Pines

by Crouch, Blake

  Ethan emerged out of the chute squinting against the flash of brilliance now just a few feet above his head.

  He was at least a hundred feet above the canyon floor, and his stomach churned. From his new vantage point, he could now see that the opposite wall climbed another five or six hundred feet to a razor ridge, which in itself looked impassable.

  If his wall did the same, he might as well jump off now, because he didn’t have it in him to climb another hundred feet, much less five.

  The two remaining creatures on the wall snapped him out of the despair. Instead of following the others up the chute, they had climbed around, one on each side—slower going, but they were still alive and now thirty feet below Ethan.

  He reached up and grabbed a ledge under the shiny metal, got both elbows onto the widest shelf of rock he’d seen, and hauled himself up, face-to-face with a steel vent protruding several inches out of the rock. It was square, approximately twenty-four inches across, the blades of a fan spinning counterclockwise directly behind it.

  Talons clicked on the rock below.

  Ethan gripped the sides of the vent, pulled.

  It didn’t budge—it had been welded to the duct.

  He stood up on the ledge and ran his hands over the surface of the wall until he came to what he was after—a large, twenty-pound wedge of granite that looked poised to fall.

  He lifted it and smashed it down on top of the vent where it joined the duct.

  The alloy disintegrated, the upper left-hand edge of the vent popping loose.

  The creatures were ten feet below him now, so close he could smell the decay of their last kill wafting off them like some savage cologne.

  He raised the rock again, brought it down in a crushing blow to the right-hand corner.

  The vent snapped free and clanged down the cliff, bouncing off the rock and nearly striking one of the creatures on its descent.

  All that stood between Ethan and the darkness of a ventilation shaft were the spinning blades of the air intake.

  He rammed the rock into them and brought their revolutions to a halt.

  Three hard blows completely detached the unit from its mount, Ethan reaching in, grabbing it by the blades, and slinging it over the cliff.

  He picked up the rock, held it high, and dropped it on the closest creature as its talons reached for the ledge.

  It fell screeching.

  Its partner watched until it hit the ground, and then looked back at Ethan.

  Ethan smiled, said, “You’re next.”

  The thing studied him, its head tilting like it could understand or at least wanted to. It clung to the rock just below the ledge, within easy reach, Ethan waiting for it to make its move, but it held position.

  Ethan spun around, searching the cliff wall within reach for another loose rock and coming up empty.

  When he turned back, the monster was still perched on the wall.

  Settling in.

  Ethan wondered if he should climb on until he came across another sizeable rock.

  Bad idea. You’d have to down-climb to get back to this ledge.

  Ethan crouched, unlaced his left boot. Pulled it off, and then did the same with his right.

  He held it—not nearly the heft of a rock, but perhaps it could do the job. Grasping it by the heel, he made a dramatic show of cocking back his arm as he stared down into the monster’s milky eyes.

  “You know what’s coming, don’t you?”

  Ethan feigned a throw.

  It didn’t flinch and come off the rock as he’d hoped, just pressed in closer to the wall.

  The next time wasn’t a fake, but Ethan threw so hard the boot sailed over the creature’s head and took an uninterrupted fall into the canyon.

  He lifted the other boot, took aim, threw.

  Direct hit to the face.

  The boot bounced off and tumbled away as the creature, still clinging to the wall, looked up at Ethan and hissed.

  A visage of murderous intent.

  “How long can you hold on, you think?” Ethan asked. “You must be getting tired.” He reached down, pretending to offer a hand. “I’ll help you the rest of the way. You just have to trust.” The way it watched him was unnerving—a definite intelligence all the more frightening because he couldn’t know how deep it went.

  Ethan sat on the rock.

  “I’ll be right here,” he said. “Until you fall.”

  He watched its heart beating.

  He watched it blinking.

  “You are one ugly motherfucker.” Ethan chuckled. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist. It’s from a movie. Seriously, what the hell are you?”

  Fifteen minutes crept by.

  Late afternoon now.

  The sun beginning to drop, the floor of the canyon already in darkness.

  It was cold up here on the rock.

  A few clouds streaming overhead, but they were inconsequential and swallowed up in all that crystal blue like afterthoughts.

  The five talons on the creature’s left arm began to quiver, rattling against the microscopic handhold, and something in its eyes had changed. Still plenty of rage, but now an added element—fear?

  Its head swiveled, surveying all the rock within reach.

  Ethan had already made the same inspection and arrived at the same conclusion.

  “Yeah, this is it, pal. This ledge. My ledge. Your only option.”

  A tremor moved through its right leg, and Ethan had opened his mouth to suggest the creature just let go when it leaped from its footholds, elevating three feet and simultaneously swiping its right claw in a wide, flat arc.

  It would have torn his face open, but he ducked—talons grazing the top of his head—and then Ethan rose up on both legs, ready to kick this thing off the cliff.

  But he didn’t need to.

  It had never had a chance of reaching the ledge in its weakened state—had merely taken one last shot at bringing Ethan down with it.

