The blast was deafening, and despite the size of the thing, the slug punched it back into the grass. It went down on its back with a sucking chest wound, dark blood bubbling out like a geyser across the translucent skin.

Kate was already on her feet.

Hecter and Maggie frozen behind the bush.

Ethan said, “We have to move.”

He clawed his way out.

The abby was still alive, moaning and trying to plug the quarter-size hole, watching in disbelief as it bled out.

It reached for Ethan as he moved past, a talon catching on the hem of his jeans, tearing easily through the denim.

Kate was right behind him, Hecter and Maggie slower in coming.

“Move!” he yelled.

They ran into the street.

Sweat beaded on Ethan’s forehead, streaming down into his eyes with a saltwater sting.

They crossed the next intersection.

Nothing was coming.

Ethan looked back over his shoulder down Eighth.

Maggie and Hecter were running their hearts out, arms pumping, and nothing behind them as far as he could see.

The school took up the entire next block on Ethan’s right.

Playground equipment standing lonely behind a chain-link fence.

Seesaws. Swing sets. Slides. Merry-go-rounds.

A tetherball pole.

A basketball hoop.

The red brick of the school beyond.

Maggie said, “Oh my God.”

Ethan looked back.

She had stopped in the middle of the street and was staring at the school.

He ran back to her.

“We have to keep going.”

She pointed.

A door in the side of the building swung open and a man was standing in the threshold waving one arm.

Maggie said, “What do we do?”

What do we do?

One of those decisions that could decide everything.

Ethan scaled the four-foot fence and raced across the schoolyard, passing a sandbox and monkey bars in the shadow of a giant cottonwood whose yellow leaves had plastered the pavement.

The man holding open the door was Spitz, the Wayward Pines postman, an inventive position for a town that had zero need for the mail. Yet still, he’d walked the streets several days a week, stuffing mailboxes with fake junk mail, bullshit tax notices, and the like. He was a brawny, extravagantly bearded man, larger through the waist than one might think for someone who lived on his feet. Presently, he stood in a shredded black T-shirt and kilt—his fête costume—with his left arm wrapped in a piece of bloody fabric. He wore a nasty slice across his cheek and a piece of flesh had been gouged out of his right leg.

He said, “Hi, Sheriff,” as Ethan arrived. “Didn’t expect to see you.”

“Back at you, Spitz. You look like shit.”

“Just a flesh wound.” The man grinned. “We thought the other groups were wiped out.”

“Ours made it through the tunnels, up to the cavern.”

“How many of you?”

“Ninety-six.”

“I got eighty-three down in the basement of the school.”

Kate asked, “Harold?”