Pines

by Crouch, Blake

  That’s all this is about.

  * * *

  Shot out of dreams of the war.

  For a full minute, he had no idea where he was, simultaneously shivering and burning with fever.

  Ethan sat up, reaching out in the darkness around him, and as his fingers grazed the rocky walls of the alcove, his internal GPS updated and the horror that had become his life came rushing back.

  He’d thrown his clothes off in his sleep, and they lay scattered on the stone beside him, cold and damp. He spread them out so they’d have a better chance at drying, and then scooted forward until he perched on the edge of the alcove.

  The rain had stopped.

  The night sky hemorrhaging starlight.

  He’d never had the slightest interest in astronomy, but he found himself searching for familiar constellations, wondering if the stars he saw shone from their proper stations.

  Is this the night sky I’ve always seen?

  Fifty feet below him, the river sang.

  He stared downslope toward the water, and when he saw it, his blood froze.

  Ethan’s first inclination was to scramble back into the recess, but he fought against the urge, fearing any sudden movement would draw attention.

  Son of a bitch, they followed me.

  Crossed the river after all.

  They were down in those giant pines by the river and so well hidden in shadow that he couldn’t gauge their number.

  At a sloth’s pace, inch by inch, Ethan withdrew into the recess, lowering himself until his chest was flattened against the freezing rock, now just peeking out over the lip of the alcove.

  They vanished into shadow, and for a moment, aside from the river, the world stood absolutely still, Ethan beginning to wonder if he’d actually seen anything at all. Considering what he’d been through in the last five days, rote hallucinations would’ve been a welcome return to sanity.

  Thirty seconds later, they emerged out of the shadow of the pines, onto the crushed rock at the base of the slope.

  What the hell?

  There was only one, and though it was the size of a man, it didn’t move like a man—traveling across the rock on all fours, hairless and pale under the stars.

  A metal taste—byproduct of fear—coated Ethan’s mouth as it struck him that its proportions were all wrong, arms seemingly twice their normal length.

  The thing raised its head, and even from this distance, Ethan could see its oversized nose pointed toward the sky.

  Smelling.

  Ethan wriggled himself away from the opening and as far back into the alcove as he could get, where he huddled with his arms around his legs, shivering and straining to listen for the sound of approaching footsteps or shifting rocks.

  But all he could hear was the purr of the river, and the next time he chanced a look outside, whatever he’d seen—or thought he’d seen—was gone.

  * * *

  In the few hours of darkness remaining, sleep eluded him.

  He was too cold.

  In too much pain.

  Too terrorized by everything he’d experienced to venture back into dreams.

  He lay on the rock, overwhelmed with one desire. One need.

  Theresa.

  Back home, he’d often wake in the middle of the night to feel her arm thrown over him, her body contoured to his. Even on the hardest nights. Nights he’d come home late. Nights they fought. Nights he’d betrayed her. She brought so much more to the table than he ever had. She loved at light-speed. No hesitation. No regrets. No conditions. No reservations. While he hoarded his chips and held a part of himself back, she went all in. Every time.

  There were moments when you saw the people you loved for who they really were, separate from the baggage of projection and shared histories. When you saw them with fresh eyes, as a stranger might, and caught the feeling of the first time you loved them. Before the tears and the armor chinks. When there was still the possibility of perfection.

  He had never had a clearer picture of his wife, had never loved her more—not even in the beginning—than in this moment, in this cold, dark place, as he imagined her holding him.

  * * *

  He watched the stars go dark as the sun breathed fire into the sky, and when it finally cleared the ridge on the far side of the river, he bathed in the rays of gorgeous warmth streaming into his alcove and toasting the frozen stone.

  In the new light, he could finally see the damage he’d sustained fleeing Wayward Pines.

  Bruises, bull’s-eyed with blackish-yellow hematomas, covered his arms and legs.

  Puncture wounds from Nurse Pam’s needle stabs specked his left shoulder and right side.

  He unwound the duct tape from his left leg, uncovering the place along the back of his thigh where Beverly had dug out the microchip. The pressure of the wrap had effectively stopped the bleeding, but the skin around the incision was inflamed. It would need antibiotics and a good stitch job to stave off infection.

  He ran his hands along his face, thinking how it didn’t feel like anything that belonged to him. The skin was swollen, split in places, and his nose, broken twice in the last twenty-four hours, felt excruciatingly tender. His cheeks were rippled with shallow cuts from branches whipping his face as he’d sprinted through the forest, and a lump had risen on the back of his head, courtesy of one of those rock-wielding children.

  Nothing, however, rivaled the blinding ache of his leg muscles, which he’d pushed far beyond their breaking point.

  He wondered if he even had the strength to walk.

  * * *

  By midmorning, with his clothes sufficiently dry, Ethan dressed, laced up his still-damp boots, and lowered himself over the alcove’s ledge, down to the base of the cliff.

  The descent to the river gave him a brutal taste of what the rest of the day held in store, and by the time he reached the bank, his muscles screamed.

  No choice but to rest, closing his eyes and letting the sunlight pour onto his face like warm water. At this elevation, it was wonderfully concentrated.

