The Virulent Chronicles Box Set

by Shelbi Wescott

  “You’re absolutely right it’s not the same!” Salem was getting fired up. And in typical Salem fashion she had shifted the argument right out from under him. Like a brilliant chess player, she maneuvered her pieces without anyone noticing and went in for the kill. “You still have the possibility of a family out there somewhere. You’re scared and worried, but you don’t know. Maybe a friend died yesterday or someone on the track team, but you didn’t see your parents take their last breath. So…what then? You want to go be someone’s freakin’ hero? Go be a hero. But we are not the same. You’re not completely demolished yet.” She took a breath and pointed a finger to Lucy and Grant. “When you’re a shell of yourself…then you’ll see. There’s nothing to conquer out there but more loss.”

  Lucy’s heart beat in her ears as she contemplated replying. Grant looked close to tears, or close to throwing a punch, Lucy couldn’t tell which. His whole leg twitched and he bounced it up and down. She knew Salem. Knew that a little pushback would calm her down.

  “I won’t speak for Grant,” Lucy interjected, glancing in his direction, and he nodded his thanks. “But for me? Hope for finding my family doesn’t take away from your grief…”

  “I’m not a monster,” Salem interrupted, lowering her finger, her voice still on edge. “I’d never take that away from you. I want you to be right. I want them to be alive. Who do you think I am?”

  Lucy stood up. “I don’t think any of us know who we are anymore. And maybe we should be allowed some time to figure it out.”

  It was truth, spoken in kindness. This sudden detour from the ordinary unmoored them from reality and thrust them into a disquiet about the future too difficult to digest. Underneath it all was a permeating worry that their time too was short and that they were treading water until the next wave of loss and horror crashed down on them. Lucy could see it on all their faces, playing out in the blank-glances, the dark circles: The sagging weight of loss.

  Grant opened his mouth to respond, but then he turned his head and he opened the door wider. The snoring had stopped. There was rustling on the speaker and they knew what that meant. The man, the monster, was waking up.

  “Food is our first priority,” Salem said. “We can stay put and away from the cameras if we have food.”

  They had listened to the office sounds for fifteen minutes. Spencer left and came back twice. He hummed and mumbled to himself, but the specifics of his one-way conversations were indecipherable. None of his current actions struck them as alarming or worrisome; he had not fired the gun again or sent menacing messages out over the intercom. In many ways, they hoped he stayed away from the intercom lest he should ever notice it was helping them track his every move in and out of the office.

  “So, we need to get to the cafeteria,” Lucy stated. “And we can’t just waltz through the hallway.”

  It had been a bit since Lucy had checked her phone; she had set it on one of the couches and she grabbed it, but the low battery light blinked and blinked, warning her and threatening her. But there was still nothing but silence. Lucy shoved the phone in her pocket and willed it to keep itself alive for a little bit longer. She didn’t even know if cell phones were working or if her wish was wasted.

  “Go up the ladder,” Grant instructed. “Boiler room is on the inside of the gates. It’ll be easy, as long as Spencer doesn’t leave the office. If he goes on the move, we should abort the trip and head back.”

  “Agreed,” Salem said.

  Back they trudged to the journalism room where the door was kept ajar with the doorstop. It was easily ten degrees cooler in there with the open roof funneling in wind and elements. The trio worked to move the tables back under the skylight and then drag the ladder upward.

  Grant went first, pulling himself up to the roof with sheer upper body strength, his legs following after. Lucy went next, bracing herself each time the ladder wobbled under her weight the higher she climbed. When she reached the top, Grant lowered his arms and pulled her up and she scrambled to the hard surface the second her legs could catch the side of roof. For a prolonged moment, she rested on the cool roof, flat on her belly against the tar. Then she stood and blinked.

