Virulent: The Release (31 page)

She shoved them into the front packet, the crinkly packaging echoing loudly in the quiet front room.

“We’ll be heading through unfamiliar neighborhoods,” Darla said. “We stay close. We don’t know who’s alive out there. Grant has proved that much.”

“And there definitely could be zombies,” Grant whispered.

“No zombies.” Lucy rolled her eyes.

“Grant, you’ll have to lead the way,” Darla continued.

Teddy sat on the steps, a found stuffed animal in his hand. He was sucking his thumb and his eyes were heavy with sleep. “Mom,” he asked. “When are you coming back?”

“Later sweetheart. Stay good for Ethan.”

“Mom?”

“Yes, baby boy.”

“Can we go to the park to play when you get home?”

Darla looked at him and smiled softly. “I’ll see. Let’s just say maybe.”

Grant and Darla started toward the side-door, but Lucy hesitated. “Go on, I’ll be right out.” They exited out into the carport and left the two of them alone. She turned to Ethan and walked over to him, kneeling, but careful not to touch his legs. “I don’t know what I should say here,” she mumbled.

“I thought I was the only one,” he replied. “The lone survivor. When I realized there was a chance you were alive too, I’ve never been so happy.”

“I always hoped. I never gave up hope,” Lucy said.

He reached out and grabbed her hand. “I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t. And I can’t lose
you
.”

“I have no immediate plans to die. Spencer will come through. I’m more worried about you. Be safe, Lucy. Please?”

“I’m doing this for us, Ethan. It feels like I’m abandoning you…but…I want to do this for us. See that and feel it. Believe it.”

“I do.”

“A hot air balloon,” Lucy said and smiled.

“The great and powerful…” Ethan trailed off and then he looked up at her—his blue eyes searching hers. “But you are. You really are. So, it’s fitting, I suppose.”

“There really is no place like home,” she said back, wanting to assure him she understood.

After a long pause, Ethan gave her hand a tight squeeze. “What home?” he asked. Then as she started to pull away he added, “Find them, Lucy. Find them.”

“I will.” She stood up and hugged her brother tightly, avoiding the dark thoughts of impending loss that flooded her and she hugged him until she couldn’t anymore.

The others had generously offered her precious moments to say goodbye.

But now it was time to go.

The Trotter farm was a legitimate farm with a small grove of apple trees and a pasture for grazing horses. Just a mile away from sprawling housing developments, and only a few miles away from the buzzing metropolis of Portland, a more rural part of the city lived and thrived. The streets were empty and vacant, but everywhere they walked, they could not avoid the stench. It reminded them that once upon a time, people were alive. Rot and death wafted in from all angles and it blended with the early morning air, bowling them over.

Only their soft footsteps, sinking in mud or thudding along on the streets, made any sound at all. Occasionally one of them remarked at a sight—a person’s body in the front yard, pajama clad, and left abandoned among the growing grass or a person in the middle of the street, or behind the wheel of a car.

All signs pointed to the fact that many people tried to go about their lives the day the virus claimed them, unwilling to let the disease stop them from going to work, watering their lawn, checking the mail. Everything happened so quickly. One minute they were walking to pick up a newspaper, the next, gone.

“Cut through here,” Grant said and his voice broke up the silence.

They followed him, leaving the developments, cutting through backyards, until they reached a long drive flanked by well-manicured grass.

Grant paused.

“This it?” Darla asked and started to walk forward.

He nodded.

“Let’s go,” she demanded. But Grant refused to step forward. Suddenly tender, Darla went back and took his hand. “We do what you say,” she announced. “Okay?”

“Yeah, okay. Let’s just, um, just go to the barn.”

Darla nodded once. “You got it.”

Lucy took in the sprawling estate with wide-eyed wonder.

Halfway up the drive, Grant walked straight through the yard and spotted a patch of yellow fur nestled among the green. He knelt down and hung his head, and then he stood up more purposeful than before.

“A pet?” Lucy asked.

Grant shook his head. “A stray,” he replied. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m just tired of all of this.”

