Virulent: The Release (24 page)

“Houseguests,” he mumbled. “If you’d have called beforehand, I could have put on pants.”

Leland Pine’s wife was still interned in their upstairs bedroom. After they had heard news that most of their children and grandchildren had perished, she retreated to the room where they had shared a bed for more than fifty years, finished off a bottle of pills, mixed with some clear alcohol from their freezer and drifted off to sleep.

He was planning on burying her in their garden, but arthritis and the constant threat of the Raiders across the street thwarted his attempts. He had given up hope that she would receive a burial and had taken to sleeping on the floor beside their bed for long hours. He’d been unable to take his own life in return and so he just waited for the illness to come claim him. Praying that he’d feel the unmistakable symptoms of the virus, he wished for death, but it never came.

Leland handed Darla a coffee mug with an illustration of an American Eskimo dog on the side filled with sweet tea that they had made with the all their remaining water and heated on Leland’s old gas stove. She placed her lips on the rim then sucked up the hot liquid between her teeth, then raised mug in a cheers after swallowing, and smiled a thin smile, tight and still suspicious.

“I haven’t seen many survivors beside the Raiders…the looters,” Darla corrected. “Especially not anyone…”

“Older?” Leland finished for her.

“No offense,” she shrugged.

“None taken,” he replied. “Virus wiped out most the older population first. And the little ones too, I suppose. When you think about who was dying early on it makes it even more difficult to comprehend that someone could do this to us.”

“Unfathomable,” Darla agreed.

Lucy took a mug next; the sweet tea had an overpowering fruit smell and she gagged it down. She was thirsty, but fruity drinks always reminded her of the long road trips to her grandparents’ house where her mother shoved juice boxes and packages of gummy bears at them to quiet the rivalry and announcements of boredom.

They all stood and sat around, drinking the sticky-sweet mixture out of an assortment of dime store coffee mugs and weighing their words. The clouds had rolled back over the area and everyone paused to listen to the sound of rain running down the gutters. Grant was the first to finish his drink and he set his mug down on the table and mumbled a sincere thank you. Leland raised his glass in reply.

“I never thought I’d have anyone in my kitchen again,” Leland said. “Raiders, as you call them, would come by periodically and I’d watch them and it would just make me sad. Seems like such a shame. I’ve lived this long life, seen so many things. Served my country and raised my kids. And here I am, one of the last ones standing? A waste if you ask me.”

No one said anything. Then Grant turned, “What branch of the military?”

“Navy,” Leland replied, then he chuckled, wiping the corner of his mouth with his finger. “Cook. Oh boy, I was a mean navy cook. When I met my wife, she was this wispy little thing, all eager and excited to go on a date with me. Didn’t take me long to fatten her up. Plump little gal she turned out to be after we got married. She blamed me and I knew it was true.” His eyes were misty, but his smile was wide.

Lucy couldn’t help but realize that maybe the Pines, in their old age, had pondered a life without each other. Mortality had to play an important role in their everyday thoughts; death was certain for everyone, but the closer you neared to the end of your life, you had to prepare your heart for imminent loss. Maybe Leland had hoped he’d go first and here he was, alone, without anyone.

“My dad wanted me to go into the military,” Grant said and he slid his eyes to the table. He played with the edge of a paper napkin. “Threatened to send me to military school if I couldn’t keep my grades up.”

“Military isn’t the same now,” Leland said and he stretched his hands above his head. “Long ago, you didn’t have a choice. You had to serve and you had to give up youth and plans. But now? Young people have all sorts of options. You have choices.”

Leland’s words were fresh in their ears when Darla laughed without missing a beat. It was loud and abrupt, but she cut it short when she saw their expressions. “I’m sorry,” she then said, looking to each of them. “It’s not funny.”

Leland nodded. “I see my mistake. It’s easy to forget.”

“The opposite is true for me,” added Salem from the back of the kitchen. “I can’t forget. Not even for a second.”

Grant looked at Leland with sympathy, bypassing Salem’s comment. “But I guess we’re in a war now though, right?” he asked.

“Oh really son?” Leland shook his head. “No, no. No war.”

“There’s nothing left to fight for,” Lucy said. But Darla disagreed by sighing and shaking her head.

