Pale Horse (A Project Eden Thriller)

by Battles, Brett

“Thank you.”

  Sanjay headed in the direction of the building the managers used. Once he was out of sight of the gate, he cut down between two of the dormitory buildings, and around the side of the administration building so he could enter through the less-used back entrance.

  There were a few people at the far end of the compound where the excess barrels of spray were kept. Their job, Sanjay knew, was to send full ones out to any zone experiencing a shortage. None of the men paid him even the slightest bit of attention as he opened the rear door and went inside.

  The building was two stories. The top floor served as the living quarters for the managers, while all the business was done on the ground floor. The question was, where would they keep the vaccine? Surely there would be some on the premises just in case of an emergency. The top floor would keep it more isolated, which might be desirable to the managers. Then again, the first floor would make it more accessible in case they needed it in a hurry.

  This being the day of the spraying, he figured that most, if not all, the managers would be downstairs in the work area, leaving the living quarters empty, so he decided to check there first.

  Based on the vaccine he’d taken, he knew what he was looking for—small jars of slightly orange-tinted liquid. He was painfully aware there could be other things that looked the same, but there had been no label on the jar of vaccine he was given, so there was no way to identify it by name.

  The stairway to the upper floor let out on a wide corridor. Every twenty feet or so, there was a door on either side. These would be the apartments, he guessed. Toward the middle was an open doorway that led to a dining area. Adjacent to this was a kitchen. Sanjay could hear the sounds of food being chopped up and dishes knocking together. He hadn’t even thought about the fact there might be people working up here. He would have to be extra careful.

  He slipped by the dining room and continued down the hall. More doors like before, all the way to the end. He frowned. He’d been hoping for a clearly labeled medical room or something similar. He didn’t think they would store surplus vaccine in one of the private quarters. But, with the exception of the kitchen, there seemed to be only private apartments.

  Downstairs, then, he thought.

  As he walked back toward the stairway, he heard the distinctive sound of a door latch being disengaged. He looked around quickly, but there was nowhere to hide.

  A door about twenty feet ahead of him opened.

  All he could do was pretend he belonged there, so he walked with purpose toward the stairs, his head held up.

  The man who came out of the room barely glanced in his direction, but Sanjay recognized him immediately. It was the senior manager, a gray-haired man Sanjay believed to be German.

  Sanjay’s muscles tensed with a sudden surge of rage. Here was the person in charge of the operation. The man had already taken Ayush’s life, and now was trying to take those of the people Sanjay passed on the street every day, the food stall owners he visited, the men who’d been recruited, like him, to work for Pishon Chem. And, of course, Kusum’s family.

  Everyone.

  A new plan quickly took shape in Sanjay’s mind.

  He slowed his pace so that he reached the senior manager just as the man was about to close his door.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Sanjay said. “I have a message for you.”

  The man looked over. “What message?”

  “I was told to give it to you in private.”

  The manager glanced down the empty hallway. “I think we are private here.”

  “If you say so, sir.” Sanjay paused, then said in a low, concerned voice, “There have been some deaths.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “From the spray. Mr. Reiner said to tell you it’s working too fast.” Mr. Reiner was another manager, one who was supposed to be out in the field during the spraying.

  The gray-haired man’s eyes widened. “That’s not possible,” he said, more to himself than to Sanjay.

  “There’s more,” Sanjay told him.

  “What?”

  Sanjay tried to look as uncomfortable as possible. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather hear this…”

  It took a second, but finally the man pushed the door to his apartment open again, and said, “Come in.”

  He entered first, Sanjay coming in right behind him.

  Once the door was closed, he said, “What else?”

  The last time Sanjay had hit anyone, he was thirteen, but he had never forgotten what Ayush taught him after he lost that fight. “The elbow can be much more effective than the hand.”

  Sanjay’s elbow proved the point as it slammed into the side of the man’s head, and the senior manager dropped straight to the ground.

  __________

  NOT KNOWING HOW much time he had, Sanjay quickly searched the room. In the nightstand next to the bed, he found a handgun. He’d never held one in his life, let alone used one. He took it anyway. The rest of the apartment seemed to only have what one would expect to find—clothes, a few personal items, toiletries. As far as he could tell, there were no little bottles of vaccine present.

  Using the laces from a pair of shoes in the closet, he tied the man’s hands together, then took a pillowcase off one of the pillows and tied it across the man’s mouth. All the jerking around caused the manager to stir, and after a few more moments, his eyes opened to find Sanjay crouching nearby with the gun in his hand.

  “You will do as I say, do you understand?” Sanjay asked.

  The man tried to speak, but all he managed through the gag was a muffled jumble of sounds.

  “Do you understand?” Sanjay said again.

  The man’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded.

  “I know about the spray, and what it really is.”

  The man’s expression remained unchanged.

  “You are going to kill my countrymen with a disease like what happened in America.”

  This time one of the man’s eyebrows twitched.

  “If I could stop you, I would. But I know that’s not possible. I don’t understand how you can live with what you are doing, but I can’t worry about that right now. You are going to help me.”

