* * *
Ethan safely reached the canyon floor and went on, the hum of the electrified fence growing softer as his system kicked into an intensified and disconcerting state of alertness. Same thing had happened to him in Iraq—a heightened level of sensory intake always seemed to hit him in the ramp-up to missions that ultimately went to shit. His palms would start sweating, his pulse rate would accelerate, his sense of hearing, smell, taste, everything ratcheted into overdrive. He’d never told anyone, but when he lost the Black Hawk in Fallujah, he’d known the RPG was coming five seconds before it exploded.
It was lonely country up here beyond the fence, the rock all fractured and lightning-blasted.
Empty sky.
The absence of clouds only underscoring the mood of absolute desolation.
After his time in Wayward Pines, it felt surreal to be this alone again, so far removed from other people. But in the back of his mind, a new worry had begun to eat at him. The canyon appeared to climb another thousand feet to a high, wind-ripped ridge. If his strength held, he might reach it by dusk. Spend another long, cold night trying to sleep on shattered rock. But then what? He would soon be out of food, and though water still bloated his stomach from the last drink he’d taken before the stream vanished, the exertion he was putting his body through would bleed him dry again in no time.
But even more than the looming threat of hunger and thirst, he feared what lay beyond that distant ridge at the top of the drainage.
Miles and miles of wilderness, if he had to guess, and though he still retained a modicum of survival training from his military days, when it came down to it, he was beat to shit and tired as hell. The prospect of walking out of these mountains and back into civilization struck him as beyond daunting.
And yet, what choice did he have?
Return to Wayward Pines?
He’d rather freeze to death alone out here than ever set foot in that place again.
Ethan made his way through a section of the canyon clogged with massive boulders, carefully hopping from one to the next. He could hear water running underneath him again, but the stream was invisible, unreachable, hidden down in the black space beneath the dogpile of boulders.
High on the left-hand wall of the canyon, something threw a sharp glint of sunlight.
Ethan stopped and cupped his hand over his eyes and squinted toward the blinding glimmer. From where he stood in the belly of the canyon, all he could see was a square, metal surface a good ways up the wall, its proportions too perfect, too exact, to be anything but man-made.
He jumped to the next boulder, now moving with greater speed, greater intensity, and constantly glancing up at the wall as he went along, but the nature of that reflective surface remained elusive.
On ahead, the canyon looked more reasonable, the boulders downsized into traversable terrain.
He was considering whether he could make the climb to that piece of metal when the crackle of falling rock disrupted his thoughts.
For a terrifying instant, Ethan imagined a landslide heading his way, a thousand tons of rock raining down off the wall, crushing him to death.
But the sound had originated behind him, not above, Ethan turning, glancing back the way he’d come, figuring it was just a boulder he’d moved across and dislodged several minutes ago, now finally shifting in his wake.
Still, there was something eerie about registering a sound other than his own labored breathing or the movement of rocks in his immediate vicinity. He’d grown so accustomed to the stillness of this isolated drainage.
He could see down-canyon for a long ways, his eyes initially fixing on the electrified fence a quarter mile back, but then on movement much closer, inside a hundred yards. At first he thought it must be one of those marmots, but it was scrambling with a weightless, feline agility, almost too quickly from rock to rock, and as he squinted to bring it into focus, Ethan saw that it didn’t have fur at all. It looked albino, covered with pale, milky skin.
Ethan instinctively backpedaled as he realized he’d grossly underestimated its size. It wasn’t moving over small rocks. It was moving through that field of giant boulders Ethan had just emerged from, which meant it was actually closer in size to a human being and traveling at an intimidating speed, barely even stopping between leaps.
Ethan tripped over a rock and jumped back onto his feet, his respirations revving.
The thing near enough that he could hear it breathing—panting—its claws clicking on the stone each time it landed on a new boulder, each leap bringing it closer to Ethan, just fifty yards away now and a sick heat beginning to ferment in Ethan’s stomach.
This is what he’d seen night before last from that alcove above the river.
This is what he’d dreamt about.
But what the hell was it?
How could such a thing exist?
He started up the canyon as fast as he’d dared to move all day, glancing back every other step.
