The Virulent Chronicles Box Set

by Shelbi Wescott

  “Light!” Teddy cried triumphantly.

  Darla patted Teddy on the head and then turned her attention back to Spencer, “First of all, you’re an asshole. Middle-aged professional? Maybe you won’t make the cut because you’re a power-hungry psychopath. Second of all, we have leverage.” She looked around the room and pointed at the doctor. “Doctor Krause saved Ethan’s life. Before that, I saved Ethan’s life. And you think they’re going to kill a child? Teddy’s just a little boy.”

  “They already killed millions of little boys,” Spencer said and he crossed his arms in front of his body.

  Darla turned to Ethan who had been quiet for the duration of the presentation. “Well? You want to weigh-in here, chief?”

  After a pause, Ethan shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. We’re arguing as if they’re on their way…or as if we know they’re coming tomorrow. Maybe no one is coming for me. Maybe this is all just a waste of Spencer’s drawing abilities.”

  “I have more,” Spencer added.

  “He has more,” Ethan repeated and pointed to the chart. “By all means…”

  “Mom!” Teddy called out. “I need a snack. A snack!”

  Growling under her breath, Darla looked at Teddy and then pointed to the back of the house. “You know where all the snacks are,” Darla told him. Teddy grumbled, but then relented, scampering out of the room and toward the back patio where the crew had turned the covered porch into a pantry—easily accessible for everyone, with ample room to organize by occasion and type.

  Once Teddy had disappeared, Darla spread out her limbs—stretching her legs outward and leaning back on her hands. She motioned for Spencer to continue. He flipped his chart and there was a picture of the outside of the house. Ethan was outside; there were two circles over two of the second floor windows looking down into the yard; and three stick figures stood in the doorway.

  “This is the plan,” Spencer said. “I think we stockpile bombs and weapons. We prepare as if a war is coming to Whispering Waters. If it becomes clear that Ethan’s people have come back for him, we set up me and Darla as snipers. Joey, Doctor Krause, Ainsley hold back inside the house and wait for the all-clear.”

  “Teddy?” Darla asked, confused.

  Spencer cocked his head and frowned. He reached over and grabbed a pen off of Scott’s desk and drew a smaller stick figure next to the character that was supposed to be Darla upstairs. “Teddy hides with his mother.”

  “A sniper and the five-year-old. Perfect plan,” Darla snorted.

  He ignored her and continued. “We are prepared to attack at all times. We do not let our guard down. They can take Ethan, but they don’t get near us.”

  Ethan shifted on the couch and leaned forward. “Wait, wait. This is ridiculous.”

  “I agree,” said Doctor Krause from the back of the den. “If they are coming back for Ethan, there is a good chance that they are not here with the intent to kill us.”

  Spencer slapped his forehead. “If you were students in my history class, I would be failing you for an inability to see the larger picture. What part of they already tried to kill you did you fail to understand?”

  “We have no evidence that Ethan’s father was responsible. Only that he knew about it,” Joey said. “Right? Ethan?”

  Ethan remained silent.

  Spencer ran his laser pen over the whole sheet in wide circles. “I don’t give a shit if this is the plan…we need something though. Because I’m telling you…there’s no way I’m dying for this kid. You hear me, Ethan?”

  “You’re paranoid,” Darla mumbled. “You’re crazy and paranoid.”

  With a smirk, Spencer flipped to the last sheet of paper in his presentation. It read in large letters: I AM NOT PARANOID.

  “Bravo,” Ainsley said and couldn’t help but smile. “But I think the principal doth protest too much.”

  From the dining room, Teddy meandered back into the group. He held a candy-bar in his hand and munched happily on the melting chocolate; it covered his face with smears of mud-colored brown. Plopping himself down next to Darla, he took another bite, and Darla acknowledged his return without glancing in his direction.

  “Look,” Darla said, putting her arm around Teddy, “and I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but…I understand the worry. I do. But you’re taking this off the deep end. Setting up snipers? Preparing bombs? Because they’re really going to want to take us back with them when they find out how well we’ve welcomed them to Oregon.”

  Darla scooped up Teddy and put him in her lap.

