The Last Town (The Wayward Pines Trilogy 3) (9 page)

“Yeah.”

“So what do you want us to do?”

“I want you to not lose hope! David Pilcher is a monster, but not everyone in the mountain is. I’m going across the valley.”

“When?”

“Right now. And I’d like Kate Ballinger and two others who can shoot to come with me.”

“We should take a large group,” the officer said.

“Why? So we attract more attention and get more people killed? No, we need to go light and fast. Stay unseen if at all possible. And yes, it’s likely we won’t come back, but the alternative is to sit here in this cave and wait for the inevitable. I say we go out swinging.”

Hecter said, “Even if you make it into the mountain, you actually believe you can stop this man?”

“I do believe that.”

A woman stepped out of the crowd. She still wore her costume from the night before—a ball gown with a tiara she hadn’t thought to take off. Her lipstick, mascara, and eyeliner streaked garishly down her face.

“I want to say something,” she said. “I know a lot of you are angry at this man. At the sheriff. My husband
. . .
” She took a moment to collect herself. “Was in another group. We’d been married six years. It was a forced marriage, but I loved him. He was my best friend, even though we barely talked. It’s amazing how well you can come to know a person through eye contact. Through subtle glances.” Murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd. She stared at Ethan. “I want you to know that I would rather Carl be dead and I would rather die today than live in that sick illusion of a town for one more hour. Like prisoners. Like slaves. I know you did what you thought was right. I don’t blame you for a thing. Maybe not everyone feels this way, but I know I’m not the only one.”

“Thank you,” Ethan said. “Thank you for saying that.”

He made a slow turn, studying the ninety-five faces watching him, feeling the true weight of their lives on his shoulders.

He said, finally, “I’m going out that door in ten minutes. Kate, you in?”

“Hell yes.”

“We need two others. I know more of you may want to come, but there could still be another attack on this cavern. We want to leave you well armed and well guarded. If you think you can shoot, if you’re in exceptional physical condition, and if you can control your fear, then join me over at the door.”

Ethan sat on the stage between Theresa and Ben.

The boy said, “I don’t want you to go back out there, Dad.”

“I know, buddy. Between you and me, I’m not all that wild about it myself.”

“So don’t go.”

“Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re the right things.”

He couldn’t imagine what was going through the boy’s mind. All the lies he’d been taught in school suddenly melting against the blistering heat of the truth. Ethan could remember his dad waking him from nightmares when he was Ben’s age, telling him it was just a bad dream, that there were no such thing as monsters.

But in his son’s world, monsters did exist.

And they were everywhere.

How did you help a boy come to terms with something like that when you could barely face it yourself?

The boy wrapped his arms around Ethan and squeezed.

“You can cry if you want,” Ethan said. “There’s no shame in it.”

“You’re not.”

“Look again.”

The boy looked up. “Why are you crying, Dad? Is it because you aren’t coming back?”

“No, it’s because I love you. So very much.”

“
Are you
coming back?”

“I’m going to try my best.”

“What if you don’t?”

“He’s coming back, Ben,” Theresa said.

“No, let’s be straight with him. It’s very dangerous what I have to do, son. It’s possible I won’t make it. If something happens to me, you take care of your mother.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to you.” Ben started to cry again.

“Ben, look at me.”

“What?”

“If something happens to me, you take care of your mother. You’ll be the man of the house.”

“Okay.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

As Ethan kissed the top of the boy’s head, he looked over at Theresa.

She was so strong.

“You’ll come back,” she said, “and when you do, you’ll make everything about this town better.”

HASSLER

The nomad had planned to spend one last night in the wild, but the moment Hassler zipped into his bivy sack at the top of the pine tree, the realization hit: sleep would never find him.

He’d been out in the wild beyond the fence for 1,308 days. He couldn’t be certain, but by his estimate, Wayward Pines was just a few miles to the north, and now that the swarm of abbies had moved out of his path, he was in the clear to go home.

Every harrowing day of his expedition, at some point, his mind had wandered to this moment. Wondering,
Would he ever see it again? What would it feel like to walk back into town? Into safety and all the things he loved?

There had been only eight nomads sent out beyond the fence in the history of Wayward Pines. Among Pilcher’s inner circle, it was seen as the ultimate honor and sacrifice. To Hassler’s knowledge, no nomad had ever returned from a long-term mission. Unless one of them had come back while he was away, Hassler would be the first.

