The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,138

spasm shook him, but the expression on his face was pleasurable, almost sexual. In the moonlight, his skin seemed almost to glow. He arched his back like a cat, his eyes heavy-lidded with pleasure.

“Whoa, that’s good,” Bob said. “That’s really … something.”

“I’m sorry,” Wolgast said.

“Hey, wait!” With a start, Bob opened his eyes; he held out his hands. “Hang on a second here!”

“I’m sorry, Bob,” Wolgast repeated, and then he squeezed the trigger.

• • •

The winter ended in rain. For days and days the rain poured down, filling the woods, swelling the river and lake, washing away what remained of the road.

He’d burned the body just as Bob had instructed, dousing it with gasoline and, when the flames died out, soaking the ashes with laundry bleach and burying it all beneath a mound of rocks and earth. The next morning he searched the snowmobile. The containers strapped to the frame turned out to be gas cans, all empty, but in a leather pouch slung from the handlebars he found Bob’s wallet. A driver’s license with Bob’s picture and a Spokane address, the usual credit cards, a few dollars in cash, a library card. There was also a photograph, shot in a studio: Bob in a holiday sweater, posed with a pretty blond woman who was obviously pregnant and two children, a little girl in tights and a green velvet dress and an infant in pajamas. All of them were smiling fiercely, even the baby. On the back of the photograph was written, in a feminine hand, “Timothy’s first Christmas.” Why had Bob said he’d never had children? Had he been forced to watch them die, an experience so painful that his mind had simply erased them from his memory? Wolgast buried the wallet on the hillside, marking the spot with a cross he fashioned from a pair of sticks bound together with twine. It didn’t seem like much, but it was all he could think to do.

Wolgast waited for others to come; he assumed Bob was just the first. He left the lodge only to perform the most necessary chores, and only in the daytime; he kept the Springfield with him at all times and left Carl’s .38, loaded, in the glove compartment of the Toyota. Every few days he turned the engine over and let it run, to keep the battery charged. Bob had said something about California. Was it still safe there? Was any place safe? He wanted to ask Amy: Do you hear them coming? Do they know where we are? He had no map to show her where California was. Instead he took her up to the roof of the lodge one evening, just after sunset. See that ridge? he said, pointing to the south. Follow my hand, Amy. The Cascades. If anything happens to me, he said, follow that ridge. Run and keep on running.

But the months passed, and still they were alone. The rains ended, and Wolgast stepped from the lodge one morning to the taste and smell of sunshine and the feeling that something had changed. Birdsong swelled the trees; he looked toward the lake and saw open water where before had been a solid disk of ice. A sweet green haze dressed the air, and at the base of the lodge, a line of crocuses was pushing from the dirt. The world could be blowing itself apart, yet here was the gift of spring, spring in the mountains. From every direction came the sounds and smells of life. Wolgast didn’t even know what month it was. Was it April or May? But he had no calendar, and the battery in his watch, unworn since autumn, had long since died.

That night, sitting in his chair by the door with the Springfield in his hand, he dreamed of Lila. Part of him knew this was a dream about sex, about making love, and yet it did not seem so. Lila was pregnant, and the two of them were playing Monopoly. The dream had no particular setting—the area beyond the place where the two of them sat was veiled in darkness, like the hidden regions of a stage. Wolgast was gripped by the irrational fear that what they were doing would hurt the baby. “We have to stop,” he told her urgently. “This is dangerous.” But she seemed not to hear him. He rolled the dice and moved his piece to find he had landed on the square with the image of the policeman blowing