Ashes (A Project Eden Thriller) Page 11

  He’d never been trained in CPR, but that didn’t stop him from trying. He pumped her chest, willing her heart to beat again. It was no use. She was gone.

  Instead of calling 911 this time, he called the main police number. No busy-circuits message, but no live operator either. Only voicemail.

  He left a message with his name, address, the news that his wife had died, and that he didn’t know what to do. Drained of energy and with his head pounding, he dropped onto the living room couch and was soon asleep.

  The second reason he wished he could stay asleep was that the illness he now realized had been coming on the night before had taken full control of his body. His throat, his chest, his head—they all screamed at him for attention. Even his skin hurt.

  “Daddy?”

  He forced his eyelids open.

  “Daddy, where are you?” Ellie’s voice drifted into the living room from the back of the house. “Mommy doesn’t want to wake up.”

  Oh, Jesus!

  Despite the pain, he pushed himself to his feet and staggered into the hallway. His daughter wasn’t there.

  “Baby, where are you?”

  “Daddy?” She was in the master bedroom.

  No, no, no!

  When he reached the door to the room he’d shared with Wendy, he saw Ellie sitting on the bed where he normally slept, his wife lying still beside her.

  “Hi, sweetie,” he said. He tried to smile as he walked over to the bed.

  “Mommy’s still asleep,” Ellie whispered.

  “Mommy’s not feeling very well.”

  “Like last night?”

  “Yes, like last night.” He wanted to pick her up but didn’t think he had the energy, so he held out his hand instead. “Come on. I’ll make you some breakfast.”

  After she ate, he put Elf on TV, and let her play with her new toys by the Christmas tree. He then sat down on the couch and promptly fell back to sleep.

  Several tugs on his arm woke him. His eyes hurt even worse than before—everything hurt worse.

  “Movie’s over, Daddy,” she said. She studied him, her face pinched. “Are you okay?”

  “Think I’m a little sick, too, sweetie.”

  Her eyes softened dramatically. “Oh, no. You want me to make you some soup?”

  Despite his condition, he laughed, or tried to, anyway, as it quickly became a cough.

  When the spasm passed, he sat up. “What would you like to watch now?”

  “Rudolph?”

  “Good choice.”

  Once he got the program going, he asked Ellie, “You feel okay?”

  She nodded without taking her eyes from the TV.

  “You don’t have to cough? No runny nose?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “What about your head?”

  “My head?”

  “Does it hurt?”

  She put a hand on top of her head and said, as if it were a silly question, “My head doesn’t hurt.”

  “Of course not,” he said. He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. “You watch your show. I’ll be right back.”

  As she picked up her bear and started dancing him to the music, Nolan staggered out of the room. Using the hallway wall to keep his balance, he returned to the master bedroom. There was no denying his condition was mirroring that of his wife’s the day before. He knew that meant his life could be measured in nothing more than hours. It wasn’t the thought of dying that scared him. It was Ellie.

  She wasn’t sick, not yet, anyway. Perhaps she would wake up tomorrow feeling like he did now, but there would be no one here to take care of her. And what if she was still well? Maybe she’d be alive for days without anyone to help her. A horrifying image of Ellie sitting on his bed, trying in vain to wake both him and Wendy, flashed through his mind.

  He grabbed his cell phone from his nightstand, and started working his way through his contact list, calling everyone he knew living in the Boulder area. But the few who actually answered sounded as sick as he was. When he reached the end of the list, he dropped the phone on the floor and buried his face in his hands.

  What was he going to do? He couldn’t leave Ellie alone. She was barely five, for God’s sake.

  Wendy’s phone, he thought. She would have the numbers for people he didn’t.

  He found her purse on the kitchen table. After pulling out her cell, he took a quick peek in at Ellie. She seemed to be doing fine, so he returned to the rear of the house where she wouldn’t hear him. But what had started off with hope ended in the same despair he’d experienced with his own contact list. No one could help.

  Out of options, he tried 911 again. Busy. So once more he dialed the general number.

  “Please, I need help,” he said as soon as the voicemail beep sounded. “My name is Nolan Gaines. I’m ill and don’t think I’ll make it through the day, but I have a daughter here. She’s only five. Her name is Ellie. She’s not sick yet. She’ll be all alone once I’m gone. Please. Please send someone to help her.”

  He hung up without realizing he hadn’t left an address.

  “Doing okay?” he asked as he walked back into the living room.

  Without looking up, Ellie said, “They shouldn’t be so mean to him just because he has a red nose.”

  “No, they shouldn’t.” He sat on the couch. “Hey, come back here and sit with me.” When she was on the couch beside him, he put his arm around her and kissed her on top of her head. “I love you, Ellie. I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too, Daddy.”

  The words were like a tonic, easing his concern for a moment, but not taking it completely away.

  “I love you, baby,” he whispered.

  14

  SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINS, CALIFORNIA

  6:58 AM PST

  IT WAS EXHAUSTION that had finally caused Martina to fall asleep in the early hours of the morning, but her bone-weary coma was only able to mask her anxiety for so long, and four hours after her eyes had shut, her sense of dread opened them again.

