Virulent: The Release (29 page)

“Grant—” Lucy whispered. “Stay.”

“Here,” said Ethan. “Lucy?”

She lifted her head to him and waited.

“Dad’s Victrola?” Lucy smiled. She slipped up and walked to the corner, where their father had kept an old Victor Talking Machine phonograph from 1921. It had belonged to his great-grandmother and had been given to her as a wedding gift only a few years before his grandma was born. It was a wooden cabinet, equipped with a crank handle and tucked inside the doors were shelves, where their dad kept all his records.

When Ethan and Lucy were little it was a treat to sit in the den and listen to the music. But they outgrew the pleasure. Only now did Lucy realize that this must have broken their father’s heart. She couldn’t even remember the last time her dad had played a record for her, letting her dance on his feet, swaying and swinging her this way and that.

She wiped away a layer of dust off the top of the phonograph and lifted the top. Leaning over to wind the machine, she placed the fiber needle on the record that was already in there. And when the music filled the den, Lucy’s heart swelled with melancholy nostalgia. The melody was familiar. It was her father’s favorite.

The song was Ethel Water’s rendition of “Moonglow.” It was a beautiful melodious love song, so pure and happy.

Unable to move from her spot by the Victrola, Lucy watched the record spin and spin, the scratchiness of the needle amplified through the internal speakers. She listened to the plucky trombones and the lazy drawl of the trumpet. When she turned back to the group, she had tears in her eyes.

Darla picked up Teddy and placed him in her lap, where the child’s eyes began to close in increments as the song progressed. She stroked his hair and rocked him softly; her subtle swaying may have been instinct as she comforted her child or a response to the music, but it was clear that the song had transported her away from an Oregon living room, sitting with near-strangers.

The record stopped.

But the needle kept spinning.

Teddy’s eyes remained closed and Darla shifted him to her shoulder and stood up. “The munchkin and I are heading to bed. Ethan,” she said in a motherly tone, “pain killers in two hours.” Then she disappeared upstairs.

“Where should I sleep?” Grant asked and at first no one answered him. “If you’re concerned about—”

“Stop!” Lucy said quickly and firmly. “No. You’ll sleep in my parent’s room…if that’s okay.”

“It’s perfect,” he replied and he walked over to the doorway and turned around one last time. “Night. And…” he looked at Lucy, “I’ll see you.”

Lucy couldn’t bear it and she rushed forward, wrapping her arms around him. “I’ll stay up with you, if you want. A game of Monopoly? You haven’t even had dinner…some of those meals downstairs didn’t sound so bad.” She knew how she sounded, but Lucy couldn’t help it; the thought of losing him and Salem in the same day was too much. “I’ll stay with you.”

Grant kissed the top of Lucy’s head in a brotherly way and smiled. “Let me be alone.” He took a breath. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had that much.” And he turned and ascended the stairs, taking each one with slow deliberate steps, looking down at his feet. Then Lucy watched as he disappeared down the hallway.

Ethan requested a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner and Lucy couldn’t help but gag as she spread the peanut butter on their mother’s wheat and honey oat bread.

For the rest of the evening they danced around sensitive subjects and discussed their mutual horror stories. And Lucy even cried upon Ethan’s retelling of Anna’s death—although it happened as she hoped. He dropped Anna off at her house before heading back to their mom because he was too afraid to show up with Anna instead of Lucy and suffer the consequences. Anna’s mother outlived her daughter and that was the heartbreaking moment: Ethan returning to take Anna with him as company to the airport and discovering her mother screaming in the street.

No one knew what was happening. It had only just started then.

Talking with Ethan felt natural, but every once in awhile he would wince, and Lucy was reminded of his pain.

“Is it bad?” Lucy asked.

He nodded. “The painkillers don’t help. If we were dealing with a normal, everyday situation, I think I would lose my legs, but Lucy, I don’t think I’ll ever walk again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“If Spencer can do what we asked of him, I’ll have a doctor take a look at them soon.”

Lucy was reminded of what those four vials bought them—a chance to save Ethan’s life.

“You think he can do it? Find someone?” Lucy asked and then as she watched Ethan’s face fall, she immediately regretted it.