  “It’s reactionary,” Ethan added.

  Joey opened his mouth to speak and croaked out a few syllables of agreement before Darla interrupted him with a growl.

  “Ewww,” she groaned. Darla held her hand out away from her body and looked at Teddy’s face and hands. “What is this?”

  “Chocolate,” Teddy replied with his mouth full. He grinned and flashed her blackened teeth.

  “You got it all over me!” Darla exclaimed and she set Teddy upright and scrambled to the box of tissues on the bookshelf. “And chocolate?” She paused and then reached down. Grabbing the candy bar wrapper from Teddy’s hand she held it up to the group. “When did we find a collection of chocolate bars?” she asked the room.

  The group looked at her.

  “Chocolate? News to me,” Joey exclaimed. “I inventoried last night and we definitely didn’t have any candy.”

  “Maybe he found it in the kitchen?” Ainsley offered. She yawned and turned her head toward Ethan. He gave a subtle wink and she nodded her head toward Spencer’s display. Ethan shrugged.

  Darla, still holding the crinkled wrapper in her hand, leaned down to her son and looked at him. “Teddy,” she said in a slow, firm voice. “Where did you get this chocolate from?”

  Teddy shook his head and clamped his mouth shut. He looked to the ground, his lip starting to tremble.

  “You’re not in trouble,” Darla added. “But we don’t know where you got it from and we’re just all confused. Can you tell us? Please?”

  With everyone waiting for his answer, Teddy leaned in to his mom and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I don’t want to say,” he mumbled. “Everyone’s looking at me. I’m embarrassed.”

  “Teddy—” she continued and she lowered her head and her eyes expectantly.

  “The man.”

  The room took a collective intake of breath.

  Ethan snapped his head back to Ainsley, but her eyes were trained right on Teddy. Joey took a step forward and Doctor Krause sat up straighter. And Spencer’s hand went to the gun he kept perpetually in the waistband of his jeans.

  Clearing her throat, Darla tried to steady her voice. “What man, Teddy?”

  The child wiped his mouth. “The man in the backyard.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Her mother said to be ready at nine for brunch in the Sky Room. She brought in a sundress and a hot pink cardigan, instructed Lucy to take a shower, and even handed her a steaming mug of green tea. Maxine kissed Lucy’s forehead, paused in the doorway, hesitant and unsure, and then ushered her other children away, leaving Lucy all alone to get ready, without any idea of what the Sky Room was or why she had to wear a dress.

  Their underground apartment was tiny compared to their two-story home, three counting the basement, back in Portland. And even though Lucy couldn’t get Grant out of her head—where could he be? Did he think she had abandoned him? Was he hurt? Afraid?—she still managed to fall asleep in the bed assigned to her in a small room designed for her and Harper. Late into the evening, after the lights in their room dimmed and the wall night-lights clicked on a soft glow, Harper left her own bed and crawled under the covers with Lucy. Her body filled the empty spots left by Lucy’s own body with a natural flexibility. Harper tucked a leg under Lucy’s legs, pressed her back against Lucy’s belly, and twisted her hair between her fingers. The six-year-old also sucked with ferocious vigor on her thumb; it was a habit Lucy thoug
ht her little sister had outgrown.

  Yes, Lucy had slept, but only after she had a chance to talk to her dad.

  Hours after he left for work per Huck’s bidding, her father reappeared, shedding his lab coat, kissing Maxine, and absorbing hugs from the twins. He proclaimed he was off to bed, but Lucy quizzed him on the System; she stood between him and his bedroom door, unwavering and unwilling to budge.

  She learned that the underground housing was powered by solar energy. Had she and Grant ventured up over a grassy hill to the North of Brixton, they would have seen the expansive solar troughs harnessing high concentrations of power and funneling them to their new home. The EUS, as her dad called it, was a dome shape, with ten floors, and on floors one through eight there were 10 pods. The pods held clusters of 5 apartments each. In the center of each floor there were various rooms: a greenhouse for growing vegetables, the medical center Lucy was taken to, a rec center.

