The Last Town (The Wayward Pines Trilogy 3) (7 page)

It’s a good twenty or thirty degrees colder than yesterday—barely above zero—and plumes of steam ascend in a perpetual cloud off the hot springs.

Otherwise, nothing moves in that vast winterscape.

He digs out his compass and the little patch of map and then heaves his pack onto his shoulders.

Hassler crawls out from under the overhanging branches and sets out across the meadow.

It is cold and perfectly still, the sun on the rise.

In the center of the meadow, he stops and glasses the terrain through the scope of his Winchester.

For the moment at least, the world is his alone.

As the sun climbs, the glare off the snowpack becomes painful. He would stop to retrieve his sunglasses, but the welcome darkness of the forest is just within reach.

It’s all lodgepole pine.

Two-hundred-foot giants with straight, thin trunks and narrow crowns.

Forest travel is considerably more dangerous, and at the edge of the trees Hassler pulls the .357 out of an inner pocket of his duster and checks the load.

The forest climbs.

The sun pushes through the pines in splashes of light.

Hassler crests a ridge.

A lake comes into view that shines like a jewel. Close to shore, the water has frozen, but it’s still liquid out in the center. He sits on a bleached tree stump and raises the butt of the rifle to his shoulder.

The lake is immense. He scopes the shoreline. There’s nothing in the direction he intends to travel but unblemished, glittering white.

On the opposite side—a couple miles away—he spots a bull in a bloody patch of snow pulling long ropes of intestines out of a massive grizzly bear whose throat the abby has torn out.

Hassler starts down the gentle slope.

At the lakeshore, he studies the map again.

The forest comes close to the water, and keeping between the shore and the trees, he makes his way around to the western side of the lake.

The trek through the snow has worn him out.

Hassler unslings his rifle from his shoulder and collapses near the water’s edge. In proximity, he sees that the ice isn’t thick. Just a fragile crust from the hard overnight freeze. This snow has come early. Way early. By his reckoning, it’s only July.

He scopes the shoreline again.

The woods at his back.

Nothing moves but that abby across the lake, its entire head now buried inside the grizzly’s belly—gorging itself.

Hassler leans back against his pack and takes out the map.

There is no wind, and with the sun directly above him, he feels warm down to his bones.

He loves mornings—without a doubt, his favorite time of day. There is something hopeful about waking in the early light and not yet knowing what the day has in store. Emotionally speaking, late afternoons are the hardest, with the light beginning to fail and the knowledge setting in that he’ll be spending another night outside, alone in the dark, the threat of an awful death forever in the wings.

But in this moment at least, the coming night feels very far away.

Once again his thoughts turn north.

To Wayward Pines.

To the day he’ll reach its fence and return to safety.

To that little Victorian house on Sixth Street.

And to the woman he loves with a ferocity he will never fully grasp. It was for her alone that he willingly abandoned his life in 2013, volunteering to be put into suspended animation for two thousand years, with no idea of what kind of a world he’d be waking to. But just knowing it would be one with Theresa Burke alive in it, and her husband, Ethan, long since dead, was more than enough for him to risk everything.

He pairs the map with the compass.

The most prominent feature in the region is a ten-thousand-foot peak that was once called Mount Sheridan. The top thousand feet of the peak stand above the timberline—blown stark white against the purple sky. It’s windy at the summit, with streamers of snow spraying off the top.

An hour’s walk in prime conditions.

Two or three in a foot of newly fallen snow.

For now, it simply represents his north.

The direction of home.

THE RICHARDSONS

Bob climbed out of the car and closed the door gently after him.

The woods were quiet, the screams in town distant.

He walked a little ways out from the hood and tried to think.

Leaving town had been the right choice. They were still alive.

The dome light in the car kicked off.

Darkness closed in.

He eased down onto the pavement and put his face between his knees. Wept softly. After a minute, the car door opened behind him and the interior lights threw color on the road.

His Wayward Pines wife walked over.

“I said I needed a minute,” Bob said.

