The Last Town (The Wayward Pines Trilogy 3) (11 page)

“You think it saw us?”

“I don’t know.”

Ethan rose up slowly on his knees, peeked through the branches.

“Get down!” Kate whispered.

“I have to check. Which house was it?”

“Brown one with yellow trim. Swing on the front porch. Two gnomes in the yard.”

He saw it.

Saw the screen door swinging closed, heard the distant slap of the wood smacking the frame.

But he didn’t see the abby.

Ethan lowered himself back behind the bushes.

“It’s outside,” he said. “The screen door just closed. I don’t know where it is.”

“It could be coming around the house,” Kate said. “Sneaking up along the side. How smart are these things?”

“Scary.”

“Do you know how they hunt? How finely tuned their senses are?”

“No idea.”

Maggie said, “I hear something.”

Everyone hushed.

It was a clicking, scraping sound.

Ethan straightened just enough to peek through the branches again.

The abby was moving upright on the sidewalk toward the house.

The clicking was its talons on the concrete.

A large bull.

Two hundred fifty pounds at least.

It had fed recently. Ethan could barely see the pulsing of its massive heart through the dried blood and viscera that clung to its chest like a bib.

At the foot of the porch, it stopped.

Turned its head.

Ethan ducked.

Held his finger to his lips and leaned over so he could whisper in Kate’s ear.

“It’s at the porch, twenty feet away. We may have to engage.”

She nodded.

He got onto his knees, raised the shotgun, and poked his head above the juniper.

Did you rack a shell into the tube?

Of course I racked a shell into the tube. I ghost-loaded this gun last night.

The abby was gone, but the smell of it was potent.

Close.

It shot up screaming on the other side of the bush, teeth bared, eyes like wet, black stones.

The blast was deafening, and despite the size of the thing, the slug punched it back into the grass. It went down on its back with a sucking chest wound, dark blood bubbling out like a geyser across the translucent skin.

Kate was already on her feet.

Hecter and Maggie frozen behind the bush.

Ethan said, “We have to move.”

He clawed his way out.

The abby was still alive, moaning and trying to plug the quarter-size hole, watching in disbelief as it bled out.

It reached for Ethan as he moved past, a talon catching on the hem of his jeans, tearing easily through the denim.

Kate was right behind him, Hecter and Maggie slower in coming.

“Move!” he yelled.

They ran into the street.

Sweat beaded on Ethan’s forehead, streaming down into his eyes with a saltwater sting.

They crossed the next intersection.

Nothing was coming.

Ethan looked back over his shoulder down Eighth.

Maggie and Hecter were running their hearts out, arms pumping, and nothing behind them as far as he could see.

The school took up the entire next block on Ethan’s right.

Playground equipment standing lonely behind a chain-link fence.

Seesaws. Swing sets. Slides. Merry-go-rounds.

A tetherball pole.

A basketball hoop.

The red brick of the school beyond.

Maggie said, “Oh my God.”

Ethan looked back.

She had stopped in the middle of the street and was staring at the school.

He ran back to her.

“We have to keep going.”

She pointed.

A door in the side of the building swung open and a man was standing in the threshold waving one arm.

Maggie said, “What
do
we do?”

What do we do?

One of those decisions that could decide everything.

Ethan scaled the four-foot fence and raced across the schoolyard, passing a sandbox and monkey bars in the shadow of a giant cottonwood whose yellow leaves had plastered the pavement.

The man holding open the door was Spitz, the Wayward Pines postman, an inventive position for a town that had zero need for the mail. Yet still, he’d walked the streets several days a week, stuffing mailboxes with fake junk mail, bullshit tax notices, and the like. He was a brawny, extravagantly bearded man, larger through the waist than one might think for someone who lived on his feet. Presently, he stood in a shredded black T-shirt and kilt—his fête costume—with his left arm wrapped in a piece of bloody fabric. He wore a nasty slice across his cheek and a piece of flesh had been gouged out of his right leg.

He said, “Hi, Sheriff,” as Ethan arrived. “Didn’t expect to see you.”

