The Virulent Chronicles Box Set

by Shelbi Wescott

  They never talked about Lucy’s dad.

  They never speculated about his role in the bioterrorism.

  Lucy let those questions stay unasked. Both of them seemed to understand that to admit Scott King was somehow involved meant they were walking straight into the lion’s den. It was a scenario that was too painful to contemplate fully.

  “I know, I know,” Grant replied and he joined Lucy by the fire. “I just keep thinking how cool it would be if we just met up with a whole group of people…immune…and then we’d realize that we can start over, you know? Start a little city. Do things right.”

  Grant had said that before too. “A little village, where people are kind to each other, and you pay for things with your talents, and no one is in charge, and everyone is valued,” he had mentioned once. He waxed on about taking chicken eggs over to his neighbor’s house to exchange for fresh cow’s milk. A place where everyone was a giant family with no hidden agendas. Lucy thought it sounded like the kind of city in a science-fiction movie where everyone turned out to be robots. His brand of post-apocalyptic socialism sounded nice in theory, but even Lucy knew it wouldn’t take long for people to fight for power.

  She had taken AP Government, after all.

  “I’m sure you aren’t the only one who survived the virus after exposure. You can’t be.” She said it once and she said it again, for his sake.

  “Maybe if we get to Nebraska and we don’t—” Grant stopped and looked at Lucy; he lowered his eyes.

  “It’s okay. Don’t stop yourself on my account.”

  “If we can’t find anything…maybe we can really work on hunting for other survivors.”

  Lucy shook her head. “That never works in the movies,” she replied. “They’d be nice and accommodating at first and then we’d wake up right at the moment where they were about to eat us. Survivors of the apocalypse are always cannibals. We should just go home.”

  Home. Oregon was still her home.

  “Sure,” he conceded. He leaned in to the fire and grabbed a stick from nearby and poked at a log; tiny sparks flew up into the flue. “Sure.”

  They slept in the lodge that night, moving their feathered comforters down in front of the fire and sleeping side by side. Grant polished off half the bottle of wine before curling up into a ball and snoring into the wee hours of the morning. Lucy used pillows from the lounge couches as a mattress, but by the time the sun crept into the mountainous skyline, Lucy found herself flat on the floor—her cheek cool against the wooden boards.

  Drool-stained and sweaty, Lucy sat up and rubbed her eyes. Her body was thick and sluggish from exhaustion and dehydration. She poked Grant with her toe, jostling his body and moving him back and forth until he peeked out of one eye and then clamped it shut with a groan.

  “Morning already?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Lucy replied.

  He rolled into a sitting position and lifted his arms above his head. Then he stretched with a loud yawn and plopped his hands back down; his front cowlick stuck straight up, the rest of his shaggy hair falling in clumps around his face.

  “Breakfast?” he asked.

  “We have our ready-meals. Let’s eat on the road.”

  “Oh, look who’s eager now?” Grant smiled.

  She shrugged. It was true she woke up with more resolve to leave their secluded hideaway, but she still felt covered in general unease. There was no more procrastination, no more conjecture. It was like she had been standing on the edge of a diving board, waiting for the motivation to fly forward into the water, and finally she realized that if she didn’t just jump someone would have to push her.

  She hated being pushed.

  “Let’s load up.”

  “Okay.” Grant eyed her suspiciously. “No ceremonious goodbye? No morning walk around the lake? That’s so unlike you. I’d thought that you’d have written a eulogy to the mountain already.”

  She shook her head, ignoring his playful dig. “I’m ready to see my family. I’m ready to know the truth.”

  They walked back to their shared cabin and shoveled their few pieces of clothing, discarded toiletries, and remaining food containers into their backpacks and then trudged in silence back to their waiting car. Lucy did pause to take in the majestic Tetons and the glistening lake one last time; she wanted to write a note in the dust on the cabin’s kitchen counter: We were here. But at the last second she walked away, leaving the dust intact.

  Grant backed out of the parking spot and traveled up through the winding roads back to the highway. While the highways were still littered with abandoned cars, this area of the country wasn’t inundated with blockage. There was just enough destruction to remind them that they weren’t just leaving their Yellowstone vacation and heading back to the real world.

