Justin Cronin - The Passage

“She always liked to have pretty feet,” the man said quietly. “I was doing them for her when you came in.”

They retreated from the room. Wolgast didn’t know what to say. The situation was obvious; the man and his wife weren’t going anywhere. The two of them stepped back into the bright sunlight of the parking area.

“She has MS,” the man explained. “I was hoping to keep her at home as long as I could. That’s what we agreed, when she started to get bad last winter. They’re supposed to send a nurse, but we haven’t seen one in a while now.” He shifted his feet on the gravel and wetly cleared his throat. “My guess is, nobody’s making any more house calls.”

Wolgast told him his name. The man was Carl; his wife was Martha. They had two grown sons, one in California, the other in Florida. Carl had been an electrician at Oregon State down in Corvallis, until they’d bought the store and retired up here.

“What can I do?” Wolgast asked.

They’d shaken hands before but did so again. “Just keep yourself alive,” Carl said.

Wolgast was driving back to the camp when, suddenly, he thought of Lila. They were memories of another time, another life. A life that was over now-over for him, over for everyone. Thinking about Lila, as he had: he was saying goodbye.

It was August, the days long and dry, when the fires came.

Wolgast smelled smoke one afternoon as he was working in the yard; by morning the air was thickened with an acrid haze. He climbed to the roof to look but saw only the trees and the lake, the mountains rolling away. He had no way of knowing how close the fires were. The wind could blow the smoke, he knew, for hundreds of miles.

He hadn’t been off the mountain in over two months, not since his trip down to Milton ’s. They’d found a routine: Wolgast slept each day till nearly noon, worked outside till dusk; then, after dinner and a swim, the two of them stayed up half the night, reading or playing board games, like passengers on a long sea voyage. He’d found a box of games stored in one of the cabins: Monopoly, Parcheesi, checkers. For a while he let Amy win, but then found he didn’t need to; she was a shrewd player, especially at Monopoly, buying up property after property and swiftly calculating the rents they’d bring in and counting her money with glee. Boardwalk, Park Place, Marvin Gardens. What did the names of these places mean to her? One night he’d settled in to read to her- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea , which they’d read before but she wanted to hear again-when she took the book from his hand and, in the flickering candlelight, started to read aloud to him. She didn’t so much as pause over the book’s difficult words, its contorted, old-fashioned syntax. When did you learn to do that? he asked her, utterly incredulous, as she paused to turn the page. Well, she explained, we read it before. I guess I just remembered.

The world off the mountain had become a memory, remoter by the day. He’d never managed to get the generator working-he’d hoped to use the shortwave-and had long since stopped trying. If what was happening was what he thought was happening, he reasoned, they were better off not knowing. What could he have done with the information? Where else could they go?

But now the woods were burning, driving a wall of choking smoke from the west. By the afternoon of the next day it was clear they had to leave; the fire was headed their way. If it jumped the river, there’d be nothing else to stop it. Wolgast loaded the Toyota and placed Amy, wrapped in a blanket, in the passenger seat. He had a soaked cloth for each of them, to hold over their mouths, their stinging eyes.

They didn’t get two miles before they saw the flames. The road was blocked with smoke, the air unbreathable, a toxic wall. A hard wind was blowing, driving the fire up the mountain toward them. They would have to turn back.

He didn’t know how long they would have until the fires arrived. He had no way to wet the roof of the lodge-they would simply have to wait it out. The sealed windows at least offered some protection from the smoke, but by nightfall they were both coughing and sputtering.

In one of the outbuildings was an old aluminum canoe. Wolgast dragged it to the shore, then fetched Amy from upstairs. He paddled to the middle of the lake while he watched the fires burning up the mountain toward the camp, a sight of furious beauty, as if the gates of hell had opened. Amy lay against him in the bottom of the canoe; if she was afraid, she showed no sign. There was nothing else to do. All the energy of the day left him and, despite himself, he fell asleep.

When he awoke in the morning, the camp was still standing. The fires hadn’t jumped the river after all. The wind had shifted sometime in the night, pushing the flames to the south. The air was still heavy with smoke, but he could tell the danger had passed. Later that afternoon, they heard a great boom of thunder, like a huge sheet of tin shaking over their heads, and rain poured down, all through the night. He couldn’t believe their luck.

In the morning he decided to use the last of his gasoline to drive down the mountain to check on Carl and Martha. He would bring Amy this time-after the fires, he intended never to let her out of his sight again. He waited until dusk and set out.

The fires had come close. Less than a mile away from the camp’s entrance the forest had been reduced to smoking ruins, the ground scorched and denuded, like the aftermath of a terrible battle. From the roadway Wolgast could see the bodies of animals, not just small creatures like possums and raccoons but deer and antelope and even a bear, folded onto himself at the base of a blackened tree trunk as he’d searched the ground for a pocket of breathable air and perished.

The store was still standing, undisturbed. No lights were on, but of course the power would be out. Wolgast told Amy to wait in the car, retrieved a flashlight, and stepped onto the porch. The door was locked. He knocked, loudly, again and again, calling Carl’s name, but received no reply. Finally he used the flashlight to break the window.

Carl and Martha were dead. They were spooned together in Martha’s hospital bed, Carl curled against her back with one arm draped over her shoulder, as if they were napping. It could have been the smoke, but the air in the room told Wolgast they’d been dead much longer than that. On the nightstand was a half-empty bottle of Scotch and, beside it, a folded newspaper, like the first one he’d seen, disquietingly thin, with a huge, shouting headline he averted his eyes from, choosing instead to put it in his pocket to read later. He stood a moment at the foot of the bed where the bodies lay. Then he closed up the room and, for the first time, he wept.

Carl’s van was still parked behind the store. Wolgast cut a length of garden hose and drew the Toyota around to the rear, to siphon the contents of the van’s tank into his car. He didn’t know where they might need to go, but the fire season wasn’t over. It had been a mistake, nearly fatal, to let himself be caught off guard. He’d found an empty gas can in a shed behind the house, and when the Toyota ’s tank was topped off, he filled this as well. Then Amy helped him go through the store to gather supplies. He took all the food and batteries and propane he thought he could fit, put it all in boxes and carried it to the car. Then he returned to the room where the bodies lay and, carefully, holding his breath, removed Carl’s.38 from the holster on his waist.

In the early hours of the morning, when Amy was finally asleep, Wolgast took the paper from the pocket of his jacket. Just a single sheet this time, dated July 10-almost a month ago. Who knew where Carl had gotten it. Probably he’d driven down into Whiteriver, and then, when he returned, and because of what he’d read and seen, put an end to things. The house was full of medicine; it would have been easy enough for him to accomplish this task. Wolgast had put the paper in his pocket out of fear, but also a fatalistic certainty about what he would find written there. Only the details would be new to him.