by Blake Crouch
“Well, I hope it’s all worth it in the end.”
“Please don’t do this. This should be the greatest night of my life. Our lives. I want you there on the other side when we all wake up.”
“I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”
Pilcher took a long breath in, let it slowly out.
“This must have been difficult for you,” he said.
“You have no idea.”
“You’ll at least stay on through the party?”
“Of course.”
He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
Couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that.
“I should talk to Alyssa,” he said.
“After the party, we’ll say our goodbyes.”
She stood.
Gray Chanel dress.
Wavy silver hair.
He watched her move gracefully toward the oak doors.
When she was gone, Pilcher went to his desk.
Lifted the phone.
Dialed.
Arnold Pope answered on the first ring.
It would’ve been the best champagne Hassler had ever tasted if he could appreciate it, but the nerves were getting to him.
This place was unreal.
Word was it had taken thirty-two years to complete the tunneling, the blasting, the excavation. The price tag must have been north of fifty billion. An entire fleet of 747s could’ve fit inside that cavernous warehouse, but he had a hunch the real money had gone into the room where he now stood.
It was the size of a grocery store.
Hundreds of drink-machine-sized units stood hissing and beeping as far back as he could see. Some of them vented white gas, the vapor hovering ten feet above the floor. It was like walking through a cold, blue fog. The ceiling invisible. The cold air pure and ionized.
“Would you like to see her, Adam?”
The voice startled him.
Hassler turned, faced Pilcher.
The man looked dapper in a crisp tuxedo, champagne flute in one hand.
“Yes,” Hassler said.
“Right this way.”
Pilcher led him down a long row toward the back of the room, and then up another aisle of machines.
“Here we are,” he said.
There was a keypad, gauges, readouts, and a digital nameplate:
THERESA LIDEN BURKE
SUSPENSION DATE: 12/19/13
SEATTLE, WA
Down the front of the machine streaked a thick pane of glass, two inches wide.
Through it, he saw black sand and a patch of skin—Theresa’s cheek.
Hassler involuntarily touched the glass.
“We’re about to get started,” Pilcher said.
“Is she dreaming?” Hassler asked.
“None of our testing—and there’s been plenty of it—indicates any level of sentience during suspension. There’s no brainwave activity. The longest we’ve put any of our test subjects under has been for nineteen months. No one reported any sense of time while they were down.”
“So it’s like a light switch going off?”
“Something like that. Did you get a chance to read the memorandum in your room? Everybody got one.”
“No, I just finished the medical exam and came straight here.”
“Ah, well, you’ll be in for a few surprises.”
“Is everyone on your team going under tonight?”
“A small group has been chosen to stay behind for the next twenty years. They’ll continue to gather provisions. Make sure we have the latest technology. Tie up a few loose ends.”
“But you’re going under.”
“Of course.” Pilcher laughed. “I’m not getting any younger. I’d rather bank my time in the world to come. We should get back out there.”
Hassler followed him out into the cavern.
Pilcher’s people were waiting—everyone dressed to the nines.
Men in tuxes, women in little black dresses.
Pilcher climbed up onto a crate and looked out over the crowd.
He smiled.
In the light of a giant globe that hung down from a cable in the rock above, Hassler thought he saw Pilcher’s eyes turn glassy with emotion.
He said, “Tonight, we come to the end of a journey thirty-two years in the making. But like all endings, it’s also a beginning. As we say goodbye to the world we know, we look forward to the world to come. The world that waits for us, two thousand years from now. I’m excited. I know you are too. And maybe you’re also afraid, but that’s okay. Fear means you’re alive. Pushing boundaries. No adventure without fear, and my God are we all on the brink of one hell of an adventure.” He raised his glass. “I would like to propose a toast. To each and every one of you who’ve come this far with me and are about to take this final leap of faith. I promise you, the parachutes will open.” Nervous laughter flickered through the crowd. “Thank you. Thank you for your trust. For your work. For your friendship. Here’s to you.”
Pilcher drank.
Everyone drank.
Hassler’s palms had begun to sweat.
Pilcher glanced at his watch.
“It’s 11:00 p.m. It’s time, my friends.”
Pilcher handed his champagne flute to Pam. He untied his bow tie and flung it away. He removed his jacket and dropped it on the rock. People began to applaud. He slid off his suspenders and unbuttoned his pleated shirt.
Now the others were beginning to undress.
Arnold Pope.
Pam.
All the men and women near Hassler.
The cavern became quiet.
Nothing but the sound of clothes sliding off and dropping to the floor.
Hassler thinking, What the hell?
But pretty soon, if he didn’t join in, he was going to be the sole clothed person in the room, and somehow that seemed worse than undressing with complete strangers.
He pulled off his bow tie and followed suit.
Within two minutes, a hundred twenty people stood naked in the cavern.
From his pedestal, Pilcher said, “I apologize for the cold. It couldn’t be helped. And I’m afraid where we’re going it’s even colder.”
