Pale Horse (A Project Eden Thriller) (3 page)

Hayes put a hand in each, and turned the whole thing like the lid of a jar. It took two complete rotations before it came free. Underneath was a round shaft stuffed with items in airtight packages.

Hayes set the lid to the side, then began pulling the packages out and handing them to Brandon. By the time they finished emptying the cylinder, the area around the hole was littered with bags. Hayes started going through them one by one, separating them into two groups.

When he finished, he pointed at the bags to his right and said, “Those go back in. Can you take care of that?”

“Of course,” Brandon said.

While he put the unwanted bags back in the storage cylinder, Hayes opened the others. The first contained a standard hiking backpack, while in the second was a smaller bag, not too dissimilar from the book backpack Brandon had used for school. Hayes began filling each with contents removed from the other bags—food, bottles of water, clothing, two sleeping bags, and a few things Brandon couldn’t identify.

“Shall I put the top back on?” Brandon asked when he was finished.

Hayes shook his head. “We need to put all the empty bags in first.”

Brandon collected the bags and stuffed them down the hole.

Once that was done, Hayes said, “You’ll take the small pack.”

The bag looked full, and had one of the sleeping bags strapped to the bottom.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t make it too heavy.”

“I’m not worried,” Brandon said.

“All right. One more check around to make sure we haven’t forgotten anything, then—”

A low, rhythmic noise echoed softly down the hill. Both Hayes and Brandon cocked their heads.

“One of the helicopters,” Brandon said.

Hayes looked around, his gaze settling on the half-full storage cylinder.

“Get in!”

“What?”

“Get in! Now. We don’t have time to talk about it.”

“You said they might have a thermal scanner. Won’t they be able to see us?”

“Not through the lid and the ground.”

Brandon looked at the hole, then at Hayes. “But…we both can’t fit.”

“I’ll get rid of them, and come back for you.”

“No!”

“If you don’t get in, you’ll get us both killed.”

The whirling of the helicopter rotors was growing louder.

“Now!” Hayes shouted.

Brandon jerked back in surprise, then climbed into the hole.

“Here,” Hayes said, shoving the small backpack in with him. “I’m going to leave the screw top off, and just pull the plate over.”

“But…but…”

“It’s going to be all right,” Hayes said, grabbing the metal plate and tipping it back over.

As it was closing down on him, Brandon said, “How long will I have to—”

“It’s going to be fine.”

The plate fell the rest of the way to the ground, plunging Brandon into darkness. He could hear scrapes on the other side as Hayes covered the plate with the loose ground they’d scraped off. For several seconds all was quiet.

Then the helicopter roared overhead.

4

YANOK ISLAND

11:04 AM CENTRAL STANDARD TIME

T
HE MOMENT THE
bullet left his gun, Daniel Ash started running toward the front of the room. His aim had been true. The slug slammed into Olivia Silva, spinning her off the chair.

But had it been in time?

He paid no attention to the huddled group of men on the floor, or their dead colleague who lay nearby. His focus was completely on Olivia, and the computer she had been using.

She was now on the ground, clutching her blood-soaked shoulder. Through clenched teeth, she said, “Very good, Captain Ash. I’m impressed.” She sneered. “But not as impressed as I could have been.”

Ash looked at the computer. On the screen, in deceptively small letters, was the simple phrase:

ACTIVATION COMPLETE

Dammit!

He blinked, but the words remained the same. His bullet may have hit its mark, but it had not stopped Olivia from transmitting the go code that would commence the release of the virus on the world.

Project Eden’s restart of humanity had begun.

He looked down at her. “You’ve got to stop it!”

“Stop it? Even…if I could, why would I?”

He whirled around and glared at the group of men, the leaders of Project Eden. “Deactivate it!”

No one moved.

He rushed forward, pointing his gun from one man to the next. “Turn it off. Stop it. Now!”

“We can’t,” one of the men said.

Ash turned to him and put the muzzle of the pistol against the guy’s forehead. “Turn it off!”

