“There’s a group in the basement of the school that’s going to be okay. A security team is fanning out through town right now, killing everything that isn’t human, saving whoever else they can. Why didn’t you and Ben stay in the cavern?”

“The abbies came back,” Ben said. “A lot of people stayed, but Mom and I found another way down the cliffs.”

“Those who stayed, I don’t think they made it,” Theresa said.

Through the bars, Ethan noticed Pam, dead on the floor.
“She found us here last night,” Theresa said. “We were locked in the cell, with no weapons. She was going to kill us.”

“Why?”

“To hurt you.” Theresa seemed to shudder at the memory of it. “Adam Hassler saved us,” she said.

“Did you know he was here?” Ethan asked.

“No.”

The chain gun started up again.

Ethan pulled out his radio, and said, “Burke here. Over.”

Alan’s voice responded: “Yeah, go ahead? Over.”

“Can you send a truck up to the sheriff’s station? I found my family. I want to get them someplace safe.”

VIII

VIII

THERESA

THERESA

WAYWARD PINES
FIVE YEARS AGO

She stands in the rain, barefoot, her hospital gown soaked straight through to her skin, staring up at a twenty-five-foot fence whose barbed wires crackle with electricity.

Two signs nearby warn:

HIGH VOLTAGE
RISK OF DEATH

And:

RETURN TO WAYWARD PINES
BEYOND THIS POINT YOU WILL DIE

She crumples down in the dirt.

Cold.

Shivering.

It’s dusk, on the verge of becoming too dark to see in these woods.

She’s at the end. At her end.

No one to turn to.

Nowhere left to run.

She crashes.

Hard.

Sobbing uncontrollably as the freezing rain beats down on her.

Hands grab her by the shoulders.

She reacts like a wounded animal, tearing herself away and scrambling off on all fours as a voice calls after her, “Theresa!”

But she doesn’t stop.

Struggling up onto her feet, she digs in for a sprint, feet sliding in the wet pine needles.

The hands tackle her to the ground, her face crushed into mud, pressing down on top of her and trying to roll her over. She fights back with everything she has, arms tucked into her sides, thinking, If those hands get anywhere near my mouth, this asshole is going to lose fingers.

But he manages to roll her onto her back and hold her arms down, pinning her legs under his knees.

“Let go!” she screams.

“Stop fighting.”

That voice.

She looks up at her attacker. It’s almost too dark to see now, but she recognizes his face.

From another life.

A better time.

She stops struggling.

“Adam?”

“It’s me.”

He releases her arms and helps her to sit up.

“What are you . . . ? Why . . . ?” So many questions screaming through her mind she can’t focus on which one to give voice to. At last she lands on, “What’s happening to me?”