Pines (23 page)

They had lights and weapons and numbers.

He had nothing.

Too great a risk.

And so, with what little gas he had remaining in his reserve tank, he went on.

Ethan had no way of knowing how long he’d been walking alone in darkness.

An hour.

Maybe two.

Maybe less.

His pace was such that he couldn’t have covered more than a mile. If nothing else, he felt certain of this. Every few minutes, he made himself stop and glance downstream, searching for oncoming lights, listening for footsteps crackling over rocks.

But each time he looked back, it was always the same—complete darkness—and if someone was following him, the roar of the river effectively masked all other sounds.

* * *

The rain slowed to a drizzle and then an intermittent sprinkle and then it stopped altogether.

Ethan still trudged along, traveling solely by feel, his hands grasping invisible boulders, his feet taking the smallest possible steps so that when they inevitably collided with an impediment, Ethan’s forward momentum didn’t throw him to the ground.

* * *

And then he could see.

One moment, darkness.

The next—a bulging, gibbous moon, its light shining down through a break in the clouds, the surfaces of every wet rock gleaming like they had been lacquered.

Ethan sat down on a flat-topped boulder, his legs trembling, at the end of endurance.

The width of the river had narrowed by almost half, but the current was rougher, blasting down through a rock garden in a furious spray of whitewater.

Great pines—seventy or eighty feet tall—towered over the riverbank on the other side.

He suddenly realized how thirsty he was.

Falling to his knees, he crawled to the edge of the river and dipped his face into a small pool.

The water tasted deliciously pure and sweet, but bitterly cold.

Between sips, he glanced downstream.

Aside from the madness of the water, nothing moved on either shore.

Ethan wanted to sleep, could’ve lain here on the rocks and drifted off in seconds, but he knew that would be foolish.

Must find shelter before I lose the light of the moon.

Before I lose the ability to walk.

Already, clouds had begun to roll back in front of the moon.

He forced himself to stand.

A river crossing here, particularly in his weakened state, would be fatal. He’d have to seek out shelter on this side of the river, but that was going to be a challenge. On the other side, an old pine forest swept up a mountainside for several thousand feet into roiling clouds. In such a forest, he felt confident he’d have been able to find someplace to hole up for the night, even if nothing more than covering himself under a latticework of downed limbs. You lay enough of them on top of you and they’d provide a shelter from the
rain, maybe even trap enough body heat to create an oasis of warmth.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

On Ethan’s side of the river, the bank climbed steeply for forty feet to the base of that same red-rock cliff that encircled Wayward Pines.

And above that—ledges upon ledges ascending into darkness.

He was in no condition for a climb.

Ethan staggered on.

Water sloshing in his stomach.

He could feel his feet—swollen and throbbing in his boots. Knew he should’ve stopped to empty the water out of them an hour ago, but he’d been concerned that if he sat down, he wouldn’t have the strength to relace them and continue on.

The going was getting more difficult on this side, with little in the way of level ground, all of it rocky and steeply sloping.

He passed into a grove of soaring pines.

The rocky ground gave way to soft, moist earth covered in a cushion of dead pine needles, Ethan thinking,
Worse comes to worse, I’ll sleep here
. Wasn’t ideal—too close to the river, no branches to cover himself with, and anyone tracking him couldn’t help but find him. But at least he’d have some protection under the canopies of these ancient pines.

He took one last look around, having already decided that if he saw nothing of interest, this would be home for the night.

Ethan glanced up the slope that led to the base of the cliff.

He thought he saw a patch of blackness up there.

Didn’t think, didn’t debate, just climbed.

Scrambling on all fours up through the pines and then out of them onto a field of shattered rock.

Steeper and steeper.

He was panting again, sweat pouring down his face, his eyes stinging with it.

Near the cliff, the rock became looser and finer, his feet sliding with every step like he was climbing a sand dune.

He reached the cliff.

