The Last Town (The Wayward Pines Trilogy 3) (8 page)

IV

PILCHER

The town of Wayward Pines lay in ruin—buildings turned upside down, cars scattered, roads cracked in two. Even the hospital was destroyed, the top three floors sheared off. Ethan’s house in particular had seen the worst of it—crushed to pieces, the aspen trees in the backyard snapped in half and shoved through the windows.

This architectural miniature of Wayward Pines had been commissioned by David Pilcher in 2010, and he’d spared no expense for the elaborate model, whose price tag came in at $35,000. For two thousand years, it had stood under glass as the centerpiece of his office, a tribute not only to the town itself, but his own boundless ambition.

It had taken him fifteen seconds to destroy it.

Now he sat on a leather sofa, watching the wall of monitors as the real town came apart at the seams.

He’d killed power to the entire valley, but the surveillance cameras ran on batteries, and most were night vision–enabled. The screens showed what the cameras saw, and the cameras were in every room of every home. In every business. In bushes. Hidden in streetlamps. They triggered off the microchips embedded in every resident of Wayward Pines, and, my, were they popping tonight.

Almost every monitor lit up.

On one screen: an abby chasing a woman up a flight of stairs.

On another: three abbies ripping a man apart in the middle of a kitchen.

—A mob of people running for their lives down the middle of Main Street, overtaken by abbies in front of the candy store.

—An abby devouring Belinda Moran in her recliner.

—Families sprinting down hallways.

—Parents trying to shield children against a horror they were incapable of stopping.

So many frames of suffering, terror, and despair.

Pilcher took a drink from a bottle of scotch—this one from 1925—and tried to think about how to feel about this. There was precedent of course. When God’s children rebelled, God laid down a righteous beating.

A soft voice, the one he’d long since learned to ignore, whispered through the gale-force madness in his head,
Do you really believe you’re their God?

Does God provide?

Check.

Does God protect?

Check.

Does God create?

Check.

Conclusion?

Fucking A.

The search for meaning was the cornerstone of human disquiet, and Pilcher had removed that impediment. He’d given the four hundred sixty-one souls in that valley an existence beyond their wildest fantasies. Given them life and purpose, shelter and comfort. For no other reason than he had chosen them, they were the most important members of their species since
h. sapiens
had begun to walk the savannahs of East Africa two hundred thousand years ago.

They
had brought this reckoning to bear. They had demanded full knowledge, knowledge they were ill-equipped to stomach. And when faced with the truth from Ethan Burke, they had revolted against their creator.

Still, watching their deaths on the monitors wounded him.

He had treasured their lives. This project meant nothing without people.

But still—fuck them. Let the abbies have them all.

He had a couple hundred people still in suspension. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d started over, and his people in the mountain would support him through it all, unquestioningly, and with pure and total devotion. They were his army of angels.

Pilcher stood, unstable on his feet. He moved over to his desk, weaving. No one else in the superstructure knew what was happening in the valley. He’d instructed Ted Upshaw to close surveillance for the night. The reveal of what he’d done would have to be finessed.

Pilcher collapsed into his chair, lifted the phone, and dialed up dear old Ted.

PAM

She reached the fence in the dead of night. The hole Ethan Burke had dug out of the back of her left thigh radiated pain all through her leg and even up into her torso. The sheriff had cut out her microchip and left her stranded on the wild side of the fence, and up until this moment, she’d been obsessed with questioning why. Now, that curiosity was replaced as she stared up at the fence and wondered,
What the hell?

It was silent.

No electricity humming through its veins.

Stupid thing to do, but she couldn’t resist. Reaching out, she grabbed hold of the thick steel cable. Barbs bit into her palm but that was it. No jolt. There was something strangely illicit, erotic even, about touching the wire.

She let go, invigorated and wet.

Limping alongside the fence, she wondered if Burke had done this. A massive swarm of abbies had raced past her two hours ago. She’d watched them running north toward Wayward Pines from forty feet up a pine tree.

