The Last Town
“That is not true.”
“You know it is. My loyalty, my devotion to you has been total. If our marriage was a rope, you on one end, me on the other, I was always pulling a little bit harder. And sometimes a lot.”
“This is punishment, isn’t it? For Kate.”
“Not everything is about you. This is about me and this man I fell in love with while you were gone, and who’s now back, and I have no f**king idea how to handle it. Can you put yourself in my shoes for two seconds?”
Ethan sat up in bed, threw back the covers.
“Don’t leave,” she said.
“I just need some air.”
“I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No, you should’ve told me on day one.”
He climbed out of bed, walked out of their room wearing socks, pajama bottoms, and a wifebeater.
It was two or three in the morning, and Level 4 stood empty, the fluorescent lights humming quietly overhead.
Ethan walked down the corridor. Behind every door he passed, residents of Wayward Pines slept safe and sound. There was comfort in knowing that some had been saved.
The cafeteria was closed, dark.
Stopping at the doors to the gymnasium, he peered through the glass. In the low light, he saw the raised basketball hoops, the court covered in cots. The people in the mountain had volunteered as a group to give up their rooms on Level 4 to the refugees, a gesture he hoped would be a good omen for the tough transition to come.
Down on Level 2, he swiped his card and stepped into surveillance.
Alan sat at the console, watching the screens.
He looked back as Ethan entered, and said, “You’re up late.”
Ethan took a seat beside him.
“Anything?” he asked.
“I disabled the motion sensors that powered up the cameras, so they’re running all the time now. I’m sure the batteries won’t last much longer. I’ve spotted a few dozen abbies back in town. I’ll take a team down in the morning first thing to finish them off.”
“And the fence?”
“Full power. All levels in the green. You should really get some sleep.”
“I don’t see a lot of that in my future.”
Alan laughed. “Tell me about it.”
“Thank you, by the way,” Ethan said. “If you hadn’t backed me up yesterday—”
“You honored my friend.”
“The people from town—”
“Don’t let this out, but we call them townies.”
Ethan said, “They’re going to be looking to me. I have a feeling the people in the mountain will be looking to you.”
“Looks that way. There are going to be some tough choices to make in our future, and a right way and a wrong way to handle them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Pilcher ran things a certain way.”
“Yeah. His.”
“I’m not defending the man, but sometimes situations arise that are so pivotal, so life and death, one or two strong people need to call the shots.”
“Think Pilcher has any diehards in the mountain?” Ethan asked.
“What do you mean? True believers?”
“Exactly.”
“Everyone in this mountain is a true believer. Don’t you understand what we gave up to be here?”
“No.”
“Everything. We believed that man when he said the old world was dying and that we had a chance to be a part of the new world to come. I sold my house, my cars, cashed out my 401(k), left my family. I gave him everything I had.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“You might have missed it with all the other excitement, but we had a nomad return today.”
“Yeah, Adam Hassler.”
“So you know him.”
“Not well. I’m shocked he made it back.”
“I’d like to know more about him. Was he a townie before he left on his mission?”
“I couldn’t tell you. You should go talk to Francis Leven.”
“Who’s that?”
“The steward of the superstructure.”
“Which means . . .”
“He tracks supplies, system integrity, the status of people in suspension and out. He’s a wealth of institutional memory. The heads of each group report to him, and he reports, well, reported, to Pilcher.”
“Never met him.”
“He’s a recluse. Keeps mostly to himself.”
“Where would I find him?”
“His office is tucked way back in the ark.”
Ethan stood.
The pain meds were fading.
The wear and tear of the last forty-eight hours becoming suddenly pronounced.
As Ethan started toward the door, Alan said, “One last thing.”
“Yeah?”
“We finally found Ted. He was in his room, stuffed in his closet, stabbed to death. Pilcher had cut his microchip out and destroyed it.”
Ethan would’ve thought that, after a day like this, one more piece of shitty news would crash into his psyche like a wave against a seawall, but it penetrated. Deeply.
He left Alan and went back out into the corridor, started up the steps toward the Level 4 dormitories, but then stopped.
Turning back, he descended the last flight of stairs to the first level.
Margaret, the abby whose intelligence Pilcher had been testing for the last few months, was up, pacing in her cage under the glare of the fluorescents.
Ethan put his face to the small window and stared through, his breath fogging the glass.
Last time he’d seen this abby, she’d been sitting peacefully in the corner.
Docile. Humanlike.
Now she looked agitated. Not angry, not vicious. Just nervous.
Because so many of your brothers and sisters have come into our valley? Ethan wondered. Because so many have been killed, even in this complex? Pilcher had told him that the abbies communicated through pheromones. Used them like words, he’d said.
Margaret saw Ethan.
She crept on all fours over toward the door and stood on her hind legs.
Ethan’s eyes and the abby’s eyes were just inches away, separated by the glass.
Up close, hers were almost pretty.
Ethan moved deeper into the corridor.
Six doors down, he looked through the window of another cage.
There was no bed, no chair.