Pines

  Just a feint—she was toying with him.

  “Now the next one, Mr. Burke, is going to—”

  Something smashed into the side of her head with a hard thunk.

  Pam hit the ground and didn’t move, Beverly standing over her, the frantic light blinking against her face. She still held the metal chair she’d dropped Nurse Pam with by its legs, looking more than a little shocked at what she’d done.

  “More people are coming,” Ethan said.

  “Can you walk?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Beverly tossed the chair aside and came over to Ethan as it clattered against the linoleum floor.

  “Hold onto me in case your balance goes.”

  “It’s already gone.”

  He clung to Beverly’s arm as she pulled him along back down the corridor. By the time they’d reached the nurses’ station, Ethan was struggling just to put one foot in front of the other.

  He glanced back as they rounded the corner, saw Nurse Pam struggling to sit up.

  “Faster,” Beverly said.

  The main corridor was still empty, and they were jogging now.

  Twice, Ethan tripped, but Beverly caught him, kept him upright.

  His eyes were growing heavy, the sedation descending on him like a warm, wet blanket, and all he wanted to do was find some quiet alcove where he could curl up and sleep this off.

  “You still with me?” Beverly asked.

  “By a thread.”

  The door at the corridor’s end loomed fifty feet ahead.

  Beverly quickened the pace. “Come on,” she said. “I can hear them coming down the stairwell.”

  Ethan heard it too—a jumble of voices and numerous footsteps behind a door they passed leading to a set of stairs.

  At the end of the corridor, Beverly jerked the door open and dragged Ethan across the threshold into a cramped stairwell whose six steps climbed to another door at the top, over which glowed a red EXIT sign.

  Beverly paused once they were through, let it close softly behind them.

  Ethan could hear voices on the other side filling the corridor, sounded like the footfalls were moving away from them, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Did they see us?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  It took all of Ethan’s focus to climb those final steps to the exit, where they crashed through the door and stumbled outside into darkness, Ethan’s feet on wet pavement and the patter of cold rain on his shoulders already beginning to seep through the paper-thin fabric of his gown.

  He could barely stand and already Beverly was pulling him toward the sidewalk.

  “Where are we going?” Ethan asked.

  “To the only place I know they can’t find you.”

  He followed her into the dark street.

  No cars out, just a smattering of streetlights and houselights, everything dim and obscured by the rain.

  They took the sidewalk down a quiet street, and after the second block, Ethan stopped and tried to sit down in the grass, but Beverly wouldn’t let him quit.

  “Not yet,” she said.

  “I can’t go any farther. I can barely feel my legs.”

  “One more block, OK? You can make it. You have to make it if you want to live. I promise you in five minutes you’ll be able to lie down and ride this out.”

  Ethan straightened up and staggered on, followed Beverly for one more block, beyond which the houses and streetlights ended.

  They entered a cemetery filled with crumbling headstones interspersed with scrub oaks and pines. It hadn’t been maintained in ages, grass and weeds rising to Ethan’s waist.

  “Where are you taking me?” His words slurred, felt heavy and awkward falling out of his mouth.

  “Straight ahead.”

  They wove through headstones and monuments, most eroded so badly Ethan couldn’t make out the engraving.

  He was cold, his gown soaked through, his feet muddy.

  “There it is.” Beverly pointed to a small, stone mausoleum standing in a grove of aspen. Ethan struggled through the last twenty feet and then collapsed at the entrance between a pair of stone planters that had disintegrated into rubble.

  It took Beverly three digs with her shoulder to force open the iron door, its hinges grinding loudly enough to wake the dead.

  “I need you inside,” she said. “Come on, you’re almost there. Four more feet.”

  Ethan opened his eyes and crawled up the steps through the narrow doorway, out of the rain. Beverly pulled the door closed after them, and for a moment, the darkness inside the crypt was total.

  A flashlight clicked on, the beam skirting across the interior and igniting the color of a stained-glass window inset in the back wall.

  The image—rays of sunlight piercing through clouds and lighting a single, flowering tree.

  Ethan slumped down onto the freezing stone as Beverly unzipped a duffel bag that had been stowed in the corner.

  She pulled out a blanket, unfolded it, spread it over Ethan.

  “I have some clothes for you as well,” she said, “but you can dress when you wake up again.”

  He shivered violently, fighting the undertow of unconsciousness, because there were things he had to ask, had to know. Didn’t want to risk Beverly not being here when he woke up again.

  “What is Wayward Pines?” he asked.

  Beverly sat down beside him, said, “When you wake, I’ll—”

  “No, tell me now. In the last two days, I’ve seen things that were impossible. Things that make me doubt my sanity.”

  “You aren’t crazy. They’re just trying to make you think you are.”

  “Why?”

  “That, I don’t know.”

  He wondered if he could believe her, figured that, all things considered, it was probably wise to err on the side of skepticism.

  “You saved my life,” he said, “and thank you for that. But I have to ask...why, Beverly? Why are you my only friend in Wayward Pines?”

  She smiled. “Because we both want the same thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “To get out.”

