The Last Town (The Wayward Pines Trilogy 3)

ETHAN

He crashed the CJ-5 through the rock-facade door. A piece of metal struck the windshield, sent a long, branching crack straight down the middle of the glass.

Ethan had half expected a brigade of Pilcher’s men to be waiting for him, but the tunnel stood empty.

He shifted into third gear.

Thirty-five miles per hour up the steep grade was the best he could do.

Lights streamed past overhead.

The bedrock dripping on the fractured windshield.

Every time he rounded a curve, he expected to see a roadblock, a line of Pilcher’s men with assault rifles and orders to shoot on sight.

Then again, it was possible Pilcher’s people had no idea what he’d done.

The only camera feeds in the superstructure were in surveillance HQ and Pilcher’s office. Surveillance techs could be sealed off, locked up, bribed, killed. Pilcher’s inner circle no doubt held a delusional sense of loyalty toward the man, but Ethan couldn’t let himself imagine all of them just standing by while he murdered the last of humanity.

His ears popped.

He was getting close and still no sign of resistance.

If he had to bet, Pilcher was planning to make certain that every last resident of Wayward Pines had been wiped out and then tell his people there had been a terrible accident. A fence failure. Nothing to be done.

Ethan eased his foot off the gas as the entrance to the superstructure came into view around a long, gentle curve.

He rolled into the massive cavern and brought the Jeep to a stop.

Jammed the gearshift into first.

Killed the engine.

He picked the Desert Eagle up off the floorboard, tugged the slide back and let it reset so the gun looked loaded. Digging through his pockets again, he only found two boxes of twelve-gauge slugs and his Harpy.

Opening the door, he stepped down onto the stone. The ark was quiet, no sound but a soft hiss—the rush of forced air—coming from the blue-lit suspension center.

Ethan unzipped his parka and tossed it into the Jeep, shoved the impotent Desert Eagle down the front of his mud-smeared, bloodstained Wranglers.

Approaching the thick glass doors that led into Level 1 of the complex, it dawned on him that he didn’t have a keycard.

A camera pointed down at him from above the doors.

Are you watching me now?

You must know I’m here.

A voice behind him said, “Put your hands on your head. Interlock your fingers.”

Ethan raised his hands and turned slowly.

A kid in his early twenties with a bandage around his head stood fifty feet away beside the closest of the massive cylindrical reservoirs in the ark, pointing an AR-15 at Ethan.

“Hi, Marcus,” Ethan said.

Marcus moved toward him, and in the jaundiced illumination of the hanging globe lights, looked mad as hell. To be fair, he had cause. During their last encounter, Ethan had pistol-whipped him.

“Mr. Pilcher knew you’d come,” Marcus said.

“He told you that, huh?”

“He told me everything you did.”

“Everything I did?”

“And he also told me to shoot you, so—”

“People are dying in Wayward Pines, Marcus. Women. Children.”

Marcus had halved the distance between them and Ethan could read enough rage in his eyes to suggest he might actually pull the trigger.

The glass doors opened. Ethan glanced back, saw a big blond man enter, aiming a pistol at his heart. Ethan remembered him from that day in the morgue. Alyssa’s friend, Alan—Pilcher’s head of security.

Ethan looked at Marcus, the kid now shouldering the machine gun, preparing to shoot.

Ethan said to Alan, “You have orders to shoot me on sight as well?”

“Better believe.”

“Where’s Ted?”

“No idea.”

“You might want to hear me out first,” Ethan said.

Marcus was closing in. As Alan pointed his pistol in Ethan’s face, Marcus reached forward and tugged the Desert Eagle out of Ethan’s waistband, threw it across the stone.

“You have no idea what’s going on out there,” Ethan said. “Either of you. Last night, Pilcher turned off the fence and opened the gate. He let a swarm of abbies into the valley. Most of the town has been massacred.”

“Bullshit,” Alan said.

“He’s lying,” Marcus said. “Why are we even listening—”

Ethan said, “I want to show you something. I’m reaching slowly into my pocket—”

Alan said, “I swear to God that’ll be the last move you ever make.”

“You just took my weapon.”

Marcus said, “Alan, we have orders. I—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Ethan said. “Adults are talking.” He looked back at Alan. “Remember when we met in the morgue? Remember what you asked me to do?”

“Find who killed Alyssa.”

“That’s right.”

Alan fixed his eyes on Ethan.

“I found who killed her,” Ethan said.

Alan’s jaw tensed.

“It was your boss. And Pam.”

Alan said, “You come in here with an accusation like that you better be able to—”

“Prove it?” Ethan pointed at his pocket. “May I?”

“Slowly.”

Ethan reached in, fingers probing until he felt it. Lifting out the memory shard, he held up the square shaving of metal, and said, “Pilcher and Pam killed Alyssa. But first they tortured her. The head of surveillance gave this to me. It shows everything.” Alan kept the gun trained on Ethan, his expression unreadable. “I have a question for you, Alan,” Ethan said. “If what I’m telling you is true, where does your loyalty fall?”

“He’s playing you,” Marcus growled.

“One way to find out,” Ethan said. “What does it cost you to look at this, Alan? Unless avenging Alyssa isn’t something that interests you.”

Behind the glass doors, Ethan saw another armed man sprinting down the corridor.

He was dressed in black, armed with a Taser, pistol, machine gun, and testosterone. As he approached the glass doors, he spotted Ethan and raised his weapon. Alan suddenly wrapped his right arm around Ethan’s neck and held his pistol to Ethan’s temple.

