The Passage (121 page)

One morning she was working in the garden when she felt his absence; she went into the house, then into the woods, calling his name. It was high summer, the air fresh and bright, falling over the leaves like drizzled sunlight. He had chosen a place where the trees were thin and the sky was all above; from here he could see the valley and, beyond it, like a great becalmed sea, the wavelike mountains receding to a blue horizon. He was leaning on a shovel, panting for breath. He was an old man now, gray and frail, and yet here he was, digging a hole in the earth. What is that hole, she asked him, and he told her, It’s for me. So that when I’m gone you won’t have to dig it yourself. It wouldn’t do in summer to have to wait to dig a hole. All that day and into the evening he dug, moving small shovels of earth, pausing after each for breath. She watched from the edge of the clearing, for he would have no help from her. And when he was done, the hole having reached a satisfactory dimension, he returned to the house where they had lived so many years together, to the bed he had built with his own hands from heavy joined timbers and lengths of fibrous rope that sagged with the shape of the two of them, and in the morning was dead.

How long ago? Lacey paused in her telling, Amy’s and the young man’s eyes—Peter’s eyes—watching her from across the room. How strange, after so much time, to tell these stories: of Jonas, and that terrible night, and all that had happened in this place. She had stoked the fire and set a pot in the cradle to warm. The air of the house, two low-ceilinged rooms separated by a curtain, was warm and fragrant, lit by the glow of the fire.

“Fifty-four years,” she said, answering the question she herself had posed. She said it again, to herself. Fifty-four years since Jonas had left her alone. She stirred the pot, which contained a stew of this and that, the meat of a fat possum from her trapline and hearty vegetables, the durable tubers, which she had put away for winter. Sitting in jars upon the shelves were the seeds she used each year, the descendents of the ones Jonas had brought in the packets. Zucchini and tomatoes, potatoes and squash, onions and turnips and lettuce. Her needs were small, the cold did not affect her, and she sometimes barely ate for days or even weeks; but Peter would be hungry. He was just as she’d imagined, young and strong, with a determined face, though she’d thought, somehow, that he would be taller.

She became aware that he was frowning at her.

“You’ve been by yourself … for fifty years?”

She shrugged. “It was really not so long.”

“And
you
set the beacon.”

The beacon; she had almost forgotten. But of course he would ask about this. “Oh, it was the doctor who did that.” It made Lacey miss him keenly, to speak this way. She broke her gaze away and turned from her stirring, wiping her hands on a cloth and taking up bowls from the table. “Such things. He was always tinkering. But there will be time for more talk. Now, we eat.”

She served them the stew. She was glad to see Peter eating heartily, though Amy, she could tell, was just pretending. Lacey herself possessed no appetite at all. Whenever it was time for her to eat, Lacey felt not hunger but a mild curiosity, her mind remarking to her in an offhand way, as if to comment on nothing more important than the weather or the time of day,
It would be good to eat now
.

She sat and watched him with a feeling of gratitude. Outside, the dark night pressed down upon the mountain. She did not know if she would ever see another; soon she would be free.

When they were done, she rose from the table and went to the bedroom. The small space was sparsely furnished, just the bed the doctor had made and a dresser where she kept the few things she needed. The boxes were under the bed. Peter stood in the curtained doorway, observing silently, as she knelt and drew them out onto the floor. A pair of army lockers; at one time they had contained guns. Amy was behind him now, watching with curious eyes.

“Help me carry these to the kitchen,” she said.

How many years she had imagined this moment! They placed them on the floor by the table. Lacey knelt once more and undid the hasps of the first locker, the one she’d kept for Amy. Inside was Amy’s knapsack, which she’d worn to the convent. The Powerpuff Girls.

“This is yours,” she said, and placed it on the table.

For a moment, the girl simply stared at it. Then, with deliberate care, she drew back the zipper and withdrew the contents. A toothbrush. A tiny shirt, limp with age, with the word
SASSY
written on it in glittering flakes. A pair of threadbare jeans. And, at the bottom, a stuffed rabbit of tan velveteen, wearing a pale blue jacket. The fabric was crumbling away; one of his ears was gone, exposing a curl of wire.

“It was Sister Claire who bought the shirt for you,” Lacey said. “I do not think Sister Arnette approved of it.”

Amy had put the other objects aside on the table and was holding the rabbit in her hands, peering into its face.

“Your sisters,” Amy said. “But not … actual sisters.”

Lacey took a chair before her. “That is right, Amy. That is what I said to you.”

“We are sisters in the eyes of God.”

Amy dropped her gaze again. With her thumb, she stroked the fabric of the rabbit.

“He brought him to me. In the sick room. I remember his voice, telling me to wake up. But I couldn’t answer him.”

Lacey was aware of Peter’s eyes, intently watching.

“Who did, Amy?” she asked.

“Wolgast.” Her voice was distant, lost in the past. “He told me about Eva.”

“Eva?”

“She died. He would have given her his heart.” The girl met Lacey’s gaze again, squinting intently. “You were there, too. I remember now.”

“Yes. I was.”

“And another man.”

Lacey nodded. “Agent Doyle.”

Amy frowned sharply. “I didn’t like him. He thought I did, but I didn’t.” She closed her eyes, remembering. “We were in the car. We were in the car, but then we stopped.” She opened her eyes. “You were bleeding. Why were you bleeding?”

Lacey had almost forgotten; after everything else, it had come to seem so small, this part of the story. “To tell you the truth, I did not know myself! But I think that one of the soldiers must have shot me.”

“You got out of the car. Why did you do that?”

“To be here for you, Amy,” she answered. “So someone would be here when you came back.”

