Virulent: The Release (4 page)

He turned to his sister, seeking solidarity. “She’s threatening to break up with
me
because she thinks I had time to show up to the school today to say goodbye but
chose
not to.”

“Has she never met Mom? Ridiculous.”

On cue, Maxine was in front of Lucy, bending down for her bag. “Thirty hours, Lucy. We won’t land in the Seychelles for thirty hours. We’re staying overnight in Dubai tonight. And all you want to bring is two books and a notebook? Wait. Wait. Where’s your homework?”

Lucy grimaced. She had noticed. In less than ten seconds.

Maxine’s eyes flashed. “Oh...don’t even tell me.”

“It was an accident. I was sidetracked. Animals were dying Mom.”

Her mother ignored the last part and raised her purple pen to Lucy’s chest. “This was a condition of the trip...a condition I made with your teachers, with your dad,” her voice began to rise. “I said to each of them that you would arrive back to school with your work completed, not in a state-of-completion.
Com-plee-ted
.” She glanced at her watch and swore loudly. “Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes Lucy until our limo to the airport arrives.” She glanced at Ethan and then turned back to Lucy, the wheels visibly churning. She swore again, then sighed, defeated and agitated.

“I can take her,” Ethan offered, keys already in his hands. “Five minutes there. Five minutes to her locker. Five minutes home. I won’t even shut off the car. We’ll be back with time to spare.”

Without hesitation, Maxine pointed to the door, as if it were the offer she was hoping for—the saving grace. “Fifteen minutes or I’ll kill a kitten for every minute you’re late.”

Lucy paused, “A worthy threat if all the kittens weren’t
already dead
.”

“Are kittens dead now too? I haven’t been paying attention because I have been getting ready for a trip. I will kill something. Be sure of it.”

“We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Ethan added.

Maxine’s eyes narrowed. “You will be back in fifteen minutes or will wish
you
were dead. So help me God.”

Like a flash the two oldest King children flew out of the house—speeding down the road with manic intensity, focused on their goal and their timeframe, and fully unaware that the world was collapsing all around them.

CHAPTER THREE

Ethan pulled his refurbished 1962 Ford Fairlane up through a small gravel driveway hidden between the Pacific Lake High School’s football field and the metal shop. The car bounced along, navigating the narrow stretch—the main building of the school extending out in all its beige and brown glory.

They were headed to their secret entrance—a forgotten door hidden behind overgrown trees and shrubs that led to a small staircase that opened up to a supply closet next to the defunct swimming pool. Since the pool had been closed down years ago due to budget cuts and the doors only locked from the outside, it was the perfect way to sneak into the building after the doors had been locked after the first period tone.

Their campus was a closed campus. The main entrance and two sets of double doors leading to a turnaround stayed open during the day with a security guard watching as students and visitors filed through metal detectors. It seemed like an unnecessary precaution for a school on the outskirts of Portland without a history of violence, but somehow it made the parents feel safer. After a gun-related shooting down in rural Oregon, panicky parents lobbied for hyper-vigilance. Within one year they ousted the mild-mannered, mopey, and much maligned principal and replaced him with a fast-speaking, bright and shiny wizard of Pacific Lake; he was quick with a dazzling smile and had a never ending bag-of-tricks. Principal Spencer was tall and thin with a perpetually trimmed buzz-cut, five hundred dollar suits, and perfected glower. He seemed to loathe teenagers and treated them with the exact same annoyance reserved for houseflies.

With Spencer came a high-tech camera system and intricate new security policy and a heavy duty key system that made getting in and out of the high school a challenge only James Bond could conquer.

Ethan’s promise that Lucy would be “in and out” in five minutes was hindered by the closed-campus, the small army of security personnel whose main priorities were to enforce it, and that Anna had texted that
“some sort of weirdness is going down today”
after Ethan told her that she had exactly five minutes to be outside at the secret entrance or she would miss her opportunity for a goodbye.

