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

by Brett Battles

  “Mr. Vanduffel, John Palmer in Perth.”

  “John, good to hear from you. How are you?” Mr. Vanduffel spoke English well enough to almost but not quite hide his Dutch accent.

  “I’m well, thanks. You?”

  “Very good. Thank you.”

  Without even thinking about it, Palmer began doodling on the pad of paper next to his phone. It was an old habit, an outlet for the frustrated teenage artist still buried deep inside him. “Just wanted to let you know that your first shipment’s arrived, and at this very moment is being safely stored away in my warehouse.”

  “Excellent news. How does everything look? Any sign of damage?”

  “Checked the containers myself and they all look fine on the outside. Do you want us to open them up and do an inspection?”

  Mr. Vanduffel paused as if considering the idea. “No, I don’t think that will be necessary. But thank you for offering.”

  “Not a problem. If you change your mind, happy to do it.”

  “Thank you. I should have the distribution plan worked out in the next day or so, and will send it to you then. My hope is to have the containers that arrived today already on their way to the different sites before the next shipment comes in.”

  “That would be great but no worries. I have the room if that doesn’t work out.”

  “Good to know. Thank you again. We appreciate your efficiency. Have a good day.”

  “You, too.”

  Palmer snickered at the drawing he created, a rendering of what he thought Mr. Vanduffel looked like. Not half bad, either, though the mustache he’d given him was a little cartoony for his taste. He tossed the drawing in the trash, and walked back out to the warehouse floor. He was happy to see that over half the containers were already stacked in place.

  Yes, he thought. Things were getting better. He could feel it. The worst was behind them.

  Next year would be great.

  S. B. KELLER MEMORIAL LIBRARY

  HAWKINS UNIVERSITY

  ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

  JEANNIE SAUNDERS SHUT her book. “Okay, I’m done.”

  Corey Wilson smiled, but kept his eyes on his laptop’s screen. “You finished all five chapters?”

  “Four.”

  “Thought you had to do five.”

  From the corner of his eye, he could see her scowl. “I’ve read enough for today. Come on. Let’s go get something to eat.”

  This time he did look up. “Don’t know if you noticed, but, unlike you, I haven’t finished yet.”

  “That paper’s not even due until the end of the semester,” she argued.

  “Because it’s a research paper. Meaning I’ve gotta do a lot of research first before I write it.”

  “Ugh!” She leaned back in her chair. “What am I supposed to do? Just sit here and wait?”

  “Go get something to eat.”

  “How much longer are you going to be here?”

  “At least another couple of hours.”

  “Come on, Corey. I’m hungry.”

  “Go. I’m not stopping you.

  The scowl reappeared. “Fine.” She stood up. “Want me to bring you back something?”

  “Banana?”

  She came around the table, leaned down, and gave him a kiss. “You’d better still be working when I come back.”

  As she walked away, he returned his attention to his computer. The research paper he was working on was for a class called Business of Agriculture 523. Ag business also happened to be the emphasis of the MBA he was working on. The assignment was to pick out a particular agriculture-associated company and do a detailed analysis of their business model, strengths, and weaknesses. Corey had chosen Varni Gen-Sym, a seed company specializing in genetically enhanced produce. The reason he went with Varni was because it was the same company that had been providing seeds to his uncle’s farm for the last several years.

  What he hadn’t expected was to find that the company was basically boring. There was no real meat to sink his teeth into. Not only was it a family-run business that only sold seeds, but it didn’t even develop its own product. Instead, it licensed its seed designs from others, and had no research arm of its own. Even its profit was steady but unremarkable.

  He’d decided that morning he was going to look around and see if he could find something more interesting. The big problem was, the obvious companies had already been snatched up by his classmates. He needed to find something different, perhaps a little unusual, a company no one else would have even thought to claim.

  So far he’d come up with a couple of different possibilities. Top on that list was Komai Produce. It was a regional company in the Pacific Northwest, so not well known to the students of Hawkins University. What Corey liked about Komai was that it was considerably more diverse than Varni. It had started off as a produce distributor, but had since entered several other areas including produce display, where it had a division that created consumer-friendly bins and storage units that kept produce fresh by means of micro-temperature control and automated misters.

  Corey particularly liked the fact Komai was expanding while a lot of other organizations were holding pat. That afternoon he was working his way through articles about the company, starting with the earliest he could find and moving forward.

  The story he’d been reading when Jeannie interrupted him was from six months earlier. He finished that, then moved on to the next one, but after only a few paragraphs he looked up, frustrated. Turned out Komai had been purchased outright five months earlier by a company called Hidde-Kel Holdings.

  That was a bummer. He’d really liked the small-guy-against-the-world aspect, and was far less interested in recounting the successes of a larger conglomerate.

  Having already spent so much time on Komai, he read some more, wanting to understand the original owners’ motivation for selling. Though the details were kept private, it appeared as though the three friends who started Komai had come out of the deal considerably wealthier than they had ever expected. They had created a good company so Corey wasn’t particularly surprised. He noted one odd thing, though. None of the three founders was asked to stay on beyond the date of final purchase. Wasn’t that pretty standard practice, to ensure stability and continuity for an organization as it moved forward? Apparently Hidde-Kel had decided it was unnecessary in this case.