  “There’s no road out of this town, is there?”

  “No.”

  “I drove here several days ago. So how is that even possible?”

  “Ethan, just let the drug take you, and when you wake up, I’ll tell you everything I know and how I think we can get out. Close your eyes.”

  He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t stop it from happening.

  “I’m not crazy,” he said.

  “I know that.”

  His shivering had begun to abate, his body heat creating a pocket of warmth under the blanket.

  “Tell me one thing,” he said. “How did you wind up in Wayward Pines?”

  “I was a rep for IBM. Came here on a sales call trying to outfit the local school’s computer lab with our Tandy 1000s. But as I drove into town, I got into a car accident. Truck came out of nowhere, slammed into my car.” Her voice was becoming softer, more distant, harder to follow. “They told me I suffered a head injury and some memory loss, which is why my first recollection of this town is waking up one afternoon beside the river.”

  Ethan wanted to tell her that the same thing had happened to him, but he couldn’t open his mouth to speak, the drug plowing through his system like a rogue wave, engulfing him.

  He’d be gone inside a minute.

  “When?” he rasped.

  She didn’t hear him, had to lean in close, put her ear to his mouth, and it took everything in his power to get the question out.

  “When...did...you...come...here?” he whispered, clinging to her words now like a life preserver that could keep him afloat, keep him awake, but still he was slipping under, seconds of consciousness remaining.

  She said, “I’ll never forget the day I arrived, because in some ways, it’s like the day I died. Since then, nothing’s been the same. It was a beautiful autumn morning. Sky a deep blue. The a
spen turning. That was October third, 1985. In fact, next week is my anniversary. I’ll have been in Wayward Pines a whole year.”

  CHAPTER 8

  She didn’t dare open the door, glanced instead through one of the missing panes in the stained-glass window. Found nothing to see through the midnight rainfall and nothing to hear above the sound of it on the weeds and the trees and the mausoleum roof.

  Ethan was gone, lost to the drug, and in some ways, she envied him.

  In sleep, the dreams came to her.

  Of her Life Before.

  Of a man whom in all likelihood she would have married.

  Of her home with him in Boise.

  All the plans they’d made together.

  The children they had one day hoped to bring into the world—sometimes, she even dreamed about their faces.

  Waking was Wayward Pines.

  This beautiful hell.

  When she’d first arrived, the surrounding cliffs had filled her with awe and wonder. Now, she hated them for what they were, what they’d become—prison bars surrounding this lovely town where no one could leave, and those few who tried...

  She still had nightmares about those nights.

  The sound of five hundred telephones ringing at once.

  The screaming.

  Not tonight...that is not going to happen tonight.

  Beverly pulled off her poncho and went to him, curled up under the blanket against the wall. When the pattern of his breathing finally slowed into long respirations, she crawled over to the duffel bag and fished the knife out of an exterior pocket.

  It was a folder, rusted and dull, but it was all she’d been able to find.

  She tugged the blanket away and pulled up Ethan’s hospital gown and ran her hand along his left leg until she felt the bump on the back of his thigh.

  Let her hand linger there a shade longer than she should have, hating herself for it, but God it’d been so long since she’d even touched or been touched by a man.

  She’d considered telling Ethan ahead of time, but his impaired state had prevented this, and maybe that was for the best. Regardless, he was lucky. She hadn’t had the benefit of anesthesia when she’d done this to herself.

  Beverly set the flashlight on the stone floor so it illuminated the backside of his left thigh.

  It was covered in scars.

  You couldn’t see the bump, only feel it—and just barely—if you knew exactly where to touch.

  She pried open the blade, which she’d sterilized two hours ago with cotton balls and alcohol, her stomach lurching at the thought of what she had to do, praying the pain wouldn’t break his sedation.

  CHAPTER 9

  Ethan dreamed he’d been tied down and that something was eating his leg, taking small, probing bites that occasionally went deep enough for him to cry out in his sleep.

  * * *

  He slammed awake.

  Groaning.

  Darkness everywhere, and his left leg, high on the back of his thigh, burning with a pain he knew all too well—someone was cutting him.

  For a terrible moment, he was back in that torture room with black-hooded Aashif, hanging from the ceiling by his wrists, his ankles chained to the floor, and his body taut so he couldn’t struggle, so he couldn’t even move, no matter how awful the pain.

  Hands shook his shoulders.

  A woman’s voice said his name.

  “Ethan, you’re all right. It’s over.”

  “Please stop, oh God, please stop.”

  “You’re safe. I got it out.”

  He registered a splash of light, blinked several times until it sharpened into focus.

  A flashlight beam shone on the floor.

  In the indirect light, he glimpsed stone walls, two crypts, a stained-glass window, and then it all came roaring back.

  “You know where you are?” Beverly asked.

  His leg hurt so much he thought he was going to throw up.

  “My leg...something’s wrong—”

  “I know. I had to cut something out of it.”

