[Project Eden 02] - Exit 9

by Battles, Brett

  “What is the first location?” Chloe asked.

  Ash looked down at the map. “Technically, we have three choices. Here, here, and here.” He pointed first at Ellef Ringnes Island, then Yanok Island, then Amund Ringnes Island.

  “That’s a lot of ground to cover. We don’t have a lot of time. Any way to rule out any of them?”

  Ash studied the map for a second. “The wreckage of the boat was found right about here, correct?” He pointed at a spot south of Ellef Ringes, and looked at Gagnon.

  The pilot nodded. “Yeah. Close enough.”

  “All right. If it was a setup and they were just trying to fool you, then I’d be inclined to rule out Ellef Ringnes. They wouldn’t set up the crash that close to Bluebird.”

  “Unless they were trying to outthink us,” Pax said.

  “I’m not going down that road. Rachel was also sure it wasn’t Ellef Ringnes.” Ash moved his finger along the map. “Which would mean it’s either Amund Ringnes or Yanok Island. That cuts away a third of where we need to check. Happy to hear anyone else’s thoughts.”

  “Sounds right to me,” Pax said.

  “Me, too,” Chloe added.

  The others chimed in their agreement.

  “So which one do you want to check first?” Gagnon asked.

  Ash frowned. “I don’t know. If I guess wrong, we might not have time to adjust.”

  Pax put a hand on Ash’s back. “No matter what we do, it’s going to be a coin toss.”

  Pax was right, but it didn’t make Ash’s choice any easier.

  “It’s still a lot of ground to cover,” Chloe said. “What if we split up? One group to Amund Ringnes, one to Yanok. Once one of us decides our location either is or is not Bluebird, we can regroup.”

  “We’re already too small as it is,” Pax pointed out.

  “That may be,” she said, “but do we have the time to check them one after the other?”

  They went back and forth, neither fully able to convince the other they were right.

  Finally, Ash said, “I’m reluctant to split up a group this size, but Chloe’s idea has merit. I’d like to think about it for a bit so let’s table it for now, and I’ll make a decision when we get closer.” He checked the time. “I want to head out as early as the weather will let us tomorrow. Let’s eat up and get some sleep. We’ve got long days ahead.”

  22

  I.D. MINUS 80 HOURS

  MUMBAI, INDIA

  SANJAY HAD BEEN working from daybreak until nearly ten p.m. every day for the last three days. According to the Pishon Chem managers, the schedule for everyone was likely to stay that way until they finished dispensing the anti-malaria spray. Thankfully, Pishon had thought ahead, and set up a dormitory complex on the grounds of the old factory they were renting so that the workers could stay there instead of going home each night.

  The main reason things had become busy was due to the dozens and dozens of shipping containers that had begun arriving daily at the factory. Each was packed full with barrels of the chemical that was to be sprayed throughout the city. Sanjay and several dozen other temporary employees had been given the responsibility of unpacking the containers, and loading pre-determined numbers of barrels onto trucks that would take them south to Goa, north to Ahmedabad, and several locations right there in Mumbai.

  The managers had assured everyone that working with the barrels was completely safe, but had also gone ahead and issued special gloves and paper surgical masks so that Sanjay and the others would feel even more at ease. While the gloves came in handy, most chose not to wear the masks, as they were more a hindrance in the humidity than a help.

  Sanjay was supervising two teams of ten men each. Their job was to load the trucks with however many containers were assigned to each, so he was nowhere near the container drop-off zone when the accident occurred.

  By all accounts, it was just a minor mishap, a truck hauling away an empty container scraping against another truck whose container was still full. Similar kinds of accidents happened in the city countless times a day. It was so minor, in fact, that Ayush, who was in charge of the delivery area, didn’t even report the incident to the Pishon Chem managers. Not at first, anyway.

