The Virulent Chronicles Box Set

by Shelbi Wescott

  “Dad? Have you seen the news? Mom is all on some Seychelles-inspired happy-juice, but Dad…Dad. This is ridiculous. Are we actually just going to pretend that this isn’t happening? Did someone poison the dogs, Dad?” she said in a rush. She took a breath.

  “Lucy—”

  “Does that mean that someone poisoned all the animals?”

  “Please, Lucy—”

  “It’s a big deal, Dad. And why aren’t we talking about it? And why did you have to work today? Didn’t your job give you this vacation as a reward? Can’t they let you actually have the day your vacation starts off from work?” She flopped herself back down on the edge of her bed and bounced her knee in agitation.

  “It’s okay to be worried, sweetheart,” her father’s calm voice said back to her. “I think the news is worrisome. But you are not in danger. I am giving you my word. I’m looking at everything you are, too. Absorbing it and understanding…and I’m telling you. Nothing will hurt you. Also, hey, as an added bonus maybe this can be reason number fifty-two why I’m glad we don’t have pets.” He chuckled, but then trailed-off when he realized Lucy wasn’t laughing. “Darling, I’m sorry. But I don’t know what you want me to do. You have a limo to the airport in a bit. Focus on that for me.”

  “Can’t a poison that hurts animals also hurt people?”

  Lucy’s dad drew in a quick breath and then let out a sigh. “Yes. It’s very possible.”

  “Then how can you say—”

  “My sweet girl,” her father was quiet for a beat. “I don’t know anything that could help you here and I have to go. I do. I have a plane to catch too. Okay? See you at the airport. Vacation of a lifetime. Right?”

  She grumbled into the phone a defeated growl. “Fine. The rest of the world will be in shambles,” she glanced down again at her phone and scrolled through some new articles, “with some new strain of flu virus? The news is saying that...Dad?” There was no answer.

  Then he said, “Lucy. Go help your mom with the little ones. Turn your phone off. Start daydreaming of scuba diving. I’m hanging up. I love you.”

  Lucy waited for a long moment to see if he had really hung up—but she heard the distinct click and saw the flash of their call time. He was not a dad well suited for her panic and worry; Lucy knew that if there was reason to worry, her father would tell her in calm, well-managed tones. She pushed the fear aside and grudgingly rose to her feet.

  Out in the hallway, Ethan nudged her on his way to the bathroom. She turned on him. “Have you seen the news this morning?”

  He yawned. “Yup,” he answered.

  “Aren’t you worried?”

  “Nope,” was all Ethan replied before shutting the door with a deliberate slam.

  Paranoia was a trait Lucy inherited from her recently deceased grandmother. When she was alive, her mother would always sit the two of them together at the dinner table—co-conspirators in a world where every stranger was a serial killer and mild-joint pain was incurable cancer. Her grandmother would whisper things to her, a mouth full of mashed potatoes, spittle dribbling on to her neon flowered shirt. “Your father is a spy,” and then with furtive glances, “I think someone is poisoning my food.”

  Everyone else treated grandma like a senile pet, but Lucy loved to hear about the bears that sneaked through her apartment at night and delivered the poison for the “agents” and how her husband, a grandfather Lucy never met, was the actual inventor of the microwave and how the government stole his plans and set “that Percy Spencer up as a puppet.” When Lucy repeated the story, her father rolled his eyes. “My father did not invent the microwave. He had no knowledge of radar technology. I respect that Grandma wants to idolize him, but my dad was a mediocre scientist at best.”

  Grandpa King’s lifelong goal was to prove the existence of time travel, but Grandma King said he failed. “A life’s work down the drain,” she would sigh. “I know because if he had figured it out, wouldn’t he have come back to visit me? I could go for a visit with a younger man right about now.” Then Lucy would blush and motion that Grandma was wearing a piece of fruit on her chin, which the old lady would brush to the floor and then say with disdain, “If your parents had a dog they wouldn’t need a vacuum.”

  When Grandma died peacefully in her sleep one night, Lucy mumbled something about wanting to inscribe on her tombstone: “Poisoned by bears.” But the rest of the family was vehemently against the idea and Lucy was outvoted.

