Pale Horse

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16

Despite how exhausted he’d been when he went to sleep the night before, Sanjay woke well before there was even a hint of daylight. His shoulders burned with tension, and he was finding it impossible to take anything but short, shallow breaths.

He lay that way for hours, trying to will himself back to sleep, but soon realized it was not going to happen. He wondered if he’d ever sleep well again.

If it weren’t for Kusum, he would have gotten up and walked around, hoping that would drive the anxiety from his veins, but she lay in his arms, asleep, and he had no desire to subject her to the same hell he was going through. As it was, he could tell her sleep wasn’t completely untroubled. Several times she’d twisted and jerked as her dreams momentarily took control of the rest of her body. A few times she’d even cried out.

He wondered, as she murmured what sounded like his name, exactly what she was dreaming about. Was he the hero or the villain in her nightmare? Or was it best not to know? He wasn’t even sure which one he was to her in real life.

What if he was wrong? What if what he’d learned were lies?

When the sky in the east started to yellow, he knew he could lie there no longer. He pulled his arm out from under her neck, and started to slowly move away.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Go back to sleep. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I’ve been awake for a while.”

“Oh,” he said, surprised. “I just thought I’d take a walk, see what’s around.”

She turned and looked at him for several seconds. “Were you lying to me yesterday?”

“No.”

She considered him some more, then touched her arm where he’d given her the shot. “I don’t feel any different.”

“It was a vaccine. I don’t think you are supposed to feel any different.”

“I just thought…”

She didn’t finish her thought. It took him a moment, but he finally realized that when she’d gone to sleep, she still believed he had drugged her.

“I told you. I have only been trying to save you.”

“If what you have told me is true, what about my family?”

It wasn’t the first time she’d asked that, and he gave her the answer he’d given before. “I only had the one shot.”

“What about the one you took?”

That she hadn’t asked before, and it surprised him. “I had to make sure it didn’t hurt me before I could give it to you. Don’t you see that?”

She sat up, suddenly determined. “We have to go back. You can get more for my family.”

He rose quickly to his feet. “Impossible. I don’t even know where I could find…” He paused. Yes, he knew where there might be more vaccine. The same place he had gotten it the first time. Still… “Today is the day they will spray the city. We can’t go back there.”

She stood and began wiping off the dirt that clung to her clothes. “We have to try.”

“There is nothing we can do.”

She stared at him, her face hardening. “Then I will go without you.”

She turned toward the road and started walking.

“Wait,” he said, grabbing her arm.

She quickly twisted free, but didn’t turn away. “If you care about me like you say, you will help me to save my family.”

“By the time we get there, it may already be too late.”

“I will not just wait here. I have to do whatever I can.”

Again, she started walking.

“Kusum! Please!”

She didn’t stop.

“Kusum!” She’d almost disappeared into the jungle. “All right, all right! I’ll drive you back.”

She slowed to a halt and looked at him. “Let’s go.”

They traveled down the rutted road toward the highway. In the first light of day, the jungle looked thinner and less menacing than it had in the dark.

It took them a full half hour to reach the blacktop road. Sanjay was surprised. He hadn’t realized they’d ridden that far into the wilderness.

It wasn’t long before he said, “We have to make a stop.”

“Why?”

“The tank is almost empty. We would never make it all the way there.”

He could hear her sigh, frustrated. “Okay, but as quick as we can.”

A few minutes later, he saw a roadside stop that was selling petrol out of cans. While a young boy helped him fill his tank, Kusum went inside the hut that served as a shop, but she was only gone a few seconds before she rushed back out.

“Sanjay! Come quick!”

He looked at her, confused, but she’d already disappeared back through the door. He paid the boy for the fuel, and jogged over to the hut.

Inside were several tables full of food items for purchase, and two coolers stuffed with drinks. But Kusum wasn’t looking at any of them. She was standing near the back corner, staring at a TV on a table. Three other people were also crowded around, watching.

A BBC news anchor was framed in the center of the screen.

“…dozens of locations around the globe,” the man said.

“What’s going on?” Sanjay asked.

Kusum and one of the others shhh’d him, their attention never leaving the screen.

“Last evening local time, in the US state of Georgia,” the anchor went on, “firefighters in the city of Athens attempted to relocate one of the boxes. This resulted in a fiery explosion that killed five firemen and three civilians. Several more similar incidents have been reported from elsewhere in the States and in Europe. Officials in most countries have now suspended all orders to move the boxes, and have begun evacuating persons living anywhere near suspected containers.

“There has still been no word on what the container’s purpose might be, or who is behind them. Several helicopters — both news and police — have flown over boxes to get a look inside.” The image switched to a downward shot of one of the boxes. It was rectangular in shape, large. While the top was open, there were two large circular areas side by side near the lip, each shimmering slightly. “Analysts have determined that what you are looking at are two exhaust-type fans that seem to be pushing whatever is inside into the air. Speculation has been focused on the possibility that the contents are biological in nature. Investigative teams in many nations have taken the precaution of wearing protective gear within a half-mile radius of the boxes.

“Several groups have put forward the suggestion that this is a hoax meant to send the message of what could happen. One Latin American organization is even taking credit for doing just that, but officials are saying the claim is baseless.”

Sanjay couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Mysterious boxes shooting something into the air? Something biological? Today? The timing was too coincidental. This had to be linked to the spray Pishon Chem was unleashing on Mumbai.

Kusum looked over at him. He could see in her eyes she believed him completely now, and was thinking the same thing.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing her hand. “We have a long way to go.”

“My family?”

“We’ll try.”

“Thank you.”

They retuned to the bike, and raced west for Mumbai.

With each passing kilometer, the traffic seemed to be getting lighter and lighter. At first Sanjay didn’t think anything of it, but when it got to the point where he and Kusum were only one of a handful of vehicles on the road, he began to wonder. It had to have something to do with the news — people captivated by the reports and staying home, worrying that the same containers would be found in the areas around Mumbai.

But while there were fewer people about as they entered the city, Sanjay did start to see many of the boys and men walking through neighborhoods spraying Pishon Chem’s “mosquito-killing” poison. The public was so focused on the troubles abroad, it couldn’t even see the one right under its nose.

Each time Sanjay saw one of the people doing the spraying, he was tempted to pull over and tell them to stop, but he knew no one would listen to him. More importantly, any delay getting to Kusum’s family could be the difference between life and death.

They went directly to the fruit stand her parents owned, where Sanjay had first seen Kusum. But when they arrived, there was no fruit on display, and no one standing behind the cart. The stand was closed.

“No,” Kusum whispered.

Without even looking at her, Sanjay knew she was thinking her parents and sister might already be sick. But the spraying had been going on for only a few hours, and even if her family had been exposed, Sanjay doubted there had been enough time for them to fall ill.

“It’s okay,” he said. “They’ve stayed home like everyone else. Look, most of the shops are closed.”

He could feel her moving around on the back of the bike, scanning the area. “Yes. Yes, that must be it.”

“Tell me where your home is.”

Once more, as they drove along the streets of Mumbai, they saw more of the army of sprayers delivering the deadly liquid, neighborhood by neighborhood.

I should be shouting, Sanjay thought. I should be screaming for everyone to run. But again, who would listen? Save who you can, he told himself, ignoring the question of how.

The building Kusum’s family lived in was down a long, narrow alley. Thankfully, the closest Pishon Chem sprayers were nearly a kilometer away, and by the absence on nearby streets and sidewalks of the residual sheen from the spray, Sanjay knew they had not yet moved through this area.

“Where is everyone?” Kusum asked as they made their way down the alley.

He didn’t have to ask her what she meant. Sanjay had seen hundreds of streets just like this one, usually teeming with people at this time of day. But they’d barely seen anyone, and those they had eyed them suspiciously while hurrying to some unknown destination.

“There,” Kusum said after a moment, pointing over his shoulder at her building.

It was an old and tired-looking place, stained brown where water from the frequent rains had run down the sides for decades. Families would be stuffed inside, ten or more people in every two- or three-room apartment, doing what they could to collectively survive.

As soon as Sanjay pulled the bike to a stop, Kusum leaped off the back and raced for the door. He headed after her, passing through in time to see her running up a set of stairs. He tried to catch up but she was moving fast, and it was all he could do to keep her in sight. When he turned at the midway point between the second and third floors, where the stairs doubled back, she was gone.

“Kusum?” he called.

“This way!” she yelled, her voice coming through the door to the third floor.

Once he exited the stairwell, he spotted her three-quarters of the way down the hall, turning the knob on one of the doors. It seemed to be locked.

She knocked loudly and yelled, “It’s me! Kusum!”

There was a momentary delay, then the door flew open, and her mother rushed out.

“Where have you been?” she asked. She touched her daughter’s face, and pulled her into her arms.

“Kusum!” the voice of her father boomed out of the room. “Answer your mother’s question. Where have you been?”

Kusum pulled back from her mother’s embrace. “I…I…”

She glanced toward Sanjay, who had stopped several meters away. Her mother followed her gaze. Her father stepped into the hallway and did the same.

“You!” her father said. He started marching toward Sanjay. “What have you done?”

Her father was not a particularly large man, but at the moment he seemed like a giant to Sanjay. Fire raged in the man’s eyes, and his nostrils flared in anger.

“I can explain,” Sanjay said, backpedaling.

“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say!”

As soon as Kusum’s father was close enough, he grabbed Sanjay’s shirt with one hand and struck him across the face with the other.

“You have ruined my daughter!”

“No!” Kusum told him. “That’s not true.”

She reached out to stop him, but her mother pulled her back.

“I have not,” Sanjay pleaded. “I was only—”

“Shut up!” The man slapped Sanjay. “You expect me to believe your lies?”

Down the hall, a few doors opened and people peeked out, but none seemed willing to come to Sanjay’s aid.

“Nothing happened,” Sanjay said quickly. “I have done nothing to her. You can ask her.”

As Kusum’s father raised his hand again, Sanjay prepared to be hit once more, but the blow never came.

“Father, please.” Kusum had broken free from her mother, and grabbed her father’s hand. “Sanjay did nothing wrong. He was only trying to save me.”

Her father whirled on her as if he’d hit her, too.

“No!” her mother yelled. “Don’t.”

“He was trying to save me,” Kusum repeated.

Her father’s anger seemed to lose a bit of focus, the tension in his upraised arm wavering. “Save you from what?” he said, his tone all but accusing her of trying to fool him.

Kusum’s eyes moved past him down the hall toward their neighbors, who continued to watch the spectacle. “Please, Father. Let’s go inside. We can talk there.”

For a moment, it looked as if he wasn’t interested in going anywhere, but then he took a deep breath and nodded. Yanking on Sanjay’s arm, he shoved him toward the door. “You first.”

The apartment was predictably small. The main room served as the kitchen, dining, and living area.

In addition to Kusum’s parents, her younger sister Jabala was there, as were three others Sanjay didn’t know. One was an older woman, and two were young children, a boy and a girl who were about five or six.

The most expensive thing in the room was the television. Like the one they’d seen when they’d stopped for gas, it was tuned to BBC International.

Kusum’s father entered last and slammed the door behind him. “Saved you from what?” he demanded.

Sanjay pointed at the TV. “From that, I think.”

Her father looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe we should all sit down,” Kusum suggested. “Jabala, could you take Panna and Darshan into the other room?”

“I want to hear what you’re going to talk about,” Jabala said.

“I know,” Kusum said softly. “I will tell you everything after, okay?”

Not looking happy, Jabala grabbed the hands of the two children and led them through the doorway at the far end of the room.

“Please, Father. Sit down,” Kusum said.

After a moment’s hesitation, her father did, and the others followed suit.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” her father said, looking at Sanjay.

Sanjay glanced at the floor, unsure how to begin.

“You need to tell them everything,” Kusum said. “Just like you told me.”

She was right, of course. It was exactly what he had to do, so it was exactly what he did.

If it weren’t for the crisis playing out on TV, he was sure they would have dismissed his claims immediately.

“The malaria spray?” Kusum’s father said when Sanjay finally finished, anger no longer underlining the man’s voice. “Are you sure?”

“I am as sure as I can be. It’s what was told to me.”

“And your cousin?” Kusum’s mother said.

“I saw Ayush with my own eyes.” He paused. “By now, I am sure he is dead.”

Both Kusum’s mother and the old woman — her aunt — looked visibly shaken.

“Then why did you come back if you were trying to keep her safe?” Kusum’s father asked. “You are saying they are spreading this…disease through the city right now.”

“The vaccine will protect her.”

“Are you sure?” Her father was starting to become angry again.

“Yes,” Sanjay said. About as much as I can be.

Before her father could speak again, Kusum jumped in. “He didn’t want to bring me back. I forced him.”

“But why?” her mother asked. “If he’s right, it’s too dangerous here. You should have stayed away.”

Kusum looked at her with surprise. “I came back for all of you. You are my family.”

“And what could you possibly do for us?” her father asked.

“Warn you. Save you.”

“Save us how?”

“We should all leave the city. Now.”

“This disease, it will be everywhere. Do you have vaccine for us?” he asked, sounding as if he already knew the answer. “How are we supposed to stay alive?”

Sanjay leaned forward. “We don’t have more vaccine. Not yet.”

The others all looked at him.

“What do you mean, not yet?” Kusum’s father asked.

“Do you have a car?”

“Do we look like we can afford a car?”

“But you can drive, yes?”

“Of course.”

“Then we will steal one.”

“Steal?” Kusum’s mother blurted out. “We are not thieves.”

Ignoring her, Sanjay said, “I have a plan that I hope will save all of you.” Plan was probably a little generous. “Get a car and take everyone out of town.” He looked at Kusum. “Do you think you can find your way back to where we were last night?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Go there.”

“What about you?”

He was silent for a moment. “I will go back to where I found Ayush. There might be more vaccine there.”

Kusum brightened. “Do you think so?”

“There is a chance.”

“I know where we can find a car,” Kusum’s father said, no longer sounding as if their fate was inevitable.

His wife looked at him, wide-eyed. “You can’t be serious.”

“We’re talking about saving our family. Of course I’m serious.”

“What about Chandra and Rochi?” she asked.

Sanjay looked at Kusum, confused.

“My mother’s brother and his wife,” she whispered. “Panna’s and Darshan’s parents.”

With a nod of understanding, Sanjay said, “You’ll have to leave them behind.”

“What?” Kusum’s mother said.

“They’ve been through the city. There’s a chance they’ve already been exposed to the spray. If they have, then they are as good as dead.”

“We can’t just leave them here.”

“We can, and we will,” her husband said. “We can call them, give them the chance to get away, but Sanjay is right. We cannot tell them where we are going. If they are alive when this is over, we will find them then.”

Sanjay stood up. “You cannot wait here any longer. There is no telling how soon it will be before the sprayers arrive.” He also had to get going himself. The sooner he finished, the sooner he could be back with Kusum and make sure she was all right.

“You should not go alone,” Kusum said.

“It will be easier on my own.”

She looked unconvinced.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I will meet up with you by this evening. No later than eight, okay?”

She stared into his eyes for a second, then nodded. “Eight.”

Sanjay gave her a reassuring smile, and turned for the door.

“Wait,” she said. She disappeared into the other room. When she returned, she was holding a mobile phone. “Take it. Father has one, too. His is the first number listed.”

“Thanks,” he said.

She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Come back to me,” she whispered.

17

A total of fourteen suspicious shipping containers had been discovered within the five boroughs of New York City. The NYPD and FDNY had moved in quickly and cordoned off the areas surrounding the boxes. At first, the off-limits zones stretched for only a couple of blocks, but after news of boxes exploding elsewhere, they were increased to eight square blocks.

Unfortunately, there was not enough manpower to watch every inch of the boundaries around the restricted areas and continue basic services to the rest of the city. So unmonitored sections were unavoidable.

Joey Chin saw this as an opportunity.

Near the middle of the evacuated area was the building where Walter Natz lived. Joey had been trying to figure out how to get into Natz’s place for weeks. While the guy was often away on business, his building had a doorman, at least ten roaming security guards at all times, and cameras on every floor, meaning any kind of incursion was next to impossible.

Until the evacuation, Joey had been unable to work up any viable options, and, understandably, his client was getting antsy. Four weeks and no visible progress had a way of doing that. The documents the man needed were inside a safe in Natz’s home office. Joey knew he could get into the safe, no problem. It was getting to the apartment that was the challenge.

Until the evacuation order a few hours earlier. Officials had made it very clear there were no exceptions for anyone, security staff included. Best of all, Joey had found a vulnerable point in the boundary to the off-limits zone.

He had watched it for over an hour just to be sure, then simply walked across the darkened street, picked the lock on the door to a dry cleaner, and let himself in. As expected, the place had an alarm, but he quickly disabled it, and made his way through the building and out the back door.

From there, it was just a matter of working his way through the streets without being spotted by the helicopters that occasionally flew over the area. That was a piece of cake.

When he reached the block where Natz’s building was, he gave it a thorough scan to make sure no one had secretly stayed behind. As expected, it looked deserted.

