Virulent: The Release (27 page)

It was their mom’s voice. Again.

“Ethan. Listen to me. Get to the airport. Get to the airport now. Get to the airport. That’s where we’re going…but I don’t know yet…”

Another click.

Another announcement of a saved voicemail.

“No time. I’m sorry. You need this message.”
In the background, there was a rumble. It was the distinct and unmistakable rumbling of an airplane funneling down a runway.
“I called your dad. I…your dad says…”
there was a bump, a pop. Their mother was yelling and the phone was far from her mouth now, but her voice trailed after it, barely audible. She was yelling two words over and over again, screaming them, with vigor and intensity, until the line went dead and her voice disappeared.

The automated woman announced: “
That is the end of new messages…to replay this message press four…
” and Ethan in the video pressed four and listened to the last message again. Zooming in the camera to the front of his phone screen. Hearing it a second time didn’t make her mother’s panicked voice any less haunting.

Then Ethan turned the camera on himself.

“Lucy
…
I’m in a rush…I’ve got to get to the airport. But in case you get back…I need you to see this.”
He jostled the camera back toward the house and out of the kitchen and through the dining room to the entryway. At the time of the video, it was only a half hour or hour after Lucy had left that area. Ethan zoomed in on Lucy and Ethan’s monogramed bags. The only bags left at the foot of the stairs. A lump formed in Lucy’s throat when she saw those—their things had been left behind.

They had been totally and completely left behind.

Then the camera panned to the entryway. And when Lucy saw it on the camera, she opened her mouth in horror and turned to Ethan, who confirmed with a nod. There had clearly been a struggle. Lucy had watched enough cop dramas on TV to know the signs—the mirror was broken, a potted plant on the floor, the vase shattered, the roots exposed. The entry table was turned on its side.

Lucy hadn’t gone through the front door when she came home, she had gone through the side door through the carport. Was this chaos still there?

Would it be a permanent reminder that something bad had happened at their house?

Not taking her eyes off of the camera, she spoke—shocked by the waver in it. “What was Mom saying?” she asked as video-Ethan opened the front door and panned to muddy tire marks in the grass which right led up to the door. A car had pulled up on their recently mowed lawn.

If what Lucy was seeing was true, then people got out and grabbed her family. In the midst of nuclear war, a deathly virus, and the end of the world and life on the planet, her family had also been kidnapped. It was mind-boggling.

“What was she saying?” Lucy asked again. The video had ended. She slammed the monitor shut and held the camera against her chest. “Do you know? Did you figure it out?”

Ethan nodded and glanced to Darla and Grant.

“Ethan?” Lucy asked again.

“Yeah,” he finally answered, his voice small. He sniffed and looked at his sister and then tilted his head. “She was saying
fruit cellar
.”

“Fruit cellar?” Lucy couldn’t hide her incredulity. “Fruit cellar.”

Their mom canned fruits and vegetables. As kids, she took them cherry picking and blueberry picking and made them go out and play on long canning days. Then she meticulously stored her goods in a dirt-walled fruit cellar in their basement. It was slightly raised off the basement ground and could be accessed by climbing up and over a two-foot wooden barrier. It was a fruit cellar—and their mother referred to it as such—but the children called it “the dungeon” and loathed stepping foot inside the tiny space. Monroe and Malcolm always chose to hide there during games of sardines or hide-and-seek; but they usually were left to discover on their own that no one was coming for them because none of the other kids wanted to open the giant wooden door to see if they were there or not. It was the only place in the house that elicited nightmares and phobias among each of the King kids. They hated the fruit cellar.

In her final message to her lost children, Maxine King had been shouting for them to go to the one place they dreaded more than anything.

“The dungeon.” Lucy reworded. And then she shook her head. “Mom was sending us to the dungeon? No, I don’t get it.”

Ethan and Darla exchanged another look.

“Grab a flashlight,” Ethan instructed. Then he turned to his sister, as the color drained from her face. “Lucy…Grant…there’s something in the fruit cellar that you two need to see.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The fruit cellar. It sat in the pitch blackness with the wooden door slightly ajar. It was cool and quiet and isolated. Every horror movie had a scene like this: Three shuffling people moving forward in a dank basement toward an eerie looking door—their flashlights only creating a small circle of concentrated light and leaving the rest of the space full of dreaded mysteries.

