Virulent: The Release Read Online Free PDF Page A

was a rape whistle that she had acquired while taking a community self-defense class; Maxine wore it around her neck for protection in public and as a parenting tool; the shrill peal was a non-negotiable call to her side. Some of her friends mocked the whistle, but no one could deny its effectiveness. Lucy tromped down the steps, depositing her half-empty bag on the landing with a pout.
    Maxine paced in front of her children, as they lined up, leaning, slouching—each possessing varying degrees of excitement about their travel day. She carried a clipboard mod-podged with scrapbook paper. Some craft site on the Internet had turned their mother into a maniac, especially when she had access to hot-glue and an entire bookshelf dedicated to scrapbooking paper. She tapped a purple pen against her personalized travel list—printed freshly that morning, adorned with a stick figure version of their family in the top left corner.
    “Anti-nausea pill time,” she announced and pulled a white bottle out of her pocket. “Hands out.” Then she tossed them all a Sesame Street juice box, watching with an eagle eye as each child gulped and choked down the bright orange pills. “Tongues out,” she demanded and then nodded. “Fantastic.”
    Her father had stressed repeatedly that the vaccines and pills for the trip were important and that they would be facilitated without complaint. “No child is coming home with typhoid or yellow fever. God forbid you get bitten by some rabies infected wild boar,” their mother had added. Monroe and Malcolm took great interest in the promise of wild boars on the islands.
    In general, their father’s disdain for illness of any kind had become a family joke. Maxine was the cleaner of vomit, the giver of medicine, the filler of humidifiers in the middle of the night. Their father worked on the effects of communicable diseases on living tissue—and his work had created a monster; he would visibly bristle at people who coughed and sneezed in public; he refused to shake hands and he applied hand-sanitizer by the buckets. Even though he could bring up disgusting tales of gelatinous tissue in jars and oozing boils growing on lab rats at the dinner table, one mention of a sore throat and he would raise a crucifix at you and back away in fear.
    Maxine checked off the first item on her list and continued. “Let’s do a carry-on check.”
    Ethan flipped his phone open, glowered at the screen, and with flying thumbs sent off a text and shoved it back into his pocket.
    “Anna?” Lucy whispered in a mocking tone as their mom started with the younger kids, rifling through their bags and suggesting additions while tossing out a wayward pirate hat and Monroe’s Ziplock bag full of mismatched Legos.
    Ethan rolled his eyes in response.
    “You should just dump her,” Lucy said. “Then go hook up with an island girl without regret.”
    He turned to his sister, seeking solidarity. “She’s threatening to break up with me because she thinks I had time to show up to the school today to say goodbye but chose not to.”
    “Has she never met Mom? Ridiculous.”
    On cue, Maxine was in front of Lucy, bending down for her bag. “Thirty hours, Lucy. We won’t land in the Seychelles for thirty hours. We’re staying overnight in Dubai tonight. And all you want to bring is two books and a notebook? Wait. Wait. Where’s your homework?”
    Lucy grimaced. She had noticed. In less than ten seconds.
    Maxine’s eyes flashed. “Oh...don’t even tell me.”
    “It was an accident. I was sidetracked. Animals were dying Mom.”
    Her mother ignored the last part and raised her purple pen to Lucy’s chest. “This was a condition of the trip...a condition I made with your teachers, with your dad,” her voice began to rise. “I said to each of them that you would arrive back to school with your work completed, not in a state-of-completion. Com-plee-ted .” She glanced at her watch and swore loudly. “Thirty minutes. Thirty