Pale Horse (A Project Eden Thriller) (14 page)

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

MUMBAI, INDIA

1:28 PM INDIAN STANDARD TIME

I
T 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.

__________

T
HE 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.