“Are you crying?”

“No.” He wiped his eyes.

“Oh my God, you are.”

“Leave me alone please.”

“Why are you crying?”

He gestured toward town. “This isn’t enough?”

She sat down beside him.

“You had someone, didn’t you?” she said. “Before Wayward Pines, I mean.”

He made no response.

“Your wife?”

“His name—”

“His?”

“Was Paul.”

They just sat there in the road.

Breathing.

Barbara finally said, “This must have been awful for you.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t any picnic on your end.”

“You never seemed like you were really—”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

“How is this remotely your fault? None of this was our choice, Barbara. You were never married before, were you?”

“You were my first. In more ways than one.”

“God, I’m so sorry.”

“How is this remotely your fault?” Barbara laughed. “The fifty-year-old virgin—”

“And the queen.”

“Sounds like a bad movie.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“How long were you and Paul
. . . 
?”

“Sixteen years. I just can’t believe he’s dead, you know? That he’s been dead for two thousand years. I always thought I would be with him again.”

“Maybe you still will.”

“That’s nice of you to say.”

She reached over, took hold of his hand, and said, “These last five years, you’re all I’ve had, Bob. You always treated me with care. With respect.”

“I think we made it work about as well as it possibly could.”

“And we did make damn good muffins.”

Somewhere out there, gunshots echoed across the valley.

“I don’t want to die tonight, honey,” she said.

He squeezed her hand. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

BELINDA MORAN

The old woman sat in her leather recliner, the footrest extended, a dinner tray on her lap. By candlelight, she turned the cards over, halfway through a game of Solitaire.

Next door, her neighbors were being killed.

She hummed quietly to herself.

There was a jack of spades.

She placed it under the queen of hearts in the middle column.

Next a six of diamonds.

It went under the seven of spades.

Something crashed into her front door.

She kept turning the cards over.

Putting them in their right places.

Two more blows.

The door burst open.

She looked up.

The monster crawled inside, and when it saw her sitting in the chair, it growled.

“I knew you were coming,” she said. “Didn’t think it’d take you quite so long.”

Ten of clubs. Hmm. No home for this one yet. Back to the pile.

The monster moved toward her. She stared into its small, black eyes.

“Don’t you know it’s not polite to just walk into someone’s house without an invitation?” she asked.

Her voice stopped it in its tracks. It tilted its head.

Blood—from one of her neighbor’s no doubt—dripped off its chest onto the floor.

Belinda put down the next card.

“I’m afraid this is a one-player game,” she said, “and I don’t have any tea to offer you.”

The monster opened its mouth and screeched a noise out of its throat like the squawk of a terrible bird.

“That is
not
your inside voice,” Belinda snapped.

The abby shrunk back a few steps.

Belinda laid down the last card.

“Ha!” She clapped. “I just won the game.”

She gathered up the cards into a single deck, split it, then shuffled.

“I could play Solitaire all day every day,” she said. “I’ve found in my life that sometimes the best company is your own.”

A growl idled again in the monster’s throat.

“You cut that right out!” she yelled. “I will not be spoken to that way in my own home.”

The growl changed into something almost like a purr.

“That’s better,” Belinda said as she dealt a new game. “I apologize for yelling. My temper sometimes gets the best of me.”

ETHAN

The light in the distance was getting closer, but he couldn’t see a thing around him.

Tripping every few steps, he tore up his hands as he grasped for branches in the dark.

Wondering,
Could the abbies track us? By scent? Sound? Sight? All of the above?

The torchlights were close.

He could see his group in the illumination.

Ethan came out of the trees at the base of the cliff.

There was already a line of people moving like ants up the rock, the glow of torches high above like a strand of Christmas lights strung across the cliff.

Ethan had climbed this route only once before while infiltrating the Wanderers, Kate and Harold’s secret group.

Steel cables had been bolted into the rock in a series of harrowing switchbacks over man-made footholds and handholds.

A dozen people stood around the base of the cliff, waiting their turn to ascend. He looked for his family, but they weren’t there.

