by Blake Crouch
Ethan bristled.
Pilcher smelled boozy. He wore a black satin robe and looked disheveled as hell as he offered Ethan the bottle.
“No thanks.”
On one of the screens, Ethan saw the brilliant muzzle flash of the chain gun cutting down abbies in the tunnel.
On another—abbies on Main Street, lackadaisically feeding on kills from the night before, their stomachs bulging.
“Quite an end to it all,” Pilcher said.
“Nothing’s ending but you.”
“I don’t blame you,” Pilcher said.
“Blame me? For what?”
“Your envy.”
“What exactly do you think I envy?”
“Me, of course. The way it feels to sit behind that desk. To have . . . created all of this.”
“You think that’s all this is about? That I want your job?”
“I know you believe in your heart it’s about giving people truth and freedom, but the truth, Ethan, is there is nothing in this world like power. The power to kill. To spare.” He waved at the screens. “To control lives. To make them better. Or worse. If there ever was a God I think I know how he must have felt. People demanding answers they could never handle. People hating him even as they basked in the safety he provided. I think I finally understand why God went away and left the world to destroy itself.” Pilcher smiled. “And you will too one day, Ethan. After you’ve sat behind that desk for a while. You’ll understand that the people in that valley aren’t like you and me. They can’t handle what you told them last night. You’ll see.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Either way, they deserved to know the truth.”
“I’m not saying it was perfect. Or even fair. But before you came, Ethan, it worked. I protected these people and they lived the closest thing to normal lives that they could ever hope for. I gave them a beautiful town and the opportunity to have faith that all was as it should be.”
Pilcher drank straight from the bottle.
“Your fatal flaw, Ethan, is that you’re under the mistaken impression that people are like you. That they have your courage, your fearlessness, your will. You and I are exceptions, cut from the same cloth. Even my people in the mountain struggle with the fear. But not you and me. We know the truth. We aren’t afraid to look it in the eye. Only difference being, I’m aware of this fact, and it’s something you’re going to learn slowly and painfully and at great cost of human life. But you’ll remember this conversation one day, Ethan. You’ll understand why I did the things I did.”
“I’ll never understand why you turned off the fence. Why you murdered your daughter.”
“Rule long enough, you will.”
“I don’t plan on ruling.”
“No?” Pilcher laughed. “What do you think you’ve got down there? Plymouth Rock? You going to write a constitution? Start a democracy? The world beyond the fence is too cruel, too hostile. That town needs one strong man to lead.”
“Why did you turn off the fence, David?”
The old man sipped his whiskey.
“Without me, this would be a world free of our species. We’re here because of me and me alone. My money. My brilliance. My vision. I gave them everything.”
“Why did you do it?”
“You might as well say I created them. And you. And you have the gall to ask—”
“Why?”
Pilcher’s eyes suddenly burned with unchecked rage.
“Where were they when I discovered that the human genome was becoming corrupted? That humanity would become extinct in a matter of generations? When I built a thousand suspended animation units? When I dug a tunnel into the heart of a mountain and stocked a five-million-square-foot ark with enough supplies to rebuild the last town on earth? And while we’re on the topic, Ethan: Where the fuck were you?”
Pilcher’s entire body shook with fury.
“Were you there the day I emerged from suspended animation and took my crew outside to find that the abbies had taken over the world? Were you there as I walked down Main Street watching my workers frame each building? Pave each road? On the morning I called the head of suspension into this office and instructed him to wake you up so you could be with your wife and son again? I gave you this life, Ethan. You and everyone in that valley. Everyone in this mountain.”
“Why?”
He growled, “Because I could. Because I am their fucking creator, and creations don’t get to question the one who made them. Who gives them breath. And who can, at any second, snatch it all away.”
Ethan looked up at the monitors. They showed chaos in the cavern. The chain gun was empty and the guards were falling back with their AR-15s as the monsters advanced.
“I didn’t have to even let you up here. I could’ve locked the elevator. What are you going to do with me?” Pilcher asked quietly.
“That’s for the people you tried to murder to decide.”
Pilcher’s eyes misted.
As if, for a fleeting moment, he saw himself with clarity.
He looked back at his desk.
At the wall of screens.
His voice became raspy with emotion.
“It got away from me,” he said, and then he blinked, a hardness returning to those small black eyes, like water freezing over.
Pilcher came at Ethan with a short-bladed fighting knife, a sudden, lunging stab aimed straight at Ethan’s gut.
Ethan deflected Pilcher’s wrist, the blade only grazing his side.
Rising to his feet, he rained down a savage left hook that snapped Pilcher’s head around and cracked his cheekbone, the force of the blow driving him off the couch, his head smashing into the edge of the coffee table.
Pilcher shivered out on his back and the knife slipped out of his grasp, clattering to the hardwood floor.
