The Virulent Chronicles Box Set

by Shelbi Wescott

  “What is this place then? Like a giant doomsday shelter?”

  “Yes,” Huck nodded and he chuckled again. “That is exactly what it is. A giant shelter…totally self-sustainable, if needed, for over a decade. But we won’t need it that long…months, a year maybe, at most.”

  Lucy didn’t speak. She opened her eyes and looked at him and he glowed as he mentioned the intricacies of her new home, as he said. A small indoor park with faux-sun; a movie theater; a restaurant. Lucy’s headache clouded her ability to process the details; what exactly had she stumbled upon in the middle of Nebraska?

  “Like a resort,” he said. “It isn’t fair to take people away from the only world they’ve known and then isolate them in darkness, without the comforts of life. That was my vision, you see. My greatest accomplishment to date is the System. And I know that you will come to understand our cause in time; I recognize that this may seem new to you. But the one thing I knew, when I set out to change the world, was that the people we chose to survive would never want for the basics and would always have access to luxuries. You’ll find everything you want here, Lucy. And if we have forgotten something, then you have a direct line.” He pointed to himself with a wink.

  “I want to see my family,” Lucy said again. She felt like a broken-record. She resisted the urge to reach out and grab Huck’s white hair and pull it off his head. Her desire to do physical damage to something was gaining by the second and he was the only thing within reach.

  “Let me tell you a story,” Huck shifted in the plastic seat by her bed and grimaced as he adjusted his legs and leaned back, exhaling.

  “Does the story end with you taking me to my family?” Lucy asked and she lifted her hips off of the bed and adjusted her upper body hoping to find comfort.

  “Oh, little Lucy,” Huck’s eyes glistened and he reached out to her and patted her hand. His hands were frigid on top of hers and she instinctually yanked her own hand back. “You remind me of my daughter.”

  Lucy’s mouth dropped open. “The girl who tried to kill me? I don’t mean to be a pain…but no. I can already tell you that we don’t have anything in common.”

  “No, no,” Huck shook his head and crossed his arms over his body. “I had another daughter. She has since passed on.”

  Lucy resisted the urge to say she was sorry. She was not unaware that somehow this man was responsible, in some capacity, for the annihilation of the human race. His own loss seemed insignificant and Lucy closed her eyes so she didn’t have to see his hurt radiating back out at her, pulling at her sympathies, begging her to just see him as an elderly man with a dead daughter, and not a monster.

  She was desperate for her father.

  Her questions were mounting.

  Huck continued without her response. “She was your age. Just turned eighteen.”

  Clamping her mouth shut, Lucy bit her cheeks, and focused on her pain. She did not want to listen to his story, did not want to give him an audience for his blatant pandering.

  “There are so many tragic ways to die. That is what the world taught me. It is an important lesson that caused me much pain. The tragic ways in which we can lose a loved one…”

  Lucy sighed. She turned to Huck just as he wiped away a single tear. She shut her eyes again. “You mean,” she started, feeling her heart skip as she mounted her attack, “like a fast-moving virus?”

  “Exactly like that, yes,” Huck replied without missing a beat. Then he leaned down to her, and put a single hand on the bed to steady himself. “I accept your confusion. But I’m here to tell you that your arrival here is very important.”

  “Please…” Lucy didn’t want to ask again.

  “Your parents thought you might have died,” Huck told her. “Of course, they assumed you would come. It hasn’t been long…they don’t know what it’s like to give up hope.” For the first time in their talk, Lucy felt ill-at-ease; the resentment leaked through his avuncular exterior. “But here you are. Hope is rewarded. They will be thrilled. Thrilled.” She detected the hint of disdain. “The rest of my dome? With the people I think of as my family? Not so thrilled, perhaps. We shall see, we shall see. It’s very complicated, Lucy. Very complicated indeed.”

  He pulled back and dug into his pocket again.

  “Here,” he said and he extended his hand. Lucy clenched her hands into fists. So, Huck dropped a small trinket to the side of her bed. She looked sidelong at it and could tell from the coil shape, the glint of a jewel, that he had given her a necklace. “It belonged to my daughter.”

