Chapter 1
A LIGHT CRUNCH of gravel.
Footsteps, slow and steady, as if uncertain they should be there.
No surprise in their arrival, though. Matt Hamilton had been expecting to hear them since the moment he’d sneaked out of the Bunker and hiked to the ridge overlooking the Lodge. Time alone was not something he experienced much anymore.
He folded the piece of paper he was holding and slipped it into his jacket pocket.
“Matt?” Chloe’s voice.
Again, not a surprise.
He waited until she was only a few feet behind him, and said, “It was always too big.”
In the open meadow below was a pile of burnt rubble that had once been the Lodge. The massive building had not only been the Resistance’s headquarters but also home to most of its members.
His home.
“I don’t know,” Chloe said, stopping next to him. “Seemed the right size to me. I liked that I could always find someplace to hide.”
“It was good for that, wasn’t it?”
Together they stared silently at the wreckage for a few seconds before Chloe turned to him. “I thought you’d like to know the others will be leaving soon.”
“Is it time already?”
She nodded.
When Project Eden had attacked the Ranch on Implementation Day, less than a week earlier, the members of the Resistance had retreated into the Bunker deep below the Lodge, where they had ridden out the fight, and where they’d continued to live in the days since. But Matt knew the threat of another strike grew exponentially each additional day they remained there, and the next time they might not be as lucky. When he saw the weather projections showing a series of storms heading their way in the coming week, storms that would likely fill their valley with snow and trap them there for months, he knew he had no other choice but to order the evacuation to Ward Mountain, their base in Nevada. It wasn’t as sophisticated as the Bunker, but it would be safer.
He hoped, at least.
Leaving the Ranch, though, was a complicated process. They may have lost the battle of keeping the Sage Flu outbreak from ever happening, but they were still in the fight to keep alive those who had survived. To that end, there could be no break in communications with those involved in the worldwide rescue operation the Resistance had initiated. If there were, it very likely would mean the additional deaths of survivors and the Resistance’s field team members trying to help them.
An additional day was lost while trailers on the back of three semi trucks were converted into mobile communication hubs that could be manned throughout the trip. While this was going on, the other vehicles were packed with all the supplies and weapons they could carry.
But continuous communications wasn’t the only problem with leaving.
There was Captain Ash, too.
The captain had been severely injured in an explosion during the early part of the outbreak. And while Dr. Gardiner was encouraged by Ash’s recovery, he insisted the captain should not travel for at least several more days. It had finally been decided that a small group would stay behind until Dr. Gardiner gave his okay, or, more likely, until the weather forced their hand. Chloe had volunteered, of course, and Brandon and Josie—the captain’s children—refused to go anywhere without their father, so they had stayed, too. Matt had assigned an additional dozen trained men and women to act as escorts in case this second group ran into any problems.
He had always planned on staying with them, something his sister Rachel was not happy about. He kind of felt it was like being the captain of a ship, and thought it only proper to be the last one to leave. But when he received the message that was now tucked in his pocket, his reason for staying changed completely.
“Are you coming?” Chloe asked.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he said. “I promise.”
“All right,” Chloe said. “I’m going to go see if they need any more help.”
Once the sound of her steps faded into the woods, he double-checked to make sure she was really gone, and then retrieved the piece of paper from his pocket.
At the top was the message as it had originally been received—a string of letters and numbers and symbols that were unreadable unless you had the key to the code, which Matt did. Below this, scrawled in his own handwriting, was the translation. The only thing consistent between the coded and decoded message was the first line:
To: MH
The translated portion then read:
Have been transferred to NB219 as part of new principal director Perez’s support staff. He has decided that through the end of this phase of the operation, Las Cruces will serve as his base. I in no way believe this will remain true once we move to rebuilding phase. This is an opportunity, my friend. If you wish me to act, please give the order.
C8
It was indeed an opportunity. One that could mean everything.
Matt had already sent a reply.
I will come to you.
December 31st
World Population
1,122,463,297
Chapter 2
MADISON, WISCONSIN
FROM THE JOURNAL OF BELINDA RAMSEY
ENTRY DATE—DECEMBER 31, 5:45 AM CENTRAL STANDARD TIME (CST)
IT’S SNOWING AGAIN. So I guess that means the university’s New Year’s Eve party will probably be canceled.
