The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,176

the man was just flat-out disgusting), stepped to the breaker panel, and powered down the lights. A wave of weary satisfaction washed through him, as it always did at Morning Bell: one more night’s work accomplished, all souls safe and sound to face another day. Let’s see Alicia and her blades do that. (And wasn’t it true that when he’d lifted his face to see the logbook, it had been the image of Alicia in his mind that had distracted him? As it sometimes—often—did? And not just Alicia but the specific picture of sunlight flaring her hair as she had stepped from the Armory that very evening, Michael moving down the path toward her, unseen? An image that was, as he considered it again, quite striking? All this despite the fact that Alicia Donadio was, in point of fact, the single most annoying woman on earth, not that there was such a vast field of competitors?) He returned to the panel and moved through the steps, flipping the cells to charge, turning on the fans and opening the vents; the meters, which stood at 28 percent across the board, began to flicker and rise.

He swiveled to look at Elton, who appeared to be dozing in his chair, though it was sometimes hard to tell. Waking and sleeping, Elton’s eyes were always the same, two thin strips of yellow jelly, peeking through slitted eyelids of perpetually tearing dampness that never quite managed to close. His pale hands were folded over the curve of his belly, the earphones, as always, clamped to the sides of his scaly head, pumping out the music he listened to all night. The Beatles. Boyz-B-Ware. Art Lundgren and his All-Girl Polka-Party Orchestra (the only one that Michael sort of liked).

“Elton?” No answer. Michael turned his voice up a notch. “Elton?”

The old man—Elton was fifty at least—startled to life. “Flyers, Michael. What time is it?”

“Relax. It’s morning. We’re down for the night.”

Elton screwed himself up in his chair, setting the hinges creaking, and drew the earphones down into the folds of his neck. “Then what you wake me up for? I was just getting to the good part.”

Next to the CDs, Elton’s nightly forays into imagined sexual adventure constituted his major pastime—dreams of women, conveniently long dead, which he would recount to Michael in excruciating detail, claiming that these were actually memories of things that had happened to him in his younger days. It was all bullshit, Michael figured, since Elton hardly ever set foot outside the Lighthouse, and to look at him now, with his dandruffy head and tangled beard and gray teeth clotted with the remains of a meal he had probably eaten two days ago, Michael didn’t see how any of it was even remotely possible.

“Don’t you want to hear about it?” The old man gave his eyebrows a suggestive wag. “It was the hay dream. I know you like that one.”

“Not now, Elton. I … found something. A book.”

“You woke me up because you found a book?”

Michael scooted his chair down the length of the panel and placed the log in the old man’s lap. Elton ran his fingers over the cover, his sightless eyes turned upward, then drew it to his nose and gave a long sniff.

“Now, I’d say that would be your great-grandfather’s logbook. Thing’s been floating around here for years.” He passed it back to Michael. “Can’t say I’ve read it myself. Find anything good in there?”

“Elton, what do you know about this?”

“Couldn’t say. Things do have a way of popping up right when you need them, though.”

Which was when Michael realized why he hadn’t seen the book before. He hadn’t seen it before because it wasn’t there.

“You put it on the shelf, didn’t you?”

“Now, Michael. Radio’s forbidden. You know that.”

“Elton, did you talk to Theo?”

“Theo who?”

Michael felt his irritation mount. Why couldn’t the man just answer a question? “Elton—”

The old man cut him off with a raised hand. “Okay, don’t get your gaps in a twist. No, I didn’t talk to Theo. Though I’m guessing you did. I didn’t talk to anyone, except for you.” He paused. “You know, you’re more like your old man than you think, Michael. He wasn’t a very good liar, either.”

Somehow, Michael wasn’t surprised. He slumped down into his chair. Part of him was glad.

“So how bad are they?” Elton asked.

“Not good.” He shrugged; for some reason, he was looking at his hands. “Number five is the worst, two and three a little better than