“I said I needed a minute,” Bob said.
“Are you crying?”
“No.” He wiped his eyes.
“Oh my God, you are.”
“Leave me alone please.”
“Why are you crying?”
He gestured toward town. “This isn’t enough?”
She sat down beside him.
“You had someone, didn’t you?” she said. “Before Wayward Pines, I mean.”
He made no response.
“Your wife?”
“His name—”
“His?”
“Was Paul.”
They just sat there in the road.
Breathing.
Barbara finally said, “This must have been awful for you.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t any picnic on your end.”
“You never seemed like you were really—”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
“How is this remotely your fault? None of this was our choice, Barbara. You were never married before, were you?”
“You were my first. In more ways than one.”
“God, I’m so sorry.”
“How is this remotely your fault?” Barbara laughed. “The fifty-year-old virgin—”
“And the queen.”
“Sounds like a bad movie.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“How long were you and Paul . . . ?”
“Sixteen years. I just can’t believe he’s dead, you know? That he’s been dead for two thousand years. I always thought I would be with him again.”
“Maybe you still will.”
“That’s nice of you to say.”
She reached over, took hold of his hand, and said, “These last five years, you’re all I’ve had, Bob. You always treated me with care. With respect.”
“I think we made it work about as well as it possibly could.”
“And we did make damn good muffins.”
Somewhere out there, gunshots echoed across the valley.
“I don’t want to die tonight, honey,” she said.
He squeezed her hand. “I’m not going to let that happen.”
BELINDA MORAN
The old woman sat in her leather recliner, the footrest extended, a dinner tray on her lap. By candlelight, she turned the cards over, halfway through a game of Solitaire.
Next door, her neighbors were being killed.
She hummed quietly to herself.
There was a jack of spades.
She placed it under the queen of hearts in the middle column.
Next a six of diamonds.
It went under the seven of spades.
Something crashed into her front door.
She kept turning the cards over.
Putting them in their right places.
Two more blows.
The door burst open.
She looked up.
The monster crawled inside, and when it saw her sitting in the chair, it growled.
“I knew you were coming,” she said. “Didn’t think it’d take you quite so long.”
Ten of clubs. Hmm. No home for this one yet. Back to the pile.
The monster moved toward her. She stared into its small, black eyes.
“Don’t you know it’s not polite to just walk into someone’s house without an invitation?” she asked.
Her voice stopped it in its tracks. It tilted its head.
Blood—from one of her neighbor’s no doubt—dripped off its chest onto the floor.
Belinda put down the next card.
“I’m afraid this is a one-player game,” she said, “and I don’t have any tea to offer you.”
The monster opened its mouth and screeched a noise out of its throat like the squawk of a terrible bird.
“That is not your inside voice,” Belinda snapped.
The abby shrunk back a few steps.
Belinda laid down the last card.
“Ha!” She clapped. “I just won the game.”
She gathered up the cards into a single deck, split it, then shuffled.
“I could play Solitaire all day every day,” she said. “I’ve found in my life that sometimes the best company is your own.”
A growl idled again in the monster’s throat.
“You cut that right out!” she yelled. “I will not be spoken to that way in my own home.”
The growl changed into something almost like a purr.
“That’s better,” Belinda said as she dealt a new game. “I apologize for yelling. My temper sometimes gets the best of me.”
ETHAN
The light in the distance was getting closer, but he couldn’t see a thing around him.
Tripping every few steps, he tore up his hands as he grasped for branches in the dark.
Wondering, Could the abbies track us? By scent? Sound? Sight? All of the above?
The torchlights were close.
He could see his group in the illumination.
Ethan came out of the trees at the base of the cliff.
There was already a line of people moving like ants up the rock, the glow of torches high above like a strand of Christmas lights strung across the cliff.
Ethan had climbed this route only once before while infiltrating the Wanderers, Kate and Harold’s secret group.
Steel cables had been bolted into the rock in a series of harrowing switchbacks over man-made footholds and handholds.
A dozen people stood around the base of the cliff, waiting their turn to ascend. He looked for his family, but they weren’t there.
Hecter walked over. “This is a bad idea,” he said. “Putting children on the cables in the dark.”
Ethan thought of Ben, drove his son out of his mind.
“How many are coming?” Hecter asked.
“More than we can handle.”
Down the mountainside, Ethan could hear branches snapping.
He had a pocketful of twelve-gauge shells and he started feeding them into the magazine while he watched the edge of the forest.
With the last shell in the tube, he leveled the shotgun on the woods.
Thinking, Not yet. Just a little bit longer please.
Hecter tapped Ethan’s shoulder, and said, “It’s time.”
They went up the rock face, clutching the freezing cable.
By the time Ethan reached the third switchback, the forest below him was alive with screams and shrieks.
Wails lifting up through the trees.
The nearest torch was twenty feet above, but the stars were numerous and bright enough to light the rock.