The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,277

stepped inside and moved straight to the bedroom. Auntie was asleep. He paused for a moment in the doorway, watching her breathe. The maps were where he’d left them, under the bed. He bent to retrieve them and slid the box into his pack.

“Peter?”

He froze. Auntie’s eyes were still closed. Her hands lay still at her sides.

“I was just lying here to rest some.”

“Auntie—”

“No time for goodbyes,” the old woman intoned. “You go on now, Peter. You’re in your own time now.”

By the time he reached the cutout, filaments of pink were rising from the east. Everyone was there. Alicia was climbing from under the trunk line, dusting herself off.

“Everybody ready?”

Footsteps behind them: Peter wheeled around, drawing his blade. But then he saw, stepping from the undergrowth, the figure of Mausami Patal. A cross was slung from one shoulder; she was wearing a pack.

“I tracked you from the Storehouse. We better hurry.”

“Maus—” Alicia began.

“Save your breath, Lish. I’m going.” Mausami focused her eyes on Peter. “Just tell me one thing,” she said. “Do you believe your brother’s dead?”

He felt as if he had been waiting for someone to ask him this very question. “No.”

“Neither do I.”

Her hand moved toward her belly, an unconscious gesture. Its meaning came upon him with such completeness it felt less like something discovered than remembered, as if he’d known all along.

“I never got the chance to tell him,” Mausami said. “I still want to.”

Peter turned to Alicia, who was studying the two of them with a look of exasperation.

“She comes.”

“Peter, this is not a good idea. Think about where we’re going.”

“Mausami’s blood now. It’s not a discussion.”

For a moment Alicia said nothing; she appeared to be at a loss for words.

“The hell with it,” she said finally. “We don’t have time to argue.”

Alicia went first, showing them the way. Sara followed, then Michael, then Caleb and Mausami, dropping into the tunnel one by one, leaving Peter to guard the rear.

Amy was the last. They’d found a jersey and a pair of gaps for her, and a pair of sandals. As she lowered herself through the hatch, her eyes found Peter’s with a sudden, beseeching force. Where are we going?

Colorado, he thought. The CQZ. They were just names on a map, bits of colored light on the screen of Michael’s CRT. The reality behind them, the hidden world of which they were a part, was nothing Peter could imagine. When they’d spoken of such a journey earlier that night—had it really been that same night, the four of them crowded into the Lighthouse?—Peter had envisioned a proper expedition: a large armed detail, carts of supplies, at least one scouting party, a meticulously plotted route. His father would spend whole seasons planning the Long Rides. Now here they were, fugitives on foot, scurrying away with little more than a pile of old maps and the blades on their belts. How could they possibly hope to get to such a place?

“I don’t really know,” he told her. “But if we don’t leave now, I think we’ll all die here.”

She ducked into the tunnel and was gone. Peter tightened the straps of his pack and scrambled in behind her, pulling the hatch closed over his head, sealing himself in darkness. The walls were cool and smelled of earth. The tunnel had been dug long ago, perhaps by the Builders themselves, to make it easier to service the trunk line; except for the Colonel, no one had used it for years. It was his secret route, Alicia had explained, the one he used to hunt. So at least one mystery was solved.

Twenty-five meters later, Peter emerged into a copse of mesquite. Everyone was waiting. The lights were down, revealing a gray dawn sky. Above them, the face of the mountain rose like a single slab of stone, a silent witness to all that had occurred. Peter heard the calls of the Watch from the top of the Wall, sounding off their posts for Morning Bell and the changing of the shift. Dale would be wondering what had happened to them, if he didn’t know already. Surely it wouldn’t be long before the bodies were found.

Alicia closed the hatch behind him and turned the wheel, then knelt to cover it with underbrush.

“They’ll come after us,” Peter said quietly, crouched beside her. “They’ll have horses. We can’t outrun them.”

“I know.” Her face was set. “It’s a question of who gets to the guns first.”

And with that Alicia rose, turned on her heels,