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

by Brett Battles

  “Nice,” he said, congratulating himself.

  Several minutes later, he located information indicating that prior to being stationed at Fort Bragg, the lieutenant had spent a short time at Fort Irwin outside Barstow, California—less than sixty miles from Sage Springs. Where Ash had gone after Fort Bragg, Gavin wasn’t able to discover yet. Still, he knew Tammy would want to hear what he’d learned so far.

  He grabbed his phone to call her, but for some reason he didn’t have a signal.

  “What the hell?”

  He always had a signal at home. It was one of the reasons he’d picked this apartment. In his business, he couldn’t afford to live in a cellular dead zone.

  He decided to copy the links into an email and send them to her. He wasn’t sure if she could retrieve email on her sat phone, but she’d get it at some point. A split second after he hit SEND, he got an error message telling him his cable modem was not currently connected to the Internet.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Now he was really annoyed. He glanced at his TV. With the exception of a blue box across the center of the screen that read Channel Currently Unavailable, the screen had gone black. Apparently, the whole cable system, or at least the part that came into his building, was out of commission.

  Just his luck that both it and his cell phone would go out at the same time. Maybe they were tied together somehow. A massive communications glitch. That should make the news. Well, if anyone was still getting a signal so they could watch it.

  He set the email to send as soon as the connection returned, and got up to grab a soda out of his refrigerator. As he was deciding whether he wanted to make a sandwich to go with his Dr. Pepper, someone knocked on his door.

  He was barely out of the kitchen when whoever it was pounded again, more urgent this time.

  “Just a minute,” he yelled.

  He looked through the security peephole in his door, but the person outside seemed to be covering it up. Had to be Dustin. He was always doing asshole things like that.

  “Hilarious,” Gavin said loud enough so Dustin could hear him. Donning a reproachful smirk, he opened the door. “What the hell are you bothering me for at this—”

  “Not a word.”

  It wasn’t Dustin. It was a man holding a gun pointed at Gavin’s face.

  “Sure,” Gavin said, then realized he’d broken the rule and added, “Sorry.”

  The man stepped toward him, backing Gavin into the room. There were two others behind him, both big like the first man, wearing similar dark suits, and also armed.

  Once everyone was inside, the last man in shut the door.

  “Anyone else here?” the first guy asked.

  “No,” Gavin said, shaking his head vigorously from side to side. “Just me.”

  “Don’t lie.”

  “I’m not lying.” Gavin’s voice cracked a little, and he could feel his hands shaking at his side.

  The two other men headed into the hallway that led back to the bedroom. They were only gone about thirty seconds before they reappeared.

  “Clear,” one of them said, then stepped carefully into the kitchen with his partner.

  There was another “clear” and they both returned.

  “Your name’s Gavin Costello?” the first guy asked.

  “Yes.”

  The man touched a Bluetooth headset mounted on his ear. “We’re secure. You can release the building.” He looked at Gavin, then nodded toward the desk. “That your only computer?”

  “What? Uh, no. I have a Dell in my closet.”

  “Is the laptop the only computer you use?”

  “Yes. Yes, it is. You want it? It’s all yours.”

  Who the hell were these guys? If they were trying to rob him, they were the best-dressed home invaders in history. Whoever they were, though, if they just wanted his computer, great. They could take it and their guns and leave.

  The main guy glanced at the other men. “Grab it.”

  The slightly smaller of the two took the laptop from the desk. “Phone,” he said, then raised Gavin’s cell into the air so the others could see it.

  “Bring it,” the main guy said. “That your only phone, Gavin?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, only one. I don’t even have a landline.”

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  Gavin tried not to show his relief. They’d be gone in just a second. And he was going to be okay.

  But then the man grabbed his arm and pushed him toward the door. “You, too.”

  “What? Why me? What do you need me for? You got my computer. You’ll get good money for that.”

  “No more talking or I pull the trigger.”

