Justin Cronin - The Passage

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Justin Cronin - The Passage» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Жанр: Триллер, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

The Passage: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «The Passage»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

"Read fifteen pages and you will find yourself captivated; read thirty and you will find yourself taken prisoner and reading late into the night. It has the vividness that only epic works of fantasy and imagination can achieve. What else can I say? This: read this book and the ordinary world disappears." – Stephen King
***
'It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.'
First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear – of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.
As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he's done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. He is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors. But for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey – spanning miles and decades – towards the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun.
With The Passage, award-winning author Justin Cronin has written both a relentlessly suspenseful adventure and an epic chronicle of human endurance in the face of unprecedented catastrophe and unimaginable danger. Its inventive storytelling, masterful prose, and depth of human insight mark it as a crucial and transcendent work of modern fiction.

The Passage — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «The Passage», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

SEVENTY-ONE

They came down the mountain as the river was thawing, riding on top of the snow. They came down as one, wearing their packs, brandishing blades. They came down to the valley, Michael at the wheel of the Sno-Cat with Greer beside him, the others up top, the wind and sun in their faces. They came down at last, into the wild country they had reclaimed.

They were going home.

They had been on the mountain one hundred and twelve days. In all that time they had seen not a single viral. For days after they had crossed the ridge, the snow had poured down, sealing them inside the lodge of the old hotel. A great stone building, its doors and windows covered by sheets of plywood, set into the frame with heavy screws. They had expected to find bodies inside but the place was empty, the furniture around the hearth of its cavernous front room draped in ghostly white sheets, the larder of its vast kitchen stocked with every kind of can, many still with their labels. Upstairs, a warren of bedrooms, and in the basement, a huge, silent furnace and long racks lining the walls, holding skis. The place was as cold as the grave. They didn’t know if the chimney was blocked; at the very least it would be full of leaves and birds’ nests. The only thing to do was light a fire and hope for the best. In the office, they found boxes of paper packed away in a closet; they rolled it up for kindling and, with Peter’s axe, chopped up a pair of dining room chairs. After a few smoky minutes, the room blazed with light and warmth. They dragged mattresses down from the second floor and slept by the fire, while the snow piled up outside.

They had found the Sno-Cats the following morning: three of them, resting on their treads in a garage behind the lodge. You think you can get one of these things running? Peter asked Michael.

It had taken most of the winter. By then, everyone was half stir-crazy, anxious to be leaving. The days were longer, and the sun seemed to hold a distant, remembered warmth; but still the snow was deep, rising in great drifts against the walls of the lodge. They had burned most of the furniture and the railings of the porch. From the three Sno-Cats, Michael had harvested enough parts to make one go, or so he believed; it was fuel that was the problem. The large tank behind the shed was empty, fissured with rot. All he had was what was in the Cats themselves, just a few gallons, badly contaminated by rust. He siphoned this off into plastic pails and poured it through a funnel lined with rags. He let it settle overnight, then repeated the process, each time stripping more debris away but also depleting his supply. By the time he was satisfied, he had just five gallons left, which he poured back into the Cat.

“No promises,” he warned everyone. He’d done his best to flush the fuel tank, running gallon after gallon of melted snow through it, but it wouldn’t take much to gum up a fuel line. “The damn thing could kick a hundred meters from here,” he said. Though he knew they wouldn’t take this warning seriously.

It was a sunny morning when they rolled the Cat from the shed and loaded up their gear. Gigantic icicles, like long, jeweled teeth, hung from the eaves of the lodge. Greer, who had helped Michael with the repairs-it turned out he’d been an oiler once and knew a thing or two about engines-took a place in the cab beside him. The others would ride on top, on a wide metal platform with a rail. They had removed the plow to cut the weight, hoping to squeeze a few more miles from what little fuel they had.

Michael opened the window and directed his voice to the rear of the vehicle. “Is everyone on board?”

Peter was lashing the last of the gear to the back of the Sno-Cat. Amy had taken her position at the rail; Hollis and Sara stood below him, passing up the skis. “Hold on a minute,” he said. He rose and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Lish, let’s get a move on!”

She emerged from the lodge. Like all of them, she was wearing a red nylon jacket with the words SKI PATROL printed on the back, and small leather boots that fit the skis, her leggings covered to the knees by a pair of canvas gaiters. Her hair had grown back, an even more vivid shade of red, mostly hidden now beneath the band of her long-brimmed cap. Over her eyes she wore dark glasses with leather pieces attached to the lenses, hugging the sides of her face like a pair of goggles.

