Justin Cronin - The Passage

He finished his packing and stepped into the main room of the house, a combined kitchen and living area under exposed beams. The stove hadn’t been lit in months; the woodpile out back was probably full of mice by now. Every surface in the room was coated in a sticky skin of dust. Like nobody lived there at all. Well, he thought, I guess they don’t.

A last impulse took him upstairs to his parents’ bedroom. The drawers of the small dresser were vacant, the sagging mattress stripped of bedding, the shelves in the old wardrobe barren except for a filigree of cobwebs that swayed in the shifting air when he opened the door. The small bedside table where his mother had kept a cup of water and her glasses-the one thing of hers Peter would have liked to keep, but couldn’t; a decent pair of glasses was worth a full share-was ringed with ghostly stains. Nobody had opened the windows in months; the atmosphere of the room felt trapped and ill-used, one more item that Peter had dishonored with his neglect. It was true: he felt like he’d failed them, failed them all.

He toted his pack out into the gathering heat of the morning. From all around him came the sounds of activity: the tamp and whinny of the horses in the stables, the ringing music of a hammer from the smithing shop, the calls of the day shift from the Wall, and, as he moved into Old Town, the laughing squeals of the children, playing in the courtyard of the Sanctuary. Morning recess, when for an exhilarating hour Teacher would let them all run wild as mice; Peter recalled a winter day, sunlit and cold, and a game of take-away in which he had, with miraculous effortlessness, seized the stick from the hands of a much older, larger boy-in his memory it was one of the Wilson brothers-and managed to keep it to himself until Teacher, clapping and waving her mittened hands, had summoned them all inside. The sharpness of cold air in his lungs, and the dry, brown look of the world in winter; the steam of his sweat rising on his brow and the pure physical elation as he had dodged and weaved his way through the grasping hands of his attackers. How alive he’d felt. Peter searched his memory for his brother-surely Theo had been among the Littles on that winter morning, part of the galloping pack-but could find no trace of him. The place where his brother should have been was empty.

He came to the training pits then. A trio of wide depressions in the earth, twenty meters long, with high earthen walls to constrain the inevitable stray bolts and arrows, the wildly misthrown blades. At the close end of the middle trench, five new trainees were standing at attention. Three girls and two boys, ranging in ages from nine to thirteen: in their rigid postures and anxious faces, Peter could read the same effortful seriousness he’d felt when he’d come into the pits, an overwhelming desire to prove himself. Theo was ahead of him, three grades; he recalled the morning his brother had been chosen as a runner, the proud smile on his face as he turned and made his way to the Wall for the first time. The glory was reflected, but Peter had felt it, too. Soon he would follow.

The trainer this morning was Peter’s cousin Dana, Uncle Willem’s girl. She was eight years older than Peter and had stood down to take over the pits after the birth of her first daughter, Ellie. Her youngest, Kat, was still in the Sanctuary, but Ellie had come out a year ago and was one of the trainees in the pit, first grade, tall for her age and slender like her mother, with long black hair plaited in a Watcher braid.

Dana, standing before the group, examined them with a stony expression, as if she were picking a ram for slaughter. All part of the ritual.

“What do we have?” she asked the group.

They answered with one voice. “One shot!”

“Where do they come from?”

Louder this time: “They come from above!”

Dana paused, rocking back on her heels, and caught sight of Peter. She sent him a sad smile before facing her charges once again, her face hardening into a scowl. “Well, that was horrible. You’ve just earned yourselves three extra laps before chow. Now, I want two lines, bows up.”

“What do you think?”

Sanjay Patal: Peter had been so lost in thought he hadn’t heard the man approach. Sanjay was standing beside him, arms folded over his chest, his gaze directed over the pits.

“They’ll learn.”

Below them the trainees had begun their morning drills. One of the youngest, the little Darrell boy, misfired, burying his arrow in the fence behind the target with a thunk. The others began to laugh.

“I’m sorry about your brother.” Sanjay turned to face him, drawing Peter’s attention back away from the pits. He was a physically slight man, though the impression he gave was one of compactness. He kept his face clean-shaven, his hair, wisped with gray, trimmed tightly to his scalp. Small white teeth and deep-set eyes darkened by a heavy, wool-like brow. “Theo was a good man. It shouldn’t have happened.”

Peter didn’t reply. What was there to say?

“I’ve been thinking about what you told me,” Sanjay continued. “To be honest, not all of it makes complete sense. This thing with Zander. And what you were doing at the library.”

Peter felt the quick shiver of his lie. They had all agreed to hold to the original story and not tell anyone about the guns, at least for the time being. But this had quickly proved itself a far more complex undertaking than Peter had anticipated. Without the guns, their story was full of holes-what they were doing on the roof of the power station, how they’d rescued Caleb, Zander’s death, their presence in the library.

“We told you everything,” Peter said. “Zander must have gotten bitten somehow. We thought it might have happened at the library, so we went to check it out.”

“But why would Theo take a risk like that? Or was it Alicia’s idea?”

“Why would you think that?”

Sanjay paused, clearing his throat. “I know she is your friend, Peter, and I do not doubt her skills. But she’s reckless. Always quick with the hunt.”

“It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anyone’s. It was just bad luck. We decided as a group.”

Sanjay paused once more, casting a meditative gaze over the pits. Peter said nothing, hoping his silence would bring about an end to the conversation.

“Still, I find it hard to understand. Out of character for your brother, to take a chance like that. I suppose we’ll never know.” Sanjay gave his head a preoccupied shake and turned to face Peter again, his expression softening. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be interrogating you like this. I’m sure you’re tired. But as long as I have you here, there’s something else I need to speak with you about. It concerns the Household. Your brother’s spot.”

Just the thought made Peter suddenly weary. But the duty was his to perform. “Let me know what you want me to do.”

“That is the thing I want to talk to you about, Peter. Your father erred, I believe, in passing his seat to your brother. His seat rightfully belonged to Dana. She was, and is, the oldest Jaxon.”

“But she turned it down.”

“That’s true. But confidentially, I will tell you that we have not always been… comfortable with the way this came about. Dana was upset. Her father, as you recall, had just been killed. Many of us think she would have been glad to serve if your father hadn’t pressured her to stand aside.”

What was Sanjay saying? That the job was Dana’s? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Theo never said a word to me about it.”

“Well, I doubt that he would have.” Sanjay let a silent moment pass. “Your father and I did not always see eye to eye. I’m sure you know this. I opposed the Long Rides from the start. But your father never could quite let go of the idea, even after he’d lost so many men. It was his intention that your brother should revive the rides. That is why he wanted Theo on the Household.”