ll surprise him…drive our food back. Gloria and Teddy stay back with Ethan. We arm Ainsley—take her for appearance only. Beef up our numbers. We won’t even load her gun.”