  The man said this so matter-of-factly that Gavin bit his lip to keep from saying anything.

  THE MAIN GUY said, “We’re secure. You can release the building.”

  Five seconds later, two doors down the hall, Mrs. McFadden’s cable came back on.

  Good thing, too. One of the local stations showed reruns of Perry Mason every day at noon, and she hadn’t missed an episode in over a year. The moment the TV signal had gone out, she’d tried calling the cable company, but there’d been something wrong with her phone, too. Now all was right with the world again, and Perry would be on in just a few minutes to embarrass that stuck-up Hamilton Burger like he always did.

  Of the eighteen other apartments in the building, there was only one additional person home, a man named Frank Bushnell. He worked graveyard dispatch for the police so he was sound asleep. The outage passed without him ever knowing anything was wrong.

  In apartment 11, Gavin Costello’s apartment, as soon as the cable kicked back in, the laptop’s Wi-Fi reconnected with the Internet. While the main guy was telling one of his associates to grab the computer, the email program was going through its normal cycle. This time, after confirming that it was once more connected to the cyber world beyond Gavin’s walls, it sent off the single message waiting in the queue, finishing its operation just seconds before the associate slammed the screen shut.

  A FEW HUNDRED miles southeast, Tamara Costello’s sat phone pinged with an incoming email. At that moment, though, Tamara was on camera and didn’t hear it arrive.

  Nineteen

  THE MOMENT RACHEL said that Josie and Brandon were still alive, Ash’s vision went gray.

  In his mind, he could hear Josie’s cry, and feel how cold she’d been as he tried to keep her warm. He could even sense Brandon’s fear as they were being led out of the house at Barker Flats.

  But most of all, he could remember the numbness, the horror, the disbelief, and the total devastation he’d felt when the voice in the ceiling had told him his children were dead.

  When he finally regained his senses, he was on the ground, one leg tucked under him, with no idea how he’d gotten there. Rachel was kneeling on one side, while Pax was doing the same on the other.

  “Are you telling me the truth?” he whispered.

  “Let’s get you back in your seat,” Rachel said.

  She and Pax lifted him to his feet and helped him into the chair.

  While they were doing this, Matt walked over to the cabinet and pulled out the tape-covered envelope. From inside, he removed a folded legal-size envelope and a thumb drive. He handed the envelope to Rachel, and took the drive over to the control panel.

  “We’ve already watched these,” Matt said. “They might not be easy to look at, but you need to see them, too.”

  He stuck the drive into a port and hit several buttons.

  The television screen was black for a moment, then gray, then…

  A room, not too dissimilar from Ash’s cell at Barker Flats. Only this room had a door that was open, and a window that Ash got the sense didn’t look to the outside. The shot was from up high and angled down.

  Lying on the bed was Brandon.

  Ash couldn’t help but lean forward. Here was his son. He hadn’t seen Brandon’s face since they had been separated. He rem
embered now what he told his son at that moment. “Go with them. It’ll be okay. You’ll see me in just a bit.”

  He’d believed it then, because that’s what they had told him. But it wasn’t true, so the last thing he had told his son was a lie.

  “I made some time notations on the back of the envelope,” Matt said to Rachel.

  Ash could hear her flip the envelope over, but he didn’t look. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the screen.

  “Oh-six twenty-seven,” Rachel said.

  The image started scrolling quickly forward, then slowed back to real time.

  “This is six-thirty in the morning, just a few hours after you were both brought in,” Matt explained.

  Brandon looked like he was asleep. Suddenly the door pushed all the way open, and someone in a biosafe suit came in. The person knelt down next to the bed and put something on Brandon’s forehead.

  A few moments later, a voice said, “Temp, ninety-eight point five.”

  Ash thought back. Six-thirty meant he’d been in his cell for at least four hours. By that point, he’d already been told that Josie was dead. But Brandon? He didn’t know for sure, but he didn’t think so.