Of course, there were still the cameras, but those he could deal with.

He went around to the alley behind Natz’s building, disabled the single camera covering the back entrance, and busted one of the low windows meant to allow light into the basement level. He knew the building’s alarm system utilized touch plates at all doors and windows, but not the more sophisticated motion sensor that would detect a window breaking. He had identified that as a weak point right at the start, but the problem had always been the guards. The information he’d been able to obtain indicated one guard was always in the basement, which meant he would probably hear any breaking glass.

Not today.

Joey made his way to the utility room that controlled the power to the building. He had no intentions of killing all the power; that would make his job difficult. He was only interested in the power supply dedicated to the security system. The actual box was unmarked, designed to look like it was part of the larger electrical system. There were even dummy wires running from it to the main boxes. It was a good camouflage job. Someone not quite as experiened as Joey would have continued looking elsewhere. Joey, though, had studied the true plans, the ones most people would never be able to get their hands on. That was part of the skill set he brought to any project — his contacts and ability to get whatever he needed.

Cover off, wires cut, job done. The offsite monitoring facility would wonder what was going on, but what could they do? It wasn’t like they could send in cars full of security men. And even if they called the police, the NYPD had its hands full at the moment and would probably just hang up on them.

He headed for the elevator.

There were grander buildings in New York for sure, skyscrapers that allowed residents to live in the clouds. Natz’s building was not nearly as tall as those. While he lived in one of the penthouse apartments, it only put him nine floors from the street.

Once Joey got there, he wasted no time opening Natz’s door. As soon as he was inside, he glanced at the alarm and noted, with satisfaction, that the display screen was dead.

The only surprise was how warm the apartment felt. He went over to the thermostat and saw that it was set at seventy-eight degrees. He considered turning it down, but needed to limit his impact on the place so that his visit would remain undiscovered.

The door to the home office was closed, but not locked. The room was even warmer than the rest of the place. He guessed it had to be at least eighty-five degrees, if not hotter. While it had been only annoying at first, the temperature was now a problem. The last thing he needed was for any sweat to drip from his face to the wood floor, leaving a potential DNA sample that could be traced.

He looked around for another thermostat, but there was none in the room. Since the building was only nine floors high, the windows could actually be opened. He stepped over to the nearest one, flipped the latch, and pushed it out.

As he was bringing his hand back inside, something wet landed just above his lip. He wiped it off with his fingers, and glanced out the window, thinking it might be starting to rain. But he could see no clouds.

What he could see were several sets of bright lights illuminating a small lot two blocks away. He couldn’t see all the way down to the ground from where he was, but he knew the lights had to mark the shipping container that was the reason he’d been able to get into the building.

Another drop of water blew in from outside, striking him on the bridge of his nose. Perhaps the clouds were above the building, just out of sight. If so, he hoped any storm they might bring would hold off until he was done.

Turning back to the room, he set to work.

Everything went as smoothly as he expected. An hour and a half later, he was back in the hotel room, the desired files in hand. At midnight, he would hand his client the prize.

But that wouldn’t be the only thing he’d pass on.

Martina Gable hadn’t intended to go to the party, but her friends Noreen and Jilly wouldn’t take no for an answer, and had made her come along.

As she knew would happen, she ended up hanging in the back of the room, nursing a Coke and thinking about Ben. She liked how they just kind of got each other right from the beginning. The problem was, he went to school up in the Bay Area, and she was stuck down in L.A., limiting the time they were able to spend together.

Eventually Noreen and Jilly found her again, then a few of their old friends from their high school softball team joined them. At first it was the standard tell-us-what-you’ve-been-doing type of conversation, but it didn’t take long before talk turned to the events that had dominated the news that day — the mysterious shipping containers.

“Just glad there’s none of those things here,” Jilly said.

“I heard they found one over by Walmart,” a girl named Wendy told them.

“I didn’t hear that,” Jilly said.

“Neither did I,” Noreen agreed. “Who told you?”

“A friend,” Wendy said, her tone a bit meeker than before.

“Was it on the radio?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

The mood darkened as they spent several minutes guessing at what might be inside. Finally, they decided to hop into Noreen’s Honda Civic and make sure there was nothing weird going on at Walmart.

Martina, being Noreen’s best friend from high school, was assigned the front passenger seat, while the three other girls crammed into the back, but Walmart was a bust.

No police. No bright lights. No shipping container.

They ended up going to Carl’s Jr., taking the same booth they’d often used back in their high school days, and sharing several bags of fries while they continued to speculate on the purpose of the boxes.

Finally, with a promise of getting together at least one more time before the holidays were over, Noreen took them back to their cars. Martina’s was last.

“Really is good to see you,” Noreen told her.

“Yeah. Same here.”

Noreen tried to smile, couldn’t pull it off.

“You all right?” Martina asked.

“I’m just a little, uh, freaked out,” Noreen said.

“About what? School?”

“School’s okay for the most part. It’s just…” She looked up, a tear running down the side of her nose. “It’s just this stuff today on the news. What the hell could be going on?”

“I don’t know,” Martina said. Though she’d been acting otherwise, it was kind of freaking her out, too. “It’s probably nothing.”

Noreen looked at her. “You think?”

“Sure.”

“Then what is it?”

Martina put on her most comforting smile. “Nothing we need to worry about.”

A few minutes later, they hugged goodbye, and both girls headed home.

In the strictest sense, Martina was right. She and Noreen didn’t need to worry about the boxes. Their immunity ensured that.

But there would have been little comfort in that knowledge.

With only two days left until Christmas, retailers had been anticipating that this would be one of the busiest shopping days of the season. The majority of customers on this day was also expected to be men. Typically, they were the ones who waited until the last minute, then rushed in and scooped up whatever they could find, no matter the cost. Savvy store managers made sure there were several items front and center specifically meant to catch the male eye.

Daniel Wheaton was such a manager, and he was in charge of one of the Marker’s department stores. Marker’s wasn’t a large chain, only five locations throughout the UK, and it certainly wasn’t high end, but it did fill a nice niche in the middle, and generated more than enough business to keep its doors open year after year.

During the Christmas season, Daniel all but lived at the store — going over receipts, making sure customers were being helped, checking inventory, and, in the words of most of the employees, doing anything he could to get in their way.

The one thing Marker’s did not have was an electronics department. This made “catching the male eyes” a bit more difficult, but not impossible. It also meant that when the first news about the shipping containers appeared not long before closing the previous evening, no one in the store had any clue what was going on. Once the day’s receipts had been tallied and the special last-minute displays were in place, it was nearly midnight, so Daniel took the tube home and went straight to bed.

That morning, his alarm woke him at five a.m. He was showered and on his way to the store before six.

The first sign that something was up came when he played the phone message for the automated office line and learned that two employees were not coming in. This was nothing more than an annoyance. He left messages on both of the affected managers’ phones, asking them to call in whoever was next on their list. Once that was done, he promptly forgot about it.

In the next hour, though, six more employees left similar messages, and he began to wonder if there was some sort of mass sickout happening, maybe a coordinated effort to get more pay or something along those lines. But he thought someone would have approached him first before taking this kind of drastic action. He was so concerned about this possibility, it didn’t even register with him that none of the employees had actually said anything about being sick, just that they wouldn’t be coming in today.

Disturbed, he walked out of his office to see if any of the support staff had heard anything, and found only empty desks. Out helping the other employees get ready, he thought, trying not to jump to conclusions. After all, it was almost nine o’clock, nearly time to open.

He sauntered out onto the main floor, and was greeted by dead silence.

“Hello?” he called out.

The office was right outside women’s wear. There should have been half a dozen employees making sure everything was in order, but the department was empty.

“Hello? Where is everyone?”

He walked briskly out into the main aisle, and did a quick circuit of the other departments. He was the only one there.

His jaw tensed. Definitely some kind of protest, he thought.

This was going to be a disaster. Being closed two days before Christmas would be something that would affect them for months. He might even get fired.

He stormed back to the office, and put in a call to Edgar Keller, Vice President of Operations at Marker’s headquarters. Instead of someone answering, the night system picked up. He punched buttons until he reached Keller’s line. After the third ring, he was sent to voice mail.

Confused, he said, “Mr. Keller, this is Daniel Wheaton at London store number two. I seem to have a situation here. I have a feeling there must be an employee protest in the works. It’s five minutes until we’re supposed to open and no one has shown up. I was wondering if someone might have contacted you. Please call me back.”

He hung up, and waited for a couple of minutes. When his phone didn’t ring, he pulled out Keller’s business card from his desk. On it was a mobile phone number, to be used only in the direst of emergencies. Losing a whole day’s receipts, especially this close to Christmas, seemed pretty dire to Daniel.

He dialed the number. It, too, rang three times. He was afraid he’d be shuffled off to voice mail again, but then the line clicked.

“Edgar Keller.”

“Mr. Keller, it’s Daniel Wheaton.”

“Wheaton?”

“London store number two, sir.”

“Oh, right. Why are you calling me?”

Keller had always been a very busy man, but his tone was particularly brusque this morning.

“Sir, I seem to have a problem.”

“What problem?”

“We’re supposed to open…” He looked at this watch. It had just clicked over to nine o’clock. “Well, now. But none of my employees have shown up.”

“And you find that surprising?”

Keller obviously did not, which made Daniel think there was some sort of labor action underway. This was a relief. “What should I do?”

“I don’t care what you do. Me, I’m staying with my family until we know what’s going on. You might want to do that, too.”

Staying with his family?

“I’m not sure I follow, sir.”

When Keller said nothing more, Daniel realized his boss had hung up. He stared at the receiver, feeling very much like he was missing something. Finally, he put it down, and walked back out into the store to see if anyone had shown up. It was as empty as it had been before.

Even more surprising, there were no customers waiting outside the door. They always had customers who liked to get their holiday shopping done first thing in the morning. There should have been at least a dozen or more people peering through the window, wondering why the store was still closed.

He walked over to the main door, turned the lock, and stepped outside. Not only was there no one waiting, there were no pedestrians on the sidewalk at all. A few cars sped by, but at this time of the morning, the street should have been jammed.

Back inside, he made his way to Mrs. Norris’s desk. The bookkeeper’s small office was just a few doors down from his. There, on the credenza behind her chair, was the radio she liked to listen to while she worked. He turned it on.

As always, it was tuned to BBC Radio 1, but instead of Chris Moyles, the usual morning host, one of the news anchors was talking.

“…what steps to take. There has been no claim of responsibility, and most authorities around the world are unwilling to speculate.”

Claim of responsibility? Had there been another terrorist attack? Maybe even here in the city?

“As a reminder,” the anchor went on, “the Home Office has asked that residents in London and all other major cities remain at home today, and off the streets. This is a voluntary order at this point, but we are told that could change at any moment. If you’re in the vicinity of what you believe to be one of the suspicious containers, you are advised to find shelter at least a mile from it, then report the container’s location to local authorities. We will, of course, give you the latest information as it comes in.

“Right now we have a report from Russell MacLean in Edinburgh, where army special forces are attempting to disable one of the containers.”

The sterile-sounding environment of the broadcast studio was replaced by the sound of wind and heavy equipment. “I’m here just outside the center of Edinburgh, where one of the devices seen around the world was discovered yesterday near a building that was undergoing restoration. Throughout the night, army officials…”

Daniel didn’t even bother turning the radio off as he ran out of Mrs. Norris’s office. He could hear the reporter in Scotland droning on, but the words no longer sunk in. He had to get home, away from the store. His branch of Marker’s was located not far from Soho, an area he was sure would be a target for terrorists. His apartment, by contrast, was in a working-class residential neighborhood on the edge of the city, where it was surely safer.

He stopped just long enough to grab his jacket from his office, and raced out of the store, almost forgetting to lock the door as he left. His anxiousness stayed with him all the way to the Underground station, and throughout his mostly solo ride home.

As he climbed back to street level just a few blocks from his building, he finally allowed himself to relax. Soon he would be in the comfort and safety of his apartment, where he could sit in front of his television and get a proper sense of what was going on.

As he walked down the block, he felt moisture land on his face and hands. Clouds had been hanging over the city for days, but so far there had been no rain. It looked like today was going to be different.

Once he was in his apartment watching the news, he never thought to look out his window. If he had, he might have seen that the clouds were far too thin to hold much water at all.

Of course, by then, he had forgotten all about the drops that had fallen on him.

18

It had taken Sanjay much longer than he anticipated to get to the building where his cousin had lain dying a few days before. The area was nearly surrounded by men spraying the streets with Pishon Chem’s deadly mixture.

He wasn’t worried about the vaccine not working. If that were the case, there would be nothing he could do about it, and he and Kusum would die like everyone else. What did concern him was unintentionally carrying the spray back to the others, and making them sick before he could inoculate them.

So he’d had to work his way around until he found a path that had yet to be sprayed, and then headed straight for the building. Only a few of the food vendors and shops that usually crowded Gamdevi Road were open, and most had no customers.

Sanjay’s stomach growled, urging him to stop for a bite of whatever he could find. But he knew he couldn’t risk it. What if the person working the stand had been exposed to the spray? Would he transfer it to the food, or even to his customers directly? Sanjay would just have to stay hungry.

He cut through the lighter-than-usual traffic, then turned off the road and drove right up to the building, parking his bike near the main door. His previous visit had been late at night, and he’d been forced to climb up to the rear balcony to the second-floor restaurant just to get in. But now, being the middle of the day, the front door was open.

In the lobby, a fat man in a tight suit sat behind a desk.

“May I help you?” he said.

Sanjay had not expected to have to deal with anyone. He hesitated for a moment before saying, “I’m with Pishon Chem. I’ve been sent to pick up something downstairs.”

“They’re all gone. No one is here.”

“Yes, I realize that,” Sanjay said, knowing that probably meant Ayush was dead. “Only picking up.” He paused, then added, “Mr. Dettling sent me.” Dettling was one of the European managers at Pishon Chem, and had been one of Sanjay’s bosses.

“Mr. Dettling?” the man said.

“Yes. I’m sure you know him.”

“Of course. Go ahead, then, but when you go back, tell Mr. Dettling he needs to send people to clean up. The rooms are unacceptable as they are now.”

“I will be sure to let him know.”

Sanjay skirted around the desk, and over to the door that led into the hallway running behind the elevators. A moment later he opened the door to the basement and raced down the stairs. If the people who had been there were truly gone, then it was unlikely he’d find more vaccine, but he had to check.

The door to the basement rooms Pishon Chem had been using was locked. He knocked, hoping there was someone present he could try to bluff his way past, but the door stayed closed.

He glanced down the hallway, his gaze zeroing in on the doorless room where he hid on his previous visit. Though it had been dark inside, he’d had the sense it was some kind of maintenance closet.

He ran to it, and felt along the inner wall for a light switch. When his fingers brushed against it, he flipped it on, and a weak bulb hanging from the ceiling lit up. Indeed, it was a maintenance closet. A couple of buckets, mops, brooms, cleaning supplies. There was also a chest of drawers that contained tools — wrenches, screwdrivers, and, best of all, a hammer.

He grabbed the last, returned to the door, and pounded at the wood until the locks finally gave way. The door swung open with a shove.

He moved quickly down the hallway to the room at the end where his cousin had been kept.

When he entered, he immediately could see why the man upstairs had wanted Pishon to come back. Everything was in disarray. Tables overturned, wiring and tubing on the floor, boxes of bandages and gauze and latex gloves thrown haphazardly around. The plastic wall that had divided the room in two was open in the middle, and the beds beyond, where Ayush and the others on his team had lain dying, were empty.

Sanjay stared for a moment at his cousin’s bed, then shook himself out of it. He couldn’t think about Ayush now. The living needed him. He could deal with the dead later.

The front half of the room, the part he was in, was where he’d previously found the nurses, and where he’d obtained the vaccine that he’d taken himself and given to Kusum.

He tried to remember exactly which of the cabinets along the wall it had been stored in.

The…center one.

The doors to all the cabinets hung open, the shelves inside mostly empty, their contents pushed to the floor. As he started going through everything, he already knew what he would find.

Nothing.

He grunted in frustration.

Returning to Kusum and her family without the vaccine was not an option. He was the only one standing between them and death. He had to get it.

He thought for a moment. There was one more place he could check. If the vaccine was anywhere, it would be there.

“What’s going on here?” The man who’d been sitting upstairs stepped into the room. “What happened? The door is broken!”

“Sorry,” Sanjay said as he pushed past the man.

“Sorry? Sorry?” the man said, waddling after him. “You have to fix that! You have to pay!”

“Pishon Chem will take care of it.”

“Wait! You will stay here until I talk to them.”

Sanjay rushed past the broken door into the common corridor.

“Wait!” the man called out, his voice growing farther away. “Wait!”

Sanjay didn’t.

The car Kusum’s father had planned on using belonged to a man who owned a small shop about a kilometer away. Kusum’s father had done some work there on and off, and knew the man hid the car keys under the dash near the steering column.

