The Project Eden Thrillers Box Set 2: Books 4 - 6 (Ashes, Eden Rising, & Dream Sky)

by Brett Battles

  “Matt’s sister,” Brandon told her.

  “Maybe she knows where he is,” Josie added.

  “I doubt it,” Chloe said.

  Ash pulled the satellite phone out of the bag between the two front seats. “Maybe not, but it’s a good idea, Josie. We’ll give it a try.”

  He punched in the number for Ward Mountain.

  The call was answered with, “Can I help you?”

  “Crystal?”

  A slight pause. “Yes?”

  “It’s Daniel Ash. Wondering if I can speak to Rachel.”

  “Captain Ash? Definitely! I’ve been trying to get ahold of you guys for her all day. Hang on. I’ll go find her.”

  Ash looked back at Chloe. “They’re getting her.”

  “My money’s on she doesn’t know anything,” Chloe said.

  Over two minutes passed before Rachel picked up the other end.

  “Ash. Thank God,” she said.

  “Afternoon, Rachel.”

  “Please tell me you’re heading back to Nevada,” she said.

  “I know that’s what Matt thinks we’re doing, but we’re not. We’re trying to catch up to him, but hoping you might be able to tell us exactly where he is.”

  “What?” she said, confused. “You’re with him, aren’t you?”

  “No,” he said, surprised by the question. “Matt left Chloe and me with the kids and told us to head to Nevada.”

  “And he went to New Mexico,” she said, sounding as if it were inevitable.

  “Yeah. Didn’t you know that?”

  “He said he was going to go, but I was hoping he would come to his senses.”

  “His senses? You don’t think he should have gone?”

  “Of course not. He’s in no condition to be out in the field, especially if he’s going inside that damn place.”

  “So I take it you don’t know where he is.”

  “Somewhere near Las Cruces, I would guess.”

  “Yeah, well, we knew that much. We’re hoping to avoid showing up at the wrong time and making things worse.”

  “I don’t understand why you guys aren’t with him right now,” she said. “I mean, I get it with the kids, but someone else could have brought them here. You and Chloe should be with Matt.”

  “That’s what we thought, too, but Matt was concerned about our injuries. Didn’t think we’d be up for it.”

  Dead air, then, “Oh, God.”

  “What?” Ash asked.

  “Look, I’m…sure he was concerned about your injuries, but I have a feeling that’s not the main reason he didn’t bring you along.”

  “Well, then why?”

  “Because either of you would have stood up to him, kept him from doing what I think he’s going to do.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “God, I hope I’m wrong.”

  “Rachel, what?”

  “I think he’s going into that facility alone.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I’m sure he thinks he’s the only one who can do this.”

  “Why would he think that?”

  She hesitated. “Because he’s been there before. And because he thinks it’s his responsibility.”

  “Why would Matt have been in a Project Eden base?” he asked.

  “It was years ago,” Rachel said.

  “I didn’t ask when. I asked why.”

  A long pause. “Because he was part of the crew who helped build it.”

  Ash put his hand over the phone and looked at Sorrento. “Pull over. Now!”

  As soon as the Humvee was at the side of the road, Ash hit the speaker button. Chloe needed to hear this, and, as much as he wished he could keep it from everyone else, there was no other way.

  “Rachel, tell me how Matt was involved in the construction of Project Eden’s Las Cruces facility.”

  Eyes throughout the truck widened in surprise.

  “Please don’t ask me that,” Rachel said.

  “Too late.”

  A sigh, then in a low, defeated voice, “It wasn’t just Las Cruces. He helped build a lot of different Project Eden bases. That’s why our facilities are so good. He saw what they had done, and tried to create something even better.”

  “Was he on an outside construction crew, or was he a member of the Project?”

  “Ash, please understand, he didn’t realize what he was getting into. It was a job offer with great pay. When you joined the Project back then, they didn’t always tell you everything up front.”