Hecter walked over. “This is a bad idea,” he said. “Putting children on the cables in the dark.”

Ethan thought of Ben, drove his son out of his mind.

“How many are coming?” Hecter asked.

“More than we can handle.”

Down the mountainside, Ethan could hear branches snapping.

He had a pocketful of twelve-gauge shells and he started feeding them into the magazine while he watched the edge of the forest.

With the last shell in the tube, he leveled the shotgun on the woods.

Thinking,
Not yet. Just a little bit longer please
.

Hecter tapped Ethan’s shoulder, and said, “It’s time.”

They went up the rock face, clutching the freezing cable.

By the time Ethan reached the third switchback, the forest below him was alive with screams and shrieks.

Wails lifting up through the trees.

The nearest torch was twenty feet above, but the stars were numerous and bright enough to light the rock.

Ethan glanced down the cliff as the first abby came out of the trees.

Another appeared.

And another.

Then five more.

Then ten.

Soon there were thirty of them gathered at the base.

He kept climbing, trying to focus on clutching the cables and stepping sure-footedly, but every time he looked down there were more abbies than before.

The rock went vertical.

He wondered how Theresa and Ben had fared.

Were they safe in the Wanderers’ cavern now?

Above him, a scream that plummeted in his direction.

Closer, closer, closer, closercloserclosercloser
. . .

Growing exponentially louder until it was right on top of him.

He looked up as a man rocketed past, arms flailing, eyes gaping wide with horror.

He missed Ethan by two inches and his head struck a ledge twenty feet below, the blow sending him somersaulting the remaining distance toward the forest floor in dead silence.

Jesus.

Ethan’s legs felt like liquid.

A tremor moved through his left foot.

He leaned into the rock and clutched a handhold. Shut his eyes. Let the panic course through him and burn itself out.

The terror passed.

Ethan went on, pulling himself up foot by foot on the rusted cable as the abbies ripped apart the man who’d lost his footing on the cliff.

Ethan reached the plank walkway.

Six inches wide, it traversed the face of the cliff.

Hecter was already halfway across.

Ethan followed.

The forest was now three hundred feet below.

Wayward Pines was somewhere out there, the town still dark but filled with distant screams.

On the rock below, Ethan spotted movement.

White forms climbing toward him.

He shouted to Hecter, “They’re on the cliff!”

Hecter looked down.

The abbies climbed fast, fearlessly, like the possibility of falling did not exist.

Ethan stopped, holding the cable with one hand while he tried to get a decent grip on the Mossberg.

No use.

He called out to Hecter, “Come here!”

Hecter turned awkwardly on the narrow planks and headed back toward Ethan.

“I need you to hold my belt,” Ethan said.

“Why?”

“There’s not enough room up here for me to stand and aim.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Hold the cable with one hand, grab my belt with the other. I’m going to lean out over the edge and take a clean shot.”

Hecter sidestepped the last few feet to Ethan and grabbed hold of his belt.

“I assume it’s buckled?” he asked.

“Good one. You got me?”

“I got you.”

And still it took three seconds for Ethan to steel his nerve.

He let go of the cable and slid the strap of the shotgun off his shoulder, aimed the luminous sight down the face of the cliff.

Ten abbies were making an ascent in a tight cluster. He tried to focus, to put the fear out of his mind, but he kept seeing that man falling toward him, his head cracking open on the rock.

The scream.

The silence.

The scream.

The silence.

Ethan’s stomach turned. The world seemed to rush up at him and fall away at the same time.

Get it together.

Ethan drew a bead on the leader.

The shotgun bucked him back against the cliff and the report raced across the valley, bounced off the western wall of rock, and returned.

The slug hit the lead abby.

It peeled off with a shrill screech and tumbled down the rock, crashing into four more and knocking them over like bowling pins.

The others held fast.

They had climbed to within sixty feet of the plank.

Once again Ethan leaned out over the ledge, heard Hecter groaning, and imagined the cable biting into Hecter’s fingers.

