Free Eden Rising by Brett Battles Page A

signaled Claudia that he was finished.
    As she disconnected the call, she said, “Group fifteen is standing by.”
    Perez filled his glass with water from a pitcher, and took a sip. When he set the glass back down, he nodded and said, “Ready.”
     
    THE RANCH, MONTANA
    8:18 PM MST
     
    S IMS CLIMBED ABOARD the helicopter and pulled the door shut.
    “Treetops,” he said to the pilot. “Follow the road we spotted earlier, out to the highway. The rest of you keep an eye out for tracks. Any questions?”
    “No, sir,” they said in unison.
    A cloud of white swirled up around them as the rotors increased their speed and the aircraft lifted off the ground. When they rose to a point approximately twenty feet higher than the tallest tree, the pilot took them south and then east.
    Whoever had built the road the helicopter was following had been very smart. Only the bare minimum of trees had been cleared to create the path. In many spots, the branches from both sides intertwined with each other for stretches of twenty, thirty—one time over one hundred—feet, making it impossible to see the road at all. The storm wasn’t helping, either, as snow flew past them in waves of near solid sheets, momentarily obscuring the view.
    When they finally reached the strip of open land where the road met highway, Sims keyed his mic and told the pilot, “Set us down near the intersection.”
    “Looks like it might be a little deep,” the pilot replied.
    “I’ve seen you land in worse.”
    “Doesn’t mean I like it.”
    The pilot slowly lowered them over the road. By the time the skids came to rest, the top of the snow was only a few inches below the lip of the door.
    “We won’t be long,” Sims said.
    After exiting the aircraft, he and his men spread out to quickly cover more area.
    “Sir!” Altman, one of Sims’s men, yelled.
    Sims twisted around, and spotted Altman fifty feet down the smaller road that led back into the woods. By the time he reached him, Altman had crouched down and was pointing at the ground.
    “Tire tracks, sir,” Altman said. “At least two sets.”
    Sims moved in low next to him. Running down the road were several wide depressions. They hadn’t filled because of the partial tree cover.
    “How old, do you think?” Sims asked.
    Altman, Sims’s best tracker, studied the marks. “Twelve hours, give or take.”
    Twelve hours. Depending on what the weather had been when the vehicles came through, they could be as much as six or seven hundred miles away. They probably hadn’t made it quite that far, but even three hundred would be a lot.
    Altman rose to his feet, but stayed bent at the waist as he followed the tracks toward the highway. Sims walked right behind him. With each step the depressions became shallower and shallower, until Sims could no longer differentiate the tracks from the surrounding ground. Altman, though, was able to follow them nearly all the way to the intersection.
    He finally stopped and straightened up. “It looks like they turned south.”
    “You’re sure?” Sims asked.
    “As sure as I can be.”
    South did make the most sense. A turn to the north would have meant heading into the meat of the storm.
    “Don’t think we’re going to find anything else here,” Sims said loudly enough for the other men to hear. “Everyone back on board.”
    Back in the warmth of the aircraft’s cabin, he pulled up on his tablet a map of the state and studied it for a moment.
    “South toward Butte,” he told the pilot. “Your destination’s the intersection of the I-90 and the I-15 a couple miles west of town. We’ll see if we can pick up another sign of them there.”
    “Yes, sir,” the pilot said.

8
     
    SHERIDAN, WYOMING
    9:39 PM MST
     
    C HLOE’S EYES SHOT open at the sound of the gunshot. She rolled off her bed and onto the floor, unsure where it was coming from. Once she realized none of the bullets were flying through her room, she scrambled across the floor and yanked on