Virulent: The Release (23 page)

Beyond the mall was an open field. A fence warned trespassers that the land was a nature preserve and violators would be prosecuted, but Darla held a flap of cut chain-link back and let the kids climb through one by one before following herself, shutting the small fence back into place with a loud clink. The field was muddy and wet and Lucy’s canvas shoes kept getting stuck. She slurped her way forward, yanking one foot and then the other. When they reached the other end of the field, they were at a wooden fence leading to a soggy backyard.

Darla marched them over the wet grass and through a gently rocking swing set. Lucy let her hand linger on the chain of the swing and then let her fingers slide down. Grant and Salem were trudging along behind; Salem held her hands around her stomach and her eyes watered, Grant kept a hand poised to catch her if she fell. They were out of breath and weak, but they did not complain.

The next backyard was littered with rusting lawn furniture and several green plastic garbage cans filled with yard debris. The house sported an abandoned porch– a product of owners who had decided their home didn’t need attention long before the world decided to crash down around them. In months, maybe years, the houses around this one would fall into the same sad state of disrepair. What had once been an eyesore to the manicured lawns and flower-basket neighbors was now just one more empty house.

Peering through the unwashed windows, Darla motioned for them to join her. Then she moved to the door, grabbed the handle and twisted it slowly.

“Probably empty,” she said, as if she were a bloodhound, and she swung the door open wider and motioned for Grant, Lucy and Salem to follow. “Let’s go. Inside,” she instructed like they were half-cognizant toddlers.

“We’re going inside? Why?” Lucy asked in a hushed voice as she stepped on the porch.

“To sit,” Darla said. “To watch,” she nodded toward the front of the house. “To wait.”

“Watch and wait for what?” Grant asked.

“For what and for whom,” she answered ambiguously, and then took three giants steps into the house, passing through a small mud room, filled from top to bottom with cardboard boxes, black sharpie labeling them—tax papers, kitchen utensils, Christmas décor—all in flowery, capital letters, script.

They entered after her and followed her into a kitchen. The blinds were drawn shut and the house was dim and stale. Lucy allowed her hand to travel over items dumped on to a wrinkled red and white gingham tablecloth. Among the debris, a dog collar. The tag read: Einstein. Lucy held the collar for a long time before setting it back down in the exact place it had been before. Each house was now a graveyard and its evidence of loss and grief was so clear and profound.

“Are they home?” Grant asked. He was standing near the counter. He reached for a coffee mug and picked it up, the coffee sloshed around—it had not been around long enough to mold.

Darla cracked her neck. “No one’s ever home,” she replied. “No one will
ever
be home.” She opened the fridge and the front of the kitchen flooded with light spilled from the appliance. She tossed aside cardboard boxes filled with leftovers, mushy vegetables, and went straight to a can of soda, popping open the tab and sucking the whole thing down in gulps. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she crushed the can and dropped it to the floor where it clattered and rocked; the echoes of tin on linoleum reverberated throughout the house.

Lucy waited until Darla had moved into the living room before she bent down and picked up the can. She set it on the table gently and looked around.

“This doesn’t feel right,” she said. “This was someone’s home.”

Salem nodded.

From the other room, Darla had found a piano and was plunking out a clunky melody; the strings were in dire need of retuning and the song pealed out its tinny tune through the whole house.

Grant moved past Lucy in the kitchen and made his way to the living room, where he sat down on the couch and picked up a discarded book, left open, mid-page, on the coffee table.

When Darla was finished with her piano playing, she wandered to the front window. She hooked her finger along the floral curtains and parted them and watched for a long moment, then let the curtain fall. The window looked out to the main street, and in front of that, a small corner market.

“We have to travel this way. But I know of a small group that’s been hanging out across the way. Just a group of kids. Once I know the coast is clear, we’ll just cross the street quickly and head up through the park. Lots of tree cover. Nothing to steal in the park,” Darla said.