  “I don’t want it,” Lucy said quickly.

  “Of course,” Huck replied and he nodded. “You think I’m evil and horrible.”

  “I just want to see my family,” Lucy bit back the tears, angry at herself for cracking and showing him just how badly she wanted to see her family.

  “I want that too, darling.” He pushed the necklace forward. “My daughter tried to drown you in the tanks after disobeying the System’s rules of not going outside without an express order from the Elektos cabinet members. To jog. She disobeyed our community’s rules because she thought she was above the rules and she wanted to run, with her dog, in the sunlight. A petty and stupid reason. But yet…she feared me so much…that she was willing to sacrifice you.”

  “Okay,” Lucy said. “I don’t care what you tell me; I don’t care what lies you tell me. You can’t keep me here.”

  “I’m many things,” Huck continued, his voice deepening. “But I’m not dishonest. Ask me anything. Go on.”

  Lucy scowled. She stuck her lip out and frowned with petulant frustration. “Fine,” she finally answered. “Why won’t you let me see my family?”

  Huck cleared his throat. “I need to decide the consequence for Blair before I can tell your father that she tried to kill you. It’s unfair to ask you to lie for her. It is my own dilemma. My own burden to bear. But the System has rules and, unfortunately, my dear daughter won’t fare well once the details of her actions come to light. I’m afraid, to put it bluntly. Afraid for her well-being.”

  “My father will forgive her…because I’m alive,” Lucy said. She knew this to be true. Her father was many things, but the one quality she simultaneously loved and hated was his capacity to forgive. When it came to forgiving his own children, Lucy thought this was an amazing trait. When it came to forgiving the people who trespassed against his family, Lucy found his agreeable attitude alarming.

  “I’m sure that is true,” Huck said. “But I’m not sure I can forgive her, you see. Maybe if she thought that you were an outsider, I could understand, but you and I both know that she knew you were Lucy King and still left you to die. Right?”

  Lucy shrugged. Maybe he was fishing. Her lungs still hurt, and she felt none of her father’s carte blanche blanket of absolution; no, she wanted Blair to pay. But more than that, she didn’t want to give Huck anything—not an iota of information.

  Honesty was one-way. Reciprocating only gave him back the power.

  “No,” Lucy then answered.

  “No?” Huck asked, his eyes wide. “She was merely protecting the System and not killing one of my best cabinet member’s daughters?”

  Lucy didn’t answer; she searched his eyes, and remained silent.

  “The rooms are wired, Lucy,” Huck said with a sad smile, after a beat. “I’ve seen the tape.”

  Lucy blushed. Immediately caught. She felt hot tears sting her eyes.

  “I understand you want to protect her…to speed up the reunion?” he said, his tone asking a question, but his words offering her the way out. She hated to take it and give him the satisfaction of orchestrating the situation, but she felt trapped.

  “Yes,” she mumbled.

  “Then maybe Blair didn’t know you were Lucy King.”

  “Maybe.”

  He pointed to the necklace on the bed. “My oldest daughter loved this necklace. I gave it to her on her thirteenth birthday. She was a little superstitious…I gave her the g
ift and said that thirteen was a beautiful number, nothing to be afraid of. She wore it and said it made her feel brave. Do you believe that an object can do that?”

  “What?” Lucy asked him. “Make someone feel brave?”

  “Yes. She believed it had power. And so I believe it does.”

  “Why are you showing it to me?” Lucy looked at it directly for the first time. It was an aquamarine gemstone suspended inside a twisted ball of metal and wires and then attached to a long silver chain.

  “It’s an apology. For everything I’m responsible for…and I realize the list is long. I’m sorry, I am. And I hope you can trust me because we’ll be asking a lot from you Lucy King and I need you to be brave.”

