Pines

When Ethan wakes in the pitch black, he feels his thigh burning. Recognizing the pain of someone cutting him, he flashes back to his torture. He lashes out before recognizing Beverly’s voice. She tells him the tracker is out and advises him to keep it, so they don’t know it’s been removed. As Ethan wraps his leg, they discuss the time difference. Beverly confirms that she arrived in 1985, one year ago. He tells her that he arrived in 2012, four days ago. Beverly is 34 years old, when in Ethan’s reality, she would be 61 years old.

Beverly tells him that one of Wayward Pines’s rules is not to talk about anything from your previous life, and the punishment for breaking that rule is severe. She points out the lack of any brand names in the stores and how the money is all from the 1950s and 1960s. However, she can’t explain exactly what’s going on, only that, like everyone else, she’s survived the past year by pretending to believe the lie.

After her accident, Pope found her wandering in town. He told her she was a bartender, then took her to a house and told her it was hers. Beverly believed him because she only remembered her name. She knew something was wrong, and when she tried to leave, she realized that Pope was a prison warden, not a sheriff. After, she pretended to go along, as everyone did. Remembering the barbeque, Ethan wonders if everyone who was there is secretly terrified.

One night at the bar, a man slipped Beverly a note about the bump on her thigh. The next night, he gave her a note explaining how to remove it and to keep it. That night, she put the tracker under her pillow and spent hours trying to escape Wayward Pines, but never found a way. On one of those trips, she found an electrified fence, its sign warning her that she would die if she went forward.

When Beverly turned away from the fence, the man who gave her the notes was standing behind her. He introduced himself as Agent Bill Evans. In trying to escape together, they got split up. The townspeople found him and tore him apart—Beverly could hear the screams from where she hid. She gave Ethan that address so he would find Evans’s body and understand the danger of Wayward Pines. Ethan tells her about the screams he heard the previous night. He wonders if the fence is there to keep them in or something else out.

They hear a strange sound. Beverly recognizes it as the telephones all over town, ringing. They will be hunting Ethan, trying to find and kill him. She hands him the clothes and tells him to follow the river upstream. He doesn’t have time to dress. Leaving the clothes behind, he runs into the rain in his hospital gown. He leaves his tracker behind and runs through the field, toward the river.

Flashlights are already bobbing in the dark, however, and Ethan has to hide until they leave. He turns down a nearby street, and three men leap out of a house and chase him. One is close, and Ethan is sure the man will catch him.

A woman, later revealed to be Theresa, watches out her attic window as Ethan, naked, runs down the street. Theresa heard the other phones ring, but hers didn’t, and she is grateful. Ethan runs out of sight, and she realizes she’ll never see her husband again because she won’t take part in the fête. She has been in Wayward Pines for five years. Ethan’s fête is the fifth during that time.

Theresa looks in on her son, Ben, who is sleeping. If she wakes him, he’ll want to go. He’s 12 years old now and looks like Ethan. She debates whether she’ll tell him about Ethan’s fête.

A large crowd chases Ethan, with several people beginning to catch up—among them is the pharmacist who refused Ethan an aspirin. The pharmacist is just steps behind when Ethan turns and runs into him at full speed. The man drops his machete, and Ethan grabs it, kicking the man in the face before fleeing into an alley. Once the footsteps fade, he enters a wooden door at the end of the alley and runs up the stairwell. A man in a dripping poncho spots him. Ethan ducks into an unlocked apartment, but his wet footprints leave a trail. When the man charges him, Ethan swings his machete, killing his pursuer.

Ethan stops to look out the window. Below, the street is chaos. A huge bonfire burns despite the rain, and the crowd, dressed in gaudy costumes, screams and cheers. Sheriff Pope is dressed in a bear fur, his star pinned to his chest. Two men drag Beverly forward. Ethan watches as the crowd beats Beverly to death, wishing he could fight. He knows, however, that if he tries, he’ll die, and he’ll lose any chance of seeing his family again or learning the truth.

Ethan creeps down the stairs and into the alley. The crowd continues cheering. A small group spots him, chasing him into the woods, and he realizes that they are children. They surround him, weapons pointed, but when Ethan charges the largest boy, all the children scatter except one.

The frightened boy tells Ethan to accept his life in Wayward Pines before screaming for help. Ethan runs to the river, now overflowing from the rain, and crosses it. The crowd assembles on the other side, pointing a huge spotlight at him. Ethan hurries upstream on the opposite bank, pushing past his fear and exhaustion.

The rain slows and stops, but Ethan keeps walking, unsure how far he’s come. The moon is bright, and he stops to drink from the river. As he scans his surroundings, he sees a strange dark patch near the base of a nearby cliff. Coming closer, he sees that it’s a cave. He crawls inside. Despite the cold, he falls sound asleep.

Ethan dreams of his imprisonment, when he was told to write down what he knew. He knew that, no matter what he wrote, he would die. He thought of Theresa, pregnant with their first child, picked up the pen, and began to write.

When Ethan wakes, he’s feverish. He lays his damp clothes across the rocks and goes to the river to drink. Some of his pursuers have crossed the river and are in the woods below the cave. On second look, he realizes that only one is chasing him now, but it isn’t a man—it moves on all fours, sniffing the air.

Ethan waits in the cave, thinking of Theresa, overcome by his love for her. As dawn breaks, he leaves the cave. He chooses a long stick to help him walk, but his energy quickly flags. As he climbs, the river, and then the trees, peter out. He continues until the sun sets, sleeps all night, and continues the next day. The terrain gets steeper, to the point that he’s climbing. He hears the hum of a machine and, coming around a bend, sees that the cliffs continue into jagged, rocky peaks. Between him and the peaks, a high electric fence hums, with a sign warning him to return to town or die.

Something square glints on the canyon wall. Realizing it is man-made, Ethan starts toward it. Hearing something following him, he turns to see a human-sized being, with pale skin, moving agilely toward him on all fours. When it screams, Ethan recognizes the sound from when he tried to escape. The creature attacks him, and Ethan smashes a rock into its skull until it stops moving.

Aiming to reach the object in the canyon wall, Ethan relies on the adrenaline from the fight to climb. When he looks down again, five more creatures are following, leaving him no option but to continue. When a rock pulls off in his hands, he hurls it at one of the creatures, which falls and hits two others. Finally, Ethan pulls himself onto a ledge just below the object.

It’s a vent, with a fan spinning behind it. Ethan smashes the cover with a rock, then pulls the fan out and throws it off the ledge. Only one creature remains, but as Ethan watches, it begins to tire. It makes one final leap at him before falling into the canyon below.