Wayward Pines- Genesis Collection

by Steven Konkoly

  When Marcus broke through the trees, he nearly stopped. The rocky, tree-stump-covered expanse of land inside the fence line was crowded with men and women holding automatic rifles, shotguns and pistols. Pilcher stood in the opening of the unfinished section, directing Marcus’s boundary teams to positions along the fence. Alan, the superstructure’s head of security, stood in front of the armed crowd with Pope, sending small groups to different sections of the barrier to reinforce the trained shooters. He reached Pilcher, too stunned to speak. A few awkward seconds passed while he stared beyond the scientist at the nearly implausible scene.

  “I rallied the troops and emptied the armory when Mustin reported a possible herd. We don’t have enough diversionary grenades to restart this effort. Without the fence, we can’t build the ramp. Without the ramp, we can’t bring out the heavy equipment needed to build the containment fence. This is our last stand.”

  “It still might not be enough,” said Marcus, following Pilcher around a group of construction engineers dragging a thick electrical cable across the opening.

  “Black is trying to energize the fence without the final section. With this much firepower, we should be able to keep the abbies off the fence long enough for him to finish the job,” said Pilcher.

  “Who has control of the Claymores?”

  “Pam.”

  “Pam? Where is she?”

  “Just wave your hands over your head when you want them detonated.”

  “Got it. What about the opening? They’ll pour through.”

  Pilcher grinned and pointed toward the hatch. Both of the Humvees had returned, their M230 chain guns pointed at the twenty-five-foot gap. Jesus, this just might work. His confidence in that thought waned a few seconds later when the ground started to rumble. Murray Wagner pointed southeast and screamed at the men and women standing behind Pope and Alan

  “Abbies inbound! Find an open space on the fence and ready your weapons!”

  Marcus sprang into action, climbing the nearest portable generator. He cupped his hands and yelled at the crowd.

  “Pick your targets, and don’t waste ammunition!”

  The perimeter grew quiet as everyone settled into position along the reinforced steel barrier. He still couldn’t believe this. Pilcher must have brought forty people down with him. Including the construction crew and Marcus’s security team, more than half of the superstructure’s crew was here. Pilcher hadn’t exaggerated. The fate of Wayward Pines would be decided right here, right now.

  “Stick your weapons through the fence!” yelled Marcus, watching the line of shooters adjust their positions to accommodate his order.

  Rifle bolts clunked and magazines slammed into place as the ground rumbled beneath them. Marcus crouched, leveling his rifle at the trees. Through his 4X-magnified sight, he quickly gauged the time it would take for the gray tsunami to emerge from the trees.

  “Stand by…fire!” he yelled as the first monsters burst into the open.

  The synchronized explosion of gunfire tore into the oncoming abbies, dropping the front ranks in a crimson shower of carnage. The solid wave of beasts pressed forward without pausing, most of them falling to the solid wall of projectiles fired by the defenders of Wayward Pines. A few broke through, hitting the fence with a sickening thud before they were killed at point-blank range. The volume of gunfire held steady, keeping the bulk of the creatures from gaining ground—momentarily.

  The abbies started to fan outward as they approached, dispersing the perimeter’s concentrated gunfire. Compounding the problem, shooters up and down the line paused to reload their weapons after the initial volley of automatic fire, giving up valuable ground to the fast-moving herd. The situation was rapidly deteriorating.

  The concussive force of several 30mm projectiles drew his attention to the exposed section of fence line, where several abbies exploded from direct impacts. A lone machine-gun team situated several yards back from the opening instinctively fired a short burst into the bloodied corpses before they fell.

  The construction engineers huddled along the sides of the opening kept their heads down, feverishly working on what Marcus assumed was a power bypass to energize the fence. Watching the abbies spread along the perimeter’s northern flank, he hoped they solved the problem quickly. The 30mm chain guns had a limited supply of ammunition.

  “Marcus, the abbies are scaling the southern cliff face,” announced Wagner.

  “Copy,” he said, turning to face south.