But he didn’t respond. After a long moment, Ethan reached over and grabbed her hand.

“I love you,” Ethan said. “Have I ever said that before?”

Lucy smiled. “Not recently.”

“Well, I do.”

“I love you too.”

“Yes, I think he can do it. I have to believe that he can. And we’re going to survive this. We’re going to figure this whole thing out.”

“Sure,” Lucy said with a smile. “As soon as we figure out what
this
is.”

Lucy wanted to sleep in her own bed. Ethan, sleepy and loopy from a cocktail of Vicodin and some of their father’s scotch, passed out on the couch. For several minutes, she stood outside her parent’s bedroom and pondered going inside to check on Grant, but the darkness and the distressing prospect of finding him already gone, kept her from fearlessly waltzing over with a flashlight. She opened the door and whispered, “Grant? Grant?” but he didn’t answer. And with a heavy heart, Lucy retreated, prepared for the worst.

Lucy, who had navigated her bedroom and the upstairs hallways during power outages and darkened lightless nights before, was not afraid of retreating to the shadows of her own room to sleep under her own sheets, under her own blanket. However, something about her house felt different than the other times she had been seeped in darkness.

She thought perhaps she could sleep and convince her brain that this night was just like any other night: Her parents downstairs, discussing the day in the absence of children with hushed voices. Harper asleep in her princess bed. Malcolm and Monroe tucked into their bunk-beds, trading fart jokes and brotherly quips. Galen reading contraband books by flashlight under the covers until someone caught him and forced him to bed. These were the rituals. This is what the house was supposed to feel like. Instead it felt like a tomb.

Their house was large and cozy, even if it had paper-thin walls and décor regulations through the HOA. Her parents paid for parks and atmosphere, the promise of safe streets and cozy cul-de-sacs. Whispering Waters, their little neighborhood was called. The name implied peaceful joy, happiness, and comfort.

If only her neighbors had known that the congenial scientist, quick with a smile and always available to offer a ladder, an hour of service, or a kind word, was starting a doomsday shelter in his fruit cellar. What would they have thought if they had known that somehow he had predicted the end of the world? That he was clandestinely spiriting away food and water and vaccines and pictures of top-secret experiments right under the noses of his unsuspecting family.

Unsuspecting. It was a true and frightening word.

Ethan had a theory that their mother was in the dark. Otherwise, he pondered, why would she have ever sent Lucy back to school for her homework in the first place? And while it wouldn’t be the first time in history that a man kept secrets hidden from his wife, Maxine’s potential blindness pained Lucy greatly. And it was this lack of knowledge cost her mother both of her eldest children. No doubt their mom assumed they were dead.

And that was even operating under the assumption that her family was alive. It was a stretch and a myth; an idea born from panic and an inability to understand a world where just she and Ethan had survived Armageddon upon the human race.

All these things ran through her brain in a loop and it occupied every second of her time, keeping her alone with memories and flashbacks. She tossed, turned, flung her blankets off, then sought them out and covered herself again. Below, she could occasionally hear a muffled voice. Ethan. Moaning in his sleep. And she kept listening for Grant, a snore or a rustle of the bedsprings—but her parent’s room was silent.

Lucy, back in the room she had dreamed of and wished for while trapped at the school, felt fully alone.

Careful to keep her voice small, Lucy prayed what she could remember from Grant’s prayer at Salem’s memorial and sobbed herself to sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Seven days after The Release

Teddy’s high, little voice roused Lucy from sleep.

“My mommy’s making pancakes with syrup,” he said and he poked her in the shoulder with a plastic sword from the King siblings’ communal dress-up bin. “And I’m going to have an orange juice!”

“Oh?” Lucy wondered how this was possible, but she didn’t question the child. She picked up her pillow and flipped it over to the cold side and then rested her head, closing her eyes again.

“I’m a pirate,” Teddy continued.

Then Lucy’s eyes snapped open and she swung her feet to the floor. Slipping past Teddy, who didn’t seem too fazed by her quick departure, Lucy darted up the hallway to her parent’s room and swung open the door. The quilt on their bed had a Grant-sized indent and a blanket that her mom usually kept at the foot of the bed for decoration was tossed to the floor. But Grant himself was nowhere to be seen. Lucy rushed back down the hall and got held up on the stairs as Teddy made his way down step by step. She grabbed him by the waist and then stomped down with him, Teddy protesting with, “Let me down. Pirates like to walk!”