That sounded a lot funnier in my head before I typed it down. I wonder how many people even realize that it is New Year’s Eve. If anyone does, I doubt they care. I know I don’t. What is today but one more day I’m alive? Perhaps the old calendar isn’t even viable anymore. Maybe the day the virus hit should be day one of year one. Or would it be year zero?
What does it matter?
I’m not sleeping well. I keep thinking I’m hearing things in the building—someone coming up the stairs, breaking through the barrier I put up, stumbling into my dorm room. In my mind, whoever it is oozes sickness. But so far, if others have come into the building, none have made it this far up. Still, knowing this doesn’t keep me from getting up six or seven times a night just to check.
By 5 a.m., I’m usually done, and pull myself out of bed. I’m careful with lights, though. I’m afraid of drawing anyone’s attention, so when it’s still dark outside, I never turn anything on in a room with a window. As I write this, I’m sitting on a pillow in the corridor, wrapped in a blanket, and using a desk lamp from one of my floormate’s rooms that I brought out here with me.
I know at some point I’m going to have to leave. I don’t have enough food to last more than a couple more weeks. What I really need to do is get to the survival station the UN has set up in Chicago. It’s the closest one to me. When I get there, I can get vaccinated. Maybe that’ll relax me enough to get a good night’s sleep. Wouldn’t that be a miracle?
The snow’s the problem right now. First off, I don’t want to leave during a storm, but the bigger problem is the roads. Those that I can see from my room are completely covered. No one’s clearing them. I have to think it’ll be the same problem on the highway. I mean, even if someone who isn’t sick has a plow, why would they leave their home? So I either wait until the snow melts off the roads, or I hike out.
I can hear the television down in the common room. It’s still playing the message from the UN secretary general. I’ve pretty much memorized it at this point. I have to say, his voice is comforting. There are TVs on in the other wings of the dorm. I can see them when I look out any of the windows, so I figure leaving mine on shouldn’t draw undue attention. I’ve tried calling the numbers at the end of the message, but even though my phone shows I have a signal, I can’t connect to anything.
I hope the snow stops soon. I hope we have a few days of warm weather to melt it away.
I started to write that I hope I don’t die here, but I deleted it because dying here of starvation or exposure has to be better than dying of the Sage Flu, right?
ISABELLA ISLAND, COSTA RICA
5:54 AM CST
THERE WAS THE Before and the After.
In the Before, when Robert had been the head bartender for the Isabella Island Resort, and routinely worked until three or four in the morning, the only time he would have seen the sunrise was after a particularly late night as he headed off to bed.
In the After, when Robert no longer poured the drinks, but was the de facto leader of the employees and guests who made up the group of survivors occupying the island, he seldom slept more than four hours a night, and found himself for the fourth day in a row on the beach staring at the horizon as the sun crested the sea.
Like he’d done every morning of the After, he allowed himself a few minutes to wish there was a way to go back to before Christmas Eve, to the time when the world as he knew it had yet to go insane. In this waking dream, the containers that had been secretly placed around the globe failed to open and spread their deadly cargo of Sage Flu, and his friend Dominic and all the others who had fallen victim to the pandemic would still be alive.
He had no idea how many were dead. Millions, surely. The horror he and the other Isabella survivors had seen on TV before the news channels stopped broadcasting made it clear the disease was not contained in only a handful of locations, but was everywhere. Worse, there had been no reports of recoveries.
Isolation is what had saved Robert and his people. Apparently the island had been too small to merit one of the deadly containers. Or, perhaps, it’d just been overlooked. Whatever the case, it was a blessing, but it wasn’t even close to a guarantee that those on the island would all remain safe from the flu. He’d been the first to realize it, to know their survival depended on not letting anyone from elsewhere on shore. It’d taken some convincing, but Dominic soon saw the logic in it, too.
This hard stance resulted in some tense encounters, but everyone on the island was still breathing and disease free. Everyone except Dominic. His death had been an act of self-sacrifice after he’d unintentionally come in contact with the disease from a body that had drifted ashore in a small boat.
Even if he couldn’t resurrect everyone, Robert wished he could at least have his friend back. He would have even been willing to change places and be the one who died so that Dominic would still be here. Robert had no business calling the shots. He didn’t have Dominic’s patience. He was much better in the role of first lieutenant, not leader.
