The Last Town (The Wayward Pines Trilogy 3) (18 page)

VIII

THERESA

WAYWARD PINES
FIVE YEARS AGO

She stands in the rain, barefoot, her hospital gown soaked straight through to her skin, staring up at a twenty-five-foot fence whose barbed wires crackle with electricity.

Two signs nearby warn:

HIGH VOLTAGE
RISK OF DEATH

And:

RETURN TO WAYWARD PINES
BEYOND THIS POINT YOU WILL DIE

She crumples down in the dirt.

Cold.

Shivering.

It’s dusk, on the verge of becoming too dark to see in these woods.

She’s at the end. At
her
end.

No one to turn to.

Nowhere left to run.

She crashes.

Hard.

Sobbing uncontrollably as the freezing rain beats down on her.

Hands grab her by the shoulders.

She reacts like a wounded animal, tearing herself away and scrambling off on all fours as a voice calls after her, “Theresa!”

But she doesn’t stop.

Struggling up onto her feet, she digs in for a sprint, feet sliding in the wet pine needles.

The hands tackle her to the ground, her face crushed into mud, pressing down on top of her and trying to roll her over. She fights back with everything she has, arms tucked into her sides, thinking,
If those hands get anywhere near my mouth, this asshole is going to lose fingers.

But he manages to roll her onto her back and hold her arms down, pinning her legs under his knees.

“Let go!” she screams.

“Stop fighting.”

That voice.

She looks up at her attacker. It’s almost too dark to see now, but she recognizes his face.

From another life.

A better time.

She stops struggling.

“Adam?”

“It’s me.”

He releases her arms and helps her to sit up.

“What are you
. . . 
? Why
. . . 
?” So many questions screaming through her mind she can’t focus on which one to give voice to. At last she lands on, “What’s happening to me?”

“You’re in Wayward Pines, Idaho.”

“I know that. Why is there no road out of here? Why is there a fence? Why won’t anyone tell me what’s happening?”

“I know you have questions—”

“Where’s my son?”

“I may be able to help you find Ben.”

“You know where he is?”

“No, but I—”

“Where is he?” she screams. “I have to—”

“Theresa, you’re endangering yourself right now. You’re putting both of our lives at risk. I want you to come with me.”

“Where?”

“To my house.”

“Your
house?
”

He takes off his rain jacket, wraps it around her shoulders, and pulls her up onto her feet.

“Why do you have a house here, Adam?”

“Because I live here.”

“For how long?”

“A year and a half.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I know it must feel that way to you right now. I’m sure everything seems strange and wrong in this moment. Where are your shoes?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m going to carry you.”

Hassler scoops her up into his arms like she weighs nothing.

Theresa looks into his face, and despite the horror of her last five days here, she can’t deny the comfort she feels staring into familiar eyes.

“Why are you here, Adam?”

“I know you have a lot of questions. Let me just get you home first, okay? You’re practically hypothermic.”

“Have I lost my mind? I don’t know
anything
anymore. I woke up in the hospital here, and these last few days have been—”

“Look at me. You’re not crazy, Theresa.”

“Then what?”

“You’re just in a different kind of place now.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“I know, but if you trust me, I swear I’ll take care of you. I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. And I’ll help you find your son.”

Despite the new protection of his jacket, she trembles violently in Hassler’s arms.

He carries her through the dark forest and the pouring rain.

Her last memory before waking in this town is of sitting in her home in Queen Anne across from a man named David Pilcher. It was the night she’d thrown a party to celebrate her missing husband’s life, and after all the guests had left, Pilcher had shown up on her doorstep in the wee hours with a mysterious offer: come with him, and she and Ben could be reunited with Ethan.

Apparently, the promise had not been kept.

Theresa lies on a sofa pulled close to an open woodstove, watching as Adam Hassler adds pine logs to the fire. The deep-down cold is beginning to retreat from her bones. She hasn’t slept in forty-eight hours—since waking up for a second time in a hospital bed to that awful, smiling nurse—but now she can feel sleep stalking her. She won’t be able to hold out much longer.

Hassler stokes the flames up into a roaring blaze, the sap boiling and popping inside the wood.

Every light in the living room is out.

Firelight colors the walls.

She can hear the steady rain hammering the tin roof above her head, ready to put her under.

Hassler scoots back from the fire, sits on the sofa’s edge.