Above the mantel were pictures of an older couple surrounded by children. One framed photo stood out above all the others. It was a photo of a boy with a chocolate-smeared grin and missing teeth, his face smashed up against the wrinkled cheek of a chuckling loved one. Lucy walked over and took the frame in her hand and then flopped it facedown, the back-stand still sticking straight up in the air. She moved to the next picture, the people were so full of life and clueless about their future. They were smiling and hugging, cherishing moments together and Lucy pushed those downward also until the entire mantel was scrubbed cleaned of the memories of bright futures and happier times.

“Where’d you meet my brother?” Lucy asked, turning to look at Darla, then she sat down next to Grant and watched as he flipped the pages of the book mindlessly.

“The airport.” But Darla shot Lucy a look that implied she wasn’t in a chatty mood.

Threadbare nerves racked her and she wanted to shake Darla and demand all the answers. It had been a long time since she started following Darla’s orders and still she had no idea who this woman was and how she knew Ethan. Lucy’s eyes must have betrayed her agony, because Darla took note and exhaled. She leaned her head against the wall.

“Ethan was there, at the airport, looking for your family,” Darla said. “They had grounded my plane to Seattle. There weren’t any gates available, so they evacuated us out of the emergency exits. Those little slides aren’t as fun as you would think,” she paused, but then took a long look at Lucy and continued. “And when I was in the terminal, I saw Ethan trying to get
out
to the tarmac to look at the planes. He was convinced that one of the planes might have your family inside.”

“My family made it to the airport?” Lucy asked. She didn’t know what she wanted the answer to be. Was there a chance they made it out alive? Could it have been their plane submerged in the Columbia River? Was it possible the plane never left?

“They weren’t at the airport. Either weren’t there or they weren’t able to be found,” Darla continued without missing a beat. “Security was so diminished that it didn’t take long for Ethan to find his way to the tarmac. He was running like a madman. Going from plane to plane. They had grounded flights by then. Whole planes of people just sitting there, with the infected, waiting to die.”

“But Ethan
thought
my family was at the airport. So, they weren’t at home?”

Darla waited and then she nodded.

“How many planes did he check? It’s possible that they still
left
. Right?” Now she didn’t know which version she wanted to be true. If her mom could have left her daughter and son behind or if somehow they had never made it to the airport, both versions seemed awful.

She gave a non-committal shrug. “Nothing was happening smoothly over there. It wasn’t like he could just ask someone about a plane and they could point him in the right direction. But…Ethan believes the plane left. Took off. Escaped Portland.”

She didn’t know what that meant.

“So, you see this guy looking for his family and you decide to help him?” Grant asked.

“Not exactly,” Darla replied. She swatted at an invisible fly, fully aware that she was being vague.

No one said anything. Salem shuffled her feet and stared mournfully at the ground. Grant reached into his bag and pulled out his water; he had only a sip left and he dripped the last few drops on to his tongue.

“Wait, was there a girl with him?” Lucy asked and she couldn’t tell if she was hopeful for survivors or indifferent. Grant went back to reading and he flipped another page in the book.

“He was alone.”

This was not surprising news, but Lucy took a moment to process the implication that Anna was gone too. All those times she had encouraged her brother to end that dead-end relationship, her evil thoughts toward Anna’s idiocy and her false friendship. And now, somewhere between leaving her standing outside the secret door and the airport, Anna and Ethan had been dealt a forced separation.

Lucy was sorry that Anna was dead. But she felt worse for Ethan and she selfishly hoped that he had been spared watching her die in the end. There were too many people to weep for; even if she felt a pang of compassion, she would not shed tears for Anna.

“Tell me about the vials,” Lucy finally asked again. “Where did you get the information you shared with Spencer?”

“What vials?” Salem asked.

But before either of them could answer, Lucy heard the floorboards squeak. It was the familiar groan of a house bearing weight. They all heard it and paused, eyes, ears and heads pointed toward the ceiling. Their bodies shifted and they all went on high alert.

“What was that?” Grant asked and he stood straight up, crossing his arms over his chest. Darla stood up next to him, her gun slipping back into the palm of her hand.

“Nothing,” Lucy said because she wanted that to be the right answer. “Don’t houses just settle, make noises?”

