The Virulent Chronicles Box Set

by Shelbi Wescott

“We can still administer morphine. It will help with the phantom pains as well,” Doctor Krause replied. She was carrying the morphine injections with her and with Ethan’s approval she administered a dose. “Joey located lollipops too. Fentanyl lollipops. You’ll like them,” she said with a smile.

  “Is there any hope for me to walk again?”

  Doctor Krause locked eyes with Ethan and he struggled not to break her gaze. “Without access to prosthetics? I don’t know. We don’t know what the world is going to look like tomorrow, let alone in a few months. Years. It’s possible.”

  “Be honest.”

  With a comforting hand on his arm, Doctor Krause tried to smile, but it came across as pained. “It’s safe to say that your energy should be spent elsewhere. Focus on rebuilding your health, remaining free of infection, positive healing. Positivity goes a long way in recovery.”

  “You sound very doctorly,” he scoffed. The morphine was kicking in; a flood of warmth and contentment rushed across his body. He even smiled at Doctor Krause and was no longer bothered by her mass of unruly hair, her unnaturally white teeth, and the tiny mole on her chin.

  Without reply, she nodded to Darla and left the room; he was slipping into chemically-induced bliss, and her job was done.

  “Feeling okay, then?” Darla asked. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. When she dropped her hands to her sides, her eyes were red, bloodshot. “So, you really don’t remember much heading up to the surgery?”

  He shook his head sleepily.

  “Look, there’s something you need to remember about the doctor. And Ainsley. Something you should keep in mind.” Ethan tried to appear alert. Darla continued, “They didn’t ask for this. They weren’t given a choice.”

  “The doctor?” Ethan was confused. Nobody asked for any of this.

  “Spencer forced her to take the vaccine at gunpoint. She told him they would rather die on Day Six than subject themselves to the injections. I’ll tell you the story when you’re better, okay. But you should know…unwilling to come here is putting it lightly.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Ethan asked her, all his anger seeping away, the thoughts of his abandoned leg no longer filling him with dread. The numbness was great; he floated—he looked at Darla’s dark hair, her intense eyes. He felt compelled to tell her she was beautiful.

  “So you’ll know,” Darla replied.

  “Know what?”

  “How much saving you has cost her.”

  And with that, Darla left the room, shutting the door with a deliberate slam behind her.

  Chapter Five

  The library was empty. Musty and dark and completely void of life.

  Grant and Lucy wandered the small square building, peering under tables and toppling over boxes in the storage area. They examined each and every corner, but the blonde woman had vanished. There wasn’t a back door and there were limited hiding spots. It was like she simply walked into the library and disappeared into thin air. Frank barked for them from the outside steps.

  “I don’t get it,” Grant said and he pulled himself up onto the library’s front counter. Plastic stands displayed new releases, but the books were outdated and dusty. Lucy pulled out a drawer from the card catalogue and thumbed through the aged pieces of paper corresponding with a book in the library.

  Lucy paused and let her hand drop. She turned to Grant. “Let the dog in,” she instructed.

  Grant nodded, understanding, and hopped down—he flung the library door open and Frank tore into the room. At first the dog seemed confused, running to Lucy and then to Grant, sniffing and jumping. Then he ran to the back of the library and barked twice at a long bookshelf; Frank pawed at the books and whined, his tail wagging.

  “You think there’s something back there?” Lucy asked.

  “Like a hidden room? No. There’s nothing to the side of this building. If there was a room back there, it would have to be small.”

  “She wasn’t a giant,” Lucy replied and she motioned for Grant to raise his gun. He drew the gun and they walked toward Frank and his bookcase-of-interest. When they reached it, they removed some books and pushed against the back of the bookshelf, but it was solid wood. They knocked. Unsurprisingly, nothing knocked back.

  “Maybe it slides?” Grant offered and so they tried pushing the shelf first to the right and then to the left, but still the tall walnut bookcase didn’t budge.

  “Alright, Frank,” Lucy said, bending down to the dog. “Where’d she go, boy?”

  Frank barked a reply.

