“Oh…um, sure.” Brandon handed over his pack.
The other kids also had their bags searched. Once everyone was cleared, Captain Valverde took them to the front of the room.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” she said in a voice loud enough for the whole room to hear.
Everyone hushed.
“I’ve brought four new children to join us.” She turned to Brandon and his travel mates. “This is Marisa, Loni, Eddie, and Brandon. Please introduce yourselves to them when you have a moment.” She looked at the new arrivals. “If you have any questions, you can ask one of the adult supervisors—Miss Collins, Mrs. Trieb, Mr. Munson, Mr. Whitney, Sergeant Lukes, and Specialist Granter.”
Specialist Granter was the one who’d checked Brandon’s bag.
“Where do we sleep?” Marisa asked.
“You will each be assigned a bed in one of the dormitories. I know it’s not like home, but it’s not bad.”
A few of the kids who’d been there laughed.
“All right, you can all go back to what you were doing,” the captain said. “And don’t forget to welcome your new friends.”
10
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA
8:14 PM PST
JAMES SUMNER, CEO of Yeti Pepper—a highly successful mobile application developer—had over six hundred bottles of wine in his private collection. Each bottle was carefully chosen not only for its taste, but also for its reputation. The majority was housed in a climate-controlled facility up the road in San Francisco, while he kept nearly one hundred at home in case a special occasion arose.
This night was one such occasion. In fact, it was probably the biggest occasion of all. It was Christmas evening, but that wasn’t why he was standing in his well-designed wine closet.
Though only in his early fifties, this would be his last night alive. He’d hoped that wouldn’t be the case. He had always dreamt of passing away at ninety while drifting off to sleep at a café in Loire Valley in France. But ninety was not to be, nor eighty, nor seventy, nor even sixty.
That morning, not long after breakfast, he had coughed for the first time. As the afternoon had progressed, his symptoms had worsened. He was now drained and congested and sore from coughing, but he had not yet given up the ghost.
What he was trying to decide was which wine would be his last.
In no particular hurry, he pulled bottle after bottle from the exquisitely handcrafted rack, read each label, and put it back if he thought it unworthy. So far, there were only two bottles he hadn’t returned to their place—the 1945 Pétrus Bordeaux, and the 1982 Château Haut-Brion, a first-growth Bordeaux.
He slid another from its slot. A 2005 Romanée-Conti Burgundy. He had bought three bottles at auction for over twenty-three thousand dollars each. He rubbed his thumb lightly across the label, but, in the end, he returned it to the rack. It was good—excellent, in fact—just not…right.
When he reached the end, he moved to the next rack. As he did, he noticed something on the floor, tucked into the back corner of the room, almost out of sight. It was a simple, brown paper bag, bottle-size, sitting upright and full. He had forgotten all about it.
As he picked it up, a cough exploded from his chest, and he had to grab one of the racks to keep from falling down.
When the fit passed, he set the bag on the table next to the Pétrus and Haut-Brion, then carefully opened the top and pulled the bottle out.
He couldn’t help but smile as he set it down.
Boone’s Farm Tickle Pink.
Not only was there no date, there was no cork, just a screw top.
When his sister had given it to him, he had rolled his eyes and grimaced.
“I just thought, you know…” Lauraine had said.
He had played dumb at the time, but of course he did know.
That had been, what? Three years ago? He hadn’t seen her since. She’d emailed him once, saying she was going to be in town and wanted to have dinner with him, but he had claimed another commitment. Now he couldn’t even remember if he’d really had one.
The bottle had made him angry at the time. It had evoked memories he had long buried and never wanted to think about again. When he arrived home that night, he fully intended to throw the low-rent wine in the trash, but found himself unable to do it. Instead, he hid the Tickle Pink in his wine vault, thinking that in a few days he’d get around to disposing it.
Apparently, he never did.
He’d been eighteen and in the final semester of his senior year of high school. Lauraine, a year and a half younger, was a sophomore. That afternoon, their father had informed him there was no way his parents could afford to send him to the university in the fall, and that he’d be better off getting a job and learning a skill. It had come as a shock. His mother had promised him they’d pay for college. He’d been counting on it. It was how he would avoid following in his father’s footsteps.
Lauraine, his biggest supporter and best friend back then, had found him outside of town along the trail by the river they used to hike together. She’d come prepared with two bottles of Tickle Pink. They passed them back and forth, drinking straight out of the top. She let him vent his anger, nodding in encouragement. At some point, they had started laughing as more of the horrible wine flowed.
It was the first time he’d ever been drunk, and he’d never had a headache as bad as the one he had the next morning—before or since.
It was funny, though. His father’s refusal to live up to his mother’s promise had been the push Sumner needed. The day after he graduated, he packed the few things he wanted to take with him into his crappy little car and headed west, not stopping until he reached the ocean.
