The Passage

by Justin Cronin

  “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.

  SEVEN

  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.

  Wolgast: he remembered the name. It was funny how he’d found himself trusting the man. Carter hadn’t trusted anyone in a long, long time. But there was something about Wolgast that made him think the man knew the place he was in.

  Carter’s wrists and feet were shackled, and he made his way gingerly down the stairs, minding his balanc
e, one soldier ahead of him, one behind. Neither had spoken a word to him or even to each other that Carter could tell. He was wearing a parka over his jumpsuit, but it was unzipped for the chains, and the wind cut through him easily. They led him across the field toward a brightly lit hangar where a van was idling. The door slid open as they approached.

  The first soldier poked him with his rifle. “In you go.”

  Carter did as he said, then heard a small motor whir and the door closed behind him. At least the seats were comfortable, not like the hard bench on the plane. The only light was from a little bulb in the ceiling. He heard two thumps on the door and the van pulled away.

  He’d dozed on the plane and wasn’t tired enough to sleep more. With no windows and no way to tell the time, he had no sense of distance or direction. But he’d sat still for whole months of his life; a few hours more wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. He let his mind go blank for a while. Time passed, and then he felt the van slowing. From the other side of the wall that sealed him from the driver’s compartment came the muffled sound of voices, but Carter didn’t know what it was all about. The van lurched forward and stopped again.

  The door slid open to show two soldiers stamping their feet in the cold, white boys wearing parkas over their fatigues. Behind the soldiers, the brightly lit oasis of a McDonald’s throbbed in the gloom. Carter heard the rush of traffic and figured they were by a highway somewhere. Though it was still dark, something about the sky felt like morning. His legs and arms were stiff from sitting.

  “Here,” one of the guards said and tossed him a bag. He noticed then that the other guard was biting into the last of a sandwich. “Breakfast.”

  Carter opened the bag, which contained an Egg McMuffin and a disk of hash browns wrapped in paper and a plastic cup of juice. His throat was bone dry from the cold, and he wished there was more of the juice, or even just water to drink. He drained it quickly. It was so sugary it made his teeth tingle.

  “Thank you.”

  The soldier yawned into his hand. Carter wondered why they were being so nice. They didn’t seem at all like Pincher and the rest of them. They were wearing sidearms but didn’t act like this was anything.

  “We’ve got a couple of hours yet,” the soldier said as Carter finished eating. “You need to make a pit stop?”

  Carter hadn’t peed since the plane, but he was so dried out he didn’t figure there was much in him to go with. He’d always been like that, could hold it for hours and hours. But he thought about the McDonald’s, the people inside, the smell of food and the bright lights, and knew he wanted to see it.

  “I reckon so.”

  The soldier climbed into the van, his heavy boots clanging on the metal floor. Crouching in the tiny space, he removed a shiny key from a pouch on his belt and unlocked the shackles. Anthony could see his face up close. He had red hair and wasn’t no more than twenty, give or take.

  “No funny stuff, understand?” he told Anthony. “We’re not really supposed to do this.”

  “No sir.”

  “Here, zip up your coat. It’s fucking freezing out here.”

  They led him across the parking lot, one on either side but not touching him. Carter couldn’t remember when he’d gone anywhere without somebody else’s hand on him someplace. Most of the cars in the lot had Colorado plates. The air smelled clean, like Pine-Sol, and he felt the presence of mountains around him, pressing down. There was snow on the ground, too, piled high against the edges of the lot and crusted with ice. He’d only seen snow once or twice in his life.

  The soldiers knocked on the bathroom door, and when nobody answered, they let Carter inside. One came in while the other watched the door. There were two urinals, and Carter took one. The soldier who was with him took the other.

  “Hands where I can see ’em,” the soldier said, and laughed. “Just kidding.”

  Carter finished up and stepped to the sink to wash. The McDonald’s he remembered from Houston were pretty dirty, especially the restrooms. When he was living on the street, he used to use one up in Montrose to wash up once in a while, until the manager caught on and chased him away. But this one was nice and clean, with flowery-smelling soap and a little potted plant sitting beside the sink. He washed his hands, taking his time, letting the warm water flow over his skin.

  “They got plants in McDonald’s now?” he asked the soldier.

  The soldier gave him a puzzled look, then burst into laughter. “How long you been away?”

  Carter didn’t know what was so funny. “Most my life,” he said.

