by Blake Crouch
“Thank you, Amber. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Would you mind showing me to the nearest exit?”
“What about your book signing?”
“I need a breath of fresh air first.”
She led him through the backstage corridors, past dressing rooms, to a pair of doors in the back of the building next to a loading bay.
“Is everything okay, Dr. Pilcher?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“And you’ll be right back? They’re already lining up at your signing table. I have a book for you to sign too.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
David pushed through the double doors and stepped out into the alley.
The darkness and the quiet and the cold so welcome.
The nearby Dumpsters reeked and he could hear the central heating units on top of the auditorium rumbling away.
It was that period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the fall semester drawing to a close, the smell of dead leaves in the air, and the quiet that befalls a campus in advance of exam week.
His ride—a black Suburban—was parked in the alley.
Arnold Pope, bundled up in a North Face jacket, sat on the hood, reading a book in the light of a streetlamp.
David walked over.
“How’d it go?” Arnold asked.
“It’s over, this tour’s over, and that’s a good thing.”
“You’re already done signing?”
“I’m skipping out. Small present to myself.”
“Congratulations. Let’s get you back downtown.” Arnold closed the paperback.
“Not just yet. I want to take a little walk across campus first. If they come asking for me…”
“Never saw you.”
“Good man.”
David patted his arm and headed off down the alleyway. Pope had been with him now for four years, initially on the payroll as a driver, but with his law enforcement background David had let him branch out into PI work.
The man was talented, capable, and scary.
David had come to value not only Pope’s investigative acumen, but also his counsel. Pope was fast becoming his right-hand man.
Crossing Sheridan, he soon found himself walking into an open field.
Despite the late hour, the stained-glass windows of the library glowed.
The sky was clear, the moon climbing over the spires of a large, Gothic hall in the distance.
He’d left his coat in the Suburban, and the cold wind cut through his wool jacket, coming off the lake that was less than a quarter of a mile away.
But it felt good.
He felt good.
Alive.
Halfway across Deering Meadow, he caught the scent of cigarette smoke riding on the breeze.
Two steps later, he nearly tripped over her.
Caught himself, staggered back.
Saw the tobacco ember first, and then, as his eyes adjusted in the growing moonlight, the girl behind it.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t see you there.”
She looked up at him, her knees drawn into her chest.
Dragging deeply on the cigarette, the ember flaring and fading, flaring and fading.
Even in the poor light, he could see she wasn’t a student here.
David knelt down.
She cut her eyes up at him.
She was shivering.
The backpack in the grass beside her was packed to the gills.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“How the fuck is that any of your business?” She smoked. “Are you like a professor here?”
“No.”
“Well, what are you doing out here in the dark and the cold?”
“I don’t know. Just needed to get away from people for a minute. Clear my head.”
“I know the feeling,” she said.
As the moon cleared the spires of the hall behind them, its light brightened the girl’s face.
Her left eye was black, swollen, half-closed.
“Someone hit you,” he said. He looked at her backpack again. “You on your own?”
“Of course not.”
“I won’t turn you in.”
She’d smoked her cigarette down to her fingers. Flicking it into the grass, she pulled another one out of her pocket, fired it up.
“That’s really bad for you, you know,” David said.
She shrugged. “What’s the worst that’ll happen?”
“You could die.”
“Yeah, that’d be so tragic.”
“How old are you?”
“How old are you?”
“Fifty-seven.”
David reached into his pocket, found his wallet, took out all the cash he had.
“This is a little over two hundred dollars—”
“I’m not going to blow you.”
“No, I’m not… I just want you to have this.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
Her hands were shaking with cold as she took the wad of cash.
“You’ll get yourself a warm bed tonight?” David asked.
“Yeah, because hotels rent out rooms to fourteen-year-olds all the damn time.”
“It’s freezing out here.”
She smirked, a glint of spirit in her eyes. “I have my methods. I won’t die tonight, don’t worry. But I will get a hot meal. Thank you.”
David stood.
“How long have you been on your own?” he asked.
“Four months.”
“Winter’s coming.”
“I would rather freeze to death than go back to another foster home. You wouldn’t understand—”
“I grew up in this beautiful neighborhood in Greenwich, Connecticut. Cute little town just a forty-minute train ride from Grand Central Station. Picket fences. Kids playing in the streets. It was the 1950s. You probably don’t know who Norman Rockwell is, but it’s the kind of place he would’ve painted. When I was seven years old, my parents left me with the sitter one Friday evening. They were going to drive into the city to have dinner and see a show. They never came back.”
“They left you?”
“They were killed in a car wreck.”
“Oh.”
“Never assume you know where someone else is coming from.”
He walked away, pant legs swishing through the grass.
She called out after him, “I’ll be gone by the time you tell the cops you saw me.”
