Justin Cronin - The Passage

As the first viral launched itself toward the Humvee, Alicia reached out, snatching Sara’s wrist off the steering wheel, and pulled. Sara swung out on Alicia’s arm in a wide arc, separating from the vehicle as it swerved away. For a horrible instant her eyes met Peter’s as her feet skimmed the ground-the eyes of a woman who was going to die and knew it. But then Alicia pulled again, hard, drawing her upward, Sara’s free hand found the ladder, and the two of them were climbing; Sara and Alicia were up and rolling into the cab.

Which was when it happened. An earsplitting boom, like thunder: the engine lurched violently forward, free of its weight; everything in the cab was suddenly airborne. Peter, standing by the open hatch, was slapped off his feet and hurled backward, his body slamming into the bulkhead. He thought: Amy . Where was Amy? And as he tumbled to the floor he heard a new sound, louder than the first, and he knew what this sound was: a deafening roar and a screech of metal, as the cars behind them jumped the rails, jackknifing into the air and careering like an avalanche of iron across the desert floor, everyone inside them dead, dead, dead.

They came to a stop at half-day. The end of the line, Michael said, powering down. The maps Billie had shown them indicated that the rails petered out at the town of Caliente. They were lucky the train had taken them this far. How far? Peter asked. Four hundred kilometers, give or take, said Michael. See that mountain ridge? He was pointing through the slitted windshield. That’s Utah.

They disembarked. They were in some kind of railyard, with tracks all around, littered with abandoned cars-engines, tankers, flatbeds. The land here was less dry; there was tall grass growing, and cottonwoods, and a gentle breeze was blowing, cooling the air. Water was running nearby; they could hear the sound of birds.

“I just don’t get it,” Alicia said, breaking the stillness. “Where did they hope to get to?”

Peter had slept in the train, once it was clear no virals were pursuing them, and awakened at dawn to find himself curled on the floor beside Theo and Maus. Michael had stayed up through the night, but the ordeal of the last few days had eventually caught up with everyone. As for Olson: perhaps he’d slept, though Peter doubted it. The man had spoken to no one and was now sitting on the ground outside the engine, staring into space. When Peter had told him about Mira, he hadn’t asked for any details, just nodded and said, “Thank you for letting me know.”

“Anywhere,” Peter answered after a moment. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling. The events of the night before-the whole four days at the Haven-felt like a feverish dream. “I think they just wanted to get… anywhere.”

Amy had stepped away from the group, into the field. For a moment they watched her, moving through the windblown grass.

“Do you think she understands what she did?” Alicia asked.

It was Amy who had blown the coupler. The switch was located in the rear of the engine compartment by the head-end unit. Probably it had been connected to a drum of diesel fuel or kerosene, Michael surmised, with some kind of igniter. That would have been enough to do it. A fail-safe, in case the cars were overrun. It made sense, Michael said, when you thought about it.

Peter supposed it did. But none of them could explain how Amy had known what to do, nor what had led her to actually throw the switch. Her actions seemed, like everything else about her, beyond ordinary understanding. And yet it was because of her, once again, that they were all alive.

Peter watched her for a long moment. In the waist-high grass she appeared almost to float, her hands held out from her sides, grazing the feathered tips. Many days had passed since he’d thought of what had happened in the Infirmary; but watching her now as she moved through the grass, he was washed by the memory of that strange night. He wondered what she had told Babcock when she had stood before him. It was as if she were part of two worlds, one that he could see and one that he could not; and it was within this other, hidden world that the meaning of their voyage lay.

“A lot of people died last night,” Alicia said.

Peter drew a breath. Despite the sun, he felt suddenly cold. He was still watching Amy, but in his mind he saw Mira-the girl’s body pressed to the roof of the train, the viral’s hand reaching for her, pulling her away. The empty space where she had been and the sound of her screams as she fell.

“I think they’d been dead a long time,” he said. “One thing’s for sure, we can’t stay here. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

They inventoried their supplies, spreading them out on the ground by the engine. It didn’t amount to much: half a dozen shotguns, a couple of pistols with a few rounds each, one automatic rifle, two spare clips for the rifle plus twenty-five shells for the shotguns, six blades, eight gallons of water in jugs plus more in the train’s holding tank, a few hundred gallons of diesel fuel but no vehicle to put it in, a couple of plastic tarps, three tins of sulfur matches, the med kit, a kerosene lantern, Sara’s journal-she had removed it from her pack when they’d left the hut and stashed it inside her jersey-and no food at all. Hollis said there was probably game out there; they shouldn’t waste their ammo, but they could set some snares. Maybe they’d find something edible in Caliente.

Theo was sleeping on the floor of the engine compartment. He’d managed to give them a rough accounting of events as best he could recall them-his fragmented memory of the attack at the mall, then his time in the cell and the dream of the woman in her kitchen and his struggle to stay awake, and the taunting visits of the man whom Peter believed was almost certainly Jude-but the effort of talking was clearly difficult for him, and he’d eventually fallen into a sleep so profound that Sara had to reassure Peter that his brother was still breathing. The wound to Mausami’s leg was worse than she’d claimed but less than life-threatening. The shot had blasted through her outer thigh, cutting a grisly-looking bloody trench but exiting cleanly. The night before, Sara had used a needle and thread from the med kit to sew the wound closed and had cleaned it with spirits from a bottle they’d found under the sink in the engine’s tiny lavatory. It must have hurt like hell, but Maus had borne all of it with a stoic silence, gritting her teeth as she clutched Theo’s hand. As long as she kept it clean, Sara said, she’d be fine. With luck she’d even be able to walk in a day or two.

The question arose about where to go. It was Hollis who raised it, and Peter found himself taken aback; the thought had never occurred to him that they would fail to press on. Whatever lay ahead of them in Colorado, he felt more strongly than ever that they had to find out what it was, and it seemed far too late to turn back now. But Hollis, he was forced to concede, had a point. Theo, and Finn, and the woman whom first Alicia and now Mausami claimed was Liza Chou-all had come from the Colony. Whatever was happening with the virals-and obviously something was happening-it appeared that they wanted people alive. Should they go back and warn the others? And Mausami-even if her leg was all right, could she really continue on foot? They had no vehicles and very little in the way of ammunition for the weapons they possessed; they could probably find food on the way, but this would slow them down, and soon they would be entering the mountains, where the terrain would be more difficult. Could they expect a pregnant woman to walk all the way to Colorado? He was only posing these questions, Hollis said, because someone had to; he wasn’t sure what he thought. On the other hand, they had come a long way. Babcock, whatever he was, was still out there, as were the Many. Turning around brought risks of its own.