  As Lucy dressed for the day, she channeled Grandma’s obsession with conspiracy. Her heart tightened in her chest as she pondered the worldwide implications of a petless world. It seemed like an unfortunate time to board a plane. She wished she could comfort Salem and offer some semblance of a rational explanation but none came to her. There was nothing she could say that would explain the tragedy. Nothing she could say to stop what had already happened.

  With great reluctance, she began to pack her carry-on—a gift from her mom for Christmas one year. In the embroidered bag, she tossed in some books and her writing journal. But when she went to her backpack to retrieve her mountains of class work, she found a math book and nothing else.

  With great dread, Lucy tore through her room. But her homework was nowhere in sight. “You’re so dumb,” Lucy mumbled and slapped her forehead. A locker drop before last period and then the distracting text from Ethan had resulted in her leaving two weeks worth of homework at school.

  Granted Lucy knew none of it actually mattered, but that was not the point—if one of her teachers had asked her to say the alphabet backwards while performing an interpretive dance, Mama Maxine would make sure it was completed before any fun was had.

  The oversight would not go over well.

  From downstairs, Maxine blew a whistle.

  It was a rape whistle that she had acquired while taking a community self-defense class; Maxine wore it around her neck for protection in public and as a parenting tool; the shrill peal was a non-negotiable call to her side. Some of her friends mocked the whistle, but no one could deny its effectiveness. Lucy tromped down the steps, depositing her half-empty bag on the landing with a pout.

  Maxine paced in front of her children as they lined up. Leaning, slouching—each possessing varying degrees of excitement about their travel day. She carried a clipboard modpodged with scrapbook paper. The Internet had turned their mother into a maniac, especially when she had access to hot-glue and an entire bookshelf dedicated to scrapbooking paper. She tapped a purple pen against her personalized travel list—printed freshly that morning, adorned with a stick figure version of their family in the top left corner.

  “Anti-nausea pill time,” she announced and pulled a white bottle out of her pocket. “Hands out.” Then she tossed them all a Sesame Street juice box, watching with an eagle eye as each child gulped and choked down the bright orange pills. “Tongues out,” she demanded and then nodded. “Fantastic.”

  Her father had stressed repeatedly that the vaccines and pills for the trip were important and that they would be facilitated without complaint.

  “No child is coming home with typhoid or yellow fever. God forbid you get bitten by some rabies infected wild boar,” their mother had added. Monroe and Malcolm took great interest in the promise of wild boars.

  In general, their father’s disdain for illness of any kind had become a family joke. Maxine was the cleaner of vomit, the giver of medicine, the filler of humidifiers in the middle of the night. Their father worked on the effects of communicable diseases on living tissue—and his work had created a monster; he would visibly bristle at people who coughed and sneezed in public, and he refused to shake hands, applying hand-sanitizer by the buckets. Even though he could bring up disgusting tales of gelatinous tissue in jars and oozing boils growing on lab rats at the dinner table, one mention of a sore throat and he would raise a crucifix at you and back away in fear.

  Maxine checked off the first item on her list and continued. “Let’s do a carry-on check.”

&n
bsp; Ethan flipped his phone open, glowered at the screen, and with flying thumbs sent off a text and shoved it back into his pocket.

  “Anna problems?” Lucy whispered in a mocking tone as their mom started with the younger kids, rifling through their bags and suggesting additions while tossing out a wayward pirate hat and Monroe’s Ziplock bag full of mismatched Legos.

  Ethan rolled his eyes in response.

  “You should just dump her,” Lucy said. “Then go hook up with an island girl without regret.”

  He turned to his sister, seeking solidarity. “She’s threatening to break up with me because she thinks I had time to show up to the school today to say goodbye but chose not to.”

  “Has she never met Mom? Ridiculous.”

  On cue, Maxine was in front of Lucy, bending down for her bag. “Thirty hours, Lucy. We won’t land in Seychelles for thirty hours. We’re staying overnight in Dubai tonight. And all you want to bring is two books and a notebook? Wait. Wait. Where’s your homework?”

  Lucy grimaced. She had noticed. In less than ten seconds.