The darkness setting back in, all but a cuticle of the moon shrouded in clouds, and the air growing heavy with the smell of returning rain.

There it was—that patch of black he’d spotted from the river was a recess in the cliff. It extended back for five or six feet, the interior smooth and dry, protected from the elements.

Ethan climbed up onto the ledge and crawled inside.

The back wall had a natural slope, and he leaned against it, the darkening world framed by the walls of the little alcove. He couldn’t see the river from his vantage point, the sound of it vastly diminished to something like a loud whisper.

As the moonlight died, the pine forest on the other side of the river dimmed steadily away, leaving Ethan once more in absolute darkness.

It began to rain.

He sat up, and with trembling fingers, tried to unlace the boots he’d taken from the man he’d killed in the apartment. Took him several minutes to finally unravel the knot and pull off the boots. Dumped at least a pint of water out of each and then peeled off the layers of socks and wrung them out and laid them on the rock to dry.

His clothes were sopping wet.

He took off the hoodie, the T-shirt, the jeans, even his briefs. Spent ten minutes sitting naked in the alcove, twisting water out of the clothes until they were only damp.

He draped the hoodie over his chest, the long-sleeved T over his legs, and folded the jeans into a pillow. Lying against the back wall of the cave, he turned over onto his side and shut his eyes.

Never in his life had he been so cold.

At first, he feared it would keep him from sleep, his body shivering so violently in a failing effort to warm itself that he had to grasp the sleeves of the hoodie so he didn’t shake it off.

But as cold as he was, he was even more exhausted.

Within five minutes, sleep won out.

Ethan’s right ankle is shackled and chained to an eyebolt in the floor.

He sits at a ramshackle desk that holds three objects...

A blank sheet of A4 paper.

A black ballpoint pen.

And an hourglass whose black grains of sand are cascading from one bulb into another.

Aashif has advised Ethan that when the sand runs out, he will return, and if at that time what Ethan has written on the paper doesn’t delight him, Ethan will die by lingchi.

But Ethan knows that even if he had specific, high-clearance knowledge of a major upcoming offensive, wrote down dates, locations, targets, details of the anticipated ground strike and air support, it wouldn’t be enough.

Nothing will ever be enough, because no matter what he writes, he will die and die horribly.

All he knows of Aashif is his voice and those brown, evil eyes in which he senses not a desire to learn information but to inflict pain.

The guise of interrogation is merely foreplay.

Something to get Aashif hard and wet.

He is a sadist. Probably al-Qaida.

Somehow, Ethan didn’t allow that full realization to set in as he hung by his wrists in the torture room, but sitting here alone at the desk in the quiet, it hits him full force.

No matter what he writes, in a little under an hour, his life will become infinitely worse.

There is a single window in the room, but it has been boarded over with two-by-sixes.

Through tiny cracks between the panels of wood, brilliant strings of Iraqi sunlight tear through.

The heat is scalding, sweat streaming out of every pore.

The hyperrealness of the moment becomes unbearable, Ethan overwhelmed with sensory input.

—A dog barking outside.

—The distant laughter of children.

—Miles away, the eerie, cicada-like clicking of a gunfight.

—A fly buzzing at his left ear.

—The scent of Masgouf roasting nearby.

—Somewhere in the bowels of this compound, a man screaming.

No one knows I’m here. At least no one who can help me.

His thoughts veer toward Theresa—pregnant back home—but the onslaught of emotion and homesickness is more than he can bear in light of what lies ahead. The temptation to replay their last conversation—a VoIP call at the MWR—is powerful, but it would break him.

Cannot go there. Not yet. In my final moments maybe.

Ethan lifts the pen.

Just need something to occupy my mind. Cannot sit here and dwell on what’s coming.

Because that’s what he wants.

That’s all this is about.

* * *

Shot out of dreams of the war.

For a full minute, he had no idea where he was, simultaneously shivering and burning with fever.