  She shuffled into the bathroom and forced herself to take a shower. As the hot water poured down her back, she rolled her head around and around, working the kinks out of her neck. Finally, she started to feel human again. She paused.

  She was feeling human again.

  What she was not feeling was sick.

  Was it just taking longer to grab hold of her system? Or had she somehow managed to not catch it yet?

  After she dried off and dressed, she went into the kitchen, wet a rag, filled a glass with water, and once more started her rounds. Her first stop was the room Mrs. Weber had died in. Martina had moved the woman outside the previous afternoon, so Pamela now had the room to herself.

  Martina sat on the bed and slipped a hand under Pamela’s head to lift it, but quickly realized the girl didn’t need any water. Like Mrs. Weber, Pamela was dead.

  Martina found it hard to breathe as she backed out of the room. She had planned on checking her parents next, but changed her mind and headed to the living room first. There, she found her brother dead, too, and though Riley was still breathing, Martina thought it wouldn’t be long before she joined Donny and Pamela.

  Steeling herself, she reentered the hallway and walked up to the door of her parents’ room. For a moment, she just stood there, unable to open it.

  Finally she forced herself to turn the knob.

  Her mother and father lay side by side, pretty much in the same position they’d been in when she last checked on them. The one big difference was that the pain that had been etched on their faces was gone.

  She had braced herself for this. She had known deep down what she was going to find, but actually standing there and seeing her parents like this, realizing she could never talk to them again, was beyond devastating. A part of her wanted to lie down between them, to take her parents’ hands in hers as she waited for her own death to come, but her feet wouldn’t move.

  It was noise in the other room that finally stirred her—a
thump, and a groan, then something falling on the floor. Martina returned to the living room, and stopped abruptly. Riley was sitting on the couch, her elbows propped on her knees, her head in her hands.

  “Riley?” Martina said, hardly believing her eyes.

  Her friend’s head jerked back in surprise. When her eyes focused on Martina, she said, “Water?”

  “What? Oh, sure. No problem.” Martina was still carrying the glass she’d been taking to her parents’ room. She rushed it over, and raised it to her friend’s lips. “Here.”

  Riley took a few sips, then coughed. Martina yanked the glass away.

  “No,” Riley said. “More.”

  By the time she had enough, the glass was half empty.

  Martina grabbed the blanket off the couch and draped it around Riley’s shoulders.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Like crap.”

  Riley may have felt like crap, but Martina could see that it was several levels above the point of no return she’d been hovering around most of the night.

  “Maybe you should lie back down,” Martina suggested.

  “Need to go to the bathroom.”

  “You have to throw up?”

  Riley looked annoyed. “No. I didn’t say that.”

  Putting an arm around her friend’s waist, Martina helped Riley walk to the bathroom.

  “You need help?” she asked once she got her inside.

  “I think I’m okay.”

  Martina closed the door partway and waited nearby. After a while, the toilet flushed and water began running into the sink. When she heard the unmistakable yet surprising sound of Riley brushing her teeth, Martina pushed the door open again.

  Riley looked over, the brush still in her mouth. “What?” she said, toothpaste foaming on her lips.

  “Nothing. I…uh, I thought you were almost done.”

  “I am.” Riley spit into the sink. “My mouth just felt like…yuck.”

  If possible, Riley seemed even better than she had been a few minutes before.

  When she was seated back on the couch, she asked, “How’s everyone else?”

  “Asleep,” Martina said. She was afraid if she told her friend the truth, it might have an adverse effect on her recovery. “You want something to eat?”

  “No. Maybe just a…maybe a nap.”

  “Sure.”

  Riley, moving slowly, stretched out once more on the sofa. Within moments, she was asleep.

  For ten minutes, Martina sat on the floor next to her, worried that Riley would slip back to the near-death state she’d been in earlier, but her breathing remained strong, and the color that had returned to her cheeks was showing no signs of retreating. When Riley started snoring, Martina began to think her friend might actually live.

  This realization caused her to wonder about something she thought she’d never think about again—the future. What should they do now? She decided to check the radio again to find out what was happening in the rest of the world.

  As she walked to the car, she saw dark clouds beginning to gather over the mountains again, and knew more snow would soon be on the way. Since they had no tire chains for the Webers’ car, even just a few more inches would be enough to snow them in until the roads cleared again. How long would that be? A week? A month? All winter?

  She climbed into the car and flipped the key. When the radio came on, all she heard was static. That was odd. When she’d last turned it off, she’d made sure to leave it tuned to a station out of Bakersfield. It was the strongest signal she’d found.

  She scanned the AM band, slowing in the areas she’d found stations before, but she didn’t even pick up the hint of a voice. She tried FM, but there was nothing there, either.

  Worried, she got out of the car and looked at the sky again. The clouds now covered three quarters of the sky and had grown even darker. Snow coming for sure, in the next hour or two at most.

  Even though it was only the two of them now, Martina was sure they didn’t have enough food to last an entire winter. If they were snowed in and the flu didn’t kill them, starvation would do the trick.

  Riley and I are alive, she told herself. It’s my job to keep us that way.