The thing leaped off the last of the large boulders and came down with the grace of a ballerina, now scuttling on all fours, low to the ground like a wild boar, the grating noise of its panting getting louder as it closed the distance between them at such an alarming rate Ethan arrived instantly at the conclusion that there was no point in trying to outrun it.
He stopped and turned to face what was coming, torn between trying to process what was happening and simply preparing himself to survive.
Twenty yards away now, and the nearer it got, the less Ethan liked what he saw.
It was short-torsoed.
Long legs and longer arms, each tipped with a row of black talons.
Hundred and ten, maybe a hundred and twenty pounds.
Sinewy.
Wiry.
And above all, humanoid, its skin in the sunlight as translucent as a baby mouse’s—mapped with a network of blue veins and purple arteries and even its heart faintly visible as a pinkish throb just right of center mass.
At ten yards, Ethan braced himself, the creature’s small head lowering for the charge, snarling as strings of bloody saliva dangled from the corners of its lipless mouth, creamy eyes hard-focused on its target.
Ethan caught a whiff of its stench two seconds before impact—fetid, decayed flesh spiced with rotted blood.
It screamed—a strangely human-sounding cry—as it launched, Ethan trying to sidestep at the last possible instant, but it had anticipated this, throwing one of its four-foot arms and hooking Ethan around the waist, talons easily penetrating the thick fabric of the hoodie and piercing into Ethan’s side.
A searing flash of pain, and then the creature’s forward momentum jerked Ethan off his feet, slamming him to the rocks with enough force to drive the air out of his lungs.
Ethan gasped for oxygen as it attacked.
Pit-bull ferocity.
Lightning-fast.
Brutal strength.
Slashing wildly as Ethan held up his arms in an effort to protect his face from the five-taloned claws that were as sharp as a bird of prey’s, tearing easily through his clothing, through his skin.
It had managed, in a matter of seconds, to straddle Ethan, the claws at the ends of its legs digging into his calves like nails pinning him to the ground.
In all the fury, Ethan glimpsed its face.
Large, craterous nostrils.
Small, opaque eyes.
Skull hairless and the skin stretched so tight and thin over its cranium he could see where the skull plates fit together like puzzle pieces.
Gums lined with double rows of tiny, razor cuspids.
It seemed like he’d been fighting this thing for hours—time slowed into sluggish, terrifying increments—though in reality, only seconds had elapsed, Ethan’s combat training struggling to kick-start, his mind beginning to rise above the fear and the confusion, struggling to quash the mad panic that had engulfed him. The more dangerous and chaotic the situation, the more clearly you needed to think to evaluate how you were going to survive, and so far, he’d failed. Allowed this encounter to sap most of his strength, and if he didn’t get control of his fear and his energy output, in another sixty seconds, he wouldn’t have the ability—mental or physical—to even try to fight back.
The creature landed its deepest strike yet—an excruciating score across Ethan’s stomach, slicing through fabric, skin, the shallow layer of fat on top of Ethan’s well-defined abs, and finally skimming across the surface of raw muscle.
As it burrowed its head into Ethan’s stomach, he could feel its teeth tearing through the hoodie, Ethan coming to the horrific realization of what this monster was actually trying to do—gut him with its built-in knives and have a feast right here in the canyon while Ethan watched and bled out.
Ethan smashed his fist into the side of its head—an awkward blow but a hard one.
The thing looked up from Ethan’s stomach and produced an angry, roaring screech.
Then raised its right claw and swung at Ethan’s neck.
He blocked the oncoming strike with his left arm as he reached across the ground with his right, fingers desperately searching for a weapon.
The luster of pure rage in the creature’s eyes was unmistakable.
It pushed off Ethan’s stomach, its hideous face driving toward his neck, teeth bared.
It’s going to tear my throat out.
Ethan’s hand seized on a rock, fingers struggling for a decent grip.
He swung as hard as he’d ever swung at anything in his life, the stone heavy, the size of a paperweight, and when its blunt end crunched into the side of the monster’s head, the thing faltered, coal-black pupils dilating in those milky eyes, its jaw gone slack with a kind of stunned amazement.
Ethan didn’t hesitate.