  In a process that had become routine, the slightly dented but still-full container was removed from the truck and placed in the delivery area, waiting to be unloaded. When its turn finally came an hour and a half later, the door was unsealed, and a crew started moving the barrels out.

  Because the contents of the barrels had been carefully designed to omit no odor, the men didn’t discover the barrel with the broken seal until they neared it toward the back of the container. When they saw that some of its contents had been sloshed onto the walls and floor, they rushed out of the box, worried that they had been poisoned.

  Ayush rushed over. “Why have you stopped? There are still barrels inside.”

  “One of them is open,” someone said.

  “The poison is everywhere,” another added.

  “What if we breathed it in? Are we going to die?”

  The others began shouting variations on the same question.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Ayush told them, patting his hands against the air to calm them down. “Show me.”

  “It’s there,” one of the men said, pointing at the open container. “Go see for yourself.”

  Annoyed, Ayush approached the container and looked in. It took him only a second to spot the mess.

  The managers had briefed him and the other leaders about the spray. While it was apparently deadly to mosquitoes, it was harmless to human beings in all but extremely large doses. Did this qualify as that? He didn’t think so, but it was probably better to check.

  “Start on the next container,” he ordered.

  “But what about us? Should we see the doctor?”

  “No. You are fine. The spray cannot hurt you. It is meant for mosquitoes, not humans.”

  “It still might be dangerous for us.”

  “It’s not. But to be sure, you keep working and I will go check with the managers. They will tell us if everything is okay or not.”

  “You promise?”

  “Of course, I promise.”

  The manager in the office at the time Ayush entered was a man named Dettling.

  “Yes?” he asked as Ayush stood in the doorway waiting to be noticed.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but one of the barrels had opened.”

  Dettling looked surprised. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. The seal has broken on one, and much of what was inside has spilled into the container. The men who were doing the unloading are concerned and want to know if they should see a doctor. I told them everything would be fine, but I had them move on to a new container so I could ask you what we should do with the open barrel first.”

  “Did they breathe it in?”

  The tone in Dettling’s voice worried Ayush. “I think probably, yes. They were in the container for some time before they found the bad barrel. Is that a problem? I’ve been told the spray is harmless against us.”

  “No, no. It is harmless. It’s just…supply is so tight…uh…losing even one barrel could be a…problem.” He paused. “Go back out and tell them everything is fine. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  __________

  AS SOON AS Ayush left the office, Dettling rushed over to the door and shut it. He didn’t use the phone on his desk, but instead retrieved the sat-phone from his briefcase to make the call.

  He was greeted with a recorded message, then a prompt. He said, “This is Dettling. Mumbai. I-7.”

  Dead air for a few seconds, then a click. “Go ahead,” a live voice said.

  Unconsciously, Dettling touched the spot on his upper arm where he’d received his KV-27a vaccination. “We have an accidental breach.”

  “Explain.”

  __________

  SANJAY WAS BONE-tired when he dragged himself back to the dormitory at a quarter after ten th
at night. The only thing that kept him from heading straight up to bed was the growl in his stomach.

  In the cafeteria, he piled the food onto his plate and carried it over to one of the common tables. Often, he had dinner with his cousin, but Ayush wasn’t around.

  Though the room was packed, few were talking. It seemed as if the only energy anyone could muster was used to move food from plate to mouth.

  Once Sanjay was done, he made his way up to the dorm. He was assigned to a room that held ten people total. He shared it with others who had been given supervisory roles, including Ayush. Only Ayush wasn’t there, either.

  That was unusual, but not enough for Sanjay to think anything was wrong. Within five minutes, he was deeply asleep, unaware that Ayush and all the others who had been in contact with the contaminated container had been moved to the basement of a building three miles away, out of sight of anyone who might raise an alarm.

  23

  I.D. MINUS 72 HOURS

  GILSTRAP HALL

  HAWKINS UNIVERSITY

  ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

  COREY FELT FINE when they arrived back in St. Louis just before dawn, but by the time he and Jeannie went out for breakfast at the Perch Café, he’d developed a case of the sniffles.

