When they’d turned him a hundred and eighty degrees, Imming said, “We’re going to lower you onto your knees.” The location of his voice had changed, almost like he was underneath Ethan’s feet now.
Ethan’s knees hit the snow.
He felt the cold bleed through the denim.
Imming said, “I’m taking hold of your boot, putting it on a step. You feel that?” The sole of Ethan’s right boot touched the narrow side of a one-by-four. “Now put your other boot beside it. Good. Boys, hold his arms. Sheriff, go on and take another step down.”
Even though he couldn’t see, Ethan felt as if he were perched over a great height.
He stepped down onto the next rung.
“Boys, put his hands on the top rung.”
“How far of a drop is it?” Ethan asked. “Or do I even want to know?”
“You got about twenty more steps to go.”
Imming’s voice sounded distant, far below him now, and it echoed.
Ethan ran his hands across the rung to gauge its width.
The ladder was rickety.
It shifted and groaned and shuddered with each descending step.
When his boots finally reached the hard, broken surface below, Imming grabbed him by the arm and dragged him several steps away.
Ethan heard the ladder rattling, the other men starting down, and again the grind of that rusty hinge.
Somewhere above, a door banged shut.
Imming moved around behind him and untied the knot.
Off came the hood.
Ethan stood on the most rotten-looking concrete he’d ever laid eyes on. He looked at Imming. The man held a kerosene lantern that muddied his face in a collage of light and shadow.
Ethan said, “What is this place, Bradley?”
“Know my name, do you? How nice. Before we get to what this place is, let’s have us a chat about whether or not you’ll be breathing long enough to find out. Whether you get to come with us, or if we kill you where you stand.”
The sound of shuffling steps spun Ethan around.
He stared into the eyes of two young men in black hoodies, each holding a machete and glaring at him with an intensity that suggested they might actually want to use them.
“You were given a warning,” Brad said.
“No chip or don’t bother coming.”
“That’s right. And now we get to see how well you follow instructions. Strip down.”
“Excuse me?”
“Get naked.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It works like this. They’re going to examine every square inch of your clothes while I examine every square inch of your body. I understand you were chipped when you met with Kate last night. That means we better find a nice, fresh, ugly-as-sin, stitched-up cut on the back of your leg. If we don’t, if I arrive at the conclusion you’re trying to pull one past us, guess what?”
“Brad, I did exactly—”
“Guess. What.”
“What?”
“We’re going to hack you to death with machetes right here. And I know what you’re thinking. ‘That would start a war, Brad.’ That’s what you’re thinking, right? Well guess what again? We don’t give a f**k. We’re ready.”
Ethan unbuckled his belt, shoved his jeans and briefs down his legs, and said, “Knock yourselves out.”Ethan pulled off his hoodie and handed it to one of the men with a machete. As he came out of his undershirt, Brad knelt down behind him and ran a gloved finger over the incision.
“It’s fresh,” he said. “You do this yourself?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“Best keep it clean while it heals. Get your boots off.”
“Aren’t you gonna buy me dinner first?”
Tough crowd—not even a snigger.
Soon Ethan was standing naked.
The kerosene lantern didn’t shed much light as the three men crouched around the glow, inspecting Ethan’s clothes and turning them inside out—every sleeve, every pocket.
The walls of the ancient culvert were six feet apart and six feet high. Everywhere he looked, the concrete was crumbling to the point that it barely resembled concrete. This could’ve been the catacombs beneath some European city, although in all likelihood, it was simply one of the last remaining pieces of infrastructure from the original, twenty-first-century Wayward Pines.
The tunnel ran on a slight incline toward what Ethan figured was the east side of town. It made sense. That big wall of mountains probably drained copious amounts of water during thunderstorms. Massive snowmelt when summer roared in. Even now, a trickle of water meandered through the disintegrating concrete under Ethan’s feet.
Brad looked up, tossed his undershirt to him, said, “You can get dressed.”
As they walked up the tunnel, their footsteps splashing in the runoff, a palpable disappointment hung in the cold, dank air—these farm boys had wanted to kill him, had been aching to dismember him. He just hadn’t given them cause.
The ceiling was low enough to force Ethan to walk hunched over.
The tunnel lay in ruin.
Vines trailed down the walls.
Gnarled rebar showed through the concrete.
Roots.
Lines of snowmelt branched down the walls and dripped from the ceiling.
The lantern only showed what lay twenty feet ahead, and the sound of tiny, scurrying footsteps seemed to be perpetually just beyond the light’s reach.
They passed through intersections with other tunnels.
By more ladders that ascended into darkness.
Ethan’s boots crushed all manner of things.
Rocks.
Dirt.
Debris carried down from the mountains in heavy rainstorms.
A rat’s skull.
He didn’t know how long they trudged through that firelit darkness.
It seemed to take both ages and no time at all.
The quality of the air changed.
It had been stagnant and marginally warmer than conditions in town.
Now they were walking into a steady breeze that brought the fresh chill of the world above.
The trickle running down the floor of the tunnel had expanded into a fast-moving stream, and instead of just the noise of their footfalls in the water, a new, more substantial sound had begun to build.
They walked out of the tunnel into a rocky streambed.
Ethan followed the men as they scrambled up the bank.