Exit 9 (6 page)

There were two men on the porch. He had never seen one of them before, but the other he had—once, on the night he’d escaped certain death from a cell in the Mojave Desert.

His one-time rescuer nodded in mutual recognition. “Afternoon, Captain Ash.”

__________

D
ANIEL ASH, ALIAS
Adam Cooper, let the men wait in his living room while he finished making lunch for his children.

Once the sandwiches were ready, he gave one to his son, Brandon, and poured him a glass of milk. “Treat today. You can eat it in my room and watch TV.”

“You just don’t want me to hear what you’re going to talk about,” Brandon said.

“Smart boy. Now go, or I won’t even let you turn the TV on.”

He carried the other sandwich into Josie’s room, and set them on her nightstand.

Without looking up from her book, she said, “Thanks, Dad.”

“No crumbs in the bed, okay?”

“Ugh. Disgusting.”

He wasn’t sure if she was referring to what she was reading or the idea of crumbs in her bed. “You want something to drink?”

“No. I’m fine.”

“I’ll come get your plate in a bit.”

Back in the living room, he motioned for the two men to follow him into the kitchen. It was farthest from the bedrooms, and provided the most privacy.

“We’re sorry to bother you like this, Captain,” the one he knew said. “Pax sent us.”

“You can call me Ash. I’m not in the army anymore.” Technically, that might not be true. If the army knew he was still alive, and not, as they believed, dead from an intentional car crash and subsequent fire in Nevada not long after the Sage Flu outbreak had passed, then he would probably still be considered part of the service. Long enough, at least, to be court-martialed and sentenced to death for what they erroneously believed to be his part in the spreading of the disease. “I don’t know your names, though.”

The first man said, “I’m Tom. Tom Browne. I hope you understand why I couldn’t tell you that before.”

Ash did, but said nothing.

“Pat Solomon,” the other man told him.

“All right, gentlemen, what is it you want?”

Browne cleared his throat. “Matt and Pax would like you to come to the Ranch for a meeting.”

“A meeting.”

“Yes.”

Ash looked from one man to the other. “What kind of meeting?”

“I don’t know all the details. I just know it’s important.”

“You don’t have any details? Nothing to convince me to come?”

Browne hesitated, then said, “Pax said to tell you the depots have been filled.”

The words hung in the air.

The depots. These were buildings spread all around the world so that the Project would thrive while civilization collapsed around it. Ash had seen one of the facilities in person that previous summer, had been inside its then-empty storerooms.

Probably a good thing it’s not full yet
, Chloe White had said to him at the time.
Humanity’s got a little more time until the plug gets pulled, I guess.

If Browne wasn’t lying, time was about to run out.

“Can I get either of you something to drink?” Ash asked. “Water, milk, a beer?”

“We’re fine,” Browne said.

“Suit yourself.”

Ash walked over to the refrigerator and opened the door.

He had been dreading this moment, knowing someday it would come. It wasn’t so much that he realized because of the help he’d been given to save his children, he would eventually be asked to return the favor. What he dreaded was what it actually meant—that the Project was really going to try and restart humanity by culling it down to all but the necessary numbers needed to begin again. It was a potential reality he couldn’t justify no matter how many ways he thought about it. And it certainly wasn’t a reality he ever wanted his children to see. Brandon and Josie had inherited Ash’s immunity to KV-27a. The flu would never kill them, only all their friends and neighbors. His kids had already lost their mother. He knew he would do whatever he could so that his children wouldn’t lose everyone else, too.

As much as he wanted to grab one of the beers, he picked up a bottle of water instead and cracked it open.

“When do they want me?”

“Now.”

There was a noise behind them. A footstep.

“When do they want you where?” Josie asked. She stood into the kitchen doorway, staring at her father.

Ash opened his mouth, intending to tell her to go back to her room, but he caught himself at the last second. “They want me to go back to the Ranch for a meeting.”

Her eyes narrowed. “About what?”

“I don’t know the specifics.”