  A cold, he thought, probably brought on by his lack of sleep and exposure to the freezing night air in Chicago. A couple cold tablets plus a few hours in bed and he should be fine.

  At eleven a.m. he woke with a jolt, overcome by a coughing fit. He tried to get out of bed to get some water, but the room began spinning the moment he rose to his feet, causing him to drop back to the mattress. He closed his eyes, willing the dizziness to go away. It didn’t work.

  Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe this wasn’t a common cold after all. After three tries, he was able to grab his phone off the nightstand. He stared at it for a moment, not remembering who he’d wanted to call.

  Jeannie. Right.

  He spent longer than usual looking for her name at the top of his favorites list before calling.

  “Hey,” she said. “Thought you were sleeping.”

  “I…I…”

  “Corey?”

  “Not…I think…doctor…”

  “Corey, are you all right?”

  Her words faded away as the phone slipped from his ear, and he fell back on the bed.

  __________

  JEANNIE POUNDED ON the door. “Corey?”

  She gave it five seconds, then tried again. When there was still no response from inside, she went in search of Corey’s resident advisor, Barry Kellerman. Barry wasn’t in his room, so she ran downstairs to the lounge.

  The RA was on the couch with two other guys, watching SportsCenter on TV.

  “Corey’s sick,” she said, running up to him. “He’s not answering his door.”

  Barry pushed himself up. He was a good RA, and knew when to take things seriously and when not to. “Come on.”

  They ran up the stairs side by side, with Barry’s buddies tagging along behind them. When they reached Corey’s door, Barry knocked.

  “I already did that,” Jeannie said. “Just open it.”

  He hesitated a second before shoving the master key into the lock.

  Corey was lying across the bed on top of the covers, his phone next to him.

  Jeannie rushed over. “Corey? Hey, Corey. Can you hear me?”

  She put her hand on his shoulder to wake him, but immediately pulled it back in surprise. He was burning up. She grabbed him again and shook him.

  “Corey. Wake up. Corey!”

  It was no use. He was completely out.

  She looked back at Barry. “Call an ambulance!”

  __________

  IT TOOK TWELVE minutes for the EMTs to arrive. In that time, over half a dozen other residents of Gilstrap Hall poked their heads into Corey’s room to see what was wrong.

  At the hospital, he was put on fluids and anti-viral medication within two minutes of arrival. One of the upshots of the Sage Flu outbreak earlier that year was improved isolation protocol across the nation. Because of this, Corey was placed in a quarantined room. In addition, one of the nurses gathered all the names of people who might have come in contact with him.

  Another improvement was the development of the Sage Test, a blood test that had an 85% accuracy at diagnosing Sage Flu. Several in the medical community thought this was overkill, their opinions gaining strength as months went by without any new Sage cases springing up, but after the outbreak, the public demanded its enforced use. That was the only reason the test was run on Corey.

  Marcie Hayward was the doctor on duty. While Corey was in obvious distress, the doctor assumed it was just a particularly severe case of the flu. That in itself was disturbing, of course. The last thing they needed was a flu bug spreading through the school, but if there was one case now, there were bound to be others later. He told Nancy Batista, the senior RN on duty, that they should be sure they had enough supplies for a sudden influx of patients. He hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, but knew the hospital couldn’t afford to be caught off guard.

  He then moved on to a broken arm suffered during an intramural game of flag football.

  It was over an hour before Corey’s preliminary lab results came in. Dr. Hayward was in the middle of a nasty case of road rash on the thigh of a girl who’d fallen from her bike when Nurse Batista rushed over.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Doctor, but I need to see you for a moment.”

  Dr. Hayward smiled at his patient, and unintentionally lied. “I’ll be right back.”

  Once they were outside the exam room, Nurse Batista showed the doctor the lab results. He read them twice, and looked at her in surprise.

