“That’s why you pay me the big bucks, right? If it were up to me, I’d have my entire security team rolling with us.”
“No, we’re keeping this intimate for now.”
Leven says, “Pam, would you mind bringing your flashlight over?”
As she shines the beam onto the release wheel, Pilcher says, “Let’s just wait a beat.”
Leven straightens.
Pope heads over.
Ted and Pam turn to face him.
Pilcher’s voice is still gravelly from the drugs that revived him.
He says, “Let’s not let this moment pass us by.” His people study him. “Do you all understand what we’ve done? We just completed the most dangerous, daring journey in human history. Not across distance. Across time. You know what waits on the other side of this door?”
He lets the question hang.
No one bites.
“Pure discovery.”
“I don’t follow,” Pam says.
“I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. This is Neil Armstrong going down the steps of Apollo 11 to stand on the moon for the first time. The Wright brothers testing their flyer at Kitty Hawk. Columbus walking ashore into the New World. There’s no telling what lies on the other side of this portal.”
“You predicted that humanity would become extinct,” Pam says.
“Yes, but my prediction was just that. A prediction. I could’ve been wrong. There could be ten-thousand-foot skyscrapers out there. Imagine a man in 213 AD stepping into 2013. ‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.’ Albert Einstein said that. We should all savor this moment.”
Leven turns his attention to the release wheel, which he begins to crank counterclockwise.
When it finally locks into place, he says, “Sir? Care to do the honors?”
Pilcher approaches the portal.
Leven says, “It’s this latch, right here.”
Pilcher throws the latch.
For a moment, nothing happens.
The lights of the Humvee cut out.
Only the beam of Pam’s meager flashlight cuts through the darkness.
Something under their feet begins to groan, like an old ship creaking.
The heavy portal door shudders and begins to creak open.
And then . . .
Light spills across the pavement, spreading toward them in a radiant stain.
Pilcher’s heart is pounding.
It is the most thrilling moment of his life.
Snow whisks inside across the pavement, and a shot of bone-chilling cold knifes into the tunnel. Pilcher squints against the light.
When the four-foot portal is fully open, it frames the world beyond like a picture.
They all see a boulder-strewn pine forest in the midst of a snowstorm.
They move into the forest, tracking through a foot of soft powder.
It is beyond quiet.
The sound of falling snow like a whisper.
After two hundred yards, Pilcher stops. The others stop too.
He says, “I think this is where the road into Wayward Pines used to be.”
They’re still standing in a dense pine wood, no sign of a road anywhere.
Pilcher pulls out a compass.
They head north into the valley.
Pines tower above them.
“I wonder,” Pilcher says, “how many times this forest burned and regrew.”
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.