The Noise Read online

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2021 by James Patterson

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  First edition: August 2021

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  ISBN 978-0-316-49989-7

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021939757

  E3-20210629-DA-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  Chapter Ninety

  Chapter Ninety-One

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  Chapter Ninety-Three

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  Chapter Ninety-Five

  Chapter Ninety-Six

  Chapter Ninety-Seven

  Chapter Ninety-Eight

  Chapter Ninety-Nine

  Chapter One Hundred

  Chapter One Hundred One

  1 WEEK LATER Chapter One Hundred Two

  Chapter One Hundred Three

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  Chapter One

  Tennant

  The forest had a particular scent to it, a dewy moistness off the Columbia River mixed with Douglas fir, ponderosa pine, red cedar, hemlock, and maple. Overnight, a fog had rolled down from the peak of Mount Hood, the sun crackling over the ghostly landscape, glistening shadows marred by flecks of white, now warming with dawn.

  Sixteen-year-old Tennant Riggin took each step over the earth with practiced care, her footfalls silent as she avoided the twigs, fallen branches, leaves, and pine needles, her leather boots leaving no trail. Just as Poppa had taught her.

  Three feet to her left, her eight-year-old sister, Sophie, took no such precaution. She crashed through the underbrush, thrashing her crooked walking stick as if intent on waking all of Mother Nature’s creatures who dare to still be sleeping when she had to be awake.

  “Will you be quiet?” Tennant urged.

  “I will not,” Sophie fired back. “If you wanted quiet, you shoulda let me sleep.”

  “Momma wants you to learn. You need to hunt, too.”

  “Coulda learned an hour from now just as good. What makes you think you caught anything at all, anyway?”

  Sophie was annoying, but she was right. While Tennant’s traps had improved substantially over the years, they weren’t as good as Poppa’s. Half the time, her bait was gone or her post snapped, or the noose was missing. Yesterday she’d seen a plump hare jump right into one of her twine nooses, but successfully break free, running off with her bait and half her trap in tow. She’d caught it, but only after nearly an hour. She hadn’t told Momma or Poppa that part. Sophie knew, though. She’d perched on a rock and laughed as her big sister chased that damn rabbit.

  Tennant set six snares yesterday, made with wire this time rather than twine.

  The Riggin sisters were fourth-generation survivalists, both born within three hundred yards from where they now stood, and neither had ever left the woods of Oregon. They’d heard stories, they knew there was another world out there, but they had no desire to see it. More than once, Grammy Riggin had sat them down and told them the horrors of the outside world, with its pollution and greed and waste, and on her deathbed last fall she made them promise never to take part in that debauchery. Tennant told her she never would. She swore to it. She loved their little village of 187—correction—188 with the birth of Lily last week—and that outside world didn’t concern her. Saying that Sophie felt the
same might have been a bit of a white lie. Sophie had started asking questions when Kaitlyn and Jeremiah’s boy Kruger went to Portland for nearly three months. He came back different, and Tennant had caught Sophie watching him, following him around, listening to the things he said. She was nosy for an eight-year-old, and most folks around here hushed up when she came round. Not Kruger, though. He seemed to like having her ear.

  They both heard the scream, and froze. A baby’s wail, a keening from up ahead. A desperate rattling in the brush.

  “Oh, stars, you got one!”

  Rabbits made the most horrible of sounds when frightened or injured.

  But there shouldn’t be any sound. When set properly, a snare ought to choke the rabbit to sleep, death a moment later. Quick. Humane. Efficient. This wasn’t the sound of a dying rabbit. This was one fighting for escape. Something had gone wrong.

  Another scream, about twenty feet away, louder than the first.

  A third, this one more faint, beyond the first two. Tennant had set six traps in total, all with the new wire.

  The excitement melted from Sophie’s face. Her eyes got wider as the screams grew louder. The blood left her cheeks, and she went pale, near tears. “Make it stop, Tennant.”

  Tennant carried a small jar of beeswax in her pack for tick and bug bites. She fished it out, scooped some on her fingertip, and pressed globs of wax deep into each of her ears, reducing the screams to dull, muted cries. She held the jar out to her sister, who waved it off—too messy for little Miss Prissy.

