Pale Horse (A Project Eden Thriller) Read Online Free PDF Page A

over to the box.
    She watched as one of them boosted the smaller of the two up so he could get a look inside. Something very strange happened then. As the small kid leaned over the opening, the collar of his jacket started to flap like it was caught in the wind. He was only there for a second before he wiped his hand across his face, and jumped off his friend’s hands to the ground. He dropped to his knees and covered his eyes.
    Mary leaned forward, muttering to herself, “I told them there was something wrong with that. I told them!”
    The taller kid hunched over his friend. After several seconds, the smaller one rubbed his eyes and stood up. His friend asked him a question, and the short one shrugged and smiled. The tall one punched him in the arm, and soon they were both laughing. But as they walked away, the short one glanced back at the box, giving it a wary look.
    He seems okay, Mary thought. But she still didn’t like it.
    Twenty minutes later, a Public Works truck turned onto the street, slowed, and pulled into the lot where the box was.
    How about that? I guess I should threaten to call the mayor every time.
    The man who got out looked at the box with disinterest, walked around it, stopped back where he’d begun, and stared at it again. Finally he pulled out a phone and made a call. As he talked, he gestured toward the box several times, so Mary assumed he was talking to his boss. Finally, with a visible sigh, he put the phone back in his pocket, and pulled a ladder off his truck.
    Setting it next to the box, he climbed up high enough so he could look inside. Unlike the kid earlier, he didn’t lean all the way over the edge. Still, his hair fluttered from the moving air coming from inside. At one point, he touched his cheek and rubbed it for a moment. When he moved his fingers away, he looked at them as if there was something on them.
    When he climbed back down, the disinterest he showed earlier was no longer on his face. He whipped out his phone, his conversation considerably more animated than it had been the last time.
    Within ten minutes, two more Public Works trucks and a city-owned sedan arrived. Five minutes after that, the fire department was on the scene.
    Mary smiled. They should have listened to her earlier. At least now she’d get the damn thing out of there.
    Unfortunately, she was mistaken. The only thing that would be moving was Mary, when she was taken to an evacuation center halfway across town, where, in a few short days, she would take her last breath.
     
    OCEANSIDE, CALIFORNIA
    9:16 AM PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
     
    B ECKER WAS GETTING impatient. He’d been sitting in his car for over an hour now, parked at the side of the road. What he shouldn’t have done was down the entire cup of Starbucks coffee as fast as he had. Now he had to piss. Bad.
    He looked at his watch. Maybe something was wrong. His eyes moved back to the shipping container on the back of the parked truck just down the street. If things had gone according to plan, the Implementation Delivery Module—or IDM—should have opened by now. Was there some sort of delay? Had the directors decided to reschedule?
    If that were the case, somebody would have called him by now, right?
    He picked up his phone. He had a good signal, but there were no missed calls.
    Then what the hell is taking so long?
    He bounced his legs up and down, attempting to ease some of the pressure on his bladder.
    “Come on, come on, come on,” he whispered.
    Then, as if magically obeying his command, the top of the IDM began to rise.
    With a sense of relief, he smiled. It was really happening. The new world they’d been working toward was about to arrive.
    He shifted his gaze past the truck, to the buildings about two miles away—Marine Corps base Camp Pendleton, directly downwind from the module.
    He picked up his phone and hit the preset number. “It’s me,” he said. “It just opened.”

6
     
    LAS CRUCES, NEW MEXICO
    10:20 AM MOUNTAIN STANDARD