  “Lucy—” Grant said in a soft voice. She recognized that tone and her heart sped up in anticipation. Grant leaned into the bookshelf and put his ear against one of the wooden sides. Then he put his hand flat against the wood. “It’s vibrating.”

  Puzzled, Lucy leaned in and put her own hand next to Grant’s. She felt the movement, the subtle shaking, and then she too could hear a mechanical hum emanating from below them. Stepping back away from the bookcase, Lucy’s eyes grew wide. “Come on,” Lucy said in a whisper. “Back away.”

  But Grant remained rooted to his spot.

  The churning and vibrating grew louder. Then it stopped with a clunk. And without any warning, the middle two bookcases opened outward, springing forward like automatic doors. Lucy looked to Grant, her eyes wide, but he wasn’t looking back at her; his stare was fixated on the blur of movement heading in their direction.

  “Run! Run!” Grant called, but it was too late. Two armed men darted outward into the small library. Raising his hand, Grant fired at them without hesitation. The gun blast was deafening and Lucy covered her ears; but Grant must have missed, because in that split second Lucy felt one of the men grab her around the shoulders and yank her toward the open bookcase.

  She screamed, but the man wasn’t deterred. Lucy opened her mouth wide and attempted to bite the flesh on the backside of his hand, but she couldn’t quite reach and she ended up chomping on air. From a corner in the library, Lucy could hear Grant and the second man scuffling. There was another gunshot—not by Grant’s gun—and then a pause, a silence.

  “No!” she screamed. “No!”

  It all happened so fast. The gunfire. The men. She wailed and kicked harder and screamed at her attacker. The man tossed her through the bookshelves and Lucy’s eyes adjusted to the dimmed box. It was an elevator; and a third man was operating the lift system—his hand poised over a green button, a key around his neck on a long chain plugged into a keyhole. A fourth man, who had also stayed in the elevator, grabbed Lucy and pinned her arms behind her back, then tucked her into his body. He smelled like cinnamon chewing gun and cheap cologne.

  Then everything went black.

  She could feel the fibers of a cloth bag against her cheek and gathered around her neck; blind and afraid, Lucy lashed out more, but the fourth man’s grip on her tightened.

  “Grant! Grant!” Lucy yelled, but her voice was lost in the cloth.

  From outside of the elevator, there was scuffling, dragging, and—to Lucy’s great relief—Grant’s angry voice calling out.

  “Get your hands off of me!” Grant was yelling.

  They tossed him into the elevator with Lucy, covered his head too, and knocked him to the floor.

  “Are you hurt?” Lucy called, her own voice amplified, her ears ringing.

  “Are you?” Grant replied.

  The man with the key, turned it inside the lock, pushed a button, and the bookshelves slid back into place with barely a squeak. With a lurch, the elevator began to travel downward, foot-by-foot, into the earth. As it lowered, Lucy could smell dirt and damp even through the bag. When the elevator didn’t stop, Lucy realized that they had to be slipping deep underground and she resisted the urge to scream and flail about. The man’s grip on her hadn’t loosened and the tiny box housed them all, but barely.

  Panicky and trapped, Lucy began to breathe rapidly. She felt light-headed and her body felt heavy. She swayed and felt a man to her left and a
man to her right; her knees buckled and the man holding her, yanked her upright and leaned her against his own body.

  “Easy now,” the man’s voice said to her.

  “She panicking?” another one asked.

  “Yeah,” the man holding Lucy replied.

  “Keep her calm, dude. Blair said the interrogation will have to be quick.”

  One of the other men chuckled. It was such an out-of-place reaction—his laugh, amidst their terror. “I don’t mind doing favors for that girl, but she knew she was going to be seen someday. It was only a matter of time.”

  “I don’t want to be around when the old man finds out.”

  “He finds out, then we all get the tank. Remember that.”

  “Then she better be quick. I don’t plan on falling on my sword for her. It’d be best for everyone if she just makes the problem disappear.”

  “When was the last time those tanks were used, anyway?” asked the man next to Lucy.