“I should not be gone more than an hour,” he said. “I will push the horn three times. When you hear it, come down.”

“No,” Kusum said. “We all go.”

“This is not up to you.”

“I’m not trying to fight you. We should go together. It will be faster. You and I can carry Panna and Darshan. Jabala and mother can help masi.”

Her tone was forceful and direct in a way she would have never spoken to her father before. But now was not a time to worry about what was appropriate. She kept her eyes locked on his, knowing he wanted to argue the point and put her back in her place, but instead he frowned and looked away.

“If you are all coming with me, why are you just sitting there?” he said.

They gathered what food they could carry, then left the apartment, not knowing when or if they would ever return. As they neared the end of the alley, Kusum’s father set Darshan down, and moved ahead to look around the corner and make sure the area hadn’t been sprayed.

After a moment, he waved at them. “Come on.”

From that point on, he and Kusum would take turns scouting each intersection to make sure they were clear. Luck stayed with them until they were only three blocks from where the car was parked. That’s when they saw some of the men spraying the road.

Panna, riding on Kusum’s back, started shaking. Though she and her brother had not been in the room when Sanjay told his story, they’d overheard enough of the conversation between Kusum and her parents as they were walking to know there was something wrong about the men holding the sprayers.

“Don’t worry,” Kusum whispered. “We won’t go near them.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Panna fell silent, but she continued to shake.

Kusum’s father studied the area for several seconds, then turned to his family and said, “This way.”

Unlike Sanjay, who’d been able to find an untainted path to the building across town, the way to the car turned out to be completely blocked by the spray.

“What are we going to do now?” Kusum’s mother asked.

“Let me think,” her husband said.

“Think about what? We use another car,” Kusum told them.

“What car?” her father said.

She swept out her hand, taking in the whole street. “Any car. We just need to get away.”

Her mother looked uncomfortable, but instead of voicing her concern, she remained silent.

“We can’t just take any car,” her father countered. “We must be able to start it, and we must be able to get away before anyone notices.”

One that started, yes, but Kusum didn’t care if anyone noticed. As long as it would carry them, that’s all that mattered.

For the first time since they’d left home, her great aunt spoke. “What about a taxi?” She gestured at two cabs parked along the side of the road in front of a restaurant. Each was empty.

“We don’t have enough money for a taxi,” Kusum’s father said.

“Who said anything about paying?” Kusum’s masi said.

Kusum looked at both taxis again, then set Panna down. After telling the girl to hold on to Jabala’s hand, she headed across the road.

“Kusum?” her mother called out.

Kusum batted a hand at her, telling her to be quiet, and kept going. When she reached the other side of the street, she walked past each cab, glancing through the driver’s-side windows. The keys to the second cab, the one in back, were just visible on the floor in front of the seat.

She glanced into the restaurant. There were two men at a table near the middle. They were the only customers, and their eyes were glued to a television on a shelf near the back. She was sure they were the drivers.

Looking back at her father, she motioned to the second cab, and moved her hand in front of her mouth in a broad gesture she hoped they’d understand to mean they needed to be quiet as they entered the vehicle. After her father nodded, she walked into the restaurant, and passed the table with the two men. There she stopped and looked up at the TV. The news was the same as it had been before, so while she pretended to pay attention, she wasn’t really listening.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see her family approach the taxi.

“Have they found anything here?” she asked, not having to fake a concerned tone.

One of the drivers looked at her, then back at the TV. “Nothing yet.”

“You think they will?”

“I hope not.”

A sound from the back of the restaurant caused her to look over. A woman wearing an apron and carrying two bottles of beer came out through a door and walked toward the occupied table. Kusum quickly repositioned herself to block the woman’s view of the cabs out front. The woman set the beers down, and looked at Kusum.

“Sit wherever you want. I’ll be back in a moment,” she said.

“I’m, uh, just watching the TV.”

A moment of displeasure crossed the woman’s lips, but she shrugged and hurried back the way she’d come. Just before she passed through the kitchen door and out of sight, the woman coughed twice, deep and wet.

Kusum stared after her, momentarily frozen in place. She turned back toward the street, searching for any of the sheen from the spray, but there was none. Maybe the woman just had a cold.

Or maybe, Kusum thought, she passed through an area that had been sprayed on her way to the restaurant.

Kusum glanced at the taxi and saw that everyone was inside. Her father gave her a quick wave and a nod from the driver’s seat, indicating they were ready. As casually as she could, she stepped back until she was no longer in the men’s direct view. She then turned and hurried to the cab.

Jabala, in the front passenger seat, had left enough room for Kusum to squeeze in beside her. As Kusum reached the open door, her father turned the ignition.

“Go!” she yelled as she jumped in next to her sister.

Her father shoved the vehicle into gear and hit the gas.

“Hey!” One of the men in the restaurant jumped out of his seat. “Hey! Come back! That’s my taxi!”

“Faster! Faster!” Kusum urged her father, sure the two drivers would get into the other cab and chase them down.

Her father turned from road to road, trying to mask their path. Whether it was because of that, or because the two men never left the restaurant, Kusum didn’t know, but after several minutes it was clear no one was following them.

“Which way now?” her father asked.

“Northeast,” she told him. “Out of the city.”

The area around the Pishon Chem compound had not yet been sprayed. Perhaps they were saving it for the end, Sanjay thought. Or perhaps the managers were worried that even though they’d been vaccinated, the disease might still affect them.

Sanjay parked near the gate that led to the dormitories many of the workers, including him, had been using. As usual, there was a guard at the gate, a local, but not one Sanjay had seen before.

“Private property,” the man said as Sanjay approached. “You cannot enter.”

“I work for the company,” Sanjay told him. “For Pishon Chem. I’m one of the coordinators. I have something I must talk to Mr. Dettling about.”

As with the man at the building, the use of an actual manager’s name caused the guard to relax. “Do you have your ID card?”

Every employee had been issued one. It had been a point of pride among the men. Sanjay did indeed have his ID in his pocket, but he was concerned all the guards had been given his name and told to detain him if he ever showed up.

“Of course I have one,” Sanjay said. “But things were so busy this morning, I left it in the dormitory. I can bring it to you when I leave.”

Though he was using all the right terms, he could see the guard was still hesitant to let him through.

“You understand how important today is, I am sure,” Sanjay said. “Any delay could cause major problems, and if you do not let me go see Mr. Dettling, there will be delays. Do you want this to be your fault?”

“Maybe I should call him.”

“Please, do it. Whatever will make this go faster.”

“Your name?”

Sanjay gave him the name of one of the other coordinators, and the man disappeared inside the little hut that served as his only shelter from the sun. Sanjay could hear him on the phone, and knew before the man returned that the ploy had worked.

“Okay,” the guard said. “You know where to go?”

“Of course.”

“Mr. Dettling said he will be in the conference room.”

“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. Just 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 door.”

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.”

“I’ve already been vaccinated.”

“I don’t care.”

Sanjay spotted a box full of prepackaged, ready-to-use syringes on a nearby shelf. He opened one, and stuck the needle through the rubber cap on the bottle. He drew in the same amount the nurse had given him and, in turn, he had given Kusum. He moved the needle toward the manager’s arm.

“No,” the man said before Sanjay could plunge it in.

Sanjay held the needle just above the manager’s skin. “Why not?”

“I…I made a mistake. That’s not it.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know,” the man said, though Sanjay was willing to bet the man did know.

Instead of asking him again where the vaccine was, Sanjay searched through the bottles, looking for the orange tinge. Finally he found two boxes of bottles sitting together in the first cabinet that matched his memory of the vaccine.

He held one in front of the man. “This is it.”

By the defeated look on the man’s face, Sanjay knew he was right. He added the box of syringes to the two boxes of vaccine, and headed to the door where the cook was waiting. Stopping just inside, he took a quick look around. There were no windows in the supply room, and the only way in and out was the single door.

“Stay here,” he said to the manager, and went out into the corridor.

Sanjay and the two cooks escorted the other managers individually into the medical supply room. The only exception was that they allowed Mr. Dettling to help his injured colleague.

After making sure they’d taken all the mobile phones from the men, they shut the door and jammed a chair from the conference room under the handle. It wouldn’t keep them inside for too long, but it would be enough for Sanjay and his new friends to get away.

He gave each cook a few of the needles and several bottles of vaccine, then instructed them on how to administer it.

They thanked him, and left as fast as they could.

Before taking off, Sanjay found a bag in one of the rooms, put the remaining vaccine and needles in it, then hurried from the building.

“Your identification,” the guard said as he walked by the gate.

“Oh,” Sanjay groaned. “I totally forgot. Look, you can call Mr. Dettling again while I wait, if you want. But please hurry. He told me I needed to deliver this across town as soon as possible.” He held up the bag.

The guard frowned, then shook his head and waved him through. “Next time, don’t forget.”

“I won’t,” Sanjay said. “Thank you.”

Less than a minute later, he was speeding away from the compound, barely believing he’d actually done it. He had the vaccine, more than enough for Kusum’s family. He couldn’t wait to meet up with them again, sure that they were already out of town and nearing the rendezvous point.

They weren’t.

19

The whole night had been a nonstop race through the woods. The monsters, faceless but always close, hounded and teased Brandon as he tried to get away, but every time he thought he was free, he would hear them again.

The forest seemed to go on forever. He knew there had to be a road somewhere, something that would lead him to others who could help protect him from the creatures hunting him.

A howl. Not a wolf, but something else, and so, so close.

“No!” he yelled. “No! No!”

His eyes shot open as the final shout woke him from his sleep. For several seconds, the terror of the woods clung to him as if it were the real thing, then it began to fade and the world came back into focus.

He was momentarily confused by how low the ceiling was above him. So low, in fact, he could reach up and easily touch it. But the air was freezing, and the last thing he wanted to do was pull his arm out from under his…sleeping bag?

The fire at the Ranch. The helicopters. Mr. Hayes. Oh, God, Mr. Hayes. The endless hours of trekking through the forest. The house. The garage.

The old station wagon.

Now he remembered, and wasn’t sure which was worse — the nightmare or reality.

Though he hadn’t wanted to expose himself to the frigid air, he had to check the time. If it was late enough, he needed to head out to the safety of the forest. Using the flashlight, he checked his watch.

Eighteen minutes to six a.m. Definitely time to get out of there.

He was about to turn the flashlight off when he realized something was wrong. The door to the car was open. He had shut it when he climbed in. He was sure of it. Had he woken at some point and opened it but didn’t remember? He didn’t think so. He’d never been the kind of person who’d get up during the night and forget about it like a sleepwalker in a movie.

He played the light through the door but didn’t see anything there. Feeling a bit of the panic he’d experienced in his dream, he scrambled out of his sleeping bag and scooted through the car door. He spun around, shining the flashlight through the room. It was exactly as it had been earlier.

Relax. Maybe you just didn’t shut it all the way and it swung open while you were sleeping. Just get your stuff together and get out of here.

After allowing himself another few seconds to calm down, he pulled his sleeping bag out of the car, rolled it up, and tied it to the bottom of his pack. He thought about eating a little bit, but decided that could wait until he was back among the trees.

He pulled his pack over his shoulder and headed for the door, but when he turned the knob the door only opened an inch before stopping. He tried again, and got the exact same results. Something was keeping it from moving any farther.

He looked through a sliver of space between the door and jamb, but it was still too dark outside to see much of anything. Putting his hand over the lens of the flashlight, he aimed it through the opening near the ground and moved it upward, looking for the cause. He found it at about eye level. A closed hinge held in place by a padlock.

He immediately shut the door and stepped back.

They know I’m here.

Whirling around, he looked toward the roll-up door. It was his only option.

There had to be a switch inside somewhere that would open it. It would make a lot of noise, but he didn’t care. He just needed to get out of there.

Usually the switches were near the door people used to walk in and out, in this case the one that had been padlocked. He moved the flashlight beam over the wall near it, but there was nothing that looked even close to what he thought the switch would look like.

He turned in a circle, desperate to find the button. Then, as his gaze passed over the car, he realized he was being an idiot. There would be a remote in the station wagon.

He pulled the driver’s door open and searched around. With a “yes!” he found the device tucked down next to the seat. He climbed back out of the car, and moved as close to the door as possible so he could make a quick escape.

He pointed the remote at the shadowy form of the motor hanging from the middle of the ceiling, and pushed the button.

Nothing happened.

He pushed again, then hit the back of the remote in case the battery wasn’t sitting right. That’s when he noticed the tiny green light next to the button. When he pushed, the light lit up. Apparently the remote was getting power, but it wasn’t turning on the motor.

The only possibilities would be either the motor was busted, or the power to the garage was off. It didn’t matter what the answer was. The problem was the same.

Wait, wasn’t there something about remote doors? Something his father had told him once?

He shined the light on the motor, and saw the wooden handle dangling from a rope a foot below it.

The emergency release!

After dumping his pack on the ground, he climbed onto the roof of the Subaru and stretched as far as he could, but his fingers just barely missed the handle. He hopped down and went to the storage area at the back. Half a minute later, he found a box that he was sure could handle his weight. He lugged it over to the car, and manhandled it onto the roof. Once he climbed back up, he scooted it until it was directly under the handle, and stepped on top.

This time he had no problem reaching the piece of wood. He pulled it down as hard as he could. There was a groan and a pop, then the door moved upward an inch or so.

Relieved, he jumped down and raced to the exit. Putting his hands underneath the door, he was able to easily raise it enough to get out. The noise was loud, but probably less than it would have been with the motor.

He pushed his bag outside, snaked through the opening, and stood up.

Keep moving. Get to the woods!

He picked up his pack and started to pull it on.

“You’re pretty smart for a kid.”

The voice belonged to a woman who couldn’t have been more than twenty feet away. Brandon turned slowly toward her, but all he could see was a shadow where she stood.

“Find everything in there you wanted?”

“What?” Brandon said. “I didn’t take anything. I was just—”

“Right. You left everything there.”

“Check for yourself. The only things I have are what I came with. I just wanted someplace where I could get out of the cold and sleep.”

“Then why didn’t you just knock on our door?”

“Because it was late,” he said quickly. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Because you wanted to see what was in the garage.”

“No! I told you. I just wanted to sleep.”

The flashlight beam swayed just enough to the side that he could see the barrel of a rifle.

“Please,” he said. “I’m just trying to get to the highway, that’s all. I didn’t take anything from you. Please, just let me go, okay?”

“Not okay,” she said. “Before we let you do anything, we need to make sure we get all our stuff back.”

Brandon took the pack off and held it out toward her. “You want to check? Okay, check. There’s nothing there.”

“Oh, we’ll check. But first we need to do something about you.”

Sometime during the night, the icebreaker Danus Marko moved out from under the storm into a slightly less rough, open sea. Ash was unaware of this, though. After his radio conversation with Matt, he’d been given a meal and had fallen back into a deep sleep from which even the rising and falling and rolling of the ship couldn’t wake him.

When he finally opened his eyes, the ship seemed to be barely swaying at all, the vibrations of the heavy-duty engines cut back to a level that was almost unnoticeable. He pushed himself up, confused.

Chloe lay on the bed across from him, her eyes still closed. Their hosts had decided not to treat them as prisoners anymore but as guests. They had been given a second room next to the one they’d been sharing with Red and Gagnon.

Ash checked his watch and was surprised to see it was already after seven a.m.

“Chloe,” he said.

No movement.

He sat up. “Chloe.”

She rolled onto her back, but her eyes remained shut.

Ash rubbed his face, and ran his fingers through his hair. Stretching his neck, he rolled his head from side to side, then stood up and gave Chloe a shake.

“Wake up.”

A groan, then lids parting. As soon as she focused on him, her eyes shot open all the way. “What’s wrong?”

“I think we might have stopped.”

“Stopped?” She sat up.

“I’m going to go check.”

“Not alone.”

They stopped first to check on Gagnon and Red. Both were still out. Ash checked Gagnon’s temperature and was encouraged by the coolness of the man’s brow, and the color that had returned to the pilot’s face. Seeing no reason to wake up Red yet, they headed for the bridge.

There were four people present when they arrived — three crew members and Gleason, the male half of Adam and Eve. Out the window Ash could see lights, maybe a mile or less from the ship. Not lights from another vessel, though. The way these were strung out, they could only be on land.

“Where are we?” Ash asked.

Gleason looked over, surprised. “You’re up. Good. We can get going.”

“Get going?”

Gleason nodded out the window. “We’re dropping you off here.”

“And where is here?”

“Grise Fiord. Thought it might be where you wanted to go.”

Ash looked toward the lights again, his turn to be surprised. The small, isolated village of Grise Fiord was the location from which Ash and his team had left on their flight to Yanok Island. It was also at Grise Fiord where they’d left the Resistance’s private jet with its crew, waiting for them to return.

A way home.

“There is a little problem.”

“What problem?”

“We’ve been in radio contact with authorities on the island. They’re not exactly in a welcoming mood at the moment.”

“What do you mean?”

“Apparently the world has gone a little paranoid in the last twenty hours or so.”

