Judson told his driver to pull over, then said into the phone, “And?”
“Whole place is infected. At least thirty people, mostly kids. We’ve got a few more buildings to check, so I expect that number to go up.”
“Dead?”
“No one yet, but give it a few hours and that’ll change.”
So their trip to Colorado was a waste of time. The people in the car had probably been sick, too, he thought.
“Turn around,” he told his driver. To Peyton, he said, “No need to continue the search. Let’s get back to the airport and out of here.”
“There’s something you might be interested in.”
“What?”
“We talked to one of the girls here. She wondered if we were with the people who had just left.”
“The ones in the car we’ve been after?”
“I assume so. Apparently they weren’t from the camp. They’d stopped here looking for a kid who was.”
“I don’t see how this is important. Probably parents wanting to get their kid before they thought it was too late.”
“I don’t think so. The woman was black, and the kid she was looking for was white.”
“A friend, then.”
“Possibly,” Peyton said. “The thing is, this kid escaped last night in a Suburban with several others. The girl I talked to said they didn’t look sick.”
Now this was interesting. “Where did they go?”
“She didn’t know.”
A call to base might solve that riddle. They could check and see if there was any satellite imagery of the area that caught the fleeing car.
“One other thing, sir. Actually, this is the item I thought you’d find most interesting.”
Judson sat up straight. “Okay. What?”
“This kid the others were looking for, the girl said his name is Brandon. We found a list of the children that had been moved up here. There’s only one Brandon on it. Brandon Ash.”
Judson said nothing for a moment, caught off guard. “You’re kidding me.”
“No, sir.”
It could be a coincidence. Ash wasn’t exactly a common name, but it wasn’t uncommon, either. And Brandon? You could throw a stone though a crowd and hit at least a couple of them. That was, if you could gather up a crowd anymore.
Still, Brandon Ash. The same name as the son of Captain Daniel Ash, well known in the Project because of the part his blood played in creating a vaccine for KV-27a that allowed them to move forward with Implementation Day.
If the boy was that Brandon Ash, he would be worth spending a little more time searching for.
Yes, a call to base would definitely be in order.
Christina tapped repeatedly on the right arrow key, so that the time-lapse image on screen moved forward at a pace slow enough for her to get a sense of each frame. What she was looking at was a series of satellite photos taken the previous night over the Rocky Mountains surrounding Camp Kiley, the shots coming at one-minute intervals.
The camp remained quiet until 1:42 a.m. That’s when a pair of headlights switched on, and a vehicle, after remaining in the camp parking area for a few minutes, headed down the road to the highway. She flipped to the infrared image and was ninety-nine percent sure the vehicle was a Suburban. It had to be them.
When it reached the highway, it stopped for at least three minutes. The next shot revealed that it turned left, going up the mountain. She traced its route, tapping and tapping and tapping, until the SUV finally turned again, stopped, and killed its lights. Flipping between IR and visual spectrum, she realized it had parked in front of a house. Several frames on, the house started to heat up.
She noted the GPS location, and was about to call Chloe with the information when a warning window opened on her screen.
DUAL ACCESS
MESSAGE 634X179
Dual access? She opened the log and rooted around for a moment.
“Oh, great,” she said to herself.
She grabbed the phone.
“It’s me,” she said, after Chloe answered her call. “I’ve traced the car to a house about seventeen miles from your current position.”
“In the mountains or below?”
“Mountains. Hold on.” Christina accessed the texting function, typed in the GPS code, and hit SEND. “You should have the coordinates now.”
There was a pause. “This is where he is?”
“It’s where he went last night. I haven’t followed the images forward enough yet, but thought you should get going.”
“Might be better if we wait until—”
“Chloe, someone else just accessed the same satellite data. Project Eden’s hunting for him, too.”
“Call me as soon as you can confirm.” Chloe hung up the phone without waiting for Christina to reply.
“Did she find him?” Josie asked.
Chloe tossed the phone to her. “I just got a text. Copy the number and enter it into the cell’s map function. It’s GPS coordinates.”
“For where Brandon is?”
“Was, at least.” Chloe shifted the car into Drive and returned to the highway. “So, which way?”
“Left,” Josie said.
They sped through the valley and up the other side.
When they reached the intersection that had earlier aided in their escape, Josie said, “Left.”
Not long after they made the turn, Chloe’s phone rang again.
“It’s the Ranch. You want me to answer it?” Josie asked.
“Put it on speaker.”
It was Christina.
“I was able to trace the rest of the satellite history,” she said. “As of two minutes ago, the Suburban is still parked in front of the house.”
“Finally some good news,” Chloe said. “We should be there in fifteen minutes, tops.”
“You won’t be the first.”
“Wait a minute. What?” Josie said. “What do you mean?”
“Where are they?” Chloe asked.
“On the road about three miles in front of you.”
“The truck or the sedan?”
“Both.”
“The Project Eden people?” Josie said. “They know where Brandon is, too?”
“Is there a back way?” Chloe asked Christina. “A back road that’ll give us the chance to get ahead of them?”
“There’s only the one route,” Christina said.
Chloe tensed. One way or the other, they would have to deal with these assholes head on.
“We’ll try to take them out on the road before they can get to the house,” she said.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Christina said. “I might have a better idea.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“I need to check something first. For now, try to get as close to them as you can without letting them know you’re there. I’ll call you back in a minute.”
“Hold on,” Chloe said. “What’s the idea?”
The line was already dead.
For the first few hours after they had broken into the house, Brandon had been unable to sleep. When he finally did, he was greeted with nightmares of chases and monsters and death.
It was a shake of his arm that woke him.
He opened his eyes to find daylight streaming into the house. By the angle, he guessed it was at least midmorning.
Ellie was sitting on the floor next to him, clutching her bear to her chest.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“Everyone’s asleep,” she told him.
“Well, you should be, too.”
“I can’t. I’m…I’m scared.”
He sat up. “You don’t have to be scared now. No one here’s going to hurt you.” When her expression didn’t change, he said, “Come here.”
He opened his arms and she crawled onto his lap. Remembering how he’d loved to be rocked by his mom whenever he felt scared, he gently moved side to side, hoping it would help the girl. After a minute or so, he could feel her relax.