The Passage: A Novel
Page 46
Peter scrambled to his feet, his finger finding the trigger. He heard a voice, his voice, calling his brother’s name, and the sound of Alicia firing. Three virals were on the ceiling now, launching from strut to strut. Peter detected, at the periphery of his vision, Alicia shoving Caleb up and over the counter of a restaurant on the far side of the atrium. Peter fired at last, fired again. But the virals were too fast; always the spot where he aimed was empty. It seemed to Peter as if they were playing a kind of game, trying to trick them into expending their ammunition. Since when do they do that? he thought, and wondered when he’d heard these words before.
As the first one let go, Peter saw, in his mind’s eye, the fatal dimension of its arc. Alicia was standing with her back to the counter now. The viral descended straight for her, arms outstretched, legs bent to absorb the impact, a being of teeth and claws and smoothly muscled power. In the instant before it landed, Alicia stepped forward, positioning herself directly under it, holding the rifle away from her body, like a blade.
She fired.
A mist of red, a confusion of bodies tumbling, the rifle clattering away. In the time it took Peter to realize that Alicia was not dead, she was on her feet again. The viral lay where he’d come to rest, the back of his head cratered with blood. She’d shot it through the mouth. Above them, the other two had come to an abrupt halt, stiffening, teeth flashing, their heads swiveling toward Alicia as if pulled by a single string.
“Get out of here!” she called, and vaulted over the counter. “Just run!”
He did. He ran.
He was deep inside the mall now. There seemed to be no way out. All the exits were barricaded, blocked by mountains of debris: furniture, shopping carts, dumpsters full of trash.
And Theo, his brother, was gone.
His only option was to hide. He tore down a hall of shuttered storefronts, yanking upward at their grates, but none would open; all were locked tight. Through the fog of his panic, a single question emerged: Why wasn’t he dead yet? He had fled from the atrium not expecting to make it more than ten steps. A flash of pain and it would all be over. At least a full minute had passed before he’d realized the virals weren’t pursuing him.
Because they were busy, he thought. He had to clutch one of the grates just to keep standing. He dug his fingers between the slats and pressed his forehead against the metal, fighting for breath. His friends were dead. That was the only explanation. Theo was dead, Caleb was dead, Alicia was dead. And when the virals were done, when they had drunk their fill, they’d be coming for him.
Hunting him.
He ran. Down one hall and into another, tearing past shuttered storefront after shuttered storefront. He wasn’t even bothering with the grates now; his mind was seized with one thought: to get outside, onto open ground. Daylight ahead, and a feeling of openness: he turned a corner and emerged, skidding on the tiles, into a wide, domelike space. A second atrium. The area was clear of debris. Sunshine descended in smoky shafts from a ring of windows, high above.
In the center of the room, standing motionless, was a herd of tiny horses.
They were grouped in a tight circle beneath some kind of freestanding shelter. Peter froze, expecting them to scatter. How had a herd of horses gotten into the mall? He stepped cautiously forward. Now it was obvious: the horses weren’t real. A carousel. Peter had seen a picture of one, in a book in the Sanctuary. The base would turn and music would play, and children would ride the horses around and around. He stepped onto the decking; a heavy layer of dust encased them, dulling their features. He squared his shoulders to one of the animals and brushed the grime away, revealing the bright colors beneath, the precisely painted-on details: the lashes of its eyes, the grooves of its teeth, the long slope of its nose and the flaring nostrils.
He felt it then, a sudden awareness at his extremities, like a touch of cold metal. He startled, lifting his face.
Standing before him was a girl.
A Walker.
He couldn’t have said how old she was. Thirteen? Sixteen? Her hair was long and dark, and thick with mats; she was wearing a pair of threadbare gaps cut off at the ankles and a T-shirt stiff with dirt, all of it too large on her boyish frame. Her pants were cinched to her waist with a length of electric cord; on her feet she wore a pair of sandals with plastic daisies poking between the toes.
Before Peter could speak, she raised a finger to her lips: Don’t speak. She moved briskly toward the center of the platform and turned to wave him on, to tell him to come with her.
He heard them then. A skittering in the hall, the rattle of metal grates on the shuttered storefronts.
The virals were coming. Searching. Hunting.
The girl’s eyes were very wide. Hurry, her eyes said. She took his hand and pulled him to the center of the platform. There she dropped to her knees and dug at a metal ring in the floor. A trapdoor, flush with the wooden decking. She climbed inside so that only her face was showing.
Quickly, quickly.
Peter followed her down the hole and sealed the trapdoor above him. They were under the carousel now, in some kind of crawl space. Angled blades of light, spangled with dust motes, fell through the slats of the decking over their heads, revealing a dark bulk of machinery and, on the floor beside it, a rumpled bedroll. Plastic bottles of water and tins of food stacked in rows, their paper labels long since worn away. Did she live here?
