Exit 9 (19 page)

He looked around and found a wide spot between two of the bushes. He thought if he was careful, he could squeeze between them. He gave it a try and made it cleanly. Jeannie wasn’t quite as lucky.

“Ow!”

“You all right?” he asked.

She was clutching her neck just below her ear.

“Let me see.”

She moved her hand. There was a one-inch scratch where a branch had whipped up and caught her.

He moved around and kissed her on the lips. “That’ll make it feel better.”

“You think so?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.

He kissed her again, longer this time. “Better?”

“Yeah. I’ll live.”

With a playful grin, he turned and leaned against the window, cupping his hands around his eyes. What he was looking at was obviously intended to be a lobby. But Hidde-Kel’s lobby was devoid of any sign of use. There were no chairs, no magazines, no plants, no company name on the wall. Nothing. It almost looked as if the room had never been used.

Hearing footsteps on the street, Corey looked over. Blanton. He was walking down the road, munching on one of the White Castle burgers he hadn’t finished earlier.

“Over here,” Corey called out.

Blanton jerked to a stop, then headed over once he realized who it was. “Why the hell did you leave me there like that?”

“You were asleep.”

“You could have woken me up. I was starting to think maybe this whole trip was some kind of practical joke.”

“It just might be,” Corey said. “This is Hidde-Kel. But it looks empty.”

“Empty?”

Blanton pushed his way through the bushes, his backpack getting caught for a second before he finally reached them. He peeked through the window.

“That’s weird.”

“How old was the information you found?” Corey asked.

“Six months or so.”

“They could have moved out,” Jeannie said.

“I guess so, but what I found made it seem like they were going to be around for a while.”

Corey frowned. “Did any of the info mention what the building was supposed to be for?”

“Corporate offices.”

Jeannie glanced up and down the street. “Doesn’t quite seem like the setting for a corporate office, does it?”

Blanton pulled his backpack off his shoulders. “Maybe they just don’t use the front.” From inside the bag, he pulled out his laptop and flipped it open. Crouching down, he set it on his knees and began typing. After a few seconds, he looked back up. “The only Wi-Fi signals I’m getting are too weak to be coming from here.”

This was totally not what Corey had expected. He’d set out to write a paper on a growing agriculture-related firm, and now he had what amounted to a mystery on his hands. There had to be some simple explanation, something that would probably make him feel like an idiot when he found out.

“I wonder if it’s possible to get inside,” he said.

Jeannie shrugged. “One way to find out.”

She moved past the windows to the concrete pathway and up to the steel front door. She gave it a yank.

“It’s locked.”

Corey headed past her to the side of the building where he’d seen a gate, but it was secured by a thick chain and padlock. The property next door also had a chain-link fence around its lot, but it was shorter, with no barbed wire on top. Even better, the gate meant to close it off was open.

With the other two trailing behind him, Corey walked into the lot and moved along the fence that separated the two properties. About three-quarters of the way back, he stopped, figuring they were far enough away from the street not to draw any attention if someone just happened to be driving by.

He waited for his two friends to catch up, then said, “You guys stay here. I’m hopping over.”

“You’re going alone?” Jeannie asked.

“Better if only one of us gets caught trespassing than all three.”

She stared at him. “Uh, excuse me. We’re all trespassing right now.”

He should have known better than to even suggest the solo trip. In the end, it was decided they’d all go.

One by one, they climbed over the fence and ran over to the Hidde-Kel building. There were no windows along the side, and only four doors. They tried each, and weren’t surprised to find they were all locked.

Along the back of the building was a large loading dock. Here there was a single, very wide opening at least a story and a half high that was currently closed off by a rolling metal door. Beside it was another normal-sized door. As with the others, both were locked.

The far side of the building was identical to the first they’d checked—four doors, none open. Corey hadn’t expected this to be easy, but he had been hoping.

“I guess that’s that,” Blanton said.

