There was no SUV in the garage, but there was an old, faded Subaru station wagon. The amount of dust on the windshield indicated it hadn’t been driven for a while.
Along the wall nearest the door was a workbench with tools packed neatly on the shelves beneath it. At the back end of the garage were larger shelves filled with boxes, each carefully marked to identify their contents—“Books,” “Files 2010,” and the like.
On the other side of the Subaru, between it and the wall, was a four-foot-wide area with only a few boxes at the back end. Plenty of room for his sleeping bag.
As he was taking off his pack, he glanced through the windshield of the car. The backseat had been lowered, creating a long, flat open area.
He paused for a moment, thinking.
The interior surface would be a lot more comfortable to lie on than the cement. Given the dust, chances were the owners wouldn’t be using the vehicle anytime soon. Besides, he planned to be up and out of the building before the sun rose, so they would never know he’d been here.
He opened the rear door of the station wagon and climbed in.
Three minutes later, as his sleeping bag warmed to his body temperature, he fell asleep.
A BEEP WOKE Lizzie.
She blinked her eyes, not registering the sound at first.
As she did most evenings, she’d fallen asleep in her favorite chair, the book she was reading—The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton—lying open on her lap.
She was putting her bookmark between the pages when the beep sounded again.
She immediately snapped her head around to look at her computer on the desk by the window. The screen was dark, the computer still in sleep mode. What was on was the smaller computer sitting on top of the short filing cabinet. Her brother’s computer. Even from her chair, she could see that the window for his security software was front and center.
She stood and whirled around, worried that someone had entered her house while she was asleep.
There was no one else in the living room, but that didn’t mean they weren’t somewhere else in the house. She listened for creaking floorboards and sounds of movement.
Nothing.
Still leery that an intruder was inside, she eased open the drawer of the end table, and pulled out the 9mm Glock pistol lying inside. There were guns hidden all over the house. Again, her brother’s doing. At first she had planned on getting rid of them, but the longer she stayed in the house, the more she was comforted by their presence. The truth was, she was beginning to think her brother’s concerns about the world weren’t entirely off-base. Though she didn’t have a television, she watched the news on her computer, and could see that the planet was falling apart.
Gun in hand, she tiptoed over to the computer. There was a warning flashing on the screen.
UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY—GARAGE DOOR #2
Not her house. Her garage. Someone’s trying to steal my car!
She went over to the window next to the fireplace, and pulled back the blackout curtain just enough so that she could see the other building. The area between her house and the garage was empty, and the side door—garage door #2—was closed.
It would be, she thought, since they were already inside.
She let the curtain drop back down, and ran over to the closet by the door. She grabbed her jacket, gloves, and hat, and put them all on. Once outfitted, she traded the Glock for the Mossberg double-barreled shotgun from the rack on the wall. There was no need to check if it was loaded because it always was.
The final things she retrieved were in a box at the bottom of the closet. So far she’d seldom had any use for them, but they were her brother’s pride and joy—a pair of ATN Generation II Night Vision Goggles with head mount. Three grand, he had told her they cost. She couldn’t believe the expense at the time, but she was glad now he’d spent the money.
Instead of exiting through the front door in full view of the garage, she used the back, and made her way to the corner. There, she studied the garage long enough to be satisfied that no one was waiting outside. Then, keeping in the crouch, she ran toward it.
She was three-quarters of the way to the other structure when she heard a noise. Maybe a scrape or a step. One thing was for sure—it had definitely come from inside.
She paused in the no man’s land between her two buildings, unsure what she should do. Despite the shotgun in her hands, she wasn’t a violent person, and didn’t know if she could shoot someone. Even if she could, she didn’t know how many of them were there. One, she might be able to scare off, but two? Three?
This is our home. You can’t just run away and hide, Owen’s voice said. She didn’t hear him all the time, but on occasion her brother would speak to her.
She nodded, and told herself he was right. She needed to protect what was hers, what was theirs. But she also had to be smart about it. She couldn’t just burst into the garage without knowing what she was up against. At some point they would have to come out again. That’s when she’d do something.
She angled toward the front of the garage. If they were going to steal her Subaru, they’d have to come through the big door. Just to play it safe, though, she found a spot where she could watch both the main door and the one on the side. She settled in to wait.
Ten silent minutes went by, then twenty.
What the hell were they doing in there?
When a half hour was gone, Lizzie decided to move in closer so she could hear better. She knelt down in front of the roll-up door and listened. Absolute silence. Thinking they might have heard her walk up, she stayed there for several minutes, sure she would hear something, but the garage remained deathly still.
She sat back up, frowning, and tried to make sense of things.
Maybe she’d been wrong about the noise. Perhaps it had come from the woods beyond the barn, a deer or an owl or something like that. Because winter was so late in coming, a lot of the local wildlife had been acting strange lately, like they didn’t know what they should be doing.
