The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,190

his nostrils, and put it down on the table. He didn’t know what was more discouraging—that his father had kept this secret from him or that Theo had.

“So why hide the guns in the first place?” he asked. “Why not just bring them up the mountain?”

“And do what with them? Think about it, brother. We all heard you out there. By my count, the two of you shot off thirty-six rounds to kill, what, two virals? Out of how many? Those guns’d last about a season if he just handed them over to the Watch. People would be shooting at their own shadows. Hell, half the time they’d probably be shooting each other. I think that’s what he was most afraid of.”

“How many are left?” Alicia asked.

“In the bunker? I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.”

“But you know where it is.”

Theo sipped his shine. “I see where you’re going with this, and you can stop right there. Our father, well, he had ideas. Peter, you know this as well as I do. He just couldn’t accept the fact that we’re all that’s left, that there’s no one out there. And if he could find others, and if they had guns … ” His voice trailed away.

Alicia lifted in her chair. “An army,” she said, her eyes moving over all of them. “That’s it, isn’t it? He wanted to make an army. To fight the smokes.”

“Which is pointless,” Theo said, and Peter heard the bitterness in his brother’s voice. “Pointless and crazy. The Army had guns, and what happened to them? Did they ever come back for us? With their guns and rockets and helicopters? No, they didn’t, and I’ll tell you why. Because they’re all dead.”

Alicia was undeterred. “Well, I like it,” she said. “Hell, I think it’s a great idea.”

Theo gave a bitter laugh. “I knew you would.”

“And I don’t think we’re alone, either,” she pressed. “There are others. Out there, somewhere.”

“Is that right? What makes you so sure?”

Alicia appeared suddenly at a loss. “Nothing,” she said. “I just am.”

Theo frowned into his cup, giving the contents a long swirl. “You can believe anything you want,” he said quietly, “but that doesn’t make it true.”

“Our father believed it,” Peter said.

“Yes, he did, brother. And it got him killed. I know it’s not something we talk about, but those are the facts. You stand the Mercy and you figure some things out, believe me. Our father didn’t go out there to let it go. Whoever thinks so doesn’t understand the first thing about him. He went out there because he just couldn’t stand not knowing, not for one more minute of his life. It was brave, and it was stupid, and he got his answer.”

“He saw a Walker. At Milagro.”

“Maybe he did. If you ask me, he saw what he wanted to see. And it doesn’t matter either way. What difference would one Walker make?”

Peter felt badly shaken by Theo’s hopelessness; it seemed not just defeated but disloyal.

“Where there’s one, there are others,” Peter said.

“What there are, brother, are smokes. All the guns in the world won’t change that.”

For a moment no one spoke. The idea was in the air, unspoken but palpable. How long did they have before the lights went out? Before no one remembered how to fix them?

“I don’t believe that,” Arlo said. “And I can’t believe you do either. If that’s all there is, what’s the point of anything?”

“The point?” Theo peered into his cup again. “I wish I knew. I suppose the point is just staying alive. Keeping the lights on as long as we can.” He tipped the shine to his lips and drained it in one hard swallow. “On that note, it’ll be daybreak soon, everyone. Let Caleb sleep, but wake the others. We’ve got bodies to take care of.”

There were four. They found three in the yard and one, Zander, on the roof, lying face-up on the concrete by the hatch, his naked limbs sprawled in a startled-looking X. The bullet from Peter’s rifle had blasted through the top of his head, shearing off the crown of his skull, which was hanging kitty-corner by a flap of skin. Already the morning sun had begun to shrivel him; a fine, gray mist was rising from his blackening flesh.

Peter had gotten used to the virals’ appearance but still found it unnerving to see one close up. The way the facial features seemed to have been buffed away, smoothed into an almost infantile blandness; the