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

by Brett Battles

  The door to the home office was closed, but not locked. The room was even warmer than the rest of the place. He guessed it had to be at least eighty-five degrees, if not hotter. While it had been only annoying at first, the temperature was now a problem. The last thing he needed was for any sweat to drip from his face to the wood floor, leaving a potential DNA sample that could be traced.

  He looked around for another thermostat, but there was none in the room. Since the building was only nine floors high, the windows could actually be opened. He stepped over to the nearest one, flipped the latch, and pushed it out.

  As he was bringing his hand back inside, something wet landed just above his lip. He wiped it off with his fingers, and glanced out the window, thinking it might be starting to rain. But he could see no clouds.

  What he could see were several sets of bright lights illuminating a small lot two blocks away. He couldn’t see all the way down to the ground from where he was, but he knew the lights had to mark the shipping container that was the reason he’d been able to get into the building.

  Another drop of water blew in from outside, striking him on the bridge of his nose. Perhaps the clouds were above the building, just out of sight. If so, he hoped any storm they might bring would hold off until he was done.

  Turning back to the room, he set to work.

  Everything went as smoothly as he expected. An hour and a half later, he was back in the hotel room, the desired files in hand. At midnight, he would hand his client the prize.

  But that wouldn’t be the only thing he’d pass on.

  RIDGECREST, CALIFORNIA

  12:53 AM PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

  MARTINA GABLE HADN’T intended to go to the party, but her friends Noreen and Jilly wouldn’t take no for an answer, and had made her come along.

  As she knew would happen, she ended up hanging in the back of the room, nursing a Coke and thinking about Ben. She liked how they just kind of got each other right from the beginning. The problem was, he went to school up in the Bay Area, and she was stuck down in L.A., limiting the time they were able to spend together.

  Eventually Noreen and Jilly found her again, then a few of their old friends from their high school softball team joined them. At first it was the standard tell-us-what-you’ve-been-doing type of conversation, but it didn’t take long before talk turned to the events that had dominated the news that day—the mysterious shipping containers.

  “Just glad there’s none of those things here,” Jilly said.

  “I heard they found one over by Walmart,” a girl named Wendy told them.

  “I didn’t hear that,” Jilly said.

  “Neither did I,” Noreen agreed. “Who told you?”

  “A friend,” Wendy said, her tone a bit meeker than before.

  “Was it on the radio?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  The mood darkened as they spent several minutes guessing at what might be inside. Finally, they decided to hop into Noreen’s Honda Civic and make sure there was nothing weird going on at Walmart.

  Martina, being Noreen’s best friend from high school, was assigned the front passenger seat, while the three other girls crammed into the back, but Walmart was a bust.

  No police. No bright lights. No shipping container.

  They ended up going to Carl’s Jr., taking the same booth they’d often used back in their high school days, and sharing several bags of fries while they continued to speculate on the purpose of the boxes.

  Finally, with a promise of getting together at least one more time before the holidays were over, Noreen took them back to their cars. Martina’s was last.

  “Really is good to see you,” Noreen told her.

  “Yeah. Same here.”

  Noreen tried to smile, couldn’t pull it off.

  “You all right?” Martina asked.

  “I’m just a little, uh, freaked out,” Noreen said.

  “About what? School?”

  “School’s okay for the most part. It’s just…” She looked up, a tear running down the side of her nose. “It’s just this stuff today on the news. What the hell could be going on?”

  “I don’t know,” Martina said. Though she’d been acting otherwise, it was kind of freaking her out, too. “It’s probably nothing.”

  Noreen looked at her. “You think?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Martina put on her most comforting smile. “Nothing we need to worry about.”

  A few minutes later, they hugged goodbye, and both girls headed home.

  In the strictest sense, Martina was right. She and Noreen didn’t need to worry about the boxes. Their immunity ensured that.

  But there would have been little comfort in that knowledge.

  LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

  8:55 AM GREENWICH MEAN TIME

  WITH ONLY TWO days left until Christmas, retailers had been anticipating that this would be one of the busiest shopping days of the season. The majority of customers on this day was also expected to be men. Typically, they were the ones who waited until the last minute, then rushed in and scooped up whatever they could find, no matter the cost. Savvy store managers made sure there were several items front and center specifically meant to catch the male eye.

  Daniel Wheaton was such a manager, and he was in charge of one of the Marker’s department stores. Marker’s wasn’t a large chain, only five locations throughout the UK, and it certainly wasn’t high end, but it did fill a nice niche in the middle, and generated more than enough business to keep its doors open year after year.

  During the Christmas season, Daniel all but lived at the store—going over receipts, making sure customers were being helped, checking inventory, and, in the words of most of the employees, doing anything he could to get in their way.

  The one thing Marker’s did not have was an electronics department. This made “catching the male eyes” a bit more difficult, but not impossible. It also meant that when the first news about the shipping containers appeared not long before closing the previous evening, no one in the store had any clue what was going on. Once the day’s receipts had been tallied and the special last-minute displays were in place, it was nearly midnight, so Daniel took the tube home and went straight to bed.