“But you have an idea, right?”

“I can guess, but it would only be that.”

“What about Brandon and me?”

“If I go to the Ranch, you’re coming with me.” He didn’t look at the two men to see what their reaction might be. It was a nonnegotiable point.

“Just a meeting and then we come back?”

His first instinct was to just say, “Yes,” but Josie wasn’t a child anymore. Neither, for that matter, was Brandon. Not after what they had been through. So he told the truth. “I don’t know.”

A hint of worry entered her eyes. “This is about what you told us might happen, isn’t it? About the flu? And the other people?”

“Yes,” he said.

She fell silent.

“Should we go?” Ash asked her.

She chewed on her lower lip for a moment. “Do we have a choice?”

“There’s always a choice.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

__________

Calls were made and explanations were given. An ill father in New York. An unexpected trip so that Adam Cooper’s children could see their grandfather for the last time. He’d call when he had a better idea of their return, and was told there was no rush. Family always came first.

Two hours later, the Ash family was eighty miles away at a small regional airport. There, they boarded the Ranch’s private jet for the flight west.

As they lifted off, Ash glanced out the window and couldn’t help but think that he and his kids would never be back there again.

8

T
HE FIRST SIGN
of trouble was what appeared to be a faulty sensor along the southern portion of the security fence. The fence was a quarter of a mile away from the house simply known as the Bluff, the affected area reachable only by foot.

A squad of three men was dispatched to make sure it wasn’t something more serious, and to fix the problem if possible.

The Bluff was on the western side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, surrounded by pine trees and magnificent vistas. There were times during the summer when the nearby road was almost bumper-to-bumper with people from the lowlands out for an afternoon of communing with nature. Now, with the official start of winter quickly approaching, there were days when fewer than a dozen cars would drive by.

For that reason alone, it should have been surprising that a car had stopped at the Bluff’s front gate. Only this wasn’t the first time this particular car had done so. Lancer, the watch officer manning the security monitors, had witnessed the two previous stops himself.

As with the other trips, the same young couple climbed out of the car. Grabbing the woman’s hand, the man kissed her as he pulled her over to the gate. Then, as if reading off the same script they had played out nearly half a dozen times before, they looked beyond the metal pipe-framed gate and down the dirt road on the other side before climbing over.

Lancer selected the call button for his boss. “Adam and Eve are back, Mr. Briley.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Briley said. “Send someone out again. Have whoever it is tell them next time we call the sheriff.”

“Yes, sir.”

For the past few visits, the Bluff had sent out the resident team to scare off the couple. The hope was that it might make them find some other place to fulfill their craving for a little outdoor sex.

The watch officer selected a different button. “Resident team, you’re up. Adam and Eve are back, and they’re waiting just for you.”

There was a chuckle in the reply. “Sullivan and Rawlings on the way.”

Sullivan and Rawlings would be dressed in civilian clothes as if they were out for a walk. They’d have Boomer with them, a beautiful black lab that could be friendly and playful one second, deadly the next.

Lancer watched the intruding couple as they came down the road for about thirty feet, then, as they’d done each time before, turn into the woods. He smiled. With any luck, Sullivan and Rawlings might get a little show.

“What’s going on?” Murphy asked. He was working containment surveillance at a terminal two stations down.

“Our exhibitionists are back,” Lancer said.

Murphy stood and walked over. “I’ve heard about them, but haven’t seen them yet.”

“Well, you can’t see them now. They’re off the road.”

“Damn. Seriously?”

“Yep. Went off right there.” The watch officer pointed between two trees on the right side of the screen.

“Couldn’t you just pan the inside gate camera over?”

The inside camera was mounted in a tree forty feet down the road from the entrance. “I’m not supposed to move it off the gate.”

“Come on. Just for a moment.”

“I can’t, and you know it.”

“Fine,” Murphy huffed, then brightened. “Maybe they’ll make a run for it before they can get dressed.”

“Fifty bucks says they don’t.”

“How about twenty?”

