by Blake Crouch
For a long moment, Ethan stood over Hassler on the brink of caving in the man’s skull.
Wanting to do it.
Not wanting to be the man who would.
He threw the coatrack across the living room and collapsed on the hardwood next to Hassler, his kidney throbbing.
“We’re here because of you,” Ethan said. “My wife, my son—”
“We’re here because two thousand years ago you fucked Kate Hewson and destroyed your wife. If Kate had never transferred to Boise, she never would have come to Wayward Pines. Pilcher never would have abducted her and Bill Evans.”
“And you never would have sold me out.”
“Just to be clear, you’d be dead right now if I hadn’t—”
“No, we’d have lived out our lives in Seattle.”
“You call what you and Theresa had a life? She was miserable. You were in love with another woman. You want to sit there and tell me what I did was wrong?”
“You seriously just said that?”
“There’s no right or wrong anymore, Ethan. There’s only survival. I learned that in my three and a half years wandering around that hell beyond the fence. So don’t look at me hoping to catch a glimpse of regret.”
“It’s kill or be killed now? That’s where we’re at?”
“We were always there.”
“So why didn’t you kill me?”
Hassler smiled, blood between his teeth.
“When you walked back to the superstructure from Kate’s house last night? I was there. In the woods. It was dark, and it was just you and me. I had my bowie knife, the same one I killed abbies with in hand-to-talon combat you couldn’t even fathom. You don’t know how close I came.”
Ethan felt something cold inch down his spine.
“What stopped you?” he asked.
Hassler wiped blood out of his eyes.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I think it’s because I’m not as hard as I’d like to be. See, in my head, I know there’s no right or wrong, but my heart hasn’t made that connection. My twenty-first-century hardwiring is too deep. Too institutional. My conscience intrudes.”
Ethan stared at his old boss through the mounting darkness in the living room.
“Where does this leave us?” Ethan asked.
“The best moments of my life I lived right here. With Theresa. With your son.”
Hassler groaned as he hoisted himself up into a sitting position against the wall.
Even in the low light, Ethan could see the man’s jaw beginning to swell, Hassler’s words now coming lopsided, garbled.
“I’ll walk away,” Hassler said. “Forever. One condition.”
“You think you’re entitled to a condition?”
“Theresa never hears about what really happened.”
“You’d just be doing this so she goes on loving you.”
“She chose you, Ethan.”
“What?”
“She chose you.”
Relief swept over him.
His throat ached with emotion.
“Now that it’s over,” Hassler said, “I don’t want her to know. Respect that wish, and I’ll make an impossible situation possible.”
“There is another option,” Ethan said.
“What’s that?”
“I could kill you.”
“Do you have that in you, old friend? Because if so, knock yourself out.”
Ethan looked at the cold woodstove. Into the evening light coming through the windows. Wondered how this house could ever feel like home again.
“I’m not a murderer,” Ethan said.
“See? We’re both too soft for this new world.”
Ethan got up. “You were out there for three and a half years?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“So you know more about this new world than any of us.”
“Probably so.”
“What if I were to tell you that we couldn’t stay in Wayward Pines any longer? That we needed to leave this valley and go someplace warmer, where crops could be grown? Do you think we’d have a chance?”
“Of surviving as a group on the other side of the fence?”
“Yeah.”
“That sounds like mass suicide. But if we truly have no choice? If it’s stay in this valley and die or take a chance heading south? I guess we’d have to find a way.”
On his way up to the cafeteria, Ethan stopped again at the cage of the female abby. She was sleeping, curled up in a corner against the wall, thinner, frailer even than the last time he’d seen her.
One of the lab techs who worked in the abby holding facility moved past Ethan, heading toward the stairwell.
“Hey,” Ethan called after him. The white-jacketed scientist stopped in the middle of the corridor, turned to face him. “Is she sick or what?” Ethan asked.
The young scientist flashed an ugly smile.
“She’s starving to death.”
“You’re starving her?”
“No, she refuses to eat or drink.”
“Why?”
The man shrugged. “No idea. Maybe because we made a bonfire out of all her cousins?”
The scientist chuckled to himself and continued down the corridor.
Ethan found Theresa and Ben at a corner table in the packed cafeteria. When she saw the bruises on his face, her eyes—tear-swollen and red—went wide.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Have you been crying?”
“We’ll talk later.”
Dinner consisted of packages of freeze-dried horror.
Lasagna for Ethan.
Beef Stroganoff for Ben.
Eggplant parm for Theresa.
All Ethan could think about was how much food this single meal was costing them.
One meal closer to nothing.
And no one had any concept of how fast the supplies were dwindling. Just took for granted that they could walk into this cafeteria, or down to the community gardens, or the town grocery, and find food.