  Bullets chipped the rock around the pale climbers, knocking several to the boulder-covered ground next to the fence. More took their place. He needed to even the odds a little. Marcus waved his hands over his head and braced himself. The Claymore mines planted fifteen yards beyond the fence detonated, clearing a deep ring of abbies around the construction site. The stunned creatures faltered briefly, giving the defenders time to reload and dispatch any remaining monsters on the fence. Marcus studied the pale throng as it regrouped and pressed its seemingly single-minded attack on the fence. They were at the mercy of Black’s engineers from this point forward. Without an electrified fence, the abbies would break through within minutes.

  “Mr. Pilcher, we have a minute before this falls apart! Maybe less!” said Marcus.

  “Faith, Marcus. Mr. Black assures me they will have the fence energized shortly,” said Pilcher.

  Shortly? Shortly didn’t sound very definitive. Not with hundreds of abbies swarming them. The 30mm cannons boomed, sending a steady stream of steel into the pack trying to reach the engineers. The gun system was incredibly effective, each three-quarter-pound projectile passing through its initial target and continuing into the tree line—dropping creatures in its path. A steady cascade of blood and body parts rained down on the engineers as the flow of abbies intensified. They never looked up from their work.

  Shooters along the fence frantically pumped bullets into a cluster of creatures approaching from the chain guns’ blind spot, killing all but one before it slammed into the fence post. Before the men could react, the abby’s hands penetrated the fence, its longest talon puncturing the closest electrician’s neck. Arterial spray pumped skyward as he tumbled forward into the opening, attracting the frenzied screeches of the herd.

  “Problem at the gate!” said Marcus, quickly realizing his request would fall on deaf ears.

  The southeastern sections of the fence bowed inward from the abbies piling up against its base. Most of the men and women on the ground had backed away from the fence, concentrating their gunfire on the monsters trying to climb the thick, reinforced steel. It was only a matter of time before one of those things made it over, jumping down into the crowd of people. Once that happened—game over.

  More abbies sailed onto the upper half of the fence, clambering over each other to reach the top. Red tracers from the boundary perimeter teams’ M240s stitched back and forth across the fence in a futile attempt to stop the inevitable. Marcus loaded another twenty-five-round magazine and settled in for the end. By the time he finished firing the bulk of the magazine, they’d be over the fence or through the open section. He glanced one last time at Pilcher. The visionary who had brought them eighteen hundred years into the future spoke into a handheld radio while firing his pistol at the creatures on the fence, his unassuming features betraying no acknowledgement of the dire circumstances.

  A surge of hope flickered in Marcus as he released the bolt on his rifle and centered the sight’s reticle on an abby high on the fence in front of him. The rifle cracked and the beast fell clear, replaced immediately by another creature reaching for the razor coil at the top of the fence. Human screams pierced the chaos as a lifeless abby plummeted to the ground inside the perimeter. A quick scan of the entire fence line confirmed that they were seconds away from a catastrophic breach.

  “Clear the fence! Away from the fence!” he heard over the gunfire.

  The crowd scurried back while dozens of abbies thrashed the thick razor coil twenty feet above them, mome
nts from jumping onto their heads.

  “Live wire! Live wire!” yelled Black from the opening, followed by a cascade of sparks along the entire length of the fence.

  The abbies clinging to the fence thrashed and shrieked. Most remained affixed to the steel structure, the muscles in their hands and feet locked into position holding the charged metal. Those ejected from the fence landed in confused heaps behind the main throng—immediately set upon by the nearest abbies. Unaware of the danger ahead, waves of abbies crashed into their fried brethren, fighting for room to die along the electric barrier.

  “Black, deactivate the fence!” yelled Pilcher over the tactical frequency. “Marcus, assemble your people at the opening to ensure we don’t have a breach. This might take a while.”

  Marcus jumped down from the generator, issuing orders to Bravo One and Bravo Two. By the time he redirected his Bravo units to the opening, Pilcher ordered Black to activate the fence—frying another wave of abbies that had nearly reached the razor coils. With the 30mm cannons firing overhead, Marcus personally arranged the squads where they could best defend the missing section of fence when the cannons stopped to reload.

