The Virulent Chronicles Box Set

by Shelbi Wescott

  “Raiders?” Dean asked and Darla didn’t feel like explaining what the world had been up to while he drunkenly slept his days away shut up in his suburban farmhouse.

  “I don’t want to—” Ainsley interjected, but then she snapped her mouth shut, aware that she had lost her privilege to make demands of the group.

  Darla eyed her and made an exaggerated scoot closer to the window. She restrained herself enough not to reply.

  “I can do this,” Dean said. “Herculean, maybe. But not impossible. I know this area, remember?” With that, Dean took a sharp left and bounced up over a curb, the contents in the truck bed bouncing and clanking against each other. He drove through a park, passed a jungle gym and a plastic slide, and then pushed his foot down to the floor. The truck lurched forward over the grass and dirt. The vehicle vaulted, and Darla grabbed on to the door handle. She felt herself lift off the seat and slam back down as the truck moved toward a chain-link fence on the opposite side.

  “Slow down!” Darla commanded and she fumbled over Ainsley to grab at Dean’s shirt, but he ignored her pawing. “Don’t you dare—”

  Gaining speed, Dean looked over at his passengers and said in loud enough voice to carry over the engine, “Trust me!”

  The truck hit the fence with minimal impact. The chain-link broke free in a clean swipe, tumbling down off of the hood. Dean slowed down and led the car through an undeveloped plot of land, where he came upon an empty housing development. Unfinished homes dotted the landscape. A black sedan was parked in one of the driveways and the bloated body of a virus victim had fallen between stacks of rolled-up sod.

  Darla exhaled.

  “This short-cut is worthless unless you have a plan. One neighborhood to another neighborhood is not industrious, Dean.” She leaned her head against the cool glass and felt a rush of air through the gap that had once held the back window against her neck.

  The car was silent as Dean meandered around side roads and cut across empty lots, attempting to get closer north while avoiding the jams. They left the underdeveloped neighborhood, driving up over someone’s lawn to avoid debris and demolishing a set of brass frogs playing musical instruments. No one said anything for several minutes; everyone listened to the cadence of each other’s breathing.

  “I’m sorry,” Ainsley said, shedding her normal reticence in favor of peacekeeping. She shifted and turned to face Darla. Her eyes were red and puffy, swollen as if she had been in a fight. Dark streaks of soot smeared down across her temples, giving the illusion that she was sweating ash. She wiped off some, but not all, of the blood. She was a mess.

  “Save it,” Darla replied.

  “I just need you to understand,” Ainsley continued. “I can’t stand this. I can’t drive around with you like this. With you so unwilling to talk to me.”

  “Ainsley,” Darla started, saying her name as a warning. “The mere fact that you are even in this truck, sharing the same space as me, should be seen as such a marvelous act of mercy...but if you sit there and tell me that you are going to force me to converse? You’re out of your mind.”

  “I want to tell my story,” Ainsley added in a small-voice. “Please, Darla—”

  “My son is gone. You were in charge of keeping him hidden. Those people came in with the intent to kill. You are not dead. The conclusion is pretty damn obvious.”

  “Ethan—”

  “Was not as vulnerable as my child. Was not your job,” Darla seethed, every word punctuated.

  “I thought—”

  “Shut up.”

  “I know it’s my fault, but—”

  “Stop! Just stop talking!” Darla screamed. Her voice filled the tiny cab and even Dean bristled, shooting her a look over Ainsley’s head that she quickly ignored. “You are alive. Teddy is gone. That’s all I ever need to know.”

  Ainsley dropped her chin to her chest and began to cry. Her shoulders bounced with sobs as she bawled and she brought her hands to her face. The car settled into silence again. Dean mumbled something under his breath and stopped the car in the middle of the street. He threw the car angrily into park.

  “Give me the cigarettes,” Dean said, reaching across Ainsley to Darla, and waiting for her to reluctantly hand them over. When she did, he rolled down his window and lit one—holding his breath for a long time before exhaling, blowing the smoke outside, where the wind carried it up and away. “Oh, wow. I’d forgotten how that felt. Okay. Girls,” he stopped and looked between Darla and Ainsley—Darla stalwart in her anger, and Ainsley unable to stop crying. “We don’t go anywhere until we get one thing straight. We’re a team and our only goal is to rescue Teddy. I’m not really very good with the whole...crying bit.”

