Justin Cronin - The Passage

“All right, all right. I’m coming.”

It wasn’t until the two men had disappeared into the maze of trailers that Peter allowed himself to expel the breath of air he realized he’d been holding in his chest. Just a day ago, he never would have imagined that such a thing was possible, that fear could turn these people-people he knew, who did their work and went about their lives and visited their children in the Sanctuary-into an angry mob. And Sam Chou: he’d never seen the man so angry. He’d never seen him angry at all.

“What the hell, Dale?” Alicia said. “When did this start?”

“About as soon as they moved Caleb over here.” Now that they were alone, the full magnitude of what had occurred, or almost occurred, could be read in Dale’s face. He looked like a man who had fallen from a great height only to discover that he was, miraculously, uninjured. “Flyers, I thought I was going to have to let them in. You should have heard the things they were saying before you got here.”

From inside the lockup came the sound of Caleb’s voice. “Lish? Is that you?”

Alicia pointed her voice to the windows. “Just hang tight, Hightop!” She fixed her eyes on Dale again. “Go and get some other Watchers. I don’t know what Jimmy was thinking, but you need at least three out here. Peter and I can stand guard till you get back.”

“Lish, you know I can’t leave you here. Sanjay will have my ass. You’re not even Watch anymore.”

“Maybe not, but Peter is. And since when did you start taking orders from Sanjay?”

“Since this morning.” He gave them a puzzled look. “Jimmy says so. Sanjay declared a… what do you call it? A civil emergency.”

“We know all about that. That doesn’t mean Sanjay gives the orders.”

“You better tell Jimmy. He seems to think so. Galen too.”

“Galen? What does Galen have to do with anything?”

“You haven’t heard?” Dale scanned their faces quickly. “I guess you wouldn’t have. Galen’s Second Captain now.”

“Galen Strauss?”

Dale shrugged. “It doesn’t make sense to me, either. Jimmy just called everyone together and told us Galen had your slot, and Ian has Theo’s.”

“What about Jimmy’s? If he’s moved up to First Captain now, who has his slot at second?”

“Ben Chou.”

Ben and Ian: It made sense. Both were in line for second. But Galen?

“Give me the key,” Alicia said. “Go get two more Watchers. No captains. Find Soo if you can, and tell her what I told you.”

“I don’t know who that leaves-”

“I mean it, Dale,” Alicia said. “Just go.”

They opened the lockup and stepped inside. The room was barren, a featureless concrete box. Old toilet stalls, long since emptied of their fixtures, stood along one wall; facing these was a line of pipes and above it a long mirror, fogged with tiny cracks.

Caleb was sitting on the floor under the windows. They’d left him a jug of water and a bucket, but that was all. Lish balanced her cross against one of the stalls and crouched before him.

“Are they gone?”

Alicia nodded. Peter could see how frightened the boy was. He looked like he’d been crying.

“I’m so screwed, Lish. Sanjay’s going to put me out for sure.”

“That’s not going to happen. I promise you.”

He wiped his runny nose with the back of a hand. His face and hands were filthy, his nails encrusted with grime. “What can you do?”

“Let me worry about that.” She drew a blade off her belt. “You know how to use this?”

“Flyers, Lish. What am I going to do with a blade?”

“Just in case. Do you?”

“I can whittle some. I’m not very good.”

She pressed it into his hand. “Put it out of sight.”

“Lish,” Peter said quietly, “you think that’s such a good idea?”

“I’m not leaving him unarmed.” She fixed her eyes on Caleb again. “You just hold tight and be ready. Anything happens, and you have a chance to get away, don’t hesitate. You run like hell for the cutout. There’s cover there, I’ll find you.”

“Why there?”

They heard voices outside. “It’ll take too long to explain. Are we clear?”

Dale stepped back into the room, a single Watcher trailing behind him, Sunny Greenberg. She was just sixteen, a runner. Not even a season on the Walls.

“Lish, I’m not fooling,” Dale said. “You have to get out of here.”

“Relax. We’re leaving.” But when Alicia rose to her feet and saw Sunny standing in the doorway, she stopped. Her eyes flashed with anger. “This is the best you could do? A runner?”

“Everybody else is on the Wall.”

Twelve hours ago, Peter realized, Alicia could have gotten anyone she wanted, a full detail. Now she had to beg for scraps.

“What about Soo?” Alicia pressed. “Did you see her?”

“I don’t know where she is. She’s probably up there too.” Dale’s eyes darted to Peter. “Will you just get her out of here?”

Sunny, who so far had said nothing, moved farther into the room. “Dale, what are you doing? I thought you said Jimmy ordered another guard. Why are you taking orders from her?”

“Lish was just helping out.”

“Dale, she’s not a captain. She’s not even Watch .” The girl acknowledged Alicia with a quick, faintly embarrassed shrug. “No offense to you, Lish.”

“None taken.” Alicia gestured toward the cross the girl was holding at her side. “Tell me something. You any good with that thing?”

A falsely modest shrug. “Highest scores in my grade.”

“Well, I hope that’s true. Because it looks like you just got promoted.” Alicia turned to Caleb again. “You’ll be all right in here?”

The boy nodded.

“Just remember what I told you. I won’t be far.”

And with that, Alicia looked at Dale and Sunny one last time, using her eyes to communicate her meaning- Make no mistake, this is personal -and led Peter from the lockup.

Sanjay Patal, Head of the Household, might have said that it had all started years ago. It had started with the dreams.

Not about the girl: he’d never dreamed about her, of that he was certain. Or mostly certain. This Girl from Nowhere-that’s what everyone was calling her, even Old Chou; the phrase had, in the space of just a morning, become her name-had arrived in their midst full blown, like an apparition borne from the darkness as a being of flesh and blood. Her sheer impossibility refuted by the fact of her existence. He’d searched his mind but could find her nowhere in it, not in the part he knew as himself, as Sanjay Patal, nor in the other: the secret, dreaming part of him.

For the feeling had lain within him as long as Sanjay could remember. The feeling that was like a whole other person, a separate soul that dwelled within his own. A soul with a name and a voice that sang inside him, Be my one. I am yours and you are mine and together we are greater than the sum, the sum of our parts .

Since he was a Little in the Sanctuary, the dream had come to him. A dream of a long-gone world and a voice that sang inside him. It was, in its way, a dream like any other, made of sound and light and sensation. A dream of a fat woman in her kitchen, breathing smoke. The woman shoving food into her wide, wobbling cave of a mouth, talking into her telephone, a curious object with a place to talk into and another to listen. Somehow he knew what this thing was, that it was a telephone, and in this manner Sanjay had come to understand that this wasn’t just a dream he was having. It was a vision. A vision of the Time Before. And the voice inside him singing its mysterious name: I am Babcock .