  The fall apparently came as no surprise, because it didn’t make a sound and it didn’t flail its arms or legs.

  Just stared up at Ethan as it plummeted toward the sunless floor of the canyon, body as motionless as if in the midst of a high dive.

  Fully resigned, maybe even at peace, with its fate.

  CHAPTER 14

  Yesterday, she hadn’t left her room.

  Hadn’t even left her bed.

  She had prepared for his death.

  Had known it was coming.

  But watching the sun rise on a world without Ethan had nearly killed her regardless. Somehow, the light had made it real. The people out on morning walks. Even the chattering magpies in the side-yard birdfeeder. It was the continuance of things that crushed her already broken heart. The gears of the world turning on while she lived with his absence like a black tumor in her chest, the grief so potent she could barely bring herself to breathe.

  Today, she had ventured outside, now sitting listless in the soft grass of her backyard in a patch of sunshine. She’d been staring up at the surrounding mountain walls for hours, watching the light move across them and trying not to think about a single thing.

  The sound of approaching footsteps broke her reverie.

  She looked back.

  Pilcher was coming toward her.

  During her time in Wayward Pines, she’d seen the man around town on numerous occasions, but they’d never spoken—she’d been warned about that from the beginning. Not a word exchanged since that rainy night five years ago in Seattle, when he’d shown up on her doorstep with the most outlandish proposition.

  Pilcher sat down beside her in the grass.

  He took off his glasses, set them on his leg, said, “I’m told you missed your harvest day at the co-op.”

  “I haven’t left my house in two days.”

  “And what’s that supposed to accomplish?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. But I can’t take people looking at me. We can’t talk about him, of course, but I’d see the pity
in their eyes. Or worse, they’d ignore me. Act like nothing happened. Like he never existed. I haven’t even told my son that his father’s dead. I don’t know how to begin.”

  It would be evening soon.

  The sky was free of clouds.

  The row of aspen saplings that separated her backyard from her neighbor’s had turned to gold overnight, the coin-shaped leaves twittering in the breeze. She could hear the wooden wind chimes clanging on the back porch beside the door. It was moments like this—the visual perfection underscored with a reality she could never know—that she feared would one day drive her to insanity.

  “You’ve done well here,” Pilcher said. “The difficulties with Ethan were the last thing I ever wanted. I hope you believe that.”

  She looked at Pilcher, stared straight into his black eyes.

  “I don’t know what I believe,” she said.

  “Your son’s inside?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “I want you to go in and get him. I have a car parked out front.”

  “Where are you taking us?”

  He shook his head.

  “Are you going to hurt Benjamin?”

  Pilcher struggled onto his feet.

  He stared down at her.

  “If I wanted to hurt you, Theresa, I would take you and your son in the middle of the night, and no one would ever hear from you again. But you already know this. Now go get him. I’ll meet you out front in two minutes.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Ethan stared into the air duct.

  The fit was going to be tight, maybe impossible with the hoodie.

  He pulled out of the sleeves and tugged it off and tossed it over the ledge, gooseflesh rising on his bare arms. Figured his feet would be responsible for most of the propulsion and decided to come out of his socks as well so he wouldn’t slide.

  He got his head through the opening.

  At first, his shoulders wouldn’t fit, but after a minute of wriggling, he finally maneuvered himself halfway inside, arms splayed out ahead, feet struggling to push him the rest of the way, the thin metal freezing against his toes.

  When he was completely inside the air duct, a wave of panic swept over him. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, his shoulders squeezed between the two walls, and the realization dawning on him that moving backward was now impossible. At least not without popping both shoulders out of socket.

  His only method of movement was the paltry momentum his toes could stir up, and they had no reverse gears.

  He inched forward, literally, sliding along the surface of the duct.

  Still bleeding.

  Muscles in revolt in the wake of the climb and his nerves frayed.

  In the distance—nothing but absolute darkness, the tunnel reverberating with the echo of his shuffling.

  Except for when he stopped.

  Then a perfect silence set in, interrupted only by random bangs that gave his heart a start—the expanding and contracting of the metal in response to temperature fluctuations.

  Five minutes in, Ethan tried to glance back toward the opening, something in him craving just one last glimpse of light—that smallest consolation—but he couldn’t crane his neck far enough back to see.

  * * *

  He crawled and crawled and crawled.

  Closed in on all sides in complete darkness.

  At some point, maybe thirty minutes in, maybe five hours, maybe a day...he had to stop.

  His toes cramped from the strain.

  He slumped across the metal.

  Shivering.

  Insanely thirsty.

  Maddeningly hungry and unable to reach the food in his pocket.

  He could hear his heart heaving in his chest against the metal and nothing else.

  * * *

  He slept.

  Or lost consciousness.

  Or died for a minute.

  When he woke again, he thrashed violently against the sides of the duct, no idea where he was or even when he was, his eyes open to sheer darkness.

  For a terrifying moment, he thought he’d been buried alive, the sound of his own hyperventilation like someone screaming in his ear.

