Justin Cronin - The Passage

Wolfgast felt completely lost. “Please. I don’t know… what you’re talking about.”

The stranger shrugged. “Well, you will. Soon enough, I’m sorry to say.” He looked at Wolgast again. “My manners. You’ll have to excuse me, Agent Wolgast. It’s been a while for me. I’m Jonas Lear.” He gave a rueful smile. “You could say I’m the person in charge around here. Or not. Under the circumstances, I rather think nobody’s in charge anymore.”

Lear. Wolgast searched his memory, but the name meant nothing. “I heard an explosion-”

“Quite right,” Lear interrupted. “That would have been the elevator. Now, my guess would be it was one of the soldiers. But I was locked in the freezer, so I didn’t see that part.” He sighed heavily and cast his eyes around the room once more. “Not a moment of great heroism, was it, Agent Wolgast, locking myself in the freezer? You know, I really wish there was another chair in here. I’d like to sit down. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I sat down.”

Wolgast shot to his feet. “Jesus. Take mine. Just please, tell me what’s going on.”

But Lear shook his head, his greasy hair swaying. “There’s no time, I’m afraid. We have to be going. It’s all over, isn’t it, Amy?” He looked down at the girl’s sleeping form and gently touched her hand. “Over at last.”

Wolgast could stand it no more. “What’s over?”

Lear lifted his face; his eyes were full of tears.

“Everything.”

Lear led them down the corridor, Wolgast carrying Amy in his arms. The air smelled burnt, like molten plastic. As they turned the corner toward the elevator, Wolgast saw the first body.

It was Fortes. There wasn’t much left. His body looked smeared, like it had been hit and dragged by something huge. Pooling blood glistened under the throb of the emergency lights. Beyond Fortes was another one, or so Wolgast thought. It took him a moment to understand he was looking at more of Fortes, just a different part of him.

Amy’s eyes were closed, but Wolgast did his best to cover them anyway, pressing her face to his chest. Beyond Fortes lay two more bodies, or three, he couldn’t tell. The floor was slick with blood, so much blood that he felt his feet sliding on it, the grease of human remains.

The elevator was blown away, nothing more than a hole, its darkened interior lit by the dancing sparks of broken wiring. Its heavy metal doors had shot across the hallway, caving in the opposite wall. Under the angular light of the emergency beams, Wolgast could see two more dead men, soldiers, crushed by pieces of the door. A third was propped against the wall, seated like a man taking a siesta, except he was resting in a pool of his own blood. His face was drawn and dessicated; his uniform hung limply on his frame, as if it were a size too large.

Wolgast tore his gaze away. “How do we get out of here?”

“This way,” Lear said. The fog had lifted from him; he was pure urgency and purpose now. “Quickly.”

Down another corridor. Doors stood open all up and down its length-heavy metal doors, identical to the one that led to Amy’s chamber. And on the floor of the hallway, more bodies, but Wolgast didn’t-couldn’t-count. The walls were riddled with bullet holes, cartridges lay all over the floor, their brass casings gleaming.

Then a man stepped through one of the doors. Not stepped: stumbled. A big soft man, like the ones who’d delivered Wolgast’s meals to his room, though his face was not familiar. He was holding a hand to a deep gash on his neck, the blood flowing through and around his fingers where they pressed into his flesh. His shirt, a white hospital tunic like Wolgast’s, was a glistening bib of blood.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey.” He looked at the three of them, then up and down the hall. He seemed not to notice the blood or, if he did, not to care. “What happened to the lights?”

Wolgast didn’t know what to say. A wound like that-the man should be dead already. Wolgast couldn’t believe he was even standing.

“Oooo,” the bleeding man said, wobbling on his feet. “I gotta sit down.”

He slid heavily to the floor, his body seeming to cave in on itself, like a tent without poles. He took a long breath and looked up at Wolgast. His body shuddered with a deep twitch.

“Am I… asleep?”

Wolgast said nothing. The question made no sense to him.

Lear touched his shoulder. “Agent, leave him. There’s no time.”

The man licked his lips. He’d lost so much blood he was becoming dehydrated. His eyes had started to flutter; his hands lay loosely, like empty gloves, on the floor at his sides.

“Because I’m here to tell you, I’ve been having the worst goddamn dream. I said to myself, Grey, you are having the worst dream in the world.”

“I don’t think it was a dream,” Wolgast said.

The man considered this and shook his head. “I was afraid of that.”

He twitched again, a hard spasm, as if he’d been hit by a jolt of current. Lear was right-there was nothing to do for him. The blood from his neck had darkened to a deep blue-black. Wolgast had to get Amy away.

“I’m sorry,” Wolgast said. “We have to go.”

“You think you’re sorry,” the man said, and let his head rock back against the wall.

“Agent-”

But Grey’s mind already seemed elsewhere. “It wasn’t just me,” he said, and closed his eyes. “It was all of us.”

They hurried on, to a room with lockers and benches. A dead end, Wolgast thought, but then Lear withdrew a key from his pocket and opened a door marked MECHANICALS.

Wolgast stepped inside. Lear was on his knees, using a small knife to pry loose a metal panel. It swung free on a pair of hinges, and Wolgast bent to look inside. The opening wasn’t more than a yard square.

“Straight on, about thirty feet, and you’ll come to an intersection. A tube leads straight up. There’s a ladder inside for maintenance. It goes all the way to the top.”

Fifty feet at least, climbing a ladder in pitch blackness holding Amy, somehow, in his arms. Wolgast didn’t see how he could do it.

“There has to be another way.”

Lear shook his head. “There isn’t.”

The man held Amy while Wolgast entered the duct. Seated, his head bent low, he’d be able to pull Amy along, holding her by the waist. He backed in until his legs were straight; Lear positioned Amy between them. She seemed to be poised on the edge of awareness now. Through her thin gown, Wolgast could still feel the warmth of her fever rising off her skin.

“Remember what I said. Ten yards.”

Wolgast nodded.

“Be careful.”

“What killed those men?”

But Lear didn’t answer. “Keep her close,” he said. “She’s everything. Now go.”

Wolgast began to scooch away, one hand clutching Amy by the waist, the other pulling them deeper into the duct. It was only when the panel sealed behind him that he realized that Lear had never meant to come with them.

The sticks were everywhere now, all over the compound. Richards could hear the screams and the gunfire. He took extra clips from his desk and ran upstairs to Sykes’s office.

The room was empty. Where was Sykes?

They had to establish a perimeter. Push the sticks back inside the Chalet and throw the switch. Richards stepped from Sykes’s office, his gun raised.

Something was moving down the hall.

It was Sykes. By the time Richards got to him, he had slumped to the floor, his back propped against the wall. His chest was heaving like a sprinter’s, his face sheened with sweat. He was holding a wide tear on his lower arm, just above the wrist, from which blood was running freely. His gun, a.45, lay on the floor near his upturned palm.