  “Keep an eye out for an exchange car,” Grant said to Lucy as he picked up speed. “We’ve got about half a tank left which won’t get us very far.”

  “How far to our destination? Eight hours?”

  “About.”

  She drew in a shaky breath. Her hand went to Salem’s crucifix, a habit that had formed the past week.

  “We’ve got this,” Grant said and he took his right hand off the steering wheel and reached over to give Lucy a comforting pat. She leaned in to his touch and let his hand linger on her shoulder. “Seriously, Lula…at the risk of sounding insensitive…what’s the worst that could happen?”

  Chapter Two

  Portland, Oregon

  Doctor Gloria Krause knelt over Ethan King—supine on the floor of the den—and ran her hand across his forehead.

  She clicked her tongue and adjusted her purple-framed glasses on the bridge of her nose and peered down at her patient, squinting in the dim light. A stethoscope around her neck dangled and swayed like a pendulum as she leaned forward. Krause slipped the ear tips into her ears and then placed the chest piece flat against Ethan’s exposed flesh. Her eyes focused on a point across the room, her mouth tight; then she sighed and removed the ear tips and snapped the metal tubing back around her neck.

  Darla, the thirty-three year-old mother and self-proclaimed Raider—those who helped steal from the dead and redistribute to the living—rubbed her hands over her eyes and looked at Ethan’s body. He had deteriorated rapidly in the last few days and it pained her to watch him so close to death. They were few now, just a small group: to lose one of their own at this point would be beyond a travesty; it simply wasn’t fair. Darla’s ventures into looting and trading took a hit after the Day Sixers, those who had survived the initial viral attack, passed away. The population in Portland and the surrounding areas had declined to just a handful of people: Most of them now congregating at the King home, and all of them the recipients of a lifesaving vaccine.

  There was no other life.

  No one else left.

  “Is it time, Mom?” asked a young woman in the corner. She was tall, with frizzy auburn hair which she wore tucked behind her unpierced ears.

  Doctor Krause nodded to her daughter and to the audience spread throughout the room. “Is it about noon? Yes. It’s time.”

  Darla tied her sleek black hair up into a bun and took a step forward. She looked down at Ethan, his chest rising and falling, his hair matted to the side of his head. Then she turned to the doctor. “The light is best now. Joey and I already set up the house yesterday. If we need to move, we move now.”

  Darla had spent the better part of her day yesterday hunting through the Whispering Waters subdivision looking for an empty, open, full of light, house that would convert into an operating room for Doctor Krause.

  Doctor Krause, her daughter Ainsley, and a bumbling thirty-something Raider named Joey came into the picture through Principal Spencer. The principal was the black market mastermind, who emerged with a vengeance after the world was attacked by bioterrorists, and who had been given precious vaccines and one task: find a doctor for the ailing Ethan. When Darla had handed over the vials of the lifesaving medicines to t
he borderline sociopath, she had no way of knowing if Spencer would be able to fulfill his end of the bargain.

  The day Lucy and Grant floated away over the Portland landscape, Darla left her five year-old son Teddy with the ailing Ethan and marched her way back to Pacific Lake High School, where she found the three recently vaccinated people waiting for her to explain their roles in this bizarre stage-play.

  Spencer had used Joey to locate Doctor Krause and her surviving family—but the details after that were murky, told to Darla in snippets over the past week; little pieces of the puzzle slipping together to form a dark and depressing tale. All Darla knew was that Spencer had dumped them all unceremoniously out in front of the school to wait for her—like children waiting for the bus on the first day of school.

  Darla met the unlikely trio in a mess of tangled expectations and doubts. Doctor Krause had been firm with Darla—they did not just want to be a pawn in someone else’s chess game. But Spencer gave them no choice; he had vaccinated them against their will, dragged them down to his school, kept them captive until Darla arrived, and then released them without a thought for their future well-being. In the most basic and drastic terms, the vaccinated strangers arrived like slaves. You will live, but you will help, was the spoken decree.