The more she thought about it, though, the more she was sure the noise had come from the garage. Besides, the alarm had gone off.
You’re going to have to check, her brother said.
“I know,” she mouthed silently.
She moved around to the side door. As she reached for the knob, her eyes strayed to the ground. Footprints. One pair, it looked like, and not as large as she would have expected. A woman?
She listened again at the door, and again heard nothing.
You’re stalling, her brother said.
“I’m not,” she whispered. “Leave me alone and let me take care of this.”
Then take care of it.
Not wanting to give him any other reason to doubt her abilities, she grabbed the knob and began turning it. Once the latch was free, she froze for a moment, then gave the knob a gentle push and let the door swing slowly open.
Both hands on the shotgun now, she tensed, fully expecting someone to start scrambling on the other side. But not a step or even a gasp of surprise.
What the hell?
If she didn’t know any better, she’d think whoever had been there was gone.
She gave it a full sixty seconds, then, staying low, stepped inside.
She swept the room, her goggles more than adequate in the darkened space. No one was there. She leaned down and looked under the car, but was equally disappointed.
She looked around again, and paused on the shelves in the back. It was really the only good hiding place, so that’s where her intruder must be. As she took a step in that direction, the Subaru creaked.
She turned quickly, thinking someone was coming around from the other side, but no one was there.
She took another look at the car, and leaned forward, surprised.
Someone was stretched out inside, tucked into a sleeping bag in the back of her car.
A boy.
Fifteen
WITH THE WORLDWIDE reach of satellite television, people acr
oss the globe were able to tune into PCN, CNN, and the other major news networks, and see coverage of the growing number of suspicious shipping containers in the US. Soon people in South America, Europe, and along the coasts of Africa reported seeing similar boxes, open and humming. According to reports, there had been several attempts to move them, but that had resulted in the boxes exploding and killing everyone in the immediate area.
Asia was just waking up, so few people had seen the stories. But as they sat eating their morning meals and drinking coffee and tea, their local stations brought them up to speed on the mystery.
A commentator on NHK in Japan went so far as to suggest that perhaps the government should order people to stay home until it was sure none of the containers were on Japanese soil. It was an idea that might have saved lives, but the government didn’t heed the advice. At least not until they realized that they, too, had been targeted.
By then it was too late.
The government in Singapore was not nearly as slow on the uptake as the Japanese had been. By seven a.m., the entire country, including the extremely busy Changi International Airport, had been closed down, and a twenty-four-hour curfew put in place. Those who hadn’t heard the news were stopped by roadblocks and roving police patrols and sent home. At first, people were not happy, but that quickly changed when they saw on TV that shipping containers, identical to the ones in the US and Japan, had been found at several places on the island.
The idea of the curfew was a good one. Unfortunately, the containers had already been spewing out the virus for hours, and those who had been out at night, a very popular activity on the small island nation, had already been exposed and carried the Sage Flu home to their families and neighbors.
Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and India all scrambled to check if they, too, had been the unknowing recipients of similar containers. While Thailand discovered a few in a couple of its port cities, the others were relieved to find that they were free of the boxes. Knowing it was not something they needed to worry about, several of these countries—plus many more in Africa—were able to turn their attention with pride to the mosquito-eradication program that started that very morning in all of their major cities.
The program had been touted as a cure for malaria by the company sponsoring it, Pishon Chem. Not only would it be eradicating the disease, but it had brought money into the communities by hiring thousands of locals to walk through the cities and spray the streets with the special liquid mixture.
Pishon was an old word. It was one of the rivers that had surrounded the Garden of Eden, and therefore an apt name for one of the Project’s dummy companies.
In less accessible areas, where politics or geography had made the placement of shipping containers and the use of the malaria drug impossible, planes disguised as commercial aircraft dispensed the virus from above. The rate of initial infection from this method was calculated to be low, but low was enough. The Project knew the second round of infection—those getting it from the first—would initiate an incremental growth that would be impossible to stop.
There were other methods of exposure used here and there throughout the world. Misters in grocery stores designed to keep the produce fresh, free perfume and cologne samples being distributed at major international airports, and small bottles of “flavored water” being handed out at tourist sites in several major capitals of the world.
It was a massive effort that had taken decades to plan, and it was commencing nearly flawlessly. The previous directors of Project Eden would probably have been very proud, if it weren’t for the fact they were all dead.
IMPLEMENTATION DAY PLUS ONE
Friday, December 23rd
World Population
7,176,607,708
Change Over Previous Day
+ 283,787
Sixteen
OUTSIDE MUMBAI, INDIA
6:39 AM INDIAN STANDARD TIME
DESPITE HOW EXHAUSTED he’d been when he went to sleep the night before, Sanjay woke well before there was even a hint of daylight. His shoulders burned with tension, and he was finding it impossible to take anything but short, shallow breaths.
He lay that way for hours, trying to will himself back to sleep, but soon realized it was not going to happen. He wondered if he’d ever sleep well again.
