The Project Eden Thrillers Box Set 1: Books 1 - 3 (Sick, Exit 9, & Pale Horse)

by Brett Battles

  “I just read your report.” It was Dr. Karp. The major had been expecting the call, waiting for it, actually. “Has there been any change in attitude?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What about physically? Still no reaction?”

  “None whatsoever, sir.”

  The doctor was silent for a moment. “I had hoped to give it a few more days, but I think it’s safe to assume the results won’t change. Where are we with the current dosing cycle?”

  “It’s scheduled to complete at two a.m.”

  “All right, we might as well let it run. Once it’s complete, pull the plug, Major.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want the autopsy performed immediately. Once you have obtained all the required samples, and the body has been eliminated, you and your team are to report to Bluebird.”

  “Understood.”

  “Good,” the doctor said, then hung up.

  As Major Littlefield replaced the receiver in the cradle, his gaze returned to the napping form of Captain Ash.

  “Enjoy it,” the major said to the TV. “It’ll be your last one.”

  Five

  TONIGHT.

  It could mean so many different things.

  Was it a warning? Was tonight the night they changed the sleeping gas to something stronger? Or was the sender going to try to contact him? Or was it just a joke and didn’t really mean anything at all?

  Ash wasn’t sure if he should be looking forward to finding out or dreading it. But there was one thing he couldn’t do—stop it from coming.

  He kept to his schedule. Eating lunch when he usually ate, exercising again in the afternoon, then pacing until his stomach began to growl, signaling it was time for dinner. Twice the voice had asked how he was feeling, and twice he had ignored it.

  When the lights flicked off then back on, he knew the wait was almost over. In ten minutes they would go off and stay that way until morning. Again, he did what he always did, brushing his teeth using only his finger and water from the sink, then relieving himself in the toilet. The only change was the ripped-up note he slipped into the bowl just before he flushed.

  As he lay on the cot, he felt tense, suddenly sure the message had been a warning. He tried to stay awake, fearful that if he closed his eyes, he might never open them again. It wasn’t that he was scared of death, or that the thought of being with his family again didn’t appeal to him. But it was because of his family that he needed to live. He had to find who had done this to them. He had to make sure whoever it was had been properly dealt with, and if they hadn’t, he had to do it himself. After that, he didn’t care.

  But then the gas must have come, because his eyelids grew heavy, and then the next thing he knew someone was shaking his shoulder.

  “Wake up, Captain.”

  The male voice seemed distant, as if it were coming from another room.

  “Give him a second,” a second voice said, also male and muffled. “The shot takes a moment to kick in.”

  Shot?

  Ash peeled open his eyes, but could see nothing in the darkness. His hand slipped as he tried to push himself up and he fell back onto the bed.

  “Easy there, Captain,” the first voice said.

  Ash turned toward it. “What’s going on?”

  “Later. Right now we have to get you out of here.”

  “Out of here? I’m…what?” He knew he wasn’t making sense, but they weren’t making sense to him, either.

  “We can talk later. Right now you need to do exactly what we say and keep quiet.”

  “I don’t under…?”

  What was this guy talking about? All Ash wanted to do was put his head back on his pillow and shut his eyes. But gloved hands were under his arms now, lifting him to his feet. As he staggered, someone grabbed him and kept him from falling.

  “We’d love to give you a few seconds to wake up, but we don’t have time,” the second voice said.

  Ash looked to his right and could barely make out a dark shadow of an oddly shaped person. Suddenly, he felt an arm wrap around his back.

  “Just hold on,” the man said, his voice still sounding farther away than it should have been.

  They exited the cell into a dark hallway. That seemed odd to Ash. Surely, there should have been some lights on.

  “Clear,” the first voice called out from the distance.

  “We’re going to move fast, Captain,” the man at his side said. “So keep a hold of me.”

  As Ash grabbed the man’s back, the material of the guy’s shirt confused him. It was thick and kind of rubbery. But Ash barely had time to register this before the man began half-pulling, half-dragging him down the corridor. It was all Ash could do to keep from slipping to the floor.

  After what he guessed was probably thirty seconds, they mercifully stopped. He heard a knob twist, then a door open, but he still couldn’t see anything.

  “Straight ahead a couple feet, then we go to the left,” his human crutch said.

  As they eased forward, Ash asked, “Why are all the lights off?”

  “Quiet.”

  Once they’d made the turn, they picked up speed again, moving quickly down the new corridor and through another door.

  “Can you stand on your own?” the man whispered to Ash.

  “What? Uh, yeah. I think so.”

  “Okay. Stay here.” The man let go of Ash and stepped away.

  “Wait. Where are you going?” the captain asked.

  “Don’t move, and you’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t understand. Why are you—”

  A torrent of thick liquid engulfed him from every side, the flow so strong he could hardly breathe. There was also an overwhelming disinfectant smell, which didn’t help. He coughed several times and tried to step away.

  “Don’t,” the first voice ordered. “You’re covered with the bug. It’s either this way or we will be forced to terminate you.”

