Eden Rising (5 page)

For the first two days, Pax’s explanation for why they were there was greeted with skepticism at best. He didn’t let up, however, and told them over and over about the plot by Project Eden, what was really in the shipping containers that had been spread around the world, and what would happen if the attempted genocide wasn’t stopped.

Yes, Darnell and the other researchers at the facility had heard about the containers, but the man wouldn’t even consider that they could be part of something so heinous, and had not believed a word of Pax’s story. So, with little choice, the two groups had settled into an uneasy coexistence while the storm continued to rage outside.

“Mr. Paxton,” Darnell said.

“Doctor.”

“I wanted to inform you that I sent my technicians out a little while ago to repair the satellite damage. I’m told that communications should be back up at any time.”

“Glad to hear it,” Pax said. He was desperate to find out if Ash had been able to stop Project Eden from implementing its horrifying plan.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t be. Just so you know, my first call will be to the police. I’m confident the RCMP will send officers here to arrest you and take you in for questioning.”

“If the Mounties are still around and want to arrest us, we’ll be happy to go.”

Darnell stared at him for several seconds. “Still sticking to your ridiculous story, I see.”

Pax shrugged.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to do, or why you are really here, but—”

The walkie-talkie clipped to Darnell’s belt chirped.

“Dr. Darnell to the communications room. Dr. Darnell to the communications room.”

He detached the radio and pushed the talk button. “On my way.” To Pax, he said, “I guess it’s time.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“I insist.”

The station was a series of mobile home-sized structures, some positioned right next to each other, some set a little farther apart and connected to the others via fully enclosed and insulated passageways. The communications room was located in one such solo building at the south end of the base near a hill. The rise did double duty, playing home to the radio antennas near the summit, and providing shelter from the winds for the satellite dishes at its base—something it failed to do during the storm.

Two people, both station personnel, were in the room when Darnell and Pax arrived.

“So, are we up?” Darnell asked.

Frances Bourgeois, the head communications officer, glanced over from a desk covered with computer equipment and monitors. “Syncing with the satellite now. Give me a moment.” She typed something on her keyboard before studying one of the monitors and then nodding. “There we go. Connection’s strong. We’re up and running.”

Darnell made a point of looking at Pax as he said, “Excellent.” He walked over to Frances’s desk and picked up the headset sitting there. “We should check in first. Call the university.”

Frances typed again. When she finished, Darnell stood at near attention as he focused on the call. After several seconds, he looked confused.

“All I’m getting is ringing,” he said. “Are you sure you dialed that correctly?”

Frances checked the number. “I did, but I can try again.”

“Do it.”

His bewilderment only deepened the second time.

“It
is
New Year’s Eve,” James Faber, the other person present, said.

Darnell considered this for a second. “Of course.” Looking back at Frances, he said, “Put me through to the RCMP in Ottawa.”

This time as he listened, he looked stunned.

“What is it?” Frances asked.

Darnell licked his lips nervously as he shot a quick glance at Pax. “Put it on speaker,” he said.

A second later, a voice streamed out of the speakers next to the monitor. “—home, and until services are restored, avoid all contact.” The voice was female, her message clearly recorded. “Good luck, and may God be with you.”

“What the hell is she talking about?” Faber asked.

Darnell held up a hand, silencing him.

There was a moment of dead air before the woman began speaking again. “You have reached the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Due to the Sage Flu crisis, there is no one able to take your call. If you are ill, remain where you are. Do not attempt to go to the hospital or any other medical facility. All facilities are currently closed to any new patients. You would do best to remain in bed, drink as much fluid as possible, and…”—she paused—“…pray. If you are unaffected at this time, stay in your home, and until services are restored, avoid all contact. Good luck, and may God be with you.”

Pax closed his eyes, his chin falling to his chest. Captain Ash had failed. They had all failed. The very thing the Resistance had been formed to prevent had happened.

