The Virulent Chronicles Box Set

by Shelbi Wescott

  She let out a small gasp of surprise and let the paper float to the floor. Then she marched back down the hallway, out of the hall of memories, away from the room of remembering, and back out of the lower level. Though it wouldn’t matter where she went. She was being watched. Forever.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ray and Jillian pulled over to the side of the road. A dirt-smeared sign greeted them with the message: Welcome to Brixton. Population 26.

  “This the place?” Ray asked through the back window into the bed of the pickup truck where Dean, Darla, and Ainsley had sat for the bulk of the sixteen-hour drive. They had stopped a few times along the way, once to drop off Liam and the girls and meet the other survivors in Montana. The Montana community welcomed their trio without fear or apprehension. They pooled together their limited resources to treat Darla’s hand and feed them well before they journeyed onward. Those who had discovered the commune felt blessed and safe.

  The whole time they were there, Darla regained some of her dashed hopefulness. Perhaps not everyone’s spirit was broken. Some goodness did survive.

  Like they promised, Ray and Jillian agreed to make the trip to Nebraska without payment. Whether propelled by kindness or some other motivation, Darla didn’t know, but they did it without complaint.

  They didn’t have to.

  Along the way, Darla, Dean, and Ainsley could have acquired a new vehicle and ventured out on their own. But they couldn’t deny that it was comforting to have a chauffeur. Ray and Jillian switched off driving while the trio slept and relaxed in the back. Though their time together was brief, it provided a needed respite.

  Darla looked at the Brixton sign and nodded.

  Brixton, Nebraska. It didn’t seem like anything was here, but she wanted to reserve her fear until she knew for sure.

  “You want us to take you further in?” Jillian asked.

  “No, ma’am,” Dean answered. “We got it from here.”

  Ray stuck his hand through the window and Darla grabbed on tight, shaking it with a strong grip. “We wish you luck and hope you find your son,” he said. He waited, paused. She had given him bits and pieces of their story, but she hadn’t told them that Ethan’s father was connected to the bioterrorism group or that the guards who stole her child were anything more than the Sweepers they had come to fear. It was a small white lie, but it felt right—the duo didn’t want to drive them into the lion’s den, but they did anyway. They deserved some tidbit to take back to their group.

  Darla knew their generosity was a sacrifice she could never repay.

  “Thank you,” she answered. “I don’t know how I can ever thank you enough...”

  Ray let go of her hand and batted the comment away. “We’re good here. And you know where we are...if you need a place to go, our doors are open.”

  “That means a lot,” Darla said as she sat on the edge of the truck and then hopped down to the dusty ground below. She extended her left hand to Ainsley and helped her down; Dean followed after. “Once I have Teddy, I don’t know where we’ll go. Maybe you’ll see us soon?”

  “We’d like that,” Jillian said. “You’re good people.”

  Darla looked at the ground and kicked the dust. She looked up and squinted. “Sometimes,” she replied and smiled. “Drive safe?”

  Ray nodded and saluted, and without any prolonged heart-warming goodbyes, the truck did a u-turn and disappeared back down the dusty road, kicking up a film of dirt around them, the truck’s tires crunching along until it was out of sight.

  From the sign, they walked in silence. Darla had her gun and nothing else. She held it in her wounded hand, keeping her finger poised on the trigger in anticipation of spotting someone worthy of shooting at any second. It was nearly half a mile of walking before they even reached a building.

  Darla was the first one to spot the car with Wyoming plates sitting at the start of Main Street. Its passenger side door was wide open, and she jogged over to inspect it. The interior was littered with wrappers and empty water bottles. In the back seat there was a small bag—Darla hoisted it into the passenger side and unzipped it; she tossed out a few pieces of clothing, but there was nothing identifiable in either the car or the bag. Darla crawled back out with her hands on her hips, assessing the town with one long sweep.

  Dean paused in front of a bar called Carson’s Place.

  “Whatcha got?” he called to Darla.