“We have plenty to fight
for
. It’s just a matter of
how
to fight for it,” Darla added. She turned to Leland. “You seem like a good man. Honest. And I’m sorry for your losses, I am. We can’t take up too much of your time though. We really were just passing through.”

Leland put his hands on the table. “Don’t rush away on my account. The company is nice.”

But Darla started to stand, taking one more sip of her drink before presumably announcing the group’s departure. Lucy watched as Darla put the chipped mug to her lips. Then her eyes grew wide and her breath quickened. She was looking at something beyond Lucy, something that had caused her to freeze.

Without a word, Lucy turned and looked behind her, where Salem was standing. She had dropped her hand to her side, her fingers still gripped the porcelain of her I-Heart-Grandma mug, but her breathing was labored. Her face had gone an eerie shade of white. Her skin was milky and green and her eyes moved to each of them in turn, shifting, darting, afraid.

“Lucy?” Salem whispered. “Grant?” There was a tremor in her voice and it rose with panic.

“Salem!” Lucy jumped from her chair, knocking it to the ground, and started toward her friend.

She reached her just as Salem slumped forward, her mug hitting the kitchen floor with a crash and shattering into tiny pieces.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

In an instant Lucy knew exactly what was going to happen next. She knew because she had seen it many times before and she knew because Salem was not looking at her, but looking past her, like she was on the other side of a two-way mirror. She had never been so close to someone succumbing to the virus before and never watched someone she loved in the act of dying. Lucy wiped her hand across Salem’s brow and her friend’s skin was on fire, clumps of her dark hair stuck to her forehead. A small trickle of blood started dripping from Salem’s left nostril and without thinking, without regard for her own safety, Lucy wiped the blood away with her bare hand; she only succeeded in smearing it down across Salem’s cheek.

“Hey, Sal. Come on…please look at me. Sal?”

Salem was trying to talk and Lucy cradled her head, lifting her up into her nap, but Salem groaned and shook her head. Lucy set her head back down onto Leland’s kitchen floor.

“Give it to me,” Lucy cried over her shoulder. “Give me the vaccine.” She was screaming, but her voice sounded foreign and strange.

For a second, she turned her head from Salem and looked around the room. Leland had pushed himself backward and he stood next to his refrigerator; he still clutched his tea with white knuckles. His wife had not died of the virus and Lucy realized that perhaps this was the first person he had seen succumb to it firsthand. She was sorry that Salem was in his house, sorry that he would never be able to look at this spot without remembering this moment.

Grant had taken a tentative step forward, but he looked lost and confused and he had started to cry. The look on his face made Lucy angry. She read resignation and futility in his eyes and she hated him for it.

Astounded by everyone’s inaction, Lucy turned to Darla with tears dripping down on to her borrowed sweatshirt and she pleaded.

“She needs it now, Darla. I need it quick.” But when she turned to Salem, her breathing had already started to slow. She fought for breath, her chest rattling with fluid with each attempt to draw air into her lungs.

“Please, please, please, please,” Lucy begged. And then, with a voice that was nearly inhuman, she yelled with rage and fear. “Why won’t you help me? Give me the rest of the vaccines!”

“Even if I had it, Lucy,” Darla said, her voice calm and quiet, hovering at normal volume, “it wouldn’t do her any good. It’s too late.”

“I don’t…believe you,” Lucy replied and she took a shaky breath and then screamed. She stopped when she felt Salem’s hand wrap around her wrist and attempt a squeeze. “I don’t believe you, I don’t believe you!”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Darla continued. “She would’ve needed it hours ago. Before it reached this point. I’m sorry, Lucy.” She slunk back to the rear of the kitchen next to Leland and rested her head against the side of the wall.

Lucy seethed and she watched as her tears dripped on to Salem’s shirt creating a little pattern of slow-spreading circles. Then she looked straight at Darla, who didn’t even try to break eye contact, and raised a shaky finger. “You wasted them.”

“Lula, he…saved me,” Salem mumbled, drawing Lucy’s attention back down toward her friend. Turning back to Salem, she slipped her clammy hands into her own and held on to them tightly.

“I don’t understand,” Lucy sniffed. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

“That summer. At the beach.”

Then Lucy remembered. She knew what Salem was trying to say.