Where would the civility go when it all ran out?
“You want to talk about what’s going to happen later tonight, Ben?” Ethan asked.
“Not really.”
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to see it, sweetheart,” Theresa said.
“I want to see it. This is his punishment for what he did, right?”
“Yeah,” Ethan said, “and we have to do it, you understand, because there aren’t courts anymore. No judges or juries. We have to watch out for ourselves, and that man hurt a lot of people. It has to be made right.”
After dinner, Ethan sent Ben back to their quarters and asked Theresa to take a walk with him.
“So Hassler and I had it out,” he said as they trudged up the stairs.
“Jesus, Ethan, what are you, in high school?”
Three doors down on the right-hand side of the Level 4 corridor, Ethan swiped his card at the reader and pulled open a heavy steel door.
They stepped onto a small platform.
Ethan said, “Hold onto the railing,” and pressed the up arrow button.
The platform accelerated through the rocky tube at the speed of an express elevator.
Four hundred feet straight up.
When it finally shuddered to a stop, they stepped off onto a catwalk that ran for twenty feet until it terminated at a second steel door. Ethan swiped his card again. The lock buzzed. He pulled open the door and they moved outside into a wall of shocking cold.
“What is this place?” Theresa asked.
“Discovered it a few nights ago when I was up and couldn’t sleep.”
The clouds from earlier had blown out.
The stars were stunning.
; Bright and sharp.
They stood in a path that had been carved three feet down into rock. On either side, the mountain fell away into oblivion.
He said, “I think people come up here to smoke, to get fresh air. It’s the fastest way to see actual daylight without having to take the tunnel into town. They call this trail the sunroof.”
“How far does it go?”
“All through these high peaks. If you stay with it, I’m told it winds down into the forest west of the cirque.”
They strolled the knife-edge ridge.
Ethan said, “After we beat the shit out of each other, Adam and I talked.”
“That sounds like borderline adult behavior.”
“He said you chose me.”
Theresa stopped, faced him.
He could feel the cold nibbling at the edges of his cheeks.
“It came down to a pretty simple choice for me, Ethan. Would I rather love or be loved?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Adam would do anything for—”
“So would I—”
“Will you listen? I told you I’d never been loved the way Adam loves me, and I meant that. But I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. There are times I hated myself for it. Because I felt weak. When I wished I could’ve just hardened myself to you and walked away, but I could never do it. Even after Kate. It’s like you’ve got some kind of hold on me. It’s a precious thing, Ethan, and you’d better care for it. You’ve hurt me before. Badly.”
“I know I’ve fucked up in the past. I know I haven’t treated you the way you deserved to be treated.”
“Ethan—”
“No, now it’s my turn. I ruined things. Hell, I ruined everything. With my work. With Kate. With not dealing with my shit from the war. But I’m trying, Theresa. Ever since I woke up in this town, I’ve been trying. Trying to protect you and Ben. Trying to love you the best that I possibly could. Trying to make the right choices.”
“I know you have. I see it. I see what we could be. It’s all I want. All I’ve ever wanted.” She kissed him. “You have to promise me something, Ethan.”
“What?”
“That you’ll go easy on Adam. We all have to live together in this valley now.”
Ethan stared down into Theresa’s face, resisting the urge to tell her everything that man had done. He said, finally, “I’ll try. For you.”
“Thank you.”
They walked on.
“What’s wrong, honey?” she asked.
“Um, everything?”
“No, there’s something more. Something new. You were weird at dinner.”
Ethan looked into the canyon three thousand feet below. It was only a month ago he’d had his first encounter with the abbies down there, and as harrowing as that experience had been, at least he’d known hope then. He’d still believed the world was out there. That if only he could escape this town, these mountains, his family and his life would be waiting for him in Seattle.
“Ethan?”
“We’re in trouble,” he said.
“I’m aware.”
“No, I mean we’re not going to make it. As a species.”
A meteor crossed the sky.
“Ethan, I’ve been here a lot longer than you have. It feels hopeless sometimes, and now more than ever, but we have everything we need in Wayward Pines.”
“The food’s running out,” he said. “That stuff we ate tonight? Those freeze-dried meals? There isn’t an endless supply, and once it’s gone, we’re not going to be able to grow enough food in this valley to get us through the long, hard winters. If we were farther south, we could make it work, but we’re trapped in this valley. I’m sorry to tell you this, but I don’t want to keep anything from you. No more secrets. I need you in my corner, because I don’t know what to do.”
“How long do we have?” Theresa asked.
“Four years.”
“And then what happens?”
“And then we die.”
HASSLER
He crossed the river on the east side of town, his legs numb by the time he stumbled out of the water and onto the far shore.