“They know about the virus?” Ash asked, hopeful. If people knew what was going on, maybe there was a chance to limit the damage.

The look on Gleason’s face was not as optimistic. “People know something’s going on, just not what, exactly. There’ve been rumors, apparently bolstered by a video that showed up on the Internet, telling people what they need to do. But from what I understand, nothing official has been determined. The people at Grise Fiord apparently don’t want to take any chances.”

“Then how are we going to get there?”

“We’ll move in some, then you and your friends can take one of the Zodiacs in.”

“That still doesn’t mean they won’t try to stop us.”

Looking tired, Gleason said, “You’ll have to convince them not to.”

Ash stared at him for several seconds. “Where are you going?”

Gleason shook his head. “I don’t know yet.” He paused. “Unfortunately, my people and I haven’t received the vaccine. So isolation seems like a good idea, but we’ll take a vote. This isn’t a decision for one person to make.”

“I’ll get my people ready,” Ash said, turning for the door. “You get us as close as you can.”

As he and Chloe walked back to Red and Gagnon’s room, Chloe whispered, “There’s vaccine on the jet. We could have bartered that, maybe gotten them to take us all the way in.”

“These are the same people who raided the Bluff and freed Olivia, who killed almost everyone there. Do you really think they deserve to be inoculated?”

She frowned. “Okay, maybe not. But it would be safer coming into the dock in this than a small boat.”

He made no reply.

She sighed. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

So did he.

Though the woman had never pointed her rifle directly at Brandon, the double-barreled gun had always been aimed at a spot nearby. He’d had no choice but to do everything she ordered.

The first thing she had him do was return the box he’d put on the roof of her car to its shelf, then she’d marched him across the yard to the house. He’d been terrified to go inside, but he had no other options. She directed him to a set of stairs that led down to the basement, and locked him in a room crowded with canned food and bags of grain.

At least she’d left the light on. And, he reminded himself, she hadn’t shot him. Yet.

Trying to think like his father, the first thing he did was check to see if there was any other way out of the room, but the only exit was the door he’d come through, and that wasn’t budging.

Exhausted, terrified, and not sure what to do next, he sat down on a large bag of rice and did his best not to cry.

“I should have just stayed in the woods,” he told himself. “I should have just kept going.”

If his dad had been there, he would have probably said something like, “Don’t deal with should haves. Deal with what is, and staying alive.”

But how was he supposed to do that? He was locked in a cellar. If he’d had his bag with him, he might have found something inside to use as a weapon, or something to force the door open. But as far as he knew, his bag was still sitting in front of the garage.

Wait. Maybe there was something in the room he could use.

He jumped up and took in every inch of his makeshift jail cell. His gaze fell on the shelf against the far wall. Stacked four high and five deep were cans of Campbell’s soup. Apparently the woman was fond of cream of mushroom.

He thought for a moment. A soup can had some weight to it, and would fit nicely in his palm. A nice fastball into the woman’s leg might at least knock her down or stun her enough so he could make his escape.

Buoyed by this idea, he grabbed one of the cans and tossed it up and down. Not quite the baseball he and his dad played catch with, but it would do.

He figured the best place for him to stand to guarantee he wouldn’t miss would be about five feet straight back from the door. The problem with that was, it would also give her enough time to see what he was up to. The smart place to be was off to the side. He wouldn’t necessarily see her as soon as she opened the door, but she wouldn’t see him either, and would be forced to take a step inside. As soon as she did, he could let the can fly.

The only wild card was that he assumed there was at least one other person in the house. The woman had said we, so she wasn’t alone. It would be horrible if he disabled the woman, only to be stopped by other people who lived in the house.

He went back, picked up a second can he could take with him, and returned to the spot near the door. Once settled, he focused his attention on the creaks of the floorboards above him. It sounded like there was only one person moving around — the woman, he assumed — so maybe her friend was on the second floor. If whoever it was stayed there, Brandon thought he should be able to get out of the house before the other person even knew he’d escaped.

Suddenly, he heard a door open and steps moving downward, the sound now coming through his cell door instead of the ceiling.

He tensed.

This is it.

The can in his throwing hand began to feel slippery. He quickly set it down, wiped his sweaty palm on his pants, and picked the container up again. That was better.

As the steps approached his door, he cocked his arm back, ready to throw.

But instead of opening it, she stopped just outside. “What’s your name?” she asked, her voice not as strained as it had sounded when she first found him.

Come on. Just come in.

“I asked you a question,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Please, just let me out,” he yelled. “I didn’t mean to cause any problems. I…I have someplace I need to go.”

“And where would that be?”

“Uh…home. My family. They’re waiting for me.”

“So you’re telling me you live around here?”

“Yeah. A few miles away. I went out for a walk and got lost.”

“You’re packing an awful lot of stuff for someone just out for a walk.”

He had no idea how to reply to that.

“What’s your name?” she asked again.

He hesitated. “Brandon.”

“Well, Brandon. You want to tell me what you were really doing in the woods?”

Please open the door.

“Brandon? Why were you out there?”

“I…I was being chased.” The words left his lips before he even realized what he’d said.

“Chased? By who?”

“They were in helicopters,” he said. Now that he had started, he couldn’t stop. “And they had guns. They killed my friend, the man who was helping me. Please, I was just trying to get away.”

The door opened, but Brandon had already dropped the hand holding the soup. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The woman remained out of view.

“Why were they chasing you?” she asked.

How did he explain that? “I don’t know.”

Silence.

“We heard those helicopters,” she said. “Yesterday. They were a long ways off, though. Ten, fifteen miles at least. Are you saying that’s where you were?”

“Yes.” His voice almost a whisper.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll ask him.” Her words were almost a mumble.

“I’m sorry?” he asked.

Ignoring him, she said, “You’re from over the big ridge, aren’t you? From that valley with that big building, and the airstrip?”

She’d seen the Ranch?

“Well?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Owen told me about it. Some kind of militia place, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what that means.” Was Owen the other person in the house?

“Private army. Anti-government. Racists, maybe? Religious zealots? Both?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Then what is it?”

Again he paused. He’d never been good at lying, so he was sure she’d see through him if he tried now. “The Resistance.”

“The what?”

“Resistance.”

She was silent for several seconds. “What exactly are you resisting?”

“The, um, end of the world.”

He heard her mumble again, but this time couldn’t make out what she was saying. It went on for nearly a minute, with pauses here and there, like she was listening. Finally, she stepped into the doorway, the barrel of her gun leading the way.

“Are you just a bunch of brainwashed crazies? Or are you telling the truth?”

There was something in the way she asked the questions that made Brandon think she was inclined to believe him. Like she knew something. Like—

Oh, no. “It started, didn’t it?” he asked. “That’s why the helicopters attacked us.”

“What started?” she asked.

He tried to recall everything he had overheard and learned while he was at the Bunker. “The shipping containers.”

“What shipping containers?”

“They’re all over the place. They’ve been turned on, haven’t they? Is it on the news?”

Her face twisted in confusion. “The news?”

Her response caught him off guard. Maybe it hadn’t happened.

Before he could say anything more, she shut the door on him. A moment later, he could hear her go upstairs and across the floor. There was a loud scrape, maybe a table being moved or a chair, then nothing for several minutes.

When the floor creaked again, she was walking faster than she had previously. In no time, she was down the stairs and opening the door to his room again.

“Come with me,” she said, disappearing into the main part of the basement.

Confused, but hoping this might be his opportunity to get away, he followed her. Once they reached the main floor, the woman crossed over to the sparsely furnished living room, and stopped in front of a plain wooden table with a computer sitting on it. He could hear what sounded like voices coming out of it, but he couldn’t see the screen.

Brandon’s eyes strayed to the front door. If he moved quickly, he could get outside before she’d be able to do anything.

“Over here,” she ordered.

Now, he told himself, go! But instead, he walked into the living room, the power of what might be on the computer drawing him forward.

On the screen was the website for one of the cable news networks. It was playing a live feed.

The room around Brandon seemed to disappear as he was sucked into the reports of the strange containers that had been found in dozens of countries, emitting some kind of mist. Authorities were doing everything they could to keep the public away from the boxes, but Brandon was sure that wouldn’t matter.

After several minutes, the woman looked at him. “You knew.”

He nodded, his eyes not leaving the computer.

“Then tell me what’s going to happen next.”

“Almost everyone is going to die.”

A spotlight cut across the water, lighting up the Zodiac.

“That’s far enough,” a voice boomed over the electronic megaphone. The speaker was standing on the dock not far from the light, surrounded by several others.

Ash backed off on the Zodiac motor, but didn’t bring the small boat to a full stop. He had no intention of using the dock, but he had to get by it to reach the beach closest to the airstrip.

“We just want to get to our plane,” Ash yelled back, not sure if they would even be able to hear him.

Something hit the water next to the boat. A split second later, the sound of a rifle shot echoed through the air.

“Any closer and the next one will go through the side of your vessel,” the man on the dock announced.

Ash cut the engine.

“Please,” he called out. “There’s nothing wrong with us. We just need to get to our plane.”

No response.

He looked over at Red, who was sitting up front next to Gagnon. “Pass me the radio.”

Red tossed it to him. The device was a handheld walkie-talkie with eleven different channel options. They had tried it several times on the way in, but hadn’t been able to reach anyone. This time, Ash held it in the air so those on the dock could see it, and yelled, “Channel Four! Channel Four!”

There was movement on the dock, several of the men clustering together in discussion. Finally one of them broke from the crowd and jogged to the shore. They watched his progress until he disappeared into one of the buildings.

“We really need to get Gagnon someplace warm,” Red said.

The pilot, whose condition had been improving, had lost a lot of the recently regained color in his cheeks.

There was a pop over the radio, then, “This is Grise Fiord calling party on boat.”

Ash pushed the transmit button. “This is Daniel Ash.”

“Mr. Ash, I regret to inform you you’re going to have to leave. We can’t have you here.”

On shore, the man who’d gone into the building reemerged, holding what was undoubtedly a portable radio in his hand.

“All we need to do is get to our plane so we can leave.”

“Plane?”

“The jet parked on your strip. That’s ours.”

“Hold on.”

They watched the man run down the dock to the others. There was another conference, then a different man broke from the crowd and headed to shore.

“Listen,” Ash said into the radio. “We’ll go directly to the airstrip. We won’t come near anyone.”

“Just stay where you are,” the man said.

Several minutes passed before the person who had left returned with someone new. When they reached the group, the radio crackled to life again.

“Ash? Is that you?”

“Harlan?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Harlan Pinto was the pilot of their private jet. “Where’s the seaplane?”

“No time right now. Tell the men there with you we just want to get to the jet and that’s it.”

“They understand that, but I’m told they’re not comfortable with you coming ashore at all. Everyone’s freaked out about what’s going on in the rest of the world. The news have been showing the video Tamara Costello made telling everyone it’s a biological attack. People here have created a kind of reverse quarantine zone.”

“Let me talk to the man in charge,” Ash said. “But you stay close and listen in.”

“Okay. Just a second.”

A pause, then, “This is Gerald McKay.”

“Mr. McKay, you’re in charge of Grise Fiord?”

“That’s right.” McKay had a rough, smoker’s voice.

“I can make you a deal, and guarantee that no one in your town will ever get sick by what’s happening elsewhere.”

“So can I. That’s why we can’t allow you to come ashore.”

“My guarantee works no matter who comes ashore, now or in the future.”

“And exactly how can you do that?”

“By providing you all with a vaccine.”

McKay fell silent. In the lights on the dock, Ash could see the men talking to each other. They seemed to be directing much of their attention at Harlan.

When things settled down, McKay came back on. “How is it you have a vaccine for a disease some terrorists just released in the last twenty-four hours?”

“It’s not just any disease, Mr. McKay. It’s Sage Flu.” He paused, letting the reality of that sink in. “We’ve had the vaccine ready for some time now, knowing the day would come when these terrorists tried it again. We’d hoped to stop them, but…”

“Bullshit. You’re just saying anything to get us to allow you ashore. You know so much about this, maybe you’re already infected.”

“What do you have to lose? Harlan will get it for you. You can choose to take it or not after that. But I’d take it if I were you.”

“Maybe it’s water, or even poison. Hell, it could even be a vitamin shot. You think we’re going to believe you’d show up right now with a cure for something we’re not even sure exists yet?”

Ash would not get through to them. He could see that.

“Hang on,” he said to Chloe and Red.

He restarted the engine.

“What are you doing?” McKay asked.

Ash tossed the radio on the floor, gunned the motor, and headed around the end of the dock in an arc he hoped would make them harder to hit.

“You’d better be going back out to sea! You’re not wanted here!” McKay yelled at them.

Once he cleared the dock, Ash aimed the boat at the spot on the shore that would put them just below the road leading to the airfield.

“They’re heading off the dock,” Chloe said. “You want to share your plan?”

“Get to the plane.”

She smirked. “Brilliant. But I guess it’s better to die from a gunshot than freeze to death out here on the water.”

“I’d rather not do either.”

As they drew closer to the shore, Red said, “Ice ahead, all the way to the beach.”

“How far does it come out?” Ash asked.

“Looks about twenty-five feet.”

“All right. Let’s hope this thing rides the ice better than Gagnon’s plane did!”

“Seriously?” Chloe asked.

“You have a better idea?”

She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head.

Ash opened up the motor as fast as it would go, building up speed while he still could.

“Here it comes!” Red yelled.

At the last second, Ash killed the motor and pushed it down, so that the propeller end lifted out of the water instead of jamming into the ice and stopping them cold.

The boat skidded across the surface, slewing left and right, then turned until they were sideways to the beach, with only their momentum keeping them headed in the right direction.

“Bump!” Red said.

With a loud thump, the boat jumped up and slammed back down. Ash shot out a hand and grabbed Chloe, barely stopping her from flying over the side.

As they passed from the ice onto the rocky beach, there was a rip followed by the loud hiss of air, and the inflatable sides of the boat began to collapse.

Ash was the first out. He grabbed Gagnon’s legs and said, “Come on. We’ve got to keep moving.”

With a grunt, Chloe crawled out after him. Red shook his head as if he were dazed, then took a hold of Gagnon’s shoulders. The two men lifted the pilot out of the boat, and followed Chloe up to the road.

From that point, it was just over a quarter-mile to the small airfield. They headed toward it as fast as they could go, but made it only fifty yards before they heard running feet behind them.

“Stop!” a man yelled. It was McKay’s voice, though unaided by the radio now.

“Keep moving,” Ash whispered.

“Dammit, stop!”

They didn’t even pause.

There was a double crack of gunfire and two bullets screamed by them, one on either side. They still didn’t slow.

“Don’t make us shoot you!” McKay yelled.

“We’re not making you do anything,” Ash called out.

Another gunshot, this bullet sailing over their heads.

Red looked over at Ash, worried.

“Keep going,” Ash told him.

There were three more shots before they reached the plane, but none hit them. As they neared the aircraft, the side door opened and Barry Kincaid, the copilot, looked out.

“Ash!” he said, surprised. “You made it.” Then he noticed the others coming behind them with guns. “Oh, shit.”

“Get the plane ready for takeoff,” Ash ordered.

With a nod, Barry disappeared back into the plane.

“You first,” Ash told Red as they reached the short stairway to the entrance. As soon as they got Gagnon inside, Ash passed the man’s legs off to Chloe, and headed back toward the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Get him comfortable and warmed up. I’ll just be a minute.”

A few feet past the door was a storage compartment. He opened it, pulled out a two-by-ten-inch blue box, and climbed outside.

As his feet hit the ground, the plane’s engines growled to life. Gathered in a line about fifty feet away from the plane were the men who’d been on the dock. There were nine of them, ten counting Harlan, whom they were holding back.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” McKay’s voice came out of a red-bearded man standing near the middle of the group.

“Leaving,” Ash said.

“You shouldn’t have come ashore. You may have exposed us all.”

“Lucky for you, I didn’t.” Ash leaned down and set the box on the ground.

“What’s that?”

Ash kept his eyes on McKay and nodded toward Harlan. “Let my friend go, and I’ll tell you.”

McKay looked over at the jet’s pilot. “Larry, let him go.”

The man holding Harlan’s arm looked confused. “But don’t we need—”

“Just let him go,” McKay said. “What are we going to do? Keep him prisoner?”

The other man reluctantly let go of the pilot’s arm.

Harlan wasted no time getting back to the plane.

“Go inside and get ready,” Ash whispered as he neared. “We leave as soon as I get back on board.”

“You got it.”

As soon as Harlan was safely on the plane, Ash pointed at the box. “Inside is the vaccine I was talking about. There are instructions for dosage. No needles, though. You’ll have to provide those yourself.”

“How can we believe it’s really a vaccine?”

Ash shrugged. “I guess you can’t. Either take a chance or don’t. But as I said before, I’d take it if I were you.”

He turned and climbed aboard the plane. After the door was shut, he checked to make sure the others were ready, took a seat next to a window, and turned on the intercom to the cockpit.

“You guys set up there?” he asked.