VII
HASSLER
SECRET SERVICE HQ
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
1,814 YEARS AGO
Hassler enters his corner office in the Columbia Center, happy to see Ethan Burke already seated across from his desk. By his watch, he’s five minutes late. Burke probably arrived five minutes early, which means he’s been waiting at least ten minutes.
Good.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Hassler says as he walks past his agent.
“Not a problem.”
“Imagine you’re wondering why I pulled you off that Everett thing.”
“We’re close to an arrest.”
“That’s good to hear, but I have something more pressing for you.”
Hassler takes a seat and studies Ethan across the desk. He isn’t wearing his black-and-whites today. His surveillance outfit is a gray jumpsuit, the shoulders still damp from the late-morning drizzle. He can just see the outline on Ethan’s left side of his concealed shoulder holster.
It crosses Hassler’s mind that he can still pull the plug on this. Until the words leave his mouth, he hasn’t committed a crime.
In his years in law enforcement, interrogating criminals, he’s always hearing about the nebulous line between right and wrong. They were only stealing for their family. They’d only intended to do it once. And his favorite: they didn’t even realize they’d crossed a line until they were deep into enemy territory on the other side, with no hope of ever getting back.
But as Hassler sits on this side of the desk, this side of the line, all that conjecture on the ambiguous nature of right and wrong feels like bullshit.
He sees his choice with crystalline clarity.
If he sends Ethan on this assignment, he has crossed the line forever.
No coming back.
If he ejects out of this entire enterprise, lets Ethan go back to his case in Everett, he stays a good guy who almost did a very bad thing.
Nothing confusing here. No gray area from his perspective.
“Sir?” Ethan says.
Hassler pictures Theresa, a couple years back at the company picnic. Thinks of Ethan flirting with Kate while his wife cried by herself on the shore of Lake Union.
Theresa’s fears about Kate and Ethan were borne out last year when Kate put in an abrupt transfer request for Boise, Idaho. Ethan cheated on Theresa with his partner, and everyone knew it. He humiliated his wife, and a woman like Theresa deserves so much better.
“Adam?” Ethan says.
Hassler lets out a breath as rain ticks on the window behind him.
He says, “Kate Hewson is missing.”
Ethan leans forward in the chair. “For how long?”
“Four days.”
“She went missing on the job?”
“Her partner’s missing too. Guy named Evans. You and Kate had a . . . special relationship, right?”
Ethan doesn’t bite, just stares, intense.
“Well, I just figured you’d want to take on the search for your old partner.”
Ethan stands.
“Boise is e-mailing the case file,” Hassler says. “We’re booking you on a flight out of Sea-Tac first thing. Tomorrow morning, you’ll meet up with Agent Stallings in the Boise field office and the two of you will head north to the last place anyone heard from Kate.”
“Where’s that?”
“Little town called Wayward Pines.”
Hassler watches Ethan leave.
He’s done it.
Set it all motion.
And the weird thing is, he doesn’t feel any different. No regret, no fear, no anxiety.
If there’s one overriding emotion, it’s relief.
Spinning around in his chair, he stares out his window at the gray, wet gloom of downtown Seattle, the water droplets beading and running down the glass.
From his office on the thirty-first floor, he can see the building where Theresa works as a paralegal. Imagines her sitting in her lifeless cube, typing dictation.
He doesn’t know how exactly, but he will have her one day. He’ll love her like she’s meant to be loved. Somehow, and this is the biggest mystery of his entire existence, she has become the only thing that matters in his world.
Flipping open his prepaid cell phone, he dials.
David Pilcher answers, “Hello?”
“It’s me,” Hassler says.
“I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever hear from you again.”
“He’s coming to you tomorrow.”
“We’ll be ready.”
Hassler closes the cell, takes out the battery, and breaks the phone in half. He places the two pieces in the Styrofoam container at the bottom of his trash can that holds the remnants of yesterday’s lunch.
THERESA
Theresa and Ben reached the edge of the forest as the sun dipped behind the distant peaks.
She whispered to her son, “Wait here.”
Moving on, Theresa crawled through a grove of scrub oak, the dead leaves crunching too loudly under her knees.
Where the oaks ended, she peered through the branches.
They had reached the outskirts of Wayward Pines but had somehow traversed the entire forest to the north side of town. The streets that Theresa could see appeared empty. The houses dark. And not a murmur to be heard.
She glanced back at Ben, waved him over.
He crawled noisily through the leaves and squatted down beside her.
Putting her mouth to his ear, she whispered, “We need to travel ten blocks.”
“Where are we going?”
“Sheriff’s station.”
“Walk or run?”
“Run,” Theresa whispered. “But take a few breaths first, fills those lungs up with air.”
She and Ben both drew in deep pulls of oxygen.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Ready.”