If it weren’t for Kusum, he would have gotten up and walked around, hoping that would drive the anxiety from his veins, but she lay in his arms, asleep, and he had no desire to subject her to the same hell he was going through. As it was, he could tell her sleep wasn’t completely untroubled. Several times she’d twisted and jerked as her dreams momentarily took control of the rest of her body. A few times she’d even cried out.
He wondered, as she murmured what sounded like his name, exactly what she was dreaming about. Was he the hero or the villain in her nightmare? Or was it best not to know? He wasn’t even sure which one he was to her in real life.
What if he was wrong? What if what he’d learned were lies?
When the sky in the east started to yellow, he knew he could lie there no longer. He pulled his arm out from under her neck, and started to slowly move away.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Go back to sleep. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I’ve been awake for a while.”
“Oh,” he said, surprised. “I just thought I’d take a walk, see what’s around.”
She turned and looked at him for several seconds. “Were you lying to me yesterday?”
“No.”
She considered him some more, then touched her arm where he’d given her the shot. “I don’t feel any different.”
“It was a vaccine. I don’t think you are supposed to feel any different.”
“I just thought…”
She didn’t finish her thought. It took him a moment, but he finally realized that when she’d gone to sleep, she still believed he had drugged her.
“I told you. I have only been trying to save you.”
“If what you have told me is true, what about my family?”
It wasn’t the first time she’d asked that, and he gave her the answer he’d given before. “I only had the one shot.”
“What about the one you took?”
That she hadn’t asked before, and it surprised him. “I had to make sure it didn’t hurt me before I could give it to you. Don’t you see that?”
She sat up, suddenly determined. “We have to go back. You can get more for my family.”
He rose quickly to his feet. “Impossible. I don’t even know where I could find…” He paused. Yes, he knew where there might be more vaccine. The same place he had gotten it the first time. Still… “Today is the day they will spray the city. We can’t go back there.”
She stood and began wiping off the dirt that clung to her clothes. “We have to try.”
“There is nothing we can do.”
She stared at him, her face hardening. “Then I will go without you.”
She turned toward the road and started walking.
“Wait,” he said, grabbing her arm.
She quickly twisted free, but didn’t turn away. “If you care about me like you say, you will help me to save my family.”
“By the time we get there, it may already be too late.”
“I will not just wait here. I have to do whatever I can.”
Again, she started walking.
“Kusum! Please!”
She didn’t stop.
“Kusum!” She’d almost disappeared into the jungle. “All right, all right! I’ll drive you back.”
She slowed to a halt and looked at him. “Let’s go.”
THEY TRAVELED DOWN the rutted road toward the highway. In the first light of day, the jungle looked thinner and less menacing than it had in the dark.
It took them a full half hour to reach the blacktop road. Sanjay was surprised. He hadn’t realized they’d ridden that far into the wilderness.
It wasn’t long before he said, “We have to make a stop.”
“Why?”
“The tank is almost empty. We would never make it all the way there.”
He could hear her sigh, frustrated. “Okay, but as quick as we can.”
A few minutes later, he saw a roadside stop that was selling petrol out of cans. While a young boy helped him fill his tank, Kusum went inside the hut that served as a shop, but she was only gone a few seconds before she rushed back out.
“Sanjay! Come quick!”
He looked at her, confused, but she’d already disappeared back through the door. He paid the boy for the fuel, and jogged over to the hut.
Inside were several tables full of food items for purchase, and two coolers stuffed with drinks. But Kusum wasn’t looking at any of them. She was standing near the back corner, staring at a TV on a table. Three other people were also crowded around, watching.
A BBC news anchor was framed in the center of the screen.
“…dozens of locations around the globe,” the man said.
“What’s going on?” Sanjay asked.
Kusum and one of the others shhh’d him, their attention never leaving the screen.
“Last evening local time, in the US state of Georgia,” the anchor went on, “firefighters in the city of Athens attempted to relocate one of the boxes. This resulted in a fiery explosion that killed five firemen and three civilians. Several more similar incidents have been reported from elsewhere in the States and in Europe. Officials in most countries have now suspended all orders to move the boxes, and have begun evacuating persons living anywhere near suspected containers.
“There has still been no word on what the container’s purpose might be, or who is behind them. Several helicopters—both news and police—have flown over boxes to get a look inside.” The image switched to a downward shot of one of the boxes. It was rectangular in shape, large. While the top was open, there were two large circular areas side by side near the lip, each shimmering slightly. “Analysts have determined that what you are looking at are two exhaust-type fans that seem to be pushing whatever is inside into the air. Speculation has been focused on the possibility that the contents are biological in nature. Investigative teams in many nations have taken the precaution of wearing protective gear within a half-mile radius of the boxes.
The Project Eden Thrillers Box Set 1: Books 1 - 3 (Sick, Exit 9, & Pale Horse) Page 61