  In the time since Darla brought the resentful newcomers back to Whispering Waters, Ethan took a turn for the worst. His legs, crushed after a truck driven by a dead-man ran into him on his way home, showed signs of infection.

  He needed amputation. Without it he would die.

  Since that news came to light, Ethan’s surgery trumped everything. Darla was certain she had forgotten to eat yesterday, and she’d barely spent time with her own child.

  She found a home only a few doors down that would work as an operating theater. Into the afternoon, the sun flooded a former dining room with enough light to aid the doctor in her surgical task. With the equipment gathered, the stage set, and the patient slowly slipping away, they knew the time had come.

  “The tissue damage is too extensive,” Doctor Krause told them. “The blood vessels are crushed and his fever is spiking. I thought we could avoid it, I really did.”

  “We knew it would come to this,” Darla said. “We’ve prepared for it. Let’s go. The longer we sit and talk about it, the better chance we have of realizing how stupid we are for trying.” She made a move toward Ethan, but Doctor Krause put out her hand.

  “There is no way to prepare for this, Darla,” she said sternly. “Finding supplies and covering a room in sheets isn’t quite the medical miracle you’re hoping for. This is a dangerous procedure. And, even then, Ethan may still...” the doctor looked to everyone and weighed her words. “Amputation is not guaranteed safety for him. And before we move him, I need everyone to acknowledge that risk.”

  Darla nodded, annoyed. “We know the risks, Doctor. But even you told us that he’ll die if we don’t. There’s no decision to make here. This boy is the reason we’re alive…if it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t be here. All of us.”

  “I’m well aware that I’m here because of Ethan,” Doctor Krause replied curtly. She ran her fingers through her hair and looked at her daughter, who hadn’t moved from her spot in the corner and watched the conversation with a bizarre juxtaposition of eagerness and apathy.

  Joey entered the den, looking bleary-eyed; he’d taken to waking up in stupor, lumbering around in a state of perpetual confusion. How he had managed to situate himself in a prime position to move goods and services around after the Release baffled Darla. In the old world, he had been a gas station attendant and used his access to gasoline to set himself up in the first few days, but beyond that, Joey’s lack of discernible gifts made him more like a houseguest who had overstayed his welcome rather than a member of their small, but functioning community.

  The man cleared his throat. Joey was young, but not too young: baby-faced, accompanied by a smattering of wrinkles on his forehead, crows-feet around his small, beady eyes. “So, this is it, huh?” he asked. “Operation day.”

  Darla nodded.

  “Who’s going then?”

  “I am,” Darla answered without hesitation. “I just need someone to stay with Teddy.”

  Ethan let out an involuntary groan and the room’s attention shifted back to him. Doctor Krause nodded as if someone had asked her a question and she was answering in the affirmative; she pursed her lips and pointed a long, bony finger at Joey.

  “You stay here,” the doctor commanded.

  Joey nodded and gnawed on a hangnail. “Good. I mean, like, I don’t even think I could do it. You know?” He shuddered and searched with his teeth for any other scraps of skin to pull and bite.

  Even when Doctor Krause first suggested amputation, Joey’s pallor shifted from bright and rosy to a pastel yellow. The jaundiced look returned whenever Joey glanced at Ethan’s injuries—the black and blue and bumpy canvas of the boy’s non-functioning legs.

  “Great,” Darla said. She didn’t entirely trust Joey to watch Teddy with the same attentiveness as the other housemates, but if her choices were that or missing out on Ethan’s surgery, it was an easy decision.

  “We’ll totally play together. A fun game. Fun board game. Or something just fun,” he trailed off as he met Darla’s gaze, her hand itching above the gun in her holster. The short, dark-haired Raider put his hands up in surrender. “Yeah, jeez. I know, Darla. I’ll take good care of him. I’ll be the best babysitter ever. I always wanted kids or nephews…I’m not saying I’m good with kids, but I can be Uncle Joey. I mean, don’t even worry about it. It takes a village, right?”

  Darla raised a single eyebrow and locked her eyes, and dipped her chin. “Joey,” she started, her tone a cross between menacing and exasperated.

