The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,43

a man in a black tracksuit, whom he’d later come to know as Richards—a wiry guy no more than five foot six with a permanent scowl on his face. Richards walked him to the curb; two other men, who must have come in on different flights, were standing by a van. Richards opened the driver’s door and returned with a cloth bag the size of a pillowcase. He held it open like a mouth.

“Wallets, cell phones, any personal stuff, photographs, anything with writing on it, right down to the pen you got at the bank,” he told them. “I don’t care if it’s a fucking fortune cookie. In it goes.”

They emptied their pockets, hoisted their duffels into the luggage rack, and climbed in through the side. It was only when Richards closed the door behind them that Grey realized the windows were blacked out. From the outside the vehicle looked like an ordinary van, but inside it was a different story: the driver’s compartment was sealed off, the passenger compartment nothing but a metal box with vinyl bench seats bolted to the floor. Richards had said they were allowed to trade first names but that was all. The other two men were Jack and Sam. They looked so much like Grey he might have been staring into a mirror: middle-aged white guys with buzz cuts and puffed red hands and workingman’s tans that stopped at the wrists and collar. Grey’s first name was Lawrence, but he’d barely ever used it. It sounded odd coming from his mouth. As soon as he said it, shaking hands with the one named Sam, he felt like somebody different, like he’d boarded the plane in Dallas as one person and landed in Cheyenne as another.

In the dark van, it was impossible to tell where they were going, and a little nauseating. For all Grey knew, they were just circling the airport. With nothing to do or see, they all fell asleep soon enough. When Grey woke up he had no sense of the hour. He also had to pee like a jackrabbit. That was the Depo. He rose from his seat and rapped his knuckles on the sliding panel at the front of the compartment.

“Yo, I gotta stop,” he said.

Richards slid the window open, affording Grey a view through the van’s windshield. The sun had set; the road ahead, a two-lane blacktop, was dark and empty. In the distance he glimpsed a purple line of light where the sky met a mountain ridge.

“I need to take a leak,” Grey explained. “Sorry.”

In the passenger compartment behind him, the other men were rousing. Richards reached onto the floor and passed Grey a clear plastic bottle with a wide mouth.

“I gotta pee in this?”

“That’s the idea.”

Richards closed the window without another word. Grey sat back down on the bench and examined the bottle in his hand. He figured it was big enough. But the thought of taking his equipment out in the van, right in front of the other men, like this was no big deal, made all the muscles around his bladder clamp like a slipknot.

“No way I’m using that,” the one named Sam said. His eyes were closed; he was sitting with his hands folded at his lap. His face wore a look of intense concentration. “I’m just holding it.”

They rode a little farther. Grey tried to think of something that could keep his mind off his bursting bladder, but this only made matters worse. It felt like an ocean sloshing around inside him. They hit a pothole and the ocean crashed against the shoreline. He heard himself groan.

“Hey!” he said, banging on the window again. “Hey in there! I’ve got an emergency!”

Richards opened the panel. “What is it now?”

“Listen,” Grey said, and pushed his head through the narrow space. He lowered his voice so the others wouldn’t hear. “I can’t. Seriously. I can’t use the bottle. You’ve got to pull over.”

“Just hold it, for fucksake.”

“I’m serious. I’m begging you. I can’t … I can’t go like this. I have a medical condition.”

Richards sighed with irritation. Their eyes met quickly in the rearview, and Grey wondered if he knew. “Stay where I can see you and no looking around. I fucking mean it.”

He pulled the vehicle to the side of the road. Grey was muttering under his breath, “C’mon, c’mon … ” Then the door opened and he was out, sprinting away from the rumbling light of the van. He stumbled down the embankment, each