The first man said, “I’m Tom. Tom Browne. I hope you understand why I couldn’t tell you that before.”
Ash did, but said nothing.
“Pat Solomon,” the other man told him.
“All right, gentlemen, what is it you want?”
Browne cleared his throat. “Matt and Pax would like you to come to the Ranch for a meeting.”
“A meeting.”
“Yes.”
Ash looked from one man to the other. “What kind of meeting?”
“I don’t know all the details. I just know it’s important.”
“You don’t have any details? Nothing to convince me to come?”
Browne hesitated, then said, “Pax said to tell you the depots have been filled.”
The words hung in the air.
The depots. These were buildings spread all around the world so that the Project would thrive while civilization collapsed around it. Ash had seen one of the facilities in person that previous summer, had been inside its then-empty storerooms.
Probably a good thing it’s not full yet, Chloe White had said to him at the time. Humanity’s got a little more time until the plug gets pulled, I guess.
If Browne wasn’t lying, time was about to run out.
“Can I get either of you something to drink?” Ash asked. “Water, milk, a beer?”
“We’re fine,” Browne said.
“Suit yourself.”
Ash walked over to the refrigerator and opened the door.
He had been dreading this moment, knowing someday it would come. It wasn’t so much that he realized because of the help he’d been given to save his children, he would eventually be asked to return the favor. What he dreaded was what it actually meant-that the Project was really going to try and restart humanity by culling it down to all but the necessary numbers needed to begin again. It was a potential reality he couldn’t justify no matter how many ways he thought about it. And it certainly wasn’t a reality he ever wanted his children to see. Brandon and Josie had inherited Ash’s immunity to KV-27a. The flu would never kill them, only all their friends and neighbors. His kids had already lost their mother. He knew he would do whatever he could so that his children wouldn’t lose everyone else, too.
As much as he wanted to grab one of the beers, he picked up a bottle of water instead and cracked it open.
“When do they want me?”
“Now.”
There was a noise behind them. A footstep.
“When do they want you where?” Josie asked. She stood into the kitchen doorway, staring at her father.
Ash opened his mouth, intending to tell her to go back to her room, but he caught himself at the last second. “They want me to go back to the Ranch for a meeting.”
Her eyes narrowed. “About what?”
“I don’t know the specifics.”
“But you have an idea, right?”
“I can guess, but it would only be that.”
“What about Brandon and me?”
“If I go to the Ranch, you’re coming with me.” He didn’t look at the two men to see what their reaction might be. It was a nonnegotiable point.
“Just a meeting and then we come back?”
His first instinct was to just say, “Yes,” but Josie wasn’t a child anymore. Neither, for that matter, was Brandon. Not after what they had been through. So he told the truth. “I don’t know.”
A hint of worry entered her eyes. “This is about what you told us might happen, isn’t it? About the flu? And the other people?”
“Yes,” he said.
She fell silent.
“Should we go?” Ash asked her.
She chewed on her lower lip for a moment. “Do we have a choice?”
“There’s always a choice.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Calls were made and explanations were given. An ill father in New York. An unexpected trip so that Adam Cooper’s children could see their grandfather for the last time. He’d call when he had a better idea of their return, and was told there was no rush. Family always came first.
Two hours later, the Ash family was eighty miles away at a small regional airport. There, they boarded the Ranch’s private jet for the flight west.
As they lifted off, Ash glanced out the window and couldn’t help but think that he and his kids would never be back there again.
8
The first sign of trouble was what appeared to be a faulty sensor along the southern portion of the security fence. The fence was a quarter of a mile away from the house simply known as the Bluff, the affected area reachable only by foot.
A squad of three men was dispatched to make sure it wasn’t something more serious, and to fix the problem if possible.
The Bluff was on the western side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, surrounded by pine trees and magnificent vistas. There were times during the summer when the nearby road was almost bumper-to-bumper with people from the lowlands out for an afternoon of communing with nature. Now, with the official start of winter quickly approaching, there were days when fewer than a dozen cars would drive by.
For that reason alone, it should have been surprising that a car had stopped at the Bluff’s front gate. Only this wasn’t the first time this particular car had done so. Lancer, the watch officer manning the security monitors, had witnessed the two previous stops himself.
As with the other trips, the same young couple climbed out of the car. Grabbing the woman’s hand, the man kissed her as he pulled her over to the gate. Then, as if reading off the same script they had played out nearly half a dozen times before, they looked beyond the metal pipe-framed gate and down the dirt road on the other side before climbing over.
Lancer selected the call button for his boss. “Adam and Eve are back, Mr. Briley.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Briley said. “Send someone out again. Have whoever it is tell them next time we call the sheriff.”
“Yes, sir.”
For the past few visits, the Bluff had sent out the resident team to scare off the couple. The hope was that it might make them find some other place to fulfill their craving for a little outdoor sex.
The watch officer selected a different button. “Resident team, you’re up. Adam and Eve are back, and they’re waiting just for you.”
There was a chuckle in the reply. “Sullivan and Rawlings on the way.”
Sullivan and Rawlings would be dressed in civilian clothes as if they were out for a walk. They’d have Boomer with them, a beautiful black lab that could be friendly and playful one second, deadly the next.
Lancer watched the intruding couple as they came down the road for about thirty feet, then, as they’d done each time before, turn into the woods. He smiled. With any luck, Sullivan and Rawlings might get a little show.
“What’s going on?” Murphy asked. He was working containment surveillance at a terminal two stations down.
“Our exhibitionists are back,” Lancer said.
Murphy stood and walked over. “I’ve heard about them, but haven’t seen them yet.”
“Well, you can’t see them now. They’re off the road.”
“Damn. Seriously?”
“Yep. Went off right there.” The watch officer pointed between two trees on the right side of the screen.
“Couldn’t you just pan the inside gate camera over?”
The inside camera was mounted in a tree forty feet down the road from the entrance. “I’m not supposed to move it off the gate.”
“Come on. Just for a moment.”
“I can’t, and you know it.”
“Fine,” Murphy huffed, then brightened. “Maybe they’ll make a run for it before they can get dressed.”
“Fifty bucks says they don’t.”
“How about twenty?”
Lancer laughed. “Okay. Twenty.”
Together, the two men watched the monitor. After a minute, Sullivan and Rawlings appeared at the far end of the road.
“Talk us in,” Sullivan said over the radio.
“Forward another sixty feet, then go left,” Lancer instructed.