  “Nothing,” Darla shouted back.

  “And we’re sure this is the place?” Ainsley asked. A heavy wind rushed down the street, throwing dust into miniature cyclones.

  “This is the place,” Darla said with authority. “These were the coordinates. This is the city. Ethan and I talked about it all the time—” she trailed off, remembering that Teddy was not the only thing they had lost that day. Ainsley looked at the ground and dug her toe into the dirt road, and then she looked up into the sky. It was a deliberate sort of quiet that blanketed the street.

  “This is hardly the type of place that is housing some sort of vast terrorist cell,” Ainsley muttered. “We’re missing something.” She peered through the darkened windows of the bar, wandered down the street, and kicked small tumbleweeds underfoot as she walked. Stopping, she paused and spun around. “Where’d Dean go?” she asked, scanning each area, rotating her head back and forth and looking perplexed.

  Darla stopped and looked around. “Dean!” she called. “Dean!” she called louder when he didn’t reply to their shouts.

  Ainsley started walking out of the main area, past the church and the school. The rolling Sand Hills of Nebraska spread out all around them. Behind the church, there was a small knoll, and atop it, she could see Dean’s figure standing, looking out and beyond at something out of sight.

  “Up there!” Ainsley called back to Darla and she took off toward Dean, who remained unmoving on the hill. As she approached from behind, she laughed. “You disappear for like one minute and I think we all think you’ve been abducted or shot,” she said.

  “I had to take a leak,” Dean replied without turning.

  “Oh.” Ainsley froze mid-step. She turned. “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” Dean said. “I’m done. No...come here. You should see this.”

  She turned around and could see Darla following her route up the small hill, past an American Sycamore tree with branches full of richly green leaves. Following Dean’s command, Ainsley perched herself beside Dean and looked down into a valley below. She gasped, bringing her hand up over her mouth. Silently, Ainsley turned to him, her eyes wide, and Dean smiled.

  Darla approached and slid up next to Ainsley; she put her hand above her eyes to shield the sun and peered outward. She whistled loud and low.

  Stretched beneath them were rows upon rows of solar panels, like little metal worshippers all lifting their bodies up to their sun god. And sitting off to the side, angled against the hills so the flat plains were in front of it, was a medium-sized passenger airplane sitting on a short black tar runway. A staircase was pushed up to its side and the cabin door was open. The three of them looked at the plane and the panels and then at each other.

  “Well,” Darla said with an authoritative nod. “That settles that. We found the right place.”

  It was Ainsley who spotted it first. As they wound their way down to inspect the plane, they found Ainsley peering through a thick pane of glass imbedded in the ground. She tapped on the glass with her foot, and then jumped up and down to test its strength. She turned to the group and called them to her.

  Darla laid herself across the skylight and cupped her hands to see, and Ainsley crouched down beside her on her haunches. They half expected someone to peer back up at them, but the space below was unoccupied and still.

  “A kitchenette. And some chairs. Books.” Darla sat up. “It’s like a little apartment.”

  “They’re underground,” Ainsley said. “Like Hobbits.”

  “Don’t Hobbits live in trees?” Dean asked.

&
nbsp; Ainsley just stared at him and blinked.

  “There must be a door somewhere. Come on,” Darla said and she went off wandering back toward the town, staring at the ground as she went, leaving everyone else in her wake. Ainsley jogged to catch up: pumping her arms and letting her curly hair fly.

  “Wait!” shouted Dean. “What about the plane?”

  “I don’t care about the plane,” Darla called back without turning. “I want to find the people who are getting on that plane.” She held her gun out from her body and scanned the buildings and kept a watchful eye on every darkened corner and behind every tree.

  “What are we looking for?” he called to Darla. She rolled her eyes at him in annoyance.

  “Just look for anything,” she shouted back.

  “Anything is a tall order!” he called back. But he listened to her and began to wander and inspect the ground beneath them and every tree as though it held the secret entrance to the terrorists’ underground lair.

