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

by Brett Battles

Ash pushed the transmit button. “This is Daniel Ash.”

  “Mr. Ash, I regret to inform you you’re going to have to leave. We can’t have you here.”

  On shore, the man who’d gone into the building reemerged, holding what was undoubtedly a portable radio in his hand.

  “All we need to do is get to our plane so we can leave.”

  “Plane?”

  “The jet parked on your strip. That’s ours.”

  “Hold on.”

  They watched the man run down the dock to the others. There was another conference, then a different man broke from the crowd and headed to shore.

  “Listen,” Ash said into the radio. “We’ll go directly to the airstrip. We won’t come near anyone.”

  “Just stay where you are,” the man said.

  Several minutes passed before the person who had left returned with someone new. When they reached the group, the radio crackled to life again.

  “Ash? Is that you?”

  “Harlan?”

  “Yeah, it’s me.” Harlan Pinto was the pilot of their private jet. “Where’s the seaplane?”

  “No time right now. Tell the men there with you we just want to get to the jet and that’s it.”

  “They understand that, but I’m told they’re not comfortable with you coming ashore at all. Everyone’s freaked out about what’s going on in the rest of the world. The news have been showing the video Tamara Costello made telling everyone it’s a biological attack. People here have created a kind of reverse quarantine zone.”

  “Let me talk to the man in charge,” Ash said. “But you stay close and listen in.”

  “Okay. Just a second.”

  A pause, then, “This is Gerald McKay.”

  “Mr. McKay, you’re in charge of Grise Fiord?”

  “That’s right.” McKay had a rough, smoker’s voice.

  “I can make you a deal, and guarantee that no one in your town will ever get sick by what’s happening elsewhere.”

  “So can I. That’s why we can’t allow you to come ashore.”

  “My guarantee works no matter who comes ashore, now or in the future.”

  “And exactly how can you do that?”

  “By providing you all with a vaccine.”

  McKay fell silent. In the lights on the dock, Ash could see the men talking to each other. They seemed to be directing much of their attention at Harlan.

  When things settled down, McKay came back on. “How is it you have a vaccine for a disease some terrorists just released in the last twenty-four hours?”

  “It’s not just any disease, Mr. McKay. It’s Sage Flu.” He paused, letting the reality of that sink in. “We’ve had the vaccine ready for some time now, knowing the day would come when these terrorists tried it again. We’d hoped to stop them, but…”

  “Bullshit. You’re just saying anything to get us to allow you ashore. You know so much about this, maybe you’re already infected.”

  “What do you have to lose? Harlan will get it for you. You can choose to take it or not after that. But I’d take it if I were you.”

  “Maybe it’s water, or even poison. Hell, it could even be a vitamin shot. You think we’re going to believe you’d show up right now with a cure for something we’re not even sure exists yet?”

  Ash would not get through to them. He could see that.

  “Hang on,” he said to Chloe and Red.

  He restarted the engine.

  “What are you doing?” McKay asked.

  Ash tossed the radio on the floor, gunned the motor, and headed around the end of the dock in an arc he hoped would make them harder to hit.

  “You’d better be going back out to sea! You’re not wanted here!” McKay yelled at them.

  Once he cleared the dock, Ash aimed the boat at the spot on the shore that would put them just below the road leading to the airfield.

  “They’re heading off the dock,” Chloe said. “You want to share your plan?”

  “Get to the plane.”

  She smirked. “Brilliant. But I guess it’s better to die from a gunshot than freeze to death out here on the water.”

  “I’d rather not do either.”

  As they drew closer to the shore, Red said, “Ice ahead, all the way to the beach.”

  “How far does it come out?” Ash asked.

  “Looks about twenty-five feet.”

  “All right. Let’s hope this thing rides the ice better than Gagnon’s plane did!”

  “Seriously?” Chloe asked.

  “You have a better idea?”

  She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head.

  Ash opened up the motor as fast as it would go, building up speed while he still could.

  “Here it comes!” Red yelled.

  At the last second, Ash killed the motor and pushed it down, so that the propeller end lifted out of the water instead of jamming into the ice and stopping them cold.

  The boat skidded across the surface, slewing left and right, then turned until they were sideways to the beach, with only their momentum keeping them headed in the right direction.

  “Bump!” Red said.

  With a loud thump, the boat jumped up and slammed back down. Ash shot out a hand and grabbed Chloe, barely stopping her from flying over the side.

  As they passed from the ice onto the rocky beach, there was a rip followed by the loud hiss of air, and the inflatable sides of the boat began to collapse.

  Ash was the first out. He grabbed Gagnon’s legs and said, “Come on. We’ve got to keep moving.”

  With a grunt, Chloe crawled out after him. Red shook his head as if he were dazed, then took a hold of Gagnon’s shoulders. The two men lifted the pilot out of the boat, and followed Chloe up to the road.

  From that point, it was just over a quarter-mile to the small airfield. They headed toward it as fast as they could go, but made it only fifty yards before they heard running feet behind them.