“Seems like we’re always leaving somewhere,” she answered. “I just wanted to say goodbye to the place.”

She was standing on the edge of the porch, ten meters away, roughly level with the platform on the Sno-Cat. Peter detected, in the sudden, curving grin on her face and the way she tipped her head, first this way and then the other, what she was about to attempt-that she was gauging the distance and angle. She removed her hat, releasing her red hair into the sunshine, and tucked it inside her Velcroed jacket; she took three steps back, bending at the knees. Her hands, at her sides, gave a watery shake, then stilled. She rose on her toes.

“Lish-”

Too late; two quick bounds and she was up. The porch where she had stood was empty; Alicia was lifting through the air. It was, Peter thought, a sight to see. Alicia Blades, Youngest Captain Since The Day; Alicia Donadio, the Last Expeditionary, airborne. She swept across the sun, arms outstretched, feet together; at the apex of her ascent, she tucked her chin against her chest and rolled head over heels, aiming the soles of her boots at the Sno-Cat, arms rising, her body descending toward them like an arrow. She hit the platform with a shuddering clang, melting to a crouch to absorb the force of the impact.

“Fuck!” Michael swiveled at the wheel. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” Peter said. He could still feel the metallic hum of her landing, chiming through his bones. “Just Lish.”

Alicia rose and tapped the glass of the cab. “Relax, Michael.”

“Flyers, I thought we’d blown the engine.”

Hollis and Sara climbed aboard; Alicia took her place at the rail and turned to Peter. Even through the smoky opaqueness of her glasses, Peter could detect the orange thrum of her eyes.

“Sorry,” she said with a guilty grin. “I thought I could nail it.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to you doing that,” he said.

The blade had never fallen. Or rather, it had fallen, when suddenly it stopped.

Everything had stopped.

It was Alicia who had done it, seizing Peter by the wrists. Freezing the blade in its downward arc, inches from her chest. The restraints had ripped away, like paper. Peter felt the power in her arms, a titanic force, more than human, and knew he was too late.

But when she opened her eyes, it was Alicia he saw.

“If it’s okay with you, Peter,” she’d said, “would you mind closing those shades? Because it’s really, really bright in here.”

The New Thing. That’s what they were calling her. Neither one nor the other, but somehow both. She couldn’t feel the virals, as Amy could; couldn’t hear the question, the great sadness of the world. In every respect she seemed herself, the same Alicia she had always been, save one:

When she chose to, she could do the most astounding things.

But then, Peter thought, when had that not been true of her?

• • •

The Sno-Cat died within sight of the valley floor. A chuffing and wheezing, followed by a final sneeze of smoke from the exhaust pipe; they coasted a few more meters on the treads and came to rest.

“That’s it,” Michael called from the cab. “We hoof it from here.”

Everyone climbed down. Peter could detect, rising from the trees below, the sound of the river, swollen with runoff. Their destination was the garrison, at least two days of travel in the sticky spring snow. They unloaded their gear and strapped themselves into their skis. They had learned the basics from a book they’d found in the lodge, a slender, yellowed volume called Principles of Nordic Skiing , though the words and pictures it contained made the thing itself look easier than it actually was. Greer, of all people, could barely stay upright and, even when he managed it, was always flying off helplessly into the trees. Amy did her best to help him-she had taken to it immediately, gliding and pushing off with a nimble grace-and showed him what to do. “Like this,” she’d say. “You just kind of fly along the snow. It’s easy.” It wasn’t easy, not by a long shot, and the rest of them had suffered more than their share of tumbles but, with practice, had all become at least passably proficient.

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «The Passage»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «The Passage» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Archibald Cronin - The Spanish gardener
Archibald Cronin
Justin Caas - The Third Sex
Justin Caas
Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down
Archibald Cronin
Justin Taylor - The Gospel of Anarchy
Justin Taylor
Justin Kemppainen - The Legend of Ivan
Justin Kemppainen
Justin Cronin - The Twelve
Justin Cronin
Justin Cronin - The Summer Guest
Justin Cronin
Justin Cronin - Mary and O’Neil
Justin Cronin
Justin Fisher - The Darkening King
Justin Fisher
Justin Fisher - The Gold Thief
Justin Fisher
Отзывы о книге «The Passage»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «The Passage» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x