  A muffled huff.

  “If you don’t help me, I will kill you and find someone else who can.” Though killing was against almost everything Sanjay believed in, he would be able to justify it in this one instance.

  The man apparently didn’t see the resolve in Sanjay’s eye, because he laughed.

  Without hesitating, Sanjay jammed the muzzle of the gun against the man’s left shoulder and pulled the trigger. The sound was loud, but not as loud as he’d expected.

  The man screamed through the pillowcase. His eyes squeezed shut for a moment, then opened again in disbelief as he twisted back and forth in pain.

  “I will say it again. You are going to help me.”

  This time there was no laugh, just a nod.

  “You will take me to the vaccine.”

  The man looked surprised.

  Sanjay shifted the gun to the man’s other shoulder. “You will take me to the vaccine.”

  The man nodded again, the look on his face pleading with Sanjay not to pull the trigger again.

  __________

  THE GUNSHOT HAD not gone unnoticed.

  When Sanjay opened the apartment door, he found two men standing in the hallway. Thankfully, they were not other managers, but Indians like him. Their aprons and grease-stained shirts identified them as the men from the kitchen. As soon as they saw the gun, they started to run.

  “Stop!” Sanjay ordered.

  They froze where they were, no doubt thinking they might get shot in the back.

  “I am not going to hurt you.”

  “Then let us go,” one of the men said.

  “If I do, you will die.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Exactly what it sounded like.”

  “Please,” the other man said. “We have families. J
ust let us go.”

  Sanjay knew the task ahead would be difficult to complete on his own, if not impossible. Who knew how many managers were still downstairs.

  “Come back here. I promise I won’t shoot you if you do,” he lied. He had no intention of shooting them at all. They had done nothing but take work in a kitchen to support their families.

  “Why should we?”

  “Because there’s something you need to know.”

  It took a bit more persuading, but finally the men came back to the manager’s apartment. When they saw the injured man lying on the floor, gagged with his hands tied behind his back, they almost ran out, but Sanjay had already moved between them and the door, his gun convincing them to stay where they were.

  “So what do you think we need to know?” the first man said.

  As quickly as he could, Sanjay explained what was really going on with Pishon Chem and the spray. The men looked at him skeptically.

  Sanjay stepped quickly to the manager and knelt down beside him. He pulled the gag off the man’s mouth, and shoved the gun back into the man’s uninjured shoulder. “Tell them.”

  “Tell them what?” the manager said defiantly.

  “Tell them it’s the truth.”

  “That there’s a disease we’re trying to distribute through Mumbai? That’s crazy.”

  “Tell them!” Sanjay moved the muzzle of the gun over to the man’s wound, and shoved it against the bullet hole.

  The man cried out.

  “Tell them!”

  The manager began panting deeply, his eyes flicking from Sanjay to the others. “He isn’t…lying. It’s true. But we’re…only trying to make this a better world.”

  “By killing our countrymen?” Sanjay said.

  “By killing everyone.”

  The last seemed to do the trick. The two other men looked horrified as the manager’s words sunk in.

  The first man turned for the door. “I need to get home. I need to save my family.”

  “Wait!” Sanjay called out. “The only way to save them is to help me.”

  The man looked back. “What are you talking about?”

  __________

  ACCORDING TO THE manager, the remaining vaccine was locked in a storage closet near the main conference room on the ground level.

  One of the two cooks went down the stairs first, checking to see if the way was clear. Once he gave them the signal, Sanjay, the other cook, and the manager joined him.

  They could hear voices from farther down the main hallway. It sounded to Sanjay like the guttural language most of the managers spoke. Unfortunately, it was also coming from the same direction they needed to go in.

  Every few steps, their captive manager grunted behind his gag in obvious pain. Sanjay didn’t care what the man was feeling, but he did care if the noise gave them away.

  “Quiet,” he whispered.

  Ahead, the hallway took a ninety-degree turn to the right toward the conference room and, just beyond it, the locked room where the vaccine was stored. Sanjay held up a hand for the others to stop, then leaned a few inches around the corner for a look.

  While the corridor was empty, the voices were clearly coming through the open door of the conference room. Sanjay could make out at least four people.

  “What are we going to do?” one of the cooks whispered.

  Sanjay thought for a moment. The managers had never seemed particularly threatening to him—not physically, anyway—relying more on their leadership positions to get what they wanted from the men they’d hired. He had also never seen more than two or three guards patrolling the compound, all local hires. Since the public and the government had been more than happy to have Pishon Chem in India, the company apparently never thought it’d face a threat.

  It was wrong, Sanjay thought.

  Glancing back at the other men, he said, “Follow me.”

  He stepped around the corner, hauling the manager right beside him, and walked straight to the conference room. Just before he got there, he turned the manager over to one of the cooks, and moved into the open doorway.

  There were five of the Europeans inside, not four. They were laughing at some unknown joke—something that caused Sanjay’s anger to intensify—and it took them a moment to realize he was there.