  With a renewed sense of purpose, Martina ran back into the house. She spent three minutes in the kitchen throwing food into two bags, then grabbed a case of water and carried everything out to the car.

  As she went back inside, she knew there was one other thing she should take. With reluctance, she reentered her parents’ room, and retrieved her father’s rifle and the two boxes of extra shells he’d kept in his bag. She hoped she didn’t need the weapon, but she had no idea what they would find once they were off the mountains.

  She kissed her father’s forehead, and then her mother’s. “I’m sorry I can’t stay,” she said, sure they would understand. “I’ll come back as soon as I can. I love you.”

  Wiping tears from her eyes, she returned to the living room and knelt down next her brother. She kissed him on the cheek, said, “I need to borrow this,” and grabbed his backpack.

  She removed the contents, set them next to Donny, and put the gun and ammunition into the bag.

  “Riley, get up,” she said, moving over to the couch. She gave her friend’s shoulder a shake. “Riley, come on.”

  The girl stirred and opened her eyes only wide enough to see. “What is it?”

  “We need to go.”

  Martina slipped an arm under her friend and started to lift her up.

  “Go where?”

  “Don’t worry about it. You can sleep in the car.”

  “The car? The others are there?”

  Martina forced a smile. “No. It’s just you and me.”

  “What about them?”

  “Come on.” Martina pulled Riley to her feet and walked her to the front door.

  “I don’t…understand,” Riley said as they stepped outside.

  “I’ll explain later. Right now we’ve got to go.”

  She helped Riley into the back and told her to lie down. Her friend still looked confused, but stretched out across the seat. Martina ran back into the house, grabbed a couple blankets, two pillows, and their sleeping bags, just in case.

  At the car, she slipped one of the pillows under Riley’s head, covered her with the blankets, stuffed everything else into the front passenger seat, and climbed in behind the wheel.

  The engine, not happy with the cold, ran rough for nearly a minute before it warmed up. As Martina shifted into Reverse, she took one last look at the house.

  “I’ll be back,” she whispered. “I promise.”

  She took her foot off the brake, backed up a dozen feet, and dropped the car into Drive.

  Right before they reached the main road, a snowflake hit the windshield.

  15

  THE BUNKER, MONTANA

  8:37 AM MST

  JOSIE WAS WAITING by the large door to the Bunker’s emergency tunnel as the latest search party returned.

  She had spent the entire night in the chair next to her father’s bed, sleeping, her hand on his. When she woke that morning, he was still unconscious, but Dr. Gardiner had told her his vital signs were continuing to improve.

  She hadn’t wanted to leave, but the doctor needed to examine her dad’s wounds, and said it would be easier if she wasn’t there. He’d suggested she go get something to eat. Though she still wasn’t hungry, she went down to the kitchen anyway. A man was having breakfast at one of the tables, a walkie-talkie sitting near his plate. As Josie was asking Bobbie for a glass of orange juice, the radio had squawked to life, announcing that Brandon’s search party was on its way back inside. That sent her racing down the hall to the tunnel.

  She shifted from one foot to the other as she waited, hopeful. But when the searchers finally appeared, she could see from the looks on their faces that they had once again been unsuccessful.

  She heard Matt Hamilton’s distinctive limp coming down the hall behi
nd her. “Any luck?” he asked as he reached them.

  A man from the search party said, “We didn’t see him, but there was—”

  “You still have people out there looking for him, right?” Josie asked Matt.

  “Of course,” Matt said. “We’re searching around the clock now. I told you we would.” He focused back on the man he’d been talking to. “There was what?”

  “Tracks,” the man said. “Out on the highway.”

  “Brandon’s?” Josie asked.

  “Hard to say.”

  “Maybe we should go down to my office,” Matt suggested.

  Josie instantly knew he was trying to cut her out of the conversation. “No!” she told him. “I want to hear what he has to say.”

  Matt looked as though he were going to fight her on it, but then he sighed in resignation. “Okay, okay. But don’t interrupt him again.”

  “I won’t.” She looked at the searcher. “Go ahead. What about the tracks?”

  The man looked at Matt, who nodded. “There were several of them. Some big. Boots, probably men. One set smaller. Could be a woman.” He inclined his head toward Josie. “Could be your brother. They were on the highway a good thirty miles from here. Whoever made the smaller tracks looked like they’d been traveling alone for a while. The larger arrived by helicopter.”

  “Helicopter?” Matt said, concerned.

  Josie was worried, too. Helicopters had attacked the Ranch.

  “Two skid prints,” the man said. “Looked like they all got on and flew away.”

  “How long ago, do you think?” Matt asked.

  “Had to have been within twenty-four hours, between that last snowstorm and this morning.”

  Matt pulled out his walkie-talkie. “Christina?”

  Static. “Go for Christina.”

  “Check the local radar archives, and see if you can find a helicopter that landed on the highway about thirty miles southeast of here in the last…” He paused. “Let’s say thirty-six hours.”

  “On it.”

  As he put the radio away, Josie said, “Do you think they have Brandon? It’s them, isn’t it?”