Lancer laughed. “Okay. Twenty.”

Together, the two men watched the monitor. After a minute, Sullivan and Rawlings appeared at the far end of the road.

“Talk us in,” Sullivan said over the radio.

“Forward another sixty feet, then go left,” Lancer instructed.

Sullivan and Rawlings did exactly as told. They, too, disappeared off screen.

“Come on,” Murphy said under his breath. “Come on.”

“Not going to happen,” Lancer told him.

“Don’t be a downer, man.”

The road remained empty, reinforcing the watch officer’s belief that they weren’t going to witness any streaking. He was about to tell Murphy to get his cash ready when Sullivan staggered into the frame and collapsed onto the road.

“What the hell?” Lancer said.

He started to reach forward to call in backup when something pricked his neck and Murphy said softly in his ear, “Sorry.”

With a suddenness that was almost more shocking than the condition itself, the watch officer realized he was paralyzed, unable to move even a finger.

He could hear the others in the communications room going about their business. On the screen in front of him, he could see the young couple dragging Sullivan back off the road. He wanted to yell. He wanted to reach out to his keyboard and type in the three-character combination that would raise the alarm. More than anything, he wanted to slam his fist into the side of Murphy’s head.

“It will all be over soon.” Murphy patted him on the cheek, then removed the watch officer’s headset. Into the mic, he said, “Resident team’s having a hard time locating our visitors. Suggest dispatching second team to help in the search.” A pause. “It’s Murphy. Lancer’s on a bathroom break…okay, great, thanks.” He put the headset down in front of the computer. As soon as two more men appeared on the monitor, heading out to assist Sullivan and Rawlings, he walked back toward his own station.

Lancer concentrated on his hands, willing them to move, but they remained frozen in place. How long was this going to last? At some point the paralysis had to wear off, right?
For God’s sake, someone please notice that there’s something wrong! Look! At! Me!

“Want to show you something.” Murphy was back at his side.

The traitor set an inch-thick, square-zippered case on the desk. Lancer immediately recognized it as the case Murphy kept his personal headphones in, something he’d brought with him every day. Murphy unzipped it, and opened it up. The headphones inside were no mere earbuds. These were state of the art, and probably cost at least a couple hundred dollars. They had foam padding on each side that fit over the ears, and were connected via a horseshoe-shaped band that could extend or contract depending on the size of the user’s head.

What? Was Murphy going to blast Lancer with music?

Then Murphy did something unexpected. He first peeled back the leather covering the padding on one side. Underneath wasn’t padding at all. It looked more like a thin plastic bag that had been rolled so that it would fit snuggly into the space.

“Cute, huh?” Murphy said.

He stretched the plastic out.

Not a bag, a…lightweight mask, with a small circular opening where the mouth would be.

Murphy disassembled the other padded earpiece, this time removing a plastic oval ring, then the speaker itself. He mounted the speaker in the ring, and attached the ring to the opening in the mask, closing it off.

“This is the best part,” he said.

From the headband he removed three thin flat containers. Each seemed to be divided in the middle, with a clear liquid on both sides.

“Can I use this?” he asked, reaching for Lancer’s coffee mug. “Thanks.”

He seemed to glance around, and Lancer heard him dump the remaining coffee on the floor before setting the mug back on the desk. He wiped the interior with a tissue, then poured in the contents from one side of one of the containers.

“I promised you it wouldn’t be long.”

He donned the plastic mask. Lancer immediately saw it for what it was—a gas mask.

No! No!
The scream in his head wanted nothing more than to pass his lips, but his vocal cords didn’t even quiver.

Murphy opened the second side—

No!

—and dumped it into the mug.

__________

O
LIVIA SILVA LAY
on the bed of her cell, her eyes closed. She’d been this way for over an hour, and most observers would have thought she was asleep.

They would have been wrong.

She was in a meditative state, one that allowed her to conserve her energy while maintaining complete awareness of her surroundings. She floated on a sea of nothing—recharging and refreshing her mind.