The woman’s voice filled the room again. “You have reached the Royal—”

“That’s enough,” Darnell said.

Frances touched her keyboard and plunged the room into silence.

“You have Internet access now?” Pax asked her.

“We should.”

As she started to type, Pax, Darnell, and Faber crowded around behind her. The first few websites she tried kicked back the message:

WEBSITE SERVER NOT RESPONDING

CNN.com, however, was working. Just below the standard banner at the top was a large, sunlit picture of Times Square. Pax figured it had been taken near midday. The buildings were decked out in holiday fare, and the electronic billboards displayed mainly Christmas ads and messages. Which made the fact that the streets and sidewalks were empty all the more eerie.

Across the picture in red, semi-transparent capital letters was the word
PANDEMIC
.

“Holy shit,” Faber said.

Frances leaned toward the screen. “This hasn’t been updated in over a week.” She looked back at her boss. “How is that possible?”

“Check the CBC or PCN or Fox or MSNBC. All of them, if you have to.”

She did, but the few that were still up displayed similar messages to CNN’s.

For the first time since they’d been listening to the RCMP message, Darnell looked at Pax. “You were telling the truth.”

“I was.”

Silence.

“They’re all dead? Everyone?”

“Not everyone,” Pax said.

“But most?” Frances asked.

“If not yet, soon.”

The room grew quiet.

Darnell finally broke the silence. “What happens now?”

Before Pax could answer, Faber, barely able to control his emotions, said, “What happens now? Now we’re all going to die is what happens! Either we stay here and freeze to death, or go home and die from the flu.” He looked at Pax. “Right?”

“That’s one option,” Pax said. “But there is another.”

“What?” Faber asked. “Kill ourselves?”

“I mentioned it when I first told you what was going on.”

All three looked at him, dumbfounded for a moment. Frances was the first to snap out of it. “Vaccine,” she said. “You told us you had vaccine.”

“Yes.”

“Enough for everyone here?” she asked.

“More than enough.”

Darnell grew wary. “I’m sure you want something for it.”

“What does it matter what he wants?” Faber said. “There are more of us than them. We can just take it!”

“Unless you’re all trained in combat like my men, I’d advise against trying that,” Pax said.

“You surrendered your weapons the first day you were here,” Faber said.

“Not all of them,” Pax told him. “But we don’t need to get to that point. You see, we don’t want anything for the vaccine. We
would
like your help getting out of here, but you’ll get inoculated either way.”

“Bullshit,” Faber said.

“Not bullshit. The vaccine is not for sale. It’s for anyone who needs it.”

“How do we even know it will work?” Darnell asked.

“You won’t. Not until you’re exposed, at least.”

“I don’t know if anyone here will want to take that chance.”

“That’s your choice,” Pax said. “But I will say this. Without the vaccine you
will
catch the flu at some point.”

“I want it,” Frances said quickly.

After a brief hesitation, Faber said, “I’d like it, too.”

NEAR FORT MEADE, MARYLAND

1:44 PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME (EST)

“W
HOA, NOW THIS
is cool,” Bobby Lion said, his voice echoing down the hallway.

“Where are you?” Tamara Costello yelled.

“Down here.”

She followed his voice to a large, black door that had been propped open. She stepped inside and immediately stopped.

She and Bobby had both seen plenty of high-tech rooms stuffed with equipment back when they’d both worked for the Prime Cable News network—PCN—she as a field reporter and Bobby as her cameraman. But this room blew away anyplace they had seen before.

It was two stories high, and at least a hundred feet wide in both directions. Taking up over half the floor space were rows of equipment racks mounted with computers and God only knew what else. Several long counters broken up into dozens of individual workstations filled the rest of the room. Perhaps the most impressive thing, however, was the gigantic digital screen that took up most of the wall the stations were facing.

“I take it this is it,” she said.

Bobby grinned. “Oh, yeah. This has got to be it.”

“So, can you get it to work?”

“Hope so. Need to poke around a bit.”

