Out in the center, it is deep and clear and sky blue.
He finds a spot near the shore a foot and a half deep and stretches out on a long, smooth rock that boasts a natural incline.
Pure, unabashed pleasure.
As if it was made for this very thing.
He reclines in the hundred-and-four-degree pool, the snow pouring down, letting his eyes close for little bursts of euphoria that remind him of what it felt like to be human. To live in a civilized world of convenience and comfort. Where the probability of death didn’t shadow every moment.
But the knowledge of where he is, of who he is, of why he is here is never far. A tense voice—the one that has kept him alive for the last eight hundred and something days in the wild—whispers that it was foolish to stop for a soak in this pool. Indulgent and reckless. This isn’t a spa. A swarm of abbies could appear at any time.
He’s normally vigilant to a fault, but this pool is nothing short of a gift, and he knows the memory of his time here will sustain him for weeks to come. Besides, the map and compass are useless in the midst of a blizzard. He’s socked in until the weather passes.
He shuts his eyes again, feels the snowflakes alighting on his lashes.
Off in the distance, he hears a sound, like water shooting out of the blowhole of a whale—one of the smaller geysers erupting.
His own smile surprises him.
He first saw this place in the faded color photos of the “XYZ” Encyclopedia Britannica volume in his parents’ basement—a 1960s crowd watching from the boardwalk as Old Faithful spewed boiling mineral water.
He’s dreamed of coming here since he was a boy. Just never imagined that his first visit to Yellowstone would be in conditions such as these.
Two thousand years in the future, and the world gone all to hell.
Hassler grabs a handful of gravel and begins to abrade the dirt and filth that has accumulated on his skin like body armor. In the middle of the pool, where the deep water covers his head, he submerges himself completely.
Clean for the first time in months, he climbs out of the pool and sits in the frosted grass to let his body cool.
Steam lifts off his shoulders.
He feels woozy from the heat.
Across the meadow, evergreens stand ghost-like, almost invisible through the steam and the snow.
And then—
Something he wrote off as a shrub begins to crawl.
Hassler’s heart stops.
He straightens and squints.
Can’t pinpoint how far away it is, but certainly inside of a hundred yards. Easy to mistake for a man crawling on all fours at this distance, except there are no men in the world anymore. At least not beyond the electrified, razor-wired fence that surrounds the town of Wayward Pines.
Well, actually, there is one.
Him.
The figure draws closer.
No.
Figures.
Three of them.
You idiot.
He’s naked, and his best means of defense—a .357—is tucked away in the pocket of his duster on the far side of the pool.
But not even his Smith & Wesson offers much comfort against three abbies at close range in snowstorm visibility. If he were prepared, if he had spotted them farther out, he might have dropped one or two with his Winchester. Put a bullet through the last one’s skull point-blank with the revolver.
This line of thought is pointless.
They’re coming toward the pool.
Hassler eases soundlessly back into the water, all the way up to his neck. He can scarcely see them now through the steam, prays that lack of visibility cuts both ways.
As the abbies close in, Hassler lowers himself to his eyes.
It is a mature female and two lankier adolescents, each of whom clock in around one twenty—easily lethal. He’s seen smaller ones than this bring down full-grown bison.
The female is the size of them both combined.
From sixty feet away, Hassler watches as the mother stops at his pile of clothes and gear.
She lowers her nose to his duster.
The young ones come up alongside her and sniff as well.
Hassler rises a few millimeters until his nose is just above the surface.
With a long, penetrating breath, he goes under, blowing enough air out of his lungs so his body will sink.
Soon, he’s sitting on the rocky floor of the pool.
Streams of burning water shoot up through tiny fissures under his legs.
He shuts his eyes, and as the pressure and the ache intensifies in his lungs, the oxygen deprivation manifests as explosions of light.
He digs his fingernails into his legs.
The thirst for breath growing exponentially.
All-consuming.
When he can’t stand it anymore, he surfaces and drinks in a gulp of air.
The abbies are gone.
He turns slowly in the water—inch by inch by—
Freezes.
The urge to jerk back, to just run, is almost irresistible.
Ten feet away at the edge of the pool, one of the young abbies crouches down beside the water.
Motionless.
Head cocked slightly to one side.
Transfixed.
Studying its reflection?
Hassler has seen more than his fair share of these monsters, but mainly through his riflescope. At a distance.
He’s never been this close to one undetected.
He can’t take his eyes off its heart: the beating of the muscle visible through the translucent skin, the blood pumping through its arteries—purple highways converging center mass. All obscured and blurred as if he watches it behind a sheet of quartz.
The abby has small eyes that remind him of black diamonds—hard and otherworldly.
But strangely enough, it isn’t the monster’s horrific qualities that so unnerve him.
Shining through the five-taloned claws, the rows of razor teeth, and the devastating physical strength is its humanness. These things have so clearly evolved from us, and now the world is theirs. David Pilcher, Hassler’s boss and the creator of Wayward Pines, estimated there were half a billion abbies on this continent alone.
The steam is thick, but Hassler doesn’t dare to slip back under the surface.
He doesn’t move.
And still the abby watches its reflection in the pool.
It will either see him and he will die, or—
Off in the distance, the mother shrieks.
The young abby’s head lifts.
The mother shrieks again, her voice filling with the intensity of a threat.
The abby scuttles off.
Hassler listens as the trio moves away from the pool, and by the time he chances the smallest degree of movement—a quick turn of the head—they have vanished into the snowstorm.