  Maybe there was something here of interest after all—what happens to a regional food business after it’s purchased by a larger company.

  Yeah, that might work.

  In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. He could even get a little bit into the parent company and show why the two were a good fit—or not. This could be a huge paper if he wasn’t careful, but that thought didn’t scare him at all. It was more like a challenge.

  The Effects of Hidde-Kel Holdings on Komai Produce. A no-brainer title.

  He didn’t need to look any further. This was it. This was what he wanted to do. Sure, it was a slight spin on the assignment, but it wouldn’t take much to talk Professor Nesbitt into okaying it.

  With renewed enthusiasm, he hit the Web. First up, find out more about Hidde-Kel and see what else they might be into.

  Four

  I.D. MINUS 20 DAYS

  MATT HAMILTON RAISED the Taurus OSS, sighted down the barrel, and pulled the trigger—once, twice, three times. The first shot nearly ripped the target in half. The following two finished it off.

  If not for the ear protection he was wearing, the roar of the pistol in the enclosed firing range would have temporarily deafened him. As it was, the muffled pop was still enough to cause his aging ears to ring.

  He took aim again, this time imagining where the target had been, and sent off three more shots in rapid succession. It wasn’t quite as satisfying when there was nothing there to hit.

  He pushed the retrieval button and the remnants of the target rushed toward him. So far, he’d already gone through fifteen of them and an entire box of ammo.
It was the only thing he could think of doing to keep himself from going crazy. The concentration down the sight, the power of the gun, the smell of the powder—each took his mind away, and kept him from wondering what was going on.

  He clipped in a new target and hit the button again, sending the paper flying back toward the other end of the range. He raised the .45, and imagined the flight his bullet would take.

  “Matt!” a distant voice called out.

  He pulled the trigger, and watched unmoving as his shot hit the imaginary foe in the bridge of his nose. He held his position for a moment longer, then lowered his gun and turned. Standing just outside his shooting stall was Rich Paxton.

  Matt raised a hopeful eyebrow. “They check in?”

  Pax shook his head. “No.”

  That made it seventy-two hours since their missing scout team had last made contact. Matt had been trying not to assume the worst, but he couldn’t avoid it now. The irony, of course, was that this could very well mean the team had discovered what it had been sent out to find.

  He closed his eyes for a second. Yes, they were fighting a war, and yes, people were going to die doing things he sent them out to do, but he didn’t have to be okay with it.

  He removed the mag from the Taurus, emptied the chamber, then put the gun and the unused ammunition on a shelf along the back wall.

  Nodding to his friend, he said, “Let’s go.”

  He followed Pax into the corridor and down to the Bunker’s communications room, ignoring as he always did the pain in his bad knee.

  Sometimes it was hard to remember they were over thirty feet below the basement level of the Lodge—the Ranch’s main building. At that moment, though, Matt was keenly aware of it, feeling every inch of dirt pressing down on him.

  The year that was finally coming to an end had not been a good one. First there had been the Sage Flu outbreak in California during the spring, a planned attack meant to test a particularly vicious viral strain. There was no question in Matt’s mind that the people of Project Eden—the people he and his meager group of like-minded individuals were trying to stop—considered the test a success. Even at conservative estimates, when the virus was in its deadly phase, its mortality rate was near 99.8%. Unleashed on a worldwide scale, it would mean the deaths of seven billion people, and unleashing it on the world was exactly what the Project had in mind.

  Not long after the outbreak scattered, reports came in from all over the globe. The few warehouses and depots owned and operated by the Project that Matt’s people had been able to identify were being stocked with food, medical supplies, weapons, and pretty much anything else the Project would need to survive the apocalypse it was planning on causing. These were just the tip of the iceberg, he knew. There had to be more, hundreds, maybe over a thousand.

  Matt and his people, taking a cue from the French in World War II, had started referring to themselves as the resistance. They’d been trying for years to get a better handle on the Project, and to figure out a way to stop it before the organization carried out its plans. Sometimes it felt like Matt and his team were getting close, that they would be able to stop the horror before it happened. But that had just been a dream.

  The Project had been going on for decades, and now had people entrenched in governments and businesses and organizations all over the globe, in position to obstruct any potential threat to their plans. In the last six months, the resistance had been falling farther and farther behind, and then, three weeks earlier, the message had come in from Heron, the only operative they still had within Project Eden. They didn’t have years to stop the coming genocide. They didn’t even have months. Seven weeks, the message had said. Tops. Which meant no more than four now.

  The Project was calling it Implementation Day.

  Such a sterile name for such a horrific plan.

  The Bunker’s communications room had become the de facto command center for the resistance. There were nearly two dozen people there when Matt and Pax arrived. While a handful was manning the actual communication terminals used to keep in contact with field teams, most were gathered in the far corner near the conference table.

