Wayward (The Wayward Pines Series, Book Two)

by Blake Crouch

  He took his time filling the bowl.

  Then tamped it down with his finger, making sure each sprig was lovingly nestled.

  The tobacco took the flame beautifully.

  He dragged on the stem.

  God, the smell.

  Smoke clouding around his head.

  He leaned back against the trunk of what he hoped was the last tree he would ever have to sleep in.

  The sky had turned pink.

  You could see the color of it on the river.

  He smoked and watched the moving water and felt, for the first time in ages, like a human being.

  23

  At 8:00 p.m., Ethan was back behind his desk in the station.

  His phone rang.

  When he lifted the receiver, Pilcher said, “Doctor Miter is more than a little angry with you, Ethan.”

  The image of Pilcher climbing up on that autopsy table and stabbing his daughter surfaced in the back of Ethan’s mind.

  You monster.

  “Do you hear that?” Ethan asked.

  “Hear what?”

  For five seconds, Ethan was silent on the line. “That’s the sound of me not giving a fuck.”

  “You’re still unchipped, and I don’t like that.”

  “Look, I didn’t feel like going under the knife again so soon. I’ll come up to the mountain tomorrow first thing and get it over with.”

  “You haven’t run into Pam, have you?”

  “No, why?”

  “She was supposed to be in the mountain thirty minutes ago for a meeting. Her signal still shows her down in the valley.”

  After returning to town, Ethan had walked to Main Street and slipped Pam’s bloody microchip into the purse of a woman he passed on the sidewalk. Sooner or later, Pilcher was going to start studying camera feeds. When Pam’s chip pinged a camera but Pam herself was mysteriously absent, Pilcher would know something had happened.

  “If I see her,” Ethan said, “I’ll tell her you’re looking for her.”

  “I’m not too worried. She tends to go on walkabouts from time to time. At the moment, I’m sitting in my office with a bottle of very nice scotch, watching my wall of screens, ready for the show to begin. Do you have any questions?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve looked over the manual? You understand the sequence of calls? The instructions you’re about to give?”

  “Yes.”

  “If Kate and Harold are killed in the forest, if they’re killed anywhere other than Main Street, center of town, I’m going to hold you personally responsible. Keep in mind they have underground support, so give the first wave of officers a little extra time.”

  “I understand.”

  “Pam delivered the phone codes to your office earlier in the day.”

  “I’ve got them here on my desk beside the manual, but you can see that, can’t you?”

  Pilcher just laughed.

  “I know your history with Kate Ballinger,” he said, “and I’m sorry if that’s going to put a shadow over tonight for you—”

  “A shadow?”

  “—but fêtes don’t come along all that often. Sometimes a year or two passes between them. So in spite of everything, I hope you’ll try to enjoy yourself. Much as I hate them, there’s something truly magic in these nights.”

  In his previous life, Ethan had developed the bad habit of flipping off the phone when he didn’t like the person or the message on the other end of the line. He somehow, and wisely, found the strength to restrain himself.

  “Well, I’ll let you go, Ethan. You’ve got lots to do. If you don’t have too bad of a hangover in the morning, I’ll send Marcus down to pick you up. We’ll have breakfast, talk about the future.”

  “Looking forward to it,” Ethan said.

  Belinda had gone home.

  The station was silent.

  It was 8:05 p.m.

  It was time.

  Hecter Gaither’s piano came through the tube radio beside the desk. He was playing the Rimsky-Korsakov edition of A Night on Bare Mountain. The frantic and terrifying section had concluded, and he was entering the slow, calming-down movement that conjured up the feeling of daybreak after a night in hell.

  Ethan’s thoughts were with Kate and Harold.

  Were they sharing a quiet dinner at this very moment, with Gaither’s piano in the background?

  Utterly blind to what was about to happen?

  Ethan picked up his phone and opened the folder Pam had left with Belinda.

  He looked at the first code and dialed.

  A female voice answered, “Hello?”

  There was a ping.

  The ringing continued.

  Each time someone answered, there was another ping.

  Finally, a voice that sounded computer-generated said, “All eleven parties are now on the line.”

  Ethan stared down at the page.

  The script had been typed out for him beneath the code.

  He could still just hang up.

  Not do this.

  There were so many ways for it all to go so badly.

  None of the ten residents of Wayward Pines on the other end of the line breathed a single word.

  Ethan began to read: “This message is for the ten officers of the fête. A fête has been scheduled to begin in forty minutes. The guests of honor are Kate and Harold Ballinger. Their address is Three-Forty-Five Eighth Avenue. Make your preparations immediately. Of critical importance is delivering Kate and Harold to the circle at the corner of Eighth and Main alive and unharmed. Do you understand what I’ve just said to you?”

  A series of yeses tripped over one another coming through the line.

  Ethan hung up the phone and started the timer on his watch.

  The officers lived for the fête.