He looked at the three bottles on the table. People would pay seven hundred dollars for one glass of the Haut-Brion. He had paid that much. And for the Pétrus—if you could buy only a glass—eight grand. The Boone’s Farm? When he was younger, he could get the whole bottle for a few bucks. He doubted the price had come up much.
He thought about Lauraine. She had always treated him with love and kindness, something he couldn’t say he’d done in return.
The Pétrus. The Haut-Brion. The Tickle Pink.
It wasn’t even a contest.
He grabbed the Boone’s Farm by the neck, and closed the door to his wine closet for the last time.
MADISON, WISCONSIN
10:20 PM CENTRAL STANDARD TIME (CST)
IT WAS WEIRD being one of only a few people in the dorm, but Belinda Ramsey had no place else to go for the holidays. Home was out of the question. Her mother, a professional drunk, had kicked Belinda out of the house when the girl had still been in high school. She’d gone to live with her grandmother, but Grams had died last summer.
That was the extent of her family, and hence the reason she had opted to stay at school while everyone else had rushed away.
She had counted a total of three others who seemed to be doing the same thing she was, all on lower floors than hers. Of course, they had all needed special permission to stay at the dorms because technically they were closed. When Belinda received her approval, she was told she would have to provide her own meals, as the cafeteria would not be open again until just before the new term began.
That was fine. There was a microwave oven on her floor, so she had stocked up on Top Ramen and frozen pizzas. Her plan was to spend the first part of the break working on her book. She was an English major with dreams of being an author. The story she was writing was a thinly veiled version of her own life. It was a bit painful to put on the page at times, but nowhere near as bad as she’d expected.
For the week leading up to Christmas Day, she had decided to seclude herself on her floor and do nothing but write, sleep, and, occasionally, eat. That way, she could avoid all the “Christmas cheer” that would remind her she had no one to share the holidays with. She disconnected the Internet and unplugged the TV. She even turned off her phone, though she didn’t think anyone would be calling her, her col
lege friends undoubtedly busy at home.
It was amazing how well it was going. The first couple of days, she was able to write over two thousand words each. The third day dipped a little, only eighteen hundred, but day four was amazing. Three thousand, six hundred, and seventy-eight. She had never written that many words in one day before. The writer’s high she had when she finally removed her fingers from the keyboard was the purest combination of euphoria and serenity she had ever felt.
The rest of the week had gone so well that she had lost track of the days and actually worked through Christmas, the day she had originally planned as a break. It was after ten p.m. when she finally realized it. She laughed at herself for getting so lost in her work.
She had been planning on calling her friend Patty to wish her a merry Christmas, but Patty’s home was in Delaware, so it was nearly eleven thirty there. Probably too late.
Belinda decided to text her instead. She could give Patty a call tomorrow. She dug her phone out of the dresser where she’d stuffed it, and turned it on. As it went through warming up and connecting to the network, she walked down the hall to the common area, grabbed the frozen mini-supreme pizza she’d been saving for this day out of the refrigerator, and popped it into the microwave.
Four minutes later she returned to her room with her gourmet meal on an elegant paper plate. From her smaller dorm-room fridge, she grabbed a Diet Coke and plopped down on her bed. The pizza was still a bit too hot, so she picked up her phone to text Patty, but paused, surprised, as she looked at the screen.
She had over two dozen text messages, and nearly as many voicemails. Most were from Patty, while the rest were from her other two close friends, Josh and Kaylee.
Patty:
where r u? r u okay?
Patty:
r there any containers there?
Patty:
why rn’t u answering ur phone?
Kaylee:
B, you ok? You’re all alone. You should come here.
Patty:
answer ur phone!
Josh:
Are you watching this? PCN…crazy!
Patty:
Belinda, please PLEASE answer!!!
Belinda stopped reading and listened to the first of Patty’s voicemails. “God, I hope you’re okay. You’re probably watching TV, right? This is insane. Please tell me there are none of these things in Madison. Call me back as soon as you get this, okay?”
Ignoring the rest of the messages, she called Patty.
Two rings. Three. Four.
“Hi, it’s Patty. Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you.”
Beep.
“Patty? It’s Belinda. What’s going on? I just got your messages. Call me.”
She tried Kaylee next. This time it didn’t even ring before going to voicemail. Belinda left a similar message for her.
She called Josh.
Two rings. “Hello?”
“Josh?”
There was a pause, a sniffle, then a stuttering voice, “Josh isn’t with us anymore.”
Her brow furrowed. “I’m sorry. What does that mean?”
“Please don’t call again.”
The line went dead.
Despite the request, she did call again, but went straight to voicemail this time.
She stared at her phone. What the hell was going on?
Are you watching this?
Josh’s message.
She rushed across the room, plugged in her TV, and turned it on.
Though the television was tuned to what normally would be the Glitz Network, the logo in the corner belonged to Prime Cable News.
