Wayward Pines: The Widow Lindley (Kindle Worlds Novella) (6 page)

“Some long-extinct, super-secret government agency—”

“Yeah, right.”

“—or maybe you yourself.”

“Me?”

“Maybe there are things you don’t
want
to remember,”
Ethan offered.

Now that was creepy. What could she have done that was so
abhorrent she’d wiped clean a whole section of her past?

She didn’t want to go there.

“How about you? Who were you”—she couldn’t resist a wicked
grin—“or who do you
think
you were before Wayward Pines?”

His mouth took a sardonic twist. “Very funny. Secret
Service.”

“No shit! Guarding the president and all?”

“We’re a branch of the Treasury Department. We do other
things besides bodyguard service.”

“Secret Service…always thought that was such a corny
name. Then I realized the initials are SS.”

“Don’t go thinking you’re the first to point that out.”

She liked this Ethan Burke. He didn’t seem to belong in the
sheriff job. He struck her as more the kind to be leading a revolution against
the powers that be than enforcing their rules.

“Can I ask you something?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

“How the fuck did you become sheriff?”

“Long story.”

“We’ve got nothing but time.”

Ethan heard the abby before he saw it.

Decade upon decade of falling pine needles had left a deep
soft carpet on the forest floor. But the pines also continually dropped small
branches that disappeared among the needles. To walk the carpet was to snap the
twigs hidden below. No choice.

They’d spent the remainder of the fading daylight hunting
for dry, deadfall wood. Karla kept watch with her Benelli while Ethan gathered
the small dry branches.

The Karla of today was definitely not the same woman he had
come here with just yesterday. And yet, in many ways, she was. The timid soul
looking for her lost child had given way to this case-hardened Valkyrie. He’d
decided that he liked them both, in different ways, for different reasons. But
the Valkyrie was also a little scary. He knew he’d much rather have her with
him than against him.

In some ways she bore an uncomfortable resemblance to Pam. But
he sensed a core of decency, and even integrity, in Karla that was totally
absent in Pam. He felt he could trust Karla to have his back, whereas he’d be
afraid to turn his back on Pam.

When dark had fallen they’d taken turns at watch—shotguns
ready, fire burning bright.

Ethan nudged Karla. She snapped upright and looked as if she
were about to speak when he pressed a finger over her lips and leaned into her
ear.

“Something out there,” he said in the tiniest whisper he
could manage.

“Abby?” she whispered into his.

He shrugged. They’d know soon enough.

The fire had burned low. Flames still flickered in the
embers but shed little light. The outcrop limited their visual field to about
120 degrees, but keeping to the rear of the space beneath offered them the
tactical advantage of protection from rear or flanking attack. The only way for
an abby or anything else to reach them was a direct frontal assault.

Karla sat to his right, shotgun ready. They’d agreed earlier
that each would take the responsibility of covering half the field. If
something charged from the left, Ethan would take it while Karla stayed focused
on the right, and vice versa. This would prevent them from falling victim to a
diversion.

He had the flashlight tucked lens-first inside his shirt for
easy access. Despite the cold, his palms grew sweaty on the Winchester. This
was where the rubber met the road. Kill or be killed. He didn’t know how
coordinated these two abbies might be—and he prayed they still numbered only
two. Christ, if they’d added others…

No sense in borrowing trouble. Plenty of that to go around
as it was. They weren’t dealing with animals acting on pure instinct here. Abbies
were degenerate humans but still had good-size brains. As predatory carnivores,
they hunted in packs—not too long ago he’d been the intended prey of a small
pack—and he had no doubt this mating pair had plenty of experience hunting
together. They probably had some well-practiced strategies of attack.

Then, a little to the left, another twig crack—no, multiple
simultaneous cracks, followed by a screech. Not a signal, not a battle cry…
this sounded like pain.

“Got him!” Karla cried, raising her shotgun but keeping it
aimed right as agreed.

Ethan listened to the thrashing and snarls and grunts,
trying to locate the source in the darkness. He wanted to pull out the
flashlight for a better view but dared not let go of his weapon.

After ten or fifteen seconds the sounds faded.

Karla said, “Well, I guess we can figure one of them’s
down—not
down
-down but limping and gimping.”

“But which one, do you think? I’ve been assuming a mating
pair. The male or the female?”

“I don’t see that it matters,” Karla went on, “If they’re a
pair, they’ll stick together, which means the hurt one’s going to slow them
both down. By the way, did you see any glowing eyes out there?”

“No, why?”