He looks down at her with a kindness in his eyes that she hasn’t seen in days.

“Is there anything I can get for you?” he asks. “Water? More blankets?”

“I’m okay. Well, not okay, but
. . .
”

He smiles. “I know what you mean.”

She stares up at him. “These have been the weirdest, worst days of my life.”

“I know.”

“What’s happening to me?”

“I can’t explain it to you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“You disappeared from Seattle the night of Ethan’s celebration-of-life party. You and Ben.”

“Right.”

“I figured you had gone to Wayward Pines looking for Ethan, so I went looking for you.”

“Shit. You’re here because of me.”

“I drove into town two days before Christmas. All I remember is a Mack truck coming out of nowhere, sideswiping my car. I woke up in the hospital, just like you did. No phone, no wallet. Have you tried to call out to Seattle?”

“I phoned my sister, Darla, I don’t know how many times from that pay phone beside the bank, but it’s always either a wrong number or there’s no dial tone.”

“Same thing happened to me.”

“So how do you have a house here now?”

“I have a job too.”

“What?”

“You’re looking at the sous-chef in training at the Aspen House, nicest restaurant in Wayward Pines.”

Theresa searches his face for signs of bullshit, but he looks absolutely sincere.

She says, “You’re the special agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Seattle. You—”

“Things have changed.”

“Adam—”

“Just listen to me.” He puts his hand on her shoulder. She can feel its weight through the blanket. “All the questions, all the fears you have, I had them too. I still have them. That doesn’t change. But there are no answers to be had in this valley. There’s only a right way to live and all the other ways that get you killed. As your friend, Theresa, I hope you can hear me. If you don’t stop running, this town will murder you.”

She looks away from Hassler, into the flames.

The firelight blurring through a sheet of tears.

The scary thing, the truly scary thing, is that she believes him.

One hundred percent. There’s something wrong, something evil about this place.

“I feel so lost,” she says.

“I know.” He squeezes her shoulder. “I’ve been there, and I’m going to help you in every way I possibly can.”

ETHAN

He found Kate that evening, sitting in her living room, staring into the cold, dark fireplace.

He sat down beside her, set his shotgun on the hardwood floor.

Abbies had broken in at some point. The front windows were smashed out, the interior looked vandalized, and it still smelled like those creatures—a harsh, alien stench.

“What are you doing in here?” Ethan asked.

Kate shrugged. “I guess I feel like if I wait here long enough, he’ll come walking through that door.”

Ethan put his arm around her.

She said, “But he’s not going to walk through that door ever again, is he?”

It seemed as if it was only by sheer force of will that she held the tears back.

Ethan shook his head.

“Because you found him.”

The light splintering through the busted windows was growing weaker by the moment. Soon, it would be dark in the valley.

“His group was run down in one of the tunnels,” Ethan said.

Still no tears came.

She just breathed in and out.

“I want to see him,” she said.

“Of course. We’ve been gathering up the dead all day, doing what we can to prepare them for—”

“I’m not afraid to see him torn up, Ethan. I just want to see him.”

“Okay.”

“How many did we lose?”

“We’re still recovering bodies, so right now we’re only counting survivors. Out of forty hundred sixty-one in-town residents, we’re down to a hundred and eight. Seventy-five are still unaccounted for.”

“I’m glad it was you who came with this news,” she said.

“They’re bringing all the survivors into the mountain for the next few nights.”

“I’m staying right here.”

“It’s not safe, Kate. There are still abbies in the valley. We haven’t gotten them all. There’s no power. No heat. When the sun drops, it’s going to get very dark and very cold. The abbies still inside the fence will come back into town.”

She looked at him. She said, “I don’t care.”

“You want me to sit with you for a while?”

“I want to be alone.”

Ethan rose to his feet, every inch of his body sore, bruised, done. “I’ll leave this shotgun with you,” he said, “just in case.”

He couldn’t be sure that she’d heard him.

She was utterly elsewhere.

“Is your family safe?” Kate asked.

“They are.”

She nodded.

“I’ll come back in the morning,” he said. “Take you to see Harold.” He moved toward the front door.

Kate said, “Hey.”

He looked back.

“This isn’t your fault.”

That night, Ethan lay next to Theresa in a warm, dark room, deep inside the superstructure.

Ben slept on a rollaway at the foot of their bed, the boy snoring quietly.

