The Last Town (The Wayward Pines Trilogy 3)

VII





HASSLER

SECRET SERVICE HQ

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

1,814 YEARS AGO

Hassler enters his corner office in the Columbia Center, happy to see Ethan Burke already seated across from his desk. By his watch, he’s five minutes late. Burke probably arrived five minutes early, which means he’s been waiting at least ten minutes.

Good.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Hassler says as he walks past his agent.

“Not a problem.”

“Imagine you’re wondering why I pulled you off that Everett thing.”

“We’re close to an arrest.”

“That’s good to hear, but I have something more pressing for you.”

Hassler takes a seat and studies Ethan across the desk. He isn’t wearing his black-and-whites today. His surveillance outfit is a gray jumpsuit, the shoulders still damp from the late-morning drizzle. He can just see the outline on Ethan’s left side of his concealed shoulder holster.

It crosses Hassler’s mind that he can still pull the plug on this. Until the words leave his mouth, he hasn’t committed a crime.

In his years in law enforcement, interrogating criminals, he’s always hearing about the nebulous line between right and wrong. They were only stealing for their family. They’d only intended to do it once. And his favorite: they didn’t even realize they’d crossed a line until they were deep into enemy territory on the other side, with no hope of ever getting back.

But as Hassler sits on this side of the desk, this side of the line, all that conjecture on the ambiguous nature of right and wrong feels like bullshit.

He sees his choice with crystalline clarity.

If he sends Ethan on this assignment, he has crossed the line forever.

No coming back.

If he ejects out of this entire enterprise, lets Ethan go back to his case in Everett, he stays a good guy who almost did a very bad thing.

Nothing confusing here. No gray area from his perspective.

“Sir?” Ethan says.

Hassler pictures Theresa, a couple years back at the company picnic. Thinks of Ethan flirting with Kate while his wife cried by herself on the shore of Lake Union.

Theresa’s fears about Kate and Ethan were borne out last year when Kate put in an abrupt transfer request for Boise, Idaho. Ethan cheated on Theresa with his partner, and everyone knew it. He humiliated his wife, and a woman like Theresa deserves so much better.

“Adam?” Ethan says.

Hassler lets out a breath as rain ticks on the window behind him.

He says, “Kate Hewson is missing.”

Ethan leans forward in the chair. “For how long?”

“Four days.”

“She went missing on the job?”

“Her partner’s missing too. Guy named Evans. You and Kate had a . . . special relationship, right?”

Ethan doesn’t bite, just stares, intense.

“Well, I just figured you’d want to take on the search for your old partner.”

Ethan stands.

“Boise is e-mailing the case file,” Hassler says. “We’re booking you on a flight out of Sea-Tac first thing. Tomorrow morning, you’ll meet up with Agent Stallings in the Boise field office and the two of you will head north to the last place anyone heard from Kate.”

“Where’s that?”

“Little town called Wayward Pines.”

Hassler watches Ethan leave.

He’s done it.

Set it all motion.

And the weird thing is, he doesn’t feel any different. No regret, no fear, no anxiety.

If there’s one overriding emotion, it’s relief.

Spinning around in his chair, he stares out his window at the gray, wet gloom of downtown Seattle, the water droplets beading and running down the glass.

From his office on the thirty-first floor, he can see the building where Theresa works as a paralegal. Imagines her sitting in her lifeless cube, typing dictation.

He doesn’t know how exactly, but he will have her one day. He’ll love her like she’s meant to be loved. Somehow, and this is the biggest mystery of his entire existence, she has become the only thing that matters in his world.

Flipping open his prepaid cell phone, he dials.

David Pilcher answers, “Hello?”

“It’s me,” Hassler says.

“I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever hear from you again.”

“He’s coming to you tomorrow.”

“We’ll be ready.”

Hassler closes the cell, takes out the battery, and breaks the phone in half. He places the two pieces in the Styrofoam container at the bottom of his trash can that holds the remnants of yesterday’s lunch.





THERESA

Theresa and Ben reached the edge of the forest as the sun dipped behind the distant peaks.

She whispered to her son, “Wait here.”

Moving on, Theresa crawled through a grove of scrub oak, the dead leaves crunching too loudly under her knees.

Where the oaks ended, she peered through the branches.

They had reached the outskirts of Wayward Pines but had somehow traversed the entire forest to the north side of town. The streets that Theresa could see appeared empty. The houses dark. And not a murmur to be heard.

She glanced back at Ben, waved him over.

He crawled noisily through the leaves and squatted down beside her.

Putting her mouth to his ear, she whispered, “We need to travel ten blocks.”

“Where are we going?”

“Sheriff’s station.”

“Walk or run?”

“Run,” Theresa whispered. “But take a few breaths first, fills those lungs up with air.”

She and Ben both drew in deep pulls of oxygen.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Ready.”

Theresa scrambled out of the thicket and climbed to her feet, then turned and helped Ben up off the ground. They stood in the backyard of a Victorian she recognized—she’d sold this house to a young, expecting couple three months ago after their good behavior in town had been rewarded with an upgrade to a larger, nicer home.

What had been their fate these last twenty-four hours of hell?

Most front yards in Wayward Pines were enclosed by white picket fences, so she and Ben jogged up the sidewalk.

The valley was going dark.

Night always seemed to set in a little too quickly once the sun had gone behind the mountains, and considering there was no power in the entire valley, this would be a black evening.

They were coming up on the first dead body in the street.

Theresa looked back at Ben, and said, “Don’t look, honey.”

But she didn’t take her own advice.

The good news was that it had been eviscerated so completely it looked less like a human being than a pile of guts and bones. A buzzard roosted on the ribcage, glutting itself.

They reached the intersection of First Avenue and Eleventh Street.