  Darla sneered and Ainsley nodded as she pulled her sleeves over her fists and covered her eyes, stopping the flow of tears. Then she exhaled and nodded again.

  “Can I say something?” Ainsley asked, her voice small.

  He didn’t wait for Darla’s approval. Dean put fatherly hand across her shoulder.

  “My mom...” Ainsley started and then her voice broke, but she swallowed her pain, her eyes brimmed with tears automatically. “I was only worried about my mom. I heard the shot and...”

  Consumed with her own pain, Darla hadn’t put all the pieces together. It wasn’t just Ethan in the upstairs part of the house. Ainsley’s mom had been up there, too. She closed her eyes, fraught with shame.

  “Jesus,” she mumbled. “Ainsley—”

  Unaware if Darla was frustrated or commiserating, Ainsley ignored her completely.

  “It was just us. Just us left. Everyone lost someone, I know that. But I knew I could make it if I still had her. And I panicked...Darla.” Ainsley turned. “I panicked.”

  “You weren’t down there at all,” Darla breathed out. She thought of Teddy, scared, and alone. She pressed her eyes shut and tried to drown out his screams that echoed in her memory. However, even Darla had to admit that she was happy to abandon her original thoughts of Teddy witnessing violence against Ainsley. There were some things he’d never be able to un-see, some things she wouldn’t be able to fix. It was a small comfort.

  “I hid him in the secret room. The one off the fruit cellar, Ethan told me about it. I knew it was dark and...but...he was so brave, Darla.”

  “Stop.”

  “I didn’t think they’d...” Ainsley’s voice broke.

  “They knew right where to go,” Darla interjected. And Teddy may not have stayed in the dark. Left alone, without Ainsley’s guidance, he might have tried to venture back upstairs. It made sense. She opened her eyes and turned toward the young woman. “How did you get out?”

  “I hid. I was out of the basement before they got there. I know that makes me a coward and I know that they got Teddy because of me...but I kept seeing my mom’s face. And then I ran out the back.” She looked down to her torn pant leg. “I ran. I tripped. I left her. I just left her there. All the smoke...I thought maybe, I should go back. Maybe she needed me.”

  “Ainsley—” Dean interrupted, but Darla shook her head to stop him from divulging too much. They looked at each other over Ainsley’s head and Dean closed his eyes and let his words trail off. There was nothing Ainsley could have done; those men killed her mother the moment they walked into the study. It was an attempt at full elimination.

  “We all wish we could have done things differently.” Darla brought her hand up to pat Ainsley on her shoulder, but she changed her mind and let it drop into her lap.

  “I’m sorry,” Ainsley said.

  “Me too, kid,” Darla replied. “But let’s get one thing straight. Teddy is a five year-old kid. Five. He was defenseless, alone, and he’s gone. I am not going to undermine your loss, but this is my kid. A child...my child.” Darla felt a swell of emotion and her lip quivered. “Dean and I are going to rescue our kids. You’re not supposed to outlive your kids, Ainsley. That’s not the way it’s supposed to happen. And I’m not going to let that happen.”

  Sh
e turned away from both of them and stared out the window and tried to regain control.

  Ainsley sniffed. “I know. I’m sorry. You can be mad at me. You can stay mad at me for the rest of your life, I don’t care. I don’t care. Because here’s the difference...we’re going to get Teddy. We’re going to save him. And my mom? My mom stays dead. I don’t say it meanly, Darla. But it’s the truth. Those men killed her. They took the last person I had and tore her from the earth.”

  They came to a main thoroughfare running parallel to a train track. A mile down the road, a passenger train sat dormant. Several cars littered the street, but they were spaced out, making it easy to navigate, until half a mile down they encountered an empty city bus resting on its side, blocking the road entirely.