Hundreds and hundreds of them.

She quickened her pace, struggling against the burn in the back of her leg.

Five minutes later, she reached it.

The gate was open.

Locked
open.

She looked back in the direction of the dark woods through which she—and that swarm of abbies—had come. She stared at the open gate.

Was it possible?

Had the swarm pushed into the valley?

Pam jogged through the gate. It hurt like hell, but she didn’t slow down, just grunted through the pain.

Several hundred yards later, she heard the screams. Couldn’t tell if they were human or abby at this distance, only that there were many of them. She stopped running. Her leg was throbbing. She didn’t have a weapon. She was injured. And in all likelihood, a swarm of abbies had somehow entered the valley.

She was torn. The part of her psyche that whispered self-preservation urged her to make a run for the superstructure. Get somewhere safe. Regroup. Let Dr. Miter patch her up. But the part that ruled every fiber of her being was afraid. Not of the abbies. Not of any horror she might encounter in a town overrun with monsters. She was afraid she would find Ethan Burke already dead, and that was unacceptable. After what he’d done to her, there was nothing in the world she wanted more than to find that man and take him slowly apart.

Piece by agonizing piece.

TED UPSHAW

The smell of booze hit him as he opened the door to the old man’s office.

Pilcher sat behind his desk, and when he saw Ted, he smiled a little too wide; his face was red, eyes gone glassy.

“Come in, come in!”

He struggled onto his feet as Ted closed the door after him.

Pilcher had wrecked the place. Two of the monitors were smashed, and the architect’s miniature of Wayward Pines had capsized, the glass that had once covered the model town shattered across the floor, houses and buildings crushed amid the shards.

“I woke you, didn’t I?” Pilcher said.

He hadn’t actually. Ted couldn’t have slept tonight if someone had injected him full of tranquilizers. But he said, “It’s fine.”

“Let’s sit together like old friends.”

There was a thickness, a deliberation, behind Pilcher’s words. Ted wondered how drunk he actually was.

Pilcher staggered over to the leather couches. As Ted followed him, he saw that the monitors had been turned off in here as well.

They sat on the cool leather, facing the dark monitors.

Pilcher poured two healthy glasses of scotch from an expensive-looking bottle with the word Macallan on it and handed Ted the glass.

They clinked the crystal glasses.

Drank.

It was the first alcohol Ted had sipped in more than two thousand years. When he’d been homeless and drinking himself to death in the wake of his wife’s passing, old scotch like this would have been a religious experience. But he’d lost his taste for it.

“I still remember the day we met,” Pilcher said. “You were standing in the soup line of that shelter. It was your eyes that called out to me. So much grief in them.”

“You saved my life.”

The old man looked over at him. “Do you still trust me, Ted?”

“Of course,” Ted lied.

“Of course. You shut down the surveillance hub when I told you to.”

“That’s right.”

“You didn’t even ask why.”

“No.”

“Because you trust me.”

Pilcher stared into his glass at the swirling amber liquid.

“I did something tonight, Ted.”

Ted looked up at the dark screens. Felt something go ice cold in the pit of his stomach. He looked over at Pilcher as the man raised a control tablet and typed something on the touchpad.

The screens flashed to life.

As head of surveillance, Ted had spent a quarter of his life watching these people eat, sleep, laugh, cry, fuck, and sometimes—when a fête was called—die.

“I didn’t do this lightly,” Pilcher said.

Ted stared at the screens, his eyes locking on one in particular—a woman crouching in the shower, shoulders heaving with sobs as a fist of talons punched through the bathroom door.

He felt suddenly ill.

Pilcher watched him.

Ted looked over at his boss. Eyes welling up with tears, he said, “You have to stop this.”

“It’s too late.”

“How so?”

“I used our abbies in captivity to draw a swarm to the fence. Then I opened the gate. Over five hundred abbies have entered the town.” Ted wiped his eyes. Five hundred. He could barely comprehend such a number. Just fifty abbies would have been an unqualified disaster.