Corey ignored him and headed once more for the back of the building. He had seen one possibility. It was a bit more involved than what he would have liked, but he really wanted to see inside to make sure Hidde-Kel
was
gone.

The outer part of the loading dock had a six-foot wall on either side, but no roof. As the walls neared the actual building, they stairstepped upward in two-foot increments until they reached the roof.

“Give me a boost,” he said to Blanton.

Both Blanton and Jeannie looked at him.

Jeannie was the first to realize what he meant to do. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“I just want to see if there’s any way to look in.”

She grimaced, but said nothing else.

Blanton created a cradle with his hands, and gave Corey the boost. Once on top, Corey stayed in a crouch to maintain his balance as he worked his way along the brick, then up and up and up until he reached the roof.

“What do you see?” Jeannie called out.

Corey scanned the roof. “Several air ducts, some machinery…maybe air conditioners or heaters?” He continued to look, then smiled. “Hey, I think there’s an access door up here.”

“Corey, be careful!”

“Don’t worry.”

It wasn’t really an access door as much as it was an access hatch. When he pulled up on it, it moved a few inches, but then stopped. It felt more rusty than latched from the inside, so he tried again. It groaned as it opened an additional half-inch. His third try opened more, then on the fourth, there was a
pop
. The hatch flew open, and Corey rolled back onto his ass.

“Everything all right?” Jeannie called out, her voice distant.

“Fine!” he yelled back.

He knelt beside the opening. There was a ladder that went down four feet to a metal catwalk, but beyond that, all was dark.

He sat back. Up to this point, he’d technically been involved in only a little exterior trespassing. Okay, and some breaking in. What he hadn’t done was actually enter anything. The moment he put any part of his body through that hole, that would all change.

While his head was saying, “Get the hell out of here,” his gut was telling him, “Just check it out.”

He decided to listen to his gut.

He lowered himself through the hole and climbed down the ladder. Testing the catwalk first, he moved onto it. Now that he was inside, he could see all the way to the nearest wall. There appeared to be another ladder there going down to ground level so that’s where he headed. Less than a minute later, he was standing on the floor.

There was an eerie silence to the place, a sense of desertion reinforced by the stale air. If Corey had to guess, he’d have said no one had been there for at least several days. Devoid of people, yes, but not empty. Even with limited visibility, he could make out several large objects looming in the darkness.

Staying near the wall, he made his way toward the back. When he was about fifty feet from the end of the building, there were no more objects filling the space and the area beside him appeared to be empty. He reached the back wall, then felt his way along the inside of the metal roll door, to the small man-sized entrance at the other end. By touch, he unbolted two deadbolts, and pulled the door open.

Jeannie and Blanton turned in surprise from the other end of the dock near the wall he’d gone up.

“You made it,” Jeannie said, relieved.

Corey gave her a smile, and looked at Blanton. “You wouldn’t have a flashlight in that bag, would you?”

Blanton shook his head. “No, but my laptop screen works pretty well.”

They used the illumination from Blanton’s computer to locate several light switches near the door. One by one they began flipping them on, and soon there was enough light for them to see.

The problem was, Corey had no idea what they were looking at.

“What the hell?” Apparently, neither did Blanton.

As Corey had sensed, the area just inside the big metal door was an open space—for the most part, anyway. There were two metal shipping containers stacked on top of each other against one wall. Their doors were open and both were empty. If Corey had come that way, he would have run right into them.

In the rest of the open area, there were marks painted on the ground that roughly corresponded to the size of the containers, applied in a way that four could sit side by side with space in between.

Beyond the open area was where the weird really began.

Corey couldn’t even guess what the nearest machine did. It was large and had a curling rail system that looked almost like a roller coaster, leading into the massive machine itself. There were several other machines past this that were unrecognizable. In fact, about the only things that were even halfway familiar were two rows of large, enclosed vats. They almost looked like something he’d seen on a brewery tour in St. Louis, but he was sure these weren’t being used for beer.