“We’re ready,” Harlan replied.

“Then let’s go.”

“Where to?”

“Home.”

20

Perez had only slept four hours since waking at six a.m. the day before. After the video conference call with the executive committee, he had spent much of his time gathering and analyzing the latest observations on how Implementation Day was proceeding.

It had always been believed that panic would set in once people realized that the shipping containers weren’t isolated events. The quarantine areas around the containers were also foreseen, but the Project had been overly generous when it predicted how quickly they would be implemented. The reality turned out to be much slower, allowing considerably more of the KV-27a aerosol to find suitable hosts.

Monitoring software indicated a total of twenty-seven IDMs were non-functioning. Three of these had failed to start up in the first place. Eight had suffered some kind of internal malfunction during the delivery process. And sixteen had been destroyed when their self-destruct systems kicked in, either by the box being moved or someone trying to get inside.

The produce sprayers that had been installed in hundreds of grocery stores across North America and at a few chains in Europe would, Perez surmised, prove to be less effective. While they were working fine, the panic was keeping most people at home, and many of the markets had closed.

On the success side was the Pishon Chem malaria project. He’d been concerned that the fear created by the shipping containers might cause some of the nations involved to call off the spraying, but it had done just the opposite. Many governments, he realized, were hoping that the “miracle” formula would not only kill malaria-bearing mosquitoes, but also neutralize whatever the shipping containers were belching out.

Perez couldn’t help but allow himself a smile. If the virus worked as it was supposed to, and with the coverage they’d been able to achieve so far, the Project’s planned mop-up of survivors might be scaled back.

With everything going well, Perez turned to consolidating his power. There was no question that the only way the Project would truly succeed was to have a single leader — him. The committee would no longer be necessary. However, that didn’t mean a committee couldn’t be useful, perhaps one to help guide policy, though in reality, he would be the one steering everything.

Easily doable. In fact, most of the current committee members would be fine additions to the new one. Dr. Lassiter would be a pushover, and Perez was confident he could make Tolliver and Halverson see things his way, too.

Nakamura, on the other hand, was a problem.

Perez had met people like her before. They liked to be part of the in-crowd, and would feverishly defend their exclusivity whether it was a logical move or not. They were the kind of people who always thought they knew better though they seldom did.

The kind of people who would never be helpful to the cause.

How Nakamura had reached the position she had, he didn’t know. In his opinion, someone had made a mistake, and as a revamped Project Eden set about creating the new world, there would be no room for mistakes.

Perhaps if she had been located in Europe or Asia, he’d have given her a pass — for a little while, anyway — but the fact that she was at NB89 near Seattle made dealing with the situation so much easier.

He thought it was important to not just delegate the task to someone else, but to also be a part of it. After all, in his past life — the life that had ended when Bluebird fell out of contact—he had been the one sent out to handle these kinds of issues.

The phone rang right on time.

“Yes?”

“Your conference call is ready, Mr. Perez,” Claudia said.

“Thank you.”

He hung up and turned to his computer. A moment later he was looking at Patricia Nakamura sitting smugly in her office.

“Mr. Perez, I’m not sure what you want to discuss, but it seems to me anything we need to talk about should be done in one of our committee meetings.”

“Of course it would seem that way to you.”

“Excuse me?”

“You perceive the world through an unfortunate filter.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think we’re done here.”

She reached for her keyboard to cut off the call, and hit the appropriate key, but, as Perez knew would happen, their connection remained live.

“What’s wrong with this?” she said to herself.

She hit the keyboard over and over but nothing happened.

Perez touched the cell phone sitting on his desk. On it was a prewritten text:

He hit SEND.

“Be careful you don’t break that,” he said.

“Shut up,” she told him.

She reached for the monitor, going for the button that would turn off the screen. Once more, she was stymied.

Frustrated, she stood up and leaned toward the monitor, her head moving out of sight as she undoubtedly searched for the power cord.

“I wouldn’t do that,” he said.

“Try to stop me,” she shot back.

It was the perfect cue, and though the door didn’t open for another couple of seconds, it worked well enough.

She looked up. “Who are you?”

Sims walked in with two of his team behind him.

“Ma’am, please have a seat,” he said.

“What is this? What’s going on?” Nakamura looked back at the monitor. “This is your doing, isn’t it? Tell these men to leave. They have no right to be here.”

“Actually, you’re the one without any rights now,” Perez said.

One of Sims’s men pushed Nakamura back into her chair.

“Hey!” she yelled. She started to get back up, but changed her mind and reached for the phone on her desk. She punched in a number before she raised the receiver to her ear. When she did, she looked at the monitor again. “Dr. Lassiter will deal with you.”

Perez gave her a halfhearted smile.

After a moment, she looked at the phone, used her finger to disconnect the call, and listened again. The anger on her face intensified. “It’s not working! What did you do to it?”

Perez leaned forward. “Ms. Nakamura, the Project thanks you for your service, but regrets to inform you that you are no longer necessary to its future success.”

“The Project thanks me?” While there was still anger in her voice, it was now tinged with fear. “You’re not the Project. You don’t get to make that kind of decision.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I am the Project, and your failure to realize that is the reason my men are there now. But know this. When the trigger is pulled—”

“Wait! No!” she blurted out, her voice full of fear and desperation.

“—it’s not being pulled by the man there with you. It’s being pulled by me.”

“Mr. Perez, I…I’m sorry. I didn’t understand the sit—”

“That’s right. You didn’t.”

Perez nodded once. Behind Nakamura, Sims raised his gun, put it to the back of her head, and removed her from the Project.

21

Someone was shaking Martina’s shoulder.

With a groan, she tried to turn away. It was much too early, she was sure of it. By the time she’d gotten home and fallen asleep the night before, it was after two in the morning. She had promised herself she really would sleep as late as possible today, noon if she could manage it.

“Martina, come on. Wake up.”

She opened her eyes, surprised. Her father was standing over her. He never woke her up.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice still full of sleep.

“Get up, get dressed, then come downstairs.”

She glanced at the clock by her bed and groaned. She had barely slept six hours. “Did I forget something? Are we supposed to be somewhere?”

But her father was already heading out the door. “Just get ready and come down.” With that, he was gone.

She sat up and blinked several times, trying to shake the sleep from her system. As she swung her legs off the bed, she noticed that several drawers of her dresser were open. She hadn’t left them that way the night before. When she got up and walked over to shut them, she was surprised to see they were empty.

What the hell?

She checked the other drawers. Several pairs of pants were missing, and her sweaters, too. Then she noticed that someone had laid some clothes out for her on her desk chair.

More confused than ever, she pulled them on and hurried downstairs to find out what was up.

A cold wind was blowing in through the open front door. Out the living room window she could see her father and brother over near the garage, putting something in the trunk of the car. Above them, high gray clouds dimmed the day.

Something banged in the kitchen.

“Mom?”

Martina stepped off the last tread of the staircase onto the cold tile floor and walked to the back of the house.

Her mother was near the kitchen sink. On the counter in front of her were boxes and packages of food. It looked to Martina like everything from inside the cabinets had been pulled down. Her mother was going through it all, sorting them into groups.

“Mom, what’s going on?”

Her mother jerked around with a start. “Oh, Martina. I didn’t hear you come down.” She attempted to give her daughter a smile, but quickly gave up. Her eyes strayed down to Martina’s feet. “Where are your shoes?”

“Where I left them when I took them off last night,” Martina said, as if it should have been obvious.

“Well, hurry and put them on.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Just do it!” her mother said sharply.

Martina took a step back, surprised by the intensity of her mother’s tone. “Okay. No problem.”

Her mother closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry. Please, just…put them on, okay?”

“Sure. I’m putting them on.”

Martina retrieved her shoes from the entryway, slipped her feet inside, and laced them up. From a peg by the door, she grabbed her zip-up hoodie and headed outside.

Her dad and brother were still at the back of the car. They had lowered the hood of the trunk, but it looked like there was too much inside for it to close all the way.

“Donny, grab me some rope,” her father said.

Her brother ran into the garage.

“Dad, would you please tell me what’s going on?” Martina said.

Her father glanced over. “Good, you’re dressed. There are some water jugs in the garage. Can you put them in the backseat for me?”

“Dad!”

He looked at her again, and finally seemed to register her earlier question. “Did you see the TV?”

“The TV?” She shook her head. “It was off.”

He stepped over to her and put his hands on her arms. “I don’t want you to panic.”

“You mean like you guys already seem to be doing?”

“The shipping containers they’ve been finding all over the place? The rumor is it’s some kind of biological attack.”

“What?” She pulled away from him, her mind assaulted by memories of the outbreak that had almost killed her. That, too, had been a biological attack.

“I said, don’t panic.”

“What is it? Who did it? Do they even know for sure?” The questions jumped out rapid fire.

“The government’s not saying anything yet, but that doesn’t matter right now. What we need to focus on is getting out of here.”

She grew still. “Getting out of here? Did they find one in town?”

“No,” he said quickly. “But they’re all over Los Angeles, and some in Bakersfield and Las Vegas.”

They were surrounded.

“I don’t want to be here when someone who’s been infected shows up,” he explained.

“But where are we going?”

“The Fullers’ cabin. They went back east for the holidays, so no one’s there.”

The Fullers’ cabin was in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, not that far away. Martina and her family had borrowed the place for a week just that past summer.

He looked her in the eye. “I really need your help. Are you going to be okay?”

The person she’d been before the previous spring would have probably argued with him, saying he was overreacting, and that they should just wait and it would probably turn out to be nothing. But coming so close to death changed all that.

“I’ll get the water,” she said.

“Thanks, sweetie.”

They took the back way to the cabin, using one of the winding roads that went up through a steep valley on the desert side of the mountains. When they’d taken the same road in the past, it had always been sparsely traveled. This time, there were dozens of vehicles, all heading up.

“Looks like other people were thinking the same thing,” Martina said.

Her father barely nodded in acknowledgment. He had a tight grip on the wheel, and his mood had darkened every time he glanced at the cars behind them. She knew he’d been hoping they’d be alone.

At the top of the canyon, the road crested over a pass into a high plain, where the desert gave way to the thin fringes of a forest that thickened with every passing mile. Here and there were small patches of snow, a few inches deep at best. That might change soon, Martina thought. The clouds that had been hanging high above their desert valley were much lower here, and were dark and heavy with moisture.

“You brought the tire chains, right?” she asked.

“Of course we did,” Donny said. “They’re in the back. What do you think? That we’re stupid?”

He was fourteen and in that wonderful phase that made Martina want to be nowhere near him pretty much all the time. Still, she held back the response that wanted to jump from her lips. It wouldn’t serve any purpose, and he was just being a kid anyway. The restraint was a grown-up move on her part, one she would have patted herself on the back for if she wasn’t so scared.

“Maybe we should try the radio again,” her mother suggested. She reached over and flipped the radio back on.

The narrow valley they had driven up from the desert had blocked the signal to their satellite radio, so they had kept it off. On again, it tried hard to reestablish a signal, but there were just too many trees and mountain peaks getting in the way.

“We’ll check again at the cabin,” her mother announced, turning it off again. “I’m sure it will work there.”

In a way, Martina was happy they weren’t able to pick up anything. When they’d listened to the news before they lost reception, there had really been nothing new, just the same reports and speculation over and over again. It had started to drive her crazy.

The old highway through the forest had several intersecting roads branching off from it. Here and there cars would turn off, heading to whatever destination they had in mind. When the Gables finally reached the turnoff for the Fullers’ cabin, there were only two other cars left behind them.

Though the new road was unpaved and bumpy, Martina’s father seemed less tense.

The change didn’t last long. A few minutes later, his disposition reverted back to what it had been at the beginning of their trip. They were skirting the edge of a large meadow that allowed them to see a good portion of the road behind them. There, about a quarter-mile back, was one of the cars that had been on the main road.

“Relax, Ken,” Martina’s mother said to her husband. “There are a lot of places out this way.”

He grunted, but said nothing.

A few seconds later Donny said, “Isn’t that the Webers’ car?”

Martina looked back at the other vehicle. It did kind of look like the Webers’ car, but there were probably about a thousand other models they could have said that about.

Mr. Weber worked in the same building as Martina’s dad. He and his wife had three kids, a set of twins who were high school seniors this year, and a younger girl who was either a sophomore or freshman. The Webers were part of the same bridge club her parents were in, and the families had occasionally done things together in the past.

The meadow fell away as they reentered the woods, and the car — the Webers’ or not — disappeared with it. As soon as it was out of sight, Martina’s father increased their speed.

Her mother grabbed the dash. “Ken, please. You’re going to get into an accident.”

The car vibrated as it bounced over the road, but Martina’s father didn’t slow down.

“Ken!”

As the road bent to the left, the back end of the car fishtailed for a second before it came back under control.

“For God’s sake! We’re not going to have to worry about whatever’s happening everywhere else. You’re going to kill us!”

He leaned forward, his chin nearly touching the wheel as he gripped it more tightly.

“Ken!”

After a couple seconds, he let out a breath and settled back against the seat, slowing the car.

Martina’s mother looked at him, her eyes wide. It appeared as if she was going to yell at him, but, like Martina had done earlier with her brother, her mother held her tongue and turned back to watch the road.

They almost missed the turnoff to the Fullers’ place. It was Donny who pointed just in time at the tree with the missing branch that marked the road. Martina’s father slammed on the brakes, kicking up a small dust cloud, and made the turn.

The dirt road was really just a long driveway that led across a portion of the twenty acres the Fullers owned. The rains from the previous spring had created a wash down the middle that had unevenly eroded the dirt surface. Martina’s father had to slow the car down to a crawl several times, and even then couldn’t avoid scraping the undercarriage.

The cabin was tucked within the trees, so it appeared almost out of nowhere after a leisurely curve to the left. There were no lights on inside, and no other cars parked out front.

As soon as they pulled to a stop near the front door, Martina’s father said, “Let’s get everything inside right away,” and climbed out.

Donny jumped out after him, and Martina reached for her door handle to do the same, but then she realized her mother hadn’t moved.

A sniffle. Low, as if it wasn’t supposed to be heard.

“Mom?” Martina said.

Her mother shook her head. “Go help your father,” she said quickly.

Martina leaned forward between the seats. “Mom, are you all right?”

“I’ll be fine.”

Martina knew that wasn’t true. Her mother’s eyes were wet, and a few tears had already traveled down her cheeks. Martina put her arms around her, hugging her as best she could with the seat between them. “It’s going to be okay, Mom. We’re safe here.”

“I know…it’s just…it’s not a great day for any of us, I guess.”

“Yeah, I’ve had better.”

“Me, too,” her mother said.

They looked at each other, then Martina grinned, and they both laughed softly.

“I’m fine, I swear,” her mother said. “Come on. We should help.”

Martina gave her one more squeeze, and they both got out.

The lid of the trunk was open, so Martina couldn’t see her dad or brother. As she walked to the back, she realized the lid hid one more thing.

Stopped at the spot where the driveway widened into the area in front of the cabin was the car that had been following them. Now that it was this close, she could see her brother had been right. It was the Webers’ car.

Mr. Weber was behind the wheel, his wife in the front passenger seat, and their three daughters in back. Martina knew the twins. She liked Riley but wasn’t fond of Laurie. For twins, they were nothing alike. She didn’t know the youngest girl, Pamela, very well.

Martina’s father was staring at the other car. In his hands was a rifle. She knew he had a few guns he’d inherited from his brother who’d passed away a few years before, but it had never crossed her mind that he’d bring them along. It was logical, she guessed, but surprising.

“Ken, what are you doing?” her mother said as she came around from the other side of the car.

“You and the kids, get in the house,” he said.

“Put that down. You’re going to hurt someone.”

“If I have to, I will.”

“You’re talking crazy, Ken. That’s the Webers. They’re our friends.”

Just then, the door on the other car opened, and Mr. Weber climbed out. He held up his hands to show he had nothing in them. “Hey, no need for a gun,” he called out. “Just looking for a place to hide out, like you.”

“This place is taken,” Martina’s father said.

“This is the Fullers’ place, isn’t it? I’ve heard them talking about it.”

“Get back in your car, Mark. Find someplace else.”

“Be reasonable. It’s just me and my family. We’re scared like you. Wouldn’t it be better if we worked together? Make things easier.”

“There’s not enough to take care of both us and you.”

“You mean food? That’s not a problem. I’ve got a whole car full of food. We just need a roof to sleep under. Someplace where we can stay warm.”

“It’s a small place. There’s not enough—”

“Just the floor. We can sleep there. Come on, you don’t want to do this.”

“He’s right,” Martina’s mother whispered. “This isn’t the type of people we are. And if they’ve brought food, that will help us, too.” She touched her husband’s shoulder. “There’s enough room inside for all of us.”

“You followed us up,” Martina’s dad said to Mr. Weber.

“Not on purpose,” Mr. Weber said. “At least not until we reached the mountain pass and I realized you guys were ahead of us. I just thought it would be good to stick with friends.”