“Do you want to go inside?” Lucy asked and then immediately regretted it. “Never mind,” she said, backtracking, realizing it was a ridiculous suggestion. “We’ll just get the balloon up.”

“I don’t need to see my dad to know he’s dead,” Grant said with determined nonchalance. “Besides…we weren’t close. And—”

“You don’t have to talk about it now,” Lucy saved him. “We have a balloon ride ahead of us.” Lucy hiked her backpack upward and her foot hit a mound of mush, her boots sinking, but she ignored it and kept following Grant and Darla up the yard toward a large brown building to the left and steering clear of the main house where the blinds and curtains were all shut tight.

When they reached the barn, Grant pulled the doors open one at a time, exposing a darkened stable on one side with empty stalls and on the other side a wall of harnesses, saddles, and riding helmets. Stored against the front wall were three small trailers, decorated with advertising from his uncle’s company.

From Up Above Tours: Beautiful Adventures Daily.

Grant opened the first trailer and stood for a long time starting into the dark. Then he turned to the girls—his face determined, focused, transformed.

“It’ll take all of us to get this thing in the air,” he commanded. “I’ve never been in charge before.”

“Now you tell us,” Darla teased, but she clapped him on the back to give him courage.

Together they dragged a large blue tarp back out to the yard, smoothing it out across the grass and muddied land where piles of horse manure disturbed the landscape. They went back for the basket and Darla and Grant balanced it, dragging the bottom toward the tarp and then tilting it one way, then another. Grant looked up to the sky, pursed his lips, and then directed them again. They hooked in uprights, laid the basket flat, and while Grant tinkered with the burners, Darla and Lucy worked swiftly with the envelope containing the balloon and pulled it freely and outward onto the tarp.

The sun was now rising into the morning sky, turning the few clouds purple and pink.

An inflator fan hooked up to a generator blew cold air into the balloon and the nylon began to take shape. Only now could Lucy see a visible pattern on the outside—rainbow argyle. The loud hum was deafening and even more shocking since the world had gone quiet.

Grant watched the balloon start to rise over the landscape as he held a rope tightly in his hand, and then he beckoned to Lucy.

“Hold this,” he instructed, handing the long white cord to her. He wrapped his hand around hers and pushed her hands tightly down around two handles attached the rope. “Hold tight. If it sways, pull it back. This is the crown line,” he told her in an educating tone. “Have you ever been waterskiing?”

Lucy shook her head.

“Well, it’s like in the movies. Just hold it tight. Pull back.”

Then Grant rushed forward, checking lines, pulling on the balloon, rolling it, inspecting it, and pushing gauges. Lucy watched him and realized that he was in his element and he was good at this.

After a few minutes, Grant called, “Switching to heat!” And with the fan off, the world seemed quiet once again and they could only hear the rustling of the fabric, swaying in wind. Grant directed Darla by the shoulders and positioned her to stand on some cables; then he switched the burners on and a large flame spewed upward.

The balloon began to rise.

Lucy kept a tight hold on her crown line as the balloon lifted off the ground, filling and rising, obscuring the entire yard with its size. Grant tied down the basket and when the balloon filled, he called to her. She rushed to him and they set the basket upright, where it lifted and bobbed, the balloon anxiously pulling itself toward the sky.

Lucy hoisted her bag into the basket—a woven undercarriage that looked like it was designed to fit six or more people—and Grant followed suit. He helped her climb in and Lucy oriented herself on the inside. She could feel the heat of the burners only feet away.

She was suddenly terrified.

“Grant—” she started and then stopped. What use would questioning do now?

He must have read her face. “We’ve already done the hard part,” he said, allowing a smile. “My uncle let me fly before when we’ve been up alone. I’ve never put a balloon together before by myself. So, that was kinda cool,” He ran his hand through his hair and broke into a proud grin.

Darla’s eyes scanned the landscape and then she checked the watch on her wrist.

“No time for heartfelt goodbyes you two. Here,” she reached into her waistband and pulled out one of the handguns. She reached up and handed it to Lucy. “And Grant’s already got one of the guns packed. Be wise.”

“For a world mostly empty…there sure are a lot of dangers,” Lucy said.

