Virulent: The Release (9 page)

It was just a small look, but Lucy’s insides twisted with guilt.

“I will get you inside,” she called, squatting to put herself close to Salem’s face. She pointed at her friend and then put a hand on her heart. “I will.” Lucy tried to communicate dedication and strength with her body and facial expressions alone; she tried to send Salem comfort instead of fear. She could not open the door, but she would not leave her friend outside to die. “I will!” Lucy screamed and she pounded the glass.

And that was when Lucy felt heavy hands upon her, closing in around her collarbone and dragging her away from the window. Not the gentle redirection of Grant, but strong adult hands that dug into the flesh on her shoulders. The security guards poured around the windows, armed with duct tape and the discarded black paper. Working swiftly—place, tape, repeat, place, tape, repeat—the men covered the windows again and the cafeteria succumbed back into the shadows, the muffled shouts from the people outside emanating from beyond the blackness.

Salem was lost behind the partition.

“I’m sorry,” Lucy sobbed into her hands, even though Salem couldn’t hear her. She kicked her legs and tried to pull away from the hands that held her. “Sal…I’m so sorry.” Fingers dug deeply into her bone and the pain radiated down her chest.

The mother and her son. The faces of that mother and her son burned into Lucy’s brain. Salem. Everyone. It was unfair.

“Those people…all those people…” Lucy mumbled. She turned to see that it was Friendly Kent who held her back. He loosened his grip, but kept his hands on her, wary and watchful. Seeing the anger flash across Friendly Kent’s face, Lucy felt doubly betrayed.

Grant watched Lucy from a few steps behind. And it was only now that Mrs. Johnston made an appearance, the staccato clip-clap-clip-clap of her heels full of reprimand.

A larger security guard, who had helped place the paper over the windows, pivoted and turned toward Lucy. He raised an angry finger, poised to launch. But Grant raised his voice instead, preventing the verbal onslaught. “That’s a Pacific Lake student out there. And I bet she’s not the only one,” he took a step forward. “Principal Spencer said his main concern was keeping students safe. So, then why aren’t we keeping
all
students safe?”

“Enough,” Friendly Kent said. “Back to your rooms.”

“Those people didn’t look infected,” Lucy added. “They’re just scared.”

“They’re
armed
. Are you out of your minds?” Friendly Kent replied. Then he settled back and crossed his arms across his chest. “I’ve waited my entire career to say this. You teenagers are idiots. Complete and total scum of the earth. Everything we’re doing is to protect you, but you think you’ve got a better plan? Of course you do. Look, I’d be happy to unload the lot of you right back out into the fray.”

“We aren’t protected in here either,” Grant responded. “Look! Look around.” Two more students emerged from their original group of ten, but no one else. Four had succumbed to the virus in the last ten minutes.

“We’re not keeping anything out! The sickness is already here. Don’t you see that?” Grant continued.

Friendly Kent raised his eyes to Mrs. Johnston and pursed his lips. “Get them back. Now.” His command was swift. He yanked Lucy to her feet and shoved her forward, Grant followed behind.

Even their teacher bristled from his tone, but she nodded and obeyed. Mrs. Johnston grabbed Lucy by the arm and turned her toward the group, then she motioned for Grant, Clayton, Purse Girl, and the others to line up, follow along. They exited the cafeteria, back to following the letter of the law without question, and everything about the situation made Lucy sick.

“Don’t you see?” Mrs. Johnston asked when they were out of earshot. “Isn’t it clear by now?” She waited, for an answer, but no one answered. “There is no
great
master plan. It’s chaos. Inside and outside.”

Slower this time, they walked the long corridor. Purse Girl’s eyes were wide open as she shuffled along, but Clayton still kept a firm hand on her elbow, propelling her forward.

“Those people will find a way inside,” Grant muttered. “Two administrators and a small team of failed mall cops?”

Mrs. Johnston nodded. She took several steps forward and stopped, her voice shaking, “Everyone’s lied to you. Your whole lives. See what happens when the world falls apart…see what happens when everything you know crumbles?” Her eyes were wild. “You realize. You will see. It’s the assholes who inherit the earth.”