  “The old man used ‘em quite a bit trying to clean up his messes. Some girl came back to Brixton looking for her parents after they stopped calling her back. Brought the State Sheriff. She was the last one that I know of.

  The elevator noises calmed; someone cleared his throat.

  “What’d he do with the Sheriff?” another voice asked.

  “He lives in Pod 8 now, with his wife and four daughters.”

  The men chuckled, privy to some inside joke that Lucy couldn’t understand.

  They went quiet for a second, and then one groaned.

  “Shit,” he mumbled. “We forgot the damn dog.”

  They pulled the bag off Lucy’s head and tossed her into a small room. The front wall was pure glass from floor to ceiling. Lucy walked up and put her hands on the glass and started pounding, but the attempt was futile—the guards had dumped her and left; they separated her from Grant, shoved her into this room, and left her alone.

  The walls of the cell were solid cement and the ground was tile; a mish-mash of colors and shapes—like a mosaic of samples from a home improvement store. Lucy noticed that the ground was wet, as if someone had recently hosed down the whole room, and she shivered at the thought. With her imagination running wild, Lucy began to call for help more fervently.

  “Please! Help me!” she screamed, until her throat felt raw.

  She stopped mid-scream as a metal door swung open in the opposite room and the blonde woman appeared. In the time between seeing her on the road in Brixton and now, the girl they called Blair had changed out of her jogging outfit and into something simpler: tan pants and a white shirt. Her hair had been let loose from its ponytail, and she had even applied a fresh layer of mascara. She was twenty-something, petite, and strikingly beautiful—but even from her position inside her glass cage, Lucy could see the dark circles under her eyes.

  Lucy let her hands fall to her side and she watched as the young woman marched across the bare room and straight up to the glass. A guard followed behind her—maybe even one of the men from the elevator—but Lucy wasn’t sure, and he hit a button near the door, activating a speaker system.

  “Do you know where you are?” Blair asked, her voice pouring into the cement room from the ceiling.

  Lucy shook her head. Then she answered the only thing she knew for certain, “I’m in Brixton, Nebraska.”

  Blair fanned her hand out in front of herself. “Do you know what this is?” and then she crossed her arms and waited, tapping her index fingers against her elbows, her mouth drawn into a tight frown.

  “An underground jail?” Lucy guessed. She looked around the cement walls again and the wet floor. When she looked up, Blair was looking straight at her—assessing her with a pained expression.

  “Not exactly,” she replied. She uncrossed her arms and ran a hand across her hair, smoothing it neatly into place. “Look. I know this is all confusing, but I need you to think. I need to know. It’s imperative that I know.”

  “Know what?” Lucy asked.

  “Tell me why you came to Brixton. How did you and the boy know to come here?”

  Grant. Lucy took a step forward, “I won’t answer anything until you let me be with him. Where is my friend? Where did you take him?”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “Tell me where you took him!”

  “How did you know this place existed?” the young woman yelled and she tore forward and pounded her hands against the glass, her mouth contorted into a sneer, her eyes narrowed in fury.

  Scared by the sudden outburst, Lucy walked backward until she felt the cool cement against her back. Then she closed her eyes and willed the girl away; she felt so exposed and raw. There was nowhere to hide in the room, and the glass displayed her every move. She didn’t know how to play this game—should she tell her about her father? Keep his name to herself? Which option would grant her grace? Lucy didn’t know and she was terrified to misstep. She wished for counsel, but knew she’d find none.

  “Please,” Blair said, her tone shifting from anger to pleading. “Are any more of you coming?”

  “More what? More people?” Lucy opened her eyes and she opened her mouth in surprise. “Because there are so many more people alive? Have you been living in this hole in the ground for years? Don’t you know what’s gone on out there?” Her voice began to rise, there was a tremor in it, and she felt her face go crimson.

  Her angry retort caused Blair to bristle. Blair leaned closer to the glass, crossing and uncrossing her arms. “I am more than aware. It’s just—” she stopped, drew in a breath, then let it out with a single sigh. Her bottom lip quivered and her eyes filled with tears, she looked at Lucy and shook her head. “You don’t understand. This has nothing to do with you. I’m so sorry. I never wanted it to be like this. But…you don’t understand.”

