Pines

The numbers of the colorful Victorians that populated this block all started with a three.

  Skozie’s block would be next.

  His palms were beginning to sweat and the pulsing in the back of his head sounded like the thump-thump-thump of a bass drum buried deep underground.

  Two seconds of double vision.

  He squeezed his eyes shut tight, and when he opened them again, it had gone away.

  At the next intersection, he stopped. His mouth had been dry, but now it turned to cotton. He was struggling to breathe, bile threatening to surge up his throat.

  This will all make sense when you see his face.

  It has to.

  He made a tentative step out into the street.

  Evening now, the chill coming off those mountains and settling down into the valley.

  Alpenglow had given the rock surrounding Wayward Pines a pinkish tint, the same shade as the darkening sky. He tried to find it beautiful and moving, but the agony prevented this.

  An older couple moved away from him, hand in hand, on a quiet stroll.

  Otherwise, the street stood empty and silent, and the noise of the downtown had completely faded away.

  He moved across the smooth, black asphalt and stepped onto the sidewalk.

  The mailbox to 401 was straight ahead.

  Number 403 next in line.

  He was having to maintain a constant squint now to stave off the double vision and the stabbing throb of his migraine.

  Fifteen painful steps, and he stood beside the black mailbox of 403.

  SKOZIE

  He stabilized his balance, holding fast to the sharp ends of the picket fence.

  Reaching over, he unlatched the gate and pushed it with the tip of his scuffed, black shoe.

  The hinges creaked as it swung open.

  The gate banged softly into the fence.

  The sidewalk was a patchwork of ancient brick, and it led to a covered front porch with a couple of rocking chairs separated by a small, wrought-iron table. The house itself was purple with green trim, and through the thin curtains, he could see lights on inside.

  Just go. You have to know.

  He stumbled toward the house.

  Double vision shot through in nauseating flashes that he was fighting harder and harder to stop.

  He stepped up onto the porch and reached out just in time to stop from falling, bracing himself against the door frame. His hands shook uncontrollably as he grabbed the knocker and lifted it off its brass plate.

  He refused himself even a split second to reconsider.

  Pounded the knocker four times into the plate.

  It felt like someone was punching him in the back of the head every four seconds, and burning patches of darkness had begun to swarm his vision like miniature black holes.

  On the other side of the door, he could hear a hardwood floor groaning under the weight of approaching footsteps.

  His knees seemed to liquefy.

  He hugged one of the posts that supported the porch’s roof for balance.

  The wood door swung open, and a man who could’ve been his father’s age stared at him through the screened door. He was tall and thin, with a splash of gray hair on top, a white goatee, and microscopic red veins in his cheeks that suggested a lifetime of heavy drinking.

  “Can I help you?” the man asked.

  He straightened himself up, blinking hard through the migraine. It took everything in his power to stand without support.

  “Are you Mack?” He could hear the fear in his voice, figured this man could too.

  Hated himself for it.

  The older man leaned in toward the screen to get a better look at the stranger on his porch.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Are you Mack?”

  “Yes.”

  He edged closer, the older man coming into sharper focus, the sour sweetness of red wine on his breath.

  “Do you know me?” he asked.

  “Pardon?”

  Now the fear was fermenting into rage.

  “Do. You. Know. Me. Did you do this to me?”

  The old man said, “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

  “Is that right?” His hands were balling involuntarily into fists. “Is there another Mack in this town?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.” Mack pushed open the screen door, ventured a step out onto the porch. “Buddy, you don’t look so hot.”

  “I don’t feel so hot.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “You tell me, Mack.”

  A woman’s voice called out from somewhere in the house, “Honey? Everything OK?”

  “Yes, Jane, all’s well!” Mack stared at him. “Why don’t you let me take you to the hospital? You’re injured. You need—”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “Then why are you at my house?” A gruff edge had entered Mack’s voice. “I just offered to help you. You don’t want that, fine, but...”

  Mack was still talking, but his words had begun to dissolve, drowned out by a noise building in the pit of his stomach like the roar of a freight train barreling toward him. The black holes were multiplying, the world beginning to spin. He simply wasn’t going to be able to stay on his feet another five seconds if his head didn’t explode first.

  He looked up at Mack, the man’s mouth still moving, that freight train closing in with a vengeance of noise, its rhythm in lockstep with the brutal pounding in his head, and he couldn’t take his eyes off Mack’s mouth, the old man’s teeth—his synapses sparking, trying to connect, and the noise, God, the noise, and the throbbing—

  He didn’t feel his knees give out.

  Didn’t even register the backward stumble.

  One second he was on the porch.

  The next, the grass.

  Flat on his back and his head reeling from a hard slam against the ground.

  Mack hovering above him now, staring down at him, bent over with his hands on his knees and his words hopelessly lost to the train that was screaming through his head.

  He was going to lose consciousness—he could feel it coming, seconds away—and he wanted it, wanted the pain to stop, but...