“Back at you, Spitz. You look like shit.”

“Just a flesh wound.” The man grinned. “We thought the other groups were wiped out.”

“Ours made it through the tunnels, up to the cavern.”

“How many of you?”

“Ninety-six.”

“I got eighty-three down in the basement of the school.”

Kate asked, “Harold?”

Spitz shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

Hecter said, “We thought everyone else had been killed.”

“We were attacked on the way to the tunnels. Lost about thirty down by the river. Brutal. As you can see, I got in a little scuffle with one of those sons of bitches. Took five men to drag it off and if one of them hadn’t had a machete it would’ve killed us all. I heard the gunshot a minute ago. It’s what drew me outside.”

“One came after us a little ways up the block,” Ethan said. “We thought maybe they’d all gone back into the woods.”

“Oh no. Town’s still crawling with them. I’ve been making house raids within sprinting distance. There’s people still hiding in their homes. I rescued Gracie and Jessica Turner just before dawn. Jim had nailed them into a closet. He isn’t with your group, is he?”

“I saw him last night,” Ethan said. “He didn’t make it.”

“That’s too bad.”

“How are your people?” Maggie asked.

“Three died from their wounds overnight. Two are in pretty rough shape. Probably won’t last the day. A bunch of us are scraped all to hell. Everyone’s freaked out. No food, just a little water from the fountains. We had a teacher in our group and if he hadn’t said to come here, we’d all be dead. No question in my mind. It was war last night.”

“How secure is the basement?” Ethan asked.

“Could be worse. We’re locked in behind two doors in a music classroom. No windows. Only one way in and out. We’ve built barricades. I’m not saying it’s impenetrable, but we’re hanging in.”

A scream erupted several blocks away.

“Better get your asses inside,” Spitz said. “Sounds like whatever you killed had a buddy.”

Ethan looked at Kate, back at Spitz.

“I’m headed for the mountain,” he said. “For Pilcher.”

Maggie said, “If there are injured people, I may be able to help. I was in school to become a nurse back in my old life.”

“We’d love to have you,” Spitz said.

A second scream answered the first.

Ethan said, “Do you guys have any weapons?”

“One machete.”

Shit
. He’d have to leave them with someone who could shoot. This group of people needed some form of protection beyond a big knife.

“Kate, you stay with them too,” he said.

“You need me.”

“Yes, but if we both go and get killed, then what? At least this way, you’re the backup plan if I don’t make it back. And meanwhile, you can protect these people.”

Hecter said, like he hadn’t quite fully committed to the idea, “Well, Ethan, I guess it’s just you and me then.”

“Will I be seeing you again, Sheriff?” Spitz asked.

“Here’s hoping.” Ethan grabbed Maggie’s hand, and said, “Bedside table drawer?”

“Yeah, go upstairs, turn right when you come off the staircase, it’s the door at the end of the hall.”

“Your house locked?”

“No.”

“Which one is it?”

“Pink with white trim. Wreath on the front door.”

Maggie and Spitz headed into the school.

Ethan started to turn away but Kate grabbed him, her hands cold on the back of his neck. She pulled him toward her and kept pulling until their lips touched, and then she was kissing him and he was letting it happen.

She said, “Be careful,” and disappeared through the door.

Ethan looked at Hecter.

The abbies were howling.

“Two blocks,” Ethan said. “We can make it.”

They ran through the schoolyard, between picnic tables, into an open playing field, heading straight for the fence.

Ethan glanced back, saw movement in the street behind them—pale forms on all fours.

With the shotgun slung across his shoulder, he put two hands on the fence and leapt over the top, hit the ground running on the other side.

Streaked into an intersection.

Right—clear.

Left—four abbies en route, still several blocks away.

Halfway down the block, an abby broke through the glass of a front window and charged Ethan.

“Keep running!” he screamed at Hecter, then stopped, squared up, and racked a fresh shell.

Hecter blitzed by and Ethan put the monster down with a head shot.

