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BELINDA RAMSEY’S SNOWMOBILE ride south has taken her just over the Illinois border when the motor begins to smoke. Another two miles on, the machine dies. With no other options, Belinda starts hiking toward the town of South Beloit, hoping she can find someplace warm to sleep. She tells herself she will look for a new snowmobile, but in the morning. She’s too tired to do that now.
As she nears a neighborhood on the edge of town, she hears something in the distance. At first she thinks someone has left a music player on somewhere, perhaps looping through a playlist that will go on and on until the power finally goes out.
But it’s not music, she soon realizes. It’s words being spoken.
She skips the neighborhood and continues toward town, toward the sound, and it’s not long before she can start making out what’s being said.
“…help you. We will be in the parking lot of the high school on Prairie Hill Road in ten minutes. We will stay there for an additional thirty. This is the Untied Nations. We are here to help you. We will be in the parking lot of…”
Belinda starts to laugh in happiness. She’s not going to need a snowmobile tomorrow. She’s not going to ever need a snowmobile again. The UN is here. Her nightmare is over.
She searches for a road sign and finds she is actually on Prairie Hill Road. But she hasn’t seen a high school yet, and has no idea how far away it is.
Though the snow is not as deep here as it was in Madison, it’s still too deep for her to run through, so she has to settle for walking fast. Even then, it’s over twenty minutes before the high school comes into sight. She is both relieved that she doesn’t have far to go, and scared to death that the UN will already be gone.
But a blue tourist bus with UN painted in white on the side is idling in the parking lot.
She weeps as a soldier meets her at the lot’s entrance. She thanks him over and over as he gives her some food and guides her onto the bus.
Three of the seats are already taken. Their occupants, wrapped in blankets, stare at her. She smiles hesitantly, then notices not one of them is sitting near another.
Hiking her scarf over her face, she takes her own isolated spot.
As the bus begins to roll, she leans back and relaxes. Before sleep can take her, though, she remembers her journal and her promise to record her journey. She opens it, enters the time and date, and then writes a single word:
SAVED!
__________
BEN BOWERMAN STANDS in the modest living room of the Cape Cod house in Santa Cruz where he found Iris the previous day. He has returned because it’s the only place he knows that she might come back to. But she is not there.
He’s now sure he will never see the picture his mother loved so much again, or retrieve the earrings he’d picked out for Martina. Tomorrow he will head south once more, this time in the car he found in Salinas. Tonight, he will find a hotel and sleep.
But he finds he can’t leave the house just yet. He wants to know what happened here, what he got tangled up in. If there are answers in the house, he figures he will find them in the dead man’s room.
Seeing Mr. Carlson on the bed for a third time is not nearly so disturbing as it was before. Ben can see now there’s something under the man’s hand, partly hidden by the covers. A piece of paper. Ben teases it free without having to touch body or blanket. There are words scribbled on it, but the writer’s hand was so shaky Ben can only make out “Iris” and “door.”
He searches the dresser but the closet is where he finds his answer. Tucked against one end is a filing cabinet, and every item inside pertains either directly or indirectly to Iris, Mr. Carlson’s daughter.
The words on the documents say many things, but all paint the same picture. The girl does not see the world the same way others do, and never has. Drugs have been tried, hospital stays, intensive therapy. Some appear to have worked better than others, but none truly well.
Ben wants to still feel angry at Iris, but he doesn’t.
What he feels instead is tired.
__________
AT SOME POINT, Martina gives up looking for the girl and just drives. She goes into the hills above Ventura, back to the coast, and finally down Highway 1 through Oxnard toward Malibu.
She runs out of gas not long before the sun goes down, so she leaves the bike at the side of the road, wanders aimlessly onto the beach, and sits on the berm crest, facing the water.
If she’s paying attention, she will see a beautiful sunset, but she’s not. Her mind is both idle and racing.
She doesn’t mean to, but she will sleep here tonight. And when she wakes in the morning, though she won’t voice it, she will feel for the first time that she is completely alone.
__________
THE ONE THING Sanjay did not take from the Pishon Chem compound was a box of syringes. While the others are resting as they wait for the sun to set, he and Kusum search local medical facilities until they collect enough syringes to give shots to everyone they have rescued.
Once darkness finally falls, Sanjay, Kusum, Jabala, and Prabal say good-bye to Arjun and Darshana, who will be staying in the city to try to stop others from going to the survival station. They then head out of Mumbai with the newly inoculated escapees, in a bus they find on a nearby street.
When they arrive at the boarding school, those they have rescued are given food and shown to empty dorms, while the boxes of vaccine are stored away.
“Why are you not sleeping?” Kusum asks Sanjay later as they lie in bed.
“Why are you not?” he counters.
“I am thinking about the vaccine.”
It’s what he’s thinking about, too. “We cannot wait for people to come to us,” he says. “We need to somehow let them know we can help them.”
“I know,” she says. “But how exactly are we supposed to do that without the people from Pishon Chem finding us?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “That is why I cannot sleep.”
__________
THE RESTAURANT DINING room of the Isabella Island Resort seems a lot smaller after so many hours with everyone jammed into it. Or maybe it’s knowing what they’re hiding from that’s making it feel like the walls are pushing in, Robert thinks.
The liquid that coated the windows after the plane flew over is now dry, but no one is foolish enough to think the danger has passed.
As the evening grows late, the satellite phone Pax has brought with him rings. When he finishes talking, he waves Robert over and says, “You’re going to want to turn on the TV.”
Robert does, and is surprised to find that Gustavo Di Sarsina has been replaced by a familiar face—Tamara Costello, a reporter he has seen on TV in the past.
