“Oh?”
“I was thinking about this poor man’s family.”
“Well, at least they didn’t have to watch him get beat to death in the street. And let’s face it—that’s where this was heading.”
“I thought I could convince him.”
“If he’d been a new arrival, maybe. But Peter snapped. Perfect resident for eight years. Not so much as a negative surveillance report until this week. Then suddenly, he’s off in the middle of the night with provisions? He’d been holding this inside for a while.” Pam looked at Ethan. “I heard what you said to him. There was nothing else you could’ve done. He’d made up his mind.”
“I could’ve let him go. I could’ve given him the answers he wanted.”
Pam smirked. “But you’re smarter than that, Ethan. As you just proved.”
“You believe we have the right to keep people in this town against their will?”
“There are no rights anymore. No laws. Just force and fear.”
“You don’t believe rights exist inherently?”
She smiled. “Didn’t I just say that?”
Pam stood and started off into the woods.
Ethan called after her, “Who will talk to his family?”
“Not your problem. Pilcher will handle.”
“And tell them what?”
Pam stopped, turned.
She was twenty feet away and barely visible in the trees.
“I’m guessing whatever the f**k he feels like telling them. Was there anything else?”
Ethan glanced at his shotgun leaning against the tree.
A mad thought.
When he looked back at Pam, she was gone.
Ethan stayed with Peter for a long time. Until it occurred to him that he didn’t want to be here when Pilcher’s men finally came for the body. He struggled to his feet.
It felt good to walk away from the fence, the noise of its current steadily fading.
Soon, he moved through silent woods and mist.
Thinking, That was so f**ked up and you have no one to tell. Not your wife. No real friend to speak of. The only people you can share this with include a megalomaniac and a psychopath. And that’s never going to change.
After a half mile, he climbed a small rise and stumbled out onto the road. He hadn’t returned the way he’d intended, but still he’d only missed his Bronco by a few hundred feet. Exhaustion hit him. No idea what time it was, but it had been a long, long day, a long, long night, and the dawn of a brand-new one loomed.
He reached the Bronco, emptied the shotgun, stowed it on the rack.
So tired he could’ve lain across the console and slept.
The stench of the electrocution was just as potent—would probably take days to leave.
At some point tomorrow, Theresa would ask him if everything was okay, and he would smile and say, “Yeah, honey. I’m fine. And how are you?”
And she would answer with those intense eyes that seemed completely disconnected from her words, “Just great.”
He cranked the engine.
The rage came out of nowhere.
He pinned the gas pedal to the floorboard.
The tires squealed, bit blacktop, launched him.He tore around the curve and down the straightaway toward the outskirts of town.
The billboard disgusted him more every time he saw it—a family with bright white smiles waving like something out of a 1950s sitcom.
WELCOME TO WAYWARD PINES
WHERE PARADISE IS HOME
Ethan sped alongside a split-rail fence.
Through the passenger window, he could see the herd of cattle congregated in the pasture.
A row of white barns at the edge of the trees glowing in the starlight.
He looked back through the windshield.
The Bronco bounced over something large enough to jar the steering wheel out of his hands.
The vehicle lurched toward the shoulder, beelining for the fence at sixty-five miles per hour.
He grabbed the wheel, cranked it back, felt the suspension lift up on two tires. For a horrifying second, the wheels screeched across pavement and his right side dug into the shoulder strap.
He felt the g-force in his chest, his face.
Through the windshield caught a glimpse of the constellations spinning.
His foot had slipped off the gas pedal and he could no longer hear the engine revving—just three seconds of silence save for the wind screaming over the windshield as the Bronco flipped.
When the roof finally met the road, the collision was deafening.
Metal caving.
Glass crunching.
Tires exploding.
Sparks where the metal dragged across pavement.
And then the Bronco was motionless, upright on four wheels, two of them still holding air. Steam hissing up through the cracks along the hood.
Ethan smelled gasoline. Scorched rubber. Coolant. Blood.
He clutched the steering wheel so hard it took him a moment to pry his hands open.
He was still strapped into the seat. His shirt covered in safety glass. He reached down, unbuckled the seat belt, relieved to feel his arms working without pain. Shifting his legs, they seemed okay. His door wouldn’t open, but the glass had been completely busted out of the window. Up onto his knees, he dragged himself through the opening and fell to the road. Now he felt the pain. Nothing stabbing—just a slowly building ache that seemed to flood out of his head and down into the rest of his body.
He made it onto his feet.
Swaying.
Tottering.
Bent over, thought he might be sick, but the nausea passed.
Ethan brushed the glass off his face, the left side stinging from a gash that had already streamed blood over his jawline, down his neck, and under his shirt.
He glanced back at the Bronco. It stood perpendicular across the double yellow, right-side tires robbed of air, the SUV slouched away from him. Most of the glass was gone and there were long scores across the paint job like the claws of a predator had raked it.
He staggered away from the Bronco, following gas and oil and other fluids like a blood trail up the road.
Stepped over the light bar that had been ripped off.
A side mirror lay on its side on the shoulder like a plucked eye, wires dangling from the housing.
Cows groaned in the distance, heads raised, faces turned toward the commotion.
Ethan stopped just shy of the billboard and stared ahead at the object lying in the road, the object that had nearly killed him.
It looked like a ghost. Pale. Still.
He limped on until he stood over her. Didn’t immediately recall her name, but he’d seen this woman around town. She’d held some position of authority at the community gardens. Midtwenties he suspected. Black hair to her shoulders. Bangs. Now she was naked and her skin a serene, dead blue like sea ice. It seemed to glow in the dark. Except for the holes. So many of them. Something clinical, not desperate, in the pattern. He started to count but stopped himself. Didn’t want that number rattling around in his head. Only her face had been left untouched. Her lips had lost all color, and the largest, darkest slit in the center of her chest looked like a small, black mouth, open in surprise. Maybe that was the one that had killed her. Several others could have easily done the job. But she was clean of any blood. In fact, the only other mark on her skin was the tire track where his Bronco had rolled across her abdomen, the tread clearly visible.