  Rachel Hamilton, Matt’s sister, was the only one sitting down. The others were looking at a map of the Arctic Circle pinned to the wall.

  Out of habit, Matt glanced at the row of monitors that had been set up on a table nearby. Five were playing feeds from the major cable news networks: CNN, MSNBC, FOX, PCN, and BBC. At the moment, the reports seemed to be the typical crap that had no relation to anything important. If Heron’s message was right, though, that would change soon.

  As Matt walked up, the others moved to the side so he could approach the map. Black Xs marked the current locations of the different scout teams that had been sent north. Each team had been given a list of ten to fifteen research stations and outposts to check. This had been the final part of Heron’s message, an arrow pointing in the direction of Bluebird, Project Eden’s main facility where all the decisions were supposedly made.

  Best location BB n of sixty-six. Sci fac.

  Best location for Bluebird, north of the sixty-sixth parallel. Science facility.

  The sixty-sixth parallel was basically the location of the Arctic Circle, minus a few degrees. Though sparsely populated, there were a considerable amount of scientific outposts north of the imaginary line. If the information was correct, one would be Bluebird. The problem was, which one?

  Five teams had been sent out, each designated by a color: orange, green, purple, yellow, and brown. Lines were drawn from location to location, indicating the path a particular team was taking. Those places already checked and cleared were circled in black. So far the tally was twenty-seven. Those that had been checked but with inconclusive findings were circled in blue. There were only two of these. Once Bluebird was found, it would be circled in red.

  The missing team’s color was yellow. Matt retraced its progress from where the team had started along the northern edge of Greenland, then across the Lincoln Sea to Ellesmere Island in northern Canada, Axel Heiberg Island, Yanok Island, Amund Ringnes Island, Ellef Ringnes Island, and then nothing.

  “The weather’s pretty rough up there right now,” Leon Owens said. “Could be they got caught in a storm.”

  That had definitely been a chance they’d taken, sending their teams out as winter was approaching, but given the deadline, they couldn’t very well just wait until spring. At first they’d been aided by a mild fall that seemed to affect the entire Northern Hemisphere. Matt had hoped that would continue, but always knew it was unlikely.

  He touched the X on Ellef Ringnes Island. This was where the team’s last transmission had originated from. The outpost they had checked there was a relatively new facility constructed only a few miles away from a permanent automated weather station that had been on the island for years. Was it possible that the facility was Bluebird? Had they, perhaps, hidden their identity enough so that yellow team had reported the location as checked and cleared, then been eliminated by the Project? Or had the team made it to its next destination, only to be captured or killed soon after arrival?

  Matt followed the line to what yellow team’s next stop would have been. Lougheed Island. By the schedule, the scouts should have arrived there two days ago, right around the time they stopped reporting in. So could that be where Bluebird was?

  It just didn’t feel right. It was too…easy.

  “Josh?” Rachel called out. “Can you play the yellow team’s last message for me again?”

  Josh was one of the people manning the communication terminals. “Sure,” he said.

  Matt glanced at his sister. He could tell something was bugging her and she was trying to work it out. He refrained from asking her what she was thinking, though, knowing from experience it was better to just let her go.

  The room was wired so that communications could either be heard over headphones worn by the people at the terminals, or on a speaker system that broadcasted the voices to
the whole room.

  After a few seconds, a voice fighting through static said over the speakers, “Yellow calling Bravo Four. Yellow calling Bravo Four.” Bravo Four was the code name for the Ranch.

  “Bravo Four. Go, Yellow.” The new voice was crisp and clear. Matt recognized it as belonging to Gary Atkins, a member of the communications team.

  “Lake hunter. Repeat, lake hunter.”

  There was a pause as Gary no doubt was checking the list of codes to make sure yellow team had used the correct one. Each was used only once, and in a specific order.

  “Roger, Yellow. Quiet night.” That would be the return code.

  “Status, Y6 clear. Proceeding to Y7.” Ellef Ringnes clear. Proceeding to Lougheed Island.

  “Roger, Yellow. Y6 clear. Proceeding to Y7. Good luck.”

  “Thanks, Bravo Four. Yellow out.”

  The recording cut off.

  “Play it again,” Rachel said.

  The message once more filled the room, but whatever Rachel had noticed, Matt had yet to pick up.

  When it was through, she said, “Play the reports from the last four stops.”

  They listened as the yellow team reported in from two different locations on Amund Ringnes Island, one on Yanok Island, and one on Axel Heiberg Island. Each report was basically the same: target checked and cleared, moving on.

  When they finished, Matt couldn’t help but ask, “What is it?”

  Rachel frowned and shook her head. “I…I don’t know. I thought I had something, but…”

  “What?”

  Again, she shook her head. “Nothing, I guess.”

  He knew that was a lie. Whatever it was, she was still mulling it over. But that was her way. Once she had it figured out, if she ever did, she’d share it with him.

  He looked back at the map. “We can’t ignore the fact that they might have found Bluebird. We’re going to have to divert one of the other teams to check this out. Leon, correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like brown team is almost done with its route.”