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

by the woman he loved.
    When you come back—and you will come back—I’m gonna fuck you, soldier, like you just came home from war .
    He had the words memorized but still liked seeing them there on the page. A smile spread across his face before quickly fading. It had only been four days since he last saw her, and already he was beginning to think he might never see her again.
    He closed the journal and balanced it on his knee, staring out again over the valley. He wondered how many abbies were down there. How many he would encounter on his way through. How many he would have to kill.
    The journal fell from his knee.
    Tobias blinked, looked down, stared at the journal for a moment on the ground, then leaned forward to pick it up. And heard the gunshot just a half-second after the tree beside him spat up bark.

    He hit the ground on instinct, and on instinct knew better than to look up over the rock. He pulled the .357 from his belt, opened the cylinders to check the load, cursed when he saw he only had three bullets to work with. He had extra rounds in his backpack, sure, but right now wasn’t the time to reload. That would waste valuable seconds. Seconds he needed to try to compute what was going on.
    The echo of the gunshot reverberated across the valley and died away leaving only silence. A few spooked birds in the trees. Blood pounding away in his ears.
    Holding his breath, listening for any sound. Any snapping twig or branch. Any scrape of boot on rock. Anything that would alert him to the person’s location who just took a shot at him, because obviously it was a person. No doubt about it. The abbies had evolved from humans but they didn’t have the mental capabilities of humans. They had yet to figure out how to create fire, let alone learn how to use a firearm.
    Several seconds passed in silence. Tobias risked a peek around the rock. Nothing but foliage. Trees. Bushes. More rocks. And was that…movement?
    Before he could tell for certain, the other side of the rock exploded at the same moment the gunshot echoed across the valley.
    Tobias popped up from where he was crouched and fired blindly toward where he had seen movement, rushing toward the trees several yards away. Another gunshot sounded out from the foliage as he dove behind one of the massive trees.
    He put his back up against the trunk, held the gun up by his ear, and realized that he had fired three rounds. That meant, shit, there were no rounds left.
    The trees here provided better cover than the rock, but Tobias still felt exposed. It was the gunshots that worried him most. If any abbies were nearby, the noise would no doubt attract them.
    Several more seconds passed in silence. Tobias closed his eyes and concentrated on the sounds around him. The birds starting up their songs. The wind slicing through branches. A woodpecker tapping a tree. Leaves rustling somewhere close by, somewhere behind him, but it wasn’t from the invisible hand of the wind.
    It was on ground level, only several yards away. Coming in his direction. Tobias opened his eyes. What was he supposed to do now?
    He couldn’t just wait here until the shooter came to him. Well, he could, but he had no way to know whether it was just one shooter or how well armed that shooter might be. What Tobias needed now above anything else was some kind of distraction. But what?
    It hit him a second later, and it took another second to unbutton the Barbour duster and slip it off his shoulders, another second to pull the Bowie knife from the sheaf on his belt.
    He inched toward the right side of the tree, the Bowie in one hand, the duster in the other. Somewhere on the other side, a twig snapped and then silence.
    Now or never .
    Throwing the duster toward the left side of the tree, Tobias waited an extra second before stepping around the right side.
    The shooter was only 40 yards away, a rifle in his hands, the barrel of the rifle at first tracking the thrown duster before quickly swinging back