  “Are we sure?”

  “I’ve drawn a new sample, so they can run it again.”

  That was also protocol if a positive result for Sage Flu was ever returned.

  “Okay,” he said. “But until we learn different, we need to assume this is correct. I want everyone who’s been in contact with him isolated, including everyone on this floor. I’ll inform the administration and the state health department.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  There was fear in her eyes as she ran off, the same fear that was probably in his. Both he and the nurse knew that the Sage Flu in its most virulent form meant one thing.

  Death.

  __________

  MATT HAMILTON WAS in the Bunker cafeteria watching the video Tamara and Bobby had just emailed him. It wasn’t the full WC report, just what they’d already completed over the previous months.

  Tamara’s voiceover—for the first time unfiltered so that it would be recognizable—had been done in an even, sure tone. There were no hysterics, just facts of the story. Even then, he couldn’t help but frown. It played more like an over-the-top Hollywood thriller than something that could actually happen. But it was what it was. Besides, if they ever did need to play this video, it would mean the pandemic had started, and chances were people would be more keen on listening and believing.

  Jordan was watching alongside him. With Pax gone, the younger man had assumed the role of Matt’s top assistant. It was a job that would have normally fallen to Michael, but he was still watching over Janice, whose illness had turned into pneumonia after spending too much time on the freezing roof of the Bluff.

  As Matt jotted down a few notes, he heard someone running through the hall toward the cafeteria.

  “Matt!” Rachel’s voice.

  Forewarned by her tone, both he and Jordan jumped up and rushed into the hallway.

  “What’s going on?” Matt asked.

  “Come! Come! I think it might have started.”

  With a feeling of dread, the three of them raced to the communications room. Nearly a dozen people were already there, including Billy. The TVs on the table were still tuned to the different networks, but only the volume on the PCN broadcast was turned up.

  The image was a night shot of a multistory building. The graphic
at the bottom identified it as Hawkins Medical Center, Hawkins University, St. Louis, Missouri. The voice speaking belonged to Catherine Minor, one of the PCN anchors.

  “…this time. We don’t have the name of the patient yet, but we’ve been told he’s a student at Hawkins University. The dormitory where he lived, and the emergency services area of the hospital have all been quarantined. Right now we need to go to a break. We’ll have more when we return.”

  The image stayed on the screen for a second longer, then cut out and was replaced by a commercial for deodorant.

  “What happened?” Matt asked.

  “Apparently a student was brought into the hospital with flu symptoms,” Billy told him. “When they ran the Sage Test, it came back positive.”

  “Just one case?”

  “So far. According to the news idiots, they’ve isolated everyone he’s come in contact with.”

  “Any reports from other locations?” If the Project had initiated Implementation Day, there should have been hundreds sick already, not just a single student in St. Louis.

  “Nothing yet.”

  Matt nodded tensely.

  An hour passed, then two. Through it all, the only words spoken were by those using the phone to see if there were outbreaks elsewhere.

  As the end of the third hour approached, it was becoming clear that this was an isolated event. How? Sage Flu was not a naturally occurring disease. The student had been exposed to it somewhere. They needed to know where that was. It could provide crucial information.

  He glanced over at Billy. “I want you in St. Louis as soon as possible. Jordan, you go with him. Find out how this happened.”

  __________

  “HOW DID THEY get in?” the DOP asked.

  “Through the roof, sir,” Ross said.

  He stared at his aide for a moment. “The roof?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The DOP knew it wasn’t worth getting upset over. Even this minor outbreak couldn’t stop anything. It was annoying, though. It meant some people would be more cautious in the weeks to come, potentially skewing the survival rates in the wrong direction. Initially, anyway. At some point they would become exposed to the virus. This just meant that deaths might continue for months longer after the main event than he’d hoped. Statistically, the number would be infinitesimal, but it could still mean dealing with millions of sick people when they should already be moving on to the new reality.