The Passage

It was at this moment that Peter reached the staging ground, ru

“It’s Lish!”

“What?”

“It’s Lish!” Hollis cried. “She’s outside!”

Caleb got to the wheelhouse first. It was this fact that would later be used to implicate him, while exonerating Peter of blame for what occurred. By the time Alicia reached the gate, it was open just wide enough for her to scramble through with the girl. If they had been able to close the doors then, probably none of the rest would have happened. But Caleb had released the brake. The weights were dropping, picking up speed as they slipped down the chains; the doors’ opening was now ordained by the simple fact of gravity. Peter grabbed hold of the wheel. Behind and above him he heard the shouts, the volley of bolts unleashed from their crosses, the pinging footsteps of Watchers racing down the ladders into the staging ground. More hands appeared, fastening onto the wheel-Ben Chou and Ian Patal and Dale Levine. With excruciating slowness, it began to turn in the opposite direction.

But it was too late. Of the three virals, only one made it through the doors. But that was enough.

He headed straight for the Sanctuary.

Hollis was the first to reach the building, just as the viral vaulted to the roof. It crested the roof’s apex like a stone skipping on water and dropped into the interior courtyard. As he tore through the front door, Hollis heard a crash of breaking glass inside.

He reached the Big Room at the same instant Mausami did, the two of them arriving by different hallways onto opposite sides of the room. Mausami was unarmed; Hollis had his cross. An unexpected silence met them. Hollis had braced himself for screams and chaos, the children ru

The viral was standing over Dora’s crib.

“Hey!” Mausami yelled. She waved her arms above her head. “Hey, look over here!”

Where was Leigh? Where was Teacher? The viral jerked its face toward the sound of Mausami’s voice. It blinked its eyes, tipping its head to the side on its long neck. A wet clicking sound rose from somewhere in the taut curve of its throat.

“Over here!” Hollis yelled, following Mausami’s lead and waving to draw the creature’s attention. “Yeah, look this way!”

The viral spun toward him, facing him squarely. Something was glinting at the base of its neck, some kind of jewelry. But there was no time to wonder about this; Hollis had his angle, his opening. Leigh entered the room then. She’d been sleeping in the office and heard nothing. As Leigh broke into a scream, Hollis aimed the crossbow and fired.

A good shot, a clean shot, dead center on the sweet spot: he felt its rightness, its perfection, the instant it leapt from the stock. And in the split second of the arrow’s flight, a distance of fewer than five meters, he knew. The glinting key on the lanyard; the look of mournful gratitude in the viral’s eyes. The thought came to Hollis fully formed, a single word that arrived on his lips at the same instant that the arrow-the merciful, awful, unrecallable arrow-struck home in the center of the viral’s chest.

“Arlo.”

Hollis had just killed his brother.

Sara-though she did not remember this and never would-first learned about the Walker in a dream: a confusing and unpleasant dream in which she was a little girl again. She was making joh

Then there was a man. It was Gabe Curtis. He was sitting at the kitchen table before an empty plate. “Is it ready?” he asked Sara, and then, turning to the girl sitting next to him, said, “I always liked joh

Then she was awake. She had fallen asleep in a chair by the cold hearth. It was the door that had awakened her; someone was outside, calling her name. Where was Michael? What time was it?

“Sara! Open up!”

Caleb Jones? She opened the door as he was reaching to hit it again, his fist freezing in the air.

“We need a nurse.” The boy was breathing hard. “Someone’s been shot.”

She was instantly awake, reaching for her kit on the table by the door. “Who?”

“Lish brought her in.”

“Lish? Lish is shot?”

Caleb shook his head, still trying to catch his breath. “Not her. The girl.”

“What girl?”

His eyes were amazed. “She’s a Walker, Sara.”

By the time they reached the Infirmary the sky beyond the lights had begun to pale. No one was there, which struck her as strange. From what Caleb had told her, she’d expected a crowd. She mounted the steps and rushed into the ward.

Lying on the nearest cot was a girl.

She was lying face-up, the bolt still embedded in her shoulder; a dark shape was pi

“Sara, do something,” Alicia said.

Sara moved quickly forward and eased her hand behind the girl’s neck to check her airway. The girl’s eyes were closed. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, her skin cool and clammy to the touch. Sara felt her neck for a pulse; her heart was banging like a bird’s.

“She’s in shock. Help me roll her over.”

The bolt had entered the girl’s left shoulder just below the spoon-shaped curve of her clavicle. Alicia wedged her hands under the girl’s shoulders while Caleb took her feet, and together they eased the girl onto her side. Sara retrieved a pair of scissors and sat behind her to cut the blood-soaked knapsack away, then the girl’s flimsy T-shirt, snipping it at the neck and tearing the rest of it free, revealing the slender frame of an early adolescent-the small, curving buds of her breasts and her pale skin. The bolt’s barbed tip was poking through a star-shaped wound just above the line of her scapula.