  * * *

  Crawled for what seemed like days.

  His eyes conjuring strange displays of light that appeared with greater frequency the longer he stayed in darkness.

  Vivid bursts of color.

  Imaginary auroras.

  Haunting radiance in the black.

  And the longer he crawled in that confined darkness, the more aggressively one thought kept eating at him—none of this is real.

  Not Wayward Pines, or the canyon, or those creatures, or even you.

  So what is this? Where am I?

  In a long, dark tunnel. But where do you think you’re going?

  I don’t know.

  Who are you?

  Ethan Burke.

  No, who are you?

  The father of Ben. Husband of Theresa. I live in a neighborhood in Seattle called Queen Anne. I was a Black Hawk helicopter pilot in the second Gulf War. After that, a Secret Service agent. Seven days ago, I came to Wayward Pines—

  Those are just facts. They say nothing about your identity, your nature.

  I love my wife, but I was unfaithful to her.

  That’s good.

  I love my son, but I was rarely around. Just a distant star in his sky.

  Even better.

  I have good intentions, but...

  But what?

  But all the time I fail. I hurt the ones I love.

  Why?

  I don’t know.

  Are you losing your mind?

  I sometimes think I’m still in that torture room. I never left.

  Are you losing your mind?

  You tell me.

  I can’t.

  Why?

  Because I am you.

  * * *

  At first, he thought it was just another phantom light show, but there were no erratic blooms of color. No optic fireworks.

  Just a sustained speck of blue somewhere far ahead, as faint as a dying star.

  When he closed his eyes, it disappeared.

  When he opened them, it came back again, like the only vestige of sanity left in his claustrophobic world. It was just a point of light, but he could make it vanish and reappear, and even this scintilla of control was something to cling to.

  An anchor. A port of call.

  Ethan thinking, Please. Be real.

  * * *

  The dim blue star grew larger, and with its expansion came a quiet hum.

  Ethan stopped to rest, a soft vibration now moving through the ductwork, moving through him.

  After hours in the dark, this new sensation felt as comforting as a mother’s heartbeat.

  * * *

  Sometime later, the blue star changed shape into a tiny square.

  It grew until it dominated Ethan’s field of vision, anticipation roiling in his gut.

  Then it was ten feet ahead of him.

  Then five.

  Then he was stretching his arms out of the opening of the duct, his shoulders crackling, the new freedom of movement as sweet as he imagined water might have been.

  Hanging out of the end of the duct, he stared down into one twice as wide and intersected by other shafts.

  A soft blue light filled the main airshaft—emanating from a bulb far below.

  Down at the bottom, he glimpsed an air intake.

  Must have been a hundred-foot drop down to those blades.

  Like staring down a well.

  At intervals of ten feet, more shafts fed into the main, some of them considerably larger.

  Ethan glanced up. The ceiling was two feet above his head.

  Shit.

  He knew what his next move was, what it had to be, and he didn’t like it.

  * * *

  Ethan climbed out into the airshaft with the same technique he’d used to ascend the chute—a pressure stance, each foot pushing into the oppo
site wall.

  His bare feet achieved decent purchase on the metal, and despite the looming fall into spinning blades that awaited even the smallest mistake, he felt almost giddy to be free of that tiny shaft.

  * * *

  He descended in painstakingly slow increments, one step at a time, keeping pressure against the walls with his arms while he lowered his legs, then shifting the pressure back onto the balls of his feet.

  Forty feet down, he rested at the opening to the first large horizontal shaft he’d encountered, sitting on the edge and staring down at the whirring blades as he ate the last of the carrots and bread.

  He’d been so focused on surviving that it only now occurred to him to wonder what purpose all this infrastructure served.

  Instead of continuing down, he glanced back into the shaft, noticing the darkness was interspersed with panels of light positioned at regular intervals. They extended on as far as he could see.

  Ethan turned over onto his hands and knees and crawled across the metal for twenty feet until he reached the first one.

  Stopped at the edge, a jolt of fear-tinged excitement coursing through him.

  It wasn’t a panel of light.

  It was a vent.

  He stared through it, down onto a flooring of checkered tile.

  The air blowing through the ductwork had taken on a lovely warmth, like an ocean breeze in the dead of July.

  For a long time, he waited.

  Watching.

  Nothing happened.

  There was the sound of moving air, of his respirations, of the metal expanding and contracting, and nothing else.

  Ethan took hold of the vent by its grating.

  It lifted easily away, no screws, no nails, no welding holding it in place.

  Setting the grate aside, he grabbed hold of the edge and tried to build the nerve to climb down.

  CHAPTER 16

  Ethan lowered himself out of the duct until his bare feet touched the black-and-white checkered tile. He stood in the middle of a long, empty corridor. There was the hum of the fluorescent lights and the soft whoosh of air moving through the ductwork above him, but no other sound.

  His feet made a quiet slap against the tile as he began to walk.

  There were doors spaced out every twenty feet with numbers on them, and the one up ahead on his right was barely cracked and spilling a bit of light out onto the floor.