  When they exited the bathroom, the first soldier was standing in line, so the three of them waited together. Neither had so much as laid a hand on him. Carter took a slow look around the room: a couple of men sitting alone, a family or two, a woman with a teenage boy who was playing a handheld video game. Everyone was white.

  They got to the counter and the soldier ordered coffee.

  “You need anything else?” he asked Carter.

  Carter thought a moment. “They got iced tea here?”

  “You got iced tea?” the soldier asked the girl behind the counter.

  She shrugged. She was loudly chewing gum. “Hot tea.”

  The soldier looked at Carter, who shook his head.

  “Just the coffee.”

  The soldiers were Paulson and Davis. They introduced themselves when they got back to the van. One was from Connecticut, the other one from New Mexico, though Carter got them confused, and he didn’t figure it made much difference, since he’d never been to either place. Davis was the one with the red hair. For the rest of the drive they left open the little window that connected the two compartments in the van; they left the shackles off, too. They were in Colorado, like he’d guessed, but whenever they came to a road sign the soldiers told him to cover his eyes, laughing like this was a big joke.

  After a time they got off the interstate and took a rural highway that wound tight against the mountains. Sitting on the front bench of the passenger compartment, Carter could view a bit of the passing world through the windshield. Snow was piled steeply against the roadsides. There were no towns at all that Carter could see; only once in a while did a car approach them from the other direction, a blaze of light followed by the splash of melted snow as it passed. He’d never been anyplace like this, that had so few people in it. The clock on the dash said it was a little after six A.M.

  “Cold up here,” Carter said.

  Paulson was driving; the other one, Davis, was reading a comic book.

  “You got that right,” said Paulson. “Colder’n Beth Pope’s back brace.”

  “Who Beth Pope?”

  Paulson shrugged, peering over the wheel. “Girl I knew in high school. She had, what’s that thing, scoliosis.”

  Carter didn’t know what that was, either. But Paulson and Davis thought it was funny enough. If the job Wolgast had for him meant working with these two, he’d be glad to do it.

  “That Aquaman?” Carter asked Davis.

  Davis passed him a couple of comic books from the pile, a League of Vengeance and an X-Men. It was too dark to read the words, but Carter liked looking at the pictures, which told the story anyway. That Wolverine was a badass; Carter had always liked him, though he always felt sorry for him, too. It couldn’t be no fun having all that metal in your bones, and somebody he cared about was always dying or getting killed.

  After another hour or so Paulson pulled the van over. “Sorry, dude,” he told Carter. “We’ve got to lock you up again.”

  “’Sall right,” Carter said, and nodded. “I appreciate the time.”

  Davis climbed out of the passenger seat and came around back. The door opened to a blast of cold air. Davis redid the shackles and pocketed the key.

  “Comfortable?”

  Carter nodded. “How much longer we got to go?”

  “Not much,” he said.

  They drove on. Carter could tell they were climbing now. He couldn’t see the sky but
guessed it would be light soon. As they slowed to cross a long bridge, wind buffeted the van.

  They had reached the other side when Paulson met his eyes through the rearview. “You know, you don’t seem like the others,” he said. “What you do, anyway? You don’t mind my asking.”

  “Who the others?”

  “You know. Other guys like you. Cons.” He swiveled his head to Davis. “Remember that guy, Babcock?” He shook his head and laughed. “Christ on a stick, what a whack job.” He looked at Carter again. “He wasn’t like you, that guy. I can tell you’re different.”

  “I ain’t crazy,” Carter said. “Judge said I wasn’t.”

  “But you did somebody, right? Else you wouldn’t be here now.”

  Carter wondered if talking like this was something he had to do, if it was part of the deal. “They said I killed a lady. But I didn’t mean to.”

  “Who was she? Wife, girlfriend, something like that?” Paulson was still grinning at him in the rearview, his eyes flashing with interest.

  “No.” Carter swallowed. “I cut the lady’s lawn.”

  Paulson laughed and glanced at Davis again. “Listen to this. He cut the lady’s lawn.” He looked at Carter through the mirror again. “Little guy like you, how’d you do it?”

  Carter didn’t know what to say. He had a bad feeling now, like maybe they’d been nice to him just to mess with his head.

  “Come on, Anthony. We got you a McMuffin, right? Took you to the bathroom? You can tell us.”

  “For fucksakes,” Davis said to Paulson. “Just shut up. We’re almost there, what’s the point?”

  “The point is,” Paulson said, and drew in a breath, “I want to know what this guy did. They all did something. Come on, Anthony, what’s your story? You rape her before you did her? Was that it?”