  Terminate? Ash stayed where he was.

  Soon the spray stopped.

  “Remove your clothes and throw them behind you.”

  Ash hesitated for only a second, then stripped.

  Once more the flow commenced, followed by a strong stream of odorless water.

  As soon as it shut off, the first voice said, “There’s a wall three feet to your left. Follow that toward my voice about ten feet. There you’ll find a towel and some clean clothes. Please hurry.”

  Ash did as instructed. As he was toweling off, he heard the sprays come on again. Judging by the sound, though, it wasn’t flowing over flesh.

  Decontamination suits, he realized. Like the ones the people who’d come into his house—so long ago, it seemed—wore. That’s why the guy’s shirt had felt so strange.

  The clothes waiting for him were not the flimsy garments he’d been given while in his cell. There was a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, a pullover sweater, socks, and a pair of sturdy but flexible ankle-high boots.

  “Ready?” the first voice asked a minute later, no longer muffled by what must have been the hood and mask of the suit.

  “Yes,” Ash said. He finished tying his last shoelace and stood up. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?”

  “Not until we get out of here,” the other voice said.

  A door opened, but the lack of light remained unchanged.

  The two men led Ash away from the room, one always keeping a hand on the captain’s arm.

  They’d been fast-walking for nearly three minutes when the guy in the lead let out a very low “shhhh.”

  They stopped in the middle of the hall.

  “Over here,” the lead guy whispered.

  Ash was ushered through a doorway, into a space that was barely big enough for the three of them. The door then clicked shut.

  A moment later, the sound of a single pair of running footsteps rushed by outside without stopping.

  “They’re going to find out he’s gone,” one of the men whispered.

  �
��It’ll be okay. I’ll take care of it,” the other one replied. “You get him out of here. You remember the way, right?”

  “Are you kidding? This place is a maze.”

  There was silence for a moment, then, “Okay. I’ll show you, but then it’ll be up to you.”

  They headed back into the hallway, picking up their pace to a near run. They passed through two more corridors and made a hard turn to the left.

  After another few moments, the one in the lead said, “It’s just up—”

  Without warning, the emergency lights kicked on.

  The guy who’d been holding Ash’s arm let go, then ripped something off his head. Night vision goggles. Both of the men had been wearing them. With the lights on, they had become useless.

  “Come on,” the lead guy said. “We’re almost there.”

  He had a short military haircut and was wearing an officer’s uniform with no insignia. The man next to Ash was dressed in clothes more like the blue jeans and sweater he was now wearing, and while this guy’s hair was also short, it had a distinct civilian look to it.

  They ran down the hallway, took a quick bend to the right, then the lead man skidded to a stop in front of a heavy-looking metal door. As Ash and the other man ran up, he pulled it open.

  Chilled air seeped into the hallway.

  “Quick, quick!” he said, then pointed at an angle out the door. “Head in that direction. It’ll get you to where we were earlier.”

  “Maybe you should come with us,” his partner said.

  The first guy shook his head. “I can do more here.”

  “They’re going to know someone on the inside helped.”

  The lead man’s face grew hard. “Go. Now. You don’t have time.”

  He shoved Ash and the other man outside then shut the door.

  Ash’s escort seemed disoriented for a moment, then he took a deep breath and said, “Keep low, and follow right behind me.”

  He took off across a wide space of leveled dirt, not waiting for Ash to respond. Though he was tired of not knowing what was going on, Ash was smart enough to realize now wasn’t the time to push, so he headed after his rescuer.

  The man led him into a narrow ravine that had been carved into the desert. It was deep enough so that they could stand up without being seen by anyone at ground level.

  They followed it for thirty minutes, finally stopping when they reached a rocky overhang. There, the man fell to his knees, reached underneath, and pulled out a cloth bag. He unzipped it and removed something.

  “Here,” he said, tossing it to Ash.

  It was a worn-looking leather jacket with a padded lining inside, and a stocking cap and gloves in the pocket. While it was definitely a cool desert night, it wasn’t that cold.

  “Put it on,” the man said. “You’ll need it later.”

  “For what?”

  “To stay warm. What do you think?”

  Next he pulled out a messenger bag and slung it over his shoulder. He then shoved the empty cloth bag back under the overhang. “All right. Let’s go.”

  Ash didn’t move.

  The man took a few steps down the riverbed before he realized this. “Look, we don’t have much time. If you miss the connection, you’re out of luck. So let’s move it.”

  “No,” Ash said.

  The man stared at him. “All right, fine. Then you can stay here and let them find you.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  The man looked away, obviously not happy. When he turned back, he took a couple steps toward Ash. “If we’d left you in your cell, you wouldn’t have woken up tomorrow morning. You were no longer any use to them alive.”

  “You saved me because they were going to kill me?”

  “We saved you because…” He paused, then took a deep breath. “Yeah. That’s as good a reason as any. You can either trust me or not, but I can guarantee you one thing. Those people back there…” He pointed in the direction they’d come. “They don’t care a thing about you. It’s what’s inside you that’s most important to them. And they can’t get to that while you’re still breathing. Get it?”