  Sophie covered her ears instead.

  Tennant dropped the wax back in her pack, retrieved her knife, and extended the blade. “Come on.”

  Sophie didn’t move. Instead, she planted her feet firmly and shook her head. She said something, but Tennant couldn’t make out her words through the wax.

  Tennant heard something else then, not from the forest but from deep in her mind. A ringing. First faint, barely audible, but steadily growing. A single tone gaining strength, joined by others, shrill, louder. Hungry. Ugly. There was a pressure, too. As if her head were filling with water and didn’t have enough room. Cold sweat trickled down the back of her neck. The world swooned, her vision clouded, and Tennant felt like she might pass out.

  She thought it was all in her mind until she glanced over at Sophie, whose eyes welled with panic—her sister’s mouth hung open as she looked up into the trees, toward the dull gray of the morning sky, her hands cupped tightly over her ears.

  The sound grew louder.

  Deafening.

  A crescendo of screams.

  As if every human, animal, and creature of Mother Earth all cried together in fevered pain.

  Tennant was on her knees, her sister curled up beside her, as Poppa burst from the bushes with a rifle slapping against his back, Momma behind him. She didn’t feel Poppa scoop her into his arms, didn’t remember it. She blinked and they were running through the trees, toward Bill McAuliffe’s barn at the far edge of the village. She blinked again, and Poppa was lowering her through the trapdoor into the cellar. Momma handed Sophie down to her and Tennant tried to catch her, but instead they both tumbled down the steps to the dirt floor, landing in a heap.

  Tennant caught a glimpse of Poppa’s eyes as he slammed the door down from up above, Momma behind him, their faces white as paper and skin stretched tight with pain. She’d never seen eyes so bloodshot.

  This sound.

  This loudest of sounds.

  Somehow, grew louder.

  Oh, God, why didn’t Poppa and Momma come down, too?

  Chapter Two

  Tennant

  Sophie’s scream cut through Tennant like a dull, rusty blade.

  Her sister’s voice blended with the horrible wail coming from both everywhere and nowhere all at once. Her bones wanted out of her skin. The dirt floor of the cellar pulsed with the penetrating hum. Dust and dirt jumped, stirred angrily through the stale, musty air.

  Tennant rolled from her back to her side, dug her fingers deep into her ears against the sound, yet the deafening cry managed to dig further—past her fingers, through the wax, a knitting needle clawing at her brain, scraping the inside of her skull, cracking against the bone.

  What had started as a single high-pitched tone had grown to all sounds—high and low, both deep and shrill—screeching, shrieking, all at once.

  The cellar wasn’t large. Ten by ten, at the most. The dirt walls were lined with wood and cinder-block shelves filled with canned goods, beef jerky, powdered milk, gallons of water, wheat.

  All of this came to life, vibrating from the sound.

  Cans and packages tumbled from the shelves and crashed to the ground. A bag of flour burst.

  The walls groaned as the weight of the earth pushed in from all sides.

  The boards of the ceiling rattled as if stomped on from above.

  Still, the sound grew louder.

  Tennant had no idea she was screaming, too, until she ran out of breath and choked on the air—dirt, dust, flour—all filling her lungs at once. She coughed it back out, forced herself to stand, clawed at the cellar door.

  Why had Poppa locked them in?

  They’d die down here.

  And Momma and Poppa out there?

  On the ground at her feet, Sophie’s hands and arms wrapped around her head, her knees pulled tight against her chest. Blood dripped from the corners of her eyes, from her button nose, seeped out from between her fingers over her ears. Thick, congealed blood, dark red, nearly black. One of her hands shot out and wrapped around Tennant’s ankles and squeezed so tight the pain brought her back down to the floor.

  The sound grew louder.

  Tennant wanted to hold her sister, but her arms and legs no longer obeyed her. Her heart drummed against her ribs, threatened to burst. She couldn’t get air, each gasp no better than breathing water. Her eyes rolled back into her head, her vision first went white, then dark, as the walls closed in. The cellar no better than a grave.

