The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,299

base of the car, returning a moment later. “I count twelve smokes from here.” She made a vague gesture up and away. “More on the tower on the far side of the street. The fires pushed them back, but that won’t last.”

So there it was. Out in the dark, their rifles gone, trapped between a burning building and the virals. They were resting with their shoulders touching, their backs braced against the car.

Alicia rolled her head to look at him. “That was a good idea. Using the pan. How’d you know it’d work?”

“I didn’t.”

She shook her head. “It was still some cool trick, anyway.” She paused, a look of pain skittering across her face. She closed her eyes and breathed, then: “Ready?”

“The Humvees?”

“It’s our best shot, I think. Stay close to the fires, use them for cover.”

Fires or no, they probably wouldn’t make it ten meters once the virals saw them. From the look of Alicia’s leg, he doubted she’d be able to walk at all. All they had were their blades and the five grenades on Alicia’s belt. But Amy and the others were still out here, maybe; they had to at least try.

She clipped off two grenades and placed them in his hands. “Remember our deal,” she said.

She meant would he kill her, if it came to that. The answer came so easily it surprised him. “Me too. I won’t be one of them.”

Alicia nodded. She had removed a grenade and pulled the pin, ready to throw. “I just want to say, before we do this, I’m glad it’s you.”

“Same here.”

She wiped her eyes with her wrist. “Oh fuck, Peter, now you’ve seen me cry twice. You can’t tell anyone, you can’t.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

A blaze of light filled his eyes. For an instant he actually believed something had happened and she’d accidentally released the grenade—that death was, in the end, an affair of light and silence. But then he heard the roar of the engine and knew that it was a vehicle, coming toward them.

“Get in!” a voice boomed. “Get in the truck!”

They froze.

Alicia’s eyes widened at the unpinned grenade in her hand. “Flyers, what do I do with this?”

“Just throw it!”

She tossed it over the top of the car; Peter yanked her to the ground as the grenade went off with a bang. The lights were closing in. They took off at a hobbling run, Peter’s arm wrapped around Alicia’s waist. Lumbering out of the darkness was a boxy vehicle with a huge plow jutting from the front like a demented smile, the windshield wrapped in a cage of wire; some kind of gun was mounted to the roof, a figure positioned behind it. As Peter watched, the gun sprang to life, shooting a plume of liquid fire over their heads.

They hit the dirt. Peter felt stinging heat on the back of his neck.

“Keep down!” the voice boomed again, and only then did Peter realize the sound was amplified, coming from a horn on the roof of the truck’s cabin. “Move your asses!”

“Well, which is it?” Alicia yelled, her body pressed to the ground. “You can’t have both!”

The truck ground to a halt just a few meters from their heads. Peter pulled Alicia to her feet as the figure on the roof slid down a ladder. A heavy wire mask obscured his face; his body was covered in thick pads. A short-barreled shotgun clung to his leg in a leather holster. Written on the side of the truck were the words NEVADA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS.

“In the back! Move it!”

The voice was a woman’s.

“There are eight of us!” Peter cried. “Our friends are still out here!”

But the woman seemed not to hear him or, if she did, to care. She hustled them to the rear of the truck, her movements surprisingly nimble despite her heavy armor. She turned a handle and flung the door wide.

“Lish! Get in!”

The voice was Caleb’s. Everybody was there, splayed out on the floor of the dark compartment. Peter and Alicia clambered inside; the door clanged shut behind them, sealing them in darkness.

With a lurch, the truck began to move.

FORTY-SIX

That awful woman. That awful fat woman in the kitchen, her loose round form spilling over her chair like something melted. The tight, close heat of the room and the taste of her smoke in his nose and mouth and the smell of the woman’s body, the sweat and crumb-filled creases in the rolls of billowing flesh. The smoke curling around her, puffing from