The Virulent Chronicles Box Set

by Shelbi Wescott

  At the kitchen island, Harper, Monroe, and Malcolm ate pancakes without utensils, and the crumbs spilled lazily around the bottom of the chair. On any other day, she’d march to vacuum them up, but she opted to ignore the messiness in favor of progress. Galen had gone to the trouble to peel two oranges for his brothers and pour them glasses of milk; he’d also started the pancakes on the griddle. But as a reward for his hard work, he had made himself a Pop-Tart, their Saturday treat, and Maxine shot him a knowing glare.

  “We won’t be here Saturday,” he responded with a shrug.

  “Protein, too. Not just carbs. You two, boys.” She looked at the twins. “Eat a slice of cheese or peanut butter.”

  “Peanut butter on my orange?” Monroe giggled, which prompted Malcolm to giggle. And both boys sat there laughing. Harper giggled alongside them, unaware of why they were laughing.

  “Peanut butter on my hand?” Malcolm tried to Monroe’s delight.

  “Peanut butter on my…. butt,” Monroe said loudly.

  Galen rolled his eyes, and Harper doubled over laughing.

  “Butt means bottom!” she declared.

  “I’m going to lose my temper,” Maxine said as she unwrapped a protein bar. She tried to take a big breath and tell herself that the kids were only excited. Their excitement came in the form of unbridled energy. But no matter what she told herself, she knew that if her morning was chaotic instead of calm, she’d have a major meltdown. “That’s your warning.” She hated Scott in that moment for abandoning her to do this first part by herself. If his work didn’t pay for trips, there was no way she’d endure the time commitment.

  The kids went back to eating, temporarily altered by her words.

  Then Monroe just whispered the word butt under his breath, and Maxine was on him in an instant. She put a crooked finger down against the tile and looked him in the eye. “In forty minutes, a man is coming to take us to the airport. I have five pieces of checked luggage and eight carry-ons. Six children. Eight passports. And if I forget one of those things at any time, our total trip goes up in flames. This is a serious endeavor. You think saying the word butt is funny?”

  She waited for Monroe to respond. Eventually, he nodded.

  “Then sit in the corner and say butt one hundred times.”

  Malcolm laughed and a chunk of half-chewed pancake flew out of his mouth and on to the tile counters.

  “You better watch it, or you’ll join him,” Maxine said.

  To preserve her sanity, she left the kitchen and began to round up toothbrushes. She shoved them into Ziploc baggies and then into front pockets of the carry-ons. She checked her clipboard and counted the bags. Five checked bags. Eight embroidered carry-ons. A camera bag. Her purse. She looked at her watch and sighed. It was time to do carry-on checks. Then she’d assign each of them a task at the airport and a buddy so they could watch out for themselves as the day progressed. Maxine grabbed the whistle dangling off the clipboard. She brought it to her lips and blew. The shrill peal echoed through the multi-level house. Like music to her ears, the whistle brought her little ones rushing to her from all corners. They lined up youngest to oldest and stood at attention, which gave Maxine a thrill. She tapped the corner of her clipboard and inspected each of the instructions she left for herself. First up—pills.

  The pills had become a miserable chore. Scott had been adamant that the kids and herself stay up on all the vaccines required to travel to the continent of Africa. He was relentless in reminding her and practically crazy with fear when she admitted to missing a dose. Of course, her husband worked with highly infectious diseases and was an admitted germaphobe, so his irrational fear of dying by contracting a contagious virus was par for the course. But even Maxine, the over-planner, thought that the regime was too extreme for a quick jaunt across the ocean.

  For their part, the kids swallowed their pills, took their shots, and allowed their father to harass them without much complaint. Maxine complained for them out of earshot, but her arguments fell on deaf ears. The shots were the biggest source of angst, as Scott refused to allow the family pediatrician to administer the required vaccines. Instead, he insisted on sending over a specialist from his company.

  Her husband was crazy. She allowed him his neurotic craziness because he was kind, hardworking, loving, and he was a true protector and caregiver—sacrificing himself on the altar of his family over and over again. But she knew that his own paranoia demanded their attention more than any actual threat to their well-being. They downed the pills and endured the shots because he asked them to, not because they were in danger. It was a distinction that Maxine used to justify giving in; and as long as she could keep her children distanced from the crazy, she could endure the behind-closed-doors obsessions.

  “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—set on the sofa table for this exact moment—and watched with an eagle eye as each child gulped and choked down the bright orange pills. “Tongues out,” she demanded and then nodded. “Fantastic.”

  Frustrated children, but no malaria. You win some, you lose some, she thought.

  She’d done her best to try to maintain the appearance of solidarity for the sake of the children. While her kids complained about the barrage of expectations related to the trip, she’d concocted farfetched scenarios that required protection—rabies, wild boar attacks, and viciously poisonous spiders. Lucy responded to the idea of being bitten by a Jumping Brown Island Spider with great fear, and Maxine found that to be a great relief. She’d completely made up the Jumping Brown Island Spider and enjoyed the idea that her imagination was saving her from having to explain to her eldest daughter that her father had requested unnecessary medical interventions.