Shot straight up and drove the rock through that mouthful of jagged brown canines, teeth breaking as the thing tumbled back, Ethan following with another strike, this one a catastrophic blow to its gaping nose.
It crashed to the ground, deep red blood pouring out of its nose and mouth as it screamed in livid disbelief, throwing weak talon-slashes that didn’t have the force or velocity behind them to even break skin.
Ethan straddled the thing, one hand crushing its windpipe, the other clutching the rock.
Seven skull-fracturing strikes, and it finally quit moving.
Ethan tossed the blood-smeared rock away and fell back onto his side, drawing long, deep breaths, his face spattered with blood and the occasional bone splinter.
He forced himself to sit up and lift his shirt.
Jesus.
Looked like he’d been in a knife fight, bleeding from numerous places across his torso—long, ugly cuts from those talons. The one across his stomach had done the most damage—a six-inch canyon carved through his abdomen. An inch deeper, and this slash would have opened him wide.
He glanced down at what was left of whatever the hell this thing was.
Didn’t even know how to begin to process it.
He couldn’t make his hands stop shaking, still so much adrenaline chugging through his system.
He stood.
The canyon still again.
He glanced up at the nearest wall, that mysterious metal object still shining in the sun. Impossible to be sure, but from his perspective, it looked like an eighty- or ninety-foot climb, and though he couldn’t quite get a fix on the reason, he felt a strong urge to get off the canyon floor as soon as possible.
Ethan wiped the gore off his face with the sleeves of his sweatshirt and scrambled back from the wall so he could get a better look at it. Took a moment to study all possible routes up the cliff face, finally deciding on one that would take him up a series of dwindling ledges to the base of a wide crack that ran all the way up to the object of his curiosity.
He walked to the wall.
In the afterglow of the fight, his body felt absolutely electric.
Be a good thing to plug this energy into a climb.
Reaching up to the first wide ledge, Ethan found a decent lip on the rock and pulled himself up.
The flexion of his stomach muscles was agonizing, compounded by the fact that they were integral to nearly every movement.
But he pushed through the pain.
Twenty feet up the wall, Ethan found a spot on a ledge where he could easily stand, and leaned back into the rock.
It had been years since he’d done any climbing, and his inefficiency was evident in the sheer physical toll just the first twenty feet had taken. He was climbing with his arms instead of relying on the power of his legs, and already he was drenched in sweat, the saltwater running down into every nick, every slice, every cut.
He carefully shuffled back around and placed his hands on the rock. The ledge was shadowed from the sun and the stone as cold as ice. From the ground, this next section had seemed fairly straightforward—a wealth of good footholds and the kind of knobby rock that lent itself to climbing. But now, standing twenty feet above the canyon floor and staring up a near-vertical pitch, the handholds didn’t look quite so inviting, and the distance to the next ledge—where he might grab a much-needed minute of rest—was at least thirty feet.
Ethan shut his eyes and took two deep breaths in an effort to bring his pulse back down to baseline.
You can do this. You have to do this.
A foot above his head, he gripped his smallest handhold yet, and then stepped up onto a gently sloping surface that contained just enough grit to give the soles of his boots several seconds of purchase.
The fear kicked up several notches as Ethan worked his way above the second ledge, trying to ignore that quiet voice lodged in the back of his mind like a splinter, whispering that he was passing out of broken-leg-and-back territory into the caliber of height where a mistake meant death.
He made increasingly risky grabs on progressively smaller hand- and footholds.
Starting out, he’d hesitated between every move, testing and retesting each hold, but no more. Already, his legs had begun to sporadically tighten—a precursor to cramps. If he was hit with one up here on the wall that might very well be the end.
And so he climbed as fast as he could, taking every decent hold he encountered, trying to find comfort in the growing distance between himself and the floor of the canyon, assuring himself that should he fall, it would be far better to just die right off, because a broken leg or back out in this barren wilderness would only mean a slow and agonizing death.
And yet the higher he climbed, the terror gripped him tighter, Ethan fighting the urge to look down, but he couldn’t resist the morbid fascination with how far he was taking himself above the ground.
His right hand finally reached the third ledge.