  “Next,” Matt said.

  Rachel read off another time code. “Ten twelve.”

  That, Ash knew, was definitely after when he’d been told about his son. No way it was later than that.

  Once more the picture raced forward before resuming normal speed. The time stamp in the lower left read 10:12. The boy in the bed was still Brandon. And he was very much alive.

  “Stop,” Ash said.

  Matt hit pause.

  “Skip ahead.”

  “How far?”

  “Nowhere in particular. Just let it run.”

  Ash just wanted to see Brandon move, Brandon alive, Brandon definitely there longer than the voice had led him to believe. One hour, two hours, three, four. It was all the same, all revealing the lie he’d been told.

  “Stop,” he finally said. “Is there video of Josie?”

  “There is.”

  “Show it to me.”

  Her footage was more painful to watch. She was still ill. But she wasn’t dead. Ash made Matt speed through the footage like he had with Brandon’s, this time not stopping until Josie sat up.

  “Play it,” Ash said quickly.

  The image snapped to normal time. Josie had a hand on the wall, steadying herself.

  “Hello? Hello?” she said. “Where am I?”

  Dear God, he never thought he’d hear her voice again.

  He could feel the tears gathering in his eyes, and the breath quivering in his lungs. But he sucked in deeply and forced himself to remain under control.

  Matt turned the video off.

  “What are you doing?” Ash said.

  “I’ll give you the drive and have a computer set up in your room. You can watch as much as you want there. But if I were you, I wouldn’t. There’s nothing else that will mean anything. The most important thing was for you to see that they’re still alive.”

  Ash glanced at the envelope in front of Rachel. “You said you had different times marked. There must be something you thought I should see.”

  “Moments, only. Things I thought might help convince you. But you don’t need convincing.”

  Ash hesitated, then asked, “Were they told anything about me?”

  Matt looked at him for a moment. “Yes. At first they were told you were sick, then later that you had died.” He paused. “I can show you that if you really want.”

  A spike of pain shot through Ash’s heart. His children, how they must be suffering thinking both of their parents were dead.

  He shook his head. He would have to watch at some point, but he wasn’t sure he could take it right now. It was enough to know they were alive, that they had survived the mysterious illness that had apparently taken everyone else around them. That he would be able to—

  His head whipped around, his eyes finding Matt. “They survived the disease, but…but the explosion!”

  “No,” Matt said quickly, shaking his head. “They weren’t there. They were moved as soon as your daughter could travel, two days after they took you in.”

  “Moved where?”

  “Some place where they…”

  “Where they what?”

  Matt glanced at Billy, so Ash did the same.

  “What?” he asked. “What is it?”

  Billy cleared his throat. “Captain, you have an immunity to this particular virus. They’ve been looking for someone like you. What happened at Barker Flats isn’t the first time some variant of this virus has been tested. But we’re pretty sure you and your children are the first to survive. It’s obvious you’ve passed your immunity on to them. We think they are…running tests on your kids. Using them to pinpoint this immunity.”

  A mix of anger and horror flashed in Ash’s eyes. “Tests?”

  “Mostly with their blood, would be my guess,” Billy said in his nonchalant way.

  “The good news,” Rachel said, jumping in, “is that it means they’ll want to keep Josie and Brandon alive.”

  “I need to find them,” Ash said, pushing himself up. “I need to go now. I have to get them back.”

  Rachel touched his arm. “If you go now, you won’t get within a hundred miles of them. Your face is all over the television. You’ll be caught, then all three of you will be lost.”

  Clenching his teeth, he said, “I can’t just stay here and do nothing.”

  “We’re not asking you to do nothing.” Matt walked down the table until he was directly across from Ash. “We’re asking you to let us help you get them back.”

  Ash was almost shaking now, his anger at those who had taken Josie and Brandon growing with each second. “How can you help me?”

  Rachel smiled. “Let us show you.”