  It was the manager named Dettling, the man whose name Sanjay had been dropping, who spoke first. “Can we help you?” Before Sanjay could say anything, the man’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Sanjay?” Then those same eyes widened as he seemed to remember that Sanjay had gone missing after paying an unauthorized visit to his dying cousin.

  “Mr. Dettling, you and your friends will stay here,” Sanjay said.

  “What do you mean, ‘stay here’? What are you talking about?”

  Sanjay lifted his hand so they could see his gun. “I would rather not hurt anyone else.”

  “What?”

  Two of the men jumped up from their chairs.

  “Sit,” Sanjay ordered, pointing the gun toward them to emphasize the point.

  The two men hesitated a second, then returned to their seats.

  “I don’t know what you are thinking,” Dettling said. “But whatever’s going on in your head, you’re wrong.”

  “Am I?”

  Glancing to the side, Sanjay grabbed hold of the senior manager’s shirt and pulled him into the doorway with him. One of the men in the room gasped.

  “He’s hurt,” Dettling said, rising to his feet. “What have you done?”

  He took a step toward the door.

  “Stop,” Sanjay said.

  When Dettling took another step, Sanjay did something he would have never thought he was capable of doing—he pressed the thumb of his free hand against the wound on the old manager’s shoulder. The man screamed, the gag barely blocking any of the noise.

  Dettling stopped. “Don’t hurt him.”

  Sanjay eased back on his thumb, but didn’t remove it completely. “Who has keys to the room next door?”

  A collective blank stare.

  Sanjay pointed the gun at the man to Dettling’s left. “The keys?”

  This time there was a shrug or two. Then Dettling said, “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what you’re—”

  Sanjay pulled the trigger.

  The man next to Dettling jammed backward against his chair and then tumbled to the ground.

  “Who?” Sanjay asked, aiming the gun at the next person in line.

  Two of the remaining men pulled sets of keys from their pockets and tossed them across the room.

  “It’s the silver one,” one of them said. “With the J on it.”

  Sanjay shoved the senior manager back to the cooks. Then, without taking his eyes off the men at the table, leaned down and picked up one set of keys.

  “Sanjay, please,” Dettling said. He was holding his hands in front of him, his palms facing out, in an obvious attempt to show he meant no harm. “Why don’t you put the gun down, and let us get medical assistance for our friends?”

  Sanjay rose back to his feet, his eyes blazing. “And who will give medical attention to all the people of Mumbai when they become sick from your spray?”

  “Whatever you think you’ve heard is wrong. The spray is only for—”

  “What I’ve heard? Mr. Dettling, I have seen what your spray does. I have seen my cousin and the men he was working with dying from it. The Sage Flu. Are you going to tell me the nurse was lying?”

  “Of course she was. Your cousin was only suffering from extreme exposure to the malaria spray. It was a very unfortunate event, but that’s all it was.”

  Sanjay grabbed his captive and pulled him back. “And your senior manager here? He has confirmed that I am right. Are you saying he lied, too?”

  “Yes. He was just telling you what you wanted to hear.”

  The worried look on the faces of the men behind Dettling belied his words.

  “Then you are saying I won’t find any of the vaccine in the room next doo
r.”

  That caught the men by surprise. Even Dettling lost some of his composure before he recovered and said, “It’s where we keep our medical supplies, so of course you’ll find medicine in there. But a vaccine? I’m sorry. I don’t even know what it would be for.”

  Sanjay wanted so much to pull the trigger again, and put a bullet right through the center of Mr. Dettling’s chest, but that was a line his conscience was not yet willing to let him cross.

  He looked over at one of the cooks. “Come here.” When the man joined him, he said, “Take this.” He handed him the gun. “Don’t let any of them leave. Remember, they are trying to kill your family.”

  The cook nodded, his face hard and determined.

  Sanjay motioned to the other cook to follow him, and bring the senior manager along.

  “You’re not going to find anything!” Dettling called out as Sanjay moved away.

  “Shut up,” the cook with the gun said. “I am not nearly as nice as my friend.”

  Sanjay used the silver J key to open the closet door. The medical supply room was about the size of the main room in Kusum’s apartment, and was cooler than the corridor, apparently having its own temperature-control system. Through the middle and along each wall were shelves filled with medical supplies.

  He pulled the gag out of the old man’s mouth. “Where is it?”

  The manager gasped several times.

  “Where?” Sanjay repeated.

  “Over there,” the man said, his voice weak. “In the glass cabinets.”

  Sanjay dragged the man across the room.

  The cabinets were built into the shelving unit. There were two of them side by side, each about Sanjay’s height, and two meters wide. Inside were boxes and bottles of varying sizes.

  “Which one is it?” Sanjay asked.

  “In there,” the man said, pointing at the second cabinet. “Those bottles on the third shelf down.”

  Sanjay opened the cabinet, pulled out one of the small bottles, and raised it to the light. The liquid inside was clear, not tinged with orange like what he’d been given.

  “You’re lying.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “This isn’t the vaccine.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Then you take it.”