  Pilcher cycled the fence on and off several times over the next twenty minutes until the bulk of the herd lay in a five-foot-high ring of pale, smoking flesh along the perimeter. The abbies kept charging the opening, but between Marcus’s machine-gun teams and the 30mm cannons, nothing came close to breaching the site. Pilcher appeared on his right, followed by Pope, who fired his AK-47 on full automatic into an abby that charged over the pile of bodies.

  “Fuckers keep on coming!” said Pope, shaking his head.

  “Indeed they do,” said Pilcher, watching the creature cascade down the slope of dead bodies and strike the fence, where it sizzled.

  “Marcus, thank you for holding the line today. Your effort outside of the fence made all of the difference. I’m sorry about your casualties today, and the other days. We’ll hold a ceremony in their honor when all of this settles.”

  “Thank you, sir, but I think everyone deserves recognition,” said Marcus, nodding at the men and women scattered throughout the construction site.

  “Everyone played their part brilliantly. I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve accomplished. Wayward Pines will succeed. I’m more sure of it today than ever before,” said Pilcher.

  “Me too, sir—but,” he said, hesitating to complete his thought.

  “But what?”

  “Protecting a compact, one-hundred-and-eighty-degree arc proved difficult enough against these things. How are we going to protect the crews building the containment fence?”

  The percussive effects of several 30mm projectiles passing overhead reinforced his point.

  “I have something in mind,” said Pilcher. “Someone in mind.”

  Chapter 29

  Adam Hassler nestled the last of the returned rifles into the rack and locked the bracket, noting the empty rack space in the armory. His latest inventory showed one hundred and ten weapons in circulation. Forty-eight pairs of rifles and pistols had been assigned to the boundary security teams. Apparently, sixteen of these pairs couldn’t be returned until they could secure a larger area outside of the hatch.

  Beyond that, Mustin’s snipers had taken all four of the arsenal’s .50-caliber sniper rifles to the mountaintop, along with the grenade launcher. Nine pistols were issued to Alan’s internal security team, Hassler included, along with Pilcher’s “inner circle.” The latter category made him nervous. The thought of Pope and Pam with access to firearms was a disturbing thought; just another glaring example of a not-so-subtle disparity between classes in the superstructure.

  The distinction came into sharpest focus during “Pilcher’s last stand.” While issuing weapons to the group hastily assembled to defend the construction site, Hassler noticed an interesting trend: Nobody critical to the continued operation of the superstructure made the trip. Sure, Pilcher had stood with his people as the abbies scaled the fence, supposedly remaining steadfast in the face of certain annihilation—but Hassler didn’t buy it. He suspected Pilcher would have been ushered to safety at the last moment, leaving the cooks, custodial staff, warehouse crew and the rest of the manual laborers to fend for themselves as the hatch lowered behind them.

  Maybe he was wrong. Doubtful. Despite Pilcher’s visionary rescue of humanity, the man was a cold-hearted pragmatist. He had no intention of giving up his obsession to raise Wayward Pines from the dirt, which meant he had zero inclination toward dying on the forest floor before that dream was realized. Pilcher had taken a calculated risk mobilizing the superstructure’s “unwashed,” and it had paid off brilliantly. Any doubt that he could restore humanity had been erased during those tense moments. Pilcher was their messiah, and he delivered another miracle. Hallelujah!

  “Beware of false prophets,” he mumbled, inserting his keycard and punching an eight-digit code into the keypad next to the door.

  He stepped into the black and white checkered hallway, once again marveling at the lack of expense spared for Pilcher’s masterpiece. Linoleum tile. Fluorescent lighting. Institutionally neutral colors covering every surface. Even after ten days of acclimation, the place left Hassler yearning for the comfort of the Seattle city morgue.