He climbed down off the crate and moved in bare feet toward the glass door that opened into suspension.
Within thirty seconds of walking inside, Hassler was shivering uncontrollably—part fear, part cold.
Lines were forming down the aisles, men in white lab coats directing traffic.
Hassler approached one, said, “I don’t know where to go.”
“You didn’t read the memo?”
“No, I’m sorry, I just got—”
“It’s fine. What’s your name?”
“Hassler. Adam Hassler.”
“Come with me.”
The lab technician showed him to the fourth row and pointed down the corridor of machines, said, “You should be halfway down on the left. Look for your nameplate.”
Hassler followed four naked women down the aisle. The vapor seemed thicker than before and his breath was pluming in the cold, the metal grating over the stone like ice to the soles of his feet.
He passed a man who was climbing into a machine.
Now the fear really kicked up.
He realized as his eyes scanned each nameplate that he had never imagined this moment. Never prepared. Sure he’d known it was coming. Known he was voluntarily submitting to this. But somehow, he’d subconsciously pictured something akin to general anesthesia. A mask descending toward his face in a warm operating room. Lights dimming out in a state of drug-induced bliss. Certainly not tramping around naked with a hundred other people.
There.
His nameplate.
His—holy fuck—machine.
ADAM T. HASSLER
SUSPENSION DATE: 12/31/13
SEATTLE, WA
He studied the keypad.
An incomprehensible collection of symbols.
He looked up and down his aisle but the others h
ad already disappeared into their machines.
Another lab tech was approaching.
Hassler said, “Hey, can you help me out?”
“Didn’t you read the memo?”
“No.”
“It explained all this.”
“Can you just help me please?”
The tech typed in something on the keypad and moved on.
There was a pneumatic hiss, like pressurized gas escaping, and then the front panel of the machine opened several inches.
Hassler pulled the door open the rest of the way.
It was a cramped, metal capsule. There was a small seat made of black composite, armrests, and an outline of human feet on the floor.
A small, quiet voice in the back of Hassler’s mind whispered, You are out of your goddamn mind to be climbing into this thing.
He did it anyway, stepping inside and easing his buttocks down onto the freezing seat.
Restraints shot out of the walls, locked around his ankles, his wrists.
His heart rate skyrocketed as the door thundered shut, and for the first time, he noticed a plastic tube curled up on the wall tipped with a needle of horrifying girth.
He thought of Theresa’s bloodless face and thought fuck.
A sound like a pressure leak kicked in overhead. He couldn’t see the gas, but he suddenly smelled something like roses and lilac and lavender.
A feminine, computerized voice said, “Please begin breathing deeply. Smell the flowers while you can.”
Through that two-inch stripe of glass, Pilcher appeared.
The computerized voice said, “Everything will be okay.”
Pilcher was shirtless, smiling proudly, giving a thumbs-up.
Hassler was no longer cold.
No longer afraid.
As “Dream Weaver” by Gary Wright poured through the speakers, his eyes slammed shut. He’d meant to pray, meant to fix his thoughts on something beautiful, like the future and the new world and the woman he would be sharing it with.
But like every important, defining moment in his life, it had all roared by too fast.
Pam was waiting for him in the cavern.
She’d slipped into a robe and she held another one for Pilcher, draped over her arm.
“My daughter?” he asked as he pushed his arms through the sleeves.
“All tucked in.”
He looked around at the cavern.
“It’s so quiet now,” he said. “I sometimes think of what this place will be like while we’re all under.”
“David!”
Elisabeth marched toward them across the stone floor.
“I’ve been looking all over,” she said. “Where is she?”
“I sent Alyssa down to my office before the clothes came off.”
Pam said, “Hi, Mrs. Pilcher. You look lovely tonight.”
“Thank you.”
“I was sorry to hear you won’t be joining us.”
Elisabeth stared at her husband. “When are you going under?”
“Soon.”
“I don’t want to stay here tonight. You’ll have someone drive Alyssa and me back to Boise?”
“Of course. Whatever you want. And you can take the jet.”
“Well. I guess it’s probably time to…”
“Right. Why don’t you head on down to my office. I’ll join you in a minute. I just need to see about one last thing.”
Pilcher watched his wife walk back across the cavern toward the Level 1 entrance.
He wiped his face.
Said, “I should not be shedding tears tonight. At least not these kind.”
Elisabeth stepped off the elevator.
Their suite was silent. She had never liked it. Never liked anything about life inside this mountain. All claustrophobia. A sense of isolation she had never come to terms with. Her soul felt hunched over from the sheer, crushing weight of living with this driven, single-purposed man. But tonight, finally, she and her daughter would be free.
The doors to David’s office were open.
She walked in.
“Alyssa? Honey?”
No answer.
She crossed to the monitors. It was late. Her daughter had probably curled up on one of the couches for a nap.
She reached them.
No.
Empty.