  Of course, if Lucy had paid attention in school, she’d have the critical reasoning skills to do her own research. But Maxine didn’t want to bemoan the fact that her daughter’s trust in her was entirely misguided.

  “Let’s do a carry-on check,” Maxine said, and she tapped her pen against her clipboard. The kids were in charge of their own carry-ons, but she had provided guidelines. Schoolwork was absolutely non-negotiable.

  She rifled through each bag and tossed out things that she deemed inappropriate to world travel. Legos? Not over her dead body. Dress-up clothes? Puzzles? Unacceptable. Books, journals, small electronics? Acceptable, preferable. Malcolm and Monroe groaned as she instructed them to start over, tossing out a pirate set and building blocks. Harper had packed a stuffed animal, a princess wand, and three books. When Maxine reached down to grab Lucy’s bag, she assessed automatically that it was light. She peered inside and spotted a spiral notebook, a mystery novel, and one of those awful YA romance books. Of course, reading was reading, but she wished Lucy would mature beyond the insta-love stories and find herself a good, old-fashioned classic to adore. The hardback Pride and Prejudice Lucy received for Christmas was gathering dust on her bookshelf.

  “Thirty hours, Lucy,” Maxine chastised. “We won't land in the 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?” Its absence dawned on her slowly. Little Lucy, trying to pull a fast one with the one stipulation she gave all her kids. Her daughter looked distraught, and Maxine narrowed her eyes, undeterred by proclamations of forgetfulness and crocodile tears. “Don’t even tell me—”

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

  Maxine raised her purple pen and pointed it at Lucy’s chest. She took a deep breath and calmed herself before launching. “This was a condition of the trip… a condition I made with your teachers, with your dad.” At the mention of Scott, Lucy dropped her eyes and her cheeks reddened. “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.” As the words left her mouth, Maxine knew they were har
sh, but she could not abide by her children’s attempts to shirk their responsibilities. Some of her friends accused her of being unmovable, but it wasn’t that she lacked empathy. The opposite was true. She knew that her high expectations for her children and their behavior would craft them into amazing adults—it was her singular goal. Shrugging off the homework sent a bad message.

  Maxine looked down at her watch, and she swore under her breath. They lived five minutes from the high school, not accounting for red lights. And the airport limo from Scott’s work wouldn’t be at the house for another thirty to forty minutes. She mentioned that to her kids and sighed heavily, closing her eyes and pondering the calculations. Ethan must have read her mind.

  “I can take her,” he volunteered. His keys were already in his hand, and Maxine eyed them. “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.”

  Maxine nodded. Somehow, she knew her eldest son’s girlfriend Anna was at the end of this journey—Ethan’s willingness to help his sister didn’t come from purely altruistic reasons. But there wasn’t enough time to get into that argument, so Maxine nodded and pointed to the door. “Fifteen minutes or I’ll kill a kitten for every minute you’re late.” She thought she heard Galen snicker, and she spun with a threatening look, but the remaining quartet remained straight-faced.

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

  “Are kittens dead now, too? I haven’t been paying attention because I’ve been getting ready for a trip.” She stuck her neck out an inch and raised her eyebrows, daring her daughter to continue her cheekiness. “I will kill something. Be sure of it.”

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

  Maxine looked at the door and her kids. Her stomach knotted. This was not in the plan. This was not a comfortable or accounted for detour and the very thought of trusting her oldest kids with the homework task felt wrong. In that second, Maxine wanted to talk herself out of it—why did it matter? She could invent her own homework for Lucy. Grab a classic book to read, require an essay, petition the teacher on her behalf. It wasn’t the homework that was the issue, but the principle of the request. And if she allowed this non-negotiable to slip, where else would she lose control?

  She felt herself hesitating and knew there wasn’t time to hesitate.

  Lucy’s homework represented responsibility. It represented Maxine’s authority. And she had time. She played it quickly in her head: five minutes there, less than five minutes to the locker, five minutes home. Back with time to spare. Lessons learned, homework box checked on the form she made.

  “You will be back in fifteen minutes or you will wish you were dead. So help me God.” Ethan’s smile disappeared, and Lucy looked to the ground. She felt the twins stiffen. She smiled, so they would know her tongue-and-cheek threats were partly for show. But it was too late—by the time the corners of her mouth turned and her eyes softened, her kids were already running out the door.

  Maxine turned to Galen and shook her head. “Worst-case scenario, we pick them up at the school in the limo and leave Ethan’s car in the school lot. Right?”

  Galen shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “Worst-case scenario.”

  When Ethan was seven, he asked to walk two blocks away to the small park by their house. He didn’t want to play at the park, he wanted to walk there, put his hand on the metal structure, and walk back. It was a rite of passage and a huge step toward independence, and Maxine wished she had handled the ten minutes he was gone with grace and confidence. Instead, she spent the entire time pressed against their front window, her eyes glued to the sidewalk in painful anticipation. She imagined abductions and careening cars; she played out doomsday scenarios—the sudden appearance of a tornado in Portland, sweeping up her child and carrying him away from her; an earthquake. Her brain vacillated between natural disasters, accidents, and evil deeds, while her heart pounded in her chest.