Ted fought to keep his tone in check.

“Think about how hard you worked to gather the people in that valley. Decades. Remember the excitement you felt every time we put a new recruit into suspension. Wayward Pines isn’t the streets or the buildings or the suspension units. It’s nothing that you built. It’s those people and you’re—”

“They turned their backs on me.”

“This is about your goddamned vanity?”

“I have several hundred others in suspension. We’ll start again.”

“People are dying down there, David. Children.”

“Sheriff Burke told them everything.”

“You lost your temper,” Ted said. “That’s understandable. Now send down a team to save whomever they still can.”

“It’s too late.”

“Not while people are alive, it isn’t. We can put them all back into suspension. They won’t remember—”

“What’s done is done. In a day or so, the rebellion in the valley will be finished, but I’m afraid one may be coming to this mountain.”

“What are you talking about?”

Pilcher sipped his drink. “You think the sheriff did this all on his own?”

Ted squeezed his hands into fists to stop the tremor that was coming.

“Burke had help from the inside, from one of my people,” Pilcher said.

“How do you know?”

“Because Burke has information he couldn’t possibly have gotten without the help of someone in surveillance. Someone in your group, Ted.”

Pilcher let the accusation sit.

Ice cracked in his glass.

“What information are you talking about?” Ted asked.

Pilcher ignored the question, held Ted’s eyes with his own. “Your group consists of you and four surveillance techs. I know your loyalty is steadfast, but what about your subordinates? Burke had the help of one of them. Any ideas who it might be?”

“Where is this coming from?”

“Ted. That is just the wrong answer.”

Ted stared down into his lap at his drink. He looked up again.

He said, “I don’t know who on my team would do such a thing. This is why you shut down surveillance?”

“You run the most sensitive group in the superstructure, and it’s been compromised.”

“What about Pam?”

“Pam?”

“It’s possible the sheriff got to her.”

Pilcher laughed, derisive. “Pam would set herself on fire if I asked her to. She’s missing by the way. Her microchip indicates she’s in town, but I haven’t heard from her in hours. I will ask you one last time—which of your men?”

“Give me the night.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Give me the night to find out who did this.”

Pilcher leaned back and regarded him with an unreadable intensity, and said, “You want to handle this yourself, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“A matter of honor?”

“Something like that.”

“Fair enough.”

Ted stood.

Pilcher pointed at the monitors. “Only you and I know what’s happening down in the valley. For now, it stays that way.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s a hard night for me, Ted. I’m grateful to have a friend like you to lean on.”

Ted tried to smile, but he couldn’t manage it. Just said, “I’ll see you in the morning.” He set his scotch glass down on a table and headed for the door.

ETHAN

Everyone went silent.

So quiet Ethan could hear the fire burning in the hearth at the back of the room.

The scratching stopped.

He heard the click-click-click of those talons again.

Retreating.

It made sense. Why would the abbies believe their prey had gone behind this door? They didn’t even know what a door was. That it was something that opened into another place. Most of them were probably still out on—

Something struck the door.

The room took in a collective gasp.

The bolt rattled in its housing.

Ethan straightened.

The door took another blow—twice as hard—as if two abbies had crashed into it at the same time.

He thumbed off the safety and glanced at Hecter, Kate, and the others.

“How many are out there?” Kate asked.

“No idea,” Ethan whispered. “Could be thirty. Could be a hundred.”

In the darkness behind them, children were beginning to cry.

Parents trying to hush them.

And the blows to the door kept coming.

Ethan walked over to the left side where the hinges attached the door to the frame. One of the rusted brass plates popped a screw.

Kate said, “Will it hold?”

“I don’t know.”

The next blow came—the hardest yet.

The entire top plate detached from the frame.

Still four more below it.

Ethan called Maggie over, and in the torchlight, they watched the housing for the bolt.

With the next collision, it shook but held.

Ethan went back to Kate and asked, “Is there another way out of this room?”

