The Virulent Chronicles Box Set

by Shelbi Wescott

  “Explain,” Lucy commanded, shifting her black and white herringbone book bag up on her shoulder. She shoved her books into the open locker, her three-ring binder, and the mounds of work that would inevitably ruin her vacation.

  “Grant Trotter.”

  Lucy shook her head. The name didn’t mean anything to her.

  “Oh, really? Tall. Blonde-ish. Pole-vaulter. Dated Bianca’s-dad-buys-everyone-beer-Nelson?” She paused for a second. “Anyway, he dumped Holly during their first date. Just told her that it wasn’t going to work and took her home. Right then and there. That’s like some serious movie crap right there. Who does he think he is?”

  “A guy who knows what he wants?” Lucy replied, feeling her phone vibrate against her leg and ignoring it.

  Salem stuck a bony finger into Lucy’s face. “Don’t get cheeky with me. That’s a major self-esteem deflater. She’s going to require so much coddling now just to get out of the house! Boys are so stupid. Lie to us. Right? Just lie! Hey, Holly, I’m totally into you. Kiss her. Then don’t call. Am I wrong here? Wait,” she hushed her voice and drew her mouth close to Lucy’s ear, her breath warming the side of Lucy’s face in short bursts, “that’s him. Look. Look.”

  With a furtive glance, Lucy followed Salem’s line-of-sight and spotted the offender leaning against a locker, his hair flopping to the side and haphazardly whisked away from his eyes, his hands shoved deep inside a Pacific Lake High School hooded sweatshirt, shoulders rounded as he slouched. His group of friends laughed at someone’s joke, but Grant only smirked, rolling his shoulders forward even more and eyeing the ground. When he glanced up, he looked straight to Salem, pulling his hand out halfway for a noncommittal wave.

  And just like that, the war between them was over.

  Salem waved back and twirled a long curl between her ring and middle finger. “I guess he’s not so bad,” Salem declared. “Holly’s a total bore one-on-one anyway, and she does have that misshapen nostril.”

  Lucy snorted. “What are you talking about?”

  “Just wait. Next time you see her, check it out? It’s freakish.”

  “You notice people’s nostrils?”

  “When you notice, you notice. Bike accident.” Salem shrugged as if this common knowledge disinterested her.

  When Lucy turned back toward the group at the lockers, Grant was still looking in their direction.

  She smiled a crooked-tight-lipped smile and cast her eyes toward a neighboring bulletin board, exercising an interested stare at the ripped motivational posters encouraging her to “Look to the future! Attend college!” with multi-racial friends all sharing a toothy laugh.

  The bell rang. Lucy muttered a goodbye and kissed the air in Salem’s direction before she drifted to her next class.

  Halfway through Trigonometry, after Lucy had endured a short geography lesson with her Seychelles-ignorant math teacher and promised she’d plug along through the four chapters of work (but considering Mr. Hegleton’s tedious review sessions and a tendency to dedicate entire class sessions to discussing Doctor Who, she was certain they’d only get through two), Ethan sent her an urgent text.

  “There’s trouble. Ride home with Sal.”

  A command. Not a suggestion. Ethan was a reliable ride home, so trouble was good for no one.

  “Explain. Mom/Dad?” Lucy texted back.

  “No. Anna.”

  Lucy’s older brother Ethan had an evil girlfriend named Anna.

  She may not have been the embodiment of evil, but vilifying her had morphed into a pastime that neither she nor Salem was willing to abandon. Ethan graduated two years ago and instead of venturing to the University of Colorado where a handsome scholarship awaited him, he enrolled at Portland State and became a commuter student. To stay with Anna.

  He was eager to leave his part-time job and his once close-knit group of friends, but for some inexplicable reason, he was reluctant to leave his clingy, cloying, and altogether horrific high school girlfriend.

  Anna, a senior, already acted like she was marrying into the King family.

  She would say things like, “How are Mom and Dad?” which made Lucy’s eyes roll involuntarily.

  And Anna was one of those girls popular on the basis of merely being involved. An assessment of her school day determined that she never attended an academic class. She made posters with the leadership class, delivered notes as an office aide, sang soprano in the choir, ran the fastest mile in gym class, and made key-chains in Exploratory Metals. Two things that Anna could not do: basic math or construct a passable essay.

