Ashes (A Project Eden Thriller) Read online

  “You should have given that to her before she went outside,” the doctor said, a touch of anger in his voice.

  “You’re right. I should have. I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it.

  She kept an eye on the roadblock as the Yukon bounced and dipped its way across the field. There were no signs of anyone getting out of the truck, no sudden spotlight streaking across the field toward the SUV, no warning shots booming through the air.

  When the roadblock had receded to a distant halo of light behind them, Chloe instructed the doctor to head back to the highway. Five minutes later, they were on the snow-covered blacktop again, and able to increase their speed to twenty miles an hour.

  “How much farther?” Gardiner asked.

  “A ways.”

  Silence.

  “Is there really a sick man where you’re taking us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then maybe we should let my wife drive. She grew up out here. She’s better in these kinds of conditions than I am. And I’m guessing you probably don’t want me to be dead tired when we arrive.”

  It was the last point that sold her.

  They stopped in the middle of the road, and the two older Gardiners switched positions.

  “Can I turn the lights on now?” Kathy asked as she buckled in.

  Chloe thought about it, then nodded. “Okay.”

  Once they were moving again, the doctor said, “Mind if I try to get a little rest?”

  “Go for it.”

  “You look pretty tired, too. Maybe you should get some sleep.”

  She gave him a humorless grin. “Nice try, Doc.”

  December 25th

  Christmas Day

  World Population

  7,165,618,453

  Change Over Previous Day

  – 11,274,398

  5

  THE RANCH, MONTANA

  3:52 AM MST

  IT WAS NEARLY four in the morning when they reached the turnoff for the Ranch. Trees grew right up to the edge of the long dirt road leading to the home of the Resistance, helping to limit the amount of accumulated snow so far. Still, it took them another fifty minutes before they reached the burnt hulk of the Lodge, which had been the Ranch’s main building.

  “What happened?” Emily asked, unable to contain her curiosity.

  “We had some unwanted visitors,” Chloe said. She leaned forward and pointed to where the road passed the Lodge and went back up a small hill into the trees. “Go up there, and stop right at the top.”

  Kathy steered the SUV around the grounds and up the slope.

  As soon as they stopped moving, Chloe said, “Kill the engine.”

  Kathy did so.

  Chloe held out her hand. “Keys.”

  Kathy pulled them out of the ignition, her hand shaking slightly.

  “Don’t be nervous. You’re going to be thanking me soon enough.” Once Chloe had the keys, she said, “We’ll be outside for a few minutes. It’s going to be cold, but it won’t be for long.”

  “You want your coat back?” Kathy asked. She had taken it off once she warmed up, so it was sitting in the front passenger seat.

  “No. You can use it.”

  Instead of donning it, Kathy handed it to her daughter. “Honey, put this on when we get out.”

  “Okay You all out first,” Chloe told them. “You can run, but as you saw, we’re not close to anything. You’re going to want to stick with me.”

  After the Gardiners exited, Chloe opened her own door. She leaned into the front and engaged the door locks in case the others had plans of jumping right back in once she was out. A moment later, she came around the front of the car and found them huddled together.

  “Wh-which way?” the doctor asked.

  “Follow me.”

  She led them through the woods to the emergency tunnel entrance. The hatch opened right before they arrived and Miller stuck his head out. “Wondering when you’d come back. Success, I assume?”

  “Yeah,” Chloe said.

  “Come on in and get warm,” he said, giving them all a wave before he disappeared back down the hole.

  The doctor and his family looked at each other, their expressions uncertain.

  Finally Gardiner said, “I’ll go first.” He lowered himself through the opening. A moment later, he called up, “It’s okay. Send Emily down.”

  The daughter passed through the opening, but before Kathy stepped into the hole, she looked at Chloe. “If anything happens to my family, you will be the one who pays,” she said. She climbed down into the tunnel without waiting for a response.

  As soon as Chloe was inside, Miller closed the hatch and led them down the tunnel.

  “How is he?” Chloe asked, hoping they weren’t too late.

  “No change,” Miller said.

  She allowed herself a brief, relieved smile.

  “What is this place?” the doctor asked.

  “We call it the Bunker,” Miller told him. “The whole property’s known as the Ranch. We try to keep it simple around here.”

  At the end of the tunnel, they stepped around the large, thick, blast-like door into the true Bunker.

  “What the hell?” the doctor said, as the Gardiners all stopped in the middle of the hall.

  The Bunker was a labyrinth of well-lit corridors and rooms that served as the Resistance’s underground control facility. Despite the lack of windows, its new, clean look made people quickly forget they were underground.

  “Come on,” Chloe said. “There’s no time to waste.”

  The doctor and his family stayed where they were for another moment before they caught up.

  “How big is this place?” he asked.

  “Big,” Chloe said. “You can take the tour later. Right now you need to help my friend.”

  They navigated to the medical area. Even at this early hour, there were over a dozen people moving around. The door to the patient room was closed. Through the window, Chloe could see Josie Ash sitting next to her father’s bed, asleep.