She remembered this story perfectly.

Her parents had always instilled a healthy fear of the ocean—the Oregon coast riptides were not trivial and insignificant. A King family friend lost his son to a sneaker wave the same summer Salem now remembered—it was a long Indian summer and they all loaded up the car for a day trip to the beach on Labor Day when the weather hit close to one-hundred degrees in Portland.

They were bodysurfing, pushing past the coldness of the water with the sun beating down on them; their bodies shivered, while their hair absorbed the heat from the sun. Her father yelled that they were going too far out, and Lucy dutifully obeyed his command by spinning around, treading water back until her feet could touch, and finding safety on the sand. It was Salem who pushed out further and ignored Lucy’s and the King family’s pleas to paddle back.

“He saved you,” Lucy said now, finishing the story, even as her shoulders heaved. “You were drowning. And he saved you.”

Salem had slipped below the surface and Lucy was terrified. Screams and shouting filled the beach and she remembered the alarm in her own voice, her fear of losing her friend. And Lucy’s father had sprinted from the blanket, waded into the ocean fully dressed and pulled her up, paddling back to shore with a gasping Salem in his arms. He had lost one shoe in the sand; it was absorbed into the muck. Maybe it resurfaced later and was discovered by an early morning jogger. One lone shoe without a partner, bobbing in the surf, resting in the foam, or tangled with seaweed.

“I can’t save you.” Lucy dropped her head on to Salem’s chest. Her forehead dug into the sharp edges of Salem’s gold crucifix. “I’ve never been able to save you. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”

“But he saved me,” Salem said again. “El me salvo.”

And Lucy curled up beside her best friend, their bodies touching. She kept her hand placed squarely on her heart until the distressed breathing stopped and the rise and fall of her chest slowed to a stop.

Salem was gone.

The room didn’t move.

Then Grant took a tentative step toward them and Lucy, sensing his approach, lifted her head. “No. Stay back.”

“Lucy—”

“I said stay back,” Lucy cried out.

A great and terrible fury passed through her. And in an instant she was on her feet, scrambling across the kitchen to Darla. Her foot slipped in blood that had seeped beneath Salem’s body and she lost her balance, tripping into the table. Her body knocked around the plates and glasses as they clinked together. She ran her hand over the table and threw the items to the floor, where they shattered or bounced, and then gripping the sides she flung herself forward, pressing her weight against Darla’s body and pushing her to the floor.

Darla darted out from under her and rolled to safety and then she lifted herself up and held her hands up in defense. She had the poise of someone who knew how to fight, but Lucy—who had only engaged in mock wrestling matches with her brothers—fought with blind rage. When she lifted a hand to scratch at Darla’s tan face, she felt a firm grip around her wrist, digging into the same spot where she had been handcuffed. And Lucy crumpled to the floor, allowing Darla to stand up straight and catch her breath.

“She let her die,” Lucy gasped. “She let her die! We had everything we needed to save them and you just let Spencer have it. How could you let me believe I was safe?”

“You are safe,” Darla said again. “
You
are safe. Ethan told me—” she stopped, sighed. “I didn’t know there were other people. I had
one
task.”

“It’s fine to be angry. It is normal for grief to look like anger,” Leland’s voice said near Lucy’s ear. “But you should not fight with your friends in a time like this,” he elucidated in a parental tone.

“She’s not my friend,” Lucy responded quickly and she yanked her hand away from his grasp. But she did not move from her place in the ground.

No one spoke. Grant wandered over to Salem’s body and stood looking at her—a sliver of sun filtered through the window fell over Salem’s legs. Then he turned back to the group, his skin red and blotchy and his eyes puffy. “What vaccine?” he asked.

Lucy stood by the window and looked out on the street. The boy had gone, run off somewhere, so the girl’s body was alone on the wet concrete. The rain had not lifted and the water ran off her body like tiny streams.

Grant sat at the piano. He ran his fingers over the fake ivory keys, stretching them out, and then settled them into position. He hit a chord and another, running them together into a melody that Lucy had never heard before, even though it had the quality of something familiar, something memorable. Grant finished the song, sustaining the last note throughout the house until he lifted his foot off the pedal suddenly and he spun on the bench and stared at Lucy.