No one sleeps for hours, as they all watch Tamara deliver her message over and over, never quite the same way twice. When the TV is finally turned off, even Pax’s most ardent critics are starting to believe he’s been telling the truth.
Robert’s eyelids grow heavy as he lies next to Estella later.
“Do you think they might come back?” she asks.
“Who?”
“These people. Project Eden. Do you think they will come back to make sure we are dead?”
Robert puts his arms around her and pulls her to him. After a moment, he whispers the only answer he can come up with. “I don’t know.”
__________
BRANDON MAKES A deal with Davis. He points out there is no way Davis can stay awake twenty-four hours a day, so Brandon lobbies to help with night watch and takes the first shift, from eight p.m. to one in the morning.
He likes the feeling of responsibility it gives him, but it’s still a poor substitute for going south with his father. He should have been on that trip instead of that idiot Rick. He understands why his father left him behind, but that doesn’t mean he likes it.
He is stewing over this when Ginny walks into the living room of the house where they’re staying.
“Sorry,” she says. “I couldn
’t sleep.”
“It’s okay,” he tells her.
She walks over and joins him on the couch that has been turned toward the window.
“I’m sure they’ll be back soon,” she says.
“Uh-huh.” He doesn’t want to talk about it.
“I wish your dad hadn’t taken Rick.”
“Uh-huh.” He really doesn’t want to talk about that.
She must sense his reluctance, because she says nothing for several minutes. When she finally talks again, she says, “It’s never going to be the same again, is it?”
She could mean a million different things, and probably does. “No. Not like it used to be.”
“So what is it going to be like?”
He shrugs. How the heck is he supposed to know that? But he realizes that’s not what she needs to hear. “It’ll be different, I guess. But someday it’s going to be good. You’ll be happy.”
“I’m not sure I can ever be happy again.”
He wants to promise she will be, but knows she will see right through him. So he focuses on the street, and says nothing.
When Ginny falls asleep fifteen minutes later, she slumps to the side, her head falling against Brandon’s shoulder. He thinks maybe he should move it, but it feels good there, makes him feel like he’s not the only person in the world.
Makes him feel like he’s doing good.
__________
ASH INSTRUCTS HILLER to drive the car to within a couple hundred yards of the warehouse. Though much of the structure is in flames, he can see the similarities between this building and the one in Oregon, and knows without question it belongs to Project Eden.
They grab their gear out of the back—weapons, rope, crowbars, wire cutters, and the like. Hiller pulls out a bag of gas masks and gives one to each of them.
“It could get smoky. These aren’t perfect, but they’re all we’ve got.”
Ash dons the mask, and throws a coil of rope over his shoulder before heading as quickly as he can toward the building.
He is still a good distance away when a man, also wearing a gas mask, appears on the bank of an arroyo that runs near the building. Ash raises his gun, but then notices the limp and lowers his weapon.
“Matt?” he yells.
The man does not seem to hear him, so Ash pulls the mask off his face.
“Matt!”
The limping man stops, looks in Ash’s direction, and falls to his knees.
As Ash rushes over, Matt rolls onto his hip and lies back in the snow.
“Hey,” Ash says. “You okay?”
He drops down next to Matt and pulls off his friend’s mask. There is pain in the man’s face, and his eyes are closed.
“Matt, can you hear me?”
The only reaction is a wince.
“Matt!”
It takes but a second for Ash to discover that Matt’s shirt is soaked with blood. He rips it open, and in the flickering light of the fire sees a bullet hole in his friend’s abdomen. He feels around the back, finds a hole where the bullet exited that’s three times as large as the entry point.
Applying pressure to the wounds, he looks around until he spots Chloe. “Over here! Over here!” Once he’s sure she’s seen him, he focuses on Matt again. “You’re going to be fine. Hang in there.”
Matt’s eyes flutter. “You…” he says.
“Quiet. Save your strength.”
“No, you…”
Ash hears the sound of running feet approaching from behind him.
“What is it?” Chloe shouts. “Is that…Matt?”
“Get the first-aid kit!” he tells her. “And have Hiller or Lin call the others in. We need the doctor and Lily here now!”
Chloe runs back toward the car.
“Ash,” Matt whispers.
“Don’t try to talk.”
Matt’s eyelids part a fraction of an inch. “Augustine…green..sky.” Each word hitches a ride on a different breath.
“What?”
“You…need to…know…”
“Augustine green sky?”
“Dream,” Matt corrects him. “Dream sky.”
“Augustine dream sky.” As Ash says this, he sees some of the stress in Matt’s face melt away.
“Yes,” Matt whispers, his eyes closing again.
“What’s it mean?”
Matt whispers again, but his voice is now too low to hear no matter how close Ash moves in.
“Don’t worry about it,” Ash says. “Don’t worry about anything. It’s going to be fine.”
But he knows it’s not going to be fine, and before Chloe can return with the first-aid kit, he watches helplessly as the man who founded the Resistance takes his last breath.
Dream Sky, Project Eden No. 6, will be out in 2014
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brett Battles is the Barry Award-winning author of nineteen novels, including the Jonathan Quinn series, the Logan Harper series, and the Project Eden series. You can learn more at his website: brettbattles.com
Table of Contents
Praise for the Project Eden Thrillers
ALSO BY BRETT BATTLES
EDEN RISING Copyright © 2013 by Brett Battles
What Came Before
1
December 31st
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
January 1st
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
January 2nd
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
Dream Sky, Project Eden No. 6, will be out in 2014
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Table of Contents
Praise for the Project Eden Thrillers
ALSO BY BRETT BATTLES
EDEN RISING Copyright © 2013 by Brett Battles
What Came Before
1
December 31st
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
January 1st
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
January 2nd
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
Dream Sky, Project Eden No. 6, will be out in 2014
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eden Rising Page 29