“Why?”

“Because this town is bullshit.”

“But it’s not like there’s something better out there. If you ever dreamed of leaving Wayward Pines, I destroyed that sliver of hope.”

“I’ll take the truth any day. And I still want to leave.”

“It’s not possible.”

“Anything’s possible.”

“Our family would be slaughtered in the first hour.”

“I can’t live like this, Ethan. I thought about it all day. I can’t stop thinking about it. I won’t live in a house where I’m spied on. Where I have to whisper to have a real conversation with my husband. I’m done living in a town where my son goes to school and I can’t know what he’s being taught. Do you know what they’re teaching him?”

“No.”

“And you’re fine with that?”

“Of course not.”

“So f**king do something about it.”

“Pilcher has a hundred and sixty people living inside the mountain.”

“There are four or five hundred of us.”

“They’re armed. We’re not. Look, I didn’t tell you what was going on so you’d ask me to blow everything up.”

“I won’t live like this.”

“What do you want from me, Theresa?”

“Fix it.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“You want your son growing up—”

“If burning this town to the f**king ground would make things just a little better for you and Ben, I would’ve torched it my first day on the job.”

“We’re losing him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It started last year. It’s only getting worse.”

“How?”

“He’s drifting away, Ethan. I don’t know what they’re teaching him, but it’s stealing him away from us. There’s a wall going up.”

“I’ll find out.”

“You promise?”

“Yes, but you have to promise me something.”

“What?”

“You won’t breathe a word of anything I’ve told you. Not a single detail to anyone.”

“I’ll try my best.”

“One last thing.”

“What?”

“This is the first time we’ve been together in Wayward Pines without the cameras watching.”

“So?”

He leaned over and kissed her in the dark.

They walked through town.

Ethan felt freezing motes begin to strike his face.

He said, “Is that what I think it is?”

In the distance, the light of a lonely streetlamp became a stage for snowflakes.

There was no wind. They fell straight down.

“Winter’s here,” Theresa said.

“But it was just summer several days ago.”

“Summer’s long. Winter’s long. Spring and fall shoot past. The last winter went on for nine months. The snow was ten feet deep at Christmas.”

He reached down and took hold of her mittened hand.

Not a sound in the entire valley.

Total hush.

Ethan said, “We could be anywhere. Some village in the Swiss Alps. Just two lovers out for a midnight stroll.”

“Don’t do that,” Theresa warned.

“Do what?”

“Pretend we’re in some other place and time. The people who pretend in this town go mad.”

They stayed off Main, kept to the side streets.

The houses were dark. With no woodsmoke in the valley, the snow-streaked air carried a clean, rinsed quality.

Theresa said, “Sometimes, I hear screams and screeches. They’re far away, but I hear them. He never mentions it, but I know that Ben hears them too.”

“Those are the abbies,” Ethan said.

“Strange he’s never asked me what the sound is. It’s like he already knows.”

They walked south beyond the hospital on the road that purported to lead out of town.

Streetlamps fell behind.

Darkness closed in.

A fragile quarter inch of snow dusted the pavement.

Ethan said, “I paid a visit to Wayne Johnson this afternoon.”

“I’m supposed to take him dinner tomorrow night.”

“I lied to him, Theresa. I told him this gets better. I told him it was just a town.”

“Me too. But that’s what they make you say, right?”

“Nobody can make me do anything. It’s always a choice in the end.”

“How’s he doing?”

“How do you think? Scared. Confused. He thinks he’s dead and this is hell.”

“Will he run?”

“Probably.”

At the edge of the forest, Ethan stopped.

He said, “The fence is about a mile straight ahead.”

“What are they like?” she asked. “The abbies.”

“Like all the bad things you have nightmares about when you’re a kid. They’re the monsters in the closet, under the bed. There are millions of them.”

“And you’re telling me we have a fence between us and them?”

“It’s a big fence. Has electricity going through it.”

“Oh, well, in that case.”

“And there’s a few snipers up on the peaks.”

“While Pilcher and his people live in safety in the mountain.”

Theresa walked a few steps down the road, the snow collecting on her shoulders, on her hoodie.

“Tell me something. What’s the point of all those pretty little houses with white picket fences?”

“I think he’s trying to preserve our way of life.”

“For who? Us or him? Maybe someone should tell him our way of life is over.”

“I’ve tried.”

“We should all be in that mountain, figuring something out. I’m not living the rest of my life in some psycho’s model train town.”

“Well, the man in charge doesn’t share your view. Look, we aren’t going to fix this tonight.”

“I know.”

“But we will fix it.”

“You swear?”

“I swear.”

“Even if it means losing everything?”