She made a slow scan of the room.
Maybe Alyssa had wandered back upstairs? They could’ve missed each other, although that seemed unlikely.
Her eyes caught on David’s desk.
He always kept it immaculate. Free of clutter. Free of anything at all.
But now, a single sheet of white paper lay in the center.
Nothing else.
She walked over, pulled the page toward her across the polished mahogany so she could read it.
Dear Elisabeth, Alyssa is coming with me. You can see the end of your story on your own. What’s left of it.—David
Elisabeth had a sudden strong sense of a presence behind her.
Turned.
Arnold Pope stood just within reach. He’d shaved for the celebration. Tall, broad-shouldered. Short blond hair and almost handsome. It was his eyes that killed the deal. Something in them a touch too cruel and dispassionate when they held your focus. She could smell the champagne on his breath.
She said, “No.”
“I’m sorry, Elisabeth.”
“Please.”
“I like you. Always have. I will make this go as fast as possible. But you have to work with me.”
She looked down at his hands, half-expecting to see a knife or a wire.
But they were empty.
She felt weak and sick.
“Can I just have a moment please? Please?”
She met his eyes.
They were cold, intense, and sad.
Revving up for something.
And she knew, a half second before he came at her, that she wasn’t going to get that moment.
IV
22
Tobias warmed his grimy hands in the heat of the fire.
He was camped riverside, deep in the mountains of what had once been Idaho.
From where he sat, he could stare down the canyon and watch the sun falling into the V.
So close.
Earlier in the day, he’d caught a glimpse of the jagged cirque that formed the amphitheater on Wayward Pines’s eastern wall.
The only thing stopping him from reaching the fence was a thousand-strong swarm of abbies in the forest that bordered the southern edge of town. Even two miles away from their position, he could smell them. Assuming they moved on overnight, he’d be in the clear to go home.
The temptation to sleep on the ground was strong.
Something about sleeping on the soft pine needles seemed massively appealing.
But that would be stupid.
He’d already fixed his bivy thirty feet up in one of the overhanging pine trees. He’d slept off the ground he didn’t know how many nights running. One more wouldn’t kill him.
And tomorrow night, if all went as planned and he didn’t get himself eaten his last day in the wilderness, he’d have a warm bed to crawl into.
Tobias opened his rucksack, shoved his arm to the bottom.
His fingers touched the cloth bag containing his pipe, a book of matches from the Hotel Andra in Seattle, and the tobacco.
He laid everything out on a rock.
It was strange. He’d thought about this moment so many times.
Built it up in his mind.
His last night in the wilderness.
He’d brought a pound with him—all the weight he could justify—and burned right through it in those first months, saving only enough tobacco for one last smoke if he made it this far. There were so many nights when he’d almost smoked it anyway.
The rationalizations plentiful and compelling.
You could die at any time.
You’ll never make it back.
Don’t get eaten sti
ll holding on to what could’ve been a half hour of pipe-joy.
And still, he’d held out. It made no sense. His chances of returning were nil. But as he opened the plastic baggie and breathed in the smell of the aromatic blend, it was unquestionably one of the happiest moments of his life.
He took his time filling the bowl.
Then tamped it down with his finger, making sure each sprig was lovingly nestled.
The tobacco took the flame beautifully.
He dragged on the stem.
God, the smell.
Smoke clouding around his head.
He leaned back against the trunk of what he hoped was the last tree he would ever have to sleep in.
The sky had turned pink.
You could see the color of it on the river.
He smoked and watched the moving water and felt, for the first time in ages, like a human being.
23
At 8:00 p.m., Ethan was back behind his desk in the station.
His phone rang.
When he lifted the receiver, Pilcher said, “Doctor Miter is more than a little angry with you, Ethan.”
The image of Pilcher climbing up on that autopsy table and stabbing his daughter surfaced in the back of Ethan’s mind.
You monster.
“Do you hear that?” Ethan asked.
“Hear what?”
For five seconds, Ethan was silent on the line. “That’s the sound of me not giving a fuck.”
“You’re still unchipped, and I don’t like that.”
“Look, I didn’t feel like going under the knife again so soon. I’ll come up to the mountain tomorrow first thing and get it over with.”
“You haven’t run into Pam, have you?”
“No, why?”
“She was supposed to be in the mountain thirty minutes ago for a meeting. Her signal still shows her down in the valley.”
After returning to town, Ethan had walked to Main Street and slipped Pam’s bloody microchip into the purse of a woman he passed on the sidewalk. Sooner or later, Pilcher was going to start studying camera feeds. When Pam’s chip pinged a camera but Pam herself was mysteriously absent, Pilcher would know something had happened.
“If I see her,” Ethan said, “I’ll tell her you’re looking for her.”
“I’m not too worried. She tends to go on walkabouts from time to time. At the moment, I’m sitting in my office with a bottle of very nice scotch, watching my wall of screens, ready for the show to begin. Do you have any questions?”