Pilcher looks for Pope. The man has wandered twenty yards away into a clearing, where he kneels down over the snow.

“What is it, Arnie?”

He waves Pilcher over.

As the group gathers around Pope, he points down at a set of tracks.

“Human?” Pilcher asks.

“They’re the size of a man’s footprint, but the spacing is all wrong.”

“How so?”

“Whatever this thing is, it was moving on four limbs. See?” He touches the snow. “Here are the hind legs. There are the forelegs. Look at the distance between tracks. That’s one helluva gait.”

In the southwest corner of the valley, they find a collection of stones poking up through the ground, scattered through a grove of scrub oak and aspen trees. Pilcher squats down to inspect one of the stones, brushing the snow away from the base. Once a block of polished marble, time has worn it rough.

“What are these?” Pam asks, running her hand across the top of another similar stone.

“The ruins of a cemetery,” Pilcher says. “The etchings have been eroded. This is all that’s left of twenty-first-century Wayward Pines.”

They walk home, back toward the superstructure.

Everyone weak.

Everyone cold.

The snow picks up again, a shroud of white falling against the backdrop of cliffs and evergreens.

“Doesn’t particularly feel like anyone’s home,” Leven says.

“One of the first things we’ll do,” Pilcher says, “is send out the drones. We’ll fly them to Boise, Missoula, even Seattle. We’ll know if there’s anything left.”

They follow their own tracks back into the woods. As a silence descends on the group, a scream rises up in the valley behind them—frail and haunting, echoing off the snow-hidden peaks.

Everyone stops.

Another scream answers—lower in pitch, but containing that same mix of sadness and aggression.

Pope opens his mouth to speak when a veritable nation of screams rises up out of the woods all around them.

They hurry through the snow, jogging at first, but as the screams close in, everyone accelerates to a full-on sprint.

A hundred yards out from the tunnel, Pilcher’s legs are finished and sweat pours down his face. The others have reached the portal. They’re climbing through, shouting at him to run faster, their voices commingling with the shrieks behind him.

His vision blurs.

He glances back.

Glimpses movement in the pines—pale forms pursuing him on all fours through the trees.

He’s gasping for air, thinking, I’m going to die my first day out of suspension.

The world goes black, and his face is suddenly freezing.

He hasn’t lost consciousness.

He’s just facedown in the snow, unable to move.

As the approaching screams grow louder, he’s suddenly hoisted out of the powder. From his new vantage point, draped over Arnold Pope’s shoulder, he sees the woods joggling behind him and humanoid creatures bearing down, the closest within fifty feet.