Growing exponentially louder until it was right on top of him.

He looked up as a man rocketed past, arms flailing, eyes gaping wide with horror.

He missed Ethan by two inches and his head struck a ledge twenty feet below, the blow sending him somersaulting the remaining distance toward the forest floor in dead silence.

Jesus.

Ethan’s legs felt like liquid.

A tremor moved through his left foot.

He leaned into the rock and clutched a handhold. Shut his eyes. Let the panic course through him and burn itself out.

The terror passed.

Ethan went on, pulling himself up foot by foot on the rusted cable as the abbies ripped apart the man who’d lost his footing on the cliff.

Ethan reached the plank walkway.

Six inches wide, it traversed the face of the cliff.

Hecter was already halfway across.

Ethan followed.

The forest was now three hundred feet below.

Wayward Pines was somewhere out there, the town still dark but filled with distant screams.

On the rock below, Ethan spotted movement.

White forms climbing toward him.

He shouted to Hecter, “They’re on the cliff!”

Hecter looked down.

The abbies climbed fast, fearlessly, like the possibility of falling did not exist.

Ethan stopped, holding the cable with one hand while he tried to get a decent grip on the Mossberg.

No use.

He called out to Hecter, “Come here!”

Hecter turned awkwardly on the narrow planks and headed back toward Ethan.

“I need you to hold my belt,” Ethan said.

“Why?”

“There’s not enough room up here for me to stand and aim.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Hold the cable with one hand, grab my belt with the other. I’m going to lean out over the edge and take a clean shot.”

Hecter sidestepped the last few feet to Ethan and grabbed hold of his belt.

“I assume it’s buckled?” he asked.

“Good one. You got me?”

“I got you.”

And still it took three seconds for Ethan to steel his nerve.

He let go of the cable and slid the strap of the shotgun off his shoulder, aimed the luminous sight down the face of the cliff.

Ten abbies were making an ascent in a tight cluster. He tried to focus, to put the fear out of his mind, but he kept seeing that man falling toward him, his head cracking open on the rock.

The scream.

The silence.

The scream.

The silence.

Ethan’s stomach turned. The world seemed to rush up at him and fall away at the same time.

Get it together.

Ethan drew a bead on the leader.

The shotgun bucked him back against the cliff and the report raced across the valley, bounced off the western wall of rock, and returned.

The slug hit the lead abby.

It peeled off with a shrill screech and tumbled down the rock, crashing into four more and knocking them over like bowling pins.

The others held fast.