Pale Horse (A Project Eden Thriller) (10 page)

They had to try the sat phone four times before Ash finally heard the other end ring.

A voice cracked through the static. “…is this?”

“Hello?” Ash said. “Matt, is that you?”

“…old…et him.”

“Hello?” Ash said.

No response.

“Hello?”

He could only hear the hiss of the line, and was about to hang up so they could try again, when—

“…is Matt. Who’s this?”

“Matt! It’s Ash.”

“Can hardly…ear you. Who are…”

“Ash. It’s Ash.”

“Ash? My God, where are…ou?”

“Doesn’t matter. The virus. It’s been set off.”

“We know. Reports from…place. Doing what we can.”

They were already on it. Which meant signs of the virus’s dispersal must have shown up. “Matt, Pax and the others are stranded on Amund Ringnes Island. The plane’s not going to be able to get them. It, uh, broke down.” Telling him that it had crashed would only create unnecessary conversation.

“How ab…you?”

“We’ve been able to hitch a ride on a boat. Tell Brandon and Josie I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

There was silence on the other end, and Ash assumed whatever Matt was saying was lost in the connection. The Resistance leader then said, “Be careful.”

“We will.”

Ash hung up, and looked at the others. “They already know.”

The room was silent. Until moments before, the release of KV-27a had been represented only by Olivia punching a code into a computer.

Now it was real.

THE BUNKER, MONTANA

4:06 PM MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME

M
ATT HUNG UP
the phone.

“That was Ash?” Rachel asked.

“Yes.”

“Thank God he’s all right. What about the others?”

“He didn’t say.”

She was quiet for a moment. “I think that’s a good sign. He would have said something otherwise.”

Matt nodded, though he wasn’t as sure as she was. “He told me to tell his kids he was on his way back. I…should have told him about Brandon.”

“No. You did the right thing. There’s nothing he can do from where he is.” She put her arm around her brother’s shoulder. “Brandon’s going to be okay.” She squeezed him, and smiled. “I’ll tell Josie her dad’s on the way back. That’ll make her feel better.”

But Matt barely heard her.

He should have told Ash. If it had been Matt’s son, he would have wanted to know.

He forced himself to focus, and turned to Christina. “Still no sign?”

Christina had been monitoring the security cameras in case the helicopters returned, or Hayes and Brandon showed up.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Maybe I should send out a team,” he said to himself.

“No,” Rachel said. “It’s too soon. The others may be waiting for us to show ourselves. You can’t afford to risk everyone’s life like that. Jon knows what to do. He’ll take care of Brandon.”

Matt grimaced, not wanting to hear the words, but knowing she was right.

14

MONTANA

4:26 PM MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME

B
RANDON HAD KEPT
a steady pace, stopping only briefly now and then to make sure he was still going in the right direction.

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.

__________

B
RANDON 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.

__________

F
OR 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.