  Things had taken a turn for the worst when Lucy showed up in the library during her peer tutor hours for National Honor Society the year before and it was Anna who needed assistance. Instead of being a gracious student, Anna made the hour as uncomfortable as possible.

  If Lucy hadn’t hated her before, spending two hours trying to eke an intelligent thought out of her on the theme of Hamlet while she went on and on about how good Ethan was at kissing was enough to do the trick.

  Lucy growled at her phone. A few heads snapped up to look at her and she ignored them. “Jerk,” she typed.

  “Shut up,” he quickly shot back.

  “Break. Up. With. The. Bitch,” Lucy suggested.

  Ethan didn’t text back.

  “Thanks. Eternally,” Lucy said as she climbed into Salem’s old Honda Civic. The interior smelled of stale French fries and vanilla body-spray; the passenger side floorboard was littered with half-full soda bottles that rolled around with each turn, hitting Lucy’s feet with soft thuds.

  Salem pulled out of the school parking lot and traveled past the strip mall and the Lutheran church, up the hill, and into the row of tract homes where the Kings lived.

  “Have fun,” Salem said, as she pulled into the long driveway lined with well-groomed shrubbery. “I’m trying not to be jealous.”

  “You should just own your jealousy,” Lucy suggested. “It’s healthier. Besides, I’d be hate-filled and moody if you were taking off for two weeks and leaving me to fend for myself in the trenches.”

  “I’ll keep good notes on all major events.”

  “I’d expect nothing less.”

  “When you come back it will almost be Spring Break. Do you know what happens in April?” Salem asked with mock-excitement.

  “It stops raining.”

  “It never stops raining.”

  “It will be our last full month of high school?”

  Salem nodded, “Yes. That. Then May. And then prom. It will be our senior prom.”

  Lucy groaned and reached for the handle. Dresses and corsages, awkward conversations with boys who needed remedial dating lessons from their mothers—the whole institution of prom was a frightening prospect but at some point in her attempt to be a quality best friend: Lucy had agreed to attend with Salem. Sometimes she would lie awake at night already regretting the evening.

  Salem’s phone broke out into a pop ballad about feeling trapped in love. It was the ringtone she selected for her mother. She held her finger up to deter Lucy from sneaking away and answered the call.

  “Hello, Mom,” she said. In the quiet of the car, Lucy could hear a shrill and riled voice; Mrs. Aguilar barked on the other end of the line with indecipherable syllables of anger and grief. Salem looked confused and then worried, but soon she erupted into full shock—her mouth a slack O—and she gasped, biting her lip. “Ay Dios mio.” She shook her head. “Mom. Wait. Mom. Are you sure?”

  Lucy leaned in, concerned for her friend. “What?” she whispered. “What?”

  Salem turned her face to the driver’s window; she kept her back to her friend, and Lucy noticed Salem shaking. Small tremors rippled down her back and her hand couldn’t keep the phone steady. Fear and concern overwhelmed Lucy. Instinctively, she placed a comforting hand on Salem, waiting for the conversation to end. Lucy was self-aware enough to know she was ill-equipped to traverse the delicate minutiae of other people’s grief. Something big
was happening and she sat there like an awkward lump, already hoping that there would be appropriate words to say.

  “I’ll be right there. Mom. Si, madre. Si! I’ll be right there,” Salem finally got a word in. She hung up the phone and dropped it into her empty cup-holder. Her eyes were wet when she turned to Lucy.

  “Sal,” Lucy started. “What’s wrong? I’m so sorry. What’s wrong?” She heard her own voice waver and she took a deep breath to steady it.

  “It’s Bogie,” Salem replied.

  Lucy let out a slow breath. Bogie was the Aguilar family dog; he was a Rottweiler beagle mix whom Lucy had known since he was a puppy. The dog, officially Bogart, was a prized possession and a member of the family. He was young and healthy, and every night he slept curled up at Salem’s feet. Salem loved that dog more than anything, and Lucy searched for perfect words of comfort while gearing up for tragic news.

  “Oh. Sal. Please...don’t tell me...”

  “My mom came home and found him...gone.”

