Justin Cronin - The Passage

“That’s her!” a voice rang out, and the words struck Lacey from behind-hit her like an arrow. Lacey spun to see the man with the camera, pointing a long finger right at her. He was standing beside a security guard in a pastel yellow jersey. “That’s the kid!”

Still clutching Amy, Lacey turned and ran, past cages of shrieking monkeys, a lagoon where swans were honking and flapping their huge, useless wings, tall cages erupting with the cries of jungle birds. Terrified crowds were pouring out of the reptile house. A group of panicked schoolchildren in matching red T-shirts stepped into Lacey’s path and she twisted around them, nearly falling but somehow staying upright. The ground before her was littered with the debris of flight, brochures and small articles of clothing and blobs of melting ice cream stuck to paper. A group of men tore past, breathing hard; one was carrying a rifle. From somewhere, a voice was saying, with robotic calm, “The zoo is now closed. Please move quickly to the nearest exit. The zoo is now closed… ”

Lacey was going in circles now, looking for a way out, finding none. Lions were roaring, baboons, meerkats, the monkeys she’d listened to from her bedroom window on summer nights. The sounds came from everywhere, filled up her mind like a chorus, ricocheting like the sound of gunfire, like the gunfire in the field, like her mother’s voice crying from the doorway: Run away, run away as fast as you can .

She stopped. And that was when she felt it. Felt him . The shadow. The man who wasn’t there but also was. He was coming for Amy, Lacey knew that now. That’s what the animals were telling her. The dark man would take Amy to the field where the branches were, the ones Lacey had watched for hours and hours as she lay and looked at the sky as it paled from night to morning, hearing the sounds of what was happening to her and the cries coming from her mouth; but she had sent her mind away from her body, up and up through the branches to heaven, where God was, and the girl in the field was someone else, nobody she remembered, and the world was wrapped in a warm light that would keep her safe forever.

The stinging taste of salt was in her mouth, but it wasn’t just the water from the tank. She was weeping now, too, watching the path through the shimmering curtain of her tears, holding Amy fiercely as she ran. Then she saw it: the snack stand. It appeared before her like a beacon, the snack stand with the big umbrella where she had bought the peanuts, and beyond it, standing open like a mouth, the wide gate of the exit. Guards in their yellow jerseys were barking into their walkie-talkies and waving people frantically through. Lacey took a deep breath and moved into the crowd, holding Amy to her chest.

She was just a few feet from the exit when a hand gripped her arm. She turned sharply: one of the guards. With his free hand he gestured over her head to someone else, his grip tightening.

Lacey. Lacey .

“Ma’am, please come with me-”

She didn’t wait. With a shove she pushed forward with all the strength she had left, felt the crowd bending. Behind her she heard the grunts and cries of people falling as she broke free, and the guard calling out for her to stop; but they were through the gate now, Lacey tearing down the pathway into the parking lot and the sound of sirens drawing near. She was sweating and breathing hard and knew that at any moment she could fall. She didn’t know where she was going but it didn’t matter. Away , she thought, away. Run as fast as you can, children. Away with Amy, away .

Then, from behind her, somewhere in the zoo, she heard a rifle shot. The sound cleaved the air, freezing Lacey in her tracks. In the sudden silence of its aftermath a van pulled up, skidding to a stop in front of her. Amy had gone limp against her chest. It was their van, Lacey saw, the one the sisters used, the big blue van they drove to the Pantry and to run errands. Sister Claire was driving, still in her sweats. A second vehicle, a black sedan, pulled in behind them as Sister Arnette burst from the van’s passenger seat. Around them the crowds were streaming past, cars were zooming out of the lot.

“Lacey, what in the world-”

Two men emerged from the second vehicle. Darkness poured off them. Lacey’s heart clenched, her voice stopped in her throat like a cork. She didn’t have to look to know what they were. Too late! All lost!

“No!” She was backing away. “No!”

Arnette gripped her by the arm. “Sister, get ahold of yourself!”

People were pulling at her. Hands were trying to wriggle the child free. With every ounce of strength Lacey held fast, squeezing the child to her chest. “Don’t let them!” she cried. “Help me!”

“Sister Lacey, these men are from the FBI! Please, do as they ask!”

“Don’t take her!” Lacey was on the ground now. “Don’t take her! Don’t take her!”

It was Arnette, after all; it was Sister Arnette who was taking Amy from her. As it had been in the field, Lacey kicking and fighting and screaming.

“Amy, Amy!”

She shook with a huge sob then, the last of her strength leaving her body in a rush; a space opened around her as she felt Amy lifted away. She heard the girl’s small voice crying out to her, Lacey, Lacey, Lacey , and then the muffling clap of the car’s doors as Amy was sealed away inside. She heard the sound of an engine, wheels turning, a car pulling away at high speed. Her face was in her hands.

“Don’t take me, don’t take me,” she was sobbing. “Don’t take me, don’t take me, don’t take me.”

Claire was beside her now. She put an arm around Lacey’s shaking shoulders. “Sister, it’s all right,” she said, and Lacey could tell she was crying, too. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.”

But it wasn’t; she wasn’t. No one was safe, not Lacey or Claire or Arnette or the woman with the baby or the guard in his yellow shirt. Lacey knew that now. How could Claire tell her everything was all right? Because it wasn’t all right. That was what the voices had been saying to her all these years, since that night in the field when she was just a girl.

Lacey Antoinette Kudoto. Listen. Look .

In her mind’s eye she saw it, saw it all at last: the rolling armies and the flames of battle; the graves and pits and dying cries of a hundred million souls; the spreading darkness, like a black wing stretching over the earth; the last, bitter hours of cruelty and sorrow, and terrible, final flights; death’s great dominion over all, and, at the last, the empty cities, becalmed by the silence of a hundred years. Already these things were coming to pass. Lacey wept, and wept some more. Because, sitting on the curb in Memphis, Tennessee, she saw Amy too; her Amy, whom Lacey could not save, as she could not save herself. Amy, time-stilled and nameless, wandering the forgotten, lightless world forever, alone and voiceless, but for this:

What I am, what I am, what I am .

Carter was someplace cold; that was the first thing he could tell. They took him off the plane first-Carter had never been on a plane in his life and would have liked to have had a window seat, but they’d stuffed him in the back with all the rucksacks, his left wrist chained to a pipe and two soldiers to watch him-and as he stepped onto the stairs leading down to the tarmac, the cold hit his lungs like a slap. Carter had been cold before, you couldn’t sleep under a Houston freeway in January and not know what cold was, but the cold here was different, so dry he could feel his lips puckering. His ears had clogged up, too. It was late, who knew how late exactly, but the airfield was lit like a jailyard; from the top of the stairs, Carter counted a dozen aircraft, big fat ones with huge doors dropped open at the back like a kid’s pajamas, and forklifts moving to and fro along the tarmac, loading pallets draped with camo. He wondered if maybe they were going to make some kind of soldier out of him, if that’s what he’d traded his life for.