  They were the only residents allowed to keep actual weapons in their homes—machetes issued by Pilcher. Everyone else resorted to makeshift instruments of death—kitchen knives, rocks, baseball bats, axes, hatchets, iron pokers from a fireplace set, anything with heft, a point, or an edge.

  He had wondered all afternoon what this block of time would feel like—the forty minutes between setting everything in motion and making that final phone call.

  And now that he was in it, it screamed past with unimaginable velocity.

  He wondered if the last meal of a death row inmate felt something like this.

  Time moving at the speed of light.

  Pulse rate accelerating.

  An eerie, emotional review of all that had led to this moment.

  And then he was watching the last ten seconds wind down on his watch, wondering where the time had gone.

  He silenced the alarm.

  Lifted the phone.

  Punched in the second code.

  That same computer-generated voice advised, “Please record your message after the tone.”

  He waited.

  The tone came.

  He read off the second script: “This is Sheriff Ethan Burke. A fête begins now. The guests of honor are Kate and Harold Ballinger. They are to be caught, brought unharmed to Main and Eighth…” He struggled with the final words. “And executed in the circle.”

  After a long pause, that CG voice said, “If you are satisfied with your message, press one. To review your message prior to sending, press two. To rerecord your message, press three. For all other options, press four.”

  Ethan pressed one and shelved the phone.

  He got up.

  On his desk, the nickel plating of the Desert Eagle gleamed under the lamp.

  He reloaded and holstered it and walked over to the closet where he took down the headdress and the bearskin cloak.

  Three steps from the door, the ringing started.

  The first one bled through the radio.

  The piano playing stopped.

  He heard the bench squeak—Gaither standing.

  The man’s footsteps trailing away.

  The sound of him lifting the ph
one.

  Saying, “Hello?”

  Then Ethan’s voice—the message he had just recorded—came quietly through the speakers.

  Gaither whispered, “Oh God,” and then the radio transmission cut to static.

  Ethan moved down the hallway, thinking only of Kate.

  Did your phone ring?

  Did you answer it and listen to my voice ordering your death?

  Do you think that I’ve betrayed you?

  He passed Belinda’s desk, made his way through the dark lobby.

  Outside, there was no moon, just a sky chock-full of stars.

  He’d heard this sound before, as his own fête was beginning, but tonight it seemed more sinister because he fully understood the implications.

  Hundreds and hundreds of telephones simultaneously ringing—an entire town receiving instructions to murder one of its own.

  For a moment, he just stood listening with a kind of horrified wonder.

  The sound filled the valley like haunted church bells.

  Someone ran past on the street.

  Several blocks away, a woman screamed, though whether from excitement or pain, he couldn’t tell.

  He walked down to the sidewalk and peered through the large glass windows of the Bronco. They were tinted, and considering the only light source was a streetlamp across the road, it was impossible to see anything inside.

  Carefully, he opened the driver-side door.

  No noise.

  No movement.

  He tossed the cloak and headpiece into the passenger seat and climbed in behind the wheel.

  It was like driving through his old neighborhood in Seattle on Halloween night.

  People everywhere.

  On the sidewalks.

  In the streets.

  Staggering around clutching open mason jars.

  Torches.

  Baseball bats.

  Golf clubs.

  The costumes had been ready and waiting.

  He cruised past a man in an old bloodstained tuxedo, carrying a two-by-four carved down into a handle at one end, the other embedded with shards of metal like a mace.

  The houses had all gone dark, but there were points of light appearing everywhere.

  Flashlights sweeping through bushes and alleyways.

  Cones of light shining into trees.

  Even from behind the wheel, Ethan could see the divisions in the gathering crowd.

  How some people saw the fête as nothing more than a chance to dress up, get drunk, go a little crazy.

  How others carried an angry purpose in their visage—a clear intent to do harm, or at the very least, drink their fill of watching violence done.

  How some could barely stand it, tears running down their face as they moved toward the center of the madness.

  He kept to the side streets.

  Between Third and Fourth, the headlights struck a pack of children thirty strong running across the road, bubbling with deadly laughter like hyenas, all costumed, knives gleaming in their little hands.

  He kept a lookout for the officers—they’d be dressed in black and wielding machetes—but he never saw them.

  Ethan turned onto First, headed south out of town.

  In the road beside the pastures, he stopped the Bronco.

  Turned off the car, stepped outside.

  The phones had stopped ringing, but the noise of an assembling crowd was growing.

  It dawned on him that it was in this exact spot, four nights ago, that he’d discovered Alyssa Pilcher.

  God, how quickly it had all come to this.

  Wasn’t quite time for him to make his appearance, but soon it would be.

  Are you still running, Kate?

  Have they caught you?

  Are they dragging you and your husband toward Main Street?

  Are you afraid?

  Or on some level, have you been long prepared for this?

  Ready for this nightmare to finally end?

  On the outskirts of Wayward Pines, it was cold and dark.

  He felt strangely isolated.

  Like standing outside a stadium and listening to the noise of a game.

