Justin Cronin - The Passage

All this, through the years and years. She remembered one day, the day of the field of bones, and another, the day of the bird and the not-talking. This was in a place with trees, so tall. There it was, just a small fluttering thing in the air before her face. Her feet were bare on the grass in the sunshine that she had learned to walk in. To and fro it moved on a blur of wings. She looked and looked. It seemed to her as if she had been beholding this small thing for many a day. She thought the word for what it was, but when she tried to say it, she realized she had forgotten how. Bird . The word was inside her but there was no door for it to come out of. Humming… bird . She thought of all the other words she knew and it was just the same. All the words, all locked away inside.

And one night in the moonlight and after much time had passed, she was lonesome and without a friend in the world for company and she thought: Come here .

They came. First one and then another and more and more.

Come to me .

They stepped from the shadows. They dropped from the sky above and the high places all around, and soon they were a company without number, as they had been in the barn, only more so. They crowded around her with their dreaming faces. She touched them, caressed them, and did not feel alone. She asked: Are we the all? For I have seen no one, no man or woman, in all the years and years. Is there no I but I? But as long as she asked, they had no answer for her, only the question, fierce and burning.

Go now , she thought, and closed her eyes; and when she opened them again she found she was alone.

That was how she learned to do it.

Then, through the seasons of nights and the years of nights, she came upon the place of the buried city, where in the paling light of dusk she saw the men on their horses. Six of them, atop six dark horses of great muscularity. The men had guns, like other men that she recalled, in the time after the man and his wife and the boy and then the woman; and she hid herself away in the shadows, waiting for night to fall. What she would do then she did not know, but then the forgetful ones came to her as they always did in the dark and although she told them not to, they descended upon the men swiftly and with a great commotion and in this fashion the men began to die and then did so, three of their number.

She moved to where the bodies lay, the men and also their horses who were dead with no blood in them as was the case with all things that had died in this manner. Three of the men were nowhere to be found but the soul of one man was still near, watching from some nameless place without the form of solid things as she bent to regard his face and the look written upon it. It was the same look she had seen upon the face of the man and his wife and the boy and then the woman. Fear, and pain, and the letting go. It came to her that the man’s name had been Willem. And the ones who had done it to Willem were sorry, so sorry, and she rose and said to them, It’s all right, go now and do not do this again if you can help it , though she knew that they could not. They could not help it because of the Twelve who filled their minds with their terrible dreams of blood and no answer to the question but this:

I am Babcock .

I am Morrison .

I am Chávez .

I am Baffes-Turrell-Winston-Sosa-Echols-Lambright-Martínez-Reinhardt-Carter .

I am Babcock .

Babcock .

Babcock .

She followed them across the sand, even though the light was a great brightness to her eyes and on some days she could not hide from it. She wrapped herself in a cloth she had found and on her face she had the glasses. The days were long, the sun in its arc cutting a swath in the sky above and plowing the earth below it with the long blade of its light. At night the desert grew still with only the sound of her moving across it and the beating of her heart and the dreaming world around.

Then it was a day when there were mountains once again. She never had found those men on their horses or where they had come from that some of their number should have died in the buried city before her eyes. The floor of the valley between the mountains was dotted with trees that turned with the wind, and that was where she came upon the building with the horses inside; and when she beheld them in their stillness and solitude she thought, Perhaps these are the horses I saw. The horses weren’t alive but they seemed so, and the look of them brought a peacefulness to her mind and a feeling of the Man and his cares for her that made her think she should stay in that place, that the time for running was ended. That this was the place where she had come to rest.

But now that time had ended, too. The men had returned at last on their horses and she had saved one of their company; she had covered his body with her own as her instincts had dictated in the moment and she’d told the dreaming ones to go, go now and do not kill this one; and for a while these urgings had worked upon them, but the other voice within their minds was strong and the hunger was strong also.

In her space in the dark and dust below the horses she thought of the one she had saved, hoping he was not dead, and listened for the sounds of the men and their horses and guns returning. And after a certain time of days, when she had detected no trace of them, she departed that place as she had departed all the others before it and stepped into the moonlit night of which she was a part, one and indivisible.

– Where are they? she asked the darkness. Where are the men on their horses that I should go to them and find them? For I have been alone through all the years and years, no I but I.

And a new voice came to her from the night sky, saying, Go into the moonlight, Amy .

– Where? Where should I go?

Bring them to me. The way will show you the way .

She would. She would do it. For she had been alone too long, no I but I, and she was filled then with a sorrow and a great desire for others of her kind, that she should be alone no longer.

Go into the moonlight and find the men that I should know them as I know you, Amy .

– Amy, she thought. Who is Amy?

And the voice said, You are .

Log of the Watch

Summer 92

Day 51: No sign.

Day 52: No sign.

Day 53: No sign.

Day 54: No sign.

Day 55: No sign.

Day 56: No sign.

Day 57: Peter Jaxon stationed at FP 1 (M: Theo Jaxon). No sign.

Day 58: No sign.

Day 59: No sign.

Day 60: No sign.

During this period: 0 contacts. No souls killed or taken. Second Captain vacancy (T. Jaxon, deceased) referred to Sanjay Patal.

Respectfully submitted to the Household,

S. C. Ramirez, First Captain

Dawn of the eighth morning: Peter’s eyes snapped open at the sound of the herd, coming down the trace.

He remembered thinking, some time after half-night: Just a few minutes. Just a few minutes off my feet, to gather my strength . But the moment he’d allowed himself to sit, bracing his back against the rampart, and rested his weary head upon his folded arms, sleep had taken him fast.