Pale Horse (A Project Eden Thriller)

by Battles, Brett

  He knew he had traveled miles, but didn’t know how many, or how many more he still had to go before he reached a town or road. It was becoming clear, though, that it wouldn’t happen today.

  The shade of the forest had dimmed considerably with the setting sun, and soon it would be too dark to travel. Off to the right, he spotted a downed tree that was caught in a tangle of other pines, creating a covered space underneath. He angled toward it, thinking it might be a good place to spend the night. After giving it a closer inspection, he decided it would definitely be better than sleeping out in the open.

  He leaned wearily against the log and pulled off his backpack. The first thing he needed to do was eat. He opened a can of beans and scarfed them down in less than a minute.

  The rumble in his stomach momentarily tamed, he gathered up loose pine needles and added them to the ones already under the dead tree to create a more comfortable surface to lie on. He untied his sleeping bag from the pack, and started to unroll it. As he did, he caught a whiff of something in the air.

  Smoke?

  He sniffed again. It was there for a moment, then gone.

  He walked through the trees in a slow circle, testing the air until he reacquired the scent. It was definitely smoke.

  Forest fire?

  The thought made him tense, but he was pretty sure it was too cold for that. Or did fires not care about the weather?

  He took in the odor once more. There was something comforting about it, something familiar.

  A campfire. That’s what it smells like.

  It seemed to be coming from his left.

  Could be a mile away, he thought, just drifting on the wind.

  Or it could be closer.

  A chill moved through his body. What if it was the people from the helicopters? Maybe a couple of them had been following him on foot.

  He had a sudden urge to flee, to get as far away from the smoke as possible. Hurrying back to his gear, he rolled his sleeping bag back up, and reattached it to the bottom of his backpack. But then he paused.

  What if it was someone else? Someone who could help him?

  He stood there unmoving, staring into the darkness.

  Just check, he thought. They’ll never know you’re there.

  If he was careful and didn’t get too close, he should be okay. Besides, whoever was out there—someone looking for him or someone who could help—it would be better to know than not.

  With a final deep, decisive breath, he strapped on his pack and headed toward the smoke.

  __________

  BRANDON ALLOWED HIMSELF to use the flashlight as he started out, but as the odor intensified, he became more and more nervous, and finally turned it off so as not to give himself away.

  He was careful to keep the sound of his footsteps to a minimum as he watched the forest ahead for any sign of the campfire. So far, the darkness remained unchanged.

  Maybe it was a mile away, he thought. If he didn’t reach it in the next few minutes, he’d find another place to camp for the night, then look for the source of the smoke again in the morning.

  He’d barely had that thought when he noticed he could see the sky up ahead above a large clearing.

  He moved to the edge of the tree line and stopped. The clearing was probably twice as big as the one where Hayes had been killed, but its size wasn’t what caught Brandon’s attention. His eyes were fixed on something just the other side of center.

  A house, spewing smoke from its chimney.

  __________

  FOR THIRTY MINUTES, Brandon remained where he was, hidden in the trees. He shifted his gaze from window to window, watching for movement.

  The house was two stories high, but small. He didn’t think there could be more than two or three rooms on each floor. The fireplace was on the far side of the house, the chimney peeking up above the roof, silhouetted against the night sky.

  There were three windows on the side facing Brandon, one on the first floor and two on the second. Because of the smoke, he knew someone had to be home, but the windows were all dark.

  Still not comfortable enough to approach the house, he moved counterclockwise around the edge of the clearing to get a look at the rest of the structure. There were four windows on the new side—dark like the others—equally divided between the floors. There was also a door off to one side on the bottom floor. It had a set of three narrow steps that led down to the ground, and looked to Brandon like a backdoor instead of the main way in.

  He kept going.

  The next side was the one with the chimney—two windows here, one on each floor, and the stone chimney widening out to the back of a large fireplace.

  There was also another building he’d been unable to see before. It was set off to the side about a hundred feet from the house, almost butting up against the trees. It looked to Brandon like a shed or garage.

  Maybe he could find a way into it, and spend the night there. It would sure be better than sleeping out in the woods. After the sun came up in the morning, he could knock on the door of the house. Or maybe see if someone came outside first, and then decide if he should approach them.

  He moved through the trees until the structure was between him and the house, and quietly slipped over to the building. Like the house, it had wood siding that had seen its share of bad weather.

  He eased up to the corner and took a cautious look around it. Definitely a garage, he decided. The side he was looking at had a wide door that was more than large enough for a good-sized SUV to pass through. It appeared to be the kind of door that rolled up. If he could move it a foot or so, he should be able to slip underneath.

  He sneaked over to the handle, and gently tugged it upward. The door barely moved a quarter inch before it stopped. When he tried again, the same thing happened.

  Great, he thought.

  It was probably operated by a remote control, like the garage his family had had once. No way he’d be able to open it on his own.

  There’s got to be another door, right?

  He moved to the far corner and peeked around. The house was just a stone’s throw away. From this angle he could see both the side with the chimney and what was obviously the front, given the small covered porch and door more appropriate for a main entrance. The windows there, like the rest of the house, were dark.

  Slowly, he stuck his head out far enough so he could look along the side of the garage. There was a door.

  He looked at the house again, studying the windows.

  They’re asleep, he thought. They won’t see me.

  He had to repeat this to himself a couple times before he got the courage to step around the side and sneak over to the door.

  He placed his fingers on the handle and twisted it. Locked again, but the door was loose. He gently pushed against it, and could feel the bolt wanting to slip out of the latch. He thought for a moment, then pulled out Mr. Hayes’s pocket knife. He couldn’t get it all the way through the space between the door and the frame, but he was able to angle it in so that the tip touched the bolt. Working it like a lever, he pushed the bolt away from the latch until it was finally free.

  Smiling in relief, he sent up a silent prayer wishing for nothing creepy to be inside, then pushed the door open, and quickly passed through.

  The moment he closed the door behind him, the interior of the garage was plunged into darkness. He stood motionless, thinking he only needed a few seconds for his eyes to adjust, but as time passed the garage remained pitch-black. Not having a choice, he pulled out his flashlight and turned it on. The beam seemed impossibly bright, and he quickly put his free hand over the lens, cutting the illumination by more than half.

  Worried that the light might have been seen from the house, he moved back to the door and placed his ear against it. After several quiet seconds, he began to breathe easily again, and allowed himself to take stock of his surroundings.

  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.

  15

  WITH THE WORLDWIDE reach of satellite television, people across the globe were able to tune into PCN, CNN, and the other major news networks, and s
ee 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.