If Lucy was caught roaming the halls without a note, she’d be relegated to In-School Suspension. Security was trained to ignore teenagers’ myriad excuses; so running into a security guard would be the end of getting back on time and pacifying Mama Maxine. Eventually, the school would realize their error and set her free, but that mistake was not allotted for in the timeframe. Lucy wished that all the subterfuge and deceit wasn’t just for collecting homework because it felt like a giant waste of energy.

The Fairlane rolled to a stop and Anna materialized from the side of the school. Wind blew her tangled bleach-blonde hair around her shoulders. She walked toward the passenger-side door, her arms crossed against her body, her eyes red. Lucy looked at Ethan, but he looked away, entreating her to leave without mocking him. Where Anna was concerned, Ethan was temperamental and touchy; always so defensive and irritable.

“Five minutes,” Ethan reminded her.

Lucy opened the door and crawled out, grabbed her brother’s black backpack to transport her work and left the door ajar for Anna, who slithered beside the door without saying a word.

“Morning, Anna,” Lucy said to her as she walked away, impressed with her own civility.

“It’s crazy in there,” Anna replied without turning around.

Lucy pivoted and opened her mouth to ask how, but Ethan motioned her away. “Go! I’m leaving in five minutes if you’re back or not. It wouldn’t be fair for Mom to have to kill two children in one day.” Anna mustered a weak smile before climbing into the car beside Ethan and shutting the door, a mopey argument ensuing before Lucy was even out of earshot.

Slipping in through a small patchwork of shrubbery, Lucy walked with purpose and determination toward the door—which had been tagged some time ago with bright neon green spray-paint. She tugged on the handle and the door pulled open, leading to a damp, dark stairwell. A dim light guided her forward; the handrails were sticky with used gum wads and crushed soda cans were abandoned in the corners—the smell of mildew, dirt, and urine permeated the air.

When she pushed on the door leading to the supply closet, the door opened and then crashed back into her shoulder; she groaned. Someone had placed the old pool cover against the door. She aligned her shoulder, grabbed the handle, and pushed with all her strength—the metal cart rolled inch by inch with each well-placed body-slam. Lucy squeezed her body through the opening she had created and then, because she couldn’t get back out that way anyway, shoved the pool cover back against the door. Then for good measure, she toppled some dusty chairs down too. She let her imagination play out what would happen when Anna tried to get back into the school after her rendezvous with Ethan—the daydream ended with Anna sporting a bruised shoulder while seething in In-School Suspension.

It made the unfortunate events of the morning seem a little less ominous.

While Lucy navigated the supply and the pool, she grabbed her phone. Four minutes. And still no texts from Salem. Even in mourning, Salem would make an attempt to connect. Salem allowed herself to feel no emotion unless it could be experienced with someone else. Where was she and why was she silent? No lamentations, no messages with excessive capitalization and punctuation. No farewell wishes or “Bon voyage!” or “Bring me back a necklace!”

With her eyes on her phone, Lucy checked her feed.

She stopped walking because she was unable to process what she was seeing and move forward at the same time.

All over the country, people were sending and posting alarming updates. In just thirty-minutes everything had gone from sad and speculative to real and nightmarish. A sickness was spreading. Hospitals couldn’t handle the intakes of the ailing who were arriving at steady-intervals. Someone who worked in an ER posted a photo of a crowded hallway, the caption reading: “Busy day. Damn this flu.” So-and-so had heard that 9-1-1 was jammed. A friend who went to another school updated her status to read: RIP Aunt Rosemary.

Lucy’s phone buzzed and she almost shrieked, juggling the device before checking her text. It was Ethan:
“Anna says teachers were reporting they were going into lockdown. Get. Out. Homework not worth it. Mom will deal.”

Lockdown.

They had done a lockdown drill during the first week of school.

It meant there was an immediate threat to the student body within, or around, the school. All students would be held in classrooms until the lockdown was lifted. Lucy took a step forward around the empty cement cavern; she could see from her vantage point the long stretch of hallway dedicated to the science department. The lights were dimmed. The entire place was clear of movement. If she could get straight down the hallway, closer to the English classrooms, she would be able to get to her locker and exit out the double-doors that opened toward the senior parking lot.