The nightlight across the room put out a soft blue and Ethan stared into the glow. The first night in ages he could actually sleep in warmth, in safety, without a camera spying on him. Sleep was there for the taking, but he couldn’t find his way in.

Theresa’s hand moved around his side and across his stomach.

She whispered, “You awake?”

He rolled over to face her, and by the illumination of the nightlight, saw the glistening in her eyes, the wetness on her face.

“I need to tell you something,” she said.

“Okay.”

“You’ve only been back in our lives for barely a month.”

“Right.”

“We’d already been here for five years. We didn’t know where we were. If we were.”

“I already know all this.”

“What I’m trying to say is
. . .
there was someone before you came.”

“Someone,” Ethan said, a sudden pressure building in his chest, a weight pressing down on his lungs, stopping him from drawing a full breath.

“I thought you were dead. Or that maybe I was.”

“Who?”

“When I first came to town, I didn’t know a soul. I woke up here just like you did, and Ben wasn’t with me, and—”

“
Who
?”

“You saw that Adam Hassler is here.”

“Hassler?”

“He saved my life, Ethan. He helped me find Ben.”

“Are you for real?”

She was crying now. “I lived with him in that house on Sixth Street for over a year, up until the day he was sent away.”

“You were
with
Hassler?”

A sob caught in her throat. “I thought you were dead. You know how this town can mess with you.”

“Did you share his bed?”

“Ethan—”

“Did you?”

She nodded.

He rolled away from her onto his back and stared at the ceiling. No idea how to even
begin
to process this. All he had were questions, images of Hassler and his wife, and a raw, combustive pool of confusion, anger, and fear coalescing deep inside of him that was accelerating toward supernova.

“Talk to me,” she said. “Don’t shut down.”

“Were you in love with him?”

“Yes.”

“Are you still?”

“I’m confused.”

“That’s not a no.”

“Do you want me to protect your feelings, Ethan, or do you want me to be honest?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I wasn’t prepared to have this conversation. You’d only been here a month. We were just starting to reconnect again.”

“You never were. Your lover showed up out of nowhere and forced your hand.”

“That is not true, Ethan. I swear I would’ve told you. I was assured that Adam was never coming back. And by the way? I was with Hassler when I thought you were dead. You fucked Kate Hewson while I was still very much alive. While I was your wife. So let’s keep this shit in perspective, shall we?”

“Do you want to be with him?”

“If he hadn’t found me, I would’ve kept running and running until they murdered me. There is no doubt in my mind. He supported me, he took care of me when there was no one else to do it. When you weren’t around.”

Ethan turned back onto his side and faced his wife, their noses touching, her breath in his face and a roiling mass of emotion inside of him that he wasn’t completely certain he could keep tied down.

“Do you want to be with him?” he asked again.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t
know
? Does that mean maybe?”

“I have never been loved the way that man loves me.” Ethan stopped breathing. “If this is hard for you to hear, I’m sorry, but I was his world, Ethan, and it
. . .
” She let the words go, let them trail off into nothing.

“What?”

“I shouldn’t say any—”

“No, finish your thought.”

“It was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Since the first time you and I met, I have loved you with everything I have. Can I just be straight up with you? I have always loved you more than you loved me.”

“That is not true.”

“You know it is. My loyalty, my devotion to you has been total. If our marriage was a rope, you on one end, me on the other, I was always pulling a little bit harder. And sometimes a lot.”

“This is punishment, isn’t it? For Kate.”

“Not everything is about you. This is about me and this man I fell in love with while you were gone, and who’s now back, and I have no fucking idea how to handle it. Can you put yourself in my shoes for two seconds?”

Ethan sat up in bed, threw back the covers.

“Don’t leave,” she said.

“I just need some air.”

“I shouldn’t have told you.”

“No, you should’ve told me on day one.”

He climbed out of bed, walked out of their room wearing socks, pajama bottoms, and a wifebeater.

It was two or three in the morning, and Level 4 stood empty, the fluorescent lights humming quietly overhead.

Ethan walked down the corridor. Behind every door he passed, residents of Wayward Pines slept safe and sound. There was comfort in knowing that some had been saved.

The cafeteria was closed, dark.