  Maxine’s eyes flashed. “Oh...don’t even tell me.”

  “It was an accident. I was sidetracked. Animals were dying, Mom.”

  Her mother ignored the last part and raised her purple pen to Lucy’s chest. “This was a condition of the trip...a condition I made with your teachers, with your dad,” her voice began to climb. “I said to each of them that you would arrive back to school with your work completed, not in a state-of-completion. Com-plee-ted.” She glanced at her watch and swore loudly. “Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes Lucy until our limo to the airport arrives.” She glanced at Ethan and then turned back to Lucy, the wheels visibly churning. She swore again, then sighed, defeated and agitated.

  “I can take her,” Ethan offered, keys already in his hands. “Five minutes there. Five minutes to her locker. Five minutes home. I won’t even shut off the car. We’ll be back with time to spare.”

  Without hesitation, Maxine pointed to the door, as if it were the offer she was hoping for—the saving grace. “Fifteen minutes or I’ll kill a kitten for every minute you’re late.”

  Lucy paused, “A worthy threat if all the kittens weren’t already dead.”

  “Are kittens dead now too? I haven’t been paying attention because I have been getting ready for a trip. I will kill something. Be sure of it.”

  “We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Ethan added.

  Maxine’s eyes narrowed. “You will be back in fifteen minutes or will wish you were dead. So help me God.”

  Like a flash the two oldest King children flew out of the house—speeding down the road with manic intensity, focused on their goal and their timeframe, and fully unaware that the world was collapsing all around them.

  Chapter Three

  Ethan pulled his refurbished 1962 Ford Fairlane up through a small gravel driveway hidden between the Pacific Lake High School’s football field and the metal shop. The car bounced along, navigating the narrow stretch—the main building of the school extending out in all its beige and brown glory.

  They were headed to their secret entrance—a forgotten door hidden behind overgrown trees and shrubs that led to a small staircase which opened up to a supply closet next to the defunct swimming pool. Since the pool had been closed down years ago due to budget cuts and the doors only locked from the outside, it was the perfect way to sneak into the building after the doors had been locked after the first period tone.

  Their campus was a closed campus. The main entrance and two sets of double doors leading to a turnaround stayed open during the day with a security guard watching as students and visitors filed through metal detectors.

  It seemed like an unnecessary precaution for a school on the outskirts of Portland without a history of violence, but somehow it made the parents feel safer. After a gun-related shooting down in rural Oregon, panicky parents lobbied for hyper-vigilance. Within one year they ousted the mild-mannered, mopey and much maligned principal and replaced him with a fast-speaking, bright and shiny wizard of Pacific Lake; he was quick with a dazzling smile and had a never ending bag-of-tricks. Principal Spencer was tall and thin with a perpetually trimmed buzz-cut, five hundred dollar suits, and perfected glower. He seemed to loathe teenagers and treated them with the exact same annoyance reserved for houseflies.

  With Spencer came a high-tech camera system and intricate new security policy and a heavy duty key system that made getting in and out of the high school a challenge only James Bond could conquer. The man was committed to safety.

  Ethan’s promise that Lucy would be “in and out” in five minutes was hindered by the closed-campus, the small army of security personnel whose main priorities were to enforce it, and Anna who had texted that “some sort of weirdness is going down today” after Ethan told her that she had exactly five minutes to be outside at the secret entrance or she would miss her opportunity for a goodbye.

  If Lucy was caught roaming the halls without a note, she’d be relegated to In-School Suspension. Security was trained to ignore teenagers’ myriad excuses; so running into a security guard would be the end of getting back on time and pacifying Mama Maxine. Eventually, the school would realize their error and set her free, but that mistake was not allotted for in the timeframe. Lucy wished that all the subterfuge and deceit wasn’t just for collecting homework because it felt like a giant waste of energy. This was Maxine’s doing. And Ethan’s. No. It was just Anna’s fault.

  The Fairlane rolled to a stop and Anna materialized from the side of the school. Wind blew her tangled bleach-blonde hair around her shoulders. She walked toward the passenger-side door, arms crossed against her body, her eyes red. Lucy looked at Ethan, but he looked away, entreating her to leave without mocking him. Where Anna was concerned, Ethan was temperamental and touchy; always so defensive and irritable.

