Author: Brett Battles
Category: Thriller
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They heard the sound again. It sounded like a piece of furniture scraping across the floor, in short bursts.
“Careful,” Sanjay said as they drew near.
Kusum waved her hand in the air without looking back, telling him she wasn’t an idiot.
The sound was coming out a doorway ten feet ahead. The door itself was cut in half, the top portion open, while the bottom was closed.
The scraping stopped, replaced by a short, hoarse Ap, ap!
Someone was in there and still alive, Sanjay realized. The place wasn’t as deserted as he had hoped. Still, only one person was better than the dozens of dead bodies they’d run into elsewhere.
Kusum hugged the wall as she approached the doorway. When she reached the edge, she leaned forward just enough to spy inside.
Ap! Ap! Ap! Ap!
More scraping.
Kusum laugh as she stepped away from the wall, moving in front of the half door.
Ap! Ap! Ap! Ap!
“What is it?” Sanjay asked, quickly following her.
The space on the other side was a communal toilet area and shower room. Old green tiles covered almost every surface. In the middle of the room, directly beyond the doorway, was a wooden table sitting at an odd angle. The reason for this was obvious. Strapped to one of the legs was a leather leash that, in turn, was connected to a dog about the size of Sanjay’s forearm. At the sight of them, it jumped up and down.
Ap! Ap! Ap! Ap!
Its bark was odd, as if its vocal chords had been removed. Perhaps they had been, or, more likely, Sanjay thought, its voice was strained from barking for days on end.
Kusum opened the door.
“Wait,” Sanjay said. “It may bite.”
“I am sure it will,” she said. “Look how hungry it is.”
From the bag over her shoulder, she pulled out a stale roll and tossed it onto the ground in front of the dog. The animal instantly pounced on it, and began tearing at the crust.
Sanjay noticed a water bowl against the wall, where the table had probably once been. The bowl was empty, so he took it over to the sink and filled it, then scooted it in front of the dog with his foot.
The dog stopped eating right away and switched to the water.
“We need to finish looking around,” Sanjay said.
Kusum nodded, and said to the dog, “We will be right back.”
As they walked out of the room, the dog looked up and began barking again.
“I promise we will not be long,” Sanjay said.
Ap! Ap! Ap! Ap!
Kusum returned to the dog.
“What are you doing?” Sanjay asked.
“She’s afraid of being left alone again.”
“She?” Sanjay asked.
Kusum glanced at him, one eyebrow raised. “Please tell me you know how to tell the difference.”
Ignoring her comment, he said. “She will be fine. We need to finish. The others are waiting.”
Instead of getting up, Kusum held her hand out to the dog, who sniffed it, then licked Kusum’s fingers.
“See?” Kusum said. “She’s friendly.”
She removed the leash from the leg of the table. With the dog in tow, she walked back to the doorway. “Let’s go, Mr. Impatient.”
THEY FOUND THREE bodies at the school—an older couple, who they assumed was husband and wife, in the caretaker’s apartment in back of the kitchen; and a middle-aged Caucasian man in the headmaster’s house.
Since Sanjay could not help, Kusum and her father—after carefully wrapping themselves in protective clothing—carried the bodies out to a ditch others had dug in the jungle. They burned the bodies, and buried the remains deep enough so that no animal could drag a piece back into the compound.
Once this was done, they divided up the rooms in the main dormitory. That evening, after most of the children were asleep, Sanjay, Kusum, her parents, and the four other adults who had joined Kusum’s family on their exodus from Mumbai gathered in the living room of the headmaster’s house. The dog, which Kusum had started calling Jeeval, had staked a claim to Kusum’s lap.
“There’s enough food in the cafeteria to last us a week, maybe two. That is, if you only want to eat rice the second week,” Kusum’s mother said.
“What about the chickens?” Kusum’s father suggested.
“The chickens are weak and skinny. We need to nurse them back. And we will need most of them for eggs.”
“Tomorrow we should send out search parties and gather what we can,” Sanjay said.
“We should also put together a list of non-food items we need,” Kusum suggested. “Medicine and soap and clothes, for instance.”
“Excellent idea,” Sanjay said.
Kusum found a pad of paper and a pen, and they began brainstorming other things they could use.
After a while, Naresh, one of other adults, said, “A radio would be good.”
The woman named Ritu pointed across the room, at a stereo on the shelf next to the television. “There’s one right there.”
“Not that kind of radio,” Naresh said. “One for talking.” He looked at Sanjay. “Some people have shortwave radio and can talk to others all over the world. There has to be more survivors. We cannot be the only ones. Maybe they also have radios, and we can connect with them.”
“Couldn’t we just try using a cell phone?” another woman, Bhakti, asked.
“And call what number?” the man said. “We need to find a shortwave.”
Sanjay nodded. This was also an excellent idea. He hadn’t even realized that such radios existed, but why wouldn’t they? “How do we find one?” he asked.
