The Last Town

Pilcher ignored the question, held Ted’s eyes with his own. “Your group consists of you and four surveillance techs. I know your loyalty is steadfast, but what about your subordinates? Burke had the help of one of them. Any ideas who it might be?”

“Where is this coming from?”

“Ted. That is just the wrong answer.”

Ted stared down into his lap at his drink. He looked up again.

He said, “I don’t know who on my team would do such a thing. This is why you shut down surveillance?”

“You run the most sensitive group in the superstructure, and it’s been compromised.”

“What about Pam?”

“Pam?”

“It’s possible the sheriff got to her.”

Pilcher laughed, derisive. “Pam would set herself on fire if I asked her to. She’s missing by the way. Her microchip indicates she’s in town, but I haven’t heard from her in hours. I will ask you one last time—which of your men?”

“Give me the night.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Give me the night to find out who did this.”

Pilcher leaned back and regarded him with an unreadable intensity, and said, “You want to handle this yourself, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“A matter of honor?”

“Something like that.”

“Fair enough.”

Ted stood.

Pilcher pointed at the monitors. “Only you and I know what’s happening down in the valley. For now, it stays that way.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s a hard night for me, Ted. I’m grateful to have a friend like you to lean on.”

Ted tried to smile, but he couldn’t manage it. Just said, “I’ll see you in the morning.” He set his scotch glass down on a table and headed for the door.

ETHAN

Everyone went silent.

So quiet Ethan could hear the fire burning in the hearth at the back of the room.

The scratching stopped.

He heard the click-click-click of those talons again.

Retreating.

It made sense. Why would the abbies believe their prey had gone behind this door? They didn’t even know what a door was. That it was something that opened into another place. Most of them were probably still out on—

Something struck the door.

The room took in a collective gasp.

The bolt rattled in its housing.

Ethan straightened.

The door took another blow—twice as hard—as if two abbies had crashed into it at the same time.

He thumbed off the safety and glanced at Hecter, Kate, and the others.

“How many are out there?” Kate asked.

“No idea,” Ethan whispered. “Could be thirty. Could be a hundred.”

In the darkness behind them, children were beginning to cry.

Parents trying to hush them.

And the blows to the door kept coming.

Ethan walked over to the left side where the hinges attached the door to the frame. One of the rusted brass plates popped a screw.

Kate said, “Will it hold?”

“I don’t know.”

The next blow came—the hardest yet.

The entire top plate detached from the frame.

Still four more below it.

Ethan called Maggie over, and in the torchlight, they watched the housing for the bolt.

With the next collision, it shook but held.

Ethan went back to Kate and asked, “Is there another way out of this room?”

“No.”

The barrage continued, and the more the abbies hurled themselves against the logs, the angrier they seemed to get, now shrieking and screaming after every failed attempt.

Another plate broke loose.

Then another.

The end was coming. The thought actually crossed Ethan’s mind that he should go find his family now. Give them both a quick, merciful death, because once the abbies got in, their last moments of sentience would be owned by horror.

The passage outside the door went quiet.

No scraping.

No footsteps.

The cavern held its breath.

After a long moment, Ethan approached the door and put his ear to the wood.

Nothing.

He reached for the bolt.

Kate whispered, “No!”

But he slid it back as quietly as he could manage and grasped the handle.

“Maggie, bring the light.”

When she was standing behind him, Ethan pulled.

The two remaining hinges creaked loudly as they bore the full weight of the door.

The firelight brightened the passage.

It still smelled of the abbies—rot and death—but it was empty.

There were people who just sat against the rock wall and wept.

There were those who trembled silently at the horror they had seen.

Those who sat expressionless, still as stone, gazing into some private abyss.

Others plugged in.

Helped tend the fire.

Repair the door.

Organize the weaponry.

Bring food and water out of storage.

Comfort the grieving.

Ethan sat with his family on a broken loveseat at the edge of the fire. The room was warming, and Hecter played something beautiful on the piano that seemed to dial back the edge, to make everyone feel just a touch more human.

In the low light, Ethan counted their number over and over.

Kept arriving at ninety-six.

This morning, there had been four hundred sixty-one souls in Wayward Pines.

He tried to tell himself that it was possible other groups had survived. That they had somehow managed to find refuge. Someplace where the abbies couldn’t get at them. Barricaded themselves in houses or the theater. Fled into the woods. But in his heart, he didn’t believe it. He might have managed to buy in if he hadn’t peeked through that trapdoor and seen Megan Fisher in the street and all those others getting slaughtered.

No.

In the town of Wayward Pines, eighty percent of humanity had been wiped out.

Theresa said, “I keep thinking we’re going to hear someone knocking on the door. Do you think there’s a chance that some of them will make it up here?”

“Always a chance, right?”

Ben’s head lay in Ethan’s lap, the boy asleep.

“You okay?” Theresa asked.

“I suppose, considering I made a decision that sent most of this town to a violent death.”

“You didn’t turn off the fence and open the gate, Ethan.”