Eden Rising Read Free Page B

help save survivors clicked the tab on his computer screen that ended the recording of the conversation. He attached the voice file to an e-mail, typed in the exact coordinates of the island, and sent the message.
    Those on Isabella Island represented the largest single, unexposed group his team had come across so far. It would be interesting to learn what the higher-ups back at Project Eden headquarters decided to do—send actual vaccine or dose them with Sage Flu. But chances were the man and his colleagues would be busy elsewhere by then, having forgotten all about the island.
    He activated the plane’s internal comm system. “Back to our previous course,” he told the pilot.
    “Yes, sir.”
    The plane banked to the west, and within no time Isabella Island was behind them.

3
     
    MUMBAI, INDIA
    11:04 PM INDIA STANDARD TIME (IST)
     
    W HILE SOME OF the streetlights in Mumbai had stopped coming on at night, many still worked, providing Sanjay more than enough illumination to see Kusum peering down at him from the rooftop above.
    She put a finger to her lip, reminding him to stay quiet. It was completely unnecessary. He knew the importance of silence as much as she did. She then extended her hands over the edge, showing five fingers on one and four on the other.
    Nine men. That was a lot. Probably best if they made a wide arc around the building instead of passing so close to it. He started to mime the suggestion to her, but she quickly waved him off, and motioned for him to come up and join her.
    He didn’t want to waste the time it would take, but she had ducked out of sight before he could tell her no. With a sigh, he ducked inside and headed quietly up the stairs.
    When the UN message had played over the radio, in the old headmaster’s house at the boarding school that Sanjay, Kusum, and the others had turned into their temporary home, the initial shock everyone felt soon turned into excitement that there might still be order in the world. They had waited three days before the broadcast began including the location for the nearest survival station to them.
    The delay hadn’t worried them. Unlike pretty much everyone else who was still clinging to life, their particular band of survivors had already been inoculated against the Sage Flu, thanks to the vaccine Sanjay had stolen.
    When the survival station’s address was finally revealed, the fact that it was located in Mumbai made sense. What didn’t—to Sanjay, anyway—was that the address was the very same one belonging to the facility he’d stolen the vaccine from, the facility run by his former employers, Pishon Chem. They were the ones who had hired hundreds of local boys and men to spray Mumbai with what they had claimed was a malaria eradication solution but was really Sage Flu virus.
    When Sanjay explained to the others the connection, the elation they’d all been feeling quickly dissolved.
    “But does this mean the UN is spreading the disease?” Kusum’s father had asked. “I cannot believe that.”
    None of them could.
    “Maybe they are not the UN at all,” Sanjay suggested. “Maybe they are just using the name to gain people’s trust.”
    “If that is the case, then…” Kusum’s mother didn’t need to finish her thought.
    If these were the same people who’d released the virus, then they could be luring in those who had escaped infection so they could finish the job they had started.
    Some at the school thought they should keep their heads low and everything would blow over, while others—Sanjay and Kusum among them—thought if it were true, they needed to do what they could to warn the living.
    The first step was finding out for sure.
    Because Sanjay knew the Pishon Chem facility from when he had worked there, it was his job to find out what was going on. Kusum was not about to let him go alone, however. She and three others had accompanied him into the city, where they had set up camp in a small furniture factory a few kilometers