  “Missing?” Lucy asked eagerly. She hoped that maybe he’d just gone exploring, he’d return. Catastrophe averted. Histrionics unnecessary.

  Salem bent over and sobbed into her hands. When she looked up, her eyes were red and tears dripped down her face. “No, Lucy...gone. Gone. Like, dead. Just in the middle of the kitchen floor like he was asleep. But he wasn’t breathing, wasn’t moving. My mom looked around the house because she thought maybe he had eaten something bad for him…”

  “And?”

  “Lucy, I don’t know. I don’t know!” She stared at her friend wide-eyed and frantic. “I mean…what’s happening? What is this? Some cruel joke? Some big cruel vicious awful joke?”

  “I’m so sorry,” was all Lucy knew to say, and she reached out again to put a hand on Salem, but Salem pulled away.

  “It’s the end of the world,” she cried.

  Lucy felt frozen to the seat of the car—conflicted with empathy for her friend combined with concern that maybe Salem’s reaction was a bit too dramatic. Even for her.

  “I know it feels like that right now,” Lucy tried, but Salem stared at her wide-eyed and it was then everything inside of her ran cold and she watched Salem twitch with fear.

  “No,” Salem whispered. She cleared her throat. “No. Listen to me. Every last one is gone. They just are all gone. All of them.”

  There was a pause and Lucy stopped. She gathered her hands into her lap and wrapped them in a ball as dread formed in her stomach and uneasiness replaced pity. “What do you mean, Salem? All of them.”

  “My mom called the vet, but the line was busy. So she went over to our neighbor's house. She was distraught, right? And our neighbor opened the door just sobbing.”

  Salem sniffed.

  Outside a motorcycle roared passed. Its engine grew louder and then faded away.

  “And?” Lucy urged.

  Salem turned directly to Lucy. “Her dog was dead, too. Because it’s all the dogs. All the dogs, Lucy. All of them are dead.”

  Chapter Two

  24-hours after the Release

  Matriarch Mama Maxine King was short and stocky with wide hips and a helmet of full-bodied brunette hair. Her home was run with military precision mixed with equal parts tenderness, unabashed sarcasm, with an added healthy dose of profanity—usually directed at people on the television, rarely her kids, but sometimes her kids.

  Lucy’s mom had kids spanning fourteen years: Ethan at twenty, Lucy, seventeen; followed by Galen at thirteen and the twins Monroe and Malcolm at ten; and the baby, Harper, six.

  Strangers often liked to ask Maxine, in grocery lines or at restaurants, about the size of her family followed immediately after by offering sainthood or astonishment disguised as praise.

  And Maxine’s go-to response was: “After you’re outnumbered it doesn’t really matter how many kids you have. I certainly don’t deserve an award for having a well-used uterus.” It was her oft-repeated line to strangers that made each kid groan with embarrassment not only because they never wanted to hear their mother say the word uterus but also because they wished she would come up with a different joke.

  But while Mama Maxine, as friends of the King kids affectionately called her, handled her six children with tough-love lectures, peppered with facetiousness, she was also the picture of equanimity. And love. She loved each child who entered her home as her own, prompting scores of Pacific Lake teenagers to declare an unyielding allegiance to the woman.

  After hearing about the dogs, Lucy’s first instinct was to panic and get home to her family. She needed her mom.

  What had been deemed a “Targeted Dog Massacre” by local reporters, the televisions networks exacerbated the story even further, which catapulted the craziness to the Internet, which led to conspiracy theorists pontificating about doomsday scenarios.

  For dinner that night, her mother put a moratorium on discussion about the dead dogs—angrily shooting an evil eye at any child daring enough to mention the atrocities in front of Harper. She was trying to save the child from a meltdown.

  “Family meeting after the first bedtime round,” she promised which helped them grieve, but her mom made each child promise to sleep and threatened melatonin drops.

  So when Lucy was caught texting and messaging Salem into the wee hours of the morning, comforting her weepy and inconsolable friend, Maxine made a surprise visit and threatened to confiscate the phone.

  “We leave early tomorrow morning and you are a forgetful mess when you’re tired. You’re keeping me up.”