The remaining abbies had taken the hint and spread out.

He took his time shooting them down from left to right.

No misses.

Watched them plunge into the darkness, taking out a handful of others who had just begun to climb.

He was out of ammo.

“All right,” Ethan said.

Hecter pulled him back onto the plank and they hurried on, crossing the rock face until they rounded the corner at the end.

They rushed up the widening ledge into the mountain.

Ethan could hardly see a thing in the passage, and up ahead, the door to the cavern was shut.

He pounded the wood.

“Two more out here! Open up!”

The bolt slid back on the other side, hinges creaking as it opened.

Ethan hadn’t noticed the door his first time here, but now he made a careful study. It had been constructed of pine logs stacked horizontally and cemented together with an earth-based mortar.

He followed Hecter inside.

Kate shut the door after him and shot a heavy steel rod back into its housing.

Ethan said, “My family—”

“They’re here. They’re safe.”

He spotted them over by the stage, flashed an
I-love-you
sign.

Ethan surveyed the cavern—several thousand square feet with kerosene lamps hanging from wires in the low rock ceiling.

A scattering of furniture.

Bar on the left.

Stage on the right.

Both rickety-looking, as if they’d been assembled out of scrap wood. At the large fireplace toward the back, someone was already building a fire.

Looked to Ethan like only a hundred people or so, everyone huddled around torches, eyes twinkling in the firelight.

He said, “Where are the other groups?”

Kate shook her head.

“It’s only us?”

As her eyes welled up, he held her. “We’ll find Harold,” Ethan said. “I promise you that.”

The abby screams reverberated through the passage beyond the door.

“Where’s our army?” Ethan asked.

“Right here.”

He looked at a half-dozen scared-shitless people who had no business even holding weapons.

The definition of ragtag.

Ethan examined the door again. The bolt was a long piece of solid metal, half an inch thick. It spanned the five-foot wide door, which had been expertly cut to fit snugly into the arch. The housing looked durable.

Kate said, “We could all stand right outside the door. Shoot anything that tried to come down the passage.”

“I don’t like it. No telling how many of those things are coming, and no offense”—Ethan glanced at the terrified faces surrounding him—“but how many of you can shoot accurately in a pressure situation? These things don’t go down easy. Those of you with .357s? You’d better score head shots every time. No, I think we stay in here. Pray the door holds.”

Ethan turned and addressed the rest of the group. “I need everybody to move back to the far wall. We’re not out of the woods yet. Keep quiet.”

Everyone began to migrate away from the stage and the bar, grouping near the sofas against the rear wall of the cavern.

Ethan said to Kate, “We’re going to stay right here, in front of this door. Anything that gets through dies. Where’s the bag of ammo?”

A young man who worked at the dairy said, “I’ve got it right here.”

Ethan took it from him and dropped it on the floor. He knelt over it, and said, “I need some light please.”

Maggie held the torch over his head.

He rifled through ammunition, grabbed a box of two-and-three-quarter-inch Winchester slugs for himself, and then handed out backup ammo to everyone else.

Moving twenty feet back from the pine-log door, Ethan ghost-loaded the Mossberg as an unsettling hush fell upon the cavern.

Maggie and another man stood behind the shooters with torches.

Kate stood next to Ethan with a shotgun of her own, and he could hear her struggling not to break down.

Then suddenly—movement out in the passage.

Kate drew in a sharp breath, wiped her eyes.

Ethan could feel a fight coming. He glanced back, tried to find his family amid the crowd, but they had withdrawn into the shadows. He had come to terms with the possibility of his own death. There was no coming to terms with seeing an abby tear into his only son or disembowel his wife. There would be no going forward after that. Whether he lived or not, he would not survive.

If the abbies got through that door, and there were more than ten of them, everyone in the cavern would die horrible deaths.

He’d expected a scream but instead came the sound of talons clicking on the stone floor of the passage.

Something scraped across the logs on the other side of the door, and then it began to scratch around the metal handle.