“Curb the philosophizing for when you’re flying,” Darla suggested. “The world’s no different than it’s always been. Maybe you just never saw the danger before, but it was always there. Now go you two.”

Grant climbed into the basket next.

Lucy looked at Darla, who started to work on releasing the lines. “Darla—”

“I got it kiddo,” Darla answered. “I’ll take care of him. I promise.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said to her and she put her hand over her heart.

Then Darla let the last line free and Grant blasted the burner. Up they rose, straight over the barn and the house and into the mild morning wind. Lucy had never been afraid of heights, so she peered over the edge, her hands gripping the basket and watched as Darla’s shape shrank. The
phhhhsssshhh
of the burner carried them upward and upward and Lucy’s mind drifted to a particularly imbedded memory from her childhood: Losing a birthday balloon into the sky and begging her parents to follow it.

“We’ll catch it when it lands,” she had begged.

Her mother stroked her hair. “Baby girl…when it lands, the balloon will be all out of helium. It won’t be the balloon you want anymore. We’ll get you another one.” But she hadn’t wanted another one, she wanted that one and she couldn’t quite understand why that wasn’t possible.

As the hot air balloon rose, Lucy had the feeling that they were staying still, rooted in one place and that the world pulling away from them. The revelation dizzied her and she pushed back a bit from the edge.

“You okay with flying?” Grant asked, not taking his eyes off of the gas tanks, watching their height.

“Uh-huh,” she said and nodded. When she had regained her composure, she peered down again and let out a small gasp.

The world below was marked with the evidence of its destruction.

Fires still smoldered in the distance. The roads were littered with abandoned cars with open doors. Small lumps and shapes dotted the landscape and Lucy could only assume they were bodies. As they had walked along the roads and parks and backyards, she had seen the devastation, but to look down on it from the sky was different. Here were miles of bodies. Not just snapshots of a scene, but a full picture of an entire city laid waste.

“How high will we go?” she asked and Grant closed the burner lid, reached into his pack and pulled out a bottle of shaving cream. Leaning over the edge, he sprayed the cream and watched as it traveled in the wind. Then he surveyed the landmarks and he clicked his tongue.

“Southeast.”

“That’s the way the wind is blowing?”

“Yes.”

“How far will we go?”

“Until I can’t fly it any longer or until we run out of fuel. I’m determined to get us as far as I can.” He paused. “You ask a lot of questions.”

Lucy took another look out over her beloved city. The buildings of Portland were off in the distance. She could recognize their distinct, postcard-worthy shapes. The city itself was quiet, abandoned, but it was still there—a picturesque skyline, the west hills in the distance, the river bifurcating the east from the west. If Lucy wanted to, she could’ve tried to convince herself that her fellow Portland residents were slow to wake, that they were just bumbling along sleepy-eyed, half-awake, shuffling through another day. From above the ground, it was hard to notice the difference between a slumbering city and an annihilated one.

But then she gasped.

“All the bridges are gone,” she whispered.

“Are you sure?” Grant asked and he walked over to her side.

“Yes. Look.”

He boosted them up higher with a blast of propane to give them a clearer look.

“My God.”

Wreckage jutted out of the lapping waves of the river. Submerged cars bounced and bobbed. Up and down the waterway were mounds of twisted metal and each and every bridge was gone—only remnants remained. Portland was a city known for its bridges and now there was nothing to look at but rubble.

“The bombs we heard. They were taking out the bridges. What does that mean?”

Grant stared at the debris, the absence of something they had taken for granted as they journeyed from one section of the city to the other. “To trap people, I suppose. Isolate the neighborhoods. Contain a virus that was uncontainable. Or maybe…just to destroy.”

It was only then that Lucy noticed the full extent of their city’s devastation. She could see the marina and capsized boats and the other vessels adrift on the Willamette River without a captain, unmoored and unanchored. Her eyes traveled to the tram—a bullet shaped vehicle that transported patients, doctors, and tourists to Oregon Health Sciences University. It was suspended above the trees, stopped midway up the track, and it swayed gently with the wind. Someone had written
HELP
in lipstick on the windows and a crack on one of the windows indicated someone had tried to break through the glass.