The doors whisked open.

Alan said, “I’ve got him. Stand down.”

“Kill him!” Marcus screamed. “You have orders!”

The new arrival said, “Alan, what the hell are you doing?”

“You do not want to shoot this man, Mustin. Not yet.”

“What I want and don’t want doesn’t have a whole helluva lot to do with it. You know that better than any of us.”

Alan tightened his grip on Ethan.

“Sheriff says the town’s been overrun with aberrations and that the bossman opened up the gate. He also says that Mr. Pilcher and Pam are responsible for Alyssa’s death.”

“One thing to say it,” Mustin said. “Another to prove it.”

Ethan held up the memory shard.

“He claims it has footage of Alyssa’s death.”

“So what?” Marcus said.

Alan leveled a wilting glare at the young man. “What are you saying, son? That on the wild assumption any of this is true, you’d be a-okay with Mr. Pilcher killing one of our own, his own daughter, and trying to hide it? You’d just go along with that?”

“He’s the boss,” Marcus said. “If he did something like that, I bet he had—”

“He’s not God, is he?”

A scream raced up the tunnel and went reverberating through the ark.

Alan released Ethan and said, “What was that?”

“Sounds like some of the abbies found their way into the mountain,” Ethan said. “I drove through the entrance to the tunnel.”

Alan looked at Mustin’s weapon. “What do we have that’s meaner than an AR-15?”

“An M230 chain gun on a rolling mount.”

“Mustin, Marcus, get on that chain gun. Call everybody up. The entire team.”

“What are you going to do with him?” Marcus asked, jutting his chin toward Ethan.

“He and I are heading up to surveillance to take a look at what he’s got.”

“We were told to kill him,” Marcus said, raising his gun.

Alan stepped toward Marcus, the barrel of the AR-15 digging into his sternum.

“Would you mind not pointing your weapon at me, son?”

Marcus lowered his gun.

“While you and Mustin make sure we don’t all get eaten, I’m going to look at what the sheriff says is proof concerning what happened to my friend. And if it’s anything less than advertised, I’ll execute him on the spot. That all right with you?”





THERESA

“You’re almost there!” Theresa whispered.

Ben lowered his shoe toward the next foothold.

The cries and the screams from the Wanderers’ cavern were still audible. That narrow ledge had just run out, and now they were down-climbing a fifty-degree stretch of cliff. So far, the abundance of handholds and footholds in the good, hard granite had saved their lives, but Theresa couldn’t ignore the two-hundred-foot fall that awaited the slightest misstep. The reality that her son was on this rock wall with her was almost too much to bear.

If Ben fell, she’d jump right after him.

But so far, he was listening, following her instructions, and doing a damn fine job of holding his twelve-year-old shit together.

Ben stepped down onto the ledge where Theresa had been perched for the last few minutes. It didn’t lead anywhere, but at least there was enough of a surface so they didn’t have to cling desperately to a handhold.

They still had a long way to go, but progress had been made, and the tops of the pine trees were only twenty feet below them.

Another scream broke out of the tunnel far above.

“Don’t think about it,” Theresa said. “Don’t imagine what they’re going through. Just focus on where you are, Ben. On making smart, safe moves.”

“Everyone in that cave is going to die,” he said.

“Ben—”

“If we hadn’t found the ledge—”

“But we did. And soon we’re going to get off this cliff and find your father.”

“Are you scared?” he asked.

“Of course I am.”

“Me too.”

Theresa reached over and touched her son’s face. It was slick and cool with sweat and rosy with exertion and the beginnings of a sunburn.

“Do you think Dad’s okay?” Ben asked.

“I think he is,” she said, but her eyes filled with tears at the thought of Ethan. “Your old man’s one tough hombre. I hope you know that.”

Ben nodded, glanced down the face of the cliff into the welcoming darkness of the dense pine forest.

“I don’t want to get eaten,” he said.

“We’re not. We’re tough hombres too. We’re a family of tough hombres.”

“You’re not a tough hombre,” Ben said.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re a tough hombra.”

Theresa rolled her eyes and said, “Come on, brat. We better keep moving.”



It was late afternoon when they stepped from the rock onto the soft floor of the forest.

They had been on the cliff for hours, under the burn of direct sunlight. They dripped sweat as their eyes readjusted in the cool shadow of the trees.

“What now?” Ben asked.

Theresa wasn’t sure exactly. By her estimate, they were approximately a mile from the edge of town, but she wasn’t confident that heading for Wayward Pines was the safest play. The abbies wanted to feed. They would stay where the people were, or at least where they’d been. Then again, if she and Ben made it into town, they could hole up inside a house. Lock themselves into a basement. If the abbies found them in the forest, there’d be nowhere to hide. It was already getting late, and she didn’t relish the thought of sleeping out here in the woods, in the dark.

Theresa said, “I think we go back into town.”

“But that’s where the abbies are.”

“I know of a place where we can hide. Wait this out until your dad fixes it.”

Theresa started off into the trees, Ben following close on her heels.

“Why are you going so slowly?” he asked.

“Because we don’t want to step on any branches. We don’t want to make a sound. If something comes our way, we need to be able to hear it early enough to hide.”

They went on, winding their way down through the trees.

They heard no more screams, human or abby.

Nothing but their own footsteps in the pine needles, their heavy exhalations, and the whoosh of wind pushing through the tops of the trees.