Virulent: The Release Read Online Free PDF

minutes Lucy until our limo to the airport arrives.” She glanced at Ethan and then turned back to Lucy, the wheels visibly churning. She swore again, then sighed, defeated and agitated.
    “I can take her,” Ethan offered, keys already in his hands. “Five minutes there. Five minutes to her locker. Five minutes home. I won’t even shut off the car. We’ll be back with time to spare.”
    Without hesitation, Maxine pointed to the door, as if it were the offer she was hoping for—the saving grace. “Fifteen minutes or I’ll kill a kitten for every minute you’re late.”
    Lucy paused, “A worthy threat if all the kittens weren’t already dead .”
    “Are kittens dead now too? I haven’t been paying attention because I have been getting ready for a trip. I will kill something. Be sure of it.”
    “We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Ethan added.
    Maxine’s eyes narrowed. “You will be back in fifteen minutes or will wish you were dead. So help me God.”
    Like a flash the two oldest King children flew out of the house—speeding down the road with manic intensity, focused on their goal and their timeframe, and fully unaware that the world was collapsing all around them.

CHAPTER THREE

    Ethan pulled his refurbished 1962 Ford Fairlane up through a small gravel driveway hidden between the Pacific Lake High School’s football field and the metal shop. The car bounced along, navigating the narrow stretch—the main building of the school extending out in all its beige and brown glory.
    They were headed to their secret entrance—a forgotten door hidden behind overgrown trees and shrubs that led to a small staircase that opened up to a supply closet next to the defunct swimming pool. Since the pool had been closed down years ago due to budget cuts and the doors only locked from the outside, it was the perfect way to sneak into the building after the doors had been locked after the first period tone.
    Their campus was a closed campus. The main entrance and two sets of double doors leading to a turnaround stayed open during the day with a security guard watching as students and visitors filed through metal detectors. It seemed like an unnecessary precaution for a school on the outskirts of Portland without a history of violence, but somehow it made the parents feel safer. After a gun-related shooting down in rural Oregon, panicky parents lobbied for hyper-vigilance. Within one year they ousted the mild-mannered, mopey, and much maligned principal and replaced him with a fast-speaking, bright and shiny wizard of Pacific Lake; he was quick with a dazzling smile and had a never ending bag-of-tricks. Principal Spencer was tall and thin with a perpetually trimmed buzz-cut, five hundred dollar suits, and perfected glower. He seemed to loathe teenagers and treated them with the exact same annoyance reserved for houseflies.
    With Spencer came a high-tech camera system and intricate new security policy and a heavy duty key system that made getting in and out of the high school a challenge only James Bond could conquer.
    Ethan’s promise that Lucy would be “in and out” in five minutes was hindered by the closed-campus, the small army of security personnel whose main priorities were to enforce it, and that Anna had texted that “some sort of weirdness is going down today” after Ethan told her that she had exactly five minutes to be outside at the secret entrance or she would miss her opportunity for a goodbye.
    If Lucy was caught roaming the halls without a note, she’d be relegated to In-School Suspension. Security was trained to ignore teenagers’ myriad excuses; so running into a security guard would be the end of getting back on time and pacifying Mama Maxine. Eventually, the school would realize their error and set her free, but that mistake was not allotted for in the timeframe. Lucy wished that all the subterfuge and deceit wasn’t just for collecting homework because it felt like a giant waste of