by Blake Crouch
Leaning back in, he opened the center console and jammed his pockets full with shells. Then he reached up and lifted the twelve-gauge off the rack. It was a pump-action tube feed with a walnut stock and fifteen inches of the barrel sawn off.
Ethan fed in five shells, racked one into the chamber, and set the hammer to half-cocked—the closest thing to a safety on this beautiful dinosaur of a weapon.
With the shotgun laid across his shoulder blades and his arms draped over the stock and barrel, Ethan stepped down off the shoulder and started into the woods.
Colder here than in town.
A yard-thick blanket of mist hovered over the floor of the forest.
The moon had yet to clear the wall of cliffs.
It was dark enough under the trees for a flashlight.
Ethan turned on the beam, moved deeper into the woods. Trying to keep on the straightest trajectory possible so he could find his way back to the road.
Ethan heard the electrified hum before he saw it—cutting through the mist like a sustained bass note.
The profile of the fence appeared in the distance.
A rampart running through the forest.
As he drew near, details emerged.
Twenty-five-foot steel pylons spaced seventy-five feet apart. Bundles of conductors stretched between them, separated every ten feet with spacers. The cables an inch thick, studded with spikes and enwrapped with razor wire.
There was ongoing debate within Pilcher’s inner circle regarding whether the fence would remain viable in a loss-of-power situation—whether or not the height and the razor wire alone could keep the abbies out. Ethan figured there wasn’t much of anything that could stop several thousand starving abbies from tearing through if they wanted—with or without electricity.
Ethan stopped five feet from the wire.
He broke off two low-hanging limbs and marked the spot with an X.
Then he headed east, walking parallel to the fence.
After a quarter mile, he stopped to listen.
There was the constant hum.
His own breathing.
The sound of something moving through the forest on the other side of the fence.
Footfalls in pine needles.
The occasional snap of a branch.
A deer?
An abby?
“Sheriff?”
The voice straightened Ethan’s spine like an electrical current had ripped through it and he swung the shotgun off his shoulders and leveled the barrel on Peter McCall.
The man stood ten feet away beside the trunk of a giant pine, dressed in dark clothes and a black baseball cap. He had a small backpack slung over his shoulder. To the pack, he’d lashed two plastic milk jugs filled with water, which sloshed as he stepped forward.
He carried no weapon that Ethan could see beyond a walking stick with more curve than an old man’s backbone.
“Jesus, Peter. What the hell are you doing out here?”
The man smiled but Ethan saw fear in it. “If I said I was just out for a late walk, would you believe me?”
Ethan lowered the shotgun.
“You shouldn’t be out here.”
“I’d heard rumors there was a fence in these woods. Always wanted to see it.”
“Well, there it is. Now you’ve seen it. Let’s walk back to town.”
Peter said, “ ‘Before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in, or walling out.’ Robert Frost wrote that.”
Ethan wanted to say he knew that. That he’d been reading Frost, that very poem in fact, just several hours ago.
“So, lawman,” McCall said, pointing at the fence. “Are you walling us in? Or walling something out?”
“It’s time to go home, Peter.”
“Is it now.”
“Yeah.”
“And by that, do you mean my house in Wayward Pines? Or my real home in Missoula?”
Ethan edged forward. “You’ve been here eight years, Peter. You’re an important member of this community. You provide an essential service.”
“The Wayward Light? Come on. That paper’s a joke.”
“Your family is here.”
“Where is here? What does that even mean? I know there are people who’ve found happiness and peace in this valley. I tried to convince myself I had, but it was a lie. I should’ve done this years ago. I sold myself out.”
“I get that it’s hard.”
“Do you? Because from my perspective, you’ve been in Pines all of five minutes. And before they made you sheriff you couldn’t get out fast enough. So what changed? Did you actually make it?”
Ethan set his jaw.
“You made it past the fence, didn’t you? What did you see? What turned you into a true believer? I hear there are demons on the other side, but that’s just a fairytale, right?”
Ethan set the butt of the Winchester on the ground, leaned the barrel against a tree.
“Tell me what’s out there,” McCall said.
“Do you love your family?” Ethan asked.
“I need to know. You of all people should—”
“Do you love your family?”
The question finally seemed to register.
“I used to. When we were real people. When we could talk about the things in our hearts. You know this is the first real conversation I’ve had in years?”
Ethan said, “Peter, this is your last chance. Are you going to come back with me?”
“My last chance, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Or what? All the phones will start to ring? You’ll disappear me yourself?”
“There’s nothing for you out there,” Ethan said.
“At least there’d be answers.”
“What’s it worth to you to know? Your life? Your freedom?”
McCall laughed bitterly. “You call that”—he gestured behind him in the general direction of town—“freedom?”
“I call it your only option, Peter.”
The man stared at the ground for a moment and then shook his head.
“You’re wrong.”
“How’s that?”
“Tell my wife and daughter I love them.”