  There was the smell of the dried pine needles baking in the sun.

  The sweet cold water.

  The bright sound of the river tumbling down through the canyon.

  The clatter of stones shifting under the current.

  The piercing blue of the sky.

  To be warm again lifted his spirits, and to be in the wilderness, despite everything, spoke to something buried deep in the pit of his soul.

  Last night, he’d been too tired to do anything but lie motionless on the stone.

  Now, his hunger returned.

  He fished the carrots and squashed bread loaf out of his pockets.

  * * *

  Back on his feet, he scavenged until he found a pine branch in the nearby grove and broke off one end so that its length suited him for a walking stick. Spent several minutes stretching, trying to work the debilitating soreness out of his muscles, but it was a losing battle.

  He finally struck off up the canyon at a pace he thought he could maintain, but after ten minutes, the trauma of yesterday’s exertion forced him to slow down.

  A half mile felt like five.

  With every step, he was relying more and more on his walking stick for support, clinging to it like a lifeline, like his only decent leg.

  * * *

  By early afternoon, the nature of the canyon had begun to change, the river narrowing until it could only be called a stream, pines shrinking, growing fewer and farther between, and those he encountered were stunted and gnarled, dwarfed victims of punishing winters.

  He was having to stop frequently, now resting more than he was walking, and constantly out of breath, his lungs burning with oxygen deprivation the higher he climbed.

  * * *

  Near dusk, he lay sprawled across a lichen-covered rock beside what was left of the river—a six-foot-wide, fast-moving current that babbled over a bed of colorful stones.

  It had been four or five hours si
nce he’d left the alcove, and already the sun was sliding behind the canyon wall on the other side of the stream.

  When it disappeared, the temperature plummeted.

  He lay there watching the color drain from the sky, curled up against the coming chill, and the grim realization setting in that he wasn’t going to be getting back up.

  Turning over onto his side, he tugged the hood over his face.

  Shut his eyes.

  He was cold, but his clothes were dry, and he was trying to sort through a swarm of thoughts and competing emotions, the exhaustion pushing him toward the edge of delirium, and then suddenly he felt the sun beating down on his hood.

  He opened his eyes, sat up.

  He was still on that rock beside the stream, only now it was morning, the sun just peeking over the canyon wall at his back.

  I slept all night.

  He dragged himself over to the stream and drank, the water so cold it made his head ache.

  He had a carrot and a few bites of bread, and then struggled onto his feet and took a leak. He felt surprisingly better, the pain in his legs less all-consuming. Almost manageable.

  He grabbed his walking stick.

  * * *

  The canyon walls closed in and the stream dwindled into a trickle before finally disappearing altogether into the spring from which it sourced.

  In the absence of running water, the silence was blaring.

  Nothing but the clink of rocks under his boots.

  The lonely croak of a bird passing overhead.

  His own panting.

  The walls on either side of him were becoming steeper, and there were no more trees or even shrubs.

  Just shattered rock and lichen and sky.

  * * *

  By midday, Ethan had abandoned his walking stick, reduced now to moving on all fours over the steepest terrain yet. As he worked his way around a bend in the canyon, a new sound crept in over the constant noise of shifting rocks. He leaned against a boulder the size of a compact car, trying to hone in on the noise over his own ragged breathing.

  There it was.

  Man-made.

  Steady.

  A low-decibel hum.

  Curiosity pulled him forward, Ethan climbing quickly until he’d cleared the corner, the hum becoming more prominent with every step, his anticipation spiking.

  When he finally saw it, a stab of exhilaration coursed through him.

  The canyon continued its steep ascent for another mile or two, the cliff walls topped with jagged spires and serrated ridges, an unforgiving cruelty to the landscape that looked almost alien.

  Fifty feet upslope, Ethan stared straight at the source of the hum—a twenty-foot-high fence crowned with coils of razor wire that spanned sixty feet across the breadth of the canyon at its most tapered point. Signage on the fence advised:

  HIGH VOLTAGE

  RISK OF DEATH

  and

  RETURN TO WAYWARD PINES

  BEYOND THIS POINT YOU WILL DIE

  Ethan stopped five feet from the barricade and made a thorough inspection—the fence was constructed of square panels of wire, the side of each square approximately four inches long. In proximity, the hum was even more ominous, giving the fence an authentic, not-to-be-fucked-with vibe.

  Ethan caught the scent of rot in the vicinity, and it took him only a moment to spot the origin. A large rodent—probably a marmot—had made the mistake of trying to crawl through one of the squares adjacent to the ground. Looked like it had been microwaved between the wires for eight hours. Charred pitch black. Some poor bird, apparently thinking it had stumbled upon a hassle-free meal, had erred in judgment, attempted to help itself to the critter’s remains, and suffered the same fate.

  Ethan glanced up at the canyon walls.

  They were sheer, but the handholds, particularly on the right side, looked feasible for someone who was both motivated and had the nerves to handle a little exposure.

  Ethan trucked over to the wall and began to climb.

  It wasn’t the best rock, and some of the holds felt rotten in his grip, but they were plentiful and spaced closely enough that he didn’t have to put his weight on any one for more than several seconds.