  It was a beautiful and unique necklace; the kind of jewelry she would want to buy, but couldn’t. But Lucy already had a necklace around her neck that belonged to a dead girl and that necklace, more than this one, would remind her of all that she had faced on the outside. Huck Truman’s dead daughter’s necklace was an unworthy token compared to Salem’s crucifix and she wished she could tell him that.

  “I’m already brave,” Lucy said and she turned her head away from him.

  Huck laughed. “You are indeed, Lucy. You are indeed.” Then with a sigh, he stood. There was the sound of the door sliding open and then sliding closed, and the female medic from the tank room appeared to the side of the curtain surrounding Lucy’s bed. She motioned for Huck to come closer and then she whispered something in his ear; she made quick eye contact with Lucy before casting her eyes to the floor.

  “I’m quite sorry to hear that,” Huck said and then he added. “The Kings can be notified that Lucy’s in the medic pod now. I’ll accompany you, if that’s okay.”

  The medic nodded. “I’ll wait outside,” she said and then slipped back out the way she came in.

  “Well, Lucy, I’m so terribly sorry to end our talk on such a horrible piece of news…” he cleared his throat and Lucy felt her body turn cold. Somehow she knew what he was going to say; she sat herself up on her elbows and shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “No bad news. No. Don’t tell me anything.”

  “I’m afraid,” Huck continued speaking over her pleas, “that the friend you arrived with—”

  Lucy shook her head back and forth, her damp hair flying, and she couldn’t stop the tears. More than sadness, rage built up inside of her. Big blocks of fury set the foundation for all her other emotions; she teetered upon them and stared into an abyss. “No! Shut up. Shut up.”

  Huck looked as if he had been slapped. His hurt was evident and made Lucy even angrier. “I do hate to be the bearer of bad news…but it appears your friend took his own life.”

  The words hit her ears and she froze. With her chest heaving, her heart pounding, she stopped and stared at him, unblinking. No. That was wrong. That was a lie. Honest Huck. Full of lies. No. There was no way.

  “They found him hanged in the tank a few moments ago.”

  “No,” Lucy said with confidence, all the fight and fire leaving her body. She sat deflated and confused. “How? With what? On what?” She lobbed each question at him with a measured level of disbelief and self-assuredness. “And…he wouldn’t have,” she added in a whisper.

  “It’s so terribly sad,” Huck said again. “To have survived it all…and then end it here.”

  “You’re lying. Grant would never…”

  “Your family will be here soon,” Huck interrupted, his voice carrying over hers. “What’s done is done. What’s gone is gone. The System is about new beginnings. So, I highly encourage you to focus on happy reunions now, shall we?” He sounded chipper once again. Lucy blanched at his nonchalance.

  “Where is he? I want to see him! You say he’s dead? Prove it. You can’t. You won’t. You’re a liar. A liar,” she hissed.

  “Lucy—” Huck said her name in a patronizing tone, chastising her inability to blindly accept the facts as he told them.

  “You said you’d be honest, but then you lie to my face. I won’t ever believe you! I won’t ever believe you!” Lucy yelled at Huck. She picked up his dead daughter’s necklace and threw it at him; he didn’t move as the chain spun through the air and landed short, sliding across the tile toward his feet.

  He looked injured. Surprised. He frowned and shook his head.

  “You’re right,” he said to her. He looked straight at her, his eyes flashing. “Lying never does me any good. So, I will tell you…he didn’t commit suicide.”

  Lucy held her breath and clenched her fists. Her fingernails created little crescent-moons dotted against her flesh.

  “And he’s not dead…yet…” Huck added the last word slowly. “But you won’t ever see your friend again and I need you to accept that.”

  “No. I won’t. I won’t ever stop until I see him again.”

  “I can make many things happen today. I can reunite you with your family; I can make you comfortable here. But Grant,” Huck said the name like it tasted bitter on his tongue, “won’t work within our System, Lucy.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” Lucy replied breathlessly.

  “I’m sorry,” Huck said, and Lucy’s head popped up: his two words packed a wallop of emotion—as if he actually was sorry, as if it pained him to take away her friend.

  “You can’t be,” Lucy said through tears. “You can’t be sorry and also take him away from me.”