“How am I wrong, Peter?”
“There’s never only one option.”
His face hardened.
Sudden onset of resolve.
He shot past Ethan like he’d exploded out of the starting blocks, still accelerating when he struck the fence.
Sparks.
Arcs stabbing into McCall from the wire like blue daggers.
The force of the voltage blasted Peter ten feet back from the fence into a tree.
“Peter!”
Ethan knelt at the man’s side, but Peter was gone.
Lesioned with electrical burns.
Crumpled and drawn.
Motionless.
Sizzling.
Smoking.
The air reeked of charred hair and skin, his clothes polka-dotted with smoldering, fire-rimmed holes.
“For the best really.”
Ethan spun.
Pam stood leaning against the tree behind him, smiling in the darkness.
Her clothes as black as the shadows under the pines, only her eyes and her teeth visible.
And the moon of her pretty face.
Pilcher’s beautiful pit bull.
She pushed off the tree and moved toward Ethan like the natural fighter that she was. Slinking. Graceful. Catlike. Complete body control and economy of movement. He hated to admit it, but she scared him.
In his past-life work with the Secret Service he’d only encountered three pure psychopaths. He felt confident Pam was one.
She squatted down beside him.
“It’s like yuck, but also makes me hungry for barbecue. Is that weird? Don’t worry. You don’t have to clean this up. They’ll send a team.”
“I wasn’t worrying about that at all.”
“Oh?”
“I was thinking about this poo
r man’s family.”
“Well, at least they didn’t have to watch him get beat to death in the street. And let’s face it—that’s where this was heading.”
“I thought I could convince him.”
“If he’d been a new arrival, maybe. But Peter snapped. Perfect resident for eight years. Not so much as a negative surveillance report until this week. Then suddenly, he’s off in the middle of the night with provisions? He’d been holding this inside for a while.” Pam looked at Ethan. “I heard what you said to him. There was nothing else you could’ve done. He’d made up his mind.”
“I could’ve let him go. I could’ve given him the answers he wanted.”
Pam smirked. “But you’re smarter than that, Ethan. As you just proved.”
“You believe we have the right to keep people in this town against their will?”
“There are no rights anymore. No laws. Just force and fear.”
“You don’t believe rights exist inherently?”
She smiled. “Didn’t I just say that?”
Pam stood and started off into the woods.
Ethan called after her, “Who will talk to his family?”
“Not your problem. Pilcher will handle.”
“And tell them what?”
Pam stopped, turned.
She was twenty feet away and barely visible in the trees.
“I’m guessing whatever the fuck he feels like telling them. Was there anything else?”
Ethan glanced at his shotgun leaning against the tree.
A mad thought.
When he looked back at Pam, she was gone.
Ethan stayed with Peter for a long time. Until it occurred to him that he didn’t want to be here when Pilcher’s men finally came for the body. He struggled to his feet.
It felt good to walk away from the fence, the noise of its current steadily fading.
Soon, he moved through silent woods and mist.
Thinking, That was so fucked up and you have no one to tell. Not your wife. No real friend to speak of. The only people you can share this with include a megalomaniac and a psychopath. And that’s never going to change.
After a half mile, he climbed a small rise and stumbled out onto the road. He hadn’t returned the way he’d intended, but still he’d only missed his Bronco by a few hundred feet. Exhaustion hit him. No idea what time it was, but it had been a long, long day, a long, long night, and the dawn of a brand-new one loomed.
He reached the Bronco, emptied the shotgun, stowed it on the rack.
So tired he could’ve lain across the console and slept.
The stench of the electrocution was just as potent—would probably take days to leave.
At some point tomorrow, Theresa would ask him if everything was okay, and he would smile and say, “Yeah, honey. I’m fine. And how are you?”
And she would answer with those intense eyes that seemed completely disconnected from her words, “Just great.”
He cranked the engine.
The rage came out of nowhere.
He pinned the gas pedal to the floorboard.
The tires squealed, bit blacktop, launched him.
He tore around the curve and down the straightaway toward the outskirts of town.
The billboard disgusted him more every time he saw it—a family with bright white smiles waving like something out of a 1950s sitcom.
WELCOME TO WAYWARD PINES
WHERE PARADISE IS HOME
Ethan sped alongside a split-rail fence.
Through the passenger window, he could see the herd of cattle congregated in the pasture.
A row of white barns at the edge of the trees glowing in the starlight.
He looked back through the windshield.
The Bronco bounced over something large enough to jar the steering wheel out of his hands.
The vehicle lurched toward the shoulder, beelining for the fence at sixty-five miles per hour.
He grabbed the wheel, cranked it back, felt the suspension lift up on two tires. For a horrifying second, the wheels screeched across pavement and his right side dug into the shoulder strap.
He felt the g-force in his chest, his face.
Through the windshield caught a glimpse of the constellations spinning.
His foot had slipped off the gas pedal and he could no longer hear the engine revving—just three seconds of silence save for the wind screaming over the windshield as the Bronco flipped.