“Can’t be done. Once activated, it can’t be stopped.”

“Bullshit! You’ve got to have some sort of override.”

“Ash!”

He looked up. Chloe was standing in the doorway at the back of the room.

“We’ve only got a few more minutes!” she yelled. “We’ve got to go!”

Before punching in the go code for the virus, Olivia had begun the self-destruct sequence for the Project Eden facility known as Bluebird. From that moment, they’d had fifteen minutes to exit the building. Half that time was already gone.

“Olivia activated the virus!” he told her.

Chloe’s eyes widened in horror.

Ash looked back at the men on the floor. “Override it!”

“There is no override,” another man said defiantly. He was the one who’d been sitting at the computer when Ash, Olivia, and the others had barged in and taken over, the man who was supposed to have activated the release. “What’s done is done. Welcome to the new world, Captain Ash.”

“Ash, we’ve got to go!” Chloe said.

Ash ran back to the computer, hoping there was something—
anything
—that might indicate the men were wrong. But there was nothing on the screen other than:

ACTIVATION COMPLETE

Sitting beside the keyboard was the open envelope Olivia had taken from the man who’d been at the computer. Next to it was the piece of paper that had been inside. Ash snatched it up. There were only five characters on it:

EXIT 9

The activation code, he realized. He started to throw it down, then stopped himself.
What if…?

“Ash! Come on!” Chloe called.

He typed in E-X-I-T-9, and hit
ENTER
. Nothing happened.

He tried the code backwards, 9-T-I-X-E, knowing it was a long shot at best. Nothing again.

“Ash!”

He glanced toward Chloe. She was frantically waving at him to join her.

“Give me a second!” he yelled, then input EXIT 9 again.

ACTIVATION COMPLETE

He tried once more.

ACTIVATION COMPLETE

Someone tugged at his arm.

“Ash,” Chloe said from beside him. “We’re out of time. We need to leave now!”

“We’ve got to stop this!”

“We
can’t
stop it! We tried, but we can’t. Do you want to die here, too? Because that’s what’s going to happen if we don’t move
now
.”

He balled his hands into fists as he stared down at the computer, more frustrated than he’d ever been in his life.

This time, when Chloe grabbed his arm and pulled, he didn’t fight her.

“Sorry to ruin your…day, Captain Ash,” Olivia called after him.

He twisted out of Chloe’s grasp and stepped toward Olivia.

“What are you doing?” Chloe asked.

“She started this,” he said. “She’s coming with us. She needs to answer for what she’s done.”

Before he could grab Olivia, Chloe yanked him to a stop. “Are you kidding me? She’s going to
die
here when the building goes up. That’s about the best solution we can get. Come on!”

He stared down at Olivia.

She smiled at him again. “Goodbye, Captain.”

Snatching his gun off the desk where he’d left it, he pointed it at her head.

“Go on. Do it,” she said. “You know you want to.”

Damn right he did. No one would ever come close to matching the number of dead that would undoubtedly lie at Olivia’s feet. Billions, if the Resistance’s projections were correct.

Her smile broadened. “You can’t, can you? You’re too good for that. You’d never shoot an unarmed—”

He pulled the trigger, blowing the top of her head off, ensuring she’d never speak another word.

“Satisfied?” Chloe asked. “Can we go now?”

There was no satisfaction in killing Olivia. His inability to stop what she’d already unleashed made her death a footnote to what he knew would be happening next.

Without responding, he headed for the door, Chloe running right beside him. When they entered the corridor, they found two members of Olivia’s strike team waiting there.

“Where is she?” one of them asked.

“She didn’t make it,” Chloe said as she tried to push past them.

The man grabbed her arm. “What do you mean, she didn’t make it?”

Ash shoved him away. “She means Olivia’s dead.”

The other man raised his rifle, aiming it at Ash. “You killed her, didn’t you?”

Before Ash could respond, two shots rang out, and both men dropped to the ground.

Chloe, her gun held near her waist, said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting the hell out of here.”