He went slowly, methodically, packing his Kelty external frame backpack for the last time—the empty one-liter water bottles, his flint and steel, an empty first-aid kit, the last few scraps of moldy buffalo jerky.

Out of habit, he sealed his leather-bound journal in its plastic bag. Everything he’d experienced and encountered in his three and a half years in the wild was contained in those pages. Days of sadness. Joy. Days he was sure would be his last. All that he’d discovered. Everything seen.

His heart racing as an abby swarm, fifty thousand strong, had sprinted across what had once been called the Bonneville Salt Flats on the Great Salt Lake.

Tears running down his face as he’d watched a life-altering sunset turn the skeletal ruins of the Portland skyline from rust to bronze.

Crater Lake—empty.

Mount Shasta—decapitated.

Standing on the ruins of Fort Point and staring across the bay at all that was left of the Golden Gate Bridge—the top hundred feet of the south tower poking out of the water like the mast of a sunken ship.

All those nights he’d spent wet and cold.

Hungry and lonely.

The gray mornings he hadn’t had the will to rise out of his sleeping bag and walk on.

The nights he’d sat contentedly before a fire, smoking his pipe.

What a strange, amazing life.

And now, after all of that, he was going home.

Hassler cinched down his pack and clipped in the straps and hoisted it onto his shoulders. He’d pushed himself harder than usual these last few days, and he could feel the strain in his legs and his hips, a slowly building ache that would take several days of rest to relieve. But what did it matter now? Soon, he’d be clean and in a warm, soft bed with a full stomach. No harm in toughing it out on the homestretch.

He followed the path of a stream until it branched west.

The white noise of the water dwindled away.

The woods became dark and silent.

Every step held meaning, and each one more than the last.

A few minutes shy of dawn, he stopped.

Straight ahead stood the fence.

Something was wrong. It should’ve been humming with its lethal voltage, but it didn’t make a sound.

A single thought screamed through his mind—Theresa.

Hassler started running for the gate.

V

TED

Ted’s residence on Level 4 was twice the size of the others, a perk of being one of the first to join David Pilcher’s inner circle. For fourteen years he’d lived in this tiny space, and it exuded the messy comfort of home, with everything (sort of) in its place.

Life in the superstructure shook out in a strange rhythm of work and leisure, and it generally took people years to find the balance. Regardless of department, work shifts were onerous. Ten-hour days, six days a week. And still, things just barely got done For Ted, as head of surveillance, there wasn’t a week in recent memory when he had worked fewer than seventy hours. The challenge had come with finding what to do, beyond sleeping, with the other seventy hours of free time in the week. He wasn’t an extrovert, and even though they existed for him only on surveillance monitors, Ted felt he spent every working second with the residents of Wayward Pines. So in his time off, he wanted nothing more than to be alone.

He’d tried painting.

Photography.

A bad spell of knitting.

Excessive exercise.

Until one day, eight years ago, he’d found an antique typewriter in the ark, an Underwood Touchmaster Five. He’d carried it back to his residence, along with several boxes of paper, and set up a little writer’s desk in the corner of his room.

All his life, he’d felt like he harbored within him the Great American Novel.

But now that there was no America, no anything really, what would he write?

Was there even a point to the creation of books and art when humanity lived on the precipice of extinction?

He didn’t know, but as he began to punch the old keys, worn so smooth the letters were barely visible, he knew he liked writing and that he loved the feel of the Underwood under his fingers.

There was no screen.

Just the lovely, tactile click-click-click of the keys, the faint smell of ink as the paper scrolled slowly out, and him alone with his thoughts.

At first, he’d toyed with a detective novel.

That had petered out.

Then his own life story, which he quickly tired of recounting.

A couple weeks in, it hit him. All day long, he stared at surveillance monitors broadcasting hundreds of private lives in all stages of desperation. He would make the residents of Wayward Pines his subjects. Chronicle their lives before, their integrations into the town, imagine their interior thoughts and fears.

He’d started writing, and he couldn’t stop.

The stories had poured out of him and the paper had accumulated beside his desk like snowfall until he had thousands upon thousands of pages detailing the lives (as he envisioned them) of the people of Wayward Pines.

He didn’t know what he would do with all these stories.