“Most animals have reflective eyes. I’d have thought the
firelight—”

“They’re not animals, remember?” Ethan explained. “They’re
us. Or rather, what we’ll become.”

“Oh. Right. Haven’t quite got my head around that yet.”

She shifted to a crouch and began to move toward the opening.

“You’re not thinking of going after it?”

A bitter laugh. “In the dark?” Karla grabbed some of the
spare twigs and tossed them onto the fire. “I may have a huge blank spot in my
past, but it didn’t leave me stupid. But at first light, we’re on the hunt. Big
time.”

Light arrived long before the sun could clear the
mountaintops. They came out from beneath the outcrop into the glow of a cold,
crystalline blue sky.

Karla grabbed a four-foot branch and Ethan followed her
along the safe path marked by the double sticks. He was checking out the needle
carpet to their left when he spotted a scuffed-up area.

“I see it.”

He hurried over and stopped before a small pit, two feet
across and almost as deep. It had been hidden with a rough mesh of twigs
covered by pine needles. Two slim, wickedly sharp stakes jutted up from the
bottom.

“I put three punji sticks in each,” she said, poking through
the fallen twigs with her branch. “It must have gimped off with the one that
went into its foot.”

“Probably
through
its foot.” Ethan leaned closer. “What’s
that stuff on the points?”

“Abby shit.”

He straightened. “Where’d you get that?”

“They’re not fastidious sorts, it seems.” Karla dropped the
stick and held her Benelli at ready as she kept watch on their perimeter. “They
left piles all around. Just helped myself.”

“So not only is it now lame, but it’s soon going to develop
a rip-roaring infection. Nasty,” Ethan said sounding impressed.

“But effective. I wish I could take credit, but the Viet
Cong invented the punji stick and that’s the way they used to do it.”

I wish I could take credit…

Really? What sort of person wished they’d dreamed up
something like a punji stick? Whatever did they do to you, Karla Williamson?

“Where’d you learn that?” Ethan asked.

“Again, haven’t a clue. But unless abbies know about
antibiotics or have the most amazing immune systems in the known universe, our
visitor last night is eventually going to develop septicemia, go into shock,
and die in a day or two. That is, if we don’t catch up with them first.”

Ethan scanned the ground and spotted drying blood near the
edge of the pit, and more farther away.

“That may not prove so hard. I think it’s left us a trail.”

Karla took a look. “Indeed it has. But that can be a
two-edged sword.”

“How so?”

“You become so intent following the trail that you drop your
guard as to what’s going on around you. That’s when you get hit from the rear,”
Karla expounded.

Ethan shook his head in wonder.

“What?” she said.

“Whoever trained you was pretty damn thorough.”

Karla met his gaze. “Maybe I trained myself. Maybe I learned
the hard way.”

“Whatever. Point well taken. Good thing there’s two of us,”
Ethan noted, “You want to lead?”

“You take point. I’ll follow. You watch the ground, I’ll be
watching everything but.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Ethan found the bloody punji stick about ten feet from the
pit.

“Looks like it pulled the stick out here.”

The trail led east, weaving among the thick trunks of the
pines. As they traveled, the blood splotches shrank to drops, and the drops
became fewer and farther apart. Eventually they petered out completely in a
thick stand of old trees.

“Where to from here?” Ethan said. “I’m guessing it would
have kept heading east.”

Karla didn’t answer. He turned and saw her staring wide-eyed
at his hat as she pulled the .357 from her belt.

“Is something—?”

The Benelli fell from her hand as she dropped to one knee
and began firing into the air. He heard a blood-freezing screech above him as
something heavy and foul-smelling landed on his shoulders, driving him head
first into the ground.

Ethan awoke spitting dirt and pine needles and blood. It
took him a second to realize that he wasn’t lying on his face, but sitting
upright with his back against a tree trunk.

And another second to realize that his wrists were cuffed
behind him around that tree.

What the—?

“Karla? Karla! What do you think you’re doing, Karla?”

No reply, no sign of her.

Then he saw the dead abby. A male, maybe a hundred and fifty
pounds, lay on its side, facing him, its eyes open, staring, their pale irises
shrunken by the death-widened pupils. Its mouth was open too, displaying its
double rows of yellow-brown teeth. The usually translucent skin had grown
opaque in death. Ethan’s Stetson lay flattened under one of its legs. Blood coated
the top of its right foot. Looked like the punji stick had pierced all the way
through. Ethan’s shotgun lay on the abby’s far side, a dozen feet away.