Ethan sat up, reaching out in the darkness around him, and as his fingers grazed the rocky walls of the alcove, his
internal GPS updated and the horror that had become his life came rushing back.

He’d thrown his clothes off in his sleep, and they lay scattered on the stone beside him, cold and damp. He spread them out so they’d have a better chance at drying, and then scooted forward until he perched on the edge of the alcove.

The rain had stopped.

The night sky hemorrhaging starlight.

He’d never had the slightest interest in astronomy, but he found himself searching for familiar constellations, wondering if the stars he saw shone from their proper stations.

Is this the night sky I’ve always seen?

Fifty feet below him, the river sang.

He stared downslope toward the water, and when he saw it, his blood froze.

Ethan’s first inclination was to scramble back into the recess, but he fought against the urge, fearing any sudden movement would draw attention.

Son of a bitch, they followed me.

Crossed the river after all.

They were down in those giant pines by the river and so well hidden in shadow that he couldn’t gauge their number.

At a sloth’s pace, inch by inch, Ethan withdrew into the recess, lowering himself until his chest was flattened against the freezing rock, now just peeking out over the lip of the alcove.

They vanished into shadow, and for a moment, aside from the river, the world stood absolutely still, Ethan beginning to wonder if he’d actually seen anything at all. Considering what he’d been through in the last five days, rote hallucinations would’ve been a welcome return to sanity.

Thirty seconds later, they emerged out of the shadow of the pines, onto the crushed rock at the base of the slope.

What the hell?

There was only one, and though it was the size of a man, it didn’t move like a man—traveling across the rock on all fours, hairless and pale under the stars.

A metal taste—byproduct of fear—coated Ethan’s mouth as it struck him that its proportions were all wrong, arms seemingly twice their normal length.

The thing raised its head, and even from this distance, Ethan could see its oversized nose pointed toward the sky.

Smelling.

Ethan wriggled himself away from the opening and as far back into the alcove as he could get, where he huddled with his arms around his legs, shivering and straining to listen for the sound of approaching footsteps or shifting rocks.

But all he could hear was the purr of the river, and the next time he chanced a look outside, whatever he’d seen—or thought he’d seen—was gone.

* * *

In the few hours of darkness remaining, sleep eluded him.

He was too cold.

In too much pain.

Too terrorized by everything he’d experienced to venture back into dreams.

He lay on the rock, overwhelmed with one desire. One need.

Theresa.

Back home, he’d often wake in the middle of the night to feel her arm thrown over him, her body contoured to his. Even on the hardest nights. Nights he’d come home late. Nights they fought. Nights he’d betrayed her. She brought so much more to the table than he ever had. She loved at
light-speed. No hesitation. No regrets. No conditions. No reservations. While he hoarded his chips and held a part of himself back, she went all in. Every time.

There were moments when you saw the people you loved for who they really were, separate from the baggage of projection and shared histories. When you saw them with fresh eyes, as a stranger might, and caught the feeling of the first time you loved them. Before the tears and the armor chinks. When there was still the possibility of perfection.

He had never had a clearer picture of his wife, had never loved her more—not even in the beginning—than in this moment, in this cold, dark place, as he imagined her holding him.

* * *

He watched the stars go dark as the sun breathed fire into the sky, and when it finally cleared the ridge on the far side of the river, he bathed in the rays of gorgeous warmth streaming into his alcove and toasting the frozen stone.

In the new light, he could finally see the damage he’d sustained fleeing Wayward Pines.

Bruises, bull’s-eyed with blackish-yellow hematomas, covered his arms and legs.

Puncture wounds from Nurse Pam’s needle stabs specked his left shoulder and right side.

He unwound the duct tape from his left leg, uncovering the place along the back of his thigh where Beverly had dug out the microchip. The pressure of the wrap had effectively stopped the bleeding, but the skin around the incision was inflamed. It would need antibiotics and a good stitch job to stave off infection.