  Blair’s tears seemed genuine, and she was right: Lucy didn’t understand. As interrogations went, her captor seemed particularly bad at it.

  “Just let me go,” Lucy tried. “My friend and I can go quietly.” It was a lie. And one that was wholly see-through. She would not leave without news of her family. Had they met a similar fate?

  This time Blair didn’t even reply. Instead she simply dropped her head, closed her eyes, and mumbled something incoherent under her breath. Then without a word she walked over to a keypad by the door. With swift keystrokes, she entered a code. And then flipped open a plastic case next to the keypad. She turned and took one more look at Lucy and then closed her eyes, inhaled slowly, and then pushed the button.

  At first nothing happened.

  But after a long delay, Lucy could hear the rumble on the other side of the walls. Then several round holes opened up at the top of the wall—Lucy hadn’t noticed them before, circles the size of coffee can lids—and water began to pour out of them, like a waterfall, cascading to the floor below. One metal cover slid open and then another, until six or eight spouts appeared, all dumping lukewarm water into the room.

  It wasn’t until the water began to collect and rise, covering Lucy’s sneakers and climbing up her leg, that she realized what was happening and what would happen next. Sloshing forward, the water splashing around her, Lucy pushed herself to the glass. She pounded with wild abandon and called out.

  “Please!” Lucy begged. “Please!”

  The young woman lowered her head. Regret, guilt, it flashed across her face, but she didn’t move to stop the water.

  “No. You can’t do this. I’m here for my father! My name is Lucy King. I came because of my dad! My father is Scott—” Lucy stopped; the water had reached her mid-thigh, it was creeping upward toward her waist. She regarded the rising liquid and forced herself to remain calm. “My dad is Scott King. He sent me here. He wrote the coordinates in the back of a book and told me that if anything happened that I should come here. I’m here! Please! Stop the water! Please!”

  Her words stopped Blair from moving; she froze and lifted her head, she squinted her eyes and looked straight at Lucy, her breath r
ising and falling in quick bursts. She took three small steps forward and lifted a finger to Lucy, pointing at her, her mouth falling open.

  “Lucy?”

  “I’m Lucy!” she screamed. And she smiled. Recognition had danced across the young woman’s face. “Yes, yes! I’m Lucy King.”

  “And the boy next door is Ethan?” Blair pointed to the left wall—indicating that Grant was on the other side.

  Lucy stopped.

  The water was at her waist. Her feet felt like they were weighted with lead.

  The girl knew them. Knew who they were. She knew Ethan’s name; it had rolled off her tongue with ease.

  Smiling, certain of her safety, Lucy shook her head. “No. My brother is still in Oregon. He’s injured. I need to get him help. Please, can you take me to my father?”

  “Wait…that boy…was he vaccinated?” the girl took another step toward the glass, her brows knit with confusion and worry.

  “He’s a survivor.”

  “A survivor? What do you mean a survivor? I don’t understand.”

  “He made it past Day Six. He’s immune. Somehow.”

  “Immune. No. He survived the outbreak?” She looked even more concerned. Blair stood there with her mouth tight and her body leaning toward the door, itching to leave.

  Lucy nodded. Which answer would save her or save him, she wondered.

  After a long pause, the water lapped upward across Lucy’s chest, the girl turned. She scrunched up her features and balled her fists.

  “I’m so sorry,” she sighed. “Please God, forgive me. I’m so sorry.”

  And with that, she turned and ran out of the door, slamming it behind her.

  The water was over Lucy’s head now. She had kicked off her sneakers and they sank to the bottom of the room—the tank, she now realized—and kicked her legs and circled her arms, just like her swim teacher taught her. Treading water was never Lucy’s strong suit, but she was too panicked and the water was rising with too much speed for her to float. Her head dipped beneath the surface and she’d pop back up, assessing the ceiling and estimating how much time she had left before she’d run out of breathing room.