Wayward Pines: The Widow Lindley (Kindle Worlds Novella) by F. Paul Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

stakes jutted up from the
bottom.
    “I put three punji sticks in each,” she said, poking through
the fallen twigs with her branch. “It must have gimped off with the one that
went into its foot.”
    “Probably through its foot.” Ethan leaned closer. “What’s
that stuff on the points?”
    “Abby shit.”
    He straightened. “Where’d you get that?”
    “They’re not fastidious sorts, it seems.” Karla dropped the
stick and held her Benelli at ready as she kept watch on their perimeter. “They
left piles all around. Just helped myself.”
    “So not only is it now lame, but it’s soon going to develop
a rip-roaring infection. Nasty,” Ethan said sounding impressed.
    “But effective. I wish I could take credit, but the Viet
Cong invented the punji stick and that’s the way they used to do it.”
    I wish I could take credit…
    Really? What sort of person wished they’d dreamed up
something like a punji stick? Whatever did they do to you, Karla Williamson?
    “Where’d you learn that?” Ethan asked.
    “Again, haven’t a clue. But unless abbies know about
antibiotics or have the most amazing immune systems in the known universe, our
visitor last night is eventually going to develop septicemia, go into shock,
and die in a day or two. That is, if we don’t catch up with them first.”
    Ethan scanned the ground and spotted drying blood near the
edge of the pit, and more farther away.
    “That may not prove so hard. I think it’s left us a trail.”
    Karla took a look. “Indeed it has. But that can be a
two-edged sword.”
    “How so?”
    “You become so intent following the trail that you drop your
guard as to what’s going on around you. That’s when you get hit from the rear,”
Karla expounded.
    Ethan shook his head in wonder.
    “What?” she said.
    “Whoever trained you was pretty damn thorough.”
    Karla met his gaze. “Maybe I trained myself. Maybe I learned
the hard way.”
    “Whatever. Point well taken. Good thing there’s two of us,”
Ethan noted, “You want to lead?”
    “You take point. I’ll follow. You watch the ground, I’ll be
watching everything but.”
    “Sounds like a plan.”
    Ethan found the bloody punji stick about ten feet from the
pit.
    “Looks like it pulled the stick out here.”
    The trail led east, weaving among the thick trunks of the
pines. As they traveled, the blood splotches shrank to drops, and the drops
became fewer and farther apart. Eventually they petered out completely in a
thick stand of old trees.
    “Where to from here?” Ethan said. “I’m guessing it would
have kept heading east.”
    Karla didn’t answer. He turned and saw her staring wide-eyed
at his hat as she pulled the .357 from her belt.
    “Is something—?”
    The Benelli fell from her hand as she dropped to one knee
and began firing into the air. He heard a blood-freezing screech above him as
something heavy and foul-smelling landed on his shoulders, driving him head
first into the ground.

    Ethan awoke spitting dirt and pine needles and blood. It
took him a second to realize that he wasn’t lying on his face, but sitting
upright with his back against a tree trunk.
    And another second to realize that his wrists were cuffed
behind him around that tree.
    What the—?
    “Karla? Karla! What do you think you’re doing, Karla?”
    No reply, no sign of her.
    Then he saw the dead abby. A male, maybe a hundred and fifty
pounds, lay on its side, facing him, its eyes open, staring, their pale irises
shrunken by the death-widened pupils. Its mouth was open too, displaying its
double rows of yellow-brown teeth. The usually translucent skin had grown
opaque in death. Ethan’s Stetson lay flattened under one of its legs. Blood coated
the top of its right foot. Looked like the punji stick had pierced all the way
through. Ethan’s shotgun lay on the abby’s far side, a dozen feet away.
    His gaze was drawn to the center of the thing’s chest where
someone had decorated it with a tight grouping of