Room 126 felt like a tomb. Mrs. Johnston kept the lights off, and she huddled at her desk, refreshing the Internet browser on her computer religiously and keeping her phone situated in her line-of-sight, next to a picture of her husband and her kids. For the most part, she ignored the students in her charge. If anyone tried to talk to her or lean over her shoulder, she shooed them away, relegating them back to the uncomfortable chairs or coarse carpeting. Pretense melted away—there was no time for comforting pep talks. They could tell they were in danger and no one was trying to spin it any other way.

Every ten minutes a security guard popped his head in and did a quick head count, then he shut the door and moved on. Every ten minutes. Like clockwork.

When Mrs. Johnston taught her English classes, she was like a puppy dog—full of boundless energy and eager naiveté—and it was something that Lucy always appreciated. This notion that someone still woke up enthusiastic about Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and would read it in dark and somber tones, burning plastic spiders over open flames and then erupting afterward into joyous giggles, making them, with hands over hearts, promise to never tell the administration about her fire hazards. She was light and bright, and she was counselor and coach. They taught her new slang words, and she snickered with embarrassment, unbridled, genuine.

But since they had locked themselves into her room, Lucy couldn’t find any of that Mrs. Johnston left in the space where they once held spirited slam poetry competitions and waxed philosophical about Emerson’s Transparent Eyeball. The new Mrs. Johnston was taciturn and cold; she barely spoke a word and didn’t try to hide her disgust toward each of the children in her care.

After an hour, they were down to five.

The security came by and took note of bodies and survivors; then a group of surviving teachers carried the dead away. But even the number of adults seemed to dwindle as time passed. Six teachers, now only two, continued to act out their roles despite the futility of it all. Mrs. Johnston never moved from her desk; her eyes never wavered from her computer screen as she clicked and clicked and willed the news on her screen to be different. She moved between the news sites, their updates slowing down as the time slipped away from them and then on to her own feed and her email. Lucy watched as she went through her pattern. Site one. Site two. Site three. Wait. Look. Repeat. As if it was not the intake of information that interested her, but instead the cathartic nature of the ritual.

A phone buzzed in the room.

The sporadic nature of sending texts and receiving calls made it impossible for her to communicate with Salem, but Lucy looked down at her phone, disappointed that her screen was blank. Even so, Lucy’s fingers flew into action. She fired a note, “
Stay strong friend. Working on a plan
.” And she watched, stomach in knots, until the little green arrow indicated success. If Salem could read it, if she was still out there, she would know that Lucy had not abandoned her. Lucy would never abandon her.

Even if that was not entirely true because she had abandoned her—she had left Salem crumpled on the ground with hoards of scared people tearing around her. Scared people with guns. Lucy took a deep breath and held her phone to her chest. She felt it apropos to pray, but specific requests eluded her, so she just repeated over and over inside her head:
Help me, help me, help me, help me
. Less like a prayer and more like a mantra.

“I have to get home,” Mrs. Johnston said. It was the first thing she had said in hours. Everyone turned to look at her and gawked, as if she had grown a tail and barked wildly. She looked at the students in the room, assessing their faces and then to the clock. Jumping up, her chair crashing backward behind her; she rushed to the window and pried it open—the bottom half was designed to open only an inch, and she ran her hands over the metal. Unless they could remove the entire pane of glass from the window, that was not a viable escape route. “Can’t. I can’t. I can’t!” Mrs. Johnston hit the metal radiator beneath the window in frustration and immediately cradled her hand. She spun around and leaned back, breathless.

Clayton, who had been slumped in the corner of the room, using his backpack as a pillow and drawing doodles in a notebook, sat up. “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

Grant had moved himself under the television and he turned his head. He’d been watching the news without saying a word for most of the time they were trapped in the room, but at one point he had sidled up to Lucy and put a reassuring arm around her shoulder. She shrugged him off and then apologized. It was easier to think Grant had single-handedly stopped her from rescuing Salem than to accept that any course of action was futile.

“You have an idea?” Grant prodded and Clayton nodded.

Purse Girl, who also hadn’t said a word since they got to the room, raised her body off the floor, alert. They each stared at Clayton expectantly.