But Dominic was gone, and Robert was here.
“Good morning.” The words were almost a whisper, as if the speaker feared talking any louder would wake the rest of the island.
Robert glanced over his shoulder. Estella, one of the resort guests, had walked up quietly behind him, a timid smile on her face. “Morning,” he said.
He thought she was from Spain, but couldn’t remember for sure. What he did recall was that she’d been on the island for only a day before everything went haywire, and was supposed to have been joined by a couple friends on Christmas Eve. They, of course, had never shown up.
She moved next to him, and looked out at the sea. “It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah,” he said, though the truth was he was having a hard time seeing beauty in anything anymore.
“I guess this is why we all came here, yes?” She finished with a laugh, nervous, almost forced.
He smiled politely and nodded, but said nothing.
As she brushed a strand of hair off her face, Robert noticed her hand was shaking.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes. Of course. I am fine.”
He smiled as if to say he was glad to hear it, but he knew none of them were fine. How could they be?
Estella looked out at the water again. “Have you been able to reach anyone yet?” He could tell she was trying to sound casual, but she wasn’t pulling it off.
“Not yet,” he said.
“But the message,” she said. “I thought we would have reached them by now.”
“We’re still trying. I’m sure we’ll get through to someone soon.”
The message was from the UN and had been playing in a loop on TV for four days now. A day earlier, a list of several ways in which the organization could be contacted had been added at the end of the secretary general’s speech. Robert had immediately used the resort’s satellite phone to try calling the provided phone number. That’s when he discovered that while the phone seemed to be working fine, it no longer had a signal. He then tried the two-way radio. Unfortunately, the resort’s owners had invested in a transmitter only powerful enough to reach the Costa Rican mainland. Either Robert or Renee kept at it every few hours, but so far no one had answered them.
“Do you think…I mean, how many people?” Estella said.
“I don’t know, but it didn’t look—”
He stopped himself. There was an object in the sky just north of the newly risen sun. A dot. Probably a bird, he thought, but…
Estella followed his gaze. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure.”
He narrowed his eyes to a squint to cut down on the sun’s glare. The dot was growing larger.
It’s gotta be a bird.
But even as the thought passed through his mind, he knew he was wrong. There was no flapping of wings, no subtle dips and rises of a bird riding the wind. The object was moving in a straight line, its speed constant.
Estella was the first to voice what they’d both realized. “A plane. It is a plane!”
The dot was no longer a dot, but a central tube with what could only be fixed wings sticking out on either side.
“It is a plane!” she said. “It is!” She started jumping up and down, waving her arms, and yelling as if her voice could reach across the sea to those aboard the aircraft.
It was her shouts that finally snapped Robert out of his trance. He turned from the water and ran toward the resort. If Estella knew he was gone, she made no indication. He could hear her continued attempts to get the plane’s attention as he left the beach.
A few of the early risers were in the open-air bar as he crested the steps and jogged onto the deck.
“Is something wrong?” a man named Jussi from Finland asked.
“Is that someone yelling?” Monica, an American from the Midwest, asked.
Ignoring the questions and stares, Robert raced around the back of the bar to the room where the radio was. He found Renee inside. She had been the resort’s assistant manager under Dominic, but had been more than happy to allow Robert to take charge after Dominic was gone.
“Are they transmitting?” he asked.
She looked over, confused. “Is who transmitting?”
“The plane.”
“Plane? What plane?”
He hurriedly sat in the chair next to hers, and reached over to the radio’s controls. As he started a frequency scan, he said, “There’s a plane out there. In the east, heading toward the mainland.”
“What kind of plane?” Her tone was cautious.
“I don’t know. It was too far away to tell.”
“Small? Big? What?”
“I don’t know. Smaller than a commercial jet, bigger than a Cessna. Why?”
Instead of answering, she shook her head, and pushed his hands from the radio. “Let me.” She pulled the microphone in front of her, adjusted the broadcast frequency, and pushed the transmit button. “This is Isabella Island calling unidentified aircraft. Come in, please.” She waited a moment and repeated the message.
The fourth try was the charm.
“Isabella Island, this is UN 132. Do you read me?”
“UN?” Renee said to Robert. “It’s the UN.”
For the first time since news of the pandemic broke, Robert felt the barest sense of hope.
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