  To the left and to the right were grassy ditches, full of overgrown weeds and rainwater. Dean swung the car to the right and started to inch forward around the backside of the bus, the truck leaning, unsteady on the mud. The bus flanked them on one side, the ditch and the train on the other. Darla looked out the window and a breath caught in her chest.

  “Dean—” she said, unsteadily. “We’re not going to make it. Reverse. Reverse!”

  He realized too late she was right. Ainsley shrieked as the tires on the right side sunk into the wetness of the earth and the truck slipped sideways down the embankment, where it threatened to topple over completely. Dean pressed down on the gas, hoping to pull them up, but gravity sucked them down. Inch by inch, the truck slipped, and landed on a tilt, no further up the road than they started. They were embedded at a forty-five degree angle in the embankment; Ainsley’s unbuckled body pushed against Darla’s as they crowded at the window.

  Dean pushed down on the pedal. The tires spun and mud flapped against the side.

  “Come on, come on,” Dean muttered as he attempted to coax the car out, but it was useless. Their slow motion slip-and-slide had rooted them into the ditch. The truck was not getting out without a tow.

  “Abandon ship,” Darla said without a hint of the ire she felt building within her.

  “We can get it out,” Dean replied, determined. “You two get out and I’ll see if we can budge the truck downward.”

  “We’ll just waste time. Get out. We pack up. We walk from here.” Darla attempted to open the passenger door, but it could only be nudged forward a few inches before it lodged against the side of the embankment. Resigned, Dean opened his own door and scrambled up the grassy hill to the pavement. Ainsley and Darla followed.

  Assuming they would have the car to act as transport, they lacked the means to carry supplies. A sturdy hiking backpack could have saved them, but instead Dean had thrown what little food they could salvage from the fire, some flashlights, sleeping bags, and a pup tent loosely into the trunk bed. Darla slipped down next to the truck and hoisted herself over the side; she eyed a tarp, and she yanked it free. Then she climbed back up to the road and unfolded it, laying it on the ground.

  “Come on. Food and weapons. Flashlights, candles. Leave the rest.”

  Dean stared wordlessly at the drifts of supplies resting in the truck. He sighed and scratched his head. “There’s a way...”

  “There’s no way. Not if we want to leave the city today.”

  “Maybe some of those houses up there would have packs, right? We’d lose twenty-minutes instead of our things.”

  “I don’t care about the things!” Darla yelled, her voice echoed. Things, things, things.

  Ainsley crossed her arms over her chest and bounced up and down on her heels, looking between Dean and Darla out from under her lowered head.

  “Can we just make some progress today, please?”

  No one answered.

  Darla went back a second time into the ditch and pulled herself up to the truck. She rifled through the items and tossed out a few cans of green beans, a dented can of chickpeas, some crackers, candles, and several plastic bottles of water. Ainsley collected the cast-offs from the grass and carried them to the tarp wordlessly while Dean wandered off a few feet, peering at the overturned bus and the abandoned train with interest.

  “You have your lighter? And your knife?” Darla asked him and he didn’t answer. She called his name and he turned, withdrawn. “Do you have the lighter and your knife?” This time Dean nodded. He looked like he wanted to say something, but thought better of it, and he turned back to the wreckage, his hands fumbling around his front shirt pocket.

  “There’s no point in trying to work our way around the city. On foot, our best bet is to just go straight through. Let’s go.” She hopped down and the truck wobbled under her shifting weight. Gathering the edges of the tarp into her hands, Darla formed a plastic sack, and she pulled it up over her shoulder, like a downtrodden Santa Claus. Her gun holstered against her side, she walked with speed and determination past Ainsley and Dean, and left the duo in her dust.

  For the most part, the city was intact. It was dusk as they marched their way into downtown Portland. This was Dean and Ainsley’s home, and it was the first time they had ventured into the heart of the city since the Release. They lamented and expressed shock over its desolate, abandoned, and wrecked landscape.

  Arriving from the west, they hit the heart of downtown after two hours of steady hiking. Their path took them past the Oregon Zoo, which Ainsley petitioned to go see. The dogs had died, it was true, and other animals suffered from the contaminated water. But they had all seen the feral cats sprouting up along the outskirts of the neighborhoods, and had heard the distant howls of wolves moving closer to the city. It was possible that some animals, even after four weeks, might still be alive.