  Twenty

  HECTOR MENDEZ ARRIVED home at ten a.m. He lived alone in an old house on the outskirts of Victorville, California. The place had belonged to his mother, but she’d been dead for three years so it had been his since then.

  That had also been around the time he and Lucy finally went their separate ways. It was his fault, and he knew it. He’d been a long-distance trucker when they were together, away from home for weeks at a time. He’d made some big stink about this being who he was and how he wasn’t going to change. But staying home by herself wasn’t who Lucy was either.

  The irony, of course, was that not long after she left him, he gave up the long-distance work, and took a local trucking job for a regional bakery that had him home every day just about the time everyone else was going to their jobs.

  His daily route started at midnight and took him from Victorville through Barstow, up to Sage Springs, around to Trona, then Ridgecrest, Johannesburg, Adelanto and finally home. His employer supplied mostly hotels, a few restaurants, and a couple of hospitals.

  As was his habit, he and a few of the other drivers had breakfast at the local diner and then he’d driven home. Once there, he had his usual pre-sleep beer, watched one of the shows he’d recorded the night before, and went to bed.

  He woke at three p.m., two hours earlier than usual. The reason was simple. He’d coughed himself awake. He headed into the kitchen where he hocked up what was in his throat, spit it into the sink, then got a glass of water.

  Great, he thought as he chugged the liquid down. He hated being sick.

  He decided to take a couple of cold tablets, the non-drowsy type since he’d have to be up and moving around in a few hours, and went back to bed.

  When his boss called at 12:10 a.m. to find out why he was late, the ringing of his phone reached his ears but his mind barely registered it. Thirty minutes later, when Karl, a friend who also drove for the bakery, knocked on his door, he didn’t hear anything at all.

  Hector was dead.

  TAMARA COSTELLO DIDN’T see the email from her brother until after lunch. She wasn’t used to checking for them on her sat phone. Nin
ety-nine percent of the time she relied on her smartphone for email. But finally she noticed the tiny icon glowing dully on her display, indicating she’d received something.

  She’d actually become annoyed with Gavin. She’d been trying to call him, but kept going straight to his voice mail. The email, however, more than made up for his lack of communication.

  Daniel Ash was in the Army. Could it be that this was some kind of military accident, and not an act of terrorism like officials were starting to characterize it? She couldn’t help but make the connection to the still unconfirmed report of an explosion at a military installation two nights ago. Had that been an Army base? It was something to check.

  She had another live spot coming up in one minute. She tried her brother one more time, wanting to see if he’d learned anything more. Voice mail.

  “Dammit, Gavin. Where the hell are you?” she said.

  “Tamara, thirty seconds,” her producer, Joe, announced.

  While she did consider trying to get independent confirmation on Gavin’s information, the thought passed so quickly through her mind it was almost like she hadn’t had it at all. The several times she’d relied on her brother in the past, his information had always proven to be accurate. And there was no question that the Ash in the picture from one of the links Gavin sent was the same man in the photo authorities had given to the media.

  As she got into position, Joe checked the mic clipped to her shirt. The moment he stepped away, she looked at the camera.

  “How’s this?” she asked.

  Bobby, the cameraman, kept his eye on the viewfinder and gave her the thumbs up.

  “Okay, we’re coming up,” Joe told her.

  As she put her earpiece back in, she could suddenly hear Greg Roberts in the studio. He’d taken over anchor duties from Catherine a half hour earlier. Tamara took a deep breath, put the appropriate concerned look on her face, then gave Joe and Bobby a nod.

  She was ready.

  “…THAT TIME UNTIL the CDC was notified,” the PCN anchor said. The graphic at the bottom of the screen identified him as Greg Roberts. “The situation seems to have settled into a kind of wait-and-see. We should learn more at the next press conference scheduled for two hours from now.” He paused. “Okay, we’re going to go back out to our reporter on the scene, Tamara Costello. Tamara, how’s the mood there?”