If Lucy had been afraid of her mother’s dungeon before, she was petrified now. Without power, they had no secondary light to illuminate the way, and every box or broom or any other basement belonging seemed particularly foreboding and potentially murderous in the dark. Ethan had demanded Lucy just go explore for herself, like he had, without any warnings or hints about what she would find. Darla, who clearly already knew about the fruit cellar’s contents, tagged along, but even she seemed turned off by the darkness of the basement combined with the growing momentum of fear and worry.

Unable to travel to the basement, Ethan stayed upstairs with Teddy and waited for their return. Teddy seemed to adore Ethan; he was conscious of Ethan’s pain and before they had opened the door to the basement, Teddy had climbed into Ethan’s lap with a collection of books.

They approached the door to the fruit cellar and everyone slowed to a halt.

“You open it,” Lucy said to Grant and gave him a small push toward the door. “This is massively frightening to me.” Grant responded with a resounding no and, as the holder of the flashlight, turned the object onto Lucy and Darla, blinding them—their hands flew to their faces in protest. “Stop. Get that out of my eyes,” Lucy complained.

“Make Darla open it,” Grant said and when Darla sighed and consented, he lowered the light and lit her path to the door. Darla peeled back the door and it squawked at them.

“There,” Darla announced and stepped out of the way. “Boys first.” She motioned for Grant to crawl up and through, he hesitated and then took a step forward, sticking just his upper body into the cellar first and shining the light all around.

“It’s a normal, boring fruit cellar,” Grant called back to them, annoyed. He then climbed in all the way and shone the light on the door so Darla and Lucy could watch where they were stepping as they followed him inside.

All three of them shoved together in the confined space was suffocating—Lucy could move, but every time she did, she ran into another person. There were arms and legs and hands touching. Darla tried to scuttle away to the corner to give them space, but she stepped on Lucy’s toe in the process. Grant tried to control the light, but viewing the fruit cellar through the lens of what Grant deemed important was making Lucy nauseous. She reached over and took the flashlight gently and then began to illuminate each area of the small space in turn.

The entire space was the size of a walk-in closet. Lucy noticed almost immediately that one of the shelves was empty. The cans their mother had carefully prepared over the summer had been moved to the floor. And the whole shelving unit was moved away from the dirt wall, giving just enough room for a body to slip behind it. Ignoring the tickling on the back of her neck, her warning beacon of intuition, she stepped over the grape jelly and peaches and asparagus spears and slid herself behind the wooden shelving unit. Up close, she realized that the wall was not dirt and earth, but wood. And there, sparkling brightly underneath the flashlight was a long, thin door handle.

“Oh my goodness,” Lucy breathed out in a gush. “There’s another room back here.”

Darla’s disembodied voice rose to her from the darkness, “Took Ethan ten minutes to find that door. Go ahead now,” she instructed in a small, sad voice. Lucy paused. It bothered her that Darla knew her family’s secrets before she did; she hated that Darla knew what was waiting for her in the next room and hadn’t made an effort to tell her, warn her, keep her involved in the story. What did Darla gain from being secretive?

She closed her eyes, her hand wrapping around the handle. It was cold against her palm.

In the dark, Lucy could make out the sound of Grant’s feet shuffling around, moving closer to the empty shelf.

“You okay, Grant?” she asked.

“I feel fine,” he answered with a subtle hint of contrition—as if he was sorry that the unknown nature of his future caused a burden.

“Are you coming?”

He paused and cleared his throat before saying; “I just think…I feel like…you should do this by yourself.”

She didn’t feel like arguing with a dead man.

That whole day, Lucy wanted to know the answers. Who and what? Why? But as she stood on the precipice of discovery, Lucy was sure she didn’t really want to know anything.

She was the child who went on massive searches around the house to discover Christmas presents, who always snooped out surprise parties. Her mind was finely tuned to disallow people from dropping startling revelations. She hated secrets and suspense. What lurked beyond the hidden door, in her mother’s fruit cellar, seemed far too overwhelming.

“Darla?” Lucy called again. “I need to know…I can’t go in…you have to tell me if it’s awful. You have to prepare me for this. I’m begging you.”

