Eden Rising (22 page)

When the plane stopped, he told the others to remain on board and climbed down the retractable staircase. He pushed his way through the snow away from the aircraft, raised his arms, and waved them back and forth over his head.

“It’s Pax!” he yelled. “Rich Paxton! You can come out!”

The only movement he saw was snow falling.

“Hello? Can you hear me? Tell Matt that Pax is back!”

Silence.

He tried a few more times before returning to the plane.

“I guess we’re going to have to hike in,” he said. He looked over at his men. “Tom, you’re with me. The rest of you help get the plane fueled up.”

Decked out in the same winter gear they had used up in northern Canada, Pax and Tom Grady set off for the Lodge.

The road, usually plowed in the winter, was now buried under two feet of snow, more in some places.

“I don’t like this,” Tom said.

Pax made no reply.

The Lodge was a bit over a mile away, about a ten-minute hike on a nice summer day at a strong and steady pace. Under current conditions, it took them twice as long before they could see the trees thinning ahead, signaling the meadow where the Lodge was located.

Knowing they were close, Pax couldn’t help but pick up his pace. He was anxious to see his friends again, to find out what had been going on. But as he stepped out from the trees, he stopped.

The Lodge was gone. It should have been
right there
, but in its place was a pile of snow-covered, charred timbers.

He looked toward the dorm building off to the side. Not there. Only another pile of debris.

“Oh, my God!” Tom said, stepping out behind him. “What happened?”

The answer to that was clear. The Lodge and the dorm had been destroyed. How and why, Pax had no idea.

“This way,” Pax said. He cut across the meadow toward the woods on the other side.

Had anyone been in the buildings when they went down? Were his friends—

Stop it!
he told himself. Those were questions that would only drive him crazy. What he needed was more information.

By the time they reached the woods again, both men were panting but they kept going, weaving through the trees and slogging up the hill to the Bunker’s emergency entrance. It took Pax a few minutes before he found the configuration of trees he was looking for, but there was no need to pace off the correct distance to find the hatch. It was unburied and wide open.  

Keeping his fear in check, he knelt next to it and looked inside. Snow had piled up directly below the opening, but otherwise the tunnel was dark.

He reached into the opening and felt along the wall near the ladder. When his fingers knocked against the switch, he flipped it up. Lights located along the top of the tunnel instantly drove the darkness away. At least the power was still working. That had to mean something, didn’t it?

“I’ll go down first,” he said. “If it looks okay, you follow.”

“Got it,” Tom said.

Pax descended the ladder, letting himself drop the final few feet to the ground. The tunnel stretched away for a while before bending out of sight. The part he could see was empty.

“Clear,” he yelled up at Tom.

As soon as Tom joined him, they set off for the Bunker proper.

Any hope Pax had that everything was still all right vanished when they reached the partially open blast door. The area beyond was too quiet. If nothing else, they should have heard the soft hum of the ventilators feeding fresh air into the underground space, but there was no noise at all.

Emergency lights, triggered by motion sensors, flickered to life as the two men stepped into the main part of the Bunker.

“They’re gone,” Tom whispered.

Or dead
, Pax thought but kept to himself, saying instead, “Let’s take a look around.”

Behind every door they opened and every corner they turned, Pax expected to find bodies, thinking that somehow the latest strain of Sage Flu had turned out to be resistant to the vaccine he and his friends had been given, but the dorms and the common areas were blessedly empty. They checked the storage rooms at the back of the kitchen. When Pax had looked in them last, they’d all been full. Now they were empty.

Their next stop was the weapons storage area. It, too, had been cleared out. Pax was starting to understand what had happened, at least a little bit.

“Comm room,” Pax ordered.

As they stepped inside the Bunker’s nerve center, Tom said, “Oh, my God.”

Most of the computers were gone, but the monitors and all other equipment still in the room had been destroyed. Chunks of glass and metal and plastic littered the floor. Pax stepped carefully through the mess and over to the communication director’s desk.