“Ken, just let them join us,” Martina’s mom said. “You’re not going to shoot them, for God’s sake. They’ll freeze out here if they don’t find shelter.”

Martina’s father remained rigid for several more seconds, then his shoulders sagged. He lowered the rifle so that the barrel was pointing at the ground. “All right. You can stay. But if anyone else comes, we turn them away.”

“Sure,” Mr. Weber said. “Sure, of course.”

He brought his car over and together the families started unloading the two vehicles. They were only halfway done when the snow started to fall, so they rushed to get the rest inside.

“For a minute there, I was afraid your dad would shoot us,” Riley Weber said to Martina as the two of them made hot chocolate for everyone later.

“He was just trying to protect us, that’s all.”

“Yeah, I know. Still, it was kind of freaky.”

“Sorry,” Martina said.

Riley shrugged. “It’s okay. Dad’s been pretty crazy himself. When they started reporting about the shipping containers yesterday, he called my mom and told her she needed to get home right away.”

Martina looked at the other girl. “Where was she?”

“Christmas shopping. Down in L.A.”

Martina felt a chill run down her arms.

“Hey, don’t worry,” Riley said. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s okay. There weren’t any of those things anywhere near where she was.”

“How do you know?”

“She didn’t see any and there weren’t any reports of them on the news. Look.” Riley glanced over at her mother in the living room. “She’s fine.”

Martina followed her gaze. Mrs. Weber did, indeed, look fine. If she’d been exposed, it had happened almost a day before, and surely she would have shown signs of something by now. Still, shouldn’t Martina say something to her parents, just in case?

She decided to tell her mom; she’d know what to do. Her dad would just panic.

“I think it’s ready,” Riley said.

Together, the girls poured the hot chocolate into mugs and carried them out.

As soon as she found a moment, Martina took her mother aside and told her what Riley had said. Her mother was concerned, but not overly worried.

“Should we tell Dad?” Martina asked.

Her mom patted her on the arm and smiled. “He’s under a lot of stress right now. Best I’ll have a little talk with Mrs. Weber. For now, we’ll just keep this to ourselves.”

In that, Martina’s mother was right.

22

“We’re switching now to our Pentagon correspondent, Brian Keeter.”

The image of the anchor, Carl Morgan, cut to a split screen, with Morgan on the left, and Brian Keeter on the right, standing in front of a wooden paneled wall that had several flagpoles in front of it.

“Brian,” Morgan said. “What’s the latest from there?”

“Carl, while spokesmen here are not saying anything official at the moment, sources have told us that scientists working at the US Army Medical Research Institute have been able to confirm that the substance being released by the shipping containers is consistent across all the locations they’ve been able to test.”

“Biological?” Morgan asked.

“Again, nothing on the record, but yes, Carl. My sources say the institute has been able to precisely identify the biolo—”

The screen with Keeter’s image suddenly went black. Morgan looked momentarily confused, but quickly regained his composure.

“Apparently we’re having some signal problems with the feed from the Pentagon. We’ll go back to Brian Keeter as soon as we’re able to reestablish the link. In the meantime, we’ve received word that the planned test destruction of one of the boxes has been delayed. No reason has been given, but our experts speculate…”

23

All work in the Bunker came to a standstill as the president spoke.

“It’s not going to work,” Rachel said once the short speech was over.

“It could save some lives,” Matt said. “It all depends on how long the virus stays active. If someone can wait it out, they’ll have a chance.”

“For now, maybe. But we both know it will come back, like flu does every year. It’ll become part of the biosphere. If it doesn’t kill them now, it’ll kill them next time.”

“We’ll just have to get them the vaccine first.”

She stared at her brother. “And how are we supposed to do that? We only have a limited supply.”

“At the moment,” he corrected her. “We’ll continue making it.”

“It still might not be enough.”

“Or it might be.”

“We’ve been doing all we can for years, Matt, and what did that get us? We failed. The Project won. They’re going to get their restart, and we can’t stop it.”

For the first time he noticed the circles under her eyes. “When was the last time you slept?”

She glared at him, then whipped around and half ran toward the door.

“Rachel!” he yelled. He tried to follow her, but with his leg, he could only go so fast. “Rachel!”

Just before he got to the door, Christina called out, “Matt, I’ve got the men at the emergency tunnel on the phone. They’ve got the door open and are about to go through. They want to know if you still want to go with them.”

Matt paused. If he kept after his sister, it would just make her more upset. What she really needed was sleep, not talk. Reluctantly, he said, “Tell them I’m on my way.”

The only way out of the Bunker now was via a long tunnel that exited through a hidden hatch in the woods. Similar to the other two entrances, both of which were now unusable because of the fire, a large blast-like door had been slid into place when they went to full cover, sealing off the underground facility from the tunnel and the world above.

While closing the massive door was easy, the built-in safeguards made opening it again considerably more difficult. It had taken the team over an hour to slide it open wide enough for people to pass through. When Matt arrived, all six of them were standing by, geared up and ready to move.

“Let’s go,” he said, not wanting to waste any more time. Brandon and Hayes had been out there for over twenty-four hours now, and he would not relax until they were found.

One of the team members handed Matt a coat and a pistol. One by one, they passed through the opening into the tunnel.

The air grew colder as they approached the far end. When they reached the hatch, Matt toggled his radio.

“We’re ready to go up,” he said.

“All clear,” Christina replied through his earpiece.

The lead man, Miller, released the lock on the hatch and carefully lowered the unhinged edge, revealing a metal plate above covering the hole. On top of the plate would be a layer of dead needles and loose branches providing the perfect camouflage to anyone looking for it on the other side. Working with two of his men — Reubens and Barlow — he maneuvered the plate up and to the side, clearing the way.

As soon as they were all out of the tunnel, they headed down the road toward the barn. Hayes and Brandon had been heading back to the Bunker from there when the helicopters were spotted, so that was the logical starting point for Matt and his men.

“I’ve got footprints,” Miller called out several minutes later.

Matt limped over, his knee bothering him more than he was willing to admit. Miller was kneeling down, studying several prints.

“Theirs?” Matt asked.

“Must be,” Miller said. He pointed at the ground. “There’s a big set and a small set.”

“This is as far as they got?”

“I think so.”

“Then they must have headed into the woods from here.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Looks to me like they headed back toward the barn.”

“Back to the barn?”

“Yeah. See?” Miller stood, pointed at some more tracks, and followed them down the road a dozen feet before stopping. He glanced at Matt. “They keep going.”

“Then we follow them.”

Why in the world would Jon take Brandon back to the barn? Matt wondered as they headed down the road. He had told Hayes to go into the forest and find one of the emergency supply stashes before hiking out to the highway. Going to the barn would have been extremely risky. The helicopters would have surely checked it.

As they neared the barn, two of the men ran ahead, while the rest continued following the footprints.

Miller stopped, still watching the ground. “It’s kind of a mess here. Tracks going to the barn and to the woods over there.” He pointed to the right.

The men who’d gone to the barn jogged back up.

“Well?” Matt asked.

“No one’s there, but someone was,” one of the men said. “All the stalls are empty, and the horses are gone.”

Matt looked past the two men at the barn, searching for any sign of the animals, but none were around.

“Could they have ridden away on one of them?” Barlow asked.

That thought had crossed Matt’s mind, too, but it would have been a huge risk. The attack team from Project Eden could easily have spotted them on a horse, and chased them down with one of their helicopters.

“I think they went into the woods on foot,” Miller said. He crouched down next to the footprints. “These leading toward the trees? They’re on top of the other ones, so they’re the last ones made.”

“They could have doubled back to the barn on the grass,” Barlow argued.

Miller shrugged, conceding the point, but not seeming to buy into it.

Matt looked at the barn, then at the woods. “I think the horses were only a diversion. Jon wouldn’t have risked taking one. We go into the woods.” He touched the transmit button on the radio. “Christina, what’s the closest emergency supply location from the barn?”

There was a pause, then she said, “There are three within a two-mile radius. One is a mile and a half northwest of you, one almost due west three-quarters of a mile, and one is northeast just over half a mile. I can send you all of their coordinates, if you’d like.”

Matt looked down at the prints Miller had found. The set on top was heading east. It was also the only logical direction to find civilization.

“Just the last one for now,” he said. “We’ll check there first.”

There was no question that the emergency stash in the east was the one Jon and Brandon had visited. It was half uncovered, and many of the supplies were gone.

Matt shone his flashlight into the tube. Per procedure, all the empty bags from the supplies they had taken had been put back inside, but, oddly, they had all been scrunched toward the bottom, like someone had crawled into the tube and stamped them down with their feet. An unnecessary step. Also, why had Hayes left the top half off? He should have replaced the metal plate and pushed the loose ground cover back over it.

The men from the team were scattered around the area, searching every square inch for any clues.

“Anything?” Matt called out.

“They walked in together from over there,” Miller said, pointing in the same direction they had come from. “I also found two sets of prints heading away. They’re both going in the same general direction, but they’re not on the same path.”

“You mean they split up?”

“Or left at different times. Which is pretty much the same thing, I guess.”

The team broke into two groups — Matt, Barlow, and two of the other men following Brandon’s prints; and Miller and the other two following Hayes’s. It wasn’t long before the two sets of tracks diverged enough that the groups were no longer in sight of each other.

There was only one reason Matt could think of for Hayes and Brandon to split up. Someone from the Project Eden team must have been in the area. That also could explain the compacted bags in the storage tube. Perhaps Brandon was hiding inside.

Matt could see the hint of a clearing ahead. Just before they reached it, the radio came to life.

“Matt,” Miller said. “You need to come here.”

“Where are you?”

“There’s a clearing. It’s pretty much straight northeast of where—”

“We’re just coming to it now,” Matt said.

“You’ll see us once you get here.”

As soon as Matt stepped out from the woods, he spotted the others. Miller and the two men with him were hunched over something on the ground. It wasn’t until Matt was a few feet away that he saw the legs of a man.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said.

Miller turned. “It’s Hayes.”

“Dead?”

Miller nodded. “Shot in the back.”

Matt knelt down next to Miller and looked at the body. Hayes was lying on his back, part of his chest blown out.

“You turned him over?” Matt asked. If Hayes had been shot in the back, he should have been lying on his stomach.

“No. He was already like this.”

So it was either the person who killed him who turned him over, or…

God, let me be wrong.

Matt struggled back to his feet. “We need to look for Brandon,” he said loudly enough for all of them to hear. “Spread out. Check everywhere.”

After twenty minutes of searching, the only thing they discovered were depressions in the meadow where a helicopter had landed.

That troubled Matt even more. Had they taken Brandon?

They carefully checked the area around where the helicopter had been, but the ground was a mixture of dead grass and leaves, so no footprints had been left behind. No way to know who might have boarded the aircraft.

“Miller,” Matt called out. When the man came over, he said, “I want you to do a circuit just outside the clearing. See if you can pick up Brandon’s trail again and figure out which way he went.”

“No problem.”

As Miller started to turn away, Matt said, “Look very hard.”

24

Brandon had told the woman what he could. The Ranch and the people there, he said nothing about. When she wondered how he knew what he did, he’d kept his mouth shut. He was confident she believed him, though; he could see it in her eyes.

Once she had finished asking him questions, she’d let him get some food from the kitchen, where he noted the back exit out of the corner of his eye. She then ushered him back down to the room in the cellar.

“Take an inventory,” she told him, pointing her gun at a clipboard hanging on the wall.

His face scrunched in confusion. “What?”

“Check to make sure everything on that list is still correct.”

“Wouldn’t you already know that?”

Her mouth tightened into a tense, straight line. “Just do it,” she said. She slammed the door closed and locked it again.

Having no intention of counting cans and jars, he had spent most of the morning thinking of ways he could get away. They all came down to the same thing — if the opportunity presented itself, he would just run.

A good enough plan, except for one big problem: the gun. Would she actually take a shot at him? He didn’t think so, but it was hard not to remember the hole in Hayes’s chest.

While he’d been thinking, he could hear the woman walking around upstairs. She seemed to be in constant motion, moving from room to room, pulling open doors, scraping across the floor. She was still alone, though, so maybe the person she lived with wasn’t home. He hoped so.

After a while, the woman turned up the volume on her computer so loud that he could hear the wah-wah-wah of the voices on the news resonating through the floor. Occasionally, he could even make out a word here and there, but mostly had no idea what was being said.

As the time passed, he started thinking about that coming evening. He didn’t want to spend it in the cellar. He wanted to be away from there, as far as possible. He paced back and forth, his anxiety increasing.

Finally, he stopped himself, knowing he needed to distract his mind so he wouldn’t wind himself up so much.

He caught a glimpse of the clipboard.

It’s better than nothing.

So, despite his earlier decision, he began checking the woman’s supplies. In addition to the cans of cream of mushroom soup, there were hundreds of others containing pears, apricots, baked beans, lima beans, peas, pineapple chunks, Spam, and beets, just to name a few. The jars, with the exception of seventy-two containing Ragu spaghetti sauce, were all labeled on the lid and filled with things he guessed the woman had jarred herself — cherry preserves, apple sauce, pickles, stewed tomatoes, and the like.

After a while he started to get hungry again. Checking his watch, he saw that it was already past noon. If she didn’t come soon, he might be tempted to open one of the jars. The applesauce looked pretty good.

He was halfway through the final section when he heard the woman coming down the basement stairs. He turned as the door opened, prepared to hand over the inventory, hoping that if he seemed to be cooperating, she might ease up on him a bit.

The look on her face made him forget all about the clipboard in his hand. Her eyes were wide and her mouth slightly open. Stunned was the only word to describe her. It was then that he noticed she wasn’t holding her rifle.

“Come,” she said. She turned, leaving the door open.

By the time he reached the stairs, she was already at the top. He raced up the steps, and into the kitchen. The woman wasn’t there, but he could hear her around the corner in the living room. He looked to the left, taking his first good glimpse of the rear door to the house.

Go!

He started to take a step, then froze in surprise. His backpack. It was sitting by the door, just off to the side.

Run.

This time, it wasn’t the sight of his bag that stopped him, but the voice coming from the computer in the other room.

“…again. As the president finished his speech, we received a release from the Department of Homeland Security. A three-hour grace period will start at the top of the hour to allow people to get home. After that, anyone outside without proper authorization will be in violation of the curfew and subject to arrest. The release also lists in detail what you can do to protect yourself and your family in your home. We have posted the document on our website, and will be going over the points in just a few minutes. But first, we’re going to replay the president’s speech in its entirety.”

By the time the news anchor finished speaking, Brandon had moved into the living room. The woman was standing in front of the computer, her eyes glued to the screen. The image on the monitor changed to a familiar one of the president sitting at his desk in the Oval Office.

“My fellow Americans and citizens in nations throughout the world, over the last…”

Brandon listened as the president spoke of the Sage Flu and the measure to stop it that hadn’t worked.

Before the president finished, the woman looked over. “You can’t fake this. That’s really the president. This is really happening.”

It was as if at that very moment, the full reality of it hit her. She staggered forward, grabbed for the desk chair, and sank to the floor.

Run! the voice in his head yelled again.

He spotted the rifle. It was clear across the room near the front door. He could easily make it outside before she could grab it.

Still, he hesitated. She hadn’t moved since she’d fallen to the floor. Maybe he should help her. She’d probably just been scared when she found him in the garage.

Run!

Instead, he took one step toward her. “Do what they tell you,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll be all right.”

She turned toward him in slow motion. He had expected to see shock and fear on her face. What he saw were unfocused eyes and a strange, crooked smile. She stared at him for a moment, then slowly turned away.

He backed out of the room, and passed quickly through the kitchen. She wouldn’t come after him. He knew that now. In fact, he’d be surprised if she moved from where she was before the sun went down. Still—

Run!

He picked up his pack, opened the door, and did just that.

25

Sean O’Brien felt the sweat running past his ear. He wanted nothing more than to wipe it off, but the biosafe gear he was wearing made that impossible. He looked over at Ryan Dunne and wondered if his partner had the same problem. Ryan, though, looked as calm as ever behind the faceplate of his hood.

“Remind me to talk to whoever designed these things,” Sean said. “Would be nice if it had something built in to cool us off.”

“Stop complaining.”

“You can’t tell me you’re not hot in there, too.”

“What I’m feeling doesn’t matter.”

They made an odd pair, Sean and Ryan. Sean was the joker, the guy always telling the stories at the pub, while Ryan was all business all the time. But this had translated into a surprisingly strong partnership, and they’d worked well together for the five years they’d both been part of the Protection Branch of An Garda Síochána, Ireland’s national police.

While many of those in their branch were geared more toward liaison work with other agencies, Sean and Ryan were situational specialists, called in when something delicate needed handling. Which was why they’d been chosen to try to deactivate one of the shipping containers that had shown up in the city. This particular one was just outside Trinity College, and had been belching out, for hours and hours, what the Americans had just confirmed was a virus.