“They will have a big antennae. Here.” Naresh motioned for Kusum to lend him the pad of paper and pen. He quickly sketched something on a clean sheet, then turned it so Sanjay could see. “Like this.”
The drawing was no masterpiece, but it got the point across—a crude house, several trees, and a tall pole-like structure towering above them.
“Maybe not so high as this,” Naresh said, “but definitely tall, and made of metal. It might also have wires out to the sides to keep it steady.”
“I think maybe you should join me tomorrow with the first search crew,” Sanjay said.
“Of course.”
“With both of us,” Kusum said.
Jeeval sat up. Ap.
“And Jeeval, too,” Kusum added.
Twenty-Five
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO
6:40 AM MST
THE DOOR TO the office Chloe was searching flew open.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” Josie said angrily as she entered. “I could have been helping you!”
Chloe looked up from the files she’d been examining. “You needed the rest.”
“I can rest later. I need to find Brandon!”
“We need to find Brandon. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to do.”
“If you had woken me when you got up, maybe I would have found something by now.”
“Or you would have missed it because you’d have been too tired to realize what you were looking at.”
“You can’t know that.”
“And you can’t know you wouldn’t have, either,” Chloe said. “So are we going to argue, or are you ready to help now?”
Josie squeezed her lips together, frustrated. Then, barely parting them again, she said, “Help.”
“Good. How are you at computers?”
A shrug. “Good enough.”
“You know your way around file systems, that kind of thing?”
“Sure.”
Chloe pointed at the computer on the desk next to her. “See what you can find.”
While Josie got busy, Chloe returned her attention to the files.
Somewhere there had to be something that would tell them where Brandon had gone. Keeping detailed records was a military tradition, and if they were moving children around, they would have made doubly sure to account for everything in writing. Even in the
face of the end of mankind, those along the chain of custody would be worried about being drawn into a potential PR fiasco if something happened to the kids and the people in charge hadn’t accounted for their actions.
So why hadn’t Chloe or the others found anything associated with Operation Piper?
She reached the bottom of the stack and tossed it all into the trash.
“Chloe?” Miller’s voice came over the walkie-talkie on the desk.
She picked it up. “Yeah?”
“You’re going to want to come over here.”
“You find something?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Josie bolted out of her chair before Chloe even had a chance to stand.
“Hold on,” Chloe told the girl.
Josie stopped a few feet short of the door.
“Where are you?” Chloe said into the radio.
“I know where he is,” Josie said.
“Building 123,” Miller replied. “The little offshoot with the sloped roof. You’ll see it.”
“Come on,” Josie said, leaning toward the door. “I’ll show you.”
It took them three minutes to jog to Building 123.
Like most of the other buildings, it had large sliding doors that faced the runway and opened to a hangar. Where this one differed from the others, though, was along the southeast side of the building, where several other structures had been added, including a rectangular extension with a pitched roof.
They found Miller inside, looking at a map tacked to the wall. Both Harlan and Barry were with him.
“Where is he?” Josie asked as soon as she and Chloe entered.
Miller tapped the map. “Right here.”
Chloe and Josie hurried over. The point he touched was in the mountains above Colorado Springs.
“I was in Building 121 and found a note taped to a computer monitor.” Miller picked up a small piece of paper from the nearby desk and handed it to Chloe.
ALL O.P. INQUIRIES TO
WEINBERG x7223
“At first I thought it meant ‘op’ like operation, in which case it could mean anything,” he said. “But then I realized it’s o-period, p-period. The whole thing doesn’t mean ‘operation,’ just the first letter. It still could mean something else, but it’s a hell of a lot closer to Operation Piper than anything I’ve seen so far. I tried to track down this Weinberg guy, but no one with that name was in the directory, so I searched by the extension number. It belongs to a guy named Clarke. This is his office, but when I got here, there were several papers on the desk signed by this Weinberg guy. He must have taken over this room in the last few days.”
Chloe nodded at the map. “But how do you know that’s where Brandon is?”
He picked up two other pieces of paper and passed them to her. The top one was crinkled, like it had been balled up before being flattened again. On it was a list of names in alphabetical order. The second one down was Brandon Ash.
“Where was this?” Josie, who’d been looking over Chloe’s shoulder, asked.
Miller pointed a grocery-sized brown bag with groups of stripes running across it—five white, five red, five white—sitting on the desk. “Burn bag,” he said. “It was in a cabinet near the door awaiting pickup. That second sheet was in there, too.”
Chloe looked at the second page. It was a printout from Google—turn-by-turn directions to someplace called Camp Kiley.
“I can’t tie the two things to each other directly, but both pieces of paper were in the same bag, and, well, it kind of makes sense. If they were trying to protect the kids, they’d want to take them someplace they thought would be safe. Someplace controllable and in the middle of nowhere would be their best bet. This has got to be where they took him.” His face tensed. “Should have thought to check for burn bags last night.”
“None of us thought of it,” Chloe said. “And you found them now.” She looked at the directions again. “This says it’s forty-six miles away but takes over an hour.”
