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

by Brett Battles

  “I wish we could. This…outbreak has stretched our resources. We’re already working with a skeleton crew here. If any of us leaves, it’ll make it all that more difficult to support the rest of our organization, and many are in just as much danger as you will be.”

  Ash couldn’t help but frown. “I’m having a hard time understanding just what your purpose is.”

  “Do you want to know? Because we’ll tell you if you do. It’s pretty heavy stuff, though.” He paused, thoughtful for a moment. “Your children are your goal right now. Anything we tell you will only distract from that. It’s your choice.”

  Several silent seconds went by.

  Matt was right. Until Josie and Brandon were with him, Ash didn’t need anything else clouding up his mind.

  “Tell me about where they’re keeping my kids.”

  Twenty-Seven

  THE DESERT WAS tricky, even more so in the moonless night with their headlamps off. But Paul, with Lisa sitting behind him, and Nick didn’t have much of a choice. The only thing they could do was keep their speed down, and hope they didn’t hit any of the random holes and ruts too hard.

  At midnight, they found a small canyon and stopped. About fifty feet in was a rock overhang, so they decided to use it as shelter and get a few hours of sleep.

  Because none of them thought to set an alarm on their cell phone, those few hours turned into almost seven. By the time Paul opened his eyes, the sky was blue, and the warmth of the early spring day had already pushed back the cold of the night.

  “Ah, crap!” he yelled, then nudged Lisa, who was sharing his sleeping bag with him. “Hey, baby, we got to get up.”

  She groaned, but didn’t open her eyes.

  “Come on, Lisa. It’s already late.”

  “Just a little longer,” she said, her voice low and raspy.

  He gave her a kiss. “One minute. That’s it.”

  “You’re so generous.”

  He crawled out of the bag without unzipping it, then scrambled over to where Nick was sleeping and shook his shoulder.

  “Time to get up.”

  Nick tried to turn away from him.

  “Come on, Nick. We overslept.”

  His brother opened one eye halfway. “It’s morning already?”

  “We should have been gone four hours ago,” Paul told him.

  Nick grunted and rolled onto his back.

  Now that Paul knew the other two were basically up, he went over to his backpack, took out one of the sandwiches his mom had made, then all but inhaled it. Since their water was limited, he was careful to drink only a few ounces.

  Nick and Lisa were both sitting up now, neither looking particularly eager to get going.

  “Come on,” Paul said. “We’ve got to move!”

  “All right, all right,” Nick said. “I’m up.”

  He unzipped his sleeping bag and rolled out.

  “Me, too,” Lisa said.

  “I don’t want to stop for a while,” Paul told them, “so eat something. I’m going to go see if I can get above the rim and figure out where we are.”

  Nick gave him a halfhearted wave of acknowledgment, then held out a hand to help Lisa out of her bag.

  Paul scanned the canyon. Near the back he saw that part of the wall had crumbled down, creating a difficult but not impossible ramp to the top. He jogged over and carefully climbed up the slope.

  He was just nearing the top when a rhythmic noise began, echoing through the canyon. He looked around, trying to spot the source, but though it kept getting louder and louder, he couldn’t see anything that might be causing it.

  Nick stepped out from under the overhang, looked up at Paul, then lifted his shoulders and held out his hands, silently asking what was making the noise. Paul, having no answer, repeated the gesture back.

  He was about ten feet from the top of the ramp, and thought maybe he could see whatever it was from up there. But the moment he started to climb again, two helicopters streaked low across the sky just beyond the edge of the canyon. As soon as they passed the open end, they turned and descended to the ground.

  There was no question in Paul’s mind why they were here.

  “Hide!” he yelled down at Lisa and Nick.

  There was no way they could hear him above the whirl of the helicopters, but they’d obviously had the same thought. They began running through the canyon toward the crumbled ramp.

  Paul looked quickly around, then slipped into a crack between two large clumps of dirt, keeping his head elevated just enough so he could see over the top.