An area of over half a mile around the box in every direction had already been evacuated. Unfortunately, the residents had fled in a near panic, leaving cars strewn haphazardly throughout the neighborhood. This meant Sean and Ryan had been forced to walk in, wearing the less-than-comfortable suits, instead of riding in most of the way in the back of a truck.

Because neither destroying nor moving the boxes had worked elsewhere, Sean and Ryan were tasked with finding out if they could just be turned off. The fact that this had also been unsuccessfully attempted elsewhere didn’t faze their bosses. The men were told to get in there and find a way.

“I could use a pint,” Sean said.

“Maybe you can suggest that to the suit designers, too, and they can put in a feeding tube.”

“Oh, a joke. What’s gotten into you, Mr. Dunne?”

Sean could see Ryan shake his head, but his partner didn’t reply.

It was weird to be walking down streets that were usually teeming with students and locals at this time of the evening. It felt like a ghost town. Sean almost expected a tumbleweed to roll across the road, and some eerie organ music to start playing.

But the only unusual sound was the hum, increasing in volume with every block. They knew from overhead surveillance that it was generated by two large fans at the top of the box. They had expected to hear it, but it was still unsettling.

They turned the final corner and stopped as they had their first direct view of the container. According to the reports, a considerable number of the boxes had been found near construction sites. Theirs was no different. It was a block and a half away, sitting in front of an old apartment building in the process of being torn down.

Even from this distance, they could see the slightly distorted air above the container where the vapor was being pushed out.

“Let’s get this done,” Ryan said.

Sean turned on the microphone to the radio. “Dani, you have our visual?”

Dani, more formally known as Danielle Sullivan, was handling communications back at the checkpoint.

“Your cameras are working fine,” she said. Both men had micro cameras attached inside their hoods at the base of their faceplates. “You’re clear to move in.”

“Proceeding to the container now.”

The two began walking toward the container. Sean wasn’t sure what Ryan was feeling, but for him every step took renewed effort, as if the road itself were melting around his feet and holding him down. It didn’t help that several droplets of the liquid from the box had landed on his faceplate.

Much too quickly for his taste, they reached the box. Up close, its dark blue metal siding looked worn and in need of fresh paint. With the exception of the roof that shouldn’t have been open, it looked like a normal shipping container.

Ryan put a hand on the side. Reluctantly, Sean did the same. The hum that he heard matched the vibration coming through his protective glove. There was no way to describe it other than it felt evil. He could leave his hand there for only a couple of seconds before pulling it away.

“I’ll go this way,” he said to Ryan, nodding to his left. “Meet you on the other side.”

Heading in opposite directions, they circled the container, looking for a way to gain access to the inside. The only thing Sean found were the doors at the short end. Like the other containers in the reports they’d received, the doors had an odd-looking lock system. No one, apparently, had been able to break through it yet — at least not without setting off the explosives inside.

“Anything?” he asked Ryan when they met up in the back.

“Nothing that I could see.”

“I’ll give the door a try, just in case, but we’ll probably have to go in through the top.”

“I agree,” Ryan said.

“Dani, you got that, right?”

“Got it,” she said. “Just be careful, okay?”

“If we were careful, we’d be sitting out there with you.”

“Be as careful as you can, then.”

While Ryan scoped out the easiest route to the top, Sean went back around to the door on the short side. He gave the handle a try first, but it didn’t move. He examined the lock next, hoping to discover some way of disengaging it. As he ran his hand along the backside of the device, the hum and vibration began to fade.

“What did you do?” Ryan asked.

Sean jumped back from the container. “Nothing. Just trying to open the door.”

The hum dropped lower and lower in both tone and volume.

“What’s going on?” Dani asked.

“It, uh, sounds like it’s shutting down,” Ryan told her.

“You mean, you did it?”

“We didn’t do anything,” Sean said. “I tried the door, but others have done that, too, and nothing happened then.”

“Maybe our container’s different,” she suggested.

“I guess it could be,” Sean said, but he didn’t believe it. Why would it be?

Ryan popped around the corner. “Help me get up on top. I want to take a look inside.”

“Use the door,” Sean suggested. With the brackets and hinges, it was as close to a ladder as they could get.

Ryan climbed up and looked over the side.

“Yeah. It’s off,” he said, not hiding his surprise. “I don’t know how, but it is.”

Sean wanted to see, too, so he climbed up at the other corner.

The two big fans sat side by side, aimed at the sky. Their blades were spinning more and more slowly until they came to a full stop.

“I think I can get down there,” Sean said.

If he was careful, he could maneuver through the blades. Below them on his side was an empty area more than wide enough for him to fit in.

“Not sure that’s such a good idea,” Dani said.

“Not sure it is, either,” Sean said, “but under the circumstances, if I can find out what happened, maybe we can use that to turn off the other ones.”

The radio remained silent for a moment, then Dani said, “You’re clear to go in.”

He glanced at Ryan. “You’ll have to help me.”

Ryan stretched out along the edge above the door, and held out his hand. Sean grabbed it, and lowered himself through the fan. For a second he worried that it would turn back on and cut him in half, but it remained as dead as it looked. Once his feet hit the bottom, he let go of Ryan and took a look around.

Most of the container seemed to be filled with large barrels that must have held the virus. He tapped on one and was surprised by the echo. It was empty.

Well, of course, that made sense. The box had been dispersing its contents for quite a while now, so some of the barrels would have to be empty. He knocked on the ones next to it. They, too, echoed back.

Frowning, he examined them for a moment, then used a small pair of cutters from his belt to hack through the tubes connected to the top of the first barrel.

“What are you doing?” Ryan asked.

Instead of answering, Sean cut the final tube, and tried to rock the barrel back and forth. Because of all the barrels on the other side, and the two metal straps that ran across the width of the container on his side, it didn’t move much.

“Hand me your bolt cutters,” he said.

“Why?”

“Just pass them down!”

Ryan handed him the large cutters. Sean got the tool’s jaw around the edge of the upper strap and bit into it. It took him a few minutes, but he was able to cut the strap in two. He bent the sides out of the way. The lower strap proved easier to slice through, and he was able to part it in about half the time.

No longer restrained, he yanked the barrel into the open space where he was standing, and squeezed around it into the spot where it had been. From there, he used the cutters to knock on all the barrels in the second row. Once he finished, he moved things around until he could reach the third row, then the row after that, and the row after that.

When he was done with the final row, he took a deep breath.

“Dani,” he said. “I know why it turned off.”

“Why?”

“It wasn’t anything we did. The damn thing is empty.”

The container in Dublin was not the first to shut off, nor was it the last. The first occurred in Wellington, New Zealand, in the parking lot of a small shopping center, precisely fifteen minutes before the one in Dublin. The last was twenty-seven minutes after Dublin, in Hawaii on the island of Oahu, just four blocks away from Waikiki Beach.

A few of the containers had experienced misfires on certain barrels. The operating software had been designed to skip over these and move on to the next. For the most part, though, the contents of each IDM had been delivered in full.

26

Perez was not surprised by anything in the president’s speech.

The nature of the virus was bound to be discovered. But so what? No one would live long enough to develop a vaccine, let alone mass produce it in the quantities needed. And when the president said they would continue to try to find a way to turn off the IDMs, it might have sounded good, but in reality it meant next to nothing. By then, ninety-five percent of the virus had already been released, more than enough to achieve the Project’s goals.

And now the containers were all off, causing even more concern and speculation around the world.

As far as he was concerned, the more panic the better.

Perez had shaken his head at Homeland Security’s list of suggested safety measures — seal off doors and windows, avoid contact with anyone not in the home with you, take frequent showers and wash hands every thirty minutes, and on and on and on. Measures that, along with the twenty-four-hour curfew that would be nearly impossible to enforce, might have worked if they’d gone into effect before the IDMs went active.

But not now. The end was coming.

There was a single knock on his door, and Claudia stuck her head in. “Dr. Lassiter would like to speak with you.”

Perez smiled. Excellent. The doctor had saved him the effort of making the call himself.

“Video?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Claudia.”

As she left, he activated the video chat on his computer.

Dr. Lassiter looked stressed and tired.

“Good afternoon, Doctor. How can I help you?” Perez said.

“I’ve been trying to get ahold of Patricia Nakamura for several hours with no success. The last time I called, a man I’ve never seen before came on and told me she was no longer with NB89. With, not at. Do you know what he’s talking about?”

“Of course I do.”

The doctor waited, but when Perez didn’t add anything, he said, “Then you need to tell me. I’m the acting chairman of the council.”

“Patricia Nakamura is dead.”

“What?” Whatever explanation Dr. Lassiter had been expecting, that was not it.

“She was a problem and had to be removed.”

“You had her killed?”

“An unfortunate necessity, but one my men handled efficiently.”

“Your men?”

“Project Eden Security.”

“Those are our men. My men!” He paused. “Mr. Perez, I am placing you under arrest. You are to go to your quarters and—”

“Dr. Lassiter,” Perez cut in. “I think I need to correct you on something you said earlier. You are no longer acting chairman of the council. That position has been dissolved, and the council itself has been transitioned into an advisory role for the Project’s principal director.”

“The principal director? He’s alive?”

Perez smiled. “Yes. I would say the director is alive and well.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“But I believe you’re confusing things again. The former PD that you’re thinking of is undoubtedly dead. I, on the other hand, am not.”

“You? Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not the PD and you never will be.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Doctor. I’ve been in contact with nearly every Project facility, and it has been decided that this part of our plan needs a strong leader. A role, I’m sorry to say, you are not fit to fill. They have all agreed with my decision to take over.” It wasn’t completely true. While he had been in contact with most bases, he hadn’t actually asked for any endorsements. He just told them he would be the one running this phase of the Project, and they had gone along with it, as he knew they would. When it came time for the next phase and he was still in charge, they’d go along with that, too.

“I don’t believe any of it,” the doctor said. “You are to step down, and break off all contact with the rest of the Project.”

“Now, Doctor,” Perez said, his voice dripping with faux compassion, “I think you’re forgetting that the security forces answer to me now. And if I tell them to, they will pay you the same type of visit they paid to former council member Nakamura.”

“You wouldn’t,” the doctor said, but the look in his eyes was not confident.

“You do have another choice,” Perez said. “It would please me if you serve on the advisory council. People would still see you as a person of influence. Now, of course this means you would back any decision I make, but that seems preferable to a bullet in the back of the head, wouldn’t you say?”

“I…I…”

“I have a team within five minutes of your location. I could call them now, if you’d like.”

“No,” the doctor said quickly. He stared at his keyboard for several seconds. “Can I…can I at least think about the offer?”

“Of course. I’ll give you sixty seconds.”

It took the doctor only twenty-one.

27

Contrary to what Martina’s mother had thought, their satellite radio was just as ineffective at the cabin as it had been when they were driving up the ravine. They had also tried the regular broadcast radios — the one that was part of the old ’70s-era stereo in the cabin and the one in the Webers’ car — but all they picked up was static. Cell phones were useless, too, not even a single bar of signal, so the two families were completely cut off.

The afternoon had been spent taking stock of what they had, then playing a tense game of Monopoly organized by the two moms to distract their children. But after only thirty minutes, everyone gave up. There was no ignoring what was going on.

“How long are we going to have to stay here?” Laurie, Riley’s twin sister, asked.

“There’s no way to know that yet, honey,” her mom said.

“We’ll stay as long as we need to,” her father added in a voice sharper than needed.

“This place is so…boring. What are we supposed to do?” Laurie asked.

“Sweetie, it’ll be okay,” her mother told her. “You can read, play games, go for a walk.”

“That’s probably not a good idea,” Martina’s father cut in. “We don’t want others to know we’re here.”

“Ken, a walk won’t hurt,” Martina’s mother said. “There’s probably no one within a mile of us.”

“We can’t know that for sure, and we don’t have any more room for anyone else.” His eyes strayed to Mr. Weber as he finished.

“So we have to stick around the cabin? That’s even worse!” Laurie said. Unlike Riley, she was more social, and used to hanging out with her friends, talking about stupid things Martina had never been interested in.

“That’s enough,” Mr. Weber said. “You know why we’re here. I don’t want you causing any problems.”

“I don’t know why we’re here,” Laurie countered. “Because of some stupid things on TV? Seriously, Dad, I bet we’re all going to look like idiots.”

“Enough,” her father said again.

She glared at him, her lips pressed tightly together, then stood up. “Not talking about it doesn’t mean it’s not stupid!” She disappeared down the hallway that led to the bathroom and the cabin’s two bedrooms.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Weber said, an embarrassed smile on her face. “She’s just…”

“A teenager?” Martina’s mom suggested.

Mrs. Weber looked relieved. “Yes. Exactly.”

“Hey, we’re teenagers, too,” Pamela said.

Her mother patted her on the leg, and said in a low, conspiratorial voice, “Yes, but you all understand what’s going on and can deal with it.”

“I’m going out to get some fresh air,” Riley whispered to Martina. “Wanna come?”

Martina nodded, and the two girls climbed to their feet.

“Where are you going?” Mr. Weber asked.

“To check out the snow,” Martina said.

Donny jumped up. “Hey, I want to check out the snow, too.”

“It’s going to be cold.”

“I don’t care.”

Martina glanced at Riley, who shrugged that it was okay with her.

“All right,” Martina said to Donny. “Come on. Anyone else?”

There were no other takers.

As they were putting on their shoes and jackets, Martina’s father said, “Stay close to the cabin.”

“We will,” Martina told him.

Night had settled over the mountains, and the snow that had been falling since not long after their arrival had created a blanket of white over the ground at least half a foot thick.

“It’s so quiet,” Riley said.

Martina had noticed it, too. The cover of snow seemed to have absorbed all the sounds of the woods, leaving behind only a peaceful hush.

“Whoa,” Donny said. “This is awesome.”

He started to run out from under the covered porch.

“Hey, hold on,” Martina said. “You can play in it in the morning.”

“Forget that!”

She grabbed the back of his jacket, stopping him. “Donny, if you trip over a rock buried under the snow and break your arm, what do you think Dad’s going to say?”

“I’m not going to break my arm,” he scoffed.

“Ugh,” she said, and let go. “Your funeral if you do.”

He ran out into the snow and promptly fell down, skidding for several feet.

“Woo-hoo!” he yelled, laughing.

“Boys,” Riley said, smirking.

“Brothers,” Martina corrected her.

“Yeah, I don’t have to worry about that.”

“No, just a twin that’s a jerk.”

Riley smiled. “At least she makes me look good.” She pulled a set of keys out of her pocket. “Come on.”

“Hold on. We can’t go anywhere.”

“I know that,” Riley replied as she jogged over to her family’s car. The doors were unlocked, so she got in on the driver’s side and motioned for Martina to get in on the other. As Martina opened the door and slid into the seat, Riley reached into the back and pulled a cloth bag off the floor. She fumbled around inside it for a moment, then pulled out a computer cable. From her pocket she retrieved an iPod, and used the cable to connect it to the radio.

“I downloaded the new Patrolled by Radar album yesterday. Have you listened to it yet?”

Martina had heard of the band, but didn’t know their music. “Not yet.”

“It’s great.”

Riley stuck the key into the ignition, and turned it so that the electrical power came on. As soon as the radio lit up, she reached over to punch the button for the auxiliary input.

“Wait!” Martina said, grabbing her friend’s hand.

Riley looked at her, confused.

“Listen.” Martina turned the volume up.

Static filled the car, but within the pops and snaps there was a voice. It would come in clear for a few seconds, then fade to almost nothing for a few more before cycling up again.

“…homes. So far there…arrests, most in connection with looting at… reiterated the importance of obeying the curfew…said the majority of the people seemed to…have also responded to several reports of gun…five deaths since the president’s speech this morn…listening to the voice of San Francisco on…”

When the voice faded away this time, it didn’t immediately return. Martina’s hand shot to the dial to try to regain the signal, but she couldn’t tune it back in. She moved up the dial, searching for anything.

A signal suddenly came in loud and strong. “…out of Washington confirms that the terror boxes have ceased working around the world. Several of the boxes are now being examined by experts, but no new information is available. The Department of Homeland Security has reiterated the need for all citizens to adhere to the nationwide curfew, reminding those who are thinking about violating it that they will be arrested and detained for the duration of the emergency.”

“Holy shit,” Riley said.

“I’m going to get the others.”

Martina threw open her door and rushed back to the cabin.

“The radio!” she yelled as she entered. “It’s working now!”

“What?”

“How?”

Mr. Weber said something about nighttime atmospheric conditions as everyone in the living room donned their jackets and hurried out to the car. Donny had already joined Riley. The only one missing was Laurie, presumably still pouting in one of the back rooms.

For an hour they crowded around the open car doors and took turns sitting inside as they listened to the news and a replay of the president’s speech. When the newscaster started reading information they’d heard twice already, Martina’s dad reached over and turned the ignition off.

“Dad!” Martina said.

“We’ve heard enough,” he told her. “We should all go in and get some sleep. It’s been a long day.”

“He’s right,” Mr. Weber said. “Come on, everyone. Let’s go.”

Martina was at the head of the pack, so she was the first to see Laurie standing on the porch near the front door. The girl’s eyes were wide in shock, and she was absently chewing on her lower lip.