  But Darla vetoed the detour; if all the zoo animals had perished, it would have been too grisly a sight. Worse yet, if they had been left abandoned by humans, and were clinging to life, their suffering would have been far more painful. They were not going to set the captives free, so it was better to leave them alone.

  “I grew up not far from this teaching hospital, you know. My mom worked at the hospital and she could walk to work, but our backyard butted up against this grassy field and beyond that...the labs. Mostly monkeys. And sometimes on summer nights we could hear them. Howling. Just screaming like they were right there in our yard. Not far away...right there,” Ainsley told them in a quiet voice.

  “In Portland?” Dean asked.

  “Right here. Outskirts of the city. Right in my backyard, but you wouldn’t know it...unless you could hear them.”

  “That’s awful,” Darla added, shifting the tarp from one shoulder to the other.

  “Terrifying,” Ainsley whispered.

  “You want me to take a turn with that?” Dean reached out his hands toward the tarp, but Darla shied away. She shook her head.

  “I got it.”

  “I can take a turn,” he said.

  “You can take a turn tomorrow.”

  “Come on—” Dean complained, readying up an argument.

  Darla spun to him. “I’m not playing some martyr role and I’m not going to give you the tarp so you can feel like you’re being productive. I’m fifteen years younger than you are and I worked out my upper arms and shoulders every day for the past five years. I’m the most equipped person to haul the damn tarp. I’m not doing it to make you feel sorry for me...I’m doing it because I should.”

  Dean put up his hands in surrender and then went to his pockets for a cigarette.

  Still hauling the tarp, Darla marched over and freed one of her hands and grabbed the pack. She tossed it to the ground and put the heel of her boot over the cardboard and smashed it into the cement.

  Ainsley watched the incident wide-eyed.

  “It’s a stressful time...if he wants to smoke, let him smoke,” she whispered.

  Darla turned her head toward Ainsley, and looked at her, blinking. Then she closed her eyes and inhaled slowly, then blew the air out her mouth, mumbling some version of a serenity prayer under her breath. Ignoring their disdain, she took several steps out into
the street. The sun was lower in the sky, and a hazy orange hue filled the hills behind them. “We’re going to have to camp inside somewhere tonight. You two know the area the best, so where should we go?”

  Everyone looked up and down the street. There were pockets of flooding, bodies, and abandoned vehicles. Something was on fire on the other side of the river and smoke trickled upward.

  Ainsley shuffled her feet and then looked at Darla. “I have a place I want to go,” she announced. “The one place in Portland I always wished I could have all to myself.”

  Without hesitation, Darla said, “Lead the way.”

  “A bookstore?” Darla looked at the black, red and white marquee and then at the darkened lobby. Without light, it was impossible to see much beyond the front windows; the cascading bookshelves disappeared into darkness. Powell’s City of Books was a Portland landmark and a tourist attraction. It took up an entire city block and inside its industrial, no frills interior were more than a million books. Or so it boasted.

  “Hotels might be too full of bodies. I wouldn’t be able to handle the smell,” Ainsley said, cupping her eyes and leaning against the glass, her breath forming a circle of fog on the window.

  “The smell doesn’t go away,” Dean added. “There’s got to be people in there, too. Employees who couldn’t make it home from work...”

  Ainsley shrugged. “It was just a thought.”

  “It’s dark.” Darla rattled the front door handle and then walked around the corner, staring at the empty side street.

  “We can go somewhere else,” Ainsley breathed, defeated. “I just thought...I don’t know...I’ve always wanted to be in there alone. “

  “Wait,” Darla replied. She motioned for them to follow her. Along the edge of the street was an employee entrance, guarded by a keypad, rendered useless without power. Darla took off her sweatshirt and wrapped her hand up tight, then without explanation or warning, she punched the glass above the door. The sound of breaking glass echoed up the street. Shaking the shards free, Darla reached over and inside and pushed the metal bar on the door. It opened easily, welcoming them into the children’s section of the store.