Wayward Pines: Nomad (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Swartwood Robert

Author:Swartwood, Robert [Swartwood, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2013-12-17T05:00:00+00:00

Two things happened simultaneously: Beth turned away from them, pivoting toward the tunnel that led to the hatch, and Carl stopped struggling in Tobias’s arms. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. They just stood there and listened to the faint jingling, tin against tin, and beyond it, almost too quiet, the sound of screeching and clicking.

Tobias pushed Carl away and immediately started toward the corner of weapons.

Carl grabbed his arm. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

He jerked his arm out of Carl’s grasp, stepped close to the man. Staring him down in the near-dark wasn’t nearly as intimating as he would have liked, but right now he didn’t have time to worry about such things.

“I’m grabbing a weapon to protect myself from the abbies. Is that okay with you?”

“How…how did they find us?” Beth asked, keeping the gun aimed down the tunnel.

Tobias thought it over for a beat. “Your leg,” he whispered to Carl.

“What?”

“You left a trail of blood all the way here.”

He stepped away from Carl, slowly, testing the waters. When the man didn’t try to grab Tobias again, he bent and grabbed his Smith & Wesson from the pile. Checking the load, he whispered, “You might want to grab a gun, too.”

Carl ducked down and grabbed a rifle.

Tobias asked, “Does the hatch have a lock?”

Beth gave a quick shake of her head. “No lock. It just latches.”

“How have you dealt with situations like this before?”

For the first time she looked away from the tunnel to stare back at him. “We’ve never had this happen.”

The bell jingled again, this time even louder. The distant screeching and clicking became even more frantic.

“It should be okay,” Carl whispered. “They’re just fucking animals. There’s no way they can open that hatch.”

As if in response, the bell all at once stopped jingling. Silence. Not even the distant screeching or clicking.

“See,” Carl whispered, “I told you there was nothing to wo—”

The jingling again, much louder this time, as the hatch was torn open. The distant screeching and clicking noises started up once again, now louder and more intense.

Tobias crouched to a knee and gripped the pistol with two hands. It was still day outside, though barely, just a little sun left in the sky to let in a modicum of light. Shadows moved off the side of the concrete.

It didn’t take long before the first abby ventured down the ladder. It didn’t so much climb down as it dropped, hitting the concrete and squealing in pain.

Beth fired the first shot. It took out the abby’s shoulder.

It roared in outrage, turning toward the tunnel.

Tobias put a bead on the abby’s head, his finger on the trigger. Squeezed. One of the abby’s eyes disappeared in a splash of blood. It stood motionless for a second, then fell to the ground.

Almost immediately another abby dropped down through the hatch, followed by a second. All three of them opened fire at the same time, the cacophony in the tight space deafening.

Beth’s gun went empty first. She ducked down

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