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

by Brett Battles

  See that everything you’ve told me is crazy, more like it. But even as he thought that, there was a small kernel of doubt tapping at the back of his mind.

  He took the next exit, then switched places with her and tried to get some sleep. But each time he started to drift off he would see the same emergency vehicles that had been parked on his street the night Ellen died. Only they weren’t parked just on his street now.

  They were everywhere.

  Forty-One

  NIGHT HAD DESCENDED over Fort Irwin, the sky filling with the arcing band of the Milky Way. But Tamara wasn’t looking at the sky as she paced impatiently near the lights Bobby had set up for her next report. Joe had disappeared fifteen minutes earlier. She had been under the impression he was taking a call from the network, but how long did it take for them to say, “Yes, play the video”?

  The three of them had already been waiting for over an hour for a response. An hour! It was enough to make her want to punch the side of the van over and over. Couldn’t the network see how important this was? Couldn’t they understand she needed to do this for her brother? The reporting was good, and the evidence was there. She just needed the damn go-ahead.

  Maybe she should have just ignored Joe, and had Bobby send it up live during her spot. Maybe they should still do that.

  Not maybe.

  With a renewed sense of determination, she headed around the van to tell Bobby to get the report ready, but before she reached the door, the sound of multiple helicopters cut out any ability to have a conversation.

  She moved to the end of the van. Over the past several hours, there had been a drastic increase in the amount of helicopters landing near the media area. Every time they arrived, Tamara would check, hoping they’d be the two helicopters from earlier, the ones with the man who’d killed Gavin. But they hadn’t returned.

  Until now.

  “Bobby!” she yelled.

  Realizing he couldn’t hear her over the noise, she ran back and grabbed his arm, then pointed at the camera. As soon as he picked it up, she pulled him to the end of the van. When he saw the helicopters, he raised the camera and turned it on.

  Like earlier, several men climbed out of each helicopter, then gathered together. When they finished talking, they started heading as a group in the general direction of the media area.

  “What are they doing?” Bobby asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tamara replied. “But try to get a shot of each of their faces.”

  “It’s a little dark.” While the landing area was flooded with bright light, the media area had to make do with a few scattered floodlights on poles.

  “Do what you can.”

  As the men got closer, she could see the two in front scanning around, looking for something. Then one of them seemed to settle on the PCN van. He said something to the other man, then the whole group veered slightly to the left and headed straight for Tamara and Bobby.

  “What the hell?” Bobby said.

  The men were still a good hundred feet away when someone grabbed Tamara and Bobby’s arms from behind. They both turned quickly. It was Peter Chavez.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

  “What are you talking about?” Tamara asked.

  “I’m talking about saving your lives.”

  “Saving our lives?” She tried to pull her arm out of his grasp, but he didn’t let go.

  Moving his face close to hers, he said, “Those soldiers? They’re here to kill you. Just like they killed those two kids out in the desert. Like they killed your brother.”

  “What? How did you—”

  “Come on!”

  He pulled at her until she was running along with him. Bobby, who’d heard it all, fell in beside her. Chavez led them on an angle that kept the van between them and the approaching soldiers until they were able to duck around the back of a transmission truck belonging to a Los Angeles network affiliate.

  “How do you know that’s what they’re here to do?” Tamara asked, shaken.

  “They know about your report. They’ve killed it in New York, and they’ve already got Joe, but you’re still a loose end.”

  “Joe? But how—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, cutting her off. “We have to keep moving.”

  He pushed off the truck, and ran toward the building the media had used to sleep in. Tamara shared a quick look with Bobby, then they both took off after Chavez.

  “All the way through,” Chavez whispered once they were inside.

  The large room in front still had cots set up all over the place, so they had to weave around them to get to the door on the far wall. Passing through it, Tamara glanced back at the building’s entrance, sure that soldiers would rush through and pursue them. But, so far, they hadn’t shown up.

  Perhaps Chavez was wrong. How did he even know the soldiers were after them in the first place?

  “Are you sure—”

  “Come on, come on!” he yelled.

  They were in a corridor now that seemed to run the rest of the length of the building.

  “Peter, please,” she said, desperately trying to convince herself that everything was all right. “How do you know they’re really after us?”

  Peter kept looking toward the door that led back into the main room, obviously anxious to keep moving. “I have a friend at your network. Dean Gaboury. Do you know him?”

  “Dean? Yes, sure.” Dean was one of the suits in charge of afternoon news coverage.

  “He told me your story’s been killed, and that Joe’s already been detained. He said they were coming after you, too, and asked if I could hide you someplace safe, until they can get this worked out. Your network doesn’t like the idea of its reporters being arrested.”

  “Arrested for what?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Jesus,” Bobby said.

  “No kidding. Now, let’s go,” Chavez said.

  Just as they passed through the door at the end of the hall that led back outside, a voice called out from behind them. “Stop right there!”

  Tamara’s fear level skyrocketed.

  “Over there,” Chavez said.