  That morning, his alarm woke him at five a.m. He was showered and on his way to the store before six.

  The first sign that something was up came when he played the phone message for the automated office line and learned that two employees were not coming in. This was nothing more than an annoyance. He left messages on both of the affected managers’ phones, asking them to call in whoever was next on their list. Once that was done, he promptly forgot about it.

  In the next hour, though, six more employees left similar messages, and he began to wonder if there was some sort of mass sickout happening, maybe a coordinated effort to get more pay or something along those lines. But he thought someone would have approached him first before taking this kind of drastic action. He was so concerned about this possibility, it didn’t even register with him that none of the employees had actually said anything about being sick, just that they wouldn’t be coming in today.

  Disturbed, he walked out of his office to see if any of the support staff had heard anything, and found only empty desks. Out helping the other employees get ready, he thought, trying not to jump to conclusions. After all, it was almost nine o’clock, nearly time to open.

  He sauntered out onto the main floor, and was greeted by dead silence.

  “Hello?” he called out.

  The office was right outside women’s wear. There should have been half a dozen employees making sure everything was in order, but the department was empty.

  “Hello? Where is everyone?”

  He walked briskly out into the main aisle, and did a quick circuit of the other departments. He was the only one there.

  His jaw tensed. Definitely some kind of protest, he thought.
<
br />   This was going to be a disaster. Being closed two days before Christmas would be something that would affect them for months. He might even get fired.

  He stormed back to the office, and put in a call to Edgar Keller, Vice President of Operations at Marker’s headquarters. Instead of someone answering, the night system picked up. He punched buttons until he reached Keller’s line. After the third ring, he was sent to voice mail.

  Confused, he said, “Mr. Keller, this is Daniel Wheaton at London store number two. I seem to have a situation here. I have a feeling there must be an employee protest in the works. It’s five minutes until we’re supposed to open and no one has shown up. I was wondering if someone might have contacted you. Please call me back.”

  He hung up, and waited for a couple of minutes. When his phone didn’t ring, he pulled out Keller’s business card from his desk. On it was a mobile phone number, to be used only in the direst of emergencies. Losing a whole day’s receipts, especially this close to Christmas, seemed pretty dire to Daniel.

  He dialed the number. It, too, rang three times. He was afraid he’d be shuffled off to voice mail again, but then the line clicked.

  “Edgar Keller.”

  “Mr. Keller, it’s Daniel Wheaton.”

  “Wheaton?”

  “London store number two, sir.”

  “Oh, right. Why are you calling me?”

  Keller had always been a very busy man, but his tone was particularly brusque this morning.

  “Sir, I seem to have a problem.”

  “What problem?”

  “We’re supposed to open…” He looked at this watch. It had just clicked over to nine o’clock. “Well, now. But none of my employees have shown up.”

  “And you find that surprising?”

  Keller obviously did not, which made Daniel think there was some sort of labor action underway. This was a relief. “What should I do?”

  “I don’t care what you do. Me, I’m staying with my family until we know what’s going on. You might want to do that, too.”

  Staying with his family?

  “I’m not sure I follow, sir.”

  When Keller said nothing more, Daniel realized his boss had hung up. He stared at the receiver, feeling very much like he was missing something. Finally, he put it down, and walked back out into the store to see if anyone had shown up. It was as empty as it had been before.

  Even more surprising, there were no customers waiting outside the door. They always had customers who liked to get their holiday shopping done first thing in the morning. There should have been at least a dozen or more people peering through the window, wondering why the store was still closed.

  He walked over to the main door, turned the lock, and stepped outside. Not only was there no one waiting, there were no pedestrians on the sidewalk at all. A few cars sped by, but at this time of the morning, the street should have been jammed.

  Back inside, he made his way to Mrs. Norris’s desk. The bookkeeper’s small office was just a few doors down from his. There, on the credenza behind her chair, was the radio she liked to listen to while she worked. He turned it on.

  As always, it was tuned to BBC Radio 1, but instead of Chris Moyles, the usual morning host, one of the news anchors was talking.

  “…what steps to take. There has been no claim of responsibility, and most authorities around the world are unwilling to speculate.”

  Claim of responsibility? Had there been another terrorist attack? Maybe even here in the city?

  “As a reminder,” the anchor went on, “the Home Office has asked that residents in London and all other major cities remain at home today, and off the streets. This is a voluntary order at this point, but we are told that could change at any moment. If you’re in the vicinity of what you believe to be one of the suspicious containers, you are advised to find shelter at least a mile from it, then report the container’s location to local authorities. We will, of course, give you the latest information as it comes in.

  “Right now we have a report from Russell MacLean in Edinburgh, where army special forces are attempting to disable one of the containers.”