  “Stop!” a man yelled. It was McKay’s voice, though unaided by the radio now.

  “Keep moving,” Ash whispered.

  “Dammit, stop!”

  They didn’t even pause.

  There was a double crack of gunfire and two bullets screamed by them, one on either side. They still didn’t slow.

  “Don’t make us shoot you!” McKay yelled.

  “We’re not making you do anything,” Ash called out.

  Another gunshot, this bullet sailing over their heads.

  Red looked over at Ash, worried.

  “Keep going,” Ash told him.

  There were three more shots before they reached the plane, but none hit them. As they neared the aircraft, the side door opened and Barry Kincaid, the copilot, looked out.

  “Ash!” he said, surprised. “You made it.” Then he noticed the others coming behind them with guns. “Oh, shit.”

  “Get the plane ready for takeoff,” Ash ordered.

  With a nod, Barry disappeared back into the plane.

  “You first,” Ash told Red as they reached the short stairway to the entrance. As soon as they got Gagnon inside, Ash passed the man’s legs off to Chloe, and headed back toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Get him comfortable and warmed up. I’ll just be a minute.”

  A few feet past the door was a storage compartment. He opened it, pulled out a two-by-ten-inch blue box, and climbed outside.

  As his feet hit the ground, the plane’s engines growled to life. Gathered in a line about fifty feet away from the plane were the men who’d been on the dock. There were nine of them, ten counting Harlan, whom they were holding back.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” McKay’s voice came out of a red-bearded man standing near the middle of the group.

  “Leaving,” Ash said.

  “You shouldn’t have come ashore. You may have exposed us all.”

  “Lucky for you, I didn’t.” Ash leaned down and set the box on the ground.
<
br />   “What’s that?”

  Ash kept his eyes on McKay and nodded toward Harlan. “Let my friend go, and I’ll tell you.”

  McKay looked over at the jet’s pilot. “Larry, let him go.”

  The man holding Harlan’s arm looked confused. “But don’t we need—”

  “Just let him go,” McKay said. “What are we going to do? Keep him prisoner?”

  The other man reluctantly let go of the pilot’s arm.

  Harlan wasted no time getting back to the plane.

  “Go inside and get ready,” Ash whispered as he neared. “We leave as soon as I get back on board.”

  “You got it.”

  As soon as Harlan was safely on the plane, Ash pointed at the box. “Inside is the vaccine I was talking about. There are instructions for dosage. No needles, though. You’ll have to provide those yourself.”

  “How can we believe it’s really a vaccine?”

  Ash shrugged. “I guess you can’t. Either take a chance or don’t. But as I said before, I’d take it if I were you.”

  He turned and climbed aboard the plane. After the door was shut, he checked to make sure the others were ready, took a seat next to a window, and turned on the intercom to the cockpit.

  “You guys set up there?” he asked.

  “We’re ready,” Harlan replied.

  “Then let’s go.”

  “Where to?”

  “Home.”

  Twenty

  LAS CRUCES, NEW MEXICO

  9:11 AM MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME

  PEREZ HAD ONLY slept four hours since waking at six a.m. the day before. After the video conference call with the executive committee, he had spent much of his time gathering and analyzing the latest observations on how Implementation Day was proceeding.

  It had always been believed that panic would set in once people realized that the shipping containers weren’t isolated events. The quarantine areas around the containers were also foreseen, but the Project had been overly generous when it predicted how quickly they would be implemented. The reality turned out to be much slower, allowing considerably more of the KV-27a aerosol to find suitable hosts.

  Monitoring software indicated a total of twenty-seven IDMs were non-functioning. Three of these had failed to start up in the first place. Eight had suffered some kind of internal malfunction during the delivery process. And sixteen had been destroyed when their self-destruct systems kicked in, either by the box being moved or someone trying to get inside.

  The produce sprayers that had been installed in hundreds of grocery stores across North America and at a few chains in Europe would, Perez surmised, prove to be less effective. While they were working fine, the panic was keeping most people at home, and many of the markets had closed.

  On the success side was the Pishon Chem malaria project. He’d been concerned that the fear created by the shipping containers might cause some of the nations involved to call off the spraying, but it had done just the opposite. Many governments, he realized, were hoping that the “miracle” formula would not only kill malaria-bearing mosquitoes, but also neutralize whatever the shipping containers were belching out.

  Perez couldn’t help but allow himself a smile. If the virus worked as it was supposed to, and with the coverage they’d been able to achieve so far, the Project’s planned mop-up of survivors might be scaled back.

  With everything going well, Perez turned to consolidating his power. There was no question that the only way the Project would truly succeed was to have a single leader—him. The committee would no longer be necessary. However, that didn’t mean a committee couldn’t be useful, perhaps one to help guide policy, though in reality, he would be the one steering everything.

  Easily doable. In fact, most of the current committee members would be fine additions to the new one. Dr. Lassiter would be a pushover, and Perez was confident he could make Tolliver and Halverson see things his way, too.

  Nakamura, on the other hand, was a problem.