  He moved across a short expanse of concrete, and pulled open the door of a building that looked very much like the one they’d just exited. Tamara was the last one to pass inside, but Chavez was still able to get the door closed before the soldiers exited the other building.

  Halfway through, Tamara stopped. “Hold on, hold on. We can’t keep running like this. What’s really going to happen if they find us? They’ll put us in a room and ask us some questions?”

  “You know what they did to those kids in the desert, to your brother.”

  Her eyes widened. “But…but we’re on a base. People have seen us, right? They can’t do anything like that to us.”

  Chavez stepped over to her and grabbed her shoulders, looking her in the eyes. “All right. The truth. Those men are not in the U.S. Army. They are something else entirely. They operate on a whole different set of rules. Their only goal is to get rid of loose ends. Joe is dead, and if you don’t come with me, you’ll both be next.” He dropped his hands to his side.

  “Joe’s dead?’” Bobby asked, shocked.

  Tamara stared at him, unable to speak.

  “Blue pill or red pill,” Chavez said. “Blue pill, you stay in your ignorant world, go out there and talk to your soldier friends, and stay happy for maybe another hour until they put a bullet in your brain. Red pill, I save your lives.”

  “I’m taking the red pill,” Bobby said quickly.

  Tamara’s lower lip trembled slightly as she licked it. “Okay.”

  Chavez nodded once, then continued down the hallway.

  When they exited the building, they found themselves in a small parking lot. There were half a dozen cars, a couple pickups, and a medium-sized, white cargo truck. Chavez led them over to the truck. The back was already open so he jumped inside, then held a h
and down to help them up.

  “This is too obvious,” Tamara said. “They find us in here for sure.”

  “Trust me. They won’t.”

  Bobby climbed up on his own, then Tamara reluctantly took Chavez’s hand. Once she was on board, he went to the front of the cargo area and touched two of the screws holding the panels in place. A small section of the wall popped open about a quarter inch. He put his fingers into the gap, then pulled it all the way open like a door.

  Inside was a three-foot-wide space that ran the width of the truck.

  “It’s not a ton of room, but you’ll be safe. The walls are insulated. Still, I wouldn’t talk very much. There’s food and water, and a pot in case you need to relieve yourself.”

  “How long do you think we’ll be in there?” Bobby asked, surprised.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Whose truck is this?” Tamara asked. “I don’t remember it from the roadblock.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s safe. Once you’re inside, there’s a latch. Close that and no one can open it from out here. Don’t undo it until you hear someone knock three times like this.” He tapped lightly against the metal, knock-knock, then paused a second before adding the final knock. He looked out the open end of the truck as if he’d heard something. “I know you have questions, but now’s not the time. Just get in.”

  Bobby immediately went inside.

  Tamara looked Peter in the eyes. “You’re not lying to us, right?” she asked, already knowing he wasn’t.

  “I’m not.”

  “And Joe is dead?”

  He nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry. Now get in quickly. Please.”

  She took a breath and passed through the opening, then watched with a nightmarish sense of the unreal as Peter closed the door behind her.

  Forty-Two

  IN THE DEAD of night, the landscape of Eastern Oregon didn’t look much different than that of the Mojave Desert surrounding Barker Flats. Perhaps it had a bit more scrub covering the ground, but like the Mojave, neither the flatlands nor the nearby mountains had any trees.

  Chloe had done well, and had already saved them an hour by the time Ash took over driving again. Their destination was approximately fifty miles north of the Nevada border, in the southeast corner of the state. That was, of course, if Olivia had told them the truth.

  What buildings they’d seen so far had been few and far between. There were stretches where it seemed as if this part of the country had either been abandoned or never claimed in the first place. None of it served to boost Ash’s confidence.

  “Should be five-point-two more miles,” Chloe said, her gaze never leaving the road.

  Ash glanced at the odometer. She was right. “How do you do that?”

  She shrugged. “It’s just the way my mind works, I guess.”

  They drove another tenth of a mile before he asked, “Do you think you could do that before? When you still had your memories?”

  “I have no idea.”

  More silence. “Do you think they did that to you?”

  “Can we not talk about this?” she asked, obviously uncomfortable.

  “Sorry.”

  He looked over at her, but she had her back partially turned to him, her eyes staring out the side window. He started to say something else, but decided it was best to leave it alone. Besides, they were closing in on NB7, and he needed to focus so that he didn’t miss anything.

  According to Olivia, just ahead they would find a road that led to the West.

  “It’s more asphalt than dirt,” she had said. “But not by much.”

  At the forty-nine-mile mark, Ash started scanning the left side of the road in case Chloe’s mileage estimate had been wrong, but it hadn’t been. The road was right where she said it would be. It had the forgotten look of having been abandoned to the elements long ago, as if its construction had been well intended, but its promise never fulfilled. Given the fact that it was literally in the middle of nowhere, Ash wondered why it had been built at all.