The decking shuddered. The girl had dropped to her knees. A shadow moved across them. She was showing him what to do.
Lie down. Be still.
He did as she asked. Then she climbed on top of him, onto his back. He could feel the heat of her body, the warmth of her breath on his neck. She was covering his body with her own. The virals were all over the carousel now. He could feel their minds searching, probing, hear the soft clicking in their throats. How long before they discovered the trapdoor?
Don’t move. Don’t breathe.
He closed his eyes tightly, willing himself into absolute stillness, waiting for the sound of the door being ripped off its hinges. The rifle was on the floor beside him. He might get off a shot or two, but that would be all.
Seconds passed. More shudders above, the sharp, excited breathing of virals with human scent in their nostrils. Tasting the blood in the air. But something was wrong; he sensed their uncertainty. The girl was pressing down upon him. Screening him, protecting him. Silence from above; had the virals gone? A minute moved by, and then another. His sense of expectation shifted from the virals to what the girl would do next. At last she climbed off him. He rose to his knees. Their faces were just inches apart. The soft curve of her cheek was like a child’s, but her eyes were not, not at all. He could smell her breath; there was something sweet to it, like honey.
“How did you—”
She shook her head sharply to silence him, pointing to the ceiling, then pressed her fingers to her lips again.
They’re gone. But they’ll be back.
She rose to her feet and opened the trapdoor. A quick turn of the head to show him her meaning.
Follow me. Do it now.
They emerged onto the decking of the carousel. The room was empty, but he could feel the virals’ departed presence, the air swirling in unseen eddies around the places they had stood. Moving quickly, the girl led him to a door across the atrium. It was propped open, held in place with a wedge of concrete. They stepped inside and she let the door close behind them, sealing them inside; he heard the click of a lock.
Blackness.
A new panic gripped him, a feeling of complete disorientation. But then he felt her taking his hand. Her grip was tight, meant to reassure; she pulled him farther in.
I have you. It’s all right.
He tried to count his steps, but it was useless. He could feel in her grip that she wanted him to go faster, that his uncertainty was holding them back. He stumbled on something in his path and the rifle fell away, lost in the darkness.
“Wait—”
He turned. The girl was still standing in the hallway, just outside the stairwell door. Their eyes met briefly, hauntingly. Before another second passed, the girl stepped forward and, rising on her toes, pressed her closed mouth—a bird pecking water—against his face.
Just that: she kissed him on the cheek.
Peter was too stunned to speak. The girl backed away, into the dark hall. Go now, her eyes said.
Then she closed the door.
“Hey!” He heard the click of the lock. He gripped the handle, but it was immovable. He pounded on the sealed metal. “Hey! Don’t leave me!”
But the girl was gone, a departed spirit. He saw the sign again: ROOF ACCESS. That’s where she wanted him to go.
He began to climb. The air was roasting, nearly asphyxiating with the gas of pigeon. Long streaks of guano smeared the walls, encrusting the stairs and banister like layers of paint. The birds seemed to take scant notice of him, fluttering here and there as he made his ascent, as if his presence were no more than a curiosity. Three flights, four; he was panting with exertion, the taste in his mouth and nose was excruciating in its foulness, his eyes stung as if splashed by acid.
At last he reached the top. A final door and, on the wall above it, far out of reach, a tiny window, its edges scalloped by broken glass, yellowed by soot and time.
The door was padlocked.
A dead end. After everything, the girl had led him to a dead end. A furious clang shook the stairwell as the first viral hit the door below him. Birds lifted off and scattered all around him, swirling the air with feathers.
That was when he saw it, so encrusted with guano it had blended invisibly into the wall around it. He used his elbow to smash the glass, then yanked the axe free. A second crash from below. One more push and the virals would be through the door and streaming up the stairs.
Peter lifted the axe over his head and gave it a hard swing, aiming for the padlock. The blade glanced off, but he could tell he’d done some damage. He took a deep breath, calculating the distance, and gave the axe another swing, putting everything he had behind it. A clean hit: the lock split and shattered. He leaned into the door with all his might and with a groan of age and rust it fell open, spilling him into sunlight.
He was on the roof at the north side of the mall, facing the mountains. He hobbled quickly to the edge.
The drop was fifteen meters at least. He’d break his leg or worse.
Lying immobile on the hardpan, waiting for the virals to take him. It wasn’t how he wanted things to end. He was bleeding freely from his elbow; a trail of his blood had followed him from the open door. Though he had no memory of pain, he must have cut it when he’d smashed the panel. But a little blood would hardly make a difference now. At least he had the axe.
He was turning to face the door, preparing to swing, when a cry reached him from below.
“Jump!”
Alicia and Caleb, coming around the corner of the building on horseback, riding fast. Alicia was waving to him, her body arched forward from the stirrups. “Jump!”