He strained to haul himself up, digging his left knee into the edge.
By the time he realized there was nothing obvious for his left hand to grasp, he was already committed.
There was an endless second where Ethan hung in midair, one knee perched on the ledge as his center of gravity slowly dragged him back from the wall toward that terrible emptiness beneath him.
He lunged out in total desperation, both hands clawing at the rock, his left just managing to find a crimp at chest level.
For a moment, he didn’t know if he had a sufficient grip to reverse gravity’s undertow and pull himself back onto the ledge, the surface of his fingertips scraping away, his knuckles blanching from the strain.
His backward momentum stopped, and he tugged himself forward by the tips of his fingers until his forehead grazed the wall.
Took everything in his power to swing his right leg up and make himself stand.
This ledge was half the width of the last one and his feet hung off the edge.
Would’ve been impossible to sit down or to remain here for any extended length of time.
The crack in the wall that climbed the remaining distance to that piece of metal opened up just above him. Looked wide enough for Ethan to squeeze into if he could get there, but he didn’t have the strength to try to pull himself up just yet.
He’d nearly died, and his body, head to toe, was still shaking.
The scream ripped him out of his own fear.
He stared fifty feet down to the canyon floor, baffled.
He’d crushed that thing’s skull into pieces.
How the hell—
Wait.
It wasn’t moving, and it no longer had a mouth to even produce such a noise.
As the next scream—this one a shade lower in pitch—resounded through the canyon, bouncing back and forth between the walls, Ethan looked back toward the electrified fence.
Oh God.
There were five of them moving up-canyon in a pattern that almost resembled a squadron formation, ascending that field of large boulders in fast, elegant leaps.
Ethan pressed his back against the wall, trying to establish as steady a perch as he could find.
The pack leader came sprinting out of the boulder field at full speed, as fast as a dog, and when it reached what Ethan had killed, it skidded to a stop and lowered its head to the ground, sniffing the smashed skull of its compatriot.
As the others closed in, it raised its face to the sky and cut loose a long, brokenhearted moan that resembled the howl of a wolf.
The other four arrived and within ten seconds they were all howling like a choir in mourning, Ethan growing cold as he stood motionless on the ledge listening, his sweat cooling on his skin and the remnants of blood from that thing drying on his face like tiny scabs.
He tried to comprehend what he was seeing and hearing, but there was no explanation.
It was all utterly beyond his experience, and possibly his imagination.
When the howling ended, the group turned to one another and conversed in the strangest language Ethan had ever heard.
Like dreadful birds—an eerie chirping quality to their fast, sharp squawks.
Ethan tightened his grip on the rock, fighting against a wave of dizziness, the world tilting beneath him.
All five of them were sniffing the ground now in the vicinity of the dead one—haunches high, faces jammed down between the rocks.
Ethan tried not to panic as it hit him, but he realized something standing there above the monsters—after they left, there was no way he could climb back down. Not even off this ledge. The only way off this wall, where he’d so thoroughly bitten off more than he could chew, was up.
One of the creatures suddenly barked a high, piercing shriek.
The others rushed over, gathering around and chirping frantically, and then the largest of the bunch—easily twice the size of the one that had attacked Ethan—broke out ahead of the others, its nose still to the ground.
Only as it reached the base of the cliff did Ethan finally understand.
My trail.
The creature pressed its nose into the rock and then came up on its legs.
It backed slowly away...
...and looked up, straight at Ethan.
They’re following my trail.
The canyon fell silent.
Five sets of milky eyes studying Ethan up on the ledge.
He could hear his heart raging in his chest like someone trying to beat a way out of a padded room.
A single thought scrolling through his mind on an endless loop...
Can they climb?
As if in answer, the large one who’d first picked up his trail reared back on its hind legs and sprang off the ground in a five-foot jump from a stationary position.
Stuck to the wall as if covered in Velcro, the points of its talons digging into tiny crevices in the rock that Ethan could never have used.
It gazed up the cliff face at Ethan as the others began leaping onto the wall.
Ethan looked up at the crack above his head, searching until he spotted a workable handhold just out of reach.
He jumped, palming a cluster of sharp, dark crystals as he heard the click of talons on rock ascending toward him.