“No.”

The barrage continued, and the more the abbies hurled themselves against the logs, the angrier they seemed to get, now shrieking and screaming after every failed attempt.

Another plate broke loose.

Then another.

The end was coming. The thought actually crossed Ethan’s mind that he should go find his family now. Give them both a quick, merciful death, because once the abbies got in, their last moments of sentience would be owned by horror.

The passage outside the door went quiet.

No scraping.

No footsteps.

The cavern held its breath.

After a long moment, Ethan approached the door and put his ear to the wood.

Nothing.

He reached for the bolt.

Kate whispered, “No!”

But he slid it back as quietly as he could manage and grasped the handle.

“Maggie, bring the light.”

When she was standing behind him, Ethan pulled.

The two remaining hinges creaked loudly as they bore the full weight of the door.

The firelight brightened the passage.

It still smelled of the abbies—rot and death—but it was empty.

There were people who just sat against the rock wall and wept.

There were those who trembled silently at the horror they had seen.

Those who sat expressionless, still as stone, gazing into some private abyss.

Others plugged in.

Helped tend the fire.

Repair the door.

Organize the weaponry.

Bring food and water out of storage.

Comfort the grieving.

Ethan sat with his family on a broken loveseat at the edge of the fire. The room was warming, and Hecter played something beautiful on the piano that seemed to dial back the edge, to make everyone feel just a touch more human.

In the low light, Ethan counted their number over and over.

Kept arriving at ninety-six.

This morning, there had been four hundred sixty-one souls in Wayward Pines.

He tried to tell himself that it was possible other groups had survived. That they had somehow managed to find refuge. Someplace where the abbies couldn’t get at them. Barricaded themselves in houses or the theater. Fled into the woods. But in his heart, he didn’t believe it. He might have managed to buy in if he hadn’t peeked through that trapdoor and seen Megan Fisher in the street and all those others getting slaughtered.

No.

In the town of Wayward Pines, eighty percent of humanity had been wiped out.

Theresa said, “I keep thinking we’re going to hear someone knocking on the door. Do you think there’s a chance that some of them will make it up here?”

“Always a chance, right?”

Ben’s head lay in Ethan’s lap, the boy asleep.

“You okay?” Theresa asked.

“I suppose, considering I made a decision that sent most of this town to a violent death.”

“You didn’t turn off the fence and open the gate, Ethan.”

“No, I just invited it to happen.”

“Kate and Harold would be dead.”

“Harold probably is anyway.”

“You can’t look at it that way—”

“I fucked up, baby.”

“You gave these people their freedom.”

“And I’m sure they really had a chance to savor it as the abbies were tearing their throats out.”

“I know you, Ethan. No, look at me.” She turned his chin toward her. “I know you. I know you only did what you believed was right.”

“I wish we lived in a world where actions were measured by the intentions behind them. But the truth is, they’re measured by their consequences.”

“Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I just need to tell you, I need you to know, that I feel closer to you right now—on the brink of dying—than I have in years. Maybe ever. I trust you now, Ethan. I know you love me. I’m starting to see it like I haven’t before.”

“I do, Theresa. So much. You are
. . .
everything
.” He kissed her and she leaned into him, resting her head against the side of his shoulder.

He put his arm around her.

Soon, she was asleep.

He looked around.

The collective grief was a tangible thing. It seemed to weigh down the air with a thickness like water or dense smoke.

His hands grew cold. He dug his right one into the pocket of his parka. His fingers touched the memory shard that contained the footage of David Pilcher murdering his own daughter. Grasping it delicately between his thumb and forefinger, an H-bomb of rage blossomed in his gut.

Ted had copies of this footage as well, and Ethan had told him not to do anything with it. To stand by. But that was before the abby invasion. Did Ted know what was happening in Wayward Pines?

Ethan ran another headcount.

Still ninety-six.

Such frailty.

