She turned quickly, thinking someone was coming around from the other side, but no one was there.
She took another look at the car, and leaned forward, surprised.
Someone was stretched out inside, tucked into a sleeping bag in the back of her car.
A boy.
15
With the worldwide reach of satellite television, people across the globe were able to tune into PCN, CNN, and the other major news networks, and see coverage of the growing number of suspicious shipping containers in the US. Soon people in South America, Europe, and along the coasts of Africa reported seeing similar boxes, open and humming. According to reports, there had been several attempts to move them, but that had resulted in the boxes exploding and killing everyone in the immediate area.
Asia was just waking up, so few people had seen the stories. But as they sat eating their morning meals and drinking coffee and tea, their local stations brought them up to speed on the mystery.
A commentator on NHK in Japan went so far as to suggest that perhaps the government should order people to stay home until it was sure none of the containers were on Japanese soil. It was an idea that might have saved lives, but the government didn’t heed the advice. At least not until they realized that they, too, had been targeted.
By then it was too late.
The government in Singapore was not nearly as slow on the uptake as the Japanese had been. By seven a.m., the entire country, including the extremely busy Changi International Airport, had been closed down, and a twenty-four-hour curfew put in place. Those who hadn’t heard the news were stopped by roadblocks and roving police patrols and sent home. At first, people were not happy, but that quickly changed when they saw on TV that shipping containers, identical to the ones in the US and Japan, had been found at several places on the island.
The idea of the curfew was a good one. Unfortunately, the containers had already been spewing out the virus for hours, and those who had been out at night, a very popular activity on the small island nation, had already been exposed and carried the Sage Flu home to their families and neighbors.
Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and India all scrambled to check if they, too, had been the unknowing recipients of similar containers. While Thailand discovered a few in a couple of its port cities, the others were relieved to find that they were free of the boxes. Knowing it was not something they needed to worry about, several of these countries — plus many more in Africa — were able to turn their attention with pride to the mosquito-eradication program that started that very morning in all of their major cities.
The program had been touted as a cure for malaria by the company sponsoring it, Pishon Chem. Not only would it be eradicating the disease, but it had brought money into the communities by hiring thousands of locals to walk through the cities and spray the streets with the special liquid mixture.
Pishon was an old word. It was one of the rivers that had surrounded the Garden of Eden, and therefore an apt name for one of the Project’s dummy companies.
In less accessible areas, where politics or geography had made the placement of shipping containers and the use of the malaria drug impossible, planes disguised as commercial aircraft dispensed the virus from above. The rate of initial infection from this method was calculated to be low, but low was enough. The Project knew the second round of infection — those getting it from the first — would initiate an incremental growth that would be impossible to stop.
There were other methods of exposure used here and there throughout the world. Misters in grocery stores designed to keep the produce fresh, free perfume and cologne samples being distributed at major international airports, and small bottles of “flavored water” being handed out at tourist sites in several major capitals of the world.
It was a massive effort that had taken decades to plan, and it was commencing nearly flawlessly. The previous directors of Project Eden would probably have been very proud, if it weren’t for the fact they were all dead.
IMPLEMENTATION DAY PLUS ONE
World Population
7,176,607,708
Change Over Previous Day
+ 283,787
16
Despite how exhausted he’d been when he went to sleep the night before, Sanjay woke well before there was even a hint of daylight. His shoulders burned with tension, and he was finding it impossible to take anything but short, shallow breaths.
He lay that way for hours, trying to will himself back to sleep, but soon realized it was not going to happen. He wondered if he’d ever sleep well again.
If it weren’t for Kusum, he would have gotten up and walked around, hoping that would drive the anxiety from his veins, but she lay in his arms, asleep, and he had no desire to subject her to the same hell he was going through. As it was, he could tell her sleep wasn’t completely untroubled. Several times she’d twisted and jerked as her dreams momentarily took control of the rest of her body. A few times she’d even cried out.
He wondered, as she murmured what sounded like his name, exactly what she was dreaming about. Was he the hero or the villain in her nightmare? Or was it best not to know? He wasn’t even sure which one he was to her in real life.
What if he was wrong? What if what he’d learned were lies?
When the sky in the east started to yellow, he knew he could lie there no longer. He pulled his arm out from under her neck, and started to slowly move away.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Go back to sleep. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I’ve been awake for a while.”
“Oh,” he said, surprised. “I just thought I’d take a walk, see what’s around.”
She turned and looked at him for several seconds. “Were you lying to me yesterday?”
“No.”
She considered him some more, then touched her arm where he’d given her the shot. “I don’t feel any different.”
“It was a vaccine. I don’t think you are supposed to feel any different.”
“I just thought…”
She didn’t finish her thought. It took him a moment, but he finally realized that when she’d gone to sleep, she still believed he had drugged her.
“I told you. I have only been trying to save you.”
“If what you have told me is true, what about my family?”
It wasn’t the first time she’d asked that, and he gave her the answer he’d given before. “I only had the one shot.”
“What about the one you took?”
That she hadn’t asked before, and it surprised him. “I had to make sure it didn’t hurt me before I could give it to you. Don’t you see that?”
She sat up, suddenly determined. “We have to go back. You can get more for my family.”
He rose quickly to his feet. “Impossible. I don’t even know where I could find…” He paused. Yes, he knew where there might be more vaccine. The same place he had gotten it the first time. Still… “Today is the day they will spray the city. We can’t go back there.”
She stood and began wiping off the dirt that clung to her clothes. “We have to try.”
“There is nothing we can do.”
She stared at him, her face hardening. “Then I will go without you.”
She turned toward the road and started walking.
“Wait,” he said, grabbing her arm.
She quickly twisted free, but didn’t turn away. “If you care about me like you say, you will help me to save my family.”