  Scanning the landscape, Lucy’s shock caused her to nearly stumble backward through the hole in the skylight. She regained her composure and took a step forward. The sky was altered, filled with the bright yellows, purples and pinks of an early-morning sunrise even though the sun had been up for hours. Above the colorful hues, the rest of the sky was dark and dense with smoke, and as Lucy opened her mouth to call down to Salem she could feel a sharp taste on her tongue and in the back of her throat. Everything around her took on a subtle orange tint—as if she were wearing thin filtered glasses. The effect of the colors and the smoke and the orange created a dreamlike atmosphere—otherworldly.

  She clamped her mouth down and took a tentative step forward. Then another. Walking to the edge of the roof and peering down on to the parking lot below to the dozens and dozens of deserted cars, dead bodies, discarded backpacks, and other personal items littering the area. It was then Lucy realized the earth was strangely quiet, just like Clayton had said. There were no planes in the sky and no cars rushing down the street. The screams and torment of the survivors from yesterday was gone.

  Only a few sporadic sounds remained—a crash, a sudden car alarm—their appearance jarring, unexpected, frightening, causing each of them to jump and seek out the source with their hearts pounding with fear.

  She closed her eyes and listened to the wind. From miles and miles away, she heard the distinct sound of a dog barking.

  Then she realized with great sadness that she must have imagined it.

  Chapter Eleven

  They climbed down into the boiler room and out into the small walkway that connected the room with the main hallway. With hearts racing and their ears trained on the intercom, they moved with cautious precision. And when they rounded the corner to the hall, Grant leading the front, Salem huddled at Lucy’s elbow a few steps behind, they all stopped short and gasped.

  Splayed out on the tile was a dead man.

  He had brown hair and was wearing a blue button-down shirt, jeans, and a walkie-talkie was still in his hand. A thick key ring with at least fifteen silver keys dangled from a belt-loop. The man still looked like a man, but his skin had a greenish and cloudy quality along his bloated cheeks and extremities as if he had been submerged in a vat of soured milk.

  This decomposition was not normal.

  Not even the Ebola virus could arrive without symptoms, kill in minutes, and reduce the body to rotting tissue within an hour. Lucy knew if her father was around, he would be looking at this virus with curiosity, examining it with a scientist’s eye, and she longed for his strength and whatever answers he could give her. Not having him within reach was alarming—she had questions. Who would answer them?

  It was difficult to look away, despite the disgust. Grant coughed into his shoulder and then leaned forward, inspecting and assessing the body. He dropped down and squatted, turned his head away from the stench, and started to reach forward, his eyes watering.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Salem asked.

  With one quick motion, Grant unhooked the silver key ring and swiped it off the belt-loop with a small tug. The keys jangled in his hand and he held them up triumphantly. “Master keys. Locker keys. All keys. This,” he jangled them, “is a treasure.”

  “I wonder why his body was left here,” Lucy said.

  “One of the last adults to get sick, probably.” Salem crossed her arms over her body and looked up and down the hall with nervous, shifty eyes. “Come on, I feel exposed.”

  “Wait,” Grant said and his shot up to the cameras. “Where’s Spencer?”

  They all strained to listen, but the office was quiet.

  Then they heard the ring of a telephone.

  One long ring, another long ring. It was coming from the main office. And Spencer answered it—off somewhere in the
office, away from the microphone.

  “The phones!” Lucy exclaimed and she reached her pocket, scrambling. “The phones are working!” Pulling her cell free, she stared at the screen, waiting for dormant text messages to start pouring through. A beep signaled that she had a message and Lucy clicked on it quickly.

  Salem: I’m in the building. Journalism room?

  But that was all.

  “What? What did you get?” Salem asked, leaning over to look at the screen.

  “Just you. From yesterday.” Lucy didn’t even try to mask her disappointment. She dialed Ethan’s number. After five long seconds, the call clicked in. “It’s ringing! It’s ringing!” she said and she took two long strides back down the side walkway toward the boiler room, shoving her left hand over her left ear out of habit, even though there wasn’t any noise to drown out in the background. After four rings, it kicked her to voicemail. Ethan’s voice on the message was bright and chipper—and so clear, like he was standing right beside her. She wanted to cry.