He chased after Hecter, and as they reached the last intersection before Maggie’s house, it occurred to him that he never asked what her car looked like. There were loads of them on this block, and two parked on the curb in front of Maggie’s place.

Abbies appeared straight ahead, coming toward them from Main Street, one block away, and Ethan looked back just in time to see a half dozen round the corner two blocks back near the school.

He and Hecter covered the last thirty feet through Maggie’s yard.

Up the steps, onto the covered porch.

Jerked open the screen door.

Abbies screaming.

Converging.

Hecter beginning to lose his grip.

Ethan turned the doorknob, put his shoulder into the door, and rushed inside.

“Lock the door!” Ethan yelled as Hecter stumbled inside. “Stand halfway up the staircase and shoot the shit out of anything that gets in.”

“Where are you going?”

“Car keys.”

Ethan doubled up the stairs.

Screams audible through the walls.

At the top he turned right and raced toward the closed door at the end of the hall.

Smashed through without slowing.

Yellow walls, white crown molding.

Soft curtains, drawn.

A terrycloth robe draped over the back of a chair.

A big, pillowy bed, neatly made.

Stack of Jane Austen novels and an incense burner on the bedside table.

The cold air still redolent of fragrant smoke.

Maggie’s haven.

Ethan hurried to the bedside table, pulled open the drawer.

Downstairs, the sound of glass breaking.

Wood splintering.

Snarling.

Hecter yelled something as Ethan shoved his arm toward the back of the drawer, felt his fingers graze the keys.

A shotgun blast followed.

Abbies screaming.

Hecter shouting, “Oh God!”

Shuck-shuck as he racked another slug.

Boom.

Shuck-shuck.

The spent shell falling down the stairs.

Ethan jammed Maggie’s keys into the front pocket of his jeans and started down the hallway.

Hecter screamed.

No more shots.

The smooth soles of Ethan’s boots slid across the hardwood floor as he reached the top of the stairs and tried to arrest his forward momentum.

Blood.

Everywhere.

Three abbies on Hecter, one tearing at his right leg, another ripping the biceps out of his arm, a third chewing its way through the fascia into his stomach.

Hecter shrieking, pounding his free hand into the skull of the abby who was gutting him.

Ethan raised the shotgun.

The first slug decapitated the abby burrowing into Hecter’s stomach, and he shot the second one as it looked up snarling, but the third had a head start and it was airborne, talons out, seconds from crashing into Ethan by the time he got the Mossberg pumped and fired.

It tumbled back down the staircase and crashed into two abbies that had just torn through the front door.

Ethan racked a shell and steadied himself at the top of the staircase, trying to process his next move, fighting panic, the inescapable thought that it was all coming off the rails right now. His left arm was so tender from the Mossberg’s recoil it was agony just pulling the stock snug against his shoulder.

The two abbies crawled out from under the dead abby and started for him, and Ethan shot them both down as they climbed.

The house was hazy with gun smoke and for a moment the only sound was the pneumatic hiss as the femoral artery in Hecter’s leg jetted arcs of red at the front door.

The stairs looked treacherous, soaked in blood.

Hecter was groaning and shaking as he held his intestines in his hands in some kind of horrified wonder.

He was bleeding out mercifully fast, shock-white, with a cold sweat matting down his hair, giving his face a corpse-like sheen that foretold what was coming.

He stared up at Ethan with a look only a dying soldier can give the one the bullet missed.

Fear.

Disbelief.

Please-God-tell-me-this-isn’t-happening.

The front door had been torn off its hinges, and through the opening, Ethan watched more abbies stream into the yard.

They would eat Hecter while he took his last breaths.

Ethan pulled his pistol, clicked off the safety.

No idea if it were true, but he said, “You’re going someplace better.”

Hecter just stared.

I should’ve let
you
go find the keys
.

Ethan shot the pianist between his eyes. As the monsters flooded in through the front door, he was already running down the hall away from Maggie’s bedroom.

He took the second doorway on his right.

Quietly shut it after him and flicked a lock that didn’t stand a chance of stopping anything.

There was a claw-foot tub under a window of frosted glass.