“I’m not telling the cops,” David said.
After ten more steps, he stopped.
He glanced back.
Then he walked back.
Knelt down in front of her again.
“I knew you were a fucking pervert,” she said.
“No, I’m a scientist. Listen, I could give you real work. A warm place to stay. Safety from the streets, the cops, your parents, child services, whatever it is you’re running from.”
“Fuck off.”
“I’m staying downtown at the Drake Hotel. My last name is Pilcher. I’ll already have your very own room waiting for you if you change your mind.”
“I wouldn’t wait up.”
He stood.
“Take care of yourself. I’m David by the way.”
“Have a nice life, David.”
“What’s your name?”
“What do you care?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
She rolled her eyes, blew out a stream of smoke.
“Pamela,” she said. “Pam.”
David slipped quietly into his suite and hung his coat on the rack beside the door.
Elisabeth was sitting in the parlor, reading in the soft light of a floor lamp that overhung the leather chair beside the window.
She was forty-two years old. Her short blond hair had begun to lose its vibrancy—yellow considering silver.
A stunning winter beauty.
“How’d it go?” she
asked.
He leaned down and kissed her. “It went great.”
“So this means you’re done?”
“We’re done. We’re going home.”
“You mean to the mountain.”
“That is home now, my love.”
David walked over to the window and swept aside the heavy drapes. There was no view of the city. Just the lights of late traffic on Lake Shore Drive and the black chasm of the lake beyond, yawning out into darkness.
He crossed the suite and carefully opened the door to the bedroom.
Crept inside.
His footfalls soundless on the thick carpeting.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then he saw her. Curled up in a ball on the immense bed. She had kicked away the blankets and rolled over to the edge. He moved her back into the center of the mattress and covered her again and eased her head gently onto a pillow.
His little girl took a deep breath, but didn’t wake.
Leaning over, he kissed her on the cheek and whispered, “Sweet dreams, my sweet Alyssa.”
When he opened the bedroom door, his wife was standing there.
“What’s wrong, Elisabeth?”
“We just had a knock at the door.”
“Who was it?”
“A teenage girl. She said her name is Pam. That you told her to come here. She’s waiting out in the hallway for you.”
II
8
Tobias finished tying off his bivy sack and descended the pine tree. In the failing light, he huddled over the circle of rocks and kindling with his flint and steel, building the nerve. It was a risk, always a risk. But it had been weeks since he’d felt the glow of a fire. Since he’d steeped pine needles in a pot of boiling water and let something warm run down his throat. He had thoroughly scouted the area. No footprints. No scat. Nothing to indicate it was frequented by anything other than a doe and two fawns. He’d seen a tuft of coarse white hair caught in the thorns of a raspberry bush.
He struck a spark onto the char cloth. A yellow flame licked up and impaled a bundle of Old Man’s Beard that was laced with a dismembered branch of dead fir. The spikes of dried-out, russet-colored needles ignited. Smoke coiled out of the tinder.
His heart swelled with primal joy.
Tobias built up a cone of sticks over the growing flames and held his hands to the heat. He hadn’t bathed since his last river crossing. That had been at least a month ago. He still remembered catching his reflection in the glass-smooth current—beard down to his sternum, skin embedded with dirt. He looked like a caveman.
Tobias added a single log to the blaze and leaned back against the tree. He felt reasonably safe in this little grove of pines, but there was no sense in pushing the luck he’d already pushed so many times to the breaking point.
At the bottom of his Kelty backpack, he pulled out the one-liter titanium camp kettle and filled it halfway with water from his last remaining bottle.
Dropped in a handful of sharp-smelling pine needles, fresh off the branch.
Kicked back waiting for his tea to boil was as close to human as he’d felt in ages.
He drank the pot of tea and let the fire die. Before he lost its light completely, he took inventory of the contents of his pack.
Six one-liter water bottles, only half of one still full.
Flint and steel.
A first aid kit down to a single pill of Advil.
A dry bag filled with buffalo jerky.
Pipe, book of matches, and the last of his tobacco, which he was holding on to for his final night—if it ever came—in the wilderness.
His last box of .30-30 Winchester cartridges.
A .357 Smith & Wesson revolver for which he’d run out of ammo over a year ago.
Pack fly.
A leather-bound journal sealed in plastic.
He pulled out a stick of jerky and scraped off the carpeting of mold. Allowed himself five small bites before returning it to the bag. He finished off the pine tea and packed everything back. Shouldering the pack, he climbed twenty feet up to his perch in the tree and fastened the Kelty to a branch.
He untied his hiking boots—the soles long since worn through the tread and the leather beginning to disintegrate—and laced them to the tree. He slid his arms out of his Barbour duster. The coat was months overdue for a thorough waxing but so far it still kept him dry.
He maneuvered into the bivy sack and zipped himself in.