Another silence passed, the girl worrying the rabbit with her fingers like a talisman.

“They’re so sad. They have such terrible dreams. I hear them all the time.”

“What do you hear, Amy?”

“
Who am I, who am I, who am I?
They ask and ask, but I can’t tell them.”

Lacey cupped the girl’s chin. Her eyes were glistening with tears. “You will. When the time is right.”

“They’re dying, Lacey. They’re dying and can’t stop. Why can’t they stop, Lacey?”

“I think that they are waiting for you, to show them the way.”

They stayed that way a long moment. In the place where Lacey’s mind met Amy’s, she felt her sorrow and her loneliness, but even more: she felt her courage.

She turned to Peter then. He did not love Amy, as Wolgast had. She could see that there was another, someone he had left behind. But he was the one who had answered the beacon. Whoever heard it and brought Amy back—he would be the one to stand with her.

She bent to the second locker on the floor. Stacked inside were manila folders of yellowed paper—still, after so many years, exuding a faint odor of smoke. It was the doctor who had retrieved them, along with Amy’s backpack, as the fires had moved down through the underground levels of the Chalet.
Someone should know
, he had said.

She withdrew the first file and placed it on the table before him. The label read:

EX ORD 13292 TS1 EYES ONLY

VIA WOLGAST, BRADFORD J
.

INTAKE PROFILE CT3

SUBJ 1 BABCOCK, GILES J
.

“It is time for you to learn how this world was made,” said Sister Lacey. And then she opened it.

SIXTY-SIX

They rode through the fading day, a party of five, Alicia on point. The trail of the Many was a broad swath of destruction—the snow trampled, branches broken, the ground littered with debris. It seemed to grow denser and wider with every kilometer, as if more of the creatures were joining the pod, called out of the wilderness to take their place among their kind. Here and there they saw a stain of blood on the snow where a hapless animal, a deer or rabbit or squirrel, had met its swift demise. The tracks were less than twelve hours old; somewhere up ahead, in the shade of the trees and under the rocky ledges and perhaps, even, beneath the snow itself, they waited, dozing the day away, a great pod of virals, thousands strong.

By late afternoon, they were forced to make a decision: to follow the creatures’ trail, the shortest route up the mountain, but one that would take them right into the heart of the pod; or to turn north, find the river again, and make their approach from the west. Michael watched from atop his horse as Alicia and Greer conferred. Hollis and Sara were beside him, their rifles resting across their laps, their parkas zipped to their chins. The air was bitterly cold; in the immense stillness, every sound seemed magnified, the wind like a rush of static over the frozen land.

“We go north,” Alicia announced. “All eyes.”

There had been no discussion about who would come; the only surprise was Greer. As the four of them had been mounting up to leave, he had come forward on his horse and joined their number without a word of explanation, passing his command to Eustace. Michael wondered if this meant Greer would be in charge, but as soon as they were clear of the ridge, the major turned to Alicia from atop his horse and said, simply, “This is your show, Lieutenant. Are we clear, everyone?” They all said they were, and that was that.

They rode on. As night was falling, Michael heard, from up ahead, the bright notes of the river. They emerged from the woods onto its southern bank and turned east, using it to guide them through the thickening dark. They had closed up to a single line now, Alicia up front, Greer taking the rear. From time to time one of the horses would stumble or Alicia would pull up, signaling for them to hold and listening intently, scanning the dark shape of the trees. Then they’d press on again. No one had spoken for hours. There was no moon at all.

Then, as a sliver of light lifted from the hills, the valley opened around them. To the east they could discern the shape of the mountain, pressed against a starry sky, and up ahead, some kind of structure, a brooding black shape that, as they approached, revealed itself as a bridge, standing astride the ice-choked river on concrete piers. Alicia dismounted and knelt to the ground.

“Two sets of footprints,” she said, gesturing with her rifle. “Over the bridge, from the far side.”

They began to climb.

It was not much later that they found the horse. With a tight nod, Greer confirmed that it was his, the gelding Peter and Amy had taken. They all dismounted and stood around the dead animal. Its throat was ripped open in a bright splash, its body stiff and shriveled where it lay on its side in the snow. Somehow it had gotten across the river, probably fording it at a shallow spot; they could see the prints of its last, terrified gallop, coming from the west.

Sara knelt and touched the animal’s side.

“He’s still warm,” she said.

No one said anything. Dawn would come soon. To the east, the sky had begun to pale.

SIXTY-SEVEN

They were criminals.

By the time Peter put down the last file, rubbing his bleary eyes, the night was nearly done. Amy had long since fallen asleep, curled on the bed beneath a blanket; Lacey had moved a chair from the kitchen to sit beside her. From time to time, as he’d turned the pages, rising to put one file back in the box and remove the next, piecing the story together as best he could, he’d heard Amy muttering softly in her sleep behind the curtain.

For a while, after Amy had gone to bed, Lacey had sat with him at the table, explaining the things he couldn’t make sense of on his own. The files were thick, full of information that referred to a world he didn’t know, had never seen or lived in. But still, over the hours, with Lacey’s help, the story had emerged in his mind. There were photographs, too: grown men with puffy, lived-in faces, their eyes glazed and unfocused. Some were holding a board of writing to their chests, or wearing it like a necklace. Texas Department of Criminal Justice, one board read. Louisiana State Department of Corrections, said another. Kentucky and Florida and Wyoming and Delaware. Some of the boards had no words on them, only numbers; some of the men had no boards at all. They were black and white and brown, heavy or slight; somehow, in the looks of numb surrender on their faces, they were all the same. He read: