Pines

ended at the pub, I’d go home, leave the chip in my bed where I was supposed to be, and head out. Each night, a different direction. I kept running into dead ends. To the north, east, and west were these towering cliff walls, and I could climb them for a hundred feet or so, but the ledges inevitably got thinner, and I would always run out of handholds or come to a point where I didn’t have the guts to keep climbing. I came across more than a few skeletons atthe base of those cliffs—old, broken bones. Human. People who had tried to climb out and taken a fall.
    “Fourth time I ventured out, I went south up the main road, the one I’d driven into Wayward Pines. I found what you found—it just looped back into town, back into itself in an endless circle. But I kept heading south into the woods. Must’ve gone a half mile before I finally came to the fence.”
    “A fence?”
    The throbbing in Ethan’s leg had become unbearable, worse than the pain of Beverly’s incision. He loosened the duct tape.
    “It was twenty feet high and it ran through the forest in either direction as far as I could see. There was barbed wire across the top, and it hummed like it was electrified. The same sign was attached to the fencing every fifty feet. It said, ‘Return to Wayward Pines. Beyond This Point You Will Die.’”
    Ethan rewrapped his leg.
    The throbbing had faded, and there was still pain, but it seemed to have dulled.
    “Did you find a way through?”
    “No. It was getting near dawn, and I thought I’d better get back to town. But when I turned to go, there was a man standing in front of me. Scared me to death until I realized who it was.”
    “Guy who told you about the chip?”
    “Exactly. He said he’d been following me. Every night I’d gone out.”
    “Who was he?” Ethan asked, and he couldn’t be sure in the low light, but it looked as though a shadow passed across Beverly’s face.
    “Bill.”
    A prickling sensation, like a low-amp current, ripped through Ethan’s body.
    “What was Bill’s last name?” he asked.
    “Evans.”
    “Jesus.”
    “What?”
    “Evans was the dead man in the house. The one you steered me toward.”
    “Right. I wanted you to understand right off how dangerous this place is.”
    “Message received. Evans was one of the Secret Service agents I was sent to Wayward Pines to find.”
    “I didn’t know Bill was Secret Service. He wouldn’t tell me anything about what we called ‘our lives before.’”
    “How did he die?”
    Beverly lifted the flashlight off the floor, its bulb beginning to weaken in intensity.
    She switched it off.
    Total darkness.
    The whisper of rain and nothing else.
    “It happened the night we tried to escape. I still don’t understand exactly how they found out, because we left our microchips in our beds like we’d done so many times before. Bill and I met up at our predetermined spot with supplies and provisions...but we never had a chance.”
    Ethan could hear the grief splitting her voice.
    “We had to go separate ways,” she said. “I made it back to my house, but they caught him. Tore him apart.”
    “Who tore him apart?”
    “Everyone.”
    “Who’s every—”
    “The entire town, Ethan. I could...hear him screaming from my house, but there was nothing I could do. At last, I understood. I realized what it was that kept everyone here.”
    For what seemed a long, long time, neither of them spoke.
    Finally, Ethan said, “I never made it to the fence, but I did wander a ways into the woods beyond the curve in the road at the south end of town. This was just last night. I could swear I heard something.”
    “What?”
    “It was a scream. Or a cry. Maybe something in between. And the weird thing was this feeling like I’d heard it before. In a dream. Or another life. It filled me with terror on such a base level, like the howl of a wolf. Something deeply ingrained. My only response was to run. So now I hear you telling me about this electrified fence, and I’m wondering, why is it there? Is it to keep us in? Or to keep something out?”
    At first, Ethan thought the sound was coming from inside his head—some aftereffects of the drug Nurse Pam had given him, or the trauma of Pope’s beating and everything he’d experienced since.
    But the noise quickly grew.
    Something was ringing.
    No.
    Many things were ringing.
    Hundreds and hundreds of them.
    “What is that?” Ethan asked, struggling onto his feet.
    Beverly was already at the