She watched for five minutes, but nearly nothing the news anchors said made sense. It was as if they were speaking another language, or, probably closer to the truth, working off a set of known facts Belinda was unaware of. What was clear was that something horrible either had happened or was happening.
She grabbed her computer and switched on the Wi-Fi for the first time in over a week. As soon as she had the signal, she opened her email program. While the messages started to download, she launched her web browser and went to the PCN website. There, she devoured story after unbelievable story, her shock growing with every paragraph.
When she read everything she could, she searched for news more specific to Madison.
TEN SHIPPING CONTAINERS LOCATED AROUND CITY
A later story talked of finding five more boxes. In the most recent article, posted that morning, she read about the sick showing up in large numbers at local hospitals, and that at least seven hundred people had already died. The reporter speculated that the total was far greater than that, as there were likely many more who had been too sick to seek medical help and passed away in their homes. The death toll was probably in the thousands, the reporter said.
Thousands? That was just here in Madison. If this was truly as spread out as the other reports suggested, then…
Oh, my God.
Unable to focus on the words anymore, Belinda walked over to her window and looked outside. Six floors below was the park that surrounded the dorm. Sometime in the past few days it must have snowed. The last time she’d checked, the ground had been bare, but now there was a layer of white at least a few inches thick.
The only way she could pick out the pathways was by the lights that lined them. Usually the grounds crew kept the paths clear to prevent the buildup of ice. But there wasn’t even so much as a footprint in the snow. Anywhere.
She looked back at the door to her room. When the break had begun, someone from the cleaning staff had come up to her floor every other day to do a light dusting, and see if the trash needed removing. Belinda couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen or heard one of them.
With a sense of dread, she reentered the hallway and made her way back to the common room. The trash can had one of those flopping panels to push rubbish through. She pulled the entire top off and looked inside the barrel. She could see the discarded containers and wrappers from her meals stretching back at least five days. Someone should have dumped it out already.
She ran to the stairwell door and pulled it open, thinking she could find one of the other students who’d stayed. But before she took the first step down, a voice in her head screamed, Wait!
The virus. The highly contagious virus. If anyone below had it, they’d give it to her. At the moment she felt okay. Actually, she felt good, never healthier. If she wanted to stay that way, she needed to avoid everyone at all costs.
She backed away from the stairs and slowly closed the door.
Using an extra bedsheet she had, she tied off the staircase door’s handle, making it harder for someone on the other side to open it. She dragged her roommate’s dresser out of their room and leaned it against the door. It might not have stopped anyone, but at the very least, it would crash down when the door opened, alerting her that someone was coming.
A bigger problem was the elevator. She could call it up and pull the stop button, but she had no idea who might have been inside in the past several days. Perhaps the virus was waiting for her on the control panel.
The thought made her pause. An hour before, she’d only been worried about where she should break the next paragraph of her story, and now she was living in fear of killer microbes.
The best she could do with the elevator was to tie her roommate’s mattress in front of the opening. She wasn’t satisfied with it at all, but she didn’t know what else to do.
For the next ninety minutes, she sat on the floor watching the news, her pizza forgotten. When she finally turned it off, she didn’t go to bed. Instead, she sat down with her laptop, opened a new file, and began to type.
She knew she would never finish the story she’d been working on. She had something different to write now.
Something that would consume her.
11
ISABELLA ISLAND, COSTA RICA
11:27 PM CENTRAL STANDARD TIME
“ANYTHING?” ROBERT ASKED.
>
A second of static, then Enrique’s voice came over the radio. “No. Nothing.”
“What about you, Evan?”
“Still clear over here, too,” Evan reported.
Thankfully the moon had come up an hour earlier, giving the spotters plenty of light to see most vessels that might approach the island.
“Great. I’ll check back in a bit.”
It had been a wild, unreal few days.
Isabella Island was a small private bump of land, sticking out of the ocean thirty-five miles off the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. It had been purchased several years earlier by the Albino Entertainment Group—owners of hotels in Las Vegas, Macau, Greece, and the French Riviera—and turned into an island-wide resort that shared the island’s name. Twice a day, a private ferry would shuttle new guests to Isabella, and take those who had checked out back to the mainland.
The island was far enough offshore that Costa Rica was below the horizon, and, if guests wanted to, they could pretend they had found a bit of paradise in the middle of nowhere. Every Christmas, the resort ran a special deal aimed directly at singles who were looking for alternatives to spending the holidays with relatives they’d rather avoid. In fact, the humorous ad campaign they ran each year had won numerous Clio Awards, and was the main reason the island was always at full capacity during the holidays.
The management had expected to have every room occupied by Christmas Eve. What they hadn’t counted on was a worldwide terror attack.
On Thursday, December 22nd, the resort had been running at sixty percent capacity, with the bulk of guests due to arrive the morning of Christmas Eve. As usual, most of those already on the island spent their day by the water—sunbathing, jet skiing, swimming, and surfing.
Ashes (A Project Eden Thriller) Page 8