  “He was in the Project.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he still?” Ash asked.

  “How can you ask that? After all he’s done? After all that’s happened to us?”

  She was right. Matt’s actions in the last several years would not have made sense if he were still in the Project. But it was a necessary question, so he wasn’t about to apologize. “When did he get out?”

  A few seconds passed before Rachel said, “There was a group of them who figured out what was really going on, and realized they had to do something about it. Most remained in the Project to do what they could from the inside.”

  “Your sources,” Chloe said.

  “Yes. Many of them.”

  “And Matt?” Ash asked.

  “He and a couple others volunteered to leave the Project so they would be freer to fight it. No one just leaves the Project, though. To get out, they would have to die. Matt’s death was the easiest, from what I was told. With the help of others who were remaining behind, he set it up to look like he was killed in a construction accident at one of the facilities. The other two were going to fake a plane crash, only something went wrong and they both lost their lives.

  “Matt lay low for a while to make sure no one suspected anything. While he was doing this, he obtained a new identity, the one you know him by, and had some plastic surgery done so he could walk down the street without being nabbed. Once he was sure they weren’t looking for him, he started up the Resistance.”

  Ash wasn’t sure what to say. It made sense, of course. How else would Matt have known so early about the Project’s existence and the need to stop them? What bothered Ash wasn’t that Matt had been a member of Project Eden, but the fact he’d hidden it from everyone.

  “What about you?” Chloe asked. “Were you part of the Project, too?”

  “No. Never. I didn’t even know what it was until…well, until Matt came back from the dead. That’s when I gave up my old life and promised I’d help him. And that’s all I’ve done since then.”

  No one in the car said a word as they absorbed what Rachel had told them.

  Ash finally broke the silence. “How’s Matt planning on getting into the facility?”

  “I don’t know specifically. C8 will get him in.”

  “C8?”

  “That’s his inside contact.”

  “Does C8 have a real name?”

  “I’m sure he does, but I don’t know what it is,” Rachel said testily.

  “I should have phrased that better,” Ash said. “I apologize.”

  Rachel made no reply.

  “All right,” Ash said. “So he’s going in alone with this C8 guy, and will try to take out the principal director. Have I got that right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But, Ash, you’ve got to stop him.”

  “I’m not sure I want to stop him. If he really can accomplish what he told us he’s planning on doing, I don’t think that’s an opportunity we can pass up.”

  “He can’t do this alone. You’ve got to keep him from going. We can find another way.”

  “We could find him and convince him, forcibly if necessary, to take Chloe and me with him.”

  “I guess you could,” Rachel admitted. “Not a great answer, though.”

  “We still have our original problem,” Chloe said. “How are we going to find him?”

  Ash thought for a moment, then said, “He’ll have to leave the others somewhere.” He tu
rned to Sorrento. “Hand me that New Mexico map.” The driver gave it to him and Ash opened it up. “Where exactly is this base?”

  “A few miles north of Las Cruces,” Rachel said.

  “Off the interstate?”

  “Not far from it.”

  “Seems likely that Matt’s won’t want to chance putting the others right next to the base. So he’ll probably keep them in a town where they can blend in and hide if necessary. Las Cruces itself is an option.” He studied the map. “If he’s coming in from the north, maybe he’ll park everyone in Truth or Consequences, and if from the east, um, Alamogordo. So we have three choices.”

  “What if they’re not in any of them?”

  “One step at a time,” Ash said. “Rachel, we need to get moving here. We’ll contact you again as soon as we find them.”

  “Please do.”

  After the phone was stowed away, Chloe said, “So where do we start?”

  “Truth or Consequences,” Ash said, pointing at the small town on the map. “We’re already heading that way. If they’re not there, we’ll backtrack north a bit and cut over to Alamogordo.” He showed both routes to Sorrento.

  “Got it,” Sorrento said.

  Chloe looked like she wanted to say something but was hesitating.