  “Five minutes,” her brother reminded her.

  Lucy opened the door and crawled out, grabbing her brother’s black backpack to transport her work and leaving the door ajar for Anna, who slithered into the car without saying a word.

  “Morning, Anna,” Lucy said to her as she walked away, impressed with her own civility.

  “It’s crazy in there,” Anna replied.

  Lucy pivoted and opened her mouth to ask how, but Ethan motioned her away. “Go! I’m leaving in five minutes if you’re back or not. It wouldn’t be fair for Mom to have to kill two children in one day.” Anna mustered a weak smile and shut the door, a mopey argument ensuing before Lucy was even out of earshot.

  Slipping in through a small patchwork of shrubbery, Lucy walked with purpose and determination toward the side door of their high school—which had been tagged some time ago with bright neon green spray-paint. She tugged on the handle and the door pulled open, leading to a damp, dark stairwell. A dim light guided her forward; the handrails were sticky with used gum wads and crushed soda cans were abandoned in the corners—the smell of mildew, dirt, and urine permeated the air.

  When she pushed on the door leading to the supply closet, the door opened and then crashed back into her shoulder; she groaned. Someone had placed the old pool cover against the door. She aligned her shoulder, grabbed the handle, and pushed with all her strength—the metal cart rolled inch by inch with each well-placed body-slam. Lucy squeezed her body through the opening she had created and then, because she couldn’t get back out that way anyway, shoved the pool cover back against the door. Then for good measure, she toppled some dusty chairs down, too. She let her imagination play out what would happen when Anna tried to get back into the school after her rendezvous with Ethan—the daydream ended with Anna sporting a bruised shoulder while seething in In-School Suspension.

  Lucy admitted her violent fantasies were a bit unfair, but they made the unfortunate events of the morning seem a little less ominous.

  While Lucy navigated the supply and the pool, she grabbed her phone. Four minutes left. And still no texts from Salem. Even in mourning,
Salem would connect. Salem allowed herself to feel no emotion unless it could be experienced with someone else. Where was she and why was she silent? No lamentations, no messages with excessive capitalization and punctuation. No farewell wishes or “Bon voyage!” or “Bring me back a necklace!”

  With her eyes on her phone, Lucy checked her feed.

  She stopped walking because she was unable to process what she was seeing and move forward at the same time.

  All over the country, people were sending and posting alarming updates. In just thirty-minutes everything had gone from sad and speculative to real and nightmarish. A sickness was spreading.

  Hospitals couldn’t handle the intakes of the ailing who were arriving at steady-intervals. Someone who worked in an ER posted a photo of a crowded hallway, the caption reading: “Busy day. Damn this flu.” So-and-so had heard that 9-1-1 was jammed. A friend who went to another school updated her status to read: RIP Aunt Rosemary.

  Lucy’s phone buzzed and she almost shrieked, juggling the device before checking her text. It was Ethan: “Anna says teachers were reporting they were going into lockdown because of some flu. Get. Out. Homework not worth it. Mom will deal.”

  Lockdown.

  They had done a lockdown drill during the first week of school.

  It meant there was an immediate threat to the student body within, or around, the school. All students would be held in classrooms until the lockdown was lifted. Lucy took a step forward around the empty cement cavern; she could see from her vantage point the long stretch of hallway dedicated to the science department. The lights were dimmed. The entire place was clear of movement. If she could get straight down the hallway and move closer to the English classrooms, she would be able to get to her locker and exit out the double-doors that opened toward the senior parking lot.

  The high school was built as a giant rectangle. Students could start walking in one direction and the school would eventually lead them back to their starting point—classrooms lined the inside and outside of the rectangle. There were small hallways off the ends leading to the pool and the library on the opposite side. The science hallway ran at one end and directly down from the main office; the other end of the hallway passed by the gym, the cafeteria, the counseling center, and eventually the social studies hallway. Then came the English and math hallways. At her present location, she could not be further from her locker but when she was finished, at least her exit would be close.