Standard operating procedure: upon abandoning a facility, the location of the next destination was to be left, when possible, in one of three specific places around the communication director’s workstation.

Pax found what he was looking for in position number two. Etched along the upper lip of the electrical socket cover were seven characters:
113-S78
.

The number eight meant nothing, as did the three and the second one. They were decoy numbers. The real message was:
1-S7
.

Nevada. They’d gone to Nevada.

Pax closed his eyes and said a prayer of thanks that his friends were apparently still alive. When he opened them again, he said, “Let’s get back to the plane. There’s nothing else here to see.”

18

SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA

12:34 PM PST

A
FTER TWENTY MINUTES
of looking for Iris, Ben began to wonder if maybe he should have left. If the girl didn’t want to be found, she wouldn’t be. There were a million places where she could hide. He could search for a month and never come within a block of her.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about the fact she was alone out there, even more so than he was. As terrifying and gut wrenching and mind numbing as living through the outbreak had been, at least he had known what was going on. Iris had clearly been unaware the world was dying around her.

He continued on for a few more blocks before finally deciding it was time to use his Jeep to cover more ground. The walk back took him thirty minutes. When he reached his vehicle, the first thing he did was pull a bottle of water out of the back and down the whole thing in one long gulp. Out of habit, he walked toward a recycling bin sitting at the curb, and had the lid open before he realized what he was doing. No one would ever collect the contents of the can. He tossed the bottle in anyway, figuring it was still better than dropping it on the street.

Instead of returning to his Jeep, however, he detoured to the Cape Cod house. Iris had all but said she’d been held captive there by this Mr. Carlson guy, but something about it—her actions, the whole setup—didn’t quite fit. Maybe if Ben could figure out what had happened, he’d have some clue about where she had gone. It was a long shot, but he thought it worth a try.

He headed down to the basement first, wanting to get a better look at the room she’d been trapped in. After blocking the door with a chair so he wouldn’t trap himself down there, he went inside. His impressions from earlier had been dead on. A lot of money had been spent in this room. Whoever had paid for it really wanted the person living there to be comfortable. He looked around for any personal items that might tell him a little more about Iris, but other than clothes and some simple jewelry, he came up empty.

Upstairs, he returned to the bedroom of the man he assumed was Mr. Carlson. He retrieved the wallet he’d seen earlier in the dresser and flipped it open. A driver’s license with a picture of the dead man indicated his name was Marvin Bernard Carlson, age forty-seven, with an address matching that of the house. There were a few business cards with the same name. Apparently Mr. Carlson worked as a manager for H&R Block. Insurance card, AAA card, a couple of credit cards, and a wallet-sized copy of one of the portraits on the wall. It was the one with the girl at her youngest.

Ben walked over to the portraits. He hadn’t realized it before, but in none of the pictures was the girl truly smiling. He noticed something else this time, too. Yes, she was a few years older now, but the girl was Iris.

A trip to the other bedroom confirmed it had been Iris’s room.
PROPERTY OF IRIS CARLSON
was written inside the covers of several books on the shelves. He wondered what was going on here, but then decided he probably didn’t want to know.

He exited the house and walked over to the Jeep.  

“Where did everybody go?”

Iris stood half hidden behind a tree in the yard directly across from her house, her gaze firmly planted on the Cape Cod. Had she been there when he first came back? Probably, he thought.

“It’s like I told you before,” he said, keeping his voice calm. “They’re gone. There was a massive flu outbreak, and almost everyone is dead.”

“You’re not dead.”

“No.”

“I’m not dead.”

“No,” he said.

“And…Mr. Carlson?”

Ben decided now was probably not the time to call her on her deception. “He’s dead.”

She looked at the house. “In his bedroom.”

“Yes.”

Her lower lip began to tremble. She sucked it between her teeth until the shaking passed. “I need to see.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

She tore her eyes from the house and looked at Ben. “I
need
to. Don’t you understand?”