  Lucy conceded and curled up into a ball, willing herself to sleep and dream of sandy beaches and a world with dogs.

  She awoke to the rambling of her mother’s to-do list as Maxine stood by the foot of her bed, pulling her comforter off her body and exposing her skin to the cold house.

  “I need your carry-on bag and your monogrammed tote in the hall in twenty minutes. Hair-brushed, breakfast eaten, schoolwork packed. Limo arrives in an hour to take us to the airport and I will not be delayed. Lucy Larkspur King, I swear to the Lord Almighty that I will leave you behind. Do you hear me? I let you sleep in beyond all reason. Now get your bony ass out of this bed and into gear. Come child. Chop, chop.”

  Then she was off, her feet clomping down their carpeted hallway like a whole herd of mothers off to rouse her next child with empty threats of abandonment.

  Lucy rubbed sleep out of her eyes and swung her feet down to the floor. She leaned over and grabbed her phone—as per her morning ritual—checking for late-night missed texts from Salem, but there was nothing new from her friend. The absence of a text was odd. And it made her feel a twinge of worry.

  A second-glance at her social feed made Lucy gasp. Tragedy abounded. The dogs, and other beloved pets, were falling to some mysterious illness. Also, someone’s grandma had passed on during the night. Many people complained of an impending flu.

  And several more people linked to articles about the animal deaths while someone suggested contaminated drinking water was the cause. The feed was a veritable plethora of honest-to-God sadness and bandwagon melodramas.

  She heard her mom walking back in her direction and Lucy darted out into the hallway, phone in-hand, and tripped right over the line of luggage—set up like soldiers marching off to war.

  “Mom,” Lucy said, brandishing her phone like a weapon. “Have you heard? They say that someone poisoned our water. Mom, I’m serious, someone thinks that people are going to die from this! Like…actual humans now? Mom! This is serious.”

  Maxine put her hand on Lucy’s phone and pushed it down toward the floor. Lucy searched her mother’s face for comfort but she didn’t know what she saw—a reflection of her own fear and a deeper worry, unreachable. Lucy knew her mom well enough to know the woman was unflappable even in the worst emergencies.

  “I already talked to your dad,” Maxine comforted. “He says there’s nothing to worry about. If we needed to worry, he’d know Lucy.”

  “He’
s not here?” Lucy gripped her phone tighter. His absence made her anxious—her father was a masterful voice of reason, a beacon of calm. He never used profanity.

  “He’s meeting us at the airport. Some meeting he couldn’t get out of.” Maxine made an attempt to scoot around Lucy, but she remained rooted, legs outstretched, hands across her chest. “Fifty-minutes Lucy. Fifty-minutes.”

  “Mom,” Lucy repeated. She opened her mouth, then closed it. “Mom.” Then just, “I’m scared.”

  For a brief second, she thought she saw her mother flinch, but then her mom smiled and leaned in, kissed her on the forehead, and moved her out of the way so she could slide past.

  “Look, maybe some sicko poisoned all the pets. And I hope they catch him, or her, and throw them into the far reaches of hell...but when it comes to disasters, I trust your father. He’s earned this vacation. We won’t be thinking about any of this fear mongering when we land. We haven’t had a vacation in six years...six years! So. Get.” She swatted her hand against Lucy’s backside and with a nod took off grabbing one suitcase with her.

  Lucy watched her mom walk out of sight before she ducked back into her room and shut the door; she dialed her father’s phone without thinking. She needed to talk to him, needed to hear the reassurance herself. It rang and rang before her dad finally answered.

  “Morning sweetie,” her dad said as he picked up the call. Before Harper arrived, Lucy was the only girl in a house of smelly, fighting, dirt-loving boys. Her father doted on her, but he never called her princess, never made her feel like she was special just because she was a girl; he always said awkward things like, “Hey, darling, I just wanted to let you know that I’m so proud of you for your eighty-six percent in math class. You’re trying so hard.”

  It was like he read a chapter in a parenting book about raising strong, self-confident daughters and followed it to the letter. First, gender neutral clothing. Perfect, everything was a hand-me-down from Ethan anyway. It would have been more helpful if he had read a book on how to deal with painfully self-aware and awkward daughters with moderate ambitions, but alas.