The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,237

do, asking the girl to hold still. Moving from her feet, Sara ran her hands up the girl’s body, gently touching every surface, examining her legs and arms and hands and neck; when this was done she rose and moved behind her, positioning herself at the head of the cot, and pulled her fingers slowly through the matted nest of her hair. Through all of it the girl held herself with a motionless compliance, lifting her arms and legs when Sara asked, her eyes floating about the room with a neutral inquisitiveness, as if she was not quite sure what to make of it all.

“If it’s here, it’s well hidden.” Sara paused to push a strand of hair from her face. “Michael, are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. It has to be inside her then.”

“Inside her body?”

“It should be near the surface. Probably just under the skin. Look for a scar.”

Sara considered this. “Well, I’m not doing it in front of a crowd. Peter and Michael, both of you turn around. Lish, get over here. I might need you.”

Peter used this moment to step to the curtain and peek through. Ben and Galen were still outside, blurred figures facing away on the far side of the windows. He wondered how much longer they had. Surely someone else would come, Sanjay or Old Chou or Jimmy.

“Okay, you can look now.”

The girl was sitting on the edge of the bed, her head bent forward at the neck. “Michael was right; I didn’t have to look very long.” Sara lifted the tangle of the girl’s hair to show them: a distinct white line at the base of her neck, no more than a couple of centimeters long. Above it was the telltale bulge of some foreign object.

“You can feel the edges.” Sara pressed her fingers against it to demonstrate. “Unless there’s more to it, I think it should come out clean.”

Peter asked, “Will it hurt?”

Sara nodded. “It’ll be quick, though. After last night it should feel like nothing. Like removing a big splinter.”

Peter sat on the cot and spoke to the girl. “Sara needs to remove something from under your skin. A kind of radio. Is that okay?”

He saw a flicker of apprehension in her face. Then she nodded.

“Just be careful,” said Peter.

Sara went to the storage cabinet and returned with a basin, a scalpel, and a bottle of spirits. She wet a cloth and cleaned the area. Then, positioned behind the girl once more, holding her hair away, she took the scalpel from the basin.

“This will sting.”

With a stroke of the scalpel’s blade she traced the line of the scar. If the girl felt any pain, she made no indication. A single bead of blood appeared at the wound, running down the long line of the girl’s neck to disappear into her gown. Sara dabbed the wound with the cloth and angled her head toward the basin.

“Somebody hand me those tweezers. Don’t touch the tines.”

Alicia was the one to do this. Sara eased the ends of the tweezers through the jacketlike opening in the girl’s skin, holding the blood-tinged cloth below it. So intense was Peter’s focus that he could feel—actually feel in the tips of his fingers—the moment when the ends of the tweezers caught hold of the object. With a slow pulling motion, Sara drew it free, a dark shadow emerging, and placed it on the cloth. She held it up for Michael to see.

“Is this what you’re looking for?”

Resting on the bed of cloth was a small, oblong-shaped disk, made of some shiny metal. A fringe of tiny wires, like hairs, beaded at the tips, encircled its edges. Altogether it looked to Peter like some kind of flattened spider.

“That’s a radio?” Alicia said.

Michael was frowning, his brow furrowed. “I’m not sure,” he confessed.

“You’re not sure? How is it you could make the phone ring but you don’t know what this is?”

Michael rubbed the object with a clean rag and held it to the light. “Well, it’s some kind of transmitter. That’s what these wires are probably for.”

“So what’s it doing inside her?” Alicia asked. “Who could have done something like that?”

“Maybe we should ask her what it is,” Michael said.

But when he held the object out to show her, lying on its bed of bloodstained cloth, the girl responded with a look of puzzlement. Its very existence in her neck seemed as mysterious to her as it was to them.

“You think the Army put it in there?” Peter asked.

“It could