The high school was built as a giant rectangle. Students could start walking in one direction and the school would eventually lead them back to their starting point—classrooms lined the inside and outside of the rectangle. There were small hallways off the ends leading to the pool and the library on the opposite side. The science hallway ran at one end and directly down from the main office; the other end of the hallway passed by the gym, the cafeteria, the counseling center, and eventually the social studies hallway. Then came the English and math hallways. At her present location, she could not be further from her locker, but at least her exit would be close.

“Go to senior lot. By double-doors,
” she texted to her brother and then opened the door from the pool, aware of the clunking echo of the metal swinging open. For good measure she added a text:
“I can do this.”

She had never heard the school so quiet. On her tiptoes, she crept forward, moving at a fast enough pace to make it to her brother on time, but slow enough to watch for a patrolling guard or a teacher on-watch. But after fifteen feet, Lucy realized that the classrooms were abandoned. The lights were turned off; the desks were empty. She pressed her face against the glass of one room; there were discarded backpacks scattered on desktops and on the floor—books and papers without owners, a solitary shoe, coats still hanging on the backs of chairs. Students had been asked to leave in a hurry.

She shivered.

The clock showed that it was partway through first period. With great trepidation, Lucy moved forward, inch by inch, stepping along the white tiled flooring, her feet tapping along, the only sound in earshot.

Down the hall, Lucy heard the distinct crackle of a walkie-talkie. She pushed her body into a small opening between a locker and a drinking fountain and held her breath. Her phone vibrated in her hand. In the absence of all other noise, the vibrating seemed loud and commanding while drawing attention to her hiding space. She pushed the ignore button with her thumb and closed her eyes.

There had to be rational explanations. Students and teachers were frightened by the news and had been called to an emergency assembly. Perhaps the grief over pets and sick loved ones had impeded any valuable learning and the students were ushered into an impromptu counseling session. During Lucy’s freshman year, a senior football player was killed in a car accident. The administration canceled every class and held a series of honorary assemblies and meetings with counselors—they even held a vigil out by the flagpole.

Occam’s Razor.

Her father taught her that.

The simplest explanation was usually correct.

They were under lockdown out of fear, not necessity. The students were at an assembly, perhaps to alleviate or control the rising worries. The pets were dead because someone had poisoned them. People were not in danger.

Her father had told her: She was not in danger.

Back on her feed, all the doomsday prophets were broadcasting their end of the world theories as a full-fledged assault. Several of her feed items were calls to faith in the midst of judgment day. If Lucy believed in evangelical Christianity, she would have guessed her classmates had been spirited away through rapture. But Lucy shook her head and scowled—she may not be perfect, but she had a hard time believing that God would leave her behind and take the entirety of Pacific Lake High School instead.

This was ridiculous. The overreacting. The fear.

“
Bears are not trying to poison me
,” she thought to herself. “
Bears are not trying to poison me
.”

There was no way that any of this amounted to anything remotely exciting. She just needed her damn homework so she could go on vacation with her family. For a moment, she thought of just walking with confidence down toward her locker, and if a guard stopped her, she would just say with calm precision, “My ride to the airport is waiting outside. I just need my Ray Bradbury book and I’ll be on my way.”

The walkie-talkie crackled again, but it was moving away from her. Further down the hall it traveled. A man’s voice, some security guard, sounded an “All Clear” for the science and main hallways. The talking turned a corner, toward the cafeteria, and away from her.

Two minutes.

With a deep breath, Lucy hesitated. Then, without thought, she sprinted, running as fast as her legs would carry her, shoes slapping heavily on the tile. She closed her eyes and ran; straight by lockers and classrooms, past the front of the building and the main office, they were all a blur as she sped down the wide stretch of hallway.

Then, she rounded the corner toward the English hall. Within eyesight of her locker, she slowed her pace, her heart beating with rapid thumps against her chest, blood pounding in her ears. Then her body flew forward. Pain shot up her legs and arms as she hit the tile with a crash, knocking the air out of her body. She landed on her elbows and knees and slid forward several feet before stopping. Her head caught the metal of a locker—a burning pain traveled from the top of her ear and all the way down her neck.