  “Yeah?” Joey replied.

  “Seriously. Shut up.”

  Darla and Doctor Krause carried Ethan out of the house on a stretcher lifted from a crashed ambulance. Ainsley followed behind. They entered the secured house through the open garage. At the far end of the garage they placed the stretcher down and worked together to pick up Ethan and carry him into the house—they went through a mudroom and through a small hallway and into the bright and light living room. A long dining room table, meant to seat a large gathering at Thanksgiving dinner, was their operating table. Darla outfitted it with blankets and pillows, and all of the surgical accouterments procured from the local hospital—which was not an easy journey. Joey had found their last supply in a shop nearby: a battery operated handsaw. And he looked close to vomiting as he handed it over, the realization of its use dawning on him.

  After all three women worked together to get his limp body on the table, Ethan lay exposed in just a pair of blue and white checkered boxer shorts. He had been in and out of consciousness, but as they gathered around, his eyes fluttered open and he saw Darla first.

  “Hey,” he said to her and attempted a smile.

  “It’s time, kiddo,” Darla replied and she grabbed his hand.

  “Okay. Okay,” Ethan closed his eyes again. “I can do this.”

  “You’re strong,” Darla told him. “Strong and ready. You’ve got this.”

  “Doc?” Ethan rolled his head to the side. “What’dya got for me? We doin’ this old-school? Whiskey and a mallet to the head?”

  “Morphine and a local anesthetic. Only I can’t give you much morphine…the risk is too great without a way to monitor your vitals closely. I’m sorry, Ethan…you will feel some of this.”

  “I’ll feel it,” he repeated.

  “You will,” Doctor Krause told him as she gave him his first shot. “But I’ll do the best I can.”

  “Can’t I get a spinal or something? You need electricity for that?”

  Doctor Krause smiled and adjusted her glasses. “Ethan, we don’t have options. I’m not a surgeon and I’m not an anesthesiologist. I want to keep you alive…we have to do this the way I know how.” She looked at him and winced. “I’m sorry.”


  “Don’t be—” Ethan closed his eyes.

  Darla held his hand.

  The doctor administered another round of injections into Ethan’s wounds. He didn’t even flinch as the needles entered his flesh. She picked up a block of fabric off of one of the side tables—it looked like a luggage strap and it wrapped around Ethan’s leg five inches above his knee. Doctor Krause sighed and glanced at her ragtag surgery technicians; she looked calm, but her clamped jaw and narrowed eyes gave her away: she was nervous—scared even. She had been honest about her position as a family doctor; it was a job that did not lend itself toward emergency amputations. But it was too late now. They were committed.

  “Okay, Darla. Ainsley,” the doctor instructed and she passed around a box of surgical gloves and masks. They covered their hands and their mouths and stood waiting for further instruction.

  Doctor Krause motioned for Ainsley and she took a step forward.

  “Darla, I’ll need you to hold Ethan still as much as possible. Start near his shoulders. Ainsley…when I ask for an item, grab it quickly.” The doctor placed a hand on Ethan’s leg and pinched slightly. Then she asked for a scalpel and extended her gloved hand backward; her daughter picked up the metal instrument and placed it in her mother’s open palm.

  Then Doctor Krause started an incision an inch above Ethan’s knee. The blood started to run down the sides of his legs, not a gush, but a trickle, and she mopped it up in a swift wipe with clean, cut towels. Blood matted down his leg hair and made his skin a rosy color. She ran the scalpel along that line and then dug further: past the skin and into a white layer of fat.

  Ethan’s leg jerked upward and Darla moved into position, wrapping her arms around Ethan’s shoulders and hugging him tightly to the table. Ethan started to yank and groan. His face was white, his teeth chattered against each other, rattling inside his mouth.

  “Shhh….shhh,” Darla repeated and with her hands secure on Ethan, she could not stop to wipe away the tears that started to roll down her cheeks. She let them run and drip, but she tried to will herself into finding every iota of strength. “It’ll be over soon. It’ll all be over soon.”