Wow, he stunk. It was almost like he’d developed his own musk.
His mind wouldn’t stop running.
The chances of a swarm stumbling through this grove of pines were admittedly slim. A small group or a loner—better.
Tree bivouacking was a good news/bad news proposition.
The good news—it kept him out of the obvious lines of sight. Countless times, he’d heard a branch snap in the middle of the night and rolled quietly over to stare down twenty or thirty feet at an abby creeping past underneath him.
The bad news—if one ever looked up, he was treed.
He reached down and touched the smooth, leathered handle of his Bowie.
It was the only real weapon in his arsenal. The Winchester would get him killed in close combat, and he only used it anymore to hunt his food.
He slept always with his hand on the knife, sometimes waking in the dark, other-side of midnight to find himself clutching it like a talisman. Strange to think that an object of such violence had assumed a place as comforting in his mind as the memory of his mother’s voice.
Then he was awake.
He could see the sky through the branches above him.
His breath steamed in the cold.
It was absolutely quiet save for the slow bump bump bump of his heart beating in the predawn.
He craned his neck, stared down at the remains of his campfire.
White smoke trickled up out of the embers.
Tobias wiped the dew off the long barrel of his high-powered rifle and shouldered his Kelty. He walked to the edge of the grove and crouched down between a pair of saplings.
It was damn cold.
First freeze of the season couldn’t be more than a night or two away.
He took a compass out of his pocket. He was facing east. A series of meadows and forests gradually climbed toward a range of mountains in the far distance. Fifty, possibly sixty miles away. He didn’t know with any certainty, but he held out hope that they were what had once been called the Sawtooth.
If they were, he was almost home.
Raising his rifle to his shoulder, he stared through the telescopic sight and glassed the terrain ahead.
There was no breeze.
The weeds in the open fields stood motionless.
Two miles out, he spotted bison—a cow and her calf grazing.
The next stretch of forest looked to be three or four miles away. Long time to be in the open. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and walked away from the protection of the trees.
Two hundred yards out, he glanced back at the grove of pines dwindling behind him.
It had been a good night there.
Fire and tea and the closest thing to a restful night’s sleep as he could ever hope to experience in the wild.
He walked into the sun, stronger than he’d felt in days.
Between his black beard, black cowboy hat, and black duster that fell to his ankles, he looked like a vagabond prophet sent to roam the world.
And in some ways, perhaps he was.
He hadn’t made the notation in his journal yet, but this was day 1,287 of his trek.
He’d made it as far west as the Pacific and as far north as where the great port city of Seattle had once stood.
He’d nearly been killed a dozen times.
Had killed forty-four abbies. Thirty-nine with a revolver. Three with his Bowie knife. Two in hand-to-hand combat that he had come very close to losing.
And now, he just needed to get home.
Not only fo
r the warm bed that awaited him and the promise of sleep without the ever-present threat of death. Not just for the food and the long-dreamt-of-sex with the woman he loved.
But because he had some news to report.
My God did he have some news.
9
Ethan followed Marcus down the Level 2 corridor past a series of doors labeled Lab A, Lab B, Lab C.
Near the far end, within spitting distance of the stairwell, Ethan’s escort stopped at a door inset with a circle of glass.
Marcus pulled out his keycard.
“I don’t know how long I’m going to be,” Ethan said, “but I’ll have them notify you when I’m ready to go back to town.”
“It’s not a problem. I’ll be by your side the whole time.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Sheriff, my orders—”
“Go cry to your boss. You may be my driver, but you aren’t my shadow. Not anymore. And while you’re at it, wrangle up Alyssa’s reports on her mission.”
Ethan snatched the young man’s keycard, swiped it through the reader, and shoved it back into his chest. Stepping across the threshold, he turned and stared the escort down as he shut the door in his face.
The room wasn’t dark, but it was dim—like a theater five minutes before the movie starts. A five-by-five stack of monitors glowed on the wall straight ahead. There was another door to the right of the screens that was accessed by a keycard entry. Ethan had never been granted access to surveillance.
A man wearing a headset turned in his swivel chair.
“I was told you could help me,” Ethan said.
The man stood. Short-sleeved button-down adorned with a clip-on tie. Balding. Mustached. What appeared to be a coffee stain on his lapel. He looked like he belonged in mission control, and the room certainly emanated a nerve-center vibe.
Ethan closed the distance between them, but he didn’t offer his hand.
Said, “I’m sure you know plenty about me, but I’m afraid I don’t even know your name.”
“I’m Ted. I head up the surveillance group.”
Ethan had tried to prepare himself for this moment. For meeting Pilcher’s number three, the man tasked with spying on the people of Wayward Pines in their most private moments. The urge to break his nose was even stronger than Ethan had anticipated.
Have you watched Theresa and me together?