Justin Cronin - The Passage

They reached the opening. The fan was higher than he’d thought, another thirty feet above their heads at least. He guessed they were somewhere on the first floor of the Chalet. Maybe he was supposed to go higher, find another exit. But his strength was nearly gone.

He positioned his right knee to take Amy’s weight and reached his left hand out. A featureless wall of cool metal met his fingertips, smooth as glass, but then he found the edge. He drew his hand back. Three more rungs should do it. He took a deep breath and ascended, positioning the two of them just above the duct.

“Amy,” he rasped. His mouth and throat were dry as bone. “Wake up. Do your best to wake up, honey.”

He felt her breathing change against his neck as she tried to rouse.

“Amy, I’m going to need you to let go when I say. I’ll hold you. There’s an opening in the wall. I need you to try to get your feet into it.”

The girl gave no reply. He hoped she had heard him. He tried to imagine how this was going to work, exactly-how he was going to get her inside the duct and then himself-and couldn’t. But he was out of options. If he waited any longer, he’d have no strength for any of it.

Now.

He pushed with his knee, lifting Amy up. Her arms released his neck and with his free hand he took her by the wrist, suspending her over the tube like a pendulum, and then he saw the way: he released his other hand, let her weight pull him away and to his left, toward the hole, and then her feet were inside it, she was sliding into the tube.

He began to fall. He’d been falling all along. But as he felt his feet lose contact with the ladder, his hands madly scrabbling at the wall, his fingers found the lip of the duct, a thin metal ridge that bit into his skin.

“Whoa!” he cried, his voice ricocheting down the length of the shaft. He seemed to be clinging to the side of the shaft by will alone; his feet were dangling in space. “Whoa now!”

How he did it he couldn’t have explained. Adrenaline. Amy. That he didn’t want to die, not yet. He pulled with all his might, his elbows bending slowly, drawing himself inexorably upward-first his head and then his chest and then his waist and finally the rest of him, sliding into the duct.

For a moment he lay still, gulping air into his lungs. He lifted his face then and saw a light ahead-some kind of opening in the floor. He twisted himself around and held Amy as he’d done before, scooting along on his backside, clutching her by the waist. The light grew stronger as they moved toward it. They came to a slatted grate.

It was sealed, screwed shut from the outside.

He wanted to cry. To come so close! Even if he’d been able to reach through the narrow slats, somehow, to find the screws with his fingers, he had no tools, no way to open it. And going back-impossible. He’d spent the last of his strength.

He heard movement below them.

He pulled Amy tight. He thought of the men they’d seen-Fortes, the soldier in the pool of blood, the one called Grey. It wasn’t how he wanted to die. He closed his eyes and held his breath, willing the two of them into absolute silence.

Then a voice, quiet and searching: “Chief?”

It was Doyle.

One of the lockers was already resting on the ground at the rear of the truck. It looked like somebody had been unloading and then, in a panic, dropped it. Richards searched quickly inside the cargo compartment and found a tire iron.

The hinge gave way with a bright snap. Inside, cradled in beds of foam, lay a pair of RPG-29s. He lifted the rack to find, beneath it, the rockets: finned cylinders, about half a meter long, tipped with tandem-charge HEATs, capable of penetrating the armor of a modern battle tank. Richards had seen what they could do.

He’d placed the requisition when the order had come through to move the sticks. Better safe than sorry, he’d thought. Vampires, say aaah .

He fixed the first rocket to the launcher. With a twist it issued the satisfying hum that meant the warhead was armed. Thousands of years of technical advancement, the whole history of human civilization, seemed contained within that sound, the hum of an arming HEAT. The 29 was reusable, but Richards knew he’d only get one shot. He hoisted it to his shoulder, lifted the sighting mechanism into position, and stepped away from the truck.

“Hey!” he yelled, and, at precisely that moment, the sound of his voice streaming away into the gloom, a cold shudder of nausea burbled from his gut. The ground beneath him swayed, like the deck of a boat at sea. Beads of sweat were popping out all over. He felt the urge to blink, a random current from the brain. So. It was happening quicker than he’d thought. He swallowed hard and took two more steps into the light, swinging the RPG toward the treetops.

“Here, kitty, kitty!”

An anxious minute passed as Doyle scrabbled through various drawers until he found a penknife. Standing on a chair, he used the blade to undo the screws. Wolgast lowered Amy into Doyle’s arms, then dropped to the floor himself.

He didn’t at first know whom he was seeing.

“Sister Lacey?”

She was holding the sleeping girl against her chest. “Agent Wolgast.”

Wolgast looked at Doyle. “I don’t-”

“Get it?” Doyle lifted his eyebrows. He was, like Wolgast, wearing scrubs. They were too large, hanging loosely on his body. He gave a little laugh. “Trust me, I don’t get it either.”

“This place is full of dead men,” Wolgast said. “Something… I don’t know. There was an explosion.” He couldn’t explain himself.

“We know,” Doyle said, nodding. “It’s time for us to go.”

They stepped from the room into the hall. Wolgast guessed they were somewhere near the rear of the Chalet. It was quiet, though they could hear scattered pops of gunfire from outside. Quickly, without speaking, they made their way to the front entrance. Wolgast saw the dead soldiers sprawled there.

Lacey turned to him. “Take her,” she said. “Take Amy.”

He did. His arms were still weak from his ascent up the ladder, but he held her hard against him. She was moaning a little, trying to wake up, fighting the force that was keeping her in twilight. She needed to be in a hospital, but even if he could get her to one, what would he say? How would he explain any of this? The air near the doors was wintry cold, and in her thin gown Amy shivered against him.

“We need a vehicle,” Wolgast said.

Doyle ducked out the door. A minute later he returned, holding a set of keys. He’d gotten a gun from somewhere, too, a.45. He took Wolgast and Lacey to the window and pointed.

“The one all the way down, at the edge of the lot. The silver Lexus. See it?”

Wolgast did. The car was a hundred yards away, at least.

“Nice ride like that,” Doyle said, “you’d think the driver wouldn’t just leave the keys under the visor.” Doyle pressed them into Wolgast’s hand. “Hold on to these. They’re yours. Just in case.”

It took Wolgast a moment. Then he understood. The car was for him, for him and Amy. “Phil-”

Doyle held up his hands. “That’s how it has to be.”

Wolgast looked at Lacey, who nodded. Then she stepped toward him. She kissed Amy, touching her hair, and then she kissed him, too, once, on the cheek. A deep calm and a feeling of certainty seemed to radiate through his entire body from the place where she had kissed him. He’d never felt anything like it.

They stepped from the door, Doyle leading them. Together they moved quickly under the cover of the building. Wolgast could barely keep up. He heard more gunfire from somewhere, but it didn’t seem aimed at them. The shots seemed to be going up and away, into the trees, at the rooftops; random shots, like some kind of sinister celebration. Each time it happened he’d hear a scream, a moment of silence, and then the shooting would start up again.