But they heard the creak again, and then the shifting and shuffling and footsteps above them. Unmistakable, distinct.

They had entered an occupied house.

“No way,” Darla said and went to the window, moving the curtain back and peering out. She grumbled and nodded outward. “And there are the other Raiders. Fantastic.”

Lucy darted to the window and stole a peek. A ragtag group of boys and one girl ambled up the street. There were four of them in a line. One held a semi-automatic weapon, another a baseball bat. They were dirty and weathered and none of them was over thirty. A boy on a motorized scooter with a wagon attached to the back was leading the crowd. They stopped in front of the storefront. The girl holding the baseball bat took a whack at one of the neon signs in the window and it cracked upon impact with the sound of breaking glass; she pulled it free, the cord trailing behind, and jumped on it for good measure. The group laughed, encouraging her. She batted at another sign and then took the bat to the hood of a car in the parking lot.

The steps above them had also paused. The movement ceased.

Two of the four people ducked into the store, shouting indecipherable messages to each other. It was just a lot of noise and consonants. Lucy made a move like she was going to back away from the window, but Darla put her hand out, commanding her to stay.

Grant, still standing between them, had no view of the outside, but he watched the ceiling with interest—his ears trained on the movement above.

Outside, with a swift motion, the girl raised her bat in mid-swing and then she stumbled forward. The steel slipped out of her hand and it hit the sidewalk with a clang. She clutched her stomach and slid to the ground. The boys watching guard rushed to her as she sank, then they recoiled. They called out and the looters rushed from the storefront.

Watching wide-eyed, Lucy covered her mouth with her hand as the boys dropped the goods in the wagon and took off. The boy on the scooter pulled ahead and the rest followed quickly on foot. There was a single boy who stayed and he held a gun in his hand. He spun wildly looking for something to shoot. Someone to dare cross his path in his moment of anger and surprise. He sat next to the girl, talking to her.

She doubled over in the street on her hands and knees and her body shook against the heavy burden of the virus. It was crippling her.

“Why?” Lucy croaked and took a tentative step back.

“Why what?” Salem whispered.

“The girl,” she said, but she couldn’t find the words to express her anguish. Lucy spun to Darla, “But I thought…” Lucy ran her fingers through her hair and kept her fingers tangled near her scalp. “You were just lying to Spencer. The stuff you said at the school.” She couldn’t even begin to formulate the words necessary to ask the questions on her mind.

“Day six,” Darla answered as if it pained her too. “It’s real, Lucy.” And then her eyes shifted to Salem and Grant, who stood and sat respectively without comprehension.

Grant raised his hand up toward the ceiling. And then put a finger to his lips.

“On the move,” he said.

The steps were heavy now and labored. A single thud and then another; Lucy’s heart quickened, but her arms hung like lead weights at her sides.

There was no escape.

They could see two slippered feet appear at the top of the landing and they watched as the feet slid to the next step and the next step, with rigid and jerky movements.

“Zombie,” Grant whispered. “It’s finally the zombies.” He yanked the gun out of his waistband and held it up at an angle toward the steps. Lucy noticed that his arm didn’t wobble and he pointed the gun up the stairs with marked self-assuredness. It was as if Grant had never imagined he would have to shoot a person, but shooting a zombie came without effort.

“Don’t you dare shoot me son,” came a rough and steady voice, gravelly from sleep, but unafraid.

“
Not
zombies,” Lucy said and pushed herself back toward the front door, her eyes trained on the emerging figure of a man in a salmon bath robe, bare, skinny legs, socks rolled down around his ankles and worn-white slippers. His hand gripped the railing and he took each step deliberately. When he had reached a spot where he could see all three of them, he paused and made eye contact with Darla and stared at her without blinking until she lowered her gun. Then he looked to Lucy, his blue eyes striking and bright despite the weathered, wrinkled face.

Outside, they could hear the boy cry out and the pop-pop-pop of rapid gunfire. Each of them ducked, expecting the bullets to rain in their direction. But the man stayed firm and upright, unmoving. As they rose, he cleared his throat.