Pines

hundred different directions and at blinding speeds.
    So he tried to just watch the world move by.
    His view was west.
    The sun was gone, and in the wake of its passing, mountain ranges stood profiled against the evening sky like a misshapen saw blade.
    There was nothing to see of the pine forest a thousand feet below.
    Not a single speck of light anywhere that existed because of man.
    * * *
    They flew through gaping darkness.
    With the cabin lights dimmed and the glow of the instrument panel in the cockpit hidden behind the curtain, Ethan could just as well have been adrift in a black sea.
    Or space.
    He had his family behind him, and there was comfort in that fact, but as he leaned against the freezing glass, he couldn’t help but feel a plunging stab of fear.
    And despair.
    They were alone.
    So very much alone.
    It hit him center mass.
    These last few days, he’d been fighting to get back to his life outside of Wayward Pines, but it was gone.
    Gone for nearly two thousand years.
    His friends.
    His home.
    His job.
    Almost everything that defined him.
    How was a man supposed to come to terms with a thing like that?
    How did one carry on in the face of such knowledge?
    What got you out of bed and made you want to breathe in and out?
    Your family. The two people sleeping behind you.
    Ethan opened his eyes.
    At first, he didn’t quite believe what he saw.
    In the distance below, a wellspring of light shone in the midst of all that darkness.
    It was Pines.
    The house lights and porch lights.
    The streetlights and car lights.
    All merging into the soft nighttime glow of a town.
    Of civilization.
    They were descending now, and he knew that down in that valley, there stood a Victorian house where his wife and his son lived.
    Where he could live too.
    There was a warm bed to crawl into.
    And a kitchen that would smell of the food they cooked.
    A porch to sit out on during the long, summer evenings.
    A yard where he might play catch with his son.
    Maybe it even had a tin roof, and there was nothing he loved more than the sound of rain drumming on tin.Especially late at night in bed, with your wife in your arms and your son sleeping just down the hall.
    The lights of Wayward Pines glowed against the cliffs that boxed it in, and for the first time, those steep mountain walls seemed inviting.
    Fortifications against all the horror that lay beyond.
    Shelter for the last town on earth.
    Would it ever
feel
like home?
    Would it be all right if it did?

You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. To the earth...a million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We’ve been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we’re gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.
Michael Crichton
    From
Jurassic Park
by Michael Crichton, copyright © 1990 by Michael Crichton. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

EPILOGUE
    He sits in the quiet of his office, his boots up on the desk, studying the brass star in his hand and running his fingers over the WP inset in the center, the lettering in some black stone—obsidian perhaps. He wears dark brown canvas pants and a hunter-green long-sleeved button-down, just like his predecessor. The fabric feels new and over starched.
    There is an extensive briefing scheduled with Pilcher and his team tomorrow, but today has been uneventful.
    And strange.
    For eight hours, he sat in the stillness of his office, lost in thought, and the phone interrupted him only once—Belinda, the receptionist, at the noon hour asking if he’d like her to pick up anything for lunch.
    He watches the second hand and the minute hand click over to the twelve.
    It is five o’clock.
    Sliding his boots off the desktop, he rises and puts on his Stetson, slips his brass star into his pocket. Maybe tomorrow he’ll bring himself to finally pin it on.
    Or maybe not.
    Like the first day of any new thing, it has been a long one, and he’s glad to see it end.
    He looks at the three antique gun cabinets—a lustful, fleeting glance—and exits his office, heading down the hallway toward reception.
    Belinda’s desk is covered in playing cards.
    “I’m taking off,” Ethan says.
    The white-haired woman lays down an ace of spades and looks up with a warm smile that does absolutely nothing