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

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    Day 3
    I killed my first abby today.
    I was following the river when I came around the bend and there it was, maybe fifty yards away, crouched down and lapping the water like a deer.
    I stopped at once.
    My first thought was of you.
    Not of my mission, not of saving us all, but of you.
    The abby must have smelled me, or sensed me, or maybe it even heard me. It stood up, turned in my direction, and just stared at me.
    I thought that if I didn’t move, if I didn’t breathe, it wouldn’t see me.
    I was wrong.
    The abby screeched and charged at me.
    I had the Winchester strapped over my shoulder, but it was the Smith & Wesson I pulled from my belt and aimed straight at the abby.
    The creature didn’t even slow.
    It knew nothing of the power in the palm of my hand.
    It simply saw me as a target. As meat. As its lunch.
    I waited until it was less than ten yards away.
    The look in its black eyes was completely animalistic. Any doubt I had about whether it possessed some shred of humanity was quickly erased.
    So I did what I had to do.
    I put a bullet between its eyes.

    Tobias read the entry once more and then closed his journal.
    The morning sun peeked up through the trees, strong, and bright, and warm.
    He considered tearing the page out. Crumping it up into a ball and using it for kindling whenever he felt brave enough to actually start a fire.
    She didn’t need to know about his first kill. She didn’t need to know about any of his kills.
    Still, it was important, wasn’t it? Of course it was. He was out here in the middle of nowhere, only four days gone, and had killed one of the things that was threatening their entire existence. If that wasn’t important, Tobias didn’t know what was.
    She didn’t need to know about the abby’s blood splattering on his clothes. Didn’t need to know about the clicking from just behind the trees, less than 300 yards away. About how Tobias had ducked down behind some boulders near the river, the revolver in hand, his heart pounding and his entire body on edge. About the second abby that appeared, a much smaller one, approaching the dead abby and nudging it once before nudging it again. About the glimpse Tobias had of the sadness in the smaller abby’s eyes, and the creeping knowledge that he had just killed its mother.
    It would have been so easy, he knew, to step out from behind the boulders and use the revolver on the smaller abby.
    There was the risk, of course, that the gunshot would bring even more abbies, though Tobias doubted it. If more were nearby, he would have heard them come running by now.
    No, it was just the smaller one, the dead abby’s offspring, and even though everything in Tobias told him to kill it, he remained where he was behind the boulders. Listening to the water bubbling and gurgling as it headed down stream. Listening to the child abby mourn the loss of its parent.

    He didn’t eat much of anything for breakfast. It wasn’t that he wasn’t hungry—he was starving, in fact—but his body needed to become conditioned. For most of his life his body was used to getting three meals a day, plus the occasional snack. Now food was sparse, and he would be eating little of it.
    He hiked for nearly an hour before taking a break. That was another thing he needed his body to adjust to—more walking, less rest. Tobias knew eventually his body would adjust. He just hoped it would be sooner rather than later.
    It was bad enough being out in the wilderness surrounded by creatures that wanted to kill you. The last thing he needed was for his body to shut down on him.
    He sat on a rock that overlooked most of the valley. A mix of firs and aspens and pines lay before him like a blanket. He glanced over his shoulder, but any glimpse of Wayward Pines was long gone.
    He unzipped the Kelty backpack he’d set on the ground between his legs and pulled out the leather-bound journal sealed in plastic. Opened the cover and read the words scribbled in loopy, graceful lines