Couldn’t fathom that anyone would ever want to read them.

His working title was
The Secret Lives of Wayward Pines
, and he imagined the cover as a collection of all the faces of all the people who lived down in that valley. He’d have to finish the book first, and therein lay the other problem. There was no end to the book in sight. The lives carried on. New things happened. People died. New people were introduced into town. How would one publish a living book, whose stories never ended?

The answer had come, tragically, last night as Ted sat in Pilcher’s office, watching on his monitors as a swarm of abbies swept through town.

The end would come all at once as the “god” of the town brought a swift and sudden conclusion.

The knock came early to Ted’s door.

He was lying in bed, where he’d been all night, paralyzed with fear. With indecision.

He said, “Come in.”

His oldest friend, David Pilcher, walked inside.

Ted hadn’t slept, and by the looks of it, neither had Pilcher.

The old man looked tired. Ted could see the immense hangover he carried in the squint of his eyes, and he still stunk of good scotch. A five o’clock shadow was fading in on Pilcher’s face, as well as sprouting up across his shaven head in fine speckles of gray.

Pilcher pulled the chair away from Ted’s writing desk, dragged it in front of the bed, and took a seat.

He looked at Ted.

He said, “What do you have for me?”

“What do I have?”

“Your team. You told me you would handle it. You would find out which of them helped Sheriff Burke orchestrate this rebellion.”

Ted sighed. He sat up, grabbed his thick glasses off the bedside table, and put them on. He was still wearing his stained, short-sleeved button-down and clip-on tie. Same pants. He hadn’t even bothered to take off his shoes.

Last night, in Pilcher’s office, Ted had been afraid.

Now, he just felt tired and angry.

So very angry.

He said, “When you said the sheriff had information he couldn’t have had otherwise, did you want to tell me what you meant by that?”

Pilcher leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs.

“No, not really. I just want you, as head of the surveillance unit, to do your job.”

Ted nodded.

“I didn’t think you would answer me,” Ted said, “but that’s okay. I know what that information is. I should’ve told you last night, but I was too scared.” Pilcher cocked his head. “I found the footage of what you and Pam did to your daughter.”

For a moment, it was painfully quiet in Ted’s quarters.

“Because Sheriff Burke asked you to help him?” Pilcher said.

“I sat here all night, trying to think what to do.” Ted reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of hardware that resembled a flake of mica.

“You made a copy of the footage?” Pilcher asked.

“I did.”

Pilcher leveled his gaze on the floor, then back at Ted.

He said, “You know the things I’ve done for our project. For us to be sitting here right now, two thousand years in the future, the last of humanity. I saved—”

“There’s a line, David.”

“You think so?”

“You murdered your own daughter.”

“She was helping an underground—”

“There is no scenario in which killing Alyssa is okay. How do you not know that?”

“I made a choice, Ted, in that previous life, that nothing,
nothing
, was more important than Wayward Pines.”

“Not even your daughter.”

“Not even my sweet Alyssa. You think”—tears spilled down his face—“I
wanted
that outcome?”

“I don’t know what you want anymore. You murdered an entire town. Your own daughter. Years ago, your wife. Where does it end? Where’s the line?”

“There is no line.”

Ted ran his fingers over the memory shard in his hand. He said, “You can still come back from this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Call everyone together. Come clean. Tell them what you did to Alyssa. Tell them what you did to the people of Wayward—”

“None of them would understand, Ted. You don’t.”

“This isn’t about them understanding. This is about you doing what’s right.”

“Why would I do that?”

“For your own soul, David.”

“Let me tell you something. It’s the story of my life, people not understanding what I was willing to do to succeed. My wife didn’t get it. Alyssa didn’t get it. And I’m sad, but not shocked, that you don’t either. Look at what I’ve created. Look at what I’ve accomplished. If there were history books still being written, I would be listed as the most important human being who ever lived. That isn’t delusion. That’s just fact. I saved the human race, Ted, because there was nothing I wasn’t willing to do to succeed. No one has ever understood that. Well, two people did. But Arnold Pope is dead, and Pam’s missing. You know what that means?”

“No.”

“It means the dirty work now falls to me.”

And suddenly Pilcher was out of the chair and moving toward the bed, Ted not understanding what was happening until the short blade of the fighting knife in his boss’s hand threw a wink of light.