  The answers.

  They were right there.

  So close.

  It made no sense, but there was something about Mack’s mouth. His teeth. He couldn’t stop looking at them, and he didn’t know why, but it was all there.

  An explanation.

  Answers to everything.

  And it occurred to him—stop fighting it.

  Stop wanting it so badly.

  Quit thinking.

  Just let it come.

  The teeth theteeth theteeththeteeththeteethteethteethteeth...

  They aren’t teeth.

  They’re a bright and shiny grille with the letters

  M A C K

  stamped across the front.

  Stallings, the man beside him in the front passenger seat doesn’t see what’s coming.

  In the three-hour ride north out of Boise, it’s become apparent that Stallings adores the sound of his own voice, and he’s doing what he’s been doing the entire time—talking. He stopped listening an hour ago, when he discovered he could tune out completely as long as he interjected an “I hadn’t thought of it that way” or “Hmm, interesting” every five minutes or so.

  He’s turned to make just such a token contribution to the conversation when he reads the word MACK several feet away on the other side of Stallings’s window.

  Hasn’t even begun to react—he’s barely read the word—when the window beside Stallings’s head bursts in a shower of glass pebbles.

  The air bag explodes out of the steering column but it’s a millisecond late, just missing his head, which slams into the window with enough force to punch through.

  The right side of the Lincoln Town Car implodes in an apocalypse of breaking glass and bending metal, and Stallings’s head takes a direct hit from the truck’s gr
ille.

  He can feel the heat from the truck’s engine as it tears into the car.

  The sudden reek of gasoline and brake fluid.

  Blood is everywhere—running down the inside of the fractured windshield, splattered across the dash, in his eyes, still erupting out of what’s left of Stallings.

  The Town Car is sliding crosswise through an intersection, being pushed by the truck toward the side of that brownstone with the phone booth near the alley, when he loses consciousness.

  CHAPTER 2

  A woman was smiling down at him. At least, he thought those were a mouthful of pretty teeth, although his blurred, double vision made it difficult to say for sure. She leaned in a little closer, her two heads merging and her features crystallizing enough for him to see she was beautiful. Her short-sleeved uniform was white with buttons all the way down the front to where the skirt stopped just above her knees.

  She kept repeating his name.

  “Mr. Burke? Mr. Burke, can you hear me? Mr. Burke?”

  The headache was gone.

  He took a slow, careful breath until the pain in his ribs cut him off.

  He must have winced, because the nurse said, “Are you still experiencing discomfort in your left side?”

  “Discomfort.” He groaned through a laugh. “Yes, I’m experiencing discomfort. You could certainly call it that.”

  “I can get something a little stronger for the pain if you’d like.”

  “I think I can manage.”

  “All right, but don’t you be a martyr, Mr. Burke. Anything I can do to make you more comfortable, just name it. I’m your girl. My name’s Pam, by the way.”

  “Thank you, Pam. I think I remember you from the last time I was here. I’d never forget that classic nurse’s uniform. I didn’t even know they still made those.”

  She laughed. “Well, I’m glad to hear your memory’s coming back. That’s very good. Dr. Miter will be in shortly to see you. Would you mind if I took a blood pressure reading?”

  “Sure.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Nurse Pam lifted a blood pressure pump from a cart at the foot of the bed and strapped the cuff around his left biceps.

  “You gave us a good scare, Mr. Burke,” she said as she inflated the cuff. “Walking off like that.”

  She was quiet while the needle fell.

  “Did I pass?” he asked.

  “A-plus. Systolic is one twenty-two. Diastolic seventy-five.” She un-Velcroed the cuff. “When they brought you in, you were delirious,” she said. “You didn’t seem to know who you were.”

  He sat up in bed, the fog in his head beginning to lift. He was in a private hospital room—he thought it looked familiar. There was a window beside the bed. The blinds had been drawn, but the light creeping through seemed timid enough to be either early morning or early evening.

  “Where’d you find me?” he asked.

  “Mack Skozie’s front yard. You’d blacked out. Do you remember what you were doing there? Mack said you seemed pretty agitated and confused.”

  “I woke up yesterday by the river. I didn’t know who I was or where I was.”

  “You’d left the hospital. Do you remember leaving?”

  “No. I went to the Skozie residence because he was the only Mack in the phone book.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  “Mack was the only name that held any meaning for me.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “Because Mack is the last word I read before the truck hit us.”

  “Oh, right...it was a Mack truck that T-boned your car.”

  “Exactly.”

  “The mind is a weird thing,” the nurse said, moving around the end of the bed and walking over to the window. “It works in mysterious ways. Seeks out the strangest connections.”

  “How long has it been since I was brought back here?”

  She raised the blinds.

  “Day and a half.”

  Light streamed in.

  It was actually late morning, the sun just clearing the eastern rim of cliffs.

  “You had a bad concussion,” she said. “You could’ve died out there.”

  “I felt like I was dying.”