Darla made pancakes over a refreshed fire. She held a skillet over the flame with both hands and then set it down on floor to flip them.

“Pancakes,” she announced without enthusiasm.

“Where’s Grant?” Lucy asked, setting Teddy down beside his mother.

Darla and Ethan exchanged glances.

“Did you take him outside without me noticing? You couldn’t have. No. Tell me…where is he?”

Flipping a pancake, the thick batter sticking a bit in the pan, Darla nodded toward the back of the house. “He’s outside,” she answered, as if this news was mundane and expected.

“He’s okay?” Lucy shrieked and she ran off without waiting for an explanation.

Lucy ran toward their kitchen and then out to their back porch. Grant sat by himself on the steps leading down to the backyard. The air was still damp, but it wasn’t raining. He turned to her and then patted the step next to him. His hair was a mess of tangles and his scruffy chin was growing fuller, the whiskers more defined.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you this morning,” Lucy said, breathless.

“I wasn’t expecting it either,” he replied. “When I opened my eyes this morning I wondered why Heaven looked so much like your parent’s bedroom.”

She laughed and leaned into him. But she was overcome with worry—Grant’s original theory, that they were taking longer to die, seemed to ring in her ears. Maybe he was just an anomaly, maybe it could still happen.

“What does this mean? Are you scared that—” Lucy stopped herself from asking the full question.

“Ethan and I talked this morning. The information your dad,” Grant hesitated, “well, the information that
they
found was very definitive. No survivors. None. Not ever. In every single study.”

“The virus was created with that endgame in mind, I imagine,” Lucy said and she stared out into the sky.

“So, the fact that I’m still here. It means something. It’s not an accident.”

“Like I keep saying…”

Grant smiled. “Yeah, well, apparently I’m superhuman.
This
surprise replaces the piano playing I think.”

“So…”

Grant nudged her with his elbow and he smiled. “I’m not going to die today Lucy
Larkspur
King. I think this means you’re stuck with me.”

“You promise?” Lucy asked.

“Pancake time!” came a cry from inside and then Teddy’s little feet pitter-pattered over to the screen on the kitchen door and the little boy pressed his face against the netting. “Pancake time,” he repeated. And they followed him inside.

“We have to go to Nebraska,” Lucy said over breakfast. They crowded around the dining room table with Ethan in his wheelchair. “Dad told us to get there if anything happened and that’s where we need to go.”

“How?” Darla asked, cutting up Teddy’s pancake pieces into smaller bites, even as he shoved her hand away. “The abandoned cars and all the wreckage? You can’t get out of the city. On top of that it’s…what…a month of walking? Two months?”

“Try three,” Grant said as he shoved a pancake into his mouth.

“Ethan,” Lucy turned to her brother. “We
have
to do this.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Ethan replied, instantly angry, and the table fell quiet. “Really? You want us to go? How can I do that? I can’t go. How can I go? How can I travel like this?” The timbre of his voice rose and fell, as if he were fighting back a wave of tears. “It’s not like you can just put me in the back of a car and drive out of here. It’s impossible. I can’t do it.”

“We can get you there—” Grant said after a long pause. “We can do it.”

“I can’t even take a dump by myself,” Ethan said and Teddy asked what that meant, Darla whispered a reply in his ear and he snickered. “But you guys want to take me on a cross-country road trip? No, Lucy. I need a doctor. I need medicine…and we’re working on that, but I can’t go anywhere. Not for a long time.”

The room grew silent.

“Besides,” Ethan continued, “what’s in Nebraska? Our family? If they’re alive, why aren’t they coming for
us
? Have you ever thought of that?”

“Dad went to the effort…”

“Writing some coordinates in a children’s book.”

“…to give us help on what to do if we got separated.”

“From something
he
might have had caused?” Ethan’s eyes flashed.

Darla drew in a sharp breath and then sucked her cheek against her teeth. “He has a point, Lucy,” she interjected. “I think you’re forgetting what you
know
to be true here. Nebraska could be dangerous.”