The Last Town

by Blake Crouch

  “They’re there right now?”

  “Yes, and—”

  Ethan took off running up Tenth Street, maintained a full sprint for six blocks until he rushed into the sheriff’s station, gasping for breath.

  “Theresa!” he shouted.

  “Ethan?”

  He shot down the hallway toward the cell at the north end of the building, and when he saw his wife and son alive behind the bars, his eyes filled with tears.

  Theresa fumbled with the key, turned the lock.

  Ethan pushed the door open and embraced her, kissing her face, her hands, like it was the first time he’d ever touched her.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” he said.

  “You almost did.”

  Ben nearly tackled him.

  “You okay, buddy?”

  “Yeah, Dad, but we almost died.”

  Gunshots started up again, several blocks away.

  “You brought the cavalry,” Theresa said.

  “I did.”

  “Have you rescued a lot of people?”

  “There’s a group in the basement of the school that’s going to be okay. A security team is fanning out through town right now, killing everything that isn’t human, saving whoever else they can. Why didn’t you and Ben stay in the cavern?”

  “The abbies came back,” Ben said. “A lot of people stayed, but Mom and I found another way down the cliffs.”

  “Those who stayed, I don’t think they made it,” Theresa said.

  Through the bars, Ethan noticed Pam, dead on the floor. “She found us here last night,” Theresa said. “We were locked in the cell, with no weapons. She was going to kill us.”

  “Why?”

  “To hurt you.” Theresa seemed to shudder at the memory of it. “Adam Hassler saved us,” she said.

  “Did you know he was here?” Ethan asked.

  “No.”

  The chain gun started up again.

  Ethan pulled out his radio, and said, “Burke here. Over.”

  Alan’s voice responded: “Yeah, go ahead? Over.”

  “Can you send a truck up to the sheriff’s station? I found my family. I want to get them someplace safe.”

  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.”