He thought of Theo, lifted up. He thought of his father, standing at the edge of the sea, and of the sea and stars. He thought of the girl, covering his body with her own, the warmth and sweetness of her breath on his neck and on his cheek where she had kissed him.
His friends were calling and waving from below, the virals were coming up the stairs, the axe was in his hand.
Not now, he thought, not yet, and he closed his eyes and jumped.
TWENTY-THREE
It was summer again and she was alone. Alone with no one but the voices she heard, everywhere and all around.
She remembered people. She remembered the Man. She remembered the other man and his wife and the boy and then the woman. She remembered some more than others. She remembered no one at all. She remembered one day thinking: I am alone. There is no I but I. She lived in the dark. She taught herself to walk in the light, though it was not easy. For a time it pained her, made her sick.
She walked and walked. She followed the mountains. The Man had told her to follow the mountains, to run and keep on running, but then one day the mountains ended; the mountains were no more. She never could find them again, those same ones. Some days she went nowhere at all. Some days were years. She lived here and there, with these and those, with the man and his wife and the boy and then the woman and finally with no one at all. Some of the people were kind to her, before they died. Others were not so. She was different, they said. She was not like them, not of them. She was apart and alone and there were no others like her in all the world. The people sent her away or they did not, but in the end they always died.
She dreamed. She dreamed of voices, and the Man. For some time of months or years she could hear the Man in the howl of the wind and the scrape of the stars if she listened just so, and it gave her a longing in her heart for his care. But over time’s passage his voice became all mixed in her mind with the voices of the others, the dreaming ones, both there and not there, as the dark was a thing but not a thing, a presence and an absence joined. The world was a world of dreaming souls who could not die. She thought: there is the ground below my feet, there is the sky over my head, there are the empty buildings and the wind and rain and stars and everywhere the voices, the voices and the question.
Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?
She was not afraid of them, as the Man had been, and the others also, the man and his wife and the boy and then the woman. She had tried to lead the dreaming ones away from the Man and she had, she had done it. They followed her with their question, dragging it like a chain, like the one she’d read about in the story of the ghost, Jacob Marley. For a time she thought they might be ghosts, but they were not so. She had no name for them. She had no name for herself, for the thing she was. One night she awoke and she beheld them all around, their needful eyes, glowing like embers in the dark. She remembered the place because it was a barn and cold and raining out. Their faces crowded around her, their dreaming faces, so sad and lost, like the lonely world she walked in. They needed her to tell them, to answer the question. She could smell their breath on her, the breath of night, and of the question, a current in the blood. Who am I? they asked her.
who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I
She ran from that place then. She ran and kept on running.
The seasons changed. They rolled round and round, and round some more. It was cold and then it was not. The nights were long and then they were not. She carried on her back a pack of things she needed, as well as the things she wanted to have because they were a comfort. They helped her to remember, to hold the time of years in her mind, both the good and the bad. Such things as: the story of the ghost, Jacob Marley. The locket of the woman, which she had taken from around her neck after the woman had died in the manner of all people dying, with great commotion. A bone from the field of bones and a stone from the beach where she had seen the ship. From time to time she ate. Some of the things in the cans she found were not good anymore. She would open a can with the tool in her pack and a terrible smell would rise from within it like
the insides of the buildings where the dead people lay in rows or not in rows, and she knew she couldn’t eat that one but would have to eat another. For a time there was the ocean beside her, huge and gray, and a beach of smooth, wave-rubbed stones, and tall pines stretching their long arms above the surface of the water. At night she watched the stars turning, she watched the moon soaring and dipping over the sea. It was the same moon as over all the world and she was happy in that place for a time. It was in that place she saw the ship. Hello! she cried, for she had seen no one in ever and ever, and was joyful at the very sight of it. Hello, ship! Hello, you big boat, hello! But the ship said no words back to her. It went away for some time of days, past the edge of the sea, and then returned, moving on the tides of the moon at night. Like a dream of a boat with no one to dream it but her. She followed it over the days and nights to the place of the rocks and the broken bridge the color of blood, where its great bow came to rest, among the others large and small, and by then she knew the ship like its fellows upon the rocks was empty with no people on it; and the sea was black with a foul smell like that which came from the cans that were no good. And she moved on from that place also.
Oh, she could feel them, feel them all. She could stretch out her hands and stroke the darkness and feel them in it, everywhere. Their sorrowful forgetting. Their great and terrible brokenheartedness. Their endless needful questioning. It moved her to a sorrow that was a kind of love. Like the love she’d felt for the Man, who in his care for her had told her to run and keep on running.
The Man. She remembered the fires and the light like an exploding sun in her eyes. She remembered his sadness and the feeling of the Man. But she could not hear him anymore. The Man, she thought, was gone.
There were others she did hear, in the dark. And she knew who these were, too.