  Lucy couldn’t conceptualize where the tanks were located. She supposed, as much as she hated to admit it, that her father could be misleading her on the size and scope of the System. She tried to remember the path to the tanks after she was pulled out of the elevator, but everything was a hazy blur—her already distant memory, slipping away before she could grasp it.

  It wasn’t too long before she could tell her father grew restless of her questions. He retreated to his simple bedroom, but only after embracing Lucy wordlessly and holding her close to his chest. She could feel his steady heartbeat through his shirt. A consistent and comforting thud-thud thud-thud. “I’m proud of your bravery, Lucy,” he said. And she initiated the end of the hug, pulling away, and curling up onto the uncomfortable beige couch in the corner of the open room.

  She wished that everyone understood that she was not the same. The weeks had changed her. How had everyone else arrived at the System unscathed?

  The world was dead. Her friends were dead. She was living underground.

  But now: brunch with her mom in a sundress just her size.

  The dichotomy was dizzying.

  Lucy held the dress in her grasp and opened the door to her room. She stood in the middle of the open area, shifting between one leg and then the other. Monroe and Malcolm were playing a board game; moving tiny plastic pieces around some map of the United States. Harper watched them from the couch, sucking away, her index finger curled up over her nose.

  “Shower?” Lucy asked and Harper pointed with her free hand to a door next to their tiny kitchenette. She walked across the room and slid into the bathroom, which had a toilet and a tile shower. Shedding her clothes, Lucy stepped onto the tile and turned the shower dial; a low-pressure stream of water trickled from the showerhead. It was lukewarm. Lucy loved her showers hot, scalding—no amount of heat was enough. The tepid water annoyed her and she spun the dial hoping for more, but the water didn’t change temperature. Then Lucy noticed the countdown. Right above the faucet a digital clock ran backward from five minutes. Ticking away.

  Working fast, Lucy lathered up what she hoped was shampoo and then rinsed; she watched the suds slip down the metal drain in the middle of the floor. She had enough time to run some of the same soap over her body before the counter reached zero and the shower clicked off, leaving Lucy standing naked and shivering.

  She took a towel and wrapped it around her body and then she walked over to the mirror. It wasn’t even steamy. Lucy looked at herself, leaning in and peering at her bare skin, yellow under the light. It seemed already that her cheeks had lost some of their youthful roundness. Her face appeared pallid and gaunt. She tucked her wet hair behind her ears and sighed.

  The Sky Room was a restaurant located on the tenth floor. When they walked through the double doors and into the room, Lucy gasped. The top of the dome was painted as a replica of the sky—just like the ceiling of the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas that Lucy had seen in pictures; artificial light simulated sunlight and from small speakers on the walls, Lucy heard the distinct chirp of birds and a subtle whooshing of wind. Funnel people underground, but give them a fancy restaurant with all the amenities of the outside world? It was all so strange and surreal.

  Maxine stayed closed to her daughter, and she had donned a slimming black dress and a pair of heels. Lucy watched as her mother walked up to a podium and told a young man standing there that the King party had arrived.

  “Mom?” Lucy asked as the young man then grabbed two paper menus and walked them through a maze of bistro tables where people from the System ate off of mismatched china. “This is weird.”

  With an apologetic look around at the people at the other tables, Maxine flashed Lucy a cautionary smile and then motioned for Lucy to sit. The young man handed Lucy a menu and helped her push in her chair. Lucy set the menu aside and took in the room—nicely dressed people, eating in hushed voices.

  “Seriously, Mom. I’m gonna freak out,” Lucy continued and set her elbows on the table and looked around. People glanced up to make eye contact with Lucy and smile. Everyone appeared friendly but immersed in his or her own little world.

  “Simmer down,” Maxine replied and she took a cloth napkin and placed it in her lap. “I’m not asking you to accept any of this…but I do want to have a nice brunch with my daughter. This place is supposed to be a treat. Can’t I treat you? Isn’t that allowed? When was the last time you had a hot meal? When was the last time we had a date, huh?”

  Mother-daughter dates used to be a real thing in the King home. With six children, someone was always feeling neglected, so they became a way to connect one-on-one. The dates went up on the family calendar and nothing, no work emergencies or kid emergencies, ever derailed them. The child was able to choose the outing and it was special and fun. Lucy remembered back on her time alone with her mom with fondness and nostalgia.