  Soon, he was twenty-five feet off the ground, a weightless, tingling sensation in his gut as the electrified razor wire hummed just several feet beneath the soles of his boots.

  He traversed a ledge on solid rock, carefully sidestepping as he crossed to the forbidden side of the fence. The height rattled him, but even more, the reality of what he’d just done—this illicit boundary crossing.

  A nagging premonition in the back of his mind whispered he’d just willingly placed himself in terrible danger.

  * * *

  Ethan safely reached the canyon floor and went on, the hum of the electrified fence growing softer as his system kicked into an intensified and disconcerting state of alertness. Same thing had happened to him in Iraq—a heightened level of sensory intake always seemed to hit him in the ramp-up to missions that ultimately went to shit. His palms would start sweating, his pulse rate would accelerate, his sense of hearing, smell, taste, everything ratcheted into overdrive. He’d never told anyone, but when he lost the Black Hawk in Fallujah, he’d known the RPG was coming five seconds before it exploded.

  It was lonely country up here beyond the fence, the rock all fractured and lightning-blasted.

  Empty sky.

  The absence of clouds only underscoring the mood of absolute desolation.

  After his time in Wayward Pines, it felt surreal to be this alone again, so far removed from other people. But in the back of his mind, a new worry had begun to eat at him. The canyon appeared to climb another thousand feet to a high, wind-ripped ridge. If his strength held, he might reach it by dusk. Spend another long, cold night trying to sleep on shattered rock. But then what? He would soon be out of food, and though water still bloated his stomach from the last drink he’d taken before the stream vanished, the exertion he was putting his body through would bleed him dry again in no time.

  But even more than the looming threat of hunger and thirst, he feared what lay beyond that distant ridge at the top of the drainage.

  Miles and miles of wilderness, if he had to guess, and though he still retained a modicum of survival training from his military days, when it came down to it, he was beat to shit and tired as hell. The prospect of walking out of these mountains and back into civilization struck him as beyond daunting.

  And yet, what choice did he have?

  Return to Wayward Pines?

  He’d rather freeze to death alone out here than ever set foot in that place again.

  Ethan made his way through a section of the canyon clogged with massive boulders, carefully hopping from one to the next. He could hear water running underneath him again, but the stream was invisible, unreachable, hidden down in the black space beneath the dogpile of boulders.

  High on the left-hand wall of the canyon, something threw a sharp glint of sunlight.

  Ethan stopped and cupped his hand over his eyes and squinted toward the blinding glimmer. From where he stood in the belly of the canyon, all he could see was a square, metal surface a good ways up the wall, its proportions too perfect, too exact, to be anything but man-made.

  He jumped to the next boulder, now moving with greater speed, greater intensity, and constantly glancing up at the wall as he went along, but the nature of that reflective surface remained elusive.

  On ahead, the canyon looked more reasonable, the boulders downsized into traversable terrain.

  He was considering whether he could make the climb to that piece of metal when the crackle of falling rock disrupted his thoughts.

  For a terrifying instant, Ethan imagined a landslide heading his way, a thousand tons of rock raining down off the wall, crushing him to death.

  But the sound had originated behind him, not above, Ethan turning, glancing back the way he’d come, figuring it was just a boulder he’d moved across
and dislodged several minutes ago, now finally shifting in his wake.

  Still, there was something eerie about registering a sound other than his own labored breathing or the movement of rocks in his immediate vicinity. He’d grown so accustomed to the stillness of this isolated drainage.

  He could see down-canyon for a long ways, his eyes initially fixing on the electrified fence a quarter mile back, but then on movement much closer, inside a hundred yards. At first he thought it must be one of those marmots, but it was scrambling with a weightless, feline agility, almost too quickly from rock to rock, and as he squinted to bring it into focus, Ethan saw that it didn’t have fur at all. It looked albino, covered with pale, milky skin.

  Ethan instinctively backpedaled as he realized he’d grossly underestimated its size. It wasn’t moving over small rocks. It was moving through that field of giant boulders Ethan had just emerged from, which meant it was actually closer in size to a human being and traveling at an intimidating speed, barely even stopping between leaps.

  Ethan tripped over a rock and jumped back onto his feet, his respirations revving.

  The thing near enough that he could hear it breathing—panting—its claws clicking on the stone each time it landed on a new boulder, each leap bringing it closer to Ethan, just fifty yards away now and a sick heat beginning to ferment in Ethan’s stomach.

  This is what he’d seen night before last from that alcove above the river.

  This is what he’d dreamt about.

  But what the hell was it?

  How could such a thing exist?

  He started up the canyon as fast as he’d dared to move all day, glancing back every other step.

  The thing leaped off the last of the large boulders and came down with the grace of a ballerina, now scuttling on all fours, low to the ground like a wild boar, the grating noise of its panting getting louder as it closed the distance between them at such an alarming rate Ethan arrived instantly at the conclusion that there was no point in trying to outrun it.

  He stopped and turned to face what was coming, torn between trying to process what was happening and simply preparing himself to survive.

  Twenty yards away now, and the nearer it got, the less Ethan liked what he saw.

  It was short-torsoed.