  In town, something exploded.

  Glass bursting.

  People cheering.

  He waited fifteen minutes, sitting on the hood of the Bronco with the warmth of the engine coming through the metal.

  Let them gather.

  Let them go mad.

  Nothing would be done without him.

  No blood would be spilled.

  When Pam opened her eyes, it was dark.

  She was shivering.

  Her head throbbing.

  Left leg on fire, like something had ripped a chunk out of it.

  She sat up.

  Where the fuck was she?

  It was freezing and dark and the last thing she remembered was leaving the hospital after her final therapy session of the day.

  Wait.

  No.

  She’d spotted Ethan Burke’s Bronco heading south out of town. Followed him on foot…

  It all came back.

  They’d fought.

  She’d lost apparently.

  What the hell had he done to her?

  When she stood, the pain in her leg made her cry out. She reached back. A large piece of her jeans had been cut away, and a nasty, open wound oozed down her left thigh.

  He’d cut out her microchip.

  That fucking motherfucker.

  The rage hit like a shot of morphine. She felt no pain, even when she started running away from the fence, back toward town, faster and faster through the dark forest, the electrified hum dwindling into silence.

  The sound of screams in the distance stopped her.

  Abby screams.

  Many, many abby screams.

  But something wasn’t right.

  How could there be screams coming from straight ahead?

  Wayward Pines lay straight ahead.

  In fact, she should’ve reached the road by—

  Shit.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  She didn’t know how long she’d been running, but she’d been running hard, running right through the pain. She’d come a mile at least from the fence.

  Not far ahead, in addition to the screams of what sounded like a massive abby swarm, she heard movement coming her way—limbs breaking, sticks snapping.

  And she could swear she even smelled them, an eye-watering, carrion stench growing stronger by the second.

  In all of her years, she had never wanted to cause someone pain so badly.

  Ethan Burke hadn’t just cut her microchip out.

  He’d somehow stranded her on the other side of the fence, out in the mean, wild world.

  Ethan climbed back into the Bronco, fired up the engine, floored the accelerator.

  Tires squealed on the pavement as he launched forward.

  He sped into the forest, took the big looping curve that brought him back on a trajectory toward town.

  The speedometer read eighty as he blasted past the welcome sign.

  He took his foot off the gas, let the RPMs die.

  On Main Street now, and still a quarter mile from his destination, but already he could see flames in the distance, the buildings all aglow with firelight and the kinetic shadows of the crowd.

  He passed the hospital.

  Four blocks from the intersection of Eighth and Main, he was steering around people in the road.

  Something had been thrown through the storefront glass of The Sweet Tooth and kids were looting the candy.

  This was all acceptable and expected.

  The crowd became denser.

  An egg broke across the passenger-side window, yolk running down the glass.

  He was barely moving now, people constantly in the way.

  Everyone costumed.

  He steered through a group of men dressed up in drag, lipstick garishly applied, wearing their wives’ bras and panties over long johns, one
of them armed with a cast-iron skillet.

  An entire family—including children—had ringed their eyes with dark eye shadow and painted their faces white to resemble the walking dead.

  He saw devil’s horns.

  Vampire teeth.

  Fright wigs.

  Angel wings.

  Top hats.

  Sharpened canes.

  Monocles.

  Capes.

  Vikings.

  Kings and queens.

  Executioner masks.

  Whores.

  Now the street was wall-to-wall.

  He laid on the horn.

  The sea of people begrudgingly parted for him.

  Inching along between Ninth and Eighth, he saw other storefronts vandalized, and up ahead—the source of the flames.

  People had pushed a car into the middle of Main and set it on fire. Its windows now littered the pavement, shivers of glass glittering in the firelight, flames licking out of the windshield, the seats and the dashboard melting.

  Above it all, the traffic signal cycled on obliviously.

  Ethan shifted into park and killed the engine.

  The energy on the other side of the windshield was dark and volatile—an evil, living thing. He studied all the ruddy faces in the firelight, eyes glassy with whatever bathtub gin had been stockpiled and passed around.

  The strangest thing was that Pilcher had been right. Clearly, the fête spoke to them. Met some deep, consuming need.

  He glanced into the back of the Bronco and checked his watch.

  Soon.

  Wool padding had been stitched into the inside of the headpiece, and it fit him snugly. He reached over and locked the passenger door, although he doubted that would make any difference in the end. Grabbing the stinking cloak and the bullhorn, he opened his door, locked it, and stepped out into the fray.

  Broken glass crunched under his boots.

  The smell of liquor spiced the air.

  He donned the cloak.

  Pushed his way into the crowd.

  People around him began to clap and cheer.

  The farther he ventured toward the traffic signal, the louder it grew.

  Applause, shouts, screams.

  And it was all for him.

  They were calling his name, slapping his back.

  Someone thrust a jar into his right hand.

  He went on.

  Bodies packed so tightly it was almost warm between them.