  The sterile-sounding environment of the broadcast studio was replaced by the sound of wind and heavy equipment. “I’m here just outside the center of Edinburgh, where one of the devices seen around the world was discovered yesterday near a building that was undergoing restoration. Throughout the night, army officials…”

  Daniel didn’t even bother turning the radio off as he ran out of Mrs. Norris’s office. He could hear the reporter in Scotland droning on, but the words no longer sunk in. He had to get home, away from the store. His branch of Marker’s was located not far from Soho, an area he was sure would be a target for terrorists. His apartment, by contrast, was in a working-class residential neighborhood on the edge of the city, where it was surely safer.

  He stopped just long enough to grab his jacket from his office, and raced out of the store, almost forgetting to lock the door as he left. His anxiousness stayed with him all the way to the Underground station, and throughout his mostly solo ride home.

  As he climbed back to street level just a few blocks from his building, he finally allowed himself to relax. Soon he would be in the comfort and safety of his apartment, where he could sit in front of his television and get a proper sense of what was going on.

  As he walked down the block, he felt moisture land on his face and hands. Clouds had been hanging over the city for days, but so far there had been no rain. It looked like today was going to be different.

  Once he was in his apartment watching the news, he never thought to look out his window. If he had, he might have seen that the clouds were far too thin to hold much water at all.

  Of course, by then, he had forgotten all about the drops that had fallen on him.

  Eighteen

  MUMBAI, INDIA

  1:28 PM INDIAN STANDARD TIME

  IT HAD TAKEN Sanjay much longer than he anticipated to get to the building where his cousin had lain dying a few days before. The area was nearly surrounded by men spraying the streets with Pishon Chem’s deadly mixture.

  He wasn’t worried about the vaccine not working. If that were the case, there would be nothing he could do about it, and he and Kusum would die like everyone else. What did concern him was unintentionally carrying the spray back to the others, and making them sick before he could inoculate them.

  So he’d had to work his way around until he found a path that had yet to be sprayed, and then headed straight for the building. Only a few of the food vendors and shops that usually crowded Gamdevi Road were open, and most had no customers.

  Sanjay’s stomach growled, urging him to stop for a bite of whatever he could find. But he knew he couldn’t risk it. What if the person working the stand had been exposed to the spray? Would he transfer it to the food, or even to his customers directly? Sanjay would just have to stay hungry.

  He cut through the lighter-than-usual traffic, then turned off the road and drove right up to the building, parking his bike near the main door. His previous visit had been late at night, and he’d been forced to climb up to the rear balcony to the second-floor restaurant just to get in. But now, being the middle of the day, the front door was open.

  In the lobby, a fat man in a tight suit sat behind a desk.

  “May I help you?” he said.

  Sanjay had not expected to have to deal with anyone. He hesitated for a moment before saying, “I’m with Pishon Chem. I’ve been sent to pick up something downstairs.”

  “They’re all gone. No one is here.”

  “Yes, I realize that,” Sanjay said, knowing that probably meant Ayush was dead. “Only picking up.” He paused, then added, “Mr. Dettling sent me.” Dettling was one of the European managers at Pishon Chem, and had been one of Sanjay’s bosses.

  “Mr. Dettling?” the man said.

  “Yes. I’m sure you know him.”

  “Of course. Go ahead, then, but when you go bac
k, tell Mr. Dettling he needs to send people to clean up. The rooms are unacceptable as they are now.”

  “I will be sure to let him know.”

  Sanjay skirted around the desk, and over to the door that led into the hallway running behind the elevators. A moment later he opened the door to the basement and raced down the stairs. If the people who had been there were truly gone, then it was unlikely he’d find more vaccine, but he had to check.

  The door to the basement rooms Pishon Chem had been using was locked. He knocked, hoping there was someone present he could try to bluff his way past, but the door stayed closed.

  He glanced down the hallway, his gaze zeroing in on the doorless room where he hid on his previous visit. Though it had been dark inside, he’d had the sense it was some kind of maintenance closet.

  He ran to it, and felt along the inner wall for a light switch. When his fingers brushed against it, he flipped it on, and a weak bulb hanging from the ceiling lit up. Indeed, it was a maintenance closet. A couple of buckets, mops, brooms, cleaning supplies. There was also a chest of drawers that contained tools—wrenches, screwdrivers, and, best of all, a hammer.

  He grabbed the last, returned to the door, and pounded at the wood until the locks finally gave way. The door swung open with a shove.

  He moved quickly down the hallway to the room at the end where his cousin had been kept.

  When he entered, he immediately could see why the man upstairs had wanted Pishon to come back. Everything was in disarray. Tables overturned, wiring and tubing on the floor, boxes of bandages and gauze and latex gloves thrown haphazardly around. The plastic wall that had divided the room in two was open in the middle, and the beds beyond, where Ayush and the others on his team had lain dying, were empty.

  Sanjay stared for a moment at his cousin’s bed, then shook himself out of it. He couldn’t think about Ayush now. The living needed him. He could deal with the dead later.