The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,284

was empty.

“I think they’re gone.”

Alicia frowned. “Why would they just leave like that?”

He felt strangely calm; the crisis, he knew, had passed. “Look for yourself.”

Alicia slung her rifle and pressed her eyes to the window, her neck straining as she tried to widen her field of vision through the opening.

“He’s right,” she reported. “There’s nothing out there.” She drew her face away and turned toward Peter, her eyes narrowed. “Like … pets?”

He shook his head, searching for the right word. “Like friends, I think.”

“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Mausami said.

“I wish I knew,” said Peter.

They raised the barricade just after daybreak. All around they saw the creatures’ tracks in the dust. None of them had slept much, but even so, Peter felt a new energy coursing through him. He wondered what this was, and then he knew. They had survived their first night out in the Darklands.

The map spread out on a boulder, Hollis went over their route.

“After Twentynine Palms, it’s open desert through here, no real roads. The trick to finding the bunker is this range of mountains to the east. There are two distinct peaks at the south end, and a third behind them. When the third stands right in the middle of the two, turn due east, and you’re going the right way.”

“What if we don’t make it before dark?” he asked.

“We could hole up in Twentynine if we had to. There are a few structures still standing. But as I remember it they’re just hulks, nothing like the fire station.”

Peter glanced toward Amy, who was standing with the others. She was still wearing the brimmed cap from the supply room; Sara had also given her a man’s long-sleeved shirt to wear, frayed at the sleeves and collar, and a pair of desert glasses they’d found in the firehouse. Her black hair was pushed away from her face, a nimbus of dark tangles flapping under the brim of the cap.

“Do you really think she did it?” Hollis said. “Sent them away.”

Peter turned back toward his friend. He thought of the magazine in the bathroom, the two stark words on its cover.

“Truthfully, Hollis? I don’t know.”

“Well, we better hope she did. After Kelso, it’s open country clear to the Nevada line.” He drew his blade and wiped it on the hem of his jersey. When he resumed speaking his voice was quiet, confidential. “Before I left, you know, I heard people talking, saying things about her. The Girl from Nowhere, the last Walker. People were saying she was a sign.”

“Of what?”

Hollis frowned. “The end, Peter. The end of the Colony, the end of the war. The human race, or what’s left of it. I’m not saying they were right. It was probably just more of Sam and Milo’s bullshit.”

Sara stepped toward them. The swelling on her face had eased overnight; the worst of the bruising had faded to a greenish purple.

“We should let Maus ride,” she said.

“Is she okay?” Peter asked.

“A little dehydrated. In her condition, she has to keep her fluids up. I don’t think she should be walking in the heat. I’m worried about Amy, too.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

She shrugged. “The sun. I don’t think she’s used to it. She’s got a bad burn already. The glasses and shirt will help, but she can stay covered only so long in this heat.” She cocked her head and looked at Hollis. “So what’s this Michael tells me about a vehicle?”

· · ·

They marched.

The mountains fell away behind them; by half-day, they were deep in open desert. The roadway was little more than suggestion, but they could still follow its course, tracing the bulge it made in the hardpan, through a landscape of scattered boulders and strange, stunted trees, beneath a boiling sun and a limitless sky bleached of all color. The breeze hadn’t so much died as collapsed; the air was so motionless it seemed to hum, the heat vibrating around them like an insect’s wings. Everything in the landscape looked both close and far away, the sense of perspective distorted by the immeasurable horizon. How easy it would be, Peter thought, to get turned around in such a place, to wander aimlessly until darkness fell. Past the town of Mojave Junction—no town at all, just a few empty foundations and a name on the map—they crested a small rise to discover a long line of abandoned vehicles, two abreast, facing the direction they had come. Most were passenger cars but there were some