They raced down the corridor, retracing their path back to the emergency tunnel. Somewhere behind them, Ash could hear others running in their direction, the Project Eden members who’d been held captive in their own command center now trying to escape the coming destruction.

“This way,” Chloe said, turning down a smaller hallway that Ash almost missed.

At the end, they could see another one of Olivia’s people standing in the open entrance to the tunnel, waiting.

“Close it behind us!” Ash yelled as they approached.

“Where are the others?” the man asked.

“Not coming,” Chloe said.

“What happened?”

As they neared the door, Ash could hear the Project Eden members turning into the hallway. “Just close it!” he ordered. He rushed through the opening right behind Chloe.

The man hesitated a moment, then followed him and shut the door.

Ash went over to the monitor mounted on the rock wall that controlled the entrance, and touched the screen, engaging the lock. The others would be able to release it from the inside, but it would at least slow them down a bit. As far as Ash was concerned, none of them deserved the chance at escape. They had all played their parts in the plan to kill most of humanity, so they could all go to hell.

“Give me that,” Chloe said to Olivia’s man as she ripped the flashlight he was holding out of his hand. “Come on!”

The three of them headed quickly down the tunnel, the flashlight’s beam bouncing across the ground ahead of them.

“How much time?” Ash asked.

Chloe glanced at her watch. “A minute if we’re lucky.”

They weren’t.

They made it halfway to the opening of the cave when they heard a low rumble behind them.

“Faster!” Ash yelled.

The sound grew louder and louder as the ground began to shake, and dust and pieces of rock started to fall from the top of the tunnel. Ten steps on, a large chunk dropped from the ceiling and grazed the side of the other man’s head, knocking him to the ground. Ash yanked him back to his feet. The man was bloodied and dazed.

“I got you,” Ash said, putting an arm around him.

The man stumbled forward, gained his footing again, and began running on his own.

More rocks assaulted them as the rumble became a roar.

Ahead, the tunnel curved slightly to the right. As soon as Chloe reached the bend, she yelled something back at them. Ash couldn’t hear her above the noise, but when he reached the point where she’d been, he saw what she was trying to tell him.

The opening of the cave, just fifty feet away. Ash thought he could see some movement beyond it, but it was hard to tell, because the perpetual dark of the Arctic winter was only slightly lighter than the pitch black of the cave.

A loud
boom
suddenly engulfed the tunnel, shaking the ground so hard all three of them were thrown off their feet. A large section of the ceiling crashed down between Ash and Chloe.

Ash grabbed the other man and pulled him back to his feet, then half carried him over the fallen rock. Once they cleared it, Chloe braced the man on the other side. They headed off again just as part of the ceiling behind them collapsed, and bits of rock pelted them in the back.

Nearing the opening, Ash could hear the wail of the wind, and realized the movement he’d seen moments earlier was snow, but not just normal snow. Blizzard snow.

The storm that had been threatening earlier had arrived.

They stopped at the entrance just long enough to pull on the hoods of their jackets, then made their way on the narrow pathway that led across the cliff face back to the relative safety of the island.

“Where are the others?” Chloe asked.

The rest of Olivia’s team had left Bluebird not long before them, but the path was empty.

“Back to base,” Olivia’s man said. “Supposed to meet there.”

“Do you know the way?” Ash asked.

“Yeah. I think so.”

Think so?
Ash thought. He and Chloe had only come this way the one time, and while both were excellent with directions, navigating through a full-on blizzard would magnify even the slightest of mistakes.

They were three-quarters of the way toward the top when the ground shook again. Chloe grabbed on to the cliffside. Ash started to do the same, but Olivia’s man began waving his arms around, attempting to regain his balance as he tipped backward toward the edge. Below were rocks, the icy sea, and certain death.

Ash whipped out a hand, snatched the man’s sleeve, and tried to pull him back. For a second, he thought they would both go over the side, but then Chloe grabbed the man’s other arm and stabilized them.

Ash took two deep breaths, and glanced toward the cave.