Brett Battles - Sick

She was right. After that, it was easy to pick out others. They spotted seven in all, stretching in what looked like a line blocking their path.

“A fence?” she suggested.

“Seems kind of low.”

They walked through the wash, then up the embankment, finally stopping ten feet short of the first post Chloe had seen. Though it was hard to judge color in the darkness, Ash got the sense the pole had been painted to blend in with its surroundings. Why? There didn’t appear to be anything attached to it, or anything sitting on the flat top. It was just…a post.

Chloe pulled out her flashlight and flicked it on.

“Turn that off. Someone will see it,” he whispered.

“Anyone who can see this probably watched us walk up the hill,” she told him, then pointed the light at the post.

Instead of wood, it appeared to be fabricated out of a plastic-like material. Near the top, a thin slot ran all the way around the post with what looked like curved, tinted glass covering it.

“Any idea what this is?” he asked.

“Motion sensor?”

“Could be,” he said. “Let’s see how far it goes.”

They went approximately seventy-five feet to the right before the row of posts took a sharp left turn. As they followed the new section, the hill fell away and they were on level ground again. Three hundred feet this time, then another turn to the left.

They’d gone twenty feet down this third part when Chloe touched Ash’s arm.

“There it is,” she said.

Ash had seen it, too.

Land had been carved out of the hill across from them and leveled off. Built exactly in the center of this area was a one-story, commercial-style building with no visible windows. On a large concrete slab next to it were several satellite dishes.

Exactly how Olivia had described NB7.

From their current angle, they could only see the back and west side of the building. There were no cars visible, but given the helicopter that sat on another concrete pad closer to the front of the building, maybe cars weren’t necessary. The aircraft was big enough to probably carry up to ten people, not including the crew.

There was a hundred feet between the line of posts and the building, or, as Ash saw it, a hundred feet between him and his children. They had to be there. It was the only possibility. To think otherwise would be pointless.

He continued down, following the odd-looking fence until he could see the front of the building. There were still no windows, but there was a door, and in front of it sat two cars.

He was contemplating walking all the way around to get a look at the east side of the building, the only part they hadn’t seen, when two people stepped out the door.

“Get down, get down,” he whispered as he crouched into the brush.

They watched the two men walk over to one of the sedans, get in, then drive toward the front of the property. Along that end was a traditional fence with a gate across the entrance road that opened automatically as the car neared. A few seconds later, the vehicle was heading down the half-asphalt, half-dirt road.

That was a problem.

Figure a mile and a half on a bad road would take them two to three minutes tops to reach the highway. If they turned right, no problem, but if they turned left, once they drove another thirty seconds, they’d pass Ash’s car parked suspiciously off the side of the road.

So, two and a half minutes plus the time it took to call back to the building, and those inside would know someone was there. He and Chloe had to move before then.

He was pretty sure the posts were motion detectors, perhaps triggered when something passed between them. But while breaking their invisible beam would betray his and Chloe’s presence, it would come as a surprise to those inside, and they would be on the defensive as opposed to being on the hunt because they’d been warned by their friends in the car.

A hundred feet. In college, Ash could run the forty-yard dash in four-point-seven seconds. He’d been younger then, and in slightly better shape, but he thought he could still do it in five and a half. And forty yards would actually get him all the way to the front door. Even if there wasn’t any kind of delay before the alarm went off, he should still be able to get there before anyone inside had the time to react.

“How fast can you run?” he asked Chloe.

“Fast enough.”

“Then that’s what we’re going to do.”

He moved over to the imaginary line of the fence.

“Wait,” she said. “What’s the plan?”

“The plan? Get my kids back.”

He put his head down, then started to run.

Their new room wasn’t that muchdifferent than their old one. There were two beds and a bathroom, just like before. The only difference this time was that the door was locked.

Brandon knew the people watching over them had done something to put him and Josie to sleep before they switched rooms, but he had no idea why. The thought that the room they were now in was in an entirely different building in an entirely different state hadn’t even crossed his mind. He thought they were still on his dad’s base, just down the hall from the room they’d been in before.

His biggest concern at the moment was his sister. She had yet to wake up. He, on the other hand, had been awake for at least a couple hours, maybe even more.

The same guy who’d been bringing them food from the beginning had brought in dinner a while ago. He was the nice one, the guy who always smiled, and seemed to really care about them.

When Brandon asked him if he knew why Josie was still asleep, the man had said, “Because she’s still getting over her illness.”

That only made Brandon more worried. What if she was getting sick again? That happened sometimes, didn’t it? He was sure he’d heard that before. Would she be even sicker this time? Would she even…die?

Thinking that terrified him. His mom and dad were already gone. What was he going to do if Josie wasn’t around, either? He’d have no one. No one at all.

He sat on the edge of her bed, wiping her head with a damp towel from the bathroom. He didn’t think she had a fever, but he wanted to make sure it stayed that way.

“It’s okay, Josie. I’m here.”

Ten minutes later, he fell asleep beside to her.

NB7 was not considered a high-priority location for project security. Its isolation was believed to be its best defense. That didn’t mean there wasn’t a security staff on hand, but it did mean other resources such as constant satellite observation were considered unnecessary. It was, by design after all, mainly a storage and backup shelter facility.

What additional security the building did have consisted of a state-of-the-art motion sensor grid surrounding the perimeter, video surveillance along the road that led to the property, and a car recognition system set up on the highway.

The way this last item worked was that cars traveling on the highway would trip an electronic beam twelve miles either to the South or to the North. This would trigger a hidden camera to take a picture of the car and its license plate, then, in a completely automated process, determine the make, model and year of the car. The vehicle would then be checked off when it crossed the opposite electronic eye on its way out of the area. There was leeway built in to the system to account for slower drivers, and for those who might stop to take a few pictures-something that happened more often than those at NB7 may have expected. But once these items were taken into consideration, if a car failed to trip the second beam in the allotted time frame, an alarm would be activated, and a team would be sent out to check.

Just such an alarm went off at 12:58 a.m. for a 2009 Honda Accord with Florida license plates. It was probably nothing, the head of security thought. He bet the driver had just pulled to the side of the road to take a nap. That had happened, too.