The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,148

some with animals in them, sheep and goats and horses and chickens in cages, even some dogs. The Watchers put us all in lines like they’d done before and took our names and gave us clean clothes and took us to the Sanctuary. The room they put us in was the one most everyone knows, where all the Littles sleep to this very day. I took a cot next to Terrence and asked him the question that was on my mind, which was, what is this place, Terrence? Your daddy must have told you if he built the train. And Terrence was very still for a moment and said, this is where we live now. The lights and walls will keep us safe. Safe from the jumps, safe from everything until the war is over. It’s like the story of Noah, and this here’s the ark. I asked him what ark and what are you talking about and will I ever see my mama and daddy again and he said, I don’t know, Ida. But I’ll look after you like I said. Sitting on the bed on the other side was a girl no older than me, who was just crying and crying, and Terrence went to her and said, quietly, what’s your name, and I’ll look after you too if you want, which made her stop. She was a beauty, that one, you could see it plain as day, even as dirty and worn down as all of us were. The sweetest little face and hair so light and wispy it was like a baby’s, the way they do. She nodded to what he said and answered, yes, would you please do that, and if it’s not much trouble can you look after my brother too. And wouldn’t you know that girl, Lucy Fisher, became my very best friend and was the one that Terrence married later on. Her brother was Rex, a little bit of a thing who was just as pretty as Lucy except in the manner of a boy, and I’m guessing you probably know that Fishers and Jaxons been mixed up together one way or the other ever since.

Nobody said it was my job to remember all these things, but it seems to me that without me to put them down, they’d all be gone by now. Not just how we came to be here but that world, the old world of the Time Before. Buying gloves and a scarf at Christmas and walking with my daddy up the block for water ice and sitting in a window on a summer night to watch the stars come on. They’re all dead now, of course, the First Ones. Most been dead so long, or else taken up, that no one even remembers their names no more. When I think back on those days it’s not sadness I feel. A little sadness, for missing folks, like Terrence, who was taken up at twenty-seven, and Lucy, who died in childbirth not long after, and Mazie Chou, who did live a good while but passed in a manner I don’t just now recall. Pendicitis, I think it was, or else the cancer. The hardest to think on are the ones who let it go, the way so many did over the years. The ones who took it into their own hands, from sadness or worry or just not wanting to carry the weight of this life no more. They the ones I dream on. Like they left the world unfinished and don’t even know they’ve gone. But I suppose it’s part of being old to feel that way, half in one world and half in the other, all of it mixed together in the mind. No one’s left who even knows my name. Folks call me Auntie, on account of I never could have no children of my own, and I guess that suits me fine. Sometimes it’s like I’ve got so many people inside me I’m never alone at all. And when I go, I’ll be taking them with me.

The Watchers told us the Army would be coming back, bringing more children and soldiers, but they never did. The buses and trucks pulled away, and as darkness settled down they sealed the gates, and then the lights came on, bright as day, so bright they blotted out the stars. It was a sight to see. Terrence and I had gone outside to look, the two of us shivering