“Have you noticed?” Blanton asked. “Everything looks so clean. No paper. No personal items. No dusty footprints. Nothing.”

“They’re gone,” Jeannie said.

“Yeah,” Corey agreed.

“What was this place?”

“I don’t know.”

Blanton pulled open a small side hatch on one of the vats and looked in. “Empty.” He shut it again. “These Hidde-Kel people are supposed to be in agriculture, right?”

“Associated with agriculture, yeah.”

“Maybe they’re making some type of fertilizer?”

Jeannie grew instantly wary. “Or pesticide.”

Blanton immediately began wiping his hands on his pants. “You don’t think so, do you?”

“Relax,” Corey said. “As far as I know, they’re not into anything like that.”

“Then what were they doing here?”

“Let’s see if we can figure that out.”

They spent twenty more minutes checking the rest of the manufacturing area and going through the rooms near the front. One thing was clear. This had never been a corporate office. There just wasn’t enough office space, even for a small operation.

As they came back through, Corey opened one of the vats and looked in for himself.

What was he going to do about his paper now? As curious as he was about Hidde-Kel, writing what little he knew about them would not fulfill his assignment. He would have to do what Blanton had suggested at the pub—find another company to write about.

“I guess we should go home,” he said.

Before closing the vat door, his fingers brushed the inside of the container. He was concerned for a second, worried that maybe Jeannie had been right about the pesticides, but there didn’t feel like there was anything on the surface.

Unfortunately, there was.

20

T
HE LINK TO
the online video remained active for exactly nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds before it was located and removed. In that time, of the 622 people who clicked on the link, only 51 clicked on it soon enough to watch the video in its entirety. For the others, the video stopped where their download had ceased, and when they tried to reload it, they were presented with a message about technical difficulties.

Of the 51 who did see it, only 24 actually watched the whole thing, and of these, all but three thought it was a viral marketing ploy for a new disaster movie. The three initially took it seriously, and were willing to believe at least part of it might be true. A killer virus, distributed by man. It sure sounded plausible to them. Unfortunately, when they realized the link had disappeared and they couldn’t share it with like-minded friends, they began to lose interest.

Within five days, the three potential believers would barely remember the video at all.

__________

“D
AMMIT,” TAMARA COSTELLO
said. “Only nine minutes? They’re getting even faster.”

Bobby Lion frowned at the computer screen. “It lasted only three on Vimeo.”

“Do they have somebody just waiting for us to upload? Is that it?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, it’s probably automated to a point. Someone gets alerted when a suspicious video gets uploaded and they take a look, then do whatever they do to pull it down.”

They’d tried everything—unassuming titles, benign descriptions and keywords. They even created a new account every time they posted. Without exception, their work got pulled down with no more than a handful of people seeing it. It was beyond frustrating.

Tamara and Bobby’s job was simple: create and distribute video reports aimed at exposing Project Eden to the general public. Their talents were particularly suited for this. Both had been in the employ of PCN—Prime Cable News—before being recruited by the Hamiltons to help stop the Project.

Recruited was a relative term. What happened was Tamara and Bobby had run afoul of the Project while they were reporting for PCN from the front lines of the Sage Flu outbreak in April. Some of the Hamiltons’ people had helped them escape before they became casualties, too.

They spent several months at the Ranch, learning about Project Eden. Bobby had believed right away, but it had taken Tamara some time to accept the horrifying reality. It was at that point they’d been asked to put their skills to use, and act as the public voice of the resistance.

They’d been set up in San Antonio, Texas, with false identities. Tamara was now Deirdre Murray, and ran a secondhand shop called Deirdre’s Treasures. Bobby was Ralph Barber, a freelance handyman who never seemed to be freelancing anywhere. Instead, he and Tamara spent much of their time in the small studio built in the basement of Deirdre’s Treasures, where he edited the pieces, and Tamara wrote the scripts and recorded the narrations, albeit with her voice altered to avoid identification.