He scrambled up the wall, got his other hand on a level surface inside the crack, and pulled himself the rest of the way into the opening of the chute.
It was tight, less than three feet across, but he forced his boots into the walls and created just enough opposing pressure to keep himself suspended.
He stared down.
The big one had already reached the second ledge, climbing fast, fearless, with no sign of fatigue.
The others close behind.
Ethan turned his attention to what lay above—a chute enclosed on three sides. Not much in the way of handholds, but he figured he could chimney up.
He began to climb, the enclosure of the rock giving a welcome, if false, sense of security.
Every few feet, he glanced down between his legs, his view now obscured by the rock surrounding him, but he could still see that thing out in front, moving effortlessly between the second and third ledges up a section of the wall where Ethan had struggled.
Twenty feet up the crack, seventy above the canyon floor, his thighs burning.
Couldn’t tell how much farther he had to go to reach that piece of metal that had gotten him into the shit to begin with. On the other hand, if he’d been down in the canyon when those things had shown up, they’d be eating him right now. So maybe in retrospect that shimmering metal that prompted this ballsy climb had actually prolonged, if not saved, his life.
The monster reached the third ledge and, without a moment’s hesitation to rest or consider its next move, leaped off the narrow shelf of rock.
A single talon at the end of its left arm caught on a square millimeter of surface just inside the opening to the crack, and in a feat of brute strength, it pulled itself up with one arm and squeezed into the chute.
Ethan locked eyes with the monster as it began to climb on foot- and handholds so insignificant Ethan had disregarded them, traveling at least twice as fast as Ethan could manage.
Nothing to do but keep climbing.
He struggled up another five feet.
Ten.
The monster twenty-five feet away and close enough that Ethan could see the pink pounding of its massive heart, obscured through its skin as if tucked behind thick, frosted glass.
Ten more feet and then the crack appeared to lead out onto flat, vertical, horrifying wall.
The handholds near the top looked good, Ethan realizing that if he kept chimneying that thing was going to reach him before he made it out.
He switched to hand-over-hand climbing, racing up the last ten feet.
Just before the top, one of the holds broke loose and he nearly lost his balance.
Caught himself before he fell.
He could feel the wind streaming across the opening to the chute.
Glimpsed something catching sunlight straight above.
Froze.
Looked down.
He’d almost blown the chance to save himself.
With the monster fifteen feet away and two more trailing close behind it in the chute, Ethan reached down, the loose handhold that had nearly killed him just within reach.
He tore the chunk of rock from its housing, hoisted it over his head.
It was a handful, even bigger than he’d thought—two pounds of quartz-laced granite.
He wedged himself between the rock, took aim, and let it fly.
It struck the creature dead center of its face just as it was reaching for a new handhold.
Its grip failed.
It plunged down the chute.
Talons scraping rock.
Its velocity too great to self-arrest.
It hit the one beneath it at a high enough rate of speed to knock it from its perch, the pair crashing as one into the third, and then all three screaming for two long seconds as they shot out of the bottom of the chute, bounced off the third ledge, and accelerated toward the rocks below where they slammed aground in a tangle of badly bent appendages and broken skulls.
Ethan emerged out of the chute squinting against the flash of brilliance now just a few feet above his head.
He was at least a hundred feet above the canyon floor, and his stomach churned. From his new vantage point, he could now see that the opposite wall climbed another five or six hundred feet to a razor ridge, which in itself looked impassable.
If his wall did the same, he might as well jump off now, because he didn’t have it in him to climb another hundred feet, much less five.
The two remaining creatures on the wall snapped him out of the despair. Instead of following the others up the chute, they had climbed around, one on each side—slower going, but they were still alive and now thirty feet below Ethan.
He reached up and grabbed a ledge under the shiny metal, got both elbows onto the widest shelf of rock he’d seen, and hauled himself up, face-to-face with a steel vent protruding several inches out of the rock. It was square, approximately twenty-four inches across, the blades of a fan spinning counterclockwise directly behind it.
Talons clicked on the rock below.
Ethan gripped the sides of the vent, pulled.
It didn’t budge—it had been welded to the duct.
