Killer Thrillers Box Set: 3 Techno-Thriller, Action/Adventure Science Fiction Thrillers (105 page)

Nothing but pain.
 

Still, it was a dull pain — throbbing, but manageable.
What happened?
 

He breathed, now realizing he’d been holding his breath. His lungs struggled with the weight, trying to push it off of him.
 

Why was there a weight on top of him?

He began to see. First the lights of the lab creeped into his vision, then a darker shadow.
 

A man’s face.
 

Malcolm Fischer’s face.

He gasped, pushing upward with his throbbing hands. The weight was the man’s body, and Ben used all his might to heave it up and off of him. He struggled for a few seconds until Malcolm fell to the side, freeing Ben.
 

Ben sat up, blinking.
 

When his vision fully returned, he saw Malcolm’s body lying next to his, upside down, in a crimson pool of blood.
 

No…

He reached out and felt behind the professor’s neck.
 

Come on,
he willed.
Wake up.

But then he saw the professor’s brown coat, wrapped around the older man. A small hole was leaking blood, almost dead-center in the man’s back.
 

The exit wound.
 

He heard sobbing and looked up. Julie was standing over him, tears falling from her face.
 

“B — Ben,” she muttered. “I thought you…”
 

Her voice trailed off as she finally saw Malcolm lying next to him.
 

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “He — he saved you.”
 

Ben just nodded. “Where’s Stephens?” Anger flashed behind his eyes, and he stood. He saw the man immediately, lying across a table against the wall, unmoving.
 

She pointed to her coworker’s body. “I — I attacked him, but I think the virus had already done its job.”
 

Again, Ben nodded. He gently stepped over Malcolm’s body and reached Julie, pulling her close. She began to sob, trying to talk. He wrapped a hand around the back of her head and slowly pushed her face forward, onto his shoulder. He stroked her hair, letting her cry.

46

THE TRUCK BOUNCED OVER ANOTHER pothole in the dirt road. Julie was again in the passenger seat, staring out the window. Every few seconds, she sniffed, holding back tears that she knew would eventually come.

They’d left the lab a mess — two dead bodies, one extremely contagious, and both bleeding onto the white tiled floor. Ben had held her for a minute, slowly rocking her as they both waited in silence.
 

Waited for nothing.
 

No help would come, and she now felt the true realization of Stephens’ double-crossing.
 

It had hit her hard, that first moment she understood.
 

They were alone
.

As they stood there, she thought about the mess of it all. But as chaotic as it was, it was flawless. The execution of it, from the initial blast to the spreading virus, down to Stephens’ own arrogant desire to watch it unfold from a front-row seat.
 

He’d told them everything. It was cryptic and difficult to understand, at best, but it was complete.
 

He’d wanted it that way — to watch them suffer through the pain of searching, only to see their helpless eyes as he unleashed his weapon.
 

His final move.
 

Checkmate.

She looked at Ben as he drove. “I can’t believe he
knew
, Ben. The whole time.”
 

Ben nodded slowly. She saw his knuckles turn white as he gripped the wheel. “I know,” he said softly. “But there’s still something I don’t understand. The syringe — why’d he do it? I mean, inject himself with the stuff? He could have just shot us.”

“No, that’s just it.” She frowned. “I figured it out right before he tried to shoot you.”
 

“Really?”
 

“Yeah. Ben —
he’s
the endgame. He’s the final piece.”
 

“I know. He orchestrated the whole thing, and —”

“No, Ben — he
is part of the bomb.”
 

Ben frowned, but quickly his eyes grew wide. “He’s…”
 

“Stephens had to make sure he was in the park because he
is supposed to be the final piece of the puzzle. Remember what happened when the first bomb went off? It sent a payload of the virus into the air, which contaminated a lot of the area. But this
second
bomb can’t carry that payload — it’ll be too big. And if it’s going to go off anywhere around that caldera —”
 

“Then the eruption from the volcano beneath us will more than eradicate the strain.”
 