  “What is it?” Ash asked.

  She nodded discreetly toward the children.

  “Right,” Ash said.

  “Right, what?” Brandon asked. Apparently the nod had not gone unnoticed.

  “I think we can find something here in Albuquerque to keep you all occupied.”

  “Dad, no,” Brandon said.

  “Uh-uh,” Josie agreed. “We’re staying with you.”

  “Not this time,” Ash said.

  “We’re not kids anymore,” Brandon said.

  “Maybe not, but you’re still my kids. And this time, you’re staying here.”

  WARD MOUNTAIN NORTH, NEVADA

  1:03 PM PST

  RACHEL HAD FELT the others staring at her as she talked to Ash. Maybe she should have cleared the room again, but by the time the idea came to her, it was too late. It was probably better this way anyhow. It was time people knew the truth. Besides, it shouldn’t change anything.

  At least, she hoped not.

  After the call disconnected, she looked around at the disbelieving faces.

  “Yes,” she said. “Matt was in the Project. I’m sorry you weren’t told before, but there it is. You can ask all the questions you want later. Right now, there’s still work to be done.”

  Twenty-Eight

  CALIFORNIA

  US 101 SOUTHBOUND

  2:27 PM PST

  BEN’S JEEP WHIPPED around another abandoned car without slowing.

  She’s going to get herself killed, Martina thought for the millionth time.

  In the three hours she had been following her boyfriend’s car, the brown-haired woman had kept the Jeep’s accelerator pressed to the floor. Only once had Martina been able to get close to the vehicle. That had been near the beginning of the chase. When the woman noticed her, she jerked the vehicle into Martina’s path, missing the front tire of the motorcycle by only a few feet. After that, Martina decided the better tactic was to stay several car lengths back and wait for the woman to eventually stop.

  South they went, through Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Maria, and Santa Barbara. As they sped down the stretch of the 101 squeezed between the mountains and the ocean, north of Ventura, Martina began to wonder if she would end up chasing the woman all the way to Los Angeles.

  The answer turned out be no. A few miles farther on, as they came around a bend, she heard a loud pop and saw the Jeep jerk left and right before slowing. The culprit was a piece of metal in the road that had ripped open one of the vehicle’s front tires. Martina would have hit it, too, if she hadn’t already clamped down on the brakes.

  Before the Jeep came to a complete stop, the woman jumped out and ran down the middle of the road. Martina weaved her bike around the Jeep and caught up to the woman in seconds.

  “Stop!” Martina yelled.

  The woman looked at her, wild-eyed. “Leave me alone!”

  “Stop, dammit. I only want to talk to you!”

  The woman yelled something incomprehensible, then sprinted forward in a burst of energy.

  Groaning in frustration, Martina brought her bike to a halt, pushed down the kickstand, and hopped off. The woman may have had a few seconds’ lead, but Martina was an active college athlete. Twenty steps down the road, she clamped a hand on the woman’s shoulder and forced her to stop.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Martina asked. “Why wouldn’t you stop?”

  The woman struggled to get away, but Martina held on tight.

  “Let go of me! Let go!”

  “Relax, I’m not going to hurt you!”

  “Let go! I’m not going back. I swear to God I’m not!”

  “Going back? Listen, lady, I’m not taking you anywhere. I just want to know how you got Ben’s Jeep and where he is.”

  The woman stopped twisting around and looked at Martina, surprised. “Ben?”

  “Yes! Ben. That’s his Jeep. How did you get it? Did he give it to you?”

  “You know Ben?”

  “I’m his girlfriend.”

  “His girlfriend?”

  “How did you get his Jeep?” Martina asked again, her patience all but gone.

  “He, um, he didn’t need it anymore.”

  There was sudden defiance in the woman’s voice, and Martina knew in that instant Ben hadn’t given it to her.

  She gave the woman’s arm a jerk. “What do you mean, he didn’t need it anymore?”

