Justin Cronin - The Passage

“She’s in shock. Help me roll her over.”

The bolt had entered the girl’s left shoulder just below the spoon-shaped curve of her clavicle. Alicia wedged her hands under the girl’s shoulders while Caleb took her feet, and together they eased the girl onto her side. Sara retrieved a pair of scissors and sat behind her to cut the blood-soaked knapsack away, then the girl’s flimsy T-shirt, snipping it at the neck and tearing the rest of it free, revealing the slender frame of an early adolescent-the small, curving buds of her breasts and her pale skin. The bolt’s barbed tip was poking through a star-shaped wound just above the line of her scapula.

“I have to clip this off. I’ll need something bigger than these shears.”

Caleb nodded and ran from the room. As he passed through the curtain, Soo Ramirez rushed in. Her long hair had come undone; her face was streaked with dirt. She stopped abruptly at the foot of the cot.

“I’ll be goddamned. She’s just a kid.”

“Where the hell is Other Sandy?” Sara demanded.

The woman appeared dazed. “Where on earth did she come from?”

“Soo, I’m all alone in here. Where’s Sandy ?”

Soo lifted her face, focusing on Sara. “She’s… in the Sanctuary, I think.”

Footsteps and voices, a buzz of commotion from without: the outer room was filling with onlookers now.

“Soo, get these people out of here.” Sara lifted her voice to the curtain. “Everybody, out! I want this building cleared now!”

Soo nodded and darted outside. Sara checked the girl’s pulse again. Her skin appeared to have taken on a faintly mottled appearance, like a winter sky on the edge of snow. How old was she? Fourteen? What was a fourteen-year-old girl doing out in the dark?

She turned to Alicia. “You brought her in?”

Alicia nodded.

“Did she say anything to you? Was she alone?”

“God, Sara.” Her eyes seemed to float. “I don’t know. Yes, I think she was alone.”

“Is that blood yours or hers?”

Alicia dropped her eyes to the front of her jersey, seeming to notice the blood for the first time. “Hers, I think.”

More commotion from without the room, and Caleb’s voice yelling, “Coming through!” He burst through the curtain, waving a heavy cutter, and thrust it into Sara’s hands.

A greasy old thing, but it would do. Sara poured spirits over the blades of the cutter and then her hands, wiping them dry on a rag. With the girl still lying on her side, she used the cutters to clip the arrowhead free, and poured more alcohol over everything. Then she directed Caleb to wash his hands as she had done while she took a skein of wool from the shelf and snipped off a long piece, rolling it into a compress.

“Hightop, when I back the bolt out, I want you to hold this against the entry wound. Don’t be gentle, press hard. I’m going to suture the other side, see if I can slow this bleeding.”

He nodded uncertainly. He was in over his head, Sara knew, but the truth was they all were. Whether or not the girl survived the next few hours depended on the extent of the bleeding, how much damage there was inside. They rolled the girl onto her back again. While Caleb and Alicia braced her shoulders, Sara took hold of the bolt and began to pull. Sara could sense, through the bolt’s metal shaft, the fibrous gristle of destroyed tissue, the clack of fractured bone. There was no way to be gentle; it was best to do it fast. With a hard tug, the bolt pulled away in a sighing gush of blood.

“Flyers, it’s her.”

Sara turned her head to see Peter standing in the doorway. What did he mean, it’s her? As if he knew her, as if he knew who this girl was? But of course that was impossible.

“Turn her on her side. Peter, help them.”

Sara positioned herself behind the girl, taking up a needle and a spool of thread, and began to stitch the wound. There was blood everywhere now, pooling on the mattress, dripping onto the floor.

“Sara, what should I do?” Caleb’s compress was sodden already.

“Just keep pressure on it.” She drew the needle through the girl’s skin, pulling a stitch taut. “I need more light over here, someone!”

Three stitches, four, five, each one pulling the edges of the wound together. But it was no use, she knew. The bolt must have nicked the subclavian artery. That’s where all the blood was coming from. The girl would be dead within minutes. Fourteen years old, Sara thought. Where did you come from?

“I think it’s stopping,” Caleb said.

Sara was tying off the last stitch. “That can’t be right. Just keep pressure on it.”

“No, really. Look for yourself.”

They rolled the girl onto her back again, and Sara pulled the sodden compress aside. It was true: the bleeding had slowed. The entry wound even looked smaller, pink and puckered at the edges. The girl’s face was gently composed, as if she were napping. Sara placed her fingers at the girl’s throat; a hard, regular beat met her fingertips. What in the world?

“Peter, hold that lantern over here.”

Peter swung the lantern over the girl’s face; Sara gently peeled back the lid of her left eye-a dark, dewy orb, the disklike pupil contracting to reveal the ribbed iris, the color of wet earth. But something was different; something was there.

“Bring it closer.”

As Peter shifted the lantern, blazing the eye with light, she felt it. A sensation like falling, as if the earth had opened under her feet-worse than dying, worse than death. A terrible blackness all around and she was falling, falling forever into it.

“Sara, what’s wrong?”

She was on her feet, backing away. Her heart was lurching in her chest, her hands were shaking like leaves in the wind. Everyone was looking at her; she tried to speak but no words came. What had she seen? But it wasn’t something she’d seen, it was something she’d felt . Sara thought the word: alone. Alone! That’s what she was, what they all were. That was what her parents were, their souls falling forever in blackness. They were alone!

She became aware that others were in the ward now. Sanjay and, beside him, Soo Ramirez. Two more Watchers hovered behind them. Everyone was waiting for her to say something; she could feel the heat of all their eyes upon her.

Sanjay stepped forward. “Will she live?”

She took a breath to calm herself. “I don’t know.” Her voice felt weak in her throat. “It’s a bad wound, Sanjay. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

Sanjay regarded the girl a moment. He appeared to be deciding what to think of her, how to account for her impossible presence. Then he turned toward Caleb, who was standing by the cot with the blood-soaked compress in his hands. Something seemed to harden in the air; the men at the door came forward, hands on their blades.

“Come with us, Caleb.”

The two men-Jimmy Molyneau and Ben Chou-grabbed the boy by the arms; he was too surprised to resist.

“Sanjay, what are you doing?” Alicia said. “Soo, what the hell is this about?”

It was Sanjay who answered. “Caleb is under arrest.”

“Arrest?” the boy squealed. “What am I under arrest for?”

“Caleb opened the gate. He knows the law as well as anyone. Jimmy, get him out of here.”

Jimmy and Ben began to pull the struggling boy toward the curtain. “Lish!” he cried.

She quickly blocked their way, positioning herself in front of the door. “Soo, tell them,” Alicia said. “It was me. I was the one who went over. If you want to arrest someone, arrest me.”

Standing beside Sanjay, Soo said nothing.

“Soo?”

But the woman shook her head. “I can’t, Lish.”

“What do you mean you can’t?”