  Six men piled out of the helicopters, three from each, and began running into the canyon. Paul wasn’t sure what was scarier: their rifles, or the full bio-protective suits they were wearing.

  He looked down the ramp for Lisa and his brother, but it was too uneven, so while he could hear them scrambling on the slope, he couldn’t see them.

  Two of the armed men stopped near the bikes by the overhang, while the other four continued toward the back of the canyon.

  “Stop!” one of them yelled, his voice distorted by his suit.

  Paul heard Lisa and Nick stop climbing, and knew they’d been caught.

  Dammit! Sarge was not going to be happy.

  He watched the men, expecting them to move in and herd Lisa and Nick away, but instead, two of them raised their rifles.

  No! No! No! They’ve stopped! They’ve stopped!

  Paul started to open his mouth to yell exactly that, but before the words could even reach his lips, the men fired. The double boom ricocheted off the canyon walls, but what Paul didn’t hear was more upsetting. Neither Lisa nor his brother yelled out.

  As the men lowered their guns, Paul felt as if the earth had just swallowed him up. He watched all four men walk over to the ramp, then pass out of his line of sight. He could hear them moving around and talking quietly amongst themselves. When they reappeared on the canyon floor, two had Nick slung between them, and two had Lisa.

  His brother.

  His girlfriend.

  Both of them clearly dead.

  Paul stared down at them, hardly able to process what he was seeing.

  No one was going to believe this. No one would ever believe helicopters had found them in the middle of the desert and—

  His hand snapped down to his pants pocket, and he pulled out his cell phone. He turned it on, and worried for a moment the people would disappear before it started up. But he was in luck, if you could call it that. They set the bodies down near the base of the ramp, while one of the two who’d stayed near the motorcycles ran back to the helicopters. The man returned a few moments later with a clump of black plastic.

  As soon as Paul’s phone was ready, he accessed the camera, flipped it to movie mode, and began recording.

  The man with the plastic gave half to the guys standing near Lisa, and the other half to the ones next to Nick. As they unfolded their pieces, Paul realized they were bags—body bags—just like ones he’d seen in some of the Military Channel documentaries Sarge liked to watch.

  He had zero doubt this had been a killing operation from the beginning. There had been absolutely no intention of simply bringing any of them in. Why else would they have the bags with them?

  “That’s my brother, and my girlfriend,” he whispered next to the camera, hoping that the suits the people below were wearing would make it hard for them to hear anything. “Those…those men shot them. We weren’t doing anything, but they shot them.” He opened his mouth to say more, but decided he’d already pressed his luck enough.

  Once the bodies were sealed up, the men started carrying them out of the canyon. They all stopped for a moment near the motorcycles and seemed to have a quick conference. When they were through, the two men not carrying the bodies picked up the backpacks and sleeping bags, and carried them to the helicopters.

  As soon as everything was aboard, the helicopters rose into the air and flew off in the direction from which they’d come, the thumping o
f the blades fading until silence descended on the canyon.

  Paul didn’t move. There was a part of his mind that said if he stayed right there, none of this had really happened. That pretty soon Nick and Lisa would walk up the ramp looking for him. It would all be fine. They’d get on the bikes and get the hell out of there.

  But there were no footsteps, no voices, no nothing, because the girl he loved and his brother were dead.

  That’s when Paul lost it.

  It was ten minutes before he finally pulled himself together, his face streaked with tears, and climbed out of his hiding spot. The first thing he did was crawl the rest of the way up to the ridge of the canyon.

  There, he looked everywhere to make sure the helicopters had really gone. There wasn’t a speck anywhere, not even a cloud. Just blue, empty sky. The wrong sky for the kind of day it had turned out to be.

  He hurried down the ramp, pausing for only a brief second as he passed the spot where Nick and Lisa had been killed. What blood he could see looked like dark stains against the dirt. It was…unreal.

