The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,338

the pistols; Peter had the other. “We can’t just leave him here.”

“I guess he comes.”

“He may not want to.”

Peter considered this for a moment. “Leave him be,” he said finally. “There’s nothing we can do.”

It was late afternoon. Caleb and Michael had gone around to the rear of the engine, to siphon off water from the tanks with a hose they’d found in a closet in the engine’s aft compartment. Peter turned to see Caleb examining a hinged panel, about a meter square, hanging off the underside of the train.

“What’s this?” he asked Michael.

“It’s an access panel. It connects to a crawl space that runs underneath the floor.”

“Anything in there we can use?”

Michael shrugged, busying himself with the hose. “I don’t know. Have a look.”

Caleb knelt and turned the handle. “It’s stuck.”

Peter, watching from five meters away, felt a prickling sensation along his skin. Something clenched inside him. All eyes. “Hightop—”

The panel flew open, sending Caleb tumbling backward. A figure unfolded from inside the tube.

Jude.

Everyone reached for a weapon. Jude stumbled toward them, lifting a pistol. Half his face had been blasted away, revealing a broad smear of exposed meat and glistening bone; one of his eyes was gone, a dark hole. He seemed, in that elongated moment, a being of pure impossibility, half dead and half alive.

“You fucking people!” Jude snarled.

He fired just as Caleb, reaching for the pistol, stepped in front of him. The bullet caught the boy in the chest, spinning him around. In the same instant, Peter and Hollis found the triggers of their weapons, lighting up Jude’s body in a crazy dance.

They emptied both their guns before he toppled.

Caleb was lying face-up on the dirt, one hand clutched at the place where the bullet had entered. His chest rose and fell in shallow jerks. Alicia threw herself onto the ground beside him.

“Caleb!”

Blood was running through the boy’s fingers. His eyes, pointed at the empty sky, were very moist. “Oh shit,” he said, blinking.

“Sara, do something!”

Death had begun to ease across the boy’s face. “Oh,” he said. “Oh.” Then something seemed to catch in his chest and he was still.

Sara was crying, everyone was crying. She got on the ground beside Alicia and touched her elbow. “He’s dead, Lish.”

Alicia shrugged her violently away. “Don’t say that!” She pulled the boy’s limp form to her chest. “Caleb, you listen to me! You open your eyes! You open your eyes right now!”

Peter crouched beside her.

“I promised him,” Alicia pleaded, hugging Caleb close. “I promised him.”

“I know you did.” It was all he could think to say. “We all know it. It’s all right. Let go now.”

Peter gently freed the body from her arms. Caleb’s eyes were closed, his body motionless where it lay in the dust. He was still wearing the yellow sneakers—one of the laces had come untied—but the boy he was, was nowhere. Caleb was gone. For a long moment, nobody said anything. The only sounds were the birds and the wind in the tips of the grass and Alicia’s damp, half-choked breathing.

Then, in a sudden burst, Alicia shot to her feet, snatched Jude’s pistol from the ground, and strode to where Olson was sitting on the dirt. A furious look was in her eyes. The gun was huge, a long-barreled revolver. As Olson looked up, squinting at the dark form looming over him, she reared back and struck him across the face with the butt of the gun, knocking him flat to the ground, cocked the hammer with her thumb, and aimed the barrel at his head.

“Goddamn you!”

“Lish—” Peter stepped toward her, his hands raised. “He didn’t kill Caleb. Put the gun down.”

“We saw Jude die! We all saw it!”

A trickle of blood was running from Olson’s nose. He made no motion to defend himself or move away. “He was familiar.”

“Familiar? What does that mean? I’m sick of your double-talk. Speak English, goddamnit!”

Olson swallowed, licking the blood from his lips. “It means … you can be one of them without being one of them.”

Alicia’s knuckles were white where she clutched the butt of the revolver. Peter knew she was going to fire. There seemed no stopping this; it was simply what was going to happen.

“Go ahead and shoot if you want.” Olson’s face was impassive; his life meant nothing to him. “It doesn’t matter. Babcock will come. You’ll see.”

The barrel had begun to waver, driven by the current of Alicia’s rage. “Caleb mattered! He was worth more than your whole fucking Haven! He never had