The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,418

it turned out, it was more than fifty kilometers, a lot more. The garrison was on the far side of town. But it didn’t matter because a little after half-day we were picked up by a patrol. Of all people, Lieutenant Eustace. He seemed more perplexed than anything to see us, but in any case they sent a Humvee back to the bunker and now we are all safe and sound, behind the walls of the garrison.

I am writing this in the civilian mess tent (there are three, one for enlisted, one for officers, and one for civilian workers). All the others have already gone to bed. The CO here is someone named Crukshank. A general, like Vorhees, but that’s where the similarity stops. With Vorhees you could tell there was a real person in there, behind all that military sternness, but Crukshank looks like the sort of man who’s never cracked a smile in his life. I also get the feeling Greer is in a lot of trouble, and this seems to extend to the rest of us. But tomorrow at 06:00, we’re going to be debriefed, and we can tell the whole story then. The Roswell Garrison makes the one in Colorado seem flimsy by comparison. I think it’s nearly as big as the Colony, with gigantic concrete walls supported by metal struts that extend down into the parade ground. The only way I can think to describe it is to say that it looks like an inside-out spider. A sea of tents and other fixed structures. Vehicles have been coming in all evening, huge tanker trucks and five-tons full of men and guns and crates of supplies, their cabs rigged with banks of lights. The air is full of the roar of engines, the smell of burning fuel, the showering sparks of torches. Tomorrow I’m going to go find the infirmary and see if there’s anything I can do to help. There are a few other women here, not many but some, mostly with the medical corps, and as long as we stay in the civilian areas, we’re free to move as we please.

Poor Hollis. He was so worn out I never got the chance to tell him the news. So tonight will be the last night for me to be alone with my secret, before someone else knows. I wonder if there’s anyone here who can marry us. Maybe the CO can do it. But Crukshank doesn’t seem the type, and I should wait until Michael’s with us, in Kerrville. He should be the one to give me away. It wouldn’t be fair to do it without him.

I should be exhausted, but I’m not. I’m much too keyed up to sleep. Probably it’s my imagination, but when I close my eyes and sit very still, I swear I can feel the baby inside me. Not moving, nothing like that, it’s far too early. Just a kind of warm and hopeful presence, this new soul my body carries, waiting to be born into the world. I feel … what’s the word? Happy. I feel happy.

Shots outside. I am going to look.

*****END OF DOCUMENT*****

Recovered at Roswell Site (“Roswell Massacre”)

Area 16, Marker 267

33.39 N, 104.50 W

2nd striation. Depth: 2.1 meters

Accession BL1894.02

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For advocacy, encouragement, counsel, inspiration, expertise, friendship, camaraderie, patience, shelter, sustenance, and the general tossing of meat through the bars, thanks and ponies to: Ellen Levine and Claire Roberts at Trident Media Group; Mark Tavani and Libby McGuire at Ballantine Books; Gina Centrello, president of the Random House Publishing Group; Bill Massey at Orion; the spectacular publicity, marketing, and sales teams at Ballantine and Orion; Rich Green at Creative Artists Agency; Michael Ellenberg and Ridley Scott at Scott Free Productions; Rodney Ferrell and Elizabeth Gabler at Fox 2000; my brilliant and intrepid readers, Jenny Smith, Tom Barbash, Jennifer Vanderbes, and Ivan Strausz; my many wonderful colleagues and students at Rice University; Bonnie Thompson; John Logan; Alex Parsons; Andrea White and The House of Fiction; ACC, best boy ever; IAC, the girl who saves the world; Leslie, Leslie, Leslie.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in New England, JUSTIN CRONIN is the award-winning author of The Summer Guest and Mary and O’Neil. Having earned his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Cronin is now a professor of English at Rice University and lives with his family in Houston, Texas.

The Passage is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Justin Cronin

Map copyright © 2010 by David Lindroth, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to HarperCollins Publishers for permission to reprint five lines of “The Wild Iris” from The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck, copyright © 1992 by Louise Gluck. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Cronin, Justin.

The passage : a novel / Justin Cronin.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-345-51686-2

1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. Human experimentation in medicine—Fiction. 3. Virus diseases—Fiction. 4. United States—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3553.R542P37 2010

813′.54—dc22 2010007455

www.ballantinebooks.com

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