“Before the massacre in the valley, there were a hundred sixty souls living in the mountain,” Leven said. “Four hundred sixty-one living in Wayward Pines. Our data only goes back fourteen years, but the first killing freeze typically comes in late August. You haven’t been here for a winter yet, but they’re long and brutal. The snow can get ten, fifteen feet deep in the valley. There’s no garden to harvest from. No fruit, no vegetables. We subsist solely on our reserve of freeze-dried meals, supplements, and meat rations. You want to hear a dirty little secret? Now that this is all on you? David Pilcher never intended for us to stay in this valley indefinitely.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He miscalculated how uninhabitable and hostile this world would become.”

Ethan felt something go dark inside of him.

“I’m rerunning my calculations,” Leven said, “but it’s looking like our winter rations will run out in four point two years. Now, there are things we can do to delay the inevitable, like enforcing reduced rations. But that only buys us, at most, another year or two.”

“Not to be callous, but don’t we have less mouths to feed now?”

“Yes, but the abbies wiped out our cattle, our dairy. There will be no milk, no meat. It would take years to reboot the herd.”

“Then we have to find a way to store what we grow for the winter.”

“Our current setup in town doesn’t produce enough food to feed us and save for the future.”

“You mean we eat what we grow?”

“Exactly. And pretty much right away. We’re just too far north. Two thousand years ago, we might have been able to make this growing season work, but it’s gotten shorter and harsher. And these last few years have been the coldest yet. Here’s what I wanted to show you.”

Leven input some new code via the touch screen.

A list began to scroll.

Ethan examined the monitor above him.

Rice: 17%

Flour: 6%

Sugar: 11%

Grain: 3%

Iodized Salt: 32%

Corn: 0%

Vitamin C: 55%

Soybeans: 0%

Powdered Milk: 0%

Malt: 4%

Barley: 3%

Yeast: 1%

The list continued on.

Ethan said, “These are the reserve staple levels?”

“Yes. And as you can see, it’s critical.”

“What was Pilcher planning to do?”

“With our full in-town population, we might have had the manpower to expand our gardens fast enough to meet demand. We were also looking into building a network of greenhouses, but see the problem comes with snow loads in the winter. If enough weight were to build up on the glass roofs, they’d collapse. Again, we’re just too far north.”

“Do the people in the mountain understand what’s coming?”

“No. David didn’t want to spook anyone until we had come up with a solution.”

“And you haven’t.”