  “Ethan? Ethan. It’s me. I’m at the school. I haven’t left. I’m still here. If you make it here, I’m in the—” the phone kicked her off. Lost signal. Lucy growled and shoved the phone back into her pocket. Salem was looking at her and she tried to smile.

  “He will hear it. He’ll get the message,” she encouraged.

  Grant positioned himself directly beneath a speaker in the hallway; his head upturned, his eyes squinting.

  “Who could he be talking to?” Grant said as Salem and Lucy joined him, stepping around the dead janitor in the process.

  “Family?”

  “No. He’s angry. Can you hear the tone?”

  Grant was right. The conversation happening halfway around the school and just out of range of their intercom was not a happy one. Spencer’s voice raised and lowered, with growing levels of intensity.

  Occasionally they heard a snippet.

  “I will control that. Only me,” Spencer had snapped once. Then a few seconds later, “No. I will not help. But we can talk.” Lucy, Grant, and Salem exchanged puzzled glances.

  Then there was nothing. A lost signal, an angry hang-up, they could only speculate what ended the discussion and who was on the other end of it. But they now heard Spencer opening and shutting drawers and files with a fury, shouting to himself as he went: “No. My school. My rules.”

  Salem lowered her head from looking at the ceiling and scowled. “I don’t like this.”

  Grant took one look at the camera. “Me neither, but while we know where Spencer is…” he pointed to the red light blinking at them, “let’s get what we need and go.”

  The three of them bolted into the cafeteria—running together against the wall; trying to stay on the outskirts as much as possible, crawling behind tables and using stacked benches for cover. Out of all the areas in the school, the cafeteria was most covered with cameras. Every corner boasted a device—sometimes several—and there were limited blind spots. Ducking behind a metal food cart, the trio the scooted to the back of the cafeteria where the industrial refrigerators hummed.

  None of them had ever entered the back part of the kitchen before and they stood in awe of the prep area and the pantry, the freezers, and the endless rows of stainless steel pots and pans. Sterile and polished, everything gleaned brightly.

  “I never actually thought any cooking happened in this kitchen,” Grant mused. “Like these have to be just for show.” He pinged a hanging saucepan with a flick and drew back, rubbing his nail. “Don’t they serve us everything frozen?”

  Lucy walked over to the walk-in freezer and unlatched it, opening the door wide—a cloud of cold air billowed up at her as she walked inside. She was instantly freezing as she rummaged around boxes of frozen peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwiches, the kind with the crusts removed, all the ingredients jammed into a bread pocket. The frozen options were limited: Meat patties, chicken nuggets, pre-cooked French fries, burritos. Lucy didn’t know how they would cook the frozen items or if there was some cooking rule on letting a meat patty defrost in a refrigerator for an unspecified amount of time. That was a question for her mom or the Internet and neither of those things were readily available.

  “Take what you can carry,” Lucy instructed the others.

  A drawer near the back yielded industrial size garbage bags and Grant handed one to each of them so they could start collecting food. They flipped them open, spreading the top wide and started filling it with anything that could be stored, consumed, and transported with ease. Salem grabbed milk cartons and sandwiches and then she turned her attention to a metal rack that held small bags of pretzels and corn chips.

  “What about the fresh stuff?” Salem asked, palming an orange.

  Grant shook his head. “Too risky.”

  “How long does it take to get scurvy?” Lucy asked.

  “Like sailors or whatever?” Grant shrugged. “Months?”

  Salem dropped the orange back into the crate. She took a few steps and opened up a refrigerator and examined the shelves stocked from top to bottom with juices and water in plastic bottles. She smiled and started dumping then two at a time into her bag.

  The bags dragged on the floor, heavy from an abundance of food, snacks, and bottled water.

  “This should last us. What a goldmine,” Grant said excitedly.

  “A statement that has never been said about a school cafeteria in the history of school cafeterias,” said Salem. She hauled her bag over her shoulder and started to walk forward, hunched over from the weight.

  “I wish we could get into the vending machines,” Lucy said. “Swedish fish and red vines, chocolate chip cookies, and peanut butter cups?”