  “That’s not exactly my point,” Lucy complained. Her mother glanced around at the other tables and then motioned for Lucy to keep her voice down. Rolling her eyes, Lucy continued. “You can’t honestly tell me that this whole thing isn’t…bizarre.”

  “It is,” Maxine said curtly. She scratched her cheek and took a breath. “So, what now? You want to leave?”

  “Is that an option?”

  Her mother dipped her head and leaned closer. “To leave the Sky Room or to leave the System?”

  “Both, I guess. And listen to yourself. The Sky Room, Mom. The System? Like, this place has a name…like we’re on an outing…I just…why is everyone acting so normal?”

  A different young man approached the table and they pulled apart, returning upright. Lucy blushed.

  “Good morning, Mrs. King,” he said addressing her mom by name. “Drinks for you two?”

  “Coffee, please,” Maxine requested.

  “A mimosa,” Lucy said. “No, just, straight gin. Right. That’s a thing, right?”

  Maxine raised her eyebrows and didn’t take her eyes off her daughter. “She’ll have an orange juice.”

  “They don’t serve alcohol in the System?”

  “We do—” The young man looked confused, he glanced at Maxine and then Lucy with an embarrassed smile, as if he were worried that he wasn’t in on some joke.

  “I’ll have coffee too,” Lucy said after a second to spare the waiter, and the boy nodded and walked quickly away.

  Maxine tapped her long fingers on the table. Rat-a-tat-tat and then a repeat rat-a-tat-tat, never looking away from Lucy, her brows knit with assessment and concern. Lucy stared back. Maybe before the Release she would have cowered, but something about losing Grant the moment she stepped foot in the underground system, combined with her family’s robotic acceptance, made her feel emboldened. She knew her mother wouldn’t expect it; that she’d play all her cards and expect Lucy to toe the line.

  It was Maxine who broke the silence first. And as she started to speak, Lucy realized quickly it wasn’t what she expected.

  “I hate this place,” her mother said, not bothering to lower her voice or lean in closer. “You’re ab
solutely right. All your instincts. You’re right.”

  Lucy froze. Then she looked confused. “Do they pipe gaseous truth serum into the air ducts here?”

  Maxine didn’t budge. Then she ran her hand through her short bob and folded her hands neatly on the table.

  “I didn’t bring you up here to play a game, Lucy Larkspur. I brought you up here because I missed my daughter. God dammit, I have been,” her mother paused, her voice breaking, her chin quivering and Lucy struggled to keep all her own emotions in check, “a disaster. I thought they would have to commit me. It was my fault…”

  “No,” Lucy shook her head with sudden sympathy.

  “I sent you out of the house that morning. I lost you and Ethan. Still, right now, I can’t forgive myself.”

  “But Dad—” Lucy tried to form the argument faster than her mother could shoot it down, but she was too slow. Maxine was armed and ready.

  “Sure, I was mad at him too. He lied to me. For years.”

  The waiter slid between two tables and set down two steaming coffees in front of them. Then he disappeared again. Maxine cupped her hands around the mug, just like she used to do at home, letting the warmth seep into her fingers. Bending down to blow across the top of the liquid, Lucy tried to take a sip, but the coffee was still too hot. She pushed the cup away and waited.

  “He lied to you about everything.”

  “Not exactly.”

  With a shuddering breath, Lucy closed her eyes. She did not want to hear that her mother knew about the attacks—even in a roundabout way. If her mother had an inkling of what the future would bring, Lucy couldn’t handle it. Imagining her mother as the naïve housewife impervious to the truth wasn’t a better alternative. Neither meshed with what she knew of Mama Maxine. Rewriting her father into his new role was bad enough: Lucy couldn’t fathom not having anything remain the same.

  “I won’t try to dumb it down for you, Lucy. Okay? Your dad told me that he was working on something top secret. That even telling me that little bit put my life in danger. He said that he sold his soul to save his family, and that I had two choices. Trust him implicitly and live. Or try to go out on my own, with no guarantee of safety.”