“Mountain roads,” Miller said. “Most of it two-lane.”
“What are we waiting for?” Josie asked. “Let’s go!”
Chloe was silent for a moment, thinking. “All right,” she said, glancing momentarily at Josie, then looking at the others. “Harlan, Barry, check in with Matt. If he needs you somewhere else, go. If not, just wait here. Miller, put us together a weapons package.” She hoped they wouldn’t need them, but it was better to be prepared. She turned back to Josie. “Let’s you and I find ourselves a ride.”
IT WASN’T SURPRISING that the only cars parked near the airfield were military vehicles, any civilian ones undoubtedly used by their owners to get home before or after they’d become ill. While the sedan they chose was adequate, it was far from comfortable, so when they drove through Colorado Springs, they exchanged it for a brand new Audi A3 right off the lot, and headed into the mountains.
No one spoke for the longest time. Finally Josie said, “He’ll be okay, right?”
“Of course,” Chloe said. “They were trying to help him, not hurt him.”
She glanced at Josie via the rearview mirror. The girl was chewing on her lower lip, her gaze unfocused.
“Hey,” Chloe said.
Josie looked up.
“He’ll be fine.”
Twenty minutes outside Colorado Springs, Josie’s satellite phone rang. The display indicated it was coming from the Ranch.
“Yes?” she said, answering it.
“It’s Matt. You have a problem.”
HARLAN HAD JUST finished checking in with Matt when Barry said, “Do you hear that?”
Harlan cocked his head and listened. An engine. A jet engine.
They looked out the cockpit window but saw nothing, so they moved back to the plane’s exit. Before Barry could climb outside, Harlan said, “Be careful. If it’s the air force, it might be better if they don’t see us.”
“They’re going to see the plane.”
“Yeah, but they might ignore it. People, not so much.”
Barry nodded.
Outside, they stayed tight to the fuselage of their jet and scanned the sky.
“There,” Harlan said, pointing.
A plane was approaching the runway, a small jet like theirs. Right before it touched down, the two men scrambled back inside, shut the door, and monitored the other plane’s progress from the passenger cabin. Once the other aircraft started taxiing, it turned toward the air force side of the airport.
“Military?” Barry asked.
Harlan studied the new arrival. There was nothing on it to indicate any kind of association, military or otherwise. Just a plain white fuselage with its identification number painted on the side and tail. “I don’t know,” he said.
They both knew if it was carrying US military personnel, the two of them could be in a whole lot of trouble if found. Hopefully, whoever was on board would assume the Ranch’s jet had been at the airport for a while and ignore it.
The plane slowed as it neared the control tower, and Harlan was sure it would pull in right beside them. But after a few minutes, the noise of its engines increased again, and it began rolling faster toward the next building over. A hundred feet from the structure, it came to a complete stop, its engines shutting down.
The door opened and half a dozen men in fatigues piled out.
“Oh, shit,” Barry said.
“Grab the binoculars,” Harlan said. There was something about the soldiers that troubled him.
Barry went into the cockpit, and returned thirty seconds later with the glasses. “I don’t know if you should use these,” he said as he handed them to Harlan. “What if the lens catches the light? They might see us.”
“Relax. That’s not going to happen.”
To be safe, though, Harlan didn’t press the binoculars directly against the window, but instead looked through them from a few feet away in the dimness of the cabin.
The six soldiers had been joined by a seventh, who, given t
he fact he was doing all the talking, seemed to be the one in charge. After a moment, two of the men broke from the group and jogged around the side of the building, out of sight. Harlan returned his attention to the men still near the plane. Each had a rifle slung over his shoulder, and two were carrying duffel bags that Harlan figured held ammunition and more weapons.
He concentrated on their uniforms. There were no patches or anything else that identified which branch of the military they belonged to. Suddenly, the one in charge raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth.
“Here,” Harlan said, handing the binoculars to Barry. “Keep an eye on them. I’ll be right back.”
Staying low to prevent the soldiers from noticing any movement, he returned to the cockpit, where he donned the headphone for the plane’s enhanced radio. He searched around until he located the channel the men outside were using to talk on their walkie-talkies.
“…for now,” a voice said.
“Yes, sir,” another replied.
There was dead air for several seconds.
“Keys located,” the second voice said. “We’ll be right there.”
“Copy that.” A pause, then the first said, “Stevens?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We should be back by noon, latest. Check in with NB219. Let them know we’re on schedule and should be at Camp Kiley within an hour.”
“Copy that.”
Harlan’s blood would have gone cold at the mention of Camp Kiley if it hadn’t already turned to ice when the man said NB219. NB was the designation Project Eden used to identify its facilities. There was no way Harlan would believe the use of the letter-number combo was a coincidence.
He heard the rumbling noise of a diesel engine. He slinked back into the passenger cabin and looked outside. A sedan and a troop-transport truck came out from between the buildings and stopped near where the remaining soldiers were gathered. The men divided themselves up and climbed aboard the two vehicles. Then, with the sedan in the lead, they drove off.