  Lily Franklin looked up from the desk where she was sitting. “A doctor?” she asked, hopeful. In the wake of Billy’s death, her nurse’s training made her the ranking medical officer.

  Chloe pointed at Gardiner. “Him.”

  “The others?”

  “His family.”

  Lily glanced at a woman across the room. “Vicky, we need three inoculations.” She turned back to Chloe. “Unless you already took care of that.”

  “I didn’t have any vaccine with me.”

  “Vaccine? What vaccine?” Gardiner said.

  “The Sage Flu.” She looked into Ash’s room. “I’ll get Josie out of the way.”

  “Hold on.” Gardiner grabbed her arm. “You have a vaccine for the Sage Flu?”

  “Remember when I said I was going to save your lives? I wasn’t lying.”

  “No one has a vaccine.”

  “We do.”

  “How do you know it even works?”

  “It works.”

  Vicky approached them, three syringes in her hand. “Which arm do you prefer?”

  “No one is sticking anything into any of us until I know what’s in there,” Gardiner said. “Who knows what you might be putting into us.”

  Lily grabbed one of the syringes, stuck it in her own arm, and depressed the plunger. The whole time she kept her eyes locked on the doctor. “Worse case, it’s not going to hurt you. Best, we’re right, and we’ll have saved you from being one of the billions who are about to die. Or would you rather take your chances outside?”

  “How can you have a vaccine?”

  “Because we knew it was coming,” Chloe said.

  “Then why didn’t everyone else know?”

  “People didn’t want to listen.”

  “Brad,” Kathy said. “Maybe we should take it, just in case.”

  “Either do it or don’t,” Chloe said. “I don’t care. But you need to get in there and help my friend.”

  Gard
iner looked into Ash’s room, then at his wife. Finally he gave Vicky a nod. While she administered shots to the two women, a fourth syringe was retrieved and the doctor was inoculated.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s see what’s wrong with the patient.”

  6

  BOULDER, COLORADO

  7:23 AM MST

  NOLAN AND WENDY Gaines had been looking forward to this day all year. Last Christmas, their daughter Ellie had not been quite old enough to grasp everything that went with the season. This year, Ellie had fully bought into the idea of a pudgy old man riding through the sky in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, and that he would visit their house on Christmas Eve and leave presents to be opened first thing Christmas morning.

  In fact, Ellie had been asking when Santa would be coming nearly every week for the last three months. Instead of being annoyed by it, Nolan and Wendy were totally into it, and had even gone as far as sending Ellie several “update” letters from Santa, telling her how things were going at the North Pole.

  When reports of the biological attack began to appear, Nolan and Wendy had been as concerned as everyone else, but they made sure to only watch the news when Ellie was asleep. While their daughter was up, their TV played a continuous loop of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, and the other holiday classics they’d enjoyed when they were young. Ellie already knew most of the songs by heart, and had no problem singing them at the top of her lungs.

  “Come on, sing with me,” she’d say.

  And they would.

  After Ellie had fallen asleep on Christmas Eve, they’d decided not to turn on the news, and instead listened to Nat King Cole sing about chestnuts and Jack Frost and mistletoe as they filled their daughter’s stocking and arranged her presents in front of the Christmas tree. When they turned in a few hours later, they could almost believe the world was going to be fine.

  It was Ellie who woke them on Christmas morning.

  “Daddy,” she whispered.

  Nolan’s eyes parted. Ellie was standing next to the bed, a grin on her face. “Hi, sweetie,” he said.

  “I think he’s been here,” she said, her exaggerated hush laced with excitement.

  “Who?”

  “Santa.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Presents. In the living room.” She put a hand on his. “Get up, get up. I’ll show you.”

  He snickered, and pushed himself up. “Hold on, baby. Let me go to the bathroom first, okay?”

  “Okay, but hurry!”

  “I’ll be as fast as I can.”

  He pulled back the covers and gently shook Wendy’s shoulder. “Time to get up. The elves were apparently busy last night.”

  She responded with a low, half-asleep groan.

  Ellie moved to the side as Nolan swung himself out of bed. Her eyes were on him the whole time, her face full of anticipation.

  “Hold your horses,” he told her as he headed into the master bathroom.

  A minute later he was out again. Surprisingly, Wendy was still in bed in pretty much the same position.

  Ellie, who had moved over to her mom’s side, looked back at Nolan. “Daddy, get Mommy up.”

  Nolan reached down and picked up his daughter by her waist. “Oh, you want me to get your mommy up, do you? You want me to do your dirty work, huh?”

  He tickled her ribs, and she squirmed and giggled. “Daddy, stop it!”

  “What’s wrong? Stop what?” He continued to tickle her.

  “Daddy!” she yelled between screams of laughter.

  “Oh, you don’t like to be tickled.”

  “No!”

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  He tossed her over his wife and onto the bed where he’d been sleeping only minutes earlier. Ellie let out a yelp of excitement as she bounced on the mattress.

  Nolan put a hand on Wendy’s shoulder. “Babe, wake up. It’s present time.”