“Right,” she said. “A bomb too small won’t destroy the underground structure enough to cause an eruption, but a bomb too big will just incinerate the payload.”
 

“So,” Ben said, thinking aloud. “To make sure you get both the volcanic eruption
and
the virus to be spread, you have to place the viral payload far enough away from the initial blast that it’s safe from that explosion, but close enough to the caldera that the resulting eruption will send the payload into the atmosphere.

“And Stephens
is
the viral payload.”
 

Julie sighed. “Like I said, he’s part of the bomb.”
 

“Then
I
need to find that bomb,” Ben said, “and you need to get out of the park.” He pushed the accelerator to the floor, and the truck swerved, barely missing a deep hole in the road.
 

She looked over at him. “Excuse me?”
 

“You heard me. I’m not letting you get anywhere near that eruption.”
 

Julie stiffened her jaw, annoyed.

“Ben, listen to yourself,” she said. “You’re not making any sense. You explained it to me, remember? If that bomb goes off, it starts a chain reaction. There’s no place in
two hundred
miles
that’s safe.”
 

Ben shrugged. “Still —”

“No, Ben. Stop. Forget it. Where are you going to drop me off? Ten miles from here? Twenty? How much time are you going to waste trying to get me away from the blast zone? And how long do you think you have before the bomb actually goes off?”
 

Ben started to answer, but instead turned the radio on. The news report was already in progress, and he turned up the volume. It was a computerized message, reading a pre-written response.
 

“…Local police and SWAT teams on high-alert for riot activity, including looting. Please stay indoors, and remain out of contact with anyone outside of immediate family. Contaminated areas include as a southern border Las Cruces, New Mexico. Western border, Kansas City. Eastern border Reno, Nevada. CDC and FEMA have prepared quarantine stations at many metropolitan areas. Please visit www…”

He turned the volume down again as Julie spoke.
 

“It’s not true,” she said.
 

“What?”
 

“The report. The CDC can’t mobilize that many quarantines that fast. They’re just not set up for it. And FEMA… There’s just no way.”
 

“At least they’re doing something,” Ben said.
 

“What? What could they possibly be doing?” Julie asked, her voice growing emotional. “Stephens kept me in the dark the entire time
,
and he murdered the man who’s supposed to be at the front of this thing, keeping the investigation moving forward.”
 

“Okay, well what do you want to do, then?” Ben asked. He slowed the truck.
 

Julie thought for a moment. “We’re it, Ben. We’re the
only
people close enough to do anything about it. We’ve
got to find that bomb, and fast. And don’t get any ideas about ditching me on the side of the road somewhere.”
 

Ben looked at her for a minute, considering the offer. He nodded, then sped up again.

47

“HOW MANY POTHOLES ARE ON these roads?” Julie asked. “I’m seriously thinking about getting out and walking.”
 

Ben smiled, for a moment forgetting the massive predicament they were in. “You know, you’ve got a fantastic ability to ignore the present circumstances and joke around.”
 

She shot him a look. “You think I’m joking?” She made a show of readjusting herself on her seat, wincing in mock pain.
 

“Sorry,” he said, shrugging. “I’m trying to stay off the larger park roads — it should be abandoned, but we can’t be too careful. Just hang on;, the lake’s coming up in a few minutes.”
 

She groaned, but didn’t argue. Instead, she opened her laptop and connected to the wireless internet tethered from her cellphone. For a few minutes, she checked for new emails, updates on the spreading virus, and sent a few emails up the chain of command at the CDC. They both knew it was a long shot, as the CDC was already doing everything they could to stop the spread of the virus, and their ability to provide research support had been extremely stifled by Stephens’ work before. After a few minutes of clicking around, she closed the computer.
 

“Try calling again?” Ben asked.
 