On all fours, he scrambled up through the pines that clung to the steepening hillside.
Up.
Up.
Up.
A hundred feet above town, the terrain went vertical, but he didn’t stop, kept fighting his way up the cliff, higher and higher.
Climbing without fear.
Without care.
He couldn’t believe he was actually scaling the suicide cliff. During that year he’d lived in town with Theresa, two people had ascended this stretch of rock and leapt to their deaths. There were plenty of other fatal options on the cliffs that surrounded Wayward Pines, but this particular precipice had the benefit of being the most sheer. No chances of accidentally bungling the jump and taking an unnecessary bounce off a ledge. If one made it to the top without falling, they could bank on an uninterrupted plummet into oblivion.
Hassler topped out five hundred feet above the valley on a long ledge.
He collapsed on the cold granite, his jaw throbbing, probably broken.
It was night and the town lay dark beneath him, paved streets glowing softly under the starlight.
His pant legs had frozen stiff.
As the chill set in, he thought about his life, and the peace he arrived at as he staggered onto his feet again was this: out of thirty-eight years, one had been magic. He’d lived in a canary-yellow house with the love of his life, and there hadn’t been a day he’d woken up beside Theresa that he didn’t know how good he had it.
He ached for more time with her, but the fact that he’d had any time at all . . .
It was enough.
Enough to cling to.
It took him a moment, but he found their home down there in the dark.
Fixing his gaze on it, he saw it not as it was, empty and dark, but rather as it had been in the soft, cool light of those summer evenings as he’d walk toward the front porch, toward everything he loved.
He stepped to the edge.
He wasn’t afraid.
Not of death. Not of pain. He’d experienced enough agony on his nomadic mission for several lifetimes, and death was something he’d long since prepared for. If anything, it held, for him at least, the promise of peace.
He bent his knees to leap.
A noise pulled him out of the moment like a rip cord.
He turned, couldn’t see much of anything in the darkness, but he realized it was the sound of someone crying.
He said, “Hello?”
The crying stopped.
A woman’s voice asked, “Who’s there?”
“Are you all right?”
“If I was do you think I’d be up here?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s a fair point. Do you want me to come over?”
“No.”
Hassler stepped back from the ledge, eased down onto the rock. “You shouldn’t do this,” he said.
“Excuse me? What the hell are you doing up here? I could tell you the same damn thing.”
“Yeah, except I actually should be up here.”
“Why? Because your life is so terrible too?”
“Do you want to hear my sob story?”
“No, I wanted to have jumped by now. I’d finally worked up the nerve when this asshole interrupted me. This is the second time I’ve climbed up here.”
“What happened the first?” Hassler asked.
“It was daylight, and I hate heights. I chickened out.”
“Why are you up here?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you as long as you don’t try to save me.”
“Deal.”
The woman sighed. “I lost my h
usband when the abbies came into town.”
“Sorry to hear that. Were you two married in Wayward Pines?”
“Yes, and I know what you’re thinking, but I loved him. I also loved this other man who’s here. Crazy thing is we knew each other in our lives before. He’s here with his wife and son, and when he came to tell me that my husband had been killed, I asked him if his family had survived.”
“Had they?”
“Yeah, but you know what? There was a part of me, a bigger part than I want to admit, that was actually sad she had lived. Don’t get me wrong, I miss my husband terribly, but I kept thinking . . .”
“If his wife had been killed, then the two of you . . .”
“Right. So on top of losing my husband, on top of the fact that I can’t be with this man I love, it also turns out I’m a shitty human being.”
Hassler laughed.
“Did you laugh at me?”
“No, I just think it’s cute that you think that’s horrible. Do you want to hear horrible?”
“Hit me.”
“In my life before, I loved a woman, but she was married to this guy who worked for me. I . . . arranged a chain of events so that her husband would be removed from the picture. See, I knew what this town was as it was being created two thousand years ago. I made certain this woman was abducted by David Pilcher, and then I volunteered to go into suspension so I could be with her when she woke up. We lived together in Wayward Pines, and she never knew she was here because of me. After a year, I was sent away on a mission beyond the fence. I was never supposed to return. Every day I was out there, it was the thought of her that kept me going, kept me breathing, putting one foot in front of the other. Against impossible odds, I made it back. I thought I’d be returning to her, to a hero’s welcome. But instead, I find that her husband is here and the town has been destroyed.”
Down in the darkness of the valley, tiny points of firelight had begun to gather on Main Street.
Watching them, Hassler said, “So I climbed up here to take my life. You thought about bad things. I did them. Does that shift things back into perspective?”
“Why are you up here?” she asked.
“I just told you.”
“No, I mean, is it because you can’t live with what you did? Or because you can’t be with her?”