  When he reached the canyon floor, he ran to the overhang, wanting to get under the cover of the rock. It had occurred to him that the only way the men in the helicopters had known they were there was if he, Nick, and Lisa had been spotted from above. There must have been planes circling around that he and Nick hadn’t noticed. He was going to have to expose himself eventually, but, for the moment, he wanted them to think no one else was there.

  Thank God the bikes had been too bulky to put on the helicopters. He would never make it if he had to walk out, but the bikes gave him a chance.

  Using a hose off of the engine on Nick’s bike, he siphoned the remaining gas from Nick’s tank into his to give himself the best chance for escape.

  His first inclination was to wait until dark, hoping that would make it harder to spot him. But the problem with that was the same problem they’d had the previous night. He would have to keep his speed down so he didn’t kill himself. If he left now, in broad daylight, he could race through the desert and that might be the difference between survival and a bullet in his head.

  A bullet.

  The rifles. The echo of the shots. The lack of any screams.

  He shook himself. He couldn’t think about that right now. He needed to go. He needed to get out. No one would know what happened to Nick and Lisa if he didn’t.

  He wheeled his bike to the edge of the overhang, then took a last look back at the earthen ramp where his girlfriend and his brother had died. Unconsciously, he touched the cell phone in his pocket, making sure it was secured. He couldn’t lose that, no matter what.

  He pulled on his helmet and hopped on the bike. There was no reason to stay any longer.

  With a sudden roar, the motorcycle shot out of the canyon and into the desert.

  BEFORE THE SUN came up that morning, the Army finally caved to media pressure, and flew several people back to the roadblock outside Sage Springs. These were the people who had driven their particular network’s vans to the location before the quarantine had gone wide. They were now allowed to drive the vans back to Fort Irwin under the escort of four Army Humvees and three helicopters flying above. Each had a soldier equipped with a radio riding inside with the driver. No one was to get out of their vehicle, and they were to stop only if the escorts stopped, too. If there were any problems, the soldier with them would radio it in.

  Since the roads were empty, they made it back to Fort Irwin just after sunrise.

  Tamara and Joe were both up and waiting when Bobby parked the PCN van in their newly assigned spot.

  “Were you able to get any shots?” Joe asked as the cameraman climbed out.

  Bobby gave him a quick shake of the head, then motioned to the other side of the van with his eyes. There, the soldier who had ridden with him was getting out. With an expression that conveyed tolerance at best, the soldier waved to Bobby and said, “Have a good day, Mr. Lion.”

  Bobby smiled broadly. “You, too.” As soon as the soldier walked away, the smile disappeared. “I told him I just wanted to get a couple of shots from inside the van, but he made it very clear that we were only there to drive. Hell, he wouldn’t even let me get in back to check the equipment before we left.”

  Tamara knew Joe had been hoping to get the shots, but, personally, she didn’t care. Her mind was on something else.

  “Can we check now?” she said.

  Both men looked hesitant.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Joe asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Come on,” Bobby said.

  He led them around the van to the side door, then opened it up. Not only was the van used to haul equipment, but it was also a mobile editing facility, allowing them to put stories together, record voiceovers, and transmit everything back to the network. Via their uplink, they also had a speedy Internet connection.

  Using this, Bobby accessed the website where the footage from the incident at the Tehachapi roadblock had been uploaded. He clicked around for a bit, then said, “Found it.”

  He downloaded the video and transferred it into the editing software.

  Before hitting PLAY, he looked back at Tamara. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure,” she said quickly. “Play it.”

  Together they watched the video all the way through. Tamara had told Bobby and Joe what she believed she saw, but had said nothing to anyone else. Every time the network replayed the video, she had watched it, pointing out to them the man she was sure was her brother.

  Bobby and Joe tried to reassure her by saying things like “you can’t tell for sure,” and “the resolution isn’t the best so you could have made a mistake,” and “why would he even be there?”