  “I have more than just you to think about, unfortunately,” he told her and then he turned around. “I’ll be seeing you around, Lucy. Be brave.” Then Huck turned and deliberately stepped over the necklace before punching in a code to the side of the door, which triggered the door to open automatically—like, Lucy couldn’t help but think, the doors in the show Star Trek that her father used to watch despite her and her brother’s protests.

  In a second, Huck was gone. The door slid back into place and Lucy, still shackled to the bed, stared after him with her lip quivering and her mind racing. She was about to be reunited with her family. She was about to see her dad, hug her mom, and be with her brothers and sister again. But Grant. Lucy flopped her head back on the bed and brought the pillow up over her face and then she screamed as loud as she could into the folds of the fabric.

  Grant. Grant. Grant.

  Her friend.

  Her solitary companion.

  Lucy wiped her tears and struggled to sit up, the paper-thin gown they had dressed her in opened at the back. Seeing her family was secondary; she had to find Grant and help him, save him, rescue him from this place. But she was trapped and alone and without an ally. It was the worst feeling in the God-forsaken world.

  Chapter Seven

  Ethan dreamed about running. Jogging. With Sophie DiCarlo at his side.

  Their feet slapped along the concrete, but his dream was in mute—he could see Sophie’s perky pony-tail flop and bounce with each step, see her arms pump at her sides, and feel the wind rush against his face, but everything was silent: a world absent of sound. Sophie turned to smile at Ethan; her bright eyes so alive and trained only on him. She said something, called to him, but he couldn’t hear her. He could just see her lips moving.

  “What?” he called. But even though he knew he was yelling, no sound came out.

  Sophie spoke again. Nothing.

  “I can’t hear you!” Ethan said as they jogged into the neighborhood, side-by-side on the road. Their legs rose and fell in unison against the concrete.

  Then the sound hit him in a rush. The wind, the cars, the birds, a dog barking, and Sophie’s voice: all so crystal clear.

  “You’re going to die,” she said with a smile.

  Then blood began to pour from her eyes and her nose, streaming onto her sports bra and dripping down between her cleavage.

  “What?” Dream Ethan asked her. And when Sophie DiCarlo opened her mouth to answer, a river of blood dribbled down her chin and stained her skin crimson.

  Ethan woke with a jolt.

  He was h
ot, burning up, and he yanked his blankets off and flung them to the floor. Then he swung his healthy leg to the side of the bed and physically moved his amputated leg over as well. With his shoulders heaving, he inhaled and exhaled in short bursts, staring at the ground, wishing he could get up and walk out of his room.

  It was dark outside.

  Someone had left candles burning on his desk. He sniffed and then hit his bed with balled up fists. His room stunk like lilac. He hated lilac; hated the scented candles his mother used to buy and stock in their hall closet. During her most proficient cleaning spells, the entire house reeked with the overwhelming scent of manufactured Hawaiian Breeze or vanilla bean candles.

  Between his pain and his frustration, he couldn’t even find an ounce of nostalgia for something that so clearly represented his mother.

  Without a nurse, an aide, he was trapped. He had slept all day; the house was silent. Ethan tried to push away the anger he felt at being left alone. What if he needed something? What if he had fallen out of bed? What if he was hungry? Had everyone forsaken him already?

  His leg throbbed, but Ethan ignored the pain and the ache—more than anything, he wanted to move, wanted to get out of his room. Ethan put his left leg on the ground and his body wobbled; he shifted so that he could place his hands against the headboard and steady himself. Then he lowered his stump off the bed too and felt the gravity of his leg pull him downward; there was heaviness despite the absence and it overwhelmed his senses.

  What would he do? Where would he go? To the bathroom? Downstairs? Could he prove to these strangers that he wasn’t a total invalid? But he was and he knew it, even as he tried to shimmy along the side of the bed, his leg in total agony, his hands shaking, he knew that without these people, he would die.

  Ethan’s door swung open and Darla entered, waving a flashlight toward the bed.