  Even if Olivia had not cautioned them that the road would be watched, Ash would have still kept driving by just like he was doing. She had told them their only chance was if they hiked in. He didn’t like the idea of following her instructions precisely, but there didn’t seem to be much of a choice.

  He drove on for another half mile, then pulled the car to the side of the road. In the wide open landscape, there was really no place to hide the vehicle.

  As he turned off the engine, he looked at Chloe. “Stay with the car.”

  “No way.”

  “I want to make sure it’s still here when I get back with my kids.”

  She looked outside, scanning both ways down the road. There were no other headlights in sight. “Where would it go?”

  “Just stay here.”

  He got out and circled around to the trunk. From the weapons case, he removed another gun, filled its mag, then set it on the floor of the trunk. He grabbed his spare mags and the container of little bangs, and distributed them between his jeans and his jacket. Picking up the spare pistol, he shut the trunk, then walked around and knocked on the passenger window.

  Chloe stared at him for a moment, then lowered it.

  “Here,” he said, handing the SIG to her. “Just in case.”

  She pulled back as if it might bite her, but then reluctantly took it.

  “You know how to fire that?” he asked.

  “I’ll figure it out.”

  He nodded, then said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Her only response was to roll the window back up.

  He checked both ways before he crossed the empty highway, then angled into the desert on the other side, paralleling the access road that was supposedly being watched. Olivia said NB7 was about a mile and a half in, on the side of the road Ash was currently on.

  His eyes quickly adjusted to the moonless night as he made his way through the scrub-covered land. At one point he thought he heard something in the brush. He paused, listening, but the sound didn’t return. He decided it was rabbit, perhaps, or whatever other types of animals might choose to live in this nothingness.

  As he passed the mile mark, his jaw tensed. Mike had warned him to be careful about believing anything Olivia said. Maybe this was just a lie. Maybe he was the only thing out here. Maybe Josie and Brandon were hundreds of miles away, and would die because he had chosen to follow the directions of an obviously deranged woman locked up in a secret prison.

  If that turned out to be the case, he would go back to the Bluff and kill her.

  He slowed his pace. If NB7 was here, he had to be close. Better to sneak up on it than to stumble.

  Again, he heard something in the brush. It came from behind him, maybe thirty yards. He crouched down, then looked back the way he’d come, letting his eyes focus on nothing in particular.

  There. Just off to the right of the line he’d been following, a shadow hovering above the brush and moving in his direction.

  A lookout, he thought. If he’s already seen me, I’m done.

  If that was the case, half a dozen others were probably closing in on him from different directions, and he was going to get taken down before he even got to NB7.

  Should he run? Stay where he was? Or what?

  He looked at the shadow again. It had moved to about forty feet away, then stopped. Carefully, he turned, scanning around, looking for others, but the only thing he could see was more brush. If there was anyone else out there, they had to be lying on the ground.

  If he’d had time to play games, he would have kept moving to see if the shadow was really following him. But time was something he didn’t have.

  He pulled out his gun, and made a beeline straight for the shadow. Before he’d even gone halfway, it disappeared. Not moved to the right or the left, or any other direction, just disappeared. But he didn’t slow until he was within a few feet of where it had been.

  He was sure whoever it was had dropped to
the ground, blending in with the brush, but there was no one there. He swung his gun around, angling it toward the ground, knowing the person had to be close.

  “I could have killed you if I wanted to.”

  He whipped around. Standing directly behind him, her gun at her side, was Chloe.

  “I told you to stay with the car,” he whispered.

  “And I never said I would. You need me,” she whispered back.

  “I don’t need you. I can do this myself. Now just go back.”

  He turned and started walking in the direction he’d been headed. After only a couple of seconds, he could hear her following him.

  “Chloe, it’s not safe,” he said, turning back.

  “And going into the psych hospital earlier was?”

  “That was different. You were the one who knew the layout. I had no choice. But you don’t know this place. I’m not going to put you in a position where you might get hurt.”

  “Not your decision,” she said. “I’m here, and I’m coming with you. Now let’s go, unless you want to stand here all night arguing.”

  Short of carrying her back to the car and locking her in the trunk, he saw there was nothing he could do to stop her.

  “Okay,” he said. “But you do everything I say.”

  He took her silence for assent, though deep down, he knew it wasn’t.

  For the next five minutes, his concerns that Olivia had been lying continued to grow. There was nothing but dirt and brush. No buildings at all.

  “What’s that?” Chloe whispered a couple minutes later.

  She was still behind him, so he had to look back to see what she was talking about. She pointed twenty degrees to their right. It took him a moment, but then he saw it, too.

  Just ahead, the terrain dipped into a shallow wash, then rose on the other side, perhaps not high enough to be called a hill, but definitely higher than this side of the wash. At the very top was a post or, maybe, the trunk of a small tree. It appeared to be less than a half-foot in diameter, and stood two feet above the brush.

  “There’s another one,” Chloe said. “About twenty feet to the left.”