  Spencer’s voice erupted above them, still talking into the phone, the cafeteria speakers echoing in the empty space. They jumped and it reminded them that their time was limited. Each heaving their loot, they began to work their way back to the boiler room—taking slow and deliberate steps, like cartoons figures tip-toeing away from a snoring enemy.

  They climbed back up the metal ladder embedded into the boiler room wall and pushed open the small square on the ceiling that allowed them roof access. Then they skipped and ran back to the skylight in the East Wing, keeping their bags hoisted on their backs as they slid down the opening, their feet blindly searching for the ladder, kicking this way and that until the wooden steps materialized and guided them back down to safety. Then Grant carried the ladder down and shoved it up against the wall and slid the tables away as well. The skylight still offered a wayward outsider entrance, but they still hoped the long drop on to the tile floor was enough of a deterrent.

  Without a word, they meandered across the hall like weary roommates arriving home from a shopping trip. Grant swung the door wide, the girls sliding inside as he fumbled for the light. Lucy dropped her grocery bags and walked to the far corner. She sat down on one of the small red couches, her bag between her legs, and she opened it wide, rummaging around, counting and assessing.

  Her cracker breakfast left much to be desired and Lucy couldn’t resist the thought of thick peanut butter and sweet jelly; she grabbed a sandwich, still partially frozen, and began to gnaw on it, succeeding in breaking off pieces of bread and hardened jelly between her teeth, and she rolled it around her mouth, warming it with her tongue.

  Grant and Salem also descended upon the bags like a pack of wolves. They crouched over their plundered food and began to eat it on the spot without regard for rationing. Grant opened a bag of pretzels and a water bottle and Salem downed a bottle of juice, each of them depositing their garbage in the corner.

  “We’ll dump our garbage next door,” Lucy suggested. “Grab a bag and then lock it up in the wood shop or something.”

  Grant dangled the keys. “This might help,” he replied. “Locker keys.”

  “Nice,” said Salem, making a grab for them, but Grant whisked them out of her reach.

  “What do we need?” Lucy asked. She surveyed the room ag
ain. They had two small couches and a big leather chair, a small wooden desk with the coffee maker, a half-empty bookshelf, a large built-in cupboard with paper cups, a stack of computer paper, and a box of old t-shirts advertising a canned food drive from six years ago.

  She turned to Grant. “I want a classroom key. I want my backpack.” Grant wiggled a key free and slapped it into her upturned palm.

  “I’ll open all the lockers in a section and we can go through them piece by piece. Save anything essential, right?” Grant asked.

  They nodded.

  They made the trek down to the English hall. Lucy let herself into Mrs. Johnston’s room and went straight to Ethan’s backpack, slipping it up over her shoulder, holding on to the strap tightly. More than anything, Lucy wanted to be reunited with her pictures. She looked around the room and assessed the familiar quality of it. Everything now seemed so foreign, so strange, and so empty. Pausing by Mrs. Johnston’s desk, she scanned the pictures, the notes from students and the ungraded papers.

  She hoped Mrs. Johnston made it home.

  Hoped her family was waiting; hoped she had water and food and a plan. Some people deserved a happy ending, Lucy thought. And Mrs. Johnston was one of those people. She stopped for a second and opened up Mrs. Johnston’s desk drawers. She nabbed a bottle of ibuprofen, but couldn’t find anything else of use—various office supplies, a thank you note, a tube of lipstick, and a nail file. She left the remaining detritus undisturbed.

  When Lucy exited the room, she saw Grant opening lockers wide with the key and Salem swooping in to plunder. They worked as a team, standing side-by-side, yanking and pulling, flipping things over and tossing it to the ground.

  It felt so wrong. But it was also so necessary.

  Maybe the items in the lockers were important, but these were still artifacts of someone else’s life, tucked away for them to discover and judge. Within minutes Grant and Salem were tittering over some of their finds: Packs of condoms, a locker turned shrine for some overly auto-tuned pop star. Salem unearthed a collection of phones and music devices, treasure trove of technology, stuffed in a shoebox under unused textbooks and half-eaten sandwich.