  She groaned again, and opened her eyes halfway. They appeared glazed and watery.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  A blink of surprise, then her eyes focused on him. She opened her mouth to say something, but instead let out a single, phlegm-filled cough.

  A sudden chill rushed over Nolan’s skin.

  Oh, no. No!

  Movement on the other side of the bed. Ellie was about to give her mother a hug.

  Nolan quickly grabbed his daughter under her arms, swung her up and over Wendy, and set her on the floor. “Honey, why don’t you go into the living room, and we’ll be right there?”

  “You said no last night,” she argued.

  Before putting her to bed Christmas Eve, they’d told her she couldn’t go past the end of the hallway that morning unless they were with her.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Just go in, sit on the couch, but don’t touch anything.”

  Her smile was back. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She ran as fast as her little legs would go, out into the hall. Once she was gone, Nolan kneeled next to his wife.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, knowing she wasn’t.

  She tried to clear her throat, and coughed again.

  “Shit,” she finally said.

  Nolan laughed. “Yeah.”

  She tried to raise herself onto her elbow, but fell back. “Help me up.”

  “You should stay here.”

  “It’s Christmas morning. Help me up.”

  Reluctantly, he helped her out of bed and half carried her into the bathroom.

  “Give me a moment,” she told him, using the sink to prop herself up.

  “Sure.”

  As he left, she said, “Close the door.”

  For the next several minutes, there were bouts of silence surrounding coughs and sniffles and grunts.

  “Daddy, Daddy, come on!” Ellie yelled from the living room.

  “Just a minute, sweetie.”

  Finally, the bathroom door opened. Wendy was wearing her robe now, and though she didn’t look much better, she was at least able to walk on her own.

  She smiled as best she could, and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Nolan threw his arms around her as tears began rolling down her cheeks. She tried to push him away, but in her weakened state it wasn’t much more than a soft nudge.

  “Don’t,” she said. “You’ll catch it.”

  “If you’ve got it, I already have it, too.”

  She fought him for a moment longer, then gave in and sobbed against his chest.

  “Mommy! Daddy! The presents!”

  Ellie was standing in the bedroom doorway, her fists on her hip and her elbows sticking out in that cute, pseudo-adult way she sometimes had.

  “Right,” Wendy said. “The presents. I think you’ve waited long enough.”

  Ellie grinned as she ran into the room and grabbed Nolan’s hand. Wendy leaned against him as Ellie pulled them both toward the door.

  Making up her own tune, Ellie sang, “It’s Christmas. It’s Christmas. Time for presents. It’s Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas,” Wendy whispered to Nolan.

  He kissed her on the cheek. “Merry Christmas.”

  SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINS

  7:17 AM PST

  AT FIRST MRS. Weber was the only one showing signs of the flu. Then, around ten p.m., Donny began coughing. By one a.m., everyone in the house except Martina was sick.

  The only sleep Martina had been able to get was half an hour sometime during the night when she’d sat down at the dining table, only meaning to rest her eyes. She had woken to the sound of Riley hacking on the couch.

  Since then, she’d been moving from room to room, giving those who were still conscious water, and wiping everyone’s face with a cool towel.

  Memories of the outbreak the previous spring kept coming to her. As one of victims, she remembered what the illness had felt like. The pain in her chest from coughing, the weakness in her muscles, and the ov
erwhelming sensation that all she wanted to do was sleep. But she and all her friends who got sick that day had lived.

  That was the hope she was clinging to—that her family and the Webers would live, too.

  As she walked back to the kitchen, she cut the corner coming out of the hallway too close and stubbed her toe against the wall.

  “Ow! Dammit!”

  Hopping on her other foot, she grabbed her injured toe and inspected the damage. The top half of the nail was bent back a quarter inch, and she could feel blood pooling where it had been. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, letting a wave of pain pass through her.

  You’re such an idiot. You need to pay attention!

  She hopped into the kitchen and raised her foot into the sink. Repositioning the faucet, she let cold water flow over her toe. It was painful at first, but soon the wounded area grew numb. As carefully as she could, she bent the nail back into place, then got a dish towel and wrapped it around the injury.

  “So stupid,” she muttered. Lowering her foot to the floor, she found she could walk if she put most of her weight on her heel.

  She thought about sitting down for a few minutes, but there had been something that needed doing. What was it? She racked her brain, and glanced back at the wall she’d hit her toe against.

  Water! That was it. She needed to do another round for everyone. She filled a cup and stopped first at Riley and Donny, the two in the living room.

  “Here you go,” Martina said, lifting Donny’s head so she could dribble some of the liquid into his mouth. He coughed, and everything she’d poured in came flying out. “Donny, come on!” She knew he couldn’t help it, but it was so frustrating.

  When he settled down, she tried again. This time, she was able to get about a quarter of a cup down without it spewing back out. She moved over to Riley.

  “Have some water.”

  Riley opened her eyes halfway. She was the last to get sick, and wasn’t quite as bad off as the others yet. “Not sure…I’m…thirsty.”