With a sigh, Darla spoke. “I suppose, in a way, it is awful,” she said in a near-whisper. “It’s petrifying. It’s devastating. Because all secrets are.” And then she paused, cleared her throat. “But then…it’s time to know the truth. You’re ready to hear it.”

“You didn’t actually answer anything,” Lucy complained.

Darla’s silence was her response.

Lucy turned the handle downward and door popped open. She adjusted her placement so that she could open the door wide enough to slide her body inside. Once inside, the door slammed closed and she spun; she had left Grant and Darla in the fruit cellar in total darkness. Unnerved and worried, she ran the light over everything, trying to make sense of this room, the space, the message it was sending her. A solitary cord attached to a single light bulb dangled from the ceiling of the room and Lucy tugged it out of habit. The light didn’t engage, but the exposed bulb still swung gently, casting shadows as it moved back and forth. She scanned her flashlight over the room.

As she inhaled deeply, she instructed herself to calm down. The room was virtually empty except for a desk along one wall and a row of shelves along the other wall. Stored on the shelves were dozens of cardboard boxes. Lucy walked over and inspected a single box. On the outside in bright red lettering it read: Apack-Ready-Meals. She tugged one down to the floor and pulled open the top. Inside the box were more individual cardboard boxes marked with labels that read:
chicken and feta; lasagna in meat sauce; cherry turnover sandwich; pepper steak; pot roast.
And then in another box on the shelf, hundreds of pouches of purified water. Lucy held one under the light and gave it a squeeze; she could feel the liquid roll between her fingers.

She was standing in a doomsday shelter.

It was appropriately and secretly stocked with, what Lucy could gather, was at least a year’s supply of food and water. She pocketed the water and turned to the desk. Her heart was racing as she approached.

The desk was small and it had been pushed up against the walls (which were nothing more than thin panels of sheetrock). On the desk was a single piece of paper; its edges were crinkled a bit. And above the desk was a map of the United States, taped with crude strips of masking tape to the wall. There were no marks, no circles, no arrows. No messages. One corner had been lifted free from the wall and the corner was bent. She lifted the map upward and it revealed a small cubby cut into the wall, which contained a shoebox.

She started to reach inside, but then pulled her hand back and waited. Lucy recognized the box from a pair of shoes she had purchased a while ago—a pair of sequined flats that she begged her mom to get for her. Of course she had never missed the box, but here it was, inside a hidden cubbyhole in a secret room in the back of their fruit cellar. She closed her eyes. Everything inside the room seemed to be pointing Lucy toward the truth. Darla assumed that she was ready to hear it; Lucy doubted she would ever be ready.

She slid the box out of the wall and heard its contents roll and shift. She opened the lid and inside were two syringes and two empty vials. The masking tape labels across the tubing read: Ethan and Lucy. Here were the other two vaccines. Her thoughts went immediately to Darla outside the door and little Teddy upstairs. These were the vaccines that saved their lives. She held them up to the flashlight, searching for a fraction of leftover vaccine—a hope that there would be something for Grant, but they were light and dry.

Inside the box was also a note, typed, that read:
Attn: Box Contents. Lab results. Photographic evidence of data. Instructions for Administering upon the following circumstances
:
If we failed to complete your immunizations for our trip to the Seychelles. Take immediately.

Lucy exhaled. None of that was new information and she braced herself for the next piece. She set her old shoebox down and shifted her attention to the paper on the desk.

She saw that it was a letter dated four months ago. Four months ago, when the biggest worries of her teenage life were winter formal and AP psychology tests, Salem’s boy chasing and Ethan’s clingy girlfriend issues. She almost laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of it all.

The note read:

My dearest family, if you are reading this note it means that our plans have not quite gone the way I hoped. If you are reading this note and it doesn’t make sense to you, then perhaps the plan failed completely and totally. If that is the case, I can’t even begin to imagine my fate. There is a chance you are reading this letter too soon, but I feel very secure that this room behind the fruit cellar will go unnoticed. I am sorry that this note is vague. It is best not to speak of things explicitly that are rooted so firmly in the future. I am sorry I cannot communicate to you fully. It is my greatest wish to explain how things came to be. You will likely have questions and I hope that I can someday answer them for you.