  As sure as she was, she wanted to believe them, so she had stared at the video every time it came on, but every time she came to the same conclusion. It was Gavin.

  The reason she couldn’t be absolutely positive, though, was that she had no control over what she was watching. She hadn’t been able to stop it or start it or reverse it. She had to watch it all the way through, then wait until the network decided to show it again. But now that the truck was here, she had access to the equipment that would allow her to take a better look.

  “Go back to the part right before he’s shot, and hold it,” she said.

  Bobby scrolled back, then hit pause. The problem with video, especially lower resolution video, was that the clarity of the picture came from the motion. A single frame often looked blurry, with less detail. Such was the case here. The man she was sure was her brother wasn’t much more than an indistinct human figure when paused on the screen.

  “Can you go back a second or two,” she said, “then scroll back and forth through this section until I tell you to stop?”

  “Sure,” Bobby replied.

  He took it back to where the man in question turned in the direction of the camera, then he started moving forward through the footage at half speed. They had just passed the point where they’d originally paused when she said, “Stop.”

  The image on the screen froze again.

  “You see that?” She pointed at the man’s left arm.

  “It’s an arm,” Joe said.

  “On the arm. Those dots.” There were three dark spots visible on the exposed underside.

  “That could just be digital noise,” Bobby said.

  She pointed again. “Gavin has a tattoo on the inside of his left arm. One big dot, and two smaller. He was on the swim team in high school. It’s the molecule model for water.”

  The two men looked at the screen again. Bobby then played that portion back and forth a couple of times. It was clear the dots were not digital artifacts, but were indeed on the man’s arm.

  “Jesus,” Bobby said.

  A tear began rolling down Tamara’s cheek. There was no denying it now—Gavin was the one who’d been shot.

  “Play it ahead some,” she said. “Let’s see if we can figure
out who did this to him.”

  Bobby moved the video forward.

  In all the times Tamara had watched it at normal speed, she had been unable to spot anyone who might have shot her brother. Her fear was that slowing the footage down wouldn’t change that.

  “Wait, wait,” Joe said. “Play that last part back.”

  “What did you see?” Tamara asked. Whatever it was, she had missed it.

  “It may have been nothing.”

  Bobby played the segment again, this time going super slow.

  “There,” Joe said. “That guy.”

  He was pointing at a man behind Gavin. The guy’s eyes were clearly fixed on Tamara’s brother. Something bright popped into view near the man’s waist for just a couple of frames, then the man disappeared behind Gavin. Two seconds later in real time, Gavin would be shot.

  “What was that?” Tamara asked, referring to the bright spot.

  “Gun, I think,” Bobby said.

  “Then that’s him.”

  Bobby froze the video. “This is right before your brother gets shot.”

  “The man’s barely on screen,” Joe said. “No wonder we didn’t notice him before.”

  The video didn’t actually show the man shooting Gavin, but it was clear to all three of them he had.

  The question for Tamara now was, what was she going to do about it?

  Twenty-Eight

  THE PLANE ARRIVED two and a half hours later, landing on a private airstrip on ranch land about a half-mile from the Lodge. It was a Gulfstream G250 business jet, outfitted for four passengers plus crew. After it was checked and refueled, Matt led Ash and Chloe aboard.

  The main cabin was separated from the cockpit, so while Ash knew the flight crew was up front, he had no idea who they were. The cabin itself boasted four comfortable-looking leather chairs. The forward two had tables in front of them, while the back two did not. Chloe immediately went for one in the back, while Ash chose a seat up front, tucking the messenger bag that now served as his suitcase under it.

  Ash was cleaned up as best as possible, but still looked like he’d been in a major accident. Rachel had cut his hair so it was now a uniform quarter-inch all the way around. She then did a quick bleach job making it and his eyebrows about three shades lighter than they’d been. The final touch had been contact lenses that changed the color of his eyes from blue to brown. He had two extra pairs in his bag as backups.