Stopping at the doors to the gymnasium, he peered through the glass. In the low light, he saw the raised basketball hoops, the court covered in cots. The people in the mountain had volunteered as a group to give up their rooms on Level 4 to the refugees, a gesture he hoped would be a good omen for the tough transition to come.

Down on Level 2, he swiped his card and stepped into surveillance.

Alan sat at the console, watching the screens.

He looked back as Ethan entered, and said, “You’re up late.”

Ethan took a seat beside him.

“Anything?” he asked.

“I disabled the motion sensors that powered up the cameras, so they’re running all the time now. I’m sure the batteries won’t last much longer. I’ve spotted a few dozen abbies back in town. I’ll take a team down in the morning first thing to finish them off.”

“And the fence?”

“Full power. All levels in the green. You should really get some sleep.”

“I don’t see a lot of that in my future.”

Alan laughed. “Tell me about it.”

“Thank you, by the way,” Ethan said. “If you hadn’t backed me up yesterday—”

“You honored my friend.”

“The people from town—”

“Don’t let this out, but we call them townies.”

Ethan said, “They’re going to be looking to me. I have a feeling the people in the mountain will be looking to you.”

“Looks that way. There are going to be some tough choices to make in our future, and a right way and a wrong way to handle them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Pilcher ran things a certain way.”

“Yeah.
His
.”

“I’m not defending the man, but sometimes situations arise that are so pivotal, so life and death, one or two strong people need to call the shots.”

“Think Pilcher has any diehards in the mountain?” Ethan asked.

“What do you mean? True believers?”

“Exactly.”

“Everyone in this mountain is a true believer. Don’t you understand what we gave up to be here?”

“No.”

“Everything. We believed that man when he said the old world was dying and that we had a chance to be a part of the new world to come. I sold my house, my cars, cashed out my 401(k), left my family. I gave him everything I had.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“You might have missed it with all the other excitement, but we had a nomad return today.”

“Yeah, Adam Hassler.”

“So you know him.”

“Not well. I’m shocked he made it back.”

“I’d like to know more about him. Was he a townie before he left on his mission?”

“I couldn’t tell you. You should go talk to Francis Leven.”

“Who’s that?”

“The steward of the superstructure.”

“Which means
. . .
”

“He tracks supplies, system integrity, the status of people in suspension and out. He’s a wealth of institutional memory. The heads of each group report to him, and he reports, well, reported, to Pilcher.”

“Never met him.”

“He’s a recluse. Keeps mostly to himself.”

“Where would I find him?”

“His office is tucked way back in the ark.”

Ethan stood.

The pain meds were fading.

The wear and tear of the last forty-eight hours becoming suddenly pronounced.

As Ethan started toward the door, Alan said, “One last thing.”

“Yeah?”

“We finally found Ted. He was in his room, stuffed in his closet, stabbed to death. Pilcher had cut his microchip out and destroyed it.”

Ethan would’ve thought that, after a day like this, one more piece of shitty news would crash into his psyche like a wave against a seawall, but it penetrated. Deeply.

He left Alan and went back out into the corridor, started up the steps toward the Level 4 dormitories, but then stopped.

Turning back, he descended the last flight of stairs to the first level.

Margaret, the abby whose intelligence Pilcher had been testing for the last few months, was up, pacing in her cage under the glare of the fluorescents.

Ethan put his face to the small window and stared through, his breath fogging the glass.

Last time he’d seen this abby, she’d been sitting peacefully in the corner.

Docile. Humanlike.

Now she looked agitated. Not angry, not vicious. Just nervous.

Because so many of your brothers and sisters have come into our valley?
Ethan wondered.
Because so many have been killed, even in this complex?
Pilcher had told him that the abbies communicated through pheromones. Used them like words, he’d said.

Margaret saw Ethan.

She crept on all fours over toward the door and stood on her hind legs.

Ethan’s eyes and the abby’s eyes were just inches away, separated by the glass.

Up close, hers were almost pretty.

Ethan moved deeper into the corridor.

Six doors down, he looked through the window of another cage.

There was no bed, no chair.

Just floor and walls and David Pilcher sitting in a corner, his head hung as if he’d fallen asleep sitting up. The lights burned down through the window and lit the left side of the man’s face.

He hadn’t been allowed to keep any personal effects, including a razor, and white stubble was beginning to overspread his jaw.

You did this
, Ethan thought.
You ruined so many lives. My life. My marriage.