The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,336

think she understands what she did?” Alicia asked.

It was Amy who had blown the coupler. The switch was located in the rear of the engine compartment by the head-end unit. Probably it had been connected to a drum of diesel fuel or kerosene, Michael surmised, with some kind of igniter. That would have been enough to do it. A fail-safe, in case the cars were overrun. It made sense, Michael said, when you thought about it.

Peter supposed it did. But none of them could explain how Amy had known what to do, nor what had led her to actually throw the switch. Her actions seemed, like everything else about her, beyond ordinary understanding. And yet it was because of her, once again, that they were all alive.

Peter watched her for a long moment. In the waist-high grass she appeared almost to float, her hands held out from her sides, grazing the feathered tips. Many days had passed since he’d thought of what had happened in the Infirmary; but watching her now as she moved through the grass, he was washed by the memory of that strange night. He wondered what she had told Babcock when she had stood before him. It was as if she were part of two worlds, one that he could see and one that he could not; and it was within this other, hidden world that the meaning of their voyage lay.

“A lot of people died last night,” Alicia said.

Peter drew a breath. Despite the sun, he felt suddenly cold. He was still watching Amy, but in his mind he saw Mira—the girl’s body pressed to the roof of the train, the viral’s hand reaching for her, pulling her away. The empty space where she had been and the sound of her screams as she fell.

“I think they’d been dead a long time,” he said. “One thing’s for sure, we can’t stay here. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

They inventoried their supplies, spreading them out on the ground by the engine. It didn’t amount to much: half a dozen shotguns, a couple of pistols with a few rounds each, one automatic rifle, two spare clips for the rifle plus twenty-five shells for the shotguns, six blades, eight gallons of water in jugs plus more in the train’s holding tank, a few hundred gallons of diesel fuel but no vehicle to put it in, a couple of plastic tarps, three tins of sulfur matches, the med kit, a kerosene lantern, Sara’s journal—she had removed it from her pack when they’d left the hut and stashed it inside her jersey—and no food at all. Hollis said there was probably game out there; they shouldn’t waste their ammo, but they could set some snares. Maybe they’d find something edible in Caliente.

Theo was sleeping on the floor of the engine compartment. He’d managed to give them a rough accounting of events as best he could recall them—his fragmented memory of the attack at the mall, then his time in the cell and the dream of the woman in her kitchen and his struggle to stay awake, and the taunting visits of the man whom Peter believed was almost certainly Jude—but the effort of talking was clearly difficult for him, and he’d eventually fallen into a sleep so profound that Sara had to reassure Peter that his brother was still breathing. The wound to Mausami’s leg was worse than she’d claimed but less than life-threatening. The shot had blasted through her outer thigh, cutting a grisly-looking bloody trench but exiting cleanly. The night before, Sara had used a needle and thread from the med kit to sew the wound closed and had cleaned it with spirits from a bottle they’d found under the sink in the engine’s tiny lavatory. It must have hurt like hell, but Maus had borne all of it with a stoic silence, gritting her teeth as she clutched Theo’s hand. As long as she kept it clean, Sara said, she’d be fine. With luck she’d even be able to walk in a day or two.

The question arose about where to go. It was Hollis who raised it, and Peter found himself taken aback; the thought had never occurred to him that they would fail to press on. Whatever lay ahead of them in Colorado, he felt more strongly than ever that they had to find out what it was, and it seemed far too late to turn back now. But Hollis, he was forced to concede, had a