He thought of Pilcher, sitting in the warmth and safety of his office, watching on his two hundred sixteen flatscreens as the people he had kidnapped in another lifetime were massacred.

Voices roused him.

Ethan opened his eyes.

Theresa was stirring beside him.

The quality of the light hadn’t changed, but it felt much later. Like he’d been asleep for days.

Gently lifting Ben’s head off his lap, he stood and rubbed his eyes.

People were up and moving around.

Near the door, voices were raised.

He saw two separate groups, with Kate standing between Hecter and another man.

Both men were yelling.

He walked over, caught Kate’s eye.

She said, “We have some people who want to go outside.”

A man named Ian, who owned a shoe-repair store on Main called The Cobbler’s Shoppe, said, “My wife is out there. We were separated when the four groups were forming.”

“And you want to do what exactly?” Ethan asked.

“I want to help her! What do you think?”

“So go.”

“He also wants a gun,” Kate said.

A woman who worked in the community gardens pushed past several people and glared at Ethan. “My son and my husband are out there.”

Kate said, “You understand my husband is too?”

“So why are we hiding in here instead of rescuing them?”

Hecter said, “You’d be dead within ten minutes of leaving this cavern.”

“That’s my choice, pal,” Ian said.

“You aren’t taking a gun.”

Ethan broke in: “Hold on just a minute. This is a conversation for everyone.”

He walked into the middle of the room, and said loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Circle up! We need to talk!”

The crowd slowly converged, bleary-eyed, bedraggled.

“I know it’s been a hard night,” he said.

Silence.

He sensed anger and blame in the eyes that watched him.

Wondered how much of it was truly there, how much he imagined.

“I know you’re all worried about those who didn’t make it in here. I am too. We barely made it ourselves. And some of you may be wondering why we didn’t stop and help. I can tell you right now that if we had, this would be an empty cavern, and we’d all be dead in that valley. That’s hard to hear. As the man responsible for us being in this situation
. . .
”

Emotion reared its head.

He let the tears come, let the tremor disrupt his voice.

“From my place at the back of the line,” he said, “I saw what was happening to our people above ground. I know what these aberrations are capable of. And I think we all need to start coming to terms with a hard, hard truth. There’s a chance we’re all that’s left of Wayward Pines.”

Someone yelled, “Don’t say that!”

A man stepped into the circle. He was an officer of the fête, still dressed in black, still carrying his machete. Ethan had never exchanged words with him, but he knew where he lived, that he worked at the library. He was slim and fit, with a shaved head and faint stubble across his jawline. He also carried that whiff of unearned arrogance that seems to cling to those who crave authority for the sheer sake of power.

The officer said, “I tell you what you do. You get on your hands and knees and crawl back to Pilcher and beg the man’s forgiveness. Tell him
you
did this. Tell him
you
brought this shitstorm down on our heads all on your very own and that we want to go back to the way things were. That none of us signed up for this.”

“It’s too late,” Ethan said. “You all know the truth now. You can’t unknow it. There’s no easy way out of this.”

A short, squat man—the town butcher—pushed his way into the circle.

He said, “You’re telling me my wife and daughters are dead. That at least a dozen dear friends of mine are dead. So what are you saying we
do
about it? Hide in here like a bunch of cowards and write them off?”

Ethan moved toward him, his jaw tensing. “I am not saying that, Andrew. I am not saying we write anybody off.”

“Then what? What are we supposed to do? You pulled the wool away from our eyes. But for what? To lose most of our people and live like
this
? I’d rather be enslaved. I’d rather be safe and have my family.”

Ethan stopped a foot away from the man. He scanned all the faces, found Theresa’s. She was crying. She was sending him love. “I may have fired the opening shot,” he said, “but I didn’t turn off the fence, and I didn’t open the gate. The man responsible for the deaths of our families and our friends, for you even being in Wayward Pines in the first place, is alive and well two miles from where we stand. And my question for you is: Are
you
going to stand for that?”

Andrew said, “He’s backed by his own private army. Those are your words.”