Theresa scrambled out of the thicket and climbed to her feet, then turned and helped Ben up off the ground. They stood in the backyard of a Victorian she recognized—she’d sold this house to a young, expecting couple three months ago after their good behavior in town had been rewarded with an upgrade to a larger, nicer home.
What had been their fate these last twenty-four hours of hell?
Most front yards in Wayward Pines were enclosed by white picket fences, so she and Ben jogged up the sidewalk.
The valley was going dark.
Night always seemed to set in a little too quickly once the sun had gone behind the mountains, and considering there was no power in the entire valley, this would be a black evening.
They were coming up on the first dead body in the street.
Theresa looked back at Ben, and said, “Don’t look, honey.”
But she didn’t take her own advice.
The good news was that it had been eviscerated so completely it looked less like a human being than a pile of guts and bones. A buzzard roosted on the ribcage, glutting itself.
They reached the intersection of First Avenue and Eleventh Street.
Theresa could see the tall pine trees in the distance that soared out of the front lawn of the sheriff’s office.
“Almost there,” she said. “Block and a half to go.”
“I’m tired.”
“I am too, but let’s finish strong.”
At the intersection of First and Thirteenth, Ben whispered, “Mom!”
“What?”
“Look!”
Theresa glanced back.
Three blocks down Thirteenth Street, two pale forms were running on all fours in their direction.
“Sprint!” Theresa screamed.
They accelerated, a surge of adrenaline-boosting power and speed. She leapt over the curb and raced up through the trimmed grass toward the entrance to the sheriff’s office.
Once inside, Theresa stopped and looked back through the glass doors toward the street.
“Did they see us come in here?” Ben asked.
The first abby hit the intersection at full speed, and without missing a beat, altered its course, now heading straight for the sheriff’s office.
“Come on!” Theresa wheeled around and bolted through the lobby.
The farther they moved away from the entrance, the darker it got.
Crossing the threshold, she turned the corner into Ethan’s office, saw the gun cabinet wide open, ammunition spilled across the floor, several rifles left behind on the desk.
The bottom cabinets of the gun case were open too.
She reached inside, pulled out a large pistol, pointed it at the wall, and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. The safety was on or it wasn’t loaded or both.
“Hurry, Mom!”
She grabbed a revolver out of the case but it was empty, and she didn’t even know how to break the cylinder open to load it assuming she could even match up the right ammo. From where she crouched by the gun case, there were at least half a dozen different sizes of cartridges scattered across the floor beneath her feet.
“Mom, what are you doing?” Ben asked.
This wasn’t going to work. They were out of time, and despite being married to a Secret Service agent, she didn’t know the first thing about firearms.
“New plan,” she said.
“What?”
She jerked open Ethan’s desk. It had to be there. His first week on the job, Ethan had given her a tour of this place, including locking her into the single jail cell as he swung the key on his finger by the carabiner it was attached to, smirking as he drawled, “Unless you can think of some way to bribe the sheriff, looks like you’re spending a night in lockup, Mrs. Burke.”
She’d seen him return that key to this middle desk drawer, and now she reached all the way to the back, fingers desperately searching.
There.
She felt the carabiner, pulled the key out, and rushed around the desk to Ben.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“Just follow me!”
They tore back down the hallway.
An abby screamed outside.
“They’re here, Mom!”
As they crossed the lobby, Theresa glanced toward the entrance, saw the pair of abbies running up the walkway lined with baby pine trees, seconds away from entering.
She shouted, “Faster, Ben!”
They turned down another dark hallway.
At the far end, Theresa saw the black bars of Wayward Pines’s only jail cell.
First time she’d seen it, it had reminded her of the cells in The Andy Griffith Show. Something almost quaint about those vertical bars. The single bed and the desk inside. The kind of place where the Saturday-night drunks had a standing reservation.
Now, the cell looked like a life raft.
The hallway opened up at the end, the fading evening light slanting in through a high window.
Theresa slammed hard into the cell bars as the abbies crashed through the glass doors into the station.
She clutched the key, worked it into the lock.
Talons clicked down the dark hallway behind them.
One of the abbies shrieked.
The dead bolt turned.
Theresa opened the door, and screamed, “Get in!”
Ben rushed into the cell as the first abby launched out of the corridor.
She stepped in, jerked the door closed, and locked it a half second before the abby rammed the bars.
Ben screamed.
As the first abby picked itself up off the floor, its partner crawled out of the hallway.
It was the first time Theresa had seen an abby up close.
The one that had crashed into the cell was huge and covered in gore.
Death emanated off its blood-soaked skin.
Ben’s back was up against the wall, his eyes gone wide, a puddle forming under his feet.
“Can they get us in here?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
When the second abby collided with the bars, the entire structure shook.