  Perez had met people like her before. They liked to be part of the in-crowd, and would feverishly defend their exclusivity whether it was a logical move or not. They were the kind of people who always thought they knew better though they seldom did.

  The kind of people who would never be helpful to the cause.

  How Nakamura had reached the position she had, he didn’t know. In his opinion, someone had made a mistake, and as a revamped Project Eden set about creating the new world, there would be no room for mistakes.

  Perhaps if she had been located in Europe or Asia, he’d have given her a pass—for a little while, anyway—but the fact that she was at NB89 near Seattle made dealing with the situation so much easier.

  He thought it was important to not just delegate the task to someone else, but to also be a part of it. After all, in his past life—the life that had ended when Bluebird fell out of contact—he had been the one sent out to handle these kinds of issues.

  The phone rang right on time.

  “Yes?”

  “Your conference call is ready, Mr. Perez,” Claudia said.

  “Thank you.”

  He hung up and turned to his computer. A moment later he was looking at Patricia Nakamura sitting smugly in her office.

  “Mr. Perez, I’m not sure what you want to discuss, but it seems to me anything we need to talk about should be done in one of our committee meetings.”

  “Of course it would seem that way to you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You perceive the world through an unfortunate filter.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think we’re done here.”

  She reached for her keyboard to cut off the call, and hit the appropriate key, but, as Perez knew would happen, their connection remained live.

  “What’s wrong with this?” she said to herself.

  She hit the keyboard over and over but nothing happened.

  Perez touched the cell phone sitting on his desk. On it was a prewritten text:

  NOW

  He hit SEND.

  “Be careful you don’t break that,” he said.

  “Shut up,” she told him.

  She reached for the monitor, going for the button that would turn off the screen. Once more, she was stymied.

  Frustrated, she stood up and leaned toward the monitor, her head moving out of sight as she undoubtedly searched for the power cord.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” he said.

  “Try to stop me,” she shot back.

  It was the perfect cue, and though the door didn’t open for another couple of seconds, it worked well enough.

  She looked up. “Who are you?”

  Sims walked in with two of his team behind him.

  “Ma’am, please have a seat,” he said.

  “What is this? What’s going on?” Nakamura looked back at the monitor. “This is your doing, isn’t it? Tell these men to leave. They have no right to be here.”

  “Actually, you’re the one without any rights now,” Perez said.

  One of Sims’s men pushed Nakamura back into her chair.

  “Hey!” she yelled. She started to get back up, but changed her mind and reached for the phone on her desk. She punched in a number before she raised the receiver to her ear. When she did, she looked at the monitor again. “Dr. Lassiter will deal with you.”

  Perez gave her a halfhearted smile.

  After a moment, she looked at the phone, used her finger to disconnect the call, and listened again. The anger on her face intensified. “It’s not working! What did you do to it?”

  Perez leaned forward. “Ms. Nakamura, the Project thanks you for your service, but regrets to inform you that you are no longer necessary to its future success.”

  “The Project thanks me?” While there was still anger in her voice, it was now tinged with fear. “You’re not the Project. You don’t get to make that kind of decision.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I am the Project, and your fa
ilure to realize that is the reason my men are there now. But know this. When the trigger is pulled—”

  “Wait! No!” she blurted out, her voice full of fear and desperation.

  “—it’s not being pulled by the man there with you. It’s being pulled by me.”

  “Mr. Perez, I…I’m sorry. I didn’t understand the sit—”

  “That’s right. You didn’t.”

  Perez nodded once. Behind Nakamura, Sims raised his gun, put it to the back of her head, and removed her from the Project.

  Twenty-One

  RIDGECREST, CALIFORNIA

  8:20 AM PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

  SOMEONE WAS SHAKING Martina’s shoulder.

  With a groan, she tried to turn away. It was much too early, she was sure of it. By the time she’d gotten home and fallen asleep the night before, it was after two in the morning. She had promised herself she really would sleep as late as possible today, noon if she could manage it.

  “Martina, come on. Wake up.”

  She opened her eyes, surprised. Her father was standing over her. He never woke her up.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, her voice still full of sleep.

  “Get up, get dressed, then come downstairs.”

  She glanced at the clock by her bed and groaned. She had barely slept six hours. “Did I forget something? Are we supposed to be somewhere?”

  But her father was already heading out the door. “Just get ready and come down.” With that, he was gone.

  She sat up and blinked several times, trying to shake the sleep from her system. As she swung her legs off the bed, she noticed that several drawers of her dresser were open. She hadn’t left them that way the night before. When she got up and walked over to shut them, she was surprised to see they were empty.

  What the hell?

  She checked the other drawers. Several pairs of pants were missing, and her sweaters, too. Then she noticed that someone had laid some clothes out for her on her desk chair.

  More confused than ever, she pulled them on and hurried downstairs to find out what was up.

  A cold wind was blowing in through the open front door. Out the living room window she could see her father and brother over near the garage, putting something in the trunk of the car. Above them, high gray clouds dimmed the day.