“Don’t let me keep you.”

With a giddy smile, he all but skipped down the aisle leading past the workstations and disappeared into the equipment racks.

Tamara wished she could help him, but knew she’d only be in the way. She’d become more tech savvy over the last year, but the nitty-gritty of the electronics world fell outside her realm of expertise. She wouldn’t have a clue about what was what here.

The room they had found was an NSA monitoring facility. Tamara had known several of them were in the DC area; that had always been the rumor in the news world. She and Bobby had first thought they’d find one at the main NSA facilities at Fort Meade. That didn’t turn out to be the case. But the trip was not in vain, as they were able to dig up information that had led them to this building, a mere 1.2 miles away.

It still felt odd to be roaming around a place where they would have been shot for doing so less than two weeks earlier. Her reporter’s mind couldn’t help wondering about all the secrets they could uncover—not only at the NSA but the Defense Department, the State Department, hell, even the White House. Someday, perhaps, she’d do just that. If for no other reason than to satisfy her own curiosity.

But now they had other work to do.

So far, she knew her and Bobby’s contributions to the Resistance’s efforts had done little to help anything. They had spent months seeding videos on the Internet in an attempt to open people’s eyes about what was coming, but more times than not, Project Eden had pulled the videos down nearly as fast as she and Bobby got them up. Their last attempt, what Matt Hamilton had referred to as their Worse Case video, had gone up when it became clear the virus was being released. Its objective was to help people survive, and it had actually remained up and viewable for several days. Tamara wanted to think it had helped a lot of people, but she knew that was probably not the case.

By that time, she and Bobby had moved to the safety of a beach house in North Carolina, both thinking they may be there for some time. But then the message from a man calling himself UN Secretary General Gustavo Di Sarsina took over the airwaves. The recorded message hadn’t even been playing for an hour before Tamara’s and Bobby’s satellite phone rang, and Matt gave them the assignment that had brought them north to the DC area.

After about forty-five minutes, Bobby popped out from behind the racks and asked, “Any chance of finding something to eat? I’m starving.”

“Are you going to be able to get it to work?”

“Not sure yet. But…I think so.”

Tamara pushed up from the workstation she’d appropriated and said, “I’ll go see what I can find.”

In a break room on the second floor, she scored a couple of burritos from a freezer and zapped them in the microwave. Drinks were a couple sodas out of a machine, courtesy of some change she found in a guy named Fitzer’s desk.

“Come and get it,” she said as she reentered the hub. “I found some—” The words died in her mouth, all thoughts of food momentarily forgotten.

On the wall across the room, the giant monitor had come alive.

5

RIDGECREST, CALIFORNIA

1:21 PM PACIFIC STANDARD TIME (PST)

T
HE FIRST SIGN
of discord occurred the same night the message from the UN had started playing over the radio. It began innocently enough. Martina Gable and the other eight survivors were gathered in the restaurant attached to the Carriage Inn—the hotel they’d decided to turn into their group home.

Everyone was excited, and though none of them—excluding, perhaps, Noreen—had truly thought they were the only ones left on the planet, hearing that others were alive was a huge relief. There were tears and laughter and smiles.

At some point, Valerie ducked into the kitchen and returned with two bottles of wine.

“I’m not sure we should be drinking this,” Riley said. She was the youngest, but none of the other girls or Craig were of legal drinking age, either.

“Why not?” Valerie asked. “You think the cops are going to bust us?”

Several of the girls laughed.

“No,” Riley said. “I mean…you know…” She frowned. “Never mind.”

“Here,” Amanda said, holding a bottle out to Riley. “It’ll make you feel better.”

“I don’t want any, thank you.”

“Come on. Just a little sip.”

“I said no.” Riley pushed out of her chair and stood up.

“Whoa,” Valerie said. “Don’t get all hurt. We friends here.”

Martina put a hand on Riley’s back. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to drink anything.”

Riley hesitated a moment before retaking her chair.