When the roof finally met the road, the collision was deafening.
Metal caving.
Glass crunching.
Tires exploding.
Sparks where the metal dragged across pavement.
And then the Bronco was motionless, upright on four wheels, two of them still holding air. Steam hissing up through the cracks along the hood.
Ethan smelled gasoline. Scorched rubber. Coolant. Blood.
He clutched the steering wheel so hard it took him a moment to pry his hands open.
He was still strapped into the seat. His shirt covered in safety glass. He reached down, unbuckled the seat belt, relieved to feel his arms working without pain. Shifting his legs, they seemed okay. His door wouldn’t open, but the glass had been completely busted out of the window. Up onto his knees, he dragged himself through the opening and fell to the road. Now he felt the pain. Nothing stabbing—just a slowly building ache that seemed to flood out of his head and down into the rest of his body.
He made it onto his feet.
Swaying.
Tottering.
Bent over, thought he might be sick, but the nausea passed.
Ethan brushed the glass off his face, the left side stinging from a gash that had already streamed blood over his jawline, down his neck, and under his shirt.
He glanced back at the Bronco. It stood perpendicular across the double yellow, right-side tires robbed of air, the SUV slouched away from him. Most of the glass was gone and there were long scores across the paint job like the claws of a predator had raked it.
He staggered away from the Bronco, following gas and oil and other fluids like a blood trail up the road.
Stepped over the light bar that had been ripped off.
A side mirror lay on its side on the shoulder like a plucked eye, wires dangling from the housing.
Cows groaned in the distance, heads raised, faces turned toward the commotion.
Ethan stopped just shy of the billboard and stared ahead at the object lying in the road, the object that had nearly killed him.
It looked like a ghost. Pale. Still.
He limped on until he stood over her. Didn’t immediately recall her name, but he’d seen this woman around town. She’d held some position of authority at the community gardens. Midtwenties he suspected. Black hair to her shoulders. Bangs. Now she was naked and her skin a serene, dead blue like sea ice. It seemed to glow in the dark. Except for the holes. So many of them. Something clinical, not desperate, in the pattern. He started to count but stopped himself. Didn’t want that number rattling around in his head. Only her face had been left untouched. Her lips had lost all color, and the largest, darkest slit in the center of her chest looked like a small, black mouth, open in surprise. Maybe that was the one that had killed her. Several others could have easily done the job. But she was clean of any blood. In fact, the only other mark on her skin was the tire track where his Bronco had rolled across her abdomen, the tread clearly visible.
His first thought was that he needed to get the police.
And then: You are the police.
There’d been talk of him hiring a deputy or two, but it hadn’t happened yet.
Ethan sat down in the road.
The shock of the wreck had begun to fade, and he was growing cold.
After a while, he got up. Couldn’t just leave her here, not even for a couple of hours. He lifted the woman in his arms and carried her off the road into the woods. She wasn’t as cold as he would’ve thought. Still warm even. Bloodless and warm—an eerie co
mbination. Twenty feet in, he found a grove of scrub oak. He ducked under the branches and set her down gently on a bed of dead leaves. There was nowhere to take her now, but it felt wrong just leaving her here. He folded her hands across her stomach. When he reached for the top button on his shirt, he discovered that his hands were still trembling. He tore it open, took it off, covered her with it.
Said, “I’ll be back for you, I promise.”
Ethan walked out to the road. For a moment, he considered putting the Bronco into neutral, rolling it off onto the shoulder. But it wasn’t like anyone would be driving out here in the next few hours. The dairy wouldn’t be making its milk deliveries until late tomorrow afternoon. He’d have time to clean this up before then.
Ethan started back toward town, the lights of the houses of Pines twinkling in the valley ahead.
So peaceful.
So perfectly deceptively peaceful.
Dawn was on the verge as Ethan walked into his house.
He drew the hottest bath he could stand in the clawfoot tub downstairs. Cleaned up his face. Scrubbed off the blood. The heat dimmed the body ache and the throbbing behind his eyes.
There was light in the sky when Ethan climbed into bed.
The sheets were cold and his wife was warm.
He should’ve called Pilcher already. Should’ve called him the moment he walked inside, but he was too tired to think. He needed sleep, if only for several hours.
“You’re back,” Theresa whispered.
He wrapped an arm around her, drew her in close.
His ribs on his left side ached when he breathed in deeply.
“Everything okay?” she asked. He thought of Peter, smoking and sizzling after the shock. The dead, naked woman lying in the middle of the road. Of almost dying, and not the first clue as to what any of it meant.
“Yeah, honey,” he said, snuggling closer. “I’m fine.”
3
Ethan opened his eyes and nearly leapt off the mattress.
Pilcher sat in a chair at the foot of his bed, watching Ethan over the top of a leather-bound book.
“Where’s Theresa?” Ethan asked. “Where’s my son?”