“Were you able to hear the reports?” Martina asked.

Laurie gave her an almost nonexistent nod, but her lip remained sucked between her teeth.

“Good thing we came up here, I guess.”

Mrs. Weber walked over and put an arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “Come on, honey. Sleep will do us all some good.”

Laurie allowed herself to be turned and ushered back into the house.

Fifteen minutes later, the lights were out and everyone was lying down — the kids in the living room, and each set of parents taking one of the bedrooms. Try as she might, Martina couldn’t fall asleep. Her mind spun with the possibilities of what the next day might bring.

Several hours later, when she was finally beginning to drift off, she heard someone go outside. A moment later a car door opened, and she could hear the faint muffled sound of the radio.

Her dad, probably, or Mr. Weber.

She was tempted to go join whoever it was, but her eyes closed once more as sleep finally took hold.

She’d been the last awake, except, of course, for the person who’d gone out to the car.

Who was neither her father nor Mr. Weber.

28

Matt had been forced to call off the search for Brandon as sundown neared. He couldn’t risk losing anyone else as the cold night took over.

The biggest problem was that there had been no clear indication of which direction Brandon took. The best they could do was split up again and follow the paths Miller thought were the most likely. But as the afternoon wore on and there had still been no signs of the boy, Matt couldn’t help thinking it was more likely that those in the helicopter had taken Brandon.

Once back in the Bunker, he’d gone straight to the control room and had Christina bring him up to speed with what had been happening elsewhere. It turned out that most of Europe and Asia, and several countries in Africa, had jumped on the curfew bandwagon. Pretty soon the whole world would be on lockdown.

Maybe it would be enough, he thought. Maybe the virus will be stopped before it can even get started.

But he didn’t really believe that.

“Have there been reports about anyone getting sick?” he asked Christina.

“Not yet.”

Though no one in the control room would say it, they all knew that was odd. During the original Sage Flu outbreak, the time between exposure and first signs of infection was often less than half a day. The containers had started launching the virus into the air a day and a half earlier. There should have been some people already sick. Hell, not just some, but a lot. Even the deaths should have started.

For the first time, he began to wonder if maybe something had gone wrong. Perhaps prolonged exposure to the air had killed the virus. Or perhaps the virus itself had mutated into a nonlethal bug without the Project realizing it.

The president had said that “with the exception of a few minor variations,” it resembled the Sage Flu virus.

Maybe the variations were unanticipated flaws that would cause the Project to fail.

“Matt?”

With a start, he pulled himself out of his thoughts.

Rachel was standing in the doorway to the control room, still looking as if she were single-handedly carrying the weight of humanity on her shoulders.

He walked over. “How are you feeling?”

“Did you find Brandon?” she asked.

He hesitated, then shook his head. “We’ll start up again in the morning.”

“Josie’s been asking about him. I’ve tried to reassure her, but…”

He put a hand on his sister’s arm. “I’ll talk to her.”

As he started to walk out of the room, she touched his back. “I’m…I’m sorry about before.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

“I didn’t mean what I said. I was just—”

“Tired? Frustrated? Angry?” He smiled. “I know. And if you need me to say it, you’re forgiven, but you weren’t saying anything the rest of us hadn’t already thought.”

There were thanks in her eyes.

He pulled her into his arms and gave her a hug. “I’d better go find Josie.”

He located her down the hall in the cafeteria, sitting at a table by herself.

“Is it true?” she asked as he sat down.

“Is what true?”

“I heard Mr. Hayes is dead.”

Matt hesitated, then said, “Yeah. I’m afraid it is.”

“And Brandon’s still out there?”

“Yes.”

“So he’s alone?”

“He’ll be fine.”

“If he’s still out there, why did you come back?”

“It’s dark. We could walk right by him and not see him.”

“But you might also find him.”

“Morning will be easier,” he said. “For him, and for us. He’s a smart boy. I’m sure he’s tucked away somewhere safe.”

“You can’t let him stay out there. That’ll be two nights!”

“I know you’re concerned. I’m just as worried about him as you—”

She pushed herself up. “No, you’re not! You don’t care! You’re leaving him out there by himself while we’re all safe in here. He’s just a kid!”

Matt felt what energy he had left drain away. “I need my team to get a few hours of sleep at least. Then we’ll go back out.”

“Before the sun comes up,” she said. Not asking — telling.

“Yes, before the sun comes up.”

“All right,” she said, still not looking happy. “Maybe I should come with you. If he hears my voice—”

“Absolutely not,” he said. “It’s not safe.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but before she could, Christina’s voice came over the intercom system. “Matt, return to the communications center immediately.”

Josie said, “I could help.”

“You could also get lost, and I’d have to look for two children,” Matt told her.

“Matt,” Christina said over the intercom, “you need to come back now!”

Josie’s brow creased as she narrowed her eyes. “I’m not a child.”

Instead of debating the point, he stood up and said, “You’re staying. If you try to follow us, we will turn around and come back. Is that understood?”

He stared at Josie until she nodded, then he hurried back to the communications center.

“What is it?” he asked as he entered the room.

“The jet,” Christina said. “They’ve just called in.”

“Our jet?”

She nodded.

“Where are they?”

“They’re requesting permission to land.”

The flight south to Montana would have taken Ash and the others about six hours if they’d been able to fly direct, but due to a shortage of fuel at Grise Fiord, they’d been forced to make a stop at Baker Lake, the same place they’d landed on the way north.

Even then, it shouldn’t have taken more than an hour to refuel and get back into the air. But it did, due to Implementation Day.

“Permission denied,” the person manning the control tower had radioed back as they neared Baker Lake. “The airport is closed.”

“We have a fuel emergency,” Harlan explained.

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to go somewhere else.”

“There’s nowhere else close enough for us to land before we run out!”

This time there was no response.

“Baker Lake? Baker Lake, do you read me?”

Harlan glanced over his shoulder at Ash, who was hunched behind him. “What do you want me to do?”

“Do we have a choice?” Ash asked.

“If we’re lucky, we might be able to make it to one of the outposts along Hudson Bay, but it’ll be a close call.”

“That doesn’t sound like a choice to me. Take her down.”

Harlan nodded. As he and Barry set to work getting the jet onto the ground, Ash returned to the passenger cabin, and grabbed one of the guns before retaking his seat.

Chloe eyed him suspiciously. “Trouble?”

“Same problem we had at Grise Fiord.”

With a nod, she unbuckled her belt and retrieved two guns, giving one to Red before sitting back down.

The landing went as smoothly as always, and as soon as the wheels touched down, Ash returned to the cockpit.

“They’ve been yelling all the way in for us to abort,” Harlan said.

“What did you tell them?”

“Nothing.”

Harlan maneuvered the plane onto the taxiway and headed toward the fueling area.

“We’ve got company,” Barry said.

Sitting across their route were a police car and a small fire truck. Standing in front of the vehicles were several men holding what appeared to be rifles.

Harlan flipped a switch on the dash, and the controller’s voice came over the speaker. “…made an unauthorized landing, and are ordered to immediately take off. Do not open your doors or attempt to leave your aircraft.”

“Tell him we’re—” Ash began.

Harlan raised a hand, stopping him. “I got this.” He activated his radio mic. “All right, if that’s what you want. But I should tell you I’ve only got just enough fuel to get us in the air, which means we’ll be coming back down pretty damn quickly. I’ll probably only have time to bank the plane to make sure it takes out the center of your fine little town.”

There was no reply for several seconds, then, “You are ordered to stay where you are. Do not open your doors. If you do, we will shoot.”

“We just need some fuel.”

“Stay where you are. We will contact you with further instructions.”

Harlan pulled off his headset and leaned back. “Okay, I guess we wait.”

It wasn’t long before one of the men at the roadblock climbed into the police car and drove off toward the tower. As soon as he left, the fire truck repositioned itself so that it was more in the center of the taxiway.

Four minutes later, a new voice came over the radio. “This is Officer Thomas Belford, RCMP. You have violated a direct order not to land at Baker Lake. This is both a territorial and federal offense. If you do not get your plane back into the air, you will be placed under arrest.”

“My turn,” Ash said to Harlan.

Harlan nodded at Barry, who handed Ash his headset.

“Officer Belford,” Ash said. “I’m sure your superiors would not be fond of planes falling from the sky because they were denied landing rights.”

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t care?”

“The citizens of Baker Lake have voted unanimously to close the town to avoid any outbreaks here. No one gets in.”

“We’re not trying to get in,” Ash said. “We just want to refuel.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t allow you to leave your plane.”

“Fine. We’ll stay on board. One of you can do it for us.”

“No one is getting anywhere near your aircraft.”

“Then what exactly do you expect us to do?”

“I already told you that. Get yourself back in the air.”

“I believe we explained to your friend in the tower what will happen if we do that.”

There was silence for a moment before Belford said, “You are to remain right where you are.”

“And then?”

“Just stay there.”

Ash frowned.

“So?” Harlan asked.

Ash looked out the cockpit window. About another hundred yards beyond the fire truck was the fueling area. So close. He thought there might be enough room to skirt around the edge of the truck, but that was only if it didn’t move back in the way and the men with the guns didn’t shoot.

Ash keyed the mic again. “Officer Belford, let me give you something else to think about. If you just leave us sitting here, at some point we will try to get out. Maybe you’ll shoot us, maybe you won’t. Either way, if we’re carrying the virus, it’ll be out there potentially infecting you and your men. Wouldn’t it be in your best interests to help us get on our way?”

The silence that followed made him wonder if his message had been heard. The answer finally came thirty minutes later, when the men standing in the road climbed onto the fire engine.

As the truck pulled away, Belford’s voice came back over the radio. “You are to proceed to the fueling station, but remain in your aircraft. At no point are you to even touch the handle on your door. Do that, and we will burn your plane with you in it. Understood?”

“Yes,” Ash said.

It was another hour before they were in the air again. They were just beginning to relax when Ash was called back to the cockpit.

“What is it?” he asked as he entered.

Harlan pointed out the window to his right, then the one on the left. Pacing them about one hundred feet to either side were two military fighter jets.

“Have they tried to contact you?”

Harlan nodded. “Wanted to know where we’re headed. Told them back to the US from one of the research stations up north.”

“And?”

“Said they’re going to make sure we make it through their fine country with no problems.”

The jets paced them until they were within a quarter mile of the border before finally peeling away. Ash expected to be greeted by two more aircraft, with US Air Force markings, as soon as they were back in the States, but the sky was empty.

From where they crossed, it took them only another hour to reach the Ranch. Not wanting to draw attention from anyone else, they waited until they were almost ready to descend before radioing in. Unlike at Baker Lake, they were given immediate permission.

At first, as they swooped down toward the ground in the early evening, the darkened valley seemed unchanged. It wasn’t until they were almost on the ground that Ash sensed something was wrong. They should have been able to see the lights of the Lodge and the dorm, but everything was dark.

Ash returned to his seat and buckled in just before the wheels touched the ground. As soon as Harlan taxied the plane to the parking area, and the engines began to wind down, both Ash and Chloe headed straight for the door. She beat him there by a step, and was the first one out. When he stepped out onto the tarmac beside her, he was surprised to find no one there to greet them. Granted, they had just radioed in, but there should have been plenty of time for someone to drive the half mile down from the Lodge.

“Not exactly excited to see us, I guess,” Chloe said.

Ash jogged over to the road, and looked in the direction of the Resistance’s headquarters. No cars coming as far as he could tell, just the night filling the void.

“Where is everyone?” Red asked from the plane’s doorway.

“Don’t know,” Chloe said. “Ash, you see anything?”

“No. Just—” He stopped. From somewhere not far down the road, he heard a noise. “Hello?” he called out.

There it was again. Steps, he realized.

“Hello?”

“Captain Ash?” a voice called back.

“Who’s that?”

Out of the darkness emerged the shapes of four men. “Captain Ash. It’s Ross Miller.”

Ash didn’t allow himself to relax until he saw the man’s face and was able to confirm that Miller was indeed who he said he was. “Where is everyone?”

“In the Bunker,” Miller said. He looked past Ash at Red. “Tell Harlan to shut everything down and go dark.”

“What’s going on?” Ash asked.

“Let’s get you all inside first. Matt’ll brief you.”

Ash frowned, wanting to know now, but held his tongue. “We have an injured man. Is someone bringing a car?”

“Sorry. None available at the moment.” He turned to the men who’d come with him. “Tony, radio in for a stretcher, then meet them halfway to escort them in.”

One of the men, who must be Tony, nodded and ran back in the direction of the Lodge. But Ash wasn’t content to wait for him to get back.

“Red,” he called out. Red stuck his head out the doorway again. “Stay here with Gagnon until help shows up.”

“Will do.”

Ash looked at Chloe. “I’m heading to the Bunker. You coming?”

“Hell, yeah,” she said.

“I’ll have to guide you,” Miller said.

“We know how to get in,” Ash told him.

“Actually, I’m pretty sure you don’t.”

Ash narrowed his eyes. “What the hell is going on?”

“This way,” Miller said, and started down the road.

Ash and Chloe shared a quick look before taking off after him.

Halfway to the Lodge, Miller veered off the road into the trees.

“Where are you going?” Ash asked.

“Back door.”

“Why the back door?”

Miller paused, and looked back. “Because the front door is blocked.”

“By what?”

“The remains of the Lodge after it burnt down.”

“What?” both Ash and Chloe said.

Instead of following Miller, the two of them ran down the road. When they reached the spot where they could see the Lodge, they stopped.

Though the moon wasn’t out yet, their eyes had had time to adjust to the night. What remained of the Resistance’s headquarters was a disorganized mound of debris. There was no need to go any closer. The building was completely destroyed.

Ash heard Miller jog up behind them. “How did this happen?” he asked without turning.

“We went to full cover,” Miller said.

“Why?”

“We were attacked by the Project.”

Ash whirled around. “My kids. Where are they?”

“Please. Let’s just get inside.”

Ash grabbed Miller by the arms. “Where are they?”

“Captain Ash, please let go of me.”

“Tell me,” Ash said.

Miller hesitated. “Your daughter’s in the Bunker.”

“And Brandon?”

Another pause. “He was caught outside during the attack.”

A bitter freeze rushed through Ash’s arms and chest. “What…happened to…”

“We’re not sure what happened to him. One of our men was with him. They hid in the woods.”

“So they got away?”

“Please. Matt has all the information.”

“Tell me what you know!”

This pause was the longest of all. “We have no idea where your son is.”

Ash stared at him, unable to speak.

“What about the man who’s with him?” Chloe asked. “Can’t we get ahold of him?”

“Jon Hayes was with him, but…”

“But what?” Ash whispered.

“We found his body this afternoon. He’d been shot.”

“But Brandon?”

“No sign of him.”

Ash finally let go of Miller. “Take us in.”

When they emerged from the tunnel and passed around the large, thick door that was used to seal off the Bunker, Josie Ash rushed forward and threw her arms around her father.

Sobbing into his shoulder, she said, “It’s my fault. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know he’d gone outside. If I’d known he was planning to, I wouldn’t have let him. I’m so sorry.”

Ash stroked his daughter’s hair. “Sweetie, it’s okay. Not your fault. Don’t ever think it is. I’ll find him. Don’t worry.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

If he could have held her until the sun came up, he would have, but he needed to get moving and find his son. He looked over at the small group waiting to greet them, and saw that Matt was there.

“Josie,” he whispered in his daughter’s ear. “Go with Chloe for a moment, okay? I need to find out all I can about your brother.”

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

He kissed her on the forehead. “I told you, not your fault. Now go with Chloe.”

Josie sniffled as she nodded, then stepped over into Chloe’s embrace.

Ash walked directly to Matt. “We need to talk. Right now.” Without waiting for a response, he headed down the hallway, and soon heard Matt’s distinctive gait following him.

When he reached the shooting range, he opened the door, checked to make sure no one was inside, and entered.

As Matt followed him in, Ash said, “Shut the door.”

Matt did, then said, “I know you’re upset, but—”

Before Matt could get anything else out, Ash slammed him against the wall. “You were supposed to watch them! You promised me they would be safe!”

Matt put up no fight. “You’re right. I did. It’s my fault he’s out there.”

“Damn right, it’s your fault!”

Ash held Matt tight against the wall, seething.

“Have at it. Whatever you want to do to me, I deserve,” Matt said.

Ash glared into Matt’s eyes, and came close to slamming his fist into the side of the Resistance leader’s face. Finally, his breathing began to slow, and he took a step back, dropping his hands to the side.

“Tell me what happened. Everything.”

Matt did exactly that.

“We’re not sure if he’s out there or if the men in the helicopter took him,” Matt said as he wrapped things up. “As soon as the search teams have had a little sleep, they’ll head out again.”

“One of them is going to head out right now with me,” Ash told him.

“They’re tired. They need rest.”

“And my son needs me.” Ash headed for the door. “Have whoever it is meet me at the tunnel entrance in fifteen minutes.”