  “Darla?” Dean called after a few minutes.

  She turned.

  Dean sighed, dropped his arms, and sped up to her. “This doesn’t feel right. And it doesn’t feel safe,” he said in a whisper.

  “No, it’s not safe. They’re here. We found them. And we have the element of surprise. This town? It is deserted. The people we want are down below.”

  “How do we even know that?” Dean asked. A look of concern crossed over his face and he put his hand out and touched Darla lightly on her forearm. “We have one gun. And we know they are armed...”

  She hadn’t wanted him to bring the truth to her hunt. She felt the energy drain out of her like she was a slowly deflating balloon. Darla lifted her head to the sky and tapped her gun against her leg. “We can sit back and we can wait for someone to show themselves...which could be minutes, hours, days. Or we can do something. I just spent time trapped in someone’s basement without the ability to save my boy. That wasn’t me, Dean. That was a shadow of me. I’m here now…I’m where I need to be…I’m where Teddy is. Don’t tell me I can’t do anything about it.”

  He pointed back over the hill to where the plane was hidden. “That plane is wide open. We won’t wait days. And—” he hesitated, “it’s not just Teddy we’re looking for. Can’t you see that? Please, Darla, I’m really asking you: can you see?” He stepped into her line of vision and forced her to look at him. Darla’s chin quivered and she blinked.

  “I can’t wait,” Darla said. “But you don’t have to come with me.”

  “You’re no good to Teddy dead, Darla.”

  “I’m no good to him up here, either. My son is down below and that’s where I’m going.”

  From behind them, they heard the sound of feet rushing toward them. Ainsley had popped her head into a church on the hill and now she rushed out, and carried herself straight up to Dean and Darla. She paused and took in deep gulps of air.

  “Bones,” she said, out of breath. “They’ve been dead a long time...way before the virus. Completely deteriorated.”

  They all paused and took a collective breath and let that information sink in.

  “I’m thinking there has to be a hidden staircase in a building. Easier to hide. Come on, let’s check each place together, no more splitting up.” Darla readied her gun and marched forward. “One end to the other. Come on, troops.”

  The first building was a library. Its door was wide open and it drifted back and forth in the wind. They walked inside and froze, each of them noticing in turn that the entire back wall was gone and exposed. In its place were the thick metal doors to an elevator. Dean looked at Darla and Darla couldn’t help but smile as she stalked forward.

  “Lucky us,” she said.

  “It’s about time,” Ainsley added.

  Darla looked at the elevator doors and pondered their next move. She put her ear to the door and listened, puzzled, and then without hesitation she pushed the button to the side. There were no telling clanks and rumblings of a machine coming to life, and Darla pushed the button again. Then she put her ear to the doors again and listened intently.

  “I think I hear it coming. But it’s far away...must be a long way down,” she said. She took a step back and motioned for Dean to join her, and assumed a leveled stance, her gun raised.

  Ainsley hid out of sight behind a row of non-fiction books, filed with care under a laminated sign boasting their Dewey Decimal System call numbers. Removing some books so she could see, she rested her head against the bookshelf and watched. She held her breath.

  After a torturous five minutes, the doors to the elevator opened to an empty box, with metal railings. Not the enclosed walls of a traditional elevator, but more like one about to lead them down to the depths of coal mine. A gray light beamed down into the box from the side railing. It blinked twice, but sustained its glow.

  “No way,” Dean said shaking his head. “That thing looks like it’s about to take me into the pit of hell.”

  Darla scanned the box and swung her gun from one corner to the other. “Come on,” she nodded toward the elevator. “Let’s see where this takes us.” She looked at the button on the side: there was only one choice. Taking a deep breath, ignoring the pit in her stomach, Darla’s finger was lingering above the round circle. “Come on,” she called back toward her friends, but they were motionless, hesitant. The air around her smelled like dirt and rust.

  “You could be walking into an ambush down there,” Dean said. “Darla...don’t...”