“There’s no point,” she replied. “Anyone there is already deployed at a waypoint or helping with disaster relief. We need to get to an actual location, then —”

“Julie, we’ve talked about this,” Ben said. “We can’t risk it. Like you just said, most of your teams are going to have already been deployed, or will be. And we don’t have the time to drive all the way there.”
 

“I know, I know,” Julie said, exasperated. “It’s just… frustrating. I feel so helpless. I’ve always been the person to rush in, take charge, you know?”
 

Ben smiled from the side of his mouth. “I do know. And what we’re trying to do out here is much more helpful than just driving to a CDC branch and talking to the office staff. There’s nothing that needs to happen back there yet. Let’s get this bomb taken care of, and we can go from there.”
 

“But how do we even know where the bomb is?”

“It’s under the lake,” Ben answered, his voice confident. As he said the words, a sign flew past on the right side of the road with the words
“
Yellowstone Lake - 1 Mile
”
printed on it.

“Ben, Livingston’s already checked there. Remember? He sent a team of geologists and excavators through most of the caves in the region, and found that tunnel. If there was something there, he would have —”

“Julie, Livingston didn’t tell you that.”
 

“He did! He called, and —” she suddenly remembered what Ben was hinting at.

Livingston hadn’t called —
Stephens
had.

She bolted upright in the seat. “Stephens called, not Livingston. He only
said
Livingston had sent the team in, and he didn’t have any reason to be communicating with Livingston, which means…” She thought for a moment. “Which means he was lying. Ben, if he was lying, we could be heading in the wrong direction.”

“But we’re not. We’re going exactly where Stephens told us to go. So far he’s double-crossed us at every step, but it’s been his information that’s gotten us this far. He even told us
why
— he wanted to watch us try to figure it out.” Ben looked at Julie. “If that bomb is actually somewhere in Yellowstone, we’re going to find it exactly where Stephens told us to look.”
 

Julie knew he was right — it
had
to be right. “Yeah, why
wouldn’t
he just tell us exactly where it is? As insane as he was, he believed it was too late to do anything anyway.”

She hoped Stephens wasn’t right about that.
 

“So where is this cave, anyway?” she asked.
 

Ben shook his head. “I don’t know. But there’s only one cave I can think of that’s long and deep enough to be a good spot. It has to be close enough to the surface that an explosion would penetrate, but deep enough to affect the magma area below the caldera. It’s a few miles around the lake, once we get there, but the cave isn’t terribly long.”
 

“But he cut a tunnel into the side of it, right?”

“Right, and we have no way of knowing how deep
that
is. But it’s wide enough that we can crouch or slide most of the way through, and there aren’t any major forks. We’ll know right away if we see a manmade tunnel.”
 

Ben pulled the truck to the left as the road took a dogleg turn, then he sped up again. This section of the road was considerably better than the one they’d been on, with a gravel base and fewer potholes and bumps. As he aimed the vehicle down the center of the one-lane drive, he couldn’t help but notice the immense beauty of the surrounding country.
 

This land had been his only home for over a decade. Diana — his mother — had tried for years to bring him and his brother together again under one roof, but she’d failed.
 

Or, rather, he’d failed
her
.
 

After his father died, Ben did the only thing that felt right. He ran away. At the time it hadn’t felt like running
away
, though, as much as it felt like running
toward
something. This something was staring down at him as he drove through it.
 

The trees, pine and spruce, scraping at the ceiling of the sky, their tops ripping into the vast blue and white. The forest floor, which had acted as his bed for so many nights he couldn’t count them, and the soft prickle of the needles that littered the ground and crunched when he walked.
 

And the
smell
.
 

That forest, deep-green, fresh,
alive
smell.
 

The smell was the biggest reason he’d settled here, and he swore he’d never live another day without it. Whether it was a mountaintop in Colorado, the sweeping forests of Yellowstone, or his secluded cabin in Alaska, as long as that smell was there when he arrived, he could live anywhere.