  “He’s dead,” the woman said, sticking out her chin. “He didn’t need it anymore because he’s dead.”

  Martina’s grip on the woman’s shoulder slipped as every cell in her body went numb. “You’re lying,” she managed, her voice cracking.

  “I’m not,” the woman said quickly. “He’s dead. I’m sorry, but he didn’t need the Jeep anymore.” She nodded back toward the vehicle. “You want it? Take it. I don’t care.”

  Martina continued to stare at the woman. “He can’t be dead. He can’t be. How…how did—”

  “The flu. Everybody’s dying from the flu. Don’t you know?”

  “But that’s not possible. If it didn’t take me, it shouldn’t have taken him.”

  The woman crossed her arms. “I don’t know what to tell you. He’s dead. Can I go now?”

  Martina’s mind reeled as she tried to think of an alternative answer, something that would make what the woman said not true.

  “His body,” she said, grabbing on to a sliver of light. “Did you actually see it? Do you even know Ben?”

  “Of course I know him. I…I went to school with him in Santa Cruz. So, yeah, I saw his body.”

  Martina’s peripheral vision began to dim. She swayed and half fell, half sat on the freeway.

  “You’re wrong,” she whispered. “You’ve got to be wrong.”

  She repeated it over and over.

  When she finally looked up, wanting to ask the woman where his body was, the woman was gone.

  Martina jumped up and ran back to her bike. “Hey! Hey, where did you go?

  She had to find the woman. She needed to know where Ben’s body was. She had to see it for herself.

  She started the engine and drove slowly away, her eyes searching both sides of the road.

  “Hey! Come back! Where is he? You’ve got to tell me where he is!”

  Her mind was so focused on the woman and Ben that she didn’t realize her friends had yet to show up.

  ISABELLA ISLAND, COSTA RICA

  4:40 PM CST

  “EVERYONE QUIET, PLEASE,” Robert said, his hands raised high in front of him. “We can’t all talk at the same time.”

  “Do we even know if this shot they gave us works?” someone shouted.

  “Who are these people? I mean,
it sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me,” another said.

  “What if they’re right? What if there is no UN?”

  “Please,” Robert said again, raising his voice. “Quiet down!”

  All one hundred and twenty-nine Isabella Island survivors were gathered in the restaurant dining room at the very top of the hotel, the same room where Dominic had told them all about the outbreak, what seemed like years ago to Robert.

  When the roar subsided to a rumble, Robert said, “I realize this isn’t what you expected to hear, but I felt it important to tell you exactly what we were told. Before you go forming too many judgments, though, let’s consider some facts. We all saw the shipping containers on TV. We saw the boxes releasing Sage Flu. We saw people dying, and governments going into emergency mode before the news finally went off the air. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say things only got worse after that.

  “The thing is, we know this wasn’t a natural occurrence. Someone did this. Someone with a huge, well-organized operation. So you’ve got to think whoever these people are, they’ve planned on still being around. To me, it makes sense that they would want to run whatever was left.”

  “Sounds like you’ve already made up your mind to believe this guy,” a guest named Phil Gatner said. “What if they’re the ones who put the virus out there? What if they’re the ones who want to kill us?”

  “I guess it’s possible,” Robert admitted. “But it’s been hours since we received our shots, and if they wanted us dead, we would be already.”

  Several people shouted questions and comments.

  Robert raised his hands again. “Please! One at a time.”

  PAX HOVERED OUTSIDE the restaurant door for the first several minutes of the meeting. He had offered to speak to everyone himself, but both he and Robert agreed it would be better coming from someone the people of Isabella Island knew.

  Pax did, however, decide to stay on the island while the medical team moved on to help others. Since this was the largest single group the Resistance had found so far, making sure they did everything they could to stay safe was a priority. He hoped the fact that he was willing to remain here by himself would convince them to take his warning seriously.

  When it was clear the meeting was going to last awhile, he wandered out to the deck.