He nodded. “Sure. I understand.” When she didn’t move, he said, “Would you like me to go with you?”

“Yes, please. I don’t think I can go alone. ”

Staying a few paces in front of her, he led Iris into the house and down the hallway. When they passed the first bedroom, he sensed her hesitate behind him, and thought she might go inside. But Iris apparently decided against visiting her old room, and soon joined him at the door to the master.

Ben covered his nose and mouth with his shirt. “You might want to do the same.”

As soon as she did, he opened the door.

“It’s not pretty,” he said.

“I don’t care.”

“You want to go in first?”

She shook her head.

Ben walked into the room and stepped to the side. Iris remained in the hallway for a few seconds before finally entering the room.

“That is Mr. Carlson, isn’t it?” he asked.

Only a nod as she stared at the corpse.

They stood there in silence for over a minute, before Iris abruptly turned and walked out. Ben started to follow her, but stopped and returned to the dresser. He hesitated, feeling guilty for what he considered doing. But he thought it might help him figure out Iris, so he opened the drawer, retrieved Mr. Carlson’s wallet, and slipped it into his pocket.

He found Iris outside, sitting on the curb.

“I’m heading south,” he said. “If you want to come with me, you’re welcome.”

At first he didn’t think she had heard him, but then she looked up. “I’d like that. Thank you.”

CENTRAL CALIFORNIA

12:47 PM PST

M
ARTINA KNEW THERE
had to be some unwritten rule about driving hung over. At first she thought it would be a good thing—the fresh air rushing past her, the bright morning sun keeping her warm. What she hadn’t taken into consideration was the helmet pressing in on her head, keeping that fresh air away and intensifying the heat to the point she could feel sweat dripping down her neck. From the looks on her friends’ faces, they weren’t doing much better. She was pretty certain none of them would be drinking again anytime soon.

She had purposely set a slower pace today, worried that in their diminished capacity they might not see a pothole or a branch in the road. Turned out the reduced speed was a good thing.

They were on Route 166, the often windy and narrow highway that separated the San Joaquin Valley from the coast, when they dipped around a bend and had to come to a sudden halt because the road in front of them was blocked.

Martina’s first thought was that there had been an accident—by the looks of it, a big one, involving over half a dozen vehicles. But then she realized that while the nearest two cars appeared to have run into each other, the ones behind them seemed to have been placed there on purpose. They were in even rows, perpendicular to the road, stretching from one shoulder to the other.

“How are we supposed to get around that?” Riley asked.

Craig popped the stand on his bike and hopped off. “I got this. Just need to push a few of them out of the way.”

He walked around the accident to the car in the first row, and leaned inside to put it in neutral. The moment his head disappeared inside, the crack of a rifle rang out from the trees beyond the blockade.

Craig jerked out of the car and dropped to the ground.

The girls stared, momentarily stunned.

“Down!” Martina yelled as another shot went off. “Everyone! On the ground!”

She hit the pavement a second before the other two.

“Why are they shooting at us?” Noreen asked. “We didn’t do anything!”

“Craig?” Riley called out. “You all right?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Craig called back. “Scared the crap out of me, that’s all. Are you guys all right?”

“Yeah,” Riley said. “We’re okay.”

“Those were warning shots,” a male voice called from the trees. “Next one won’t miss. Now get on your bikes and go back the way you came. This road is closed!”

“We’re just trying to get to the coast,” Martina shouted back. “Not trying to cause any problems!”

“Plenty of other ways to get there. You’re not coming through here!”

“Okay, okay! No problem! Please don’t shoot at us again, all right?”

“If you turn those bikes around and get out of here, there won’t be any problems.”

“I’m going to get up,” Martina said.

Riley reached out and grabbed Martina’s wrist. “No. What if it’s a trick?”

“I think he could shoot us where we’re lying if he wanted to. And even if he can’t, what are we going to do? Just stay here?”