  Right as she was about to slip on her shoes and march down the street, Ethan returned. He was safe, happy, and so grown up. He’d walked down there and back without incident, and the pride of his excursion was evident by his confident gait. Maxine waited until he came inside, then she hugged him, asked him what he saw, and was impressed when he described some of the neighbor’s houses—a broken gate, a barking dog, an open mailbox (he closed it, so no one would steal their mail).

  Ten minutes.

  Now it was fifteen minutes. Sixteen minutes. And Maxine felt the same rush of panic she did when he was seven. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Ethan; it was that she knew the world was big and scary, and maybe they would get into a car accident, or maybe he’d get a flat tire. Even while she tried to tell herself that she’d simply take the airport limo and go find her wayward kids, she could not push aside her guilt and fear that she’d sent them on a misguided mission.

  With her nose pressed against the glass, Maxine uttered a simple prayer for their quick return. She was an opportunistic prayer. She hoped God understood. She was a prayer for lost car keys and good parking spots and for stains to come out of new clothes. But now she prayed that she’d see Ethan’s classic car roll down the street so she could breathe again.

  “Mom?”

  Maxine turned and saw Galen beside her. His face was pale and she started, hand outstretched to feel his forehead. No, no. Sickness would not be part of her plan today. No vomit. No colds. No motion sickness. She’d adopt her husband’s ritualistic application of hand sanitizer and have them wash their hands every ten minutes. Nothing else would derail them.

  “Are you sick?” she asked. But Galen’s head wasn’t warm, it was clammy. “What?” she asked, snippier than she intended. Seventeen minutes. Where were they?

  “I was watching the news—”

  “I said no technology,” Maxine replied. “I said… sit here and wait. Read a book.”

  “I was watching the news,” Galen said again, and his voice shook. Maxine stopped and assessed her son’s pallor, demeanor, and fear. She didn’t interrupt. “Something bad is happening.”

  “Where?” she asked. But it was a ridiculous question. The dogs, she thought, and Galen’s fearful expression. Here. It was happening here.

  “Everywhere,” he whispered.

  “What’s happening everywhere?” she asked, and she stood up and walked away from her lookout point at the window. She didn’t have to bend down to look at her son anymore—even at thirteen, he was taller than she was. But she still wrapped her right arm around his shoulders and tucked him into the side of her body. He collapsed against her, and Maxine could feel the small tremors ripple through his body. Galen was shaking.

  “I don’t want to say it,” he muttered. So, they walked together into the kitchen where the small, under-the-counter mounted TV ran images of car crashes and bodies in the street. It was on mute, so Maxine leaned forward and turned on the volume. The news poured out. Virus.

  She heard the word and everything inside of her chilled. She thought of Scott in bed the night before, and she remembered his face, his sappiness, his dismissal of her fears. Immediately, Maxine went for her phone and began to text Ethan. But she was slower than her children when it came to technology, and she had not even been able to craft the first few words of her message to him before she heard the doorbell.

  Before she could stop them, the twins had opened the door wide and welcomed their airport chaperones inside. Maxine had pictured their airport limo driver to be a dapper young man with a little hat and a pocket square. She’d imagined him saying, “Ms. King, your bags?” and offering her a mimosa as they rode in luxury to the departures terminal at PDX. She’d imagined the limo to be just that, a limo.

  But standing in her foyer were two large men in dark suits and sunglasses with little headphones in their ears. They looked like secret service men, and their faces were void of all emotion. Maxine hated that she couldn’t see their
eyes, and she looked around them to the driveway and saw that they had pulled up in a tank-sized SUV with tinted windows.

  “We’re not quite ready,” she declared. “A few more minutes.”

  “We’re right on time, Mrs. King,” the first man said. He was shorter, stockier, with the hint of a blond beard on a chin. His voice was gravelly and thick. “And we are on a schedule. This is Randy, and I’m Rusty… point us to your bags.”

  “My oldest children are currently running an errand—”

  She saw them hold their breath and look at each other out of the corners of their eyes. It was a subtle moment, but she noticed it right away, and Maxine put her hands on her hips and looked at the young men, with all their boasting and their faux-power, and she wagged her finger.

  “We will wait for them,” she said. And she spun to walk into the kitchen, away from the men, so she could finish her text.

  “Are these the bags?” Rusty asked. Without waiting for a reply, he began to sling them on his arm and carry them down her front steps to the waiting SUV.

  “Mom?” Galen said.

  Maxine looked at her message to Ethan: Hurry home. Drivers here. Then she turned to her middle son and raised her eyebrows. “Yes?”

  “Mom. The news… I just saw… the schools are on lockdown. There’s a plane that crashed.”

  “Can you act as lookout at the main window for your brother and sister? We’ll get everything loaded up—”

  “Mom.”