  His head was clearing, the hospital, the sheriff, his attempt to leave town all coming back, the memories trying to reassemble themselves into a sequence that made sense. He thought he’d seen Kate as well, but wasn’t sure. That piece felt too much like a dream, or a nightmare.

  With newfound clarity, the pain in his leg was making it difficult to concentrate on anything else.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  Beverly lifted the flashlight and let it shine on her right hand, where between her thumb and first finger, she held something that resembled a microchip, specks of drying blood still caught up in the semiconductor.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “How they monitor and track you.”

  “That was in my leg?”

  “They’re embedded in everyone’s.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can stomp it into pieces.”

  “No, no, no. You don’t want to do that. Then they’ll know you removed it.” She handed it to him. “Just ditch it in the cemetery when we leave.”

  “Won’t they find us in here?”

  “I’ve hidden here with the chip before. These thick stone walls disrupt the signal. But we can’t stay here long. They can track the chip to within a hundred yards of where the signal drops.”

  Ethan struggled to sit up. He folded back the blanket to uncover a small pool of blood glistening on stone under the flashlight beam. More red eddies trickled out of an incision site on the back of his leg. He wondered how deep she’d had to dig. Felt light-headed, his skin achy and clammy with fever.

  “You have something in the bag to close this wound?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Just duct tape.”

  “Get it. Better than nothing.”

  Beverly pulled the duffel bag over and thrust her hand inside.

  Ethan said, “Did I dream you told me you came here in 1985, or did that really happen?”

  “That happened.” She pulled out a roll of tape. “What do I do?” she asked. “I have no medical training.”

  “Just wrap it around my leg several times.”

  She started a piece of tape and then moved in, winding it carefully around Ethan’s thigh.

  “Is that too tight?”

  “No, it’s good. You need to stop the bleeding.”

  She made five revolutions and then ripped the tape and smoothed it down.

  “I’m going to tell you something,” Ethan said. “Something that you won’t believe.”

  “Try me.”

  “I came here five days ago...”

  “You already told me that.”

  “The date was September twenty-fourth, 2012.”

  For a moment, she just stared at him.

  “Ever heard of an iPhone?” Ethan asked.

  She shook her head...

  “The Internet? Facebook? Twitter?”

  ...and kept shaking it.

  Ethan said, “Your president is...”

  “Ronald Reagan.”

  “In 2008, America elected its first black president, Barack Obama. You’ve never heard of the Challenger disaster?”

  He noticed the flashlight beginning to tremble in her hand.

  “No.”

  “The fall of the Berlin Wall?”

  “No, none of it.”

  “The two Gulf Wars? September eleventh?”

  “Are you playing some mind game with me?” Her eyes narrowed—one measure of anger, two of fear. “Oh God. You’re with them, aren’t you?”

  “Of course not. How old are you?”

  “Thirty-four.”

  “And your birthday is...”

  “November first.”

  “What year?”

  “Nineteen fifty.”

  “You should be sixty-one years old, Beverly.”

  “I don’t understand what this means,” she said.

  “Makes two
of us.”

  “The people here...they don’t talk to each other about anything outside of Wayward Pines,” she said. “It’s one of the rules.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They call it ‘live in the moment.’ No talk of politics is allowed. No talk of your life before. No discussions of pop culture—movies, books, music. At least nothing that isn’t available here in town. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are hardly any brand names. Even the money is weird. I didn’t realize it until recently, but all the currency is from the fifties and sixties. Nothing later. And there are no calendars, no newspapers. Only way I know how long I’ve been here is because I keep a journal.”

  “Why is it like this?”

  “I don’t know, but the punishment for slipping up is severe.”

  Ethan’s leg throbbed from the constriction of the duct tape, but at least the bleeding had subsided. He let it ride for now, but he’d have to loosen it soon.

  Beverly said, “If I find out you’re with them—”

  “I am not with them, whoever they are.”

  There were tears building in her eyes. She blinked them away and wiped the glistening trails off the sides of her face.

  Ethan leaned back against the wall.

  The chills and the aches getting worse.

  He could still hear the rain beating down above them, and it was still night beyond that stained-glass window.

  Beverly lifted the blanket off the floor and draped it over Ethan’s shoulders.

  “You’re burning up,” she said.

  “I asked you what this place was, but you never really answered me.”

  “Because I don’t know.”

  “You know more than me.”

  “The more you know, the stranger it becomes. The less you know.”

  “You’ve been here a year. How have you survived?”

  She laughed—sad and resigned. “By doing what everyone else does...buying into the lie.”

  “What lie?”

  “That everything’s fine. That we all live in a perfect little town.”

  “Where paradise is home.”

  “What?”

  “Where paradise is home. It’s something I saw on a sign on the outskirts of town when I was trying to drive out of here last night.”

  “When I first woke up here, I was so disoriented and in so much pain from the car accident, I believed them when they told me I lived here. After wandering around in a fog all day, Sheriff Pope found me. He escorted me to the Biergarten, that pub where you and I first met. Told me I was a bartender there, even though I’d never tended bar in my life. Then he took me to a little Victorian house I’d never seen before, told me it was home.”