He stood up on the ledge and ran his hands over the surface of the wall until he came to what he was after—a large, twenty-pound wedge of granite that looked poised to fall.
He lifted it and smashed it down on top of the vent where it joined the duct.
The alloy disintegrated, the upper left-hand edge of the vent popping loose.
The creatures were ten feet below him now, so close he could smell the decay of their last kill wafting off them like some savage cologne.
He raised the rock again, brought it down in a crushing blow to the right-hand corner.
The vent snapped free and clanged down the cliff, bouncing off the rock and nearly striking one of the creatures on its descent.
All that stood between Ethan and the darkness of a ventilation shaft were the spinning blades of the air intake.
He rammed the rock into them and brought their revolutions to a halt.
Three hard blows completely detached the unit from its mount, Ethan reaching in, grabbing it by the blades, and slinging it over the cliff.
He picked up the rock, held it high, and dropped it on the closest creature as its talons reached for the ledge.
It fell screeching.
Its partner watched until it hit the ground, and then looked back at Ethan.
Ethan smiled, said, “You’re next.”
The thing studied him, its head tilting like it could understand or at least wanted to. It clung to the rock just below the ledge, within easy reach, Ethan waiting for it to make its move, but it held position.
Ethan spun around, searching the cliff wall within reach for another loose rock and coming up empty.
When he turned back, the monster was still perched on the wall.
Settling in.
Ethan wondered if he should climb on until he came across another sizeable rock.
Bad idea. You’d have to down-climb to get back to this ledge.
Ethan crouched, unlaced his left boot. Pulled it off, and then did the same with his right.
He held it—not nearly the heft of a rock, but perhaps it could do the job. Grasping it by the heel, he made a dramatic show of cocking back his arm as he stared down into the monster’s milky eyes.
“You know what’s coming, don’t you?”
Ethan feigned a throw.
It didn’t flinch and come off the rock as he’d hoped, just pressed in closer to the wall.
The next time wasn’t a fake, but Ethan threw so hard the boot sailed over the creature’s head and took an uninterrupted fall into the canyon.
He lifted the other boot, took aim, threw.
Direct hit to the face.
The boot bounced off and tumbled away as the creature, still clinging to the wall, looked up at Ethan and hissed.
A visage of murderous intent.
“How long can you hold on, you think?” Ethan asked. “You must be getting tired.” He reached down, pretending to offer a hand. “I’ll help you the rest of the way. You just have to trust.” The way it watched him was unnerving—a definite intelligence all the more frightening because he couldn’t know how deep it went.
Ethan sat on the rock.
“I’ll be right here,” he said. “Until you fall.”
He watched its heart beating.
He watched it blinking.
“You are one ugly motherfucker.” Ethan chuckled. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist. It’s from a movie. Seriously, what the hell are you?”
Fifteen minutes crept by.
Late afternoon now.
The sun beginning to drop, the floor of the canyon already in darkness.
It was cold up here on the rock.
A few clouds streaming overhead, but they were inconsequential and swallowed up in all that crystal blue like afterthoughts.
The five talons on the creature’s left arm began to quiver, rattling against the microscopic handhold, and something in its eyes had changed. Still plenty of rage, but now an added element—fear?
Its head swiveled, surveying all the rock within reach.
Ethan had already made the same inspection and arrived at the same conclusion.
“Yeah, this is it, pal. This ledge. My ledge. Your only option.”
A tremor moved through its right leg, and Ethan had opened his mouth to suggest the creature just let go when it leaped from its footholds, elevating three feet and simultaneously swiping its right claw in a wide, flat arc.
It would have torn his face open, but he ducked—talons grazing the top of his head—and then Ethan rose up on both legs, ready to kick this thing off the cliff.
But he didn’t need to.
It had never had a chance of reaching the ledge in its weakened state—had merely taken one last shot at bringing Ethan down with it.
The fall apparently came as no surprise, because it didn’t make a sound and it didn’t flail its arms or legs.
Just stared up at Ethan as it plummeted toward the sunless floor of the canyon, body as motionless as if in the midst of a high dive.
Fully resigned, maybe even at peace, with its fate.