  He turned around and started walking, this time without looking back.

  Ash stood where he was a moment longer, then followed.

  Six

  MAJOR LITTLEFIELD WAS in the cafeteria when the power went out.

  “What the hell?”

  He’d made himself a late-night sandwich as he waited for Ash’s final cycle to complete. It was already obvious that, once more, the bug would fail to take hold. The captain was as immune to KV-27a as a person could be.

  From Littlefield’s understanding, the testing of the Ash children was proceeding slowly. But now Dr. Karp would have samples from an actual body he could take a closer look at and hopefully speed up the process.

  The plan for that evening was simple. Once the cycle finished at two a.m. and the captain’s vital signs remained unchanged, the air to his cell would be slowly cut off and within an hour, he would take his last breath. This method would eliminate any chance of contaminating the body with whatever poison they would have had to use otherwise.

  But now the lights had gone off, and the stupid backup power had yet to kick in.

  He pulled his radio off his belt. “Control, this is Littlefield.”

  “Control,” a voice replied. It sounded like Brewer.

  “What’s your power situation there?”

  There was a slight pause. “Sir, we’re in the dark. Literally.”

  “Backup?”

  “No, sir. Nothing.”

  Littlefield stood up. “All right, I’m coming to you.”

  “Sir, where are you?”

  “The cafeteria.”

  “I think you’re going to have a problem getting here.”

  Littlefield pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, using it as a flashlight as he weaved his way out of the room. “Why do you say that?”

  “When the power cuts off, the facility entrance automatically locks down until the electricity comes back.”

  “Well, what about one of the emergency doors?”

  “Those can only be opened from the inside.”

  “Then get off your ass and go open one!”

  There was no response for a moment. “The observation room door also locks down. Jones and I are, uh, stuck in here.”

  “Jesus.”

  Littlefield stepped out of the cafeteria and jogged quickly toward the entrance to the containment facility. There was absolutely no one else around. Not surprising since Littlefield had been left with only a bare-bones crew of five men including himself, more than enough to deal with the single person under their supervision. The rest of the team that had been at Barker Flats had either left with Dr. Karp and the children, or had relocated to Bluebird already. So with the exception of his team and Captain Ash, there was no one else anywhere on the decommissioned base.

  “Are you telling me there’s no manual override?” he asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, where are Causey and Ellison? If they’re not in there with you, they must be somewhere in the facility. They can let me in.”

  “Not sure, sir. I’ll try to locate them.”

  Littlefield reached the main door. Sure enough it was locked tight. He made his way around, trying each of the three emergency doors, but they were sealed shut, too.

  “Control, have you found Causey or Ellison yet?”

  “No, sir. Neither is answering his radio.”

  A sudden chill ran down the major’s back.

  “What was the status of Cell 57 when you were last able to check?”

  “The captain was sound asleep. Vital signs unchanged.”

  “Are you sure he was asleep?”

  “Absolutely.”

  That was good, but it still wasn’t enough to ease Littlefield’ mind. “There’s got to be a way for me to get in. Something—”

  “Sir?” a new voice came over the radio.


  “Who is this?” the major asked.

  “It’s Jones, sir. I believe if you go to emergency door B, you might be able to get in there.”

  “I’ve already tried each of the emergency doors. No go. All closed tight.”

  “Yes, sir, but…”

  “What is it, Jones?”

  “Sir, I believe…if I remember correctly, there is a manual override outside door B.”

  “I didn’t see anything.”

  “It’s…hidden, sir.”

  Littlefield began running back toward emergency door B. “How do you know it’s hidden?”

  There was a pause. “One of the other men, sir. He left with Dr. Karp last week. He found it and showed it to me. We’d used it when we needed a smoke.”

  That was a potentially serious breach of security. Jones should have known better. It would have to be dealt with later but at the moment, the major could take advantage of the rule-breaking.

  “Okay, I’m here,” he said half a minute later. “Where is it?”

  “If you face the door, you’ll see a little panel low and to the right, about three feet from the entrance.”

  “I see it.”

  “Open the panel, sir.”

  Littlefield did. There was a lever inside in the down position, and above it, a series of six tumblers with numbers on each barrel.

  “Okay,” he said. “I see the lock. What’s the combination?”

  “Are all ones still showing, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you just need to pull the handle, sir.”

  “The combination is all ones?”

  “I…think it’s just waiting to be reset when the next permanent operation moves in.”

  Good God. How easily they could have been compromised if someone had snuck onto the base.

  He pulled the lever and the door sprang open.

  Inside the facility, he couldn’t see his fingers even if he tried to poke himself in the eye, so once again he resorted to using his cell phone as a flashlight.

  “I’m in,” he said as he took off running down the hallway. “I’m going for the emergency power first, then I’ll check the cell.”

  When he got to the emergency panel, his worst fear was confirmed. This wasn’t just a simple fault. Someone had tampered with it. Thankfully, it wasn’t enough to put it out of action permanently.