  Ten days. What he wouldn’t give to go back into suspension and wake up with Theresa. Based on the progress Pilcher’s crew had made so far, he suspected it would take far longer than two years to build Wayward Pines. Hassler pushed the thought out of his head and verified that the armory door had closed securely behind him. He turned begrudgingly toward the nearest staircase, mentally preparing to eat a few piles of nutrient-dense slop before turning in for the evening. The rest of his night would be spent staring at the quarter-empty bottle of Johnny Walker Blue on his desk—his prize for outwitting Pilcher. Only ten fucking days.

  He took a few steps, stopping to look over his shoulder at the opposite end of the hallway. Beyond that door, Pilcher’s people were preparing for something far bigger than the project at the hatch. Something epic. He’d seen monstrous, bright yellow vehicles with tires as tall as the men climbing into them. Large green tractors with massive augers attached to articulated crane arms. Unfamiliar, military-style armored transport vehicles fitted with shielded gun turrets. Up-armored Humvees with fully protected gunner kits. Welders working day and night to fashion solid steel cages to the construction vehicles. Screw that.

  Hassler was perfectly content in the armory. He’d seen exactly what they were facing on the outside and had no interest in leaving the superstructure until they’d figured out a way to remove their genetically lethal ancestors from the valley—permanently. Until then, he’d suffer the people and the food, sipping his Scotch until the work was done. Life could be worse.

  Pam stood a few feet in front of him when he turned his head.

  “Shit, Pam! You need to stop doing that. One of these days I’m going to punch you in the throat.”

  “Not with reflexes like that,” she said, spinning to deliver a near-miss kick to his head.

  He kept an impassive look.

  “You’re pretty slow for a Delta Force guy.”

  “I’ll take your appraisal under advisement,” he said, stepping into her personal space. “Do you mind? I don’t want to miss out on dinner.”

  “Better eat up fast. Pilcher wants you in Operations at nineteen hundred hours. That’s 7 PM in case your memory faded along with your reaction time,” she said, smiling perversely as Hassler walked past.

  When he reached the door, he paused to look back. She continued to stare at him with the same disturbed look. He was beginning to understand why her biological parents had dumped her into the foster care system when she was four.

  “Some memories never fade, Pam. You should know that,” he said, watching her strange glare flatline into something dead and hateful.

  “Now there’s a glimpse of the real Pam. Frankly, this look suits you better. It’s much harder to i
magine you sucking off an entire college fraternity with that look on your face,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  Chapter 30

  Arnold Pope leaned back in the conference room chair, debating whether to put his feet up on the table in front of Pilcher. He felt pretty damn good about the past few days. His role as sheriff was taking shape, formally defining his relationship with the rest of the superstructure crew and solidifying his rank within Pilcher’s inner circle. His real authority hadn’t changed since they went into suspension; only the perception of his authority had shifted—which meant everything. In their eyes, he’d gone from Pilcher’s strong-arm to the sheriff of Wayward Pines, a job critical to the future of mankind’s survival. He relished the newly appointed position, envisioning a day when Pilcher relinquished the helm and let Pope steer humanity’s course for the future. Until then, he’d keep his feet off the table. No sense in pissing off the boss.

  “Earth to Pope. What does the sheriff have to say about Mr. Leven’s proposal?” said Pilcher.

  Shit. His mind had drifted again. What did that slovenly looking freak propose? Oh yeah. He knew the right answer to this question before Leven had finished reviewing the data.

  “I think shutting down the present operation and fast-forwarding several thousand years will be perceived as giving up, especially after fighting so hard to secure the landing.”

  Pilcher turned his attention to Francis Leven, the superstructure’s mysterious steward. The unkempt, longhaired man squinted, pushing his thick-framed glasses toward the bridge of his nose.

  “Mr. Pope, have you actually spoken with any of the construction crew?” said Leven.

  “I talk to them every day,” said Pope, feigning an incredulous look.

  “I mean with them. Not to them. Big difference,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “David, I don’t think you’ll find a single person unwilling to reenter suspension and set the clock forward ten thousand years—to see if those things go away.”