  Ainsley whimpered. “I don’t know...it’s so dark. I’m done with the dark. No more dark.”

  With a deep breath, Darla took the barrel of her gun and pushed it into the button. Dean and Ainsley watched her with their eyes wide, and their mouths formed into circles of worry and fear. The elevator doors began to close, eclipsing the library and the world above, and steeping Darla into darkness.

  From outside she heard Dean swear and he pushed the button in a vain attempt to stop her. Then she jumped back as Dean’s outstretched hand pushed its way into the closing elevator doors. He wrestled them open, but the elevator did not stop its slow descent. Darla looked up, through the topless metal box, as she traveled downward, Dean’s face growing smaller. And without warning, he swung his body down into the blackness of the hole and dropped. He crashed into Darla and hit her to the floor; he landed on his ankle and crumpled into a heap. Dean yelped in pain.

  “You could’ve killed us both,” Darla said to him, angry. The light in the corner the elevator illuminated Dean’s face, and she saw that he was in pain. He winced as he tried to push himself to the side while cradling his foot in his hands. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  From above them they could hear Ainsley’s panicked voice calling to them, but her small shrieks became smaller and traveled further away. The light from above disappeared entirely, and it was getting colder.

  “Will she be okay there by herself?” Dean asked.

  “Maybe you should have thought of that before you dropped fifteen feet into a moving elevator,” Darla replied. “Can you stand?” she asked him.

  “Yup,” he replied and he allowed himself to be helped up. He leaned against Darla’s shoulder.

  “You didn’t have to come with me,” Darla said, the elevator bounced further down, and made no movement to stop anytime soon.

  “I’m a coward,” he replied.

  Darla looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “A shocking admission,” she replied with a grin.

  “But,” he continued, eyeing her, “I wasn’t going to let you do this by yourself.”

  Her smile faded and she turned to face Dean. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  She was dismissive. “I’m scared,” she added after a beat.

  “I’d be worried if you weren’t.”

  The lift slowed, the gears screeched, and then the whole thing came to a stop. Nothing happened. They stared forward at a shiny wall. Darla took a step forward
and pushed on the wall and it shifted under her touch and slid forward. Light flooded their metal container, and Darla pushed the door open more, and then finally all the way.

  Extending beyond them was a long hallway. It was well lit, but empty. They moved out of the elevator with caution and began to traverse the stretch of space before them.

  “Where are we?” Dean asked in a whisper.

  Darla shook her head and placed a finger to her lips.

  They continued to walk, cognizant of their footsteps against the tiled floor, their eyes trained forward on the exit in front of them. This hall was empty, but there was no indication of what they would find behind the next closed door. They turned the knob when they reached the end and to their surprise saw the metal doors of a second elevator. They pushed the button and held their breath.

  The doors opened and they stepped inside. Dozens of shiny buttons lined the panel but a hand scanner beeped angrily when they attempted to press one, spitting back an error message: Unrecognized user.

  They stood there confused and shaken. This was the only way out of their current floor—which contained the elevator to the surface—and without a code, or a registered hand swipe, their journey would be over before it had begun. Before they had time to assess the best way to navigate their roadblock, they heard a small peal, and the doors closed automatically. They started to move down.

  Darla swore and pushed her body against the side, obscuring her body from view. Dean followed suit on the other side, tucking himself into the corner.

  Down they traveled. And when it stopped, and the doors opened, they held their breath and waited.

  A large man in a uniform walked steadily on to the elevator with them. He spotted Darla first and went for his gun, but Dean punched him in the jaw with a well-placed blow and the man reeled backward and stumbled to the floor. Dazed, he took a swipe at Darla, but she held the gun to the center of his forehead and leaned down so he could feel her breath against his face.

  The doors closed. Dean reached in and unhooked the gun and the holster, and left the man without a weapon. The man’s hand went to his other pocket, but Darla stepped on his arm. She shoved her foot into the ground and dug her heel into his flesh. He cried out.