  The early light pouring down into the town was stunning.

  “How’s your memory?” Pam asked.

  “Weirdest thing. It all came back when I remembered the accident. Like someone just flipped a switch. How’s Agent Stallings?”

  “Who?”

  “The man who was riding in the front passenger seat of the car when the collision happened.”

  “Oh.”

  “He didn’t make it, did he?”

  Nurse Pam walked back over to the bedside. She reached down, put her hand on his wrist. “I’m afraid not.”

  He’d assumed as much. Hadn’t seen that sort of trauma since the war. Still, to have that suspicion confirmed was a sobering thing.

  “Was he a close friend of yours?” the nurse asked.

  “No. I’d met him for the first time earlier that day.”

  “Must’ve been just awful. I’m so sorry.”

  “What’s my damage?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My injuries?”

  “Dr. Miter will be able to fill you in better than I can, but you suffered a concussion, which is resolved now. A few cracked ribs. Some superficial cuts and bruises. All things considered, it could have been much, much worse for you.”

  She turned away and headed for the door, stopping as she started to pull it open for a quick glance back over her shoulder.

  “So,” she said. “We’re sure about your memory coming back?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “What’s your first name?”

  “Ethan,” he said.

  “Excellent.”

  “Could you do me a favor?” Ethan asked.

  Big, high-wattage smile. “Name it.”

  “There are people I need to call. My wife. My SAC. Has anyone been in contact with them?”

  “I believe someone from the sheriff’s office got in touch with your emergency contacts right after the accident. Let them know what happened, your condition.”

  “I had an iPhone in my jacket at the time of the collision. Would you happen to know where it is?”

  “No, but I can certainly put on my Nancy Drew detective hat and check into that for you.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “That little red button on the side of the railing? See it?”

  Ethan glanced down at it.

  “I’m one click away.”

  Nurse Pam flashed one more brilliant smile and left.

  * * *

  There was no television in the room, and no telephone. The best and only entertainment was the wall clock hanging above the door, and he lay in bed for several hours watching the second hand make its endless orbit as the morning turned to midday and then to afternoon.

  He couldn’t be sure, but his room appeared to be three, possibly four floors up. Nurse Pam had left the blinds open, and when he tired of clock-watching, he turned carefully over onto his good side and studied the happenings of Wayward Pines.

  From his vantage point, he could see straight down Main Street and several blocks back on either side.

  He’d known prior to coming here that it was a tiny, sleepy town, but the sheer inactivity still surprised him. An hour elapsed, and he counted a dozen people strolling down the sidewalk past the hospital, and not a single car driving down the town’s busiest thoroughfare. The most effective object of distraction was two blocks away—a construction crew framing a house.

  He thought about his wife and son back in Seattle, hoping they were already en route to see him. They’d probably caught the first plane out. They would have had to fly into Boise or Missoula. Rent a car for the long trek out to Wayward Pines.

  The next time he glanced at the clock, it was a quarter to four.

  He’d been lying in this bed all day, a
nd Dr. Miter, or whatever his name was, hadn’t even bothered to stop by. Ethan had spent significant time in hospitals, and in his experience, nurses and doctors never left you alone for more than ten seconds—someone always bringing some new medication, always prodding and poking.

  Here, they’d practically ignored him.

  Nurse Pam had never even shown up with his iPhone and other belongings. How busy could this hospital in the middle of nowhere be?

  He reached for the control panel attached to the railing and jammed his thumb into the NURSE CALL button.

  Fifteen minutes later, the door to his room swung open and Nurse Pam breezed through.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t see that you rang until ten seconds ago. I think we’re having some issues with our intercom.” She stopped at the foot of the bed and put her hands on the metal railing. “How can I help you, Ethan?”

  “Where’s Dr. Miter?”

  She grimaced. “He’s been tied up in an emergency surgery all afternoon. One of those five-hour nightmares.” She laughed. “But I filled him in on your vitals this morning and the fantastic progress you’re making with your memory, and he thinks you’re doing A-OK.”

  She gave Ethan a double thumbs-up.

  “When can I see him?”

  “It’s looking like he’ll make his rounds after supper now, which should be coming up in the next half hour.”

  Ethan struggled to mask his growing frustration.

  “Any luck finding my phone and the other things I had with me before the accident? This would include my wallet and a black briefcase.”

  Nurse Pam gave a half salute and marched in place for several steps.

  “Working on it, Captain.”

  “Just bring me a landline right now. I need to make some calls.”

  “Of course, Marshal.”

  “Marshal?”

  “Aren’t you like a US Marshal or something?”

  “No, I’m a special agent with the United States Secret Service.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I thought you guys protected the president.”

  “We handle some other things too.”

  “So what are you doing out here in our little slice of heaven?”

  Ethan gave her a cool, thin smile.

  “I can’t discuss that.”

  He could actually, just didn’t feel like it.

  “Well, now you’ve got me all intrigued.”