Theresa could see the tall pine trees in the distance that soared out of the front lawn of the sheriff’s office.

“Almost there,” she said. “Block and a half to go.”

“I’m tired.”

“I am too, but let’s finish strong.”

At the intersection of First and Thirteenth, Ben whispered, “Mom!”

“What?”

“Look!”

Theresa glanced back.

Three blocks down Thirteenth Street, two pale forms were running on all fours in their direction.

“Sprint!” Theresa screamed.

They accelerated, a surge of adrenaline-boosting power and speed. She leapt over the curb and raced up through the trimmed grass toward the entrance to the sheriff’s office.

Once inside, Theresa stopped and looked back through the glass doors toward the street.

“Did they see us come in here?” Ben asked.

The first abby hit the intersection at full speed, and without missing a beat, altered its course, now heading straight for the sheriff’s office.

“Come on!” Theresa wheeled around and bolted through the lobby.

The farther they moved away from the entrance, the darker it got.

Crossing the threshold, she turned the corner into Ethan’s office, saw the gun cabinet wide open, ammunition spilled across the floor, several rifles left behind on the desk.

The bottom cabinets of the gun case were open too.

She reached inside, pulled out a large pistol, pointed it at the wall, and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. The safety was on or it wasn’t loaded or both.

“Hurry, Mom!”

She grabbed a revolver out of the case but it was empty, and she didn’t even know how to break the cylinder open to load it assuming she could even match up the right ammo. From where she crouched by the gun case, there were at least half a dozen different sizes of cartridges scattered across the floor beneath her feet.

“Mom, what are you doing?” Ben asked.

This wasn’t going to work. They were out of time, and despite being married to a Secret Service agent, she didn’t know the first thing about firearms.

“New plan,” she said.

“What?”

She jerked open Ethan’s desk. It had to be there. His first week on the job, Ethan had given her a tour of this place, including locking her into the single jail cell as he swung the key on his finger by the carabiner it was attached to, smirking as he drawled, “Unless you can think of some way to bribe the sheriff, looks like you’re spending a night in lockup, Mrs. Burke.”

She’d seen him return that key to this middle desk drawer, and now she reached all the way to the back, fingers desperately searching.

There.

She felt the carabiner, pulled the key out, and rushed around the desk to Ben.

“What are we doing?” he asked.

“Just follow me!”

They tore back down the hallway.

An abby screamed outside.

“They’re here, Mom!”

As they crossed the lobby, Theresa glanced toward the entrance, saw the pair of abbies running up the walkway lined with baby pine trees, seconds away from entering.

She shouted, “Faster, Ben!”

They turned down another dark hallway.

At the far end, Theresa saw the black bars of Wayward Pines’s only jail cell.

First time she’d seen it, it had reminded her of the cells in The Andy Griffith Show. Something almost quaint about those vertical bars. The single bed and the desk inside. The kind of place where the Saturday-night drunks had a standing reservation.

Now, the cell looked like a life raft.

The hallway opened up at the end, the fading evening light slanting in through a high window.

Theresa slammed hard into the cell bars as the abbies crashed through the glass doors into the station.

She clutched the key, worked it into the lock.

Talons clicked down the dark hallway behind them.

One of the abbies shrieked.

The dead bolt turned.

Theresa opened the door, and screamed, “Get in!”

Ben rushed into the cell as the first abby launched out of the corridor.

She stepped in, jerked the door closed, and locked it a half second before the abby rammed the bars.

Ben screamed.

As the first abby picked itself up off the floor, its partner crawled out of the hallway.

It was the first time Theresa had seen an abby up close.

The one that had crashed into the cell was huge and covered in gore.

Death emanated off its blood-soaked skin.

Ben’s back was up against the wall, his eyes gone wide, a puddle forming under his feet.

“Can they get us in here?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

When the second abby collided with the bars, the entire structure shook.

Theresa wrapped her arms around Ben as the first abby stood to its full five-and-a-half-foot height.

It cocked its head and watched them through the bars, milky eyes blinking, processing, problem-solving.

“What’s that thing moving inside its chest?” Theresa whispered.

“That’s its heart, Mom.”

“How do you—” Oh. Right. He’d learned about them in school.

The heart beat rapidly, blurred and distorted through the layers of skin, as if Theresa were watching it through several inches of ice.

This one’s legs were short, and standing straight, its arms reached all the way down to the floor. It slid its right arm between the bars—slim but rippled with muscle. It was over four feet long, and Theresa watched in horror as those black talons stretched across the floor of the cell.

“Get away!” she screamed.

The other abby came around the side of the cell and did the same. Its left arm was five feet long and when one of its talons grazed Ben’s shoe, Theresa stomped on its claw.

The abby roared.

Theresa pulled Ben toward the corner farthest away from the bars, where they climbed up onto the metal bed frame.

“Are we going to die, Mom?”

“No.”

Three new abbies emerged from the corridor and broke for the cell, screeching and hissing. There were more behind them, the noise in the room growing and growing.

Soon there were fifteen arms reaching through the bars, and more abbies hurling themselves at the cell.

Theresa sank down onto the bare mattress and held Ben tightly in her arms.

The light coming through the window had changed from blue to purple, the room becoming steadily darker.

She put her lips to Ben’s ear and said over the noise of the monsters, “Think about another place, another time.”

Ben trembled in her arms, and still more abbies streamed into the room.

Theresa stared up at that high window as the monsters shook the bars and crashed into them and reached their hideously long arms into the cell.

The last thing she saw as the light went away was the room beyond the bars packed wall to wall with abbies and one of them kneeling down in front of the lock, trying to dig its talon into the keyhole.

Suddenly there was nothing to see. Night had fallen over Wayward Pines.

And they were in the dark with monsters.