“You have a master key? You know, from coaching?”

Mrs. Johnston’s shoulders slumped as if she was already preparing for this plan to fail. “It doesn’t unlock the main doors. They have control for the locking mechanism in the security office and outside the main office. My keys are worthless,” she said. She took out a rubber band and tied her hair up into a high ponytail, her blonde hair cascading down her back. Lucy marveled that somehow throughout the entire day it had not lost its curl.

“No. I’m not interested in using them to get outside,” Clayton answered. He stood up and brushed his hands off on his jeans. “Does your key unlock the doors in the East wing?”

Mrs. Johnston clamped her mouth tight for a minute and peered at Clayton curiously, as if she were trying to guess what he had in mind. Then she reached into her pocket and produced her keys, turning them over in her hand. “Yes,” she nodded. “They do.”

Clayton broke out into a huge smile, and he flipped his long blonde hair forward over his shoulders. “If you can get me into the metal shop, then I think I can get you out of this school.”

“Wait!” Lucy popped up from her chair by the desk, forgetting she was holding her phone and it skittered away from her across the floor. “Can you get someone
into
the school the same way?” She bent over to retrieve her cell and admired a fresh crack across her screen. It seemed, even amid everything else, a tragedy worthy of tears, but she pushed them away and tried to keep her head clear and focused.

He nodded. “Yes,” he replied. “Trickier, but yes. But if we don’t want to get caught, we have to work in shifts. I’ve been plotting it since they trapped us here. Do you trust me?”

“What choice do we have?” Lucy answered and then realized it sounded harsh and unfair. She opened her mouth to add something softer, nicer, but Mrs. Johnston stepped forward—her open palm extended toward Clayton, handing him her keys.

“Just tell us what to do,” Mrs. Johnston said. “I’ll do anything.” Her eyes were supplicating and she walked right up to Clayton. Standing next to each other, she looked so tiny, fragile, and afraid and he towered above her, a man-child, with massive, calloused hands, broad shoulders, and a smattering of acne.

He turned to Lucy. “If you can get your friend on the roof, leave everything else to me.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

The East Wing was entirely its own entity. Separated from the rest of the school down a long and often forgotten-about hallway, the tiny square plot of school that held the metal and wood shops, the art studio, and the journalism lab, seemed to function as an independent school within Pacific Lake. Many students didn’t even know the wing existed—it was easy to miss the narrow hallway leading to the classrooms. The East Wing was so independent and often ignored that it took administrators two years to notice that the teachers had converted an abandoned storage room into a sitting lounge complete with couches and a coffee maker.

The metals kids were their own group; funneling in and out of the metals room at all times during the day, dressed in dark hooded sweatshirts and skinny jeans, sporting lip-rings and tattoos, half-inch ear gauges, and congenial dispositions. They made electric cars after school and entered robotics competitions and their skills with blowtorches, drills, and the foundry unparalleled in the entirety of East County. And often they were outcast, huddling at the periphery of the other social groups, always humming along toward escape. They smoked weed in their cars in the parking lot of the LDS church next door and respected their mothers.

Metals kids were different from those who took woodshop. That class attracted football players on the hunt for an easy elective and entire collections of skinny little Romeos who wanted to make velvet lined jewelry boxes for girls on their buses.

The art studios were brightly painted and cluttered with decades of abandoned projects. There were bookshelves shoved with forgotten pottery and closets stuffed with unfinished canvas portraits. Mobiles dangled from the ceiling and the desks were covered with a rainbow paint splatter. The art students were shy and unassuming with their own inside jokes and general disdain for those without appreciation for the French Impressionists.

Lucy was familiar with this area of the school from Salem, who, not surprisingly, had found a niche in journalism early in her high school career as she channeled her penchant for gossip into a career as the Living Editor for the Pacific Lake newspaper
The Herald
. She would go and collect Salem from the journalism lab after school hours, meandering into the dimly lit East Wing with trepidation. It was the only section of the school exempt from the last remodel: The roof was leaky, the linoleum flooring was tearing up at the seams and entire banks of florescent lights blinked on and off, which made the entire area feel like the set of a campy 1980’s horror film.