  Chapter Three

  Tennant

  When Tennant woke, her eyes fluttered open on muted darkness. Light crept down from above, leaking from between the cracks in the ceiling boards, flickering over the dust hovering in the air, finding her on the floor, on her back, her right leg twisted awkwardly beneath her.

  Utter silence.

  The silence so complete, Tennant thought she could no longer hear at all. Then she remembered the wax in her ears and clawed it out, sat up, gathered her senses.

  “Sophie?”

  Tennant had experienced earthquakes before. Two she recalled vividly, and neither had left the cellar in such disarray. Most of the shelves had collapsed. Those still in place were bare, the ground littered with their contents. Canned berries and jams had exploded, their sweet scent mixing with the dust, shards of glass everywhere. The once-familiar room looked foreign to her.

  She spotted Sophie tucked into the corner, crouched, rocking side to side on her feet. Matted hair and blood covered her face. Her eyes were wide but unfocused. Her lips moved in some silent conversation.

  Tennant shuffled through the debris and went to her. Every muscle in her body ached, as if she’d spent the day in the cornfield or baling hay.

  When she reached out to Sophie her sister didn’t respond to her touch, only continued to mumble, although Tennant couldn’t make out the words.

  Her eyes were bloodshot, like Momma and Poppa’s. She was horribly pale, too. Cold to the touch. “Sophie, can you hear me?”

  Her sister didn’t respond.

  Tennant wrapped her arms around her, tried to stop her from rocking, but her sister continued to move side to side.

  Tennant leaned in closer, brought her ear to her sister’s lips.

  Sophie’s incoherent mumbling was barely a whisper. Tennant didn’t know what her sister was saying, but there was urgency to the words. Her head nodded as she spoke, her eyes flickering about the room without really looking at anything at all.

  Ten
nant snapped her fingers.

  Nothing.

  She slapped her.

  She didn’t want to, but it did work.

  The rocking stopped. Sophie sucked in a breath and went rigid. Her gaze fixed on her sister.

  Tennant pressed her palms to Sophie’s cheeks. “You okay?”

  Sophie stared at her for a moment, confused. Then her hands went to her ears, her fingertips digging inside. Tentatively at first, then more fevered, aggressive. Tennant grabbed her wrists and tried to make her stop, but she was so strong.

  Both their hands came away bloody—Sophie screamed, and that only made things worse. She slammed her hands against the sides of her head. “Can’t hear! Can’t hear!”

  Tennant tried to pull her arms away, but Sophie just slapped at her, banged the sides of her head again, each blow more harsh than the last. “No! No! No!”

  “Sophie! Stop!”

  Smack.

  Smack.

  Smack.

  She started rocking again, faster than before—left to right, right to left, back again.

  Smack.

  Smack.

  Smack.

  Sophie pushed her back, sending Tennant tumbling across the floor into a barrel of cornmeal.

  She had to get them out of there. She knew Bill McAuliffe kept an ax down here. Normally, it hung on the wall in the far right corner, but now she found it on the ground under a pile of powdered milk cartons.

  Tennant hefted the heavy ax and scrambled up the steps to the trapdoor. With the blade facing up, she gripped the handle with both hands and swung up at the door. She aimed for the hinge but struck the wood about four inches off-center. She repositioned and swung again. On the third hit, the first hinge snapped. The second hinge took five blows. The door fell in, and sunlight streamed down through the opening.

  Dropping the ax, Tennant went back down into the cellar and grabbed Sophie’s hand. “Come on!”

  At first, she thought her sister would fight her, but instead she was on her feet. She pushed past Tennant and raced out into the open air.

  “Wait!” Tennant hollered after her, bounding up the steps.

  There shouldn’t be daylight.

  Chapter Four

  Tennant

  The McAuliffe barn was gone.

  Tennant found Sophie standing where the barn door had been, her back to her. The roof of the old building was missing, the walls nothing but a crumbled ruin. Cracked and splintered boards littered the ground, hay tossed about wildly. Only a single post remained, sticking awkwardly out from the earth, no longer straight, but like a finger pointing east on a bent knuckle.