The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,72

her head.

“Okay?” he asked.

“I’m not doing it here.”

Wolgast didn’t say anything about not wandering off; there seemed no point. Where would she go? He led her fifty feet down the roadway, away from the lights of the Tahoe. Wolgast looked away while she stood at the edge of the ditch and pulled down her jeans.

“I need help.”

Wolgast turned. She was facing him, her jeans and underpants bunched around her ankles. He felt his face warm with embarrassment.

“What do you need me to do?”

She held out both her hands. Her fingers felt tiny in his own; her palms were moist with childlike heat. He had to hold tightly as she leaned back, giving him nearly all her weight, to position herself in a crouch, suspending her body out over the ditch like a piano swinging from a crane. Where had she learned to do this? Who else had held her hands this way?

When she was done he turned around so she could pull her pants back up.

“You don’t have to be afraid, honey.”

Amy said nothing; she made no motion to return to the Tahoe. Around them, the fields were empty, the air absolutely still, as if caught between breaths. Wolgast could feel it, the emptiness of the fields, the thousands of miles they spread in every direction. He heard the front door of the Tahoe open and slam closed; Doyle, going off to take a leak himself. Far off to the south, he heard a distant echo of thunder rolling away and, in the clear aural space behind it, a new sound—a kind of tinkling, like bells.

“We can be friends if you want,” he ventured. “Would that be okay?”

She was a strange girl, he thought again; why hadn’t she cried? Because she hadn’t, not since the zoo, and she’d never asked for her mother, or said she wanted to go home, or even back to the convent. Where was home for her? Memphis, maybe, but he had the feeling it wasn’t. No place was. Whatever had happened to the girl had taken the idea of home away.

Then, “I’m not afraid. We can go back to the car if you want.”

For a moment she just looked at him, in that evaluating way of hers. His ears had adjusted to the silence, and he was certain now that it was music he was hearing, the sound distorted by distance. Somewhere, down the road they were driving on, somebody was playing music.

“I’m Brad.” The name felt bland and heavy in his mouth.

She nodded.

“The other man? He’s Phil.”

“I know who you are. I heard you talking.” She shifted her weight. “You thought I wasn’t listening, but I was.”

A spooky kid. And smart, too. He could hear it in her voice, see it in the way she was sizing him up with her eyes, using the silence to appraise him, to draw him out. He felt as if he were speaking with somebody much older, though not exactly. He couldn’t put his finger on what the difference was.

“What’s in Colorado? That’s where we’re going, I heard you say it.”

Wolgast wasn’t sure how much to say. “Well, there’s a doctor there. He’s going to look at you. Like a checkup.”

“I’m not sick.”

“That’s why, I think. I don’t … well, I don’t really know.” He winced inwardly at the lie. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

“Don’t keep saying that.”

He was so taken aback by her directness that for a moment he said nothing. “Okay. That’s good. I’m glad you’re not.”

“Because I’m not afraid,” Amy declared, and began walking toward the lights of the Tahoe. “You are.”

A few miles later, they saw it up ahead: a domelike zone of thrumming light that sorted, as they approached, into discrete, orbiting points, like a family of constellations spinning low against the horizon. Just as Wolgast figured out what he was seeing, the road ended at an intersection. He turned on the overhead light and checked the GPS. A line of cars and pickup trucks, more than they had seen in hours, was passing on the highway, all headed in the same direction. He opened his window to the night air; the sound of music was unmistakable now.

“What is that?” Doyle asked.

Wolgast said nothing. He turned west, threading into the line of traffic. In the bed of the pickup ahead of them, a group of teenagers, about a half dozen, were sitting on bales of hay. They passed a sign that read, HOMER, OKLAHOMA, POP. 1,232.

“Not so close,” Doyle said, referring to