The Passage

“Fuck!”

“It hurts, don’t it?”

Spangled motes were dancing in his eyes. He tried to pull his hand away, but the force holding him in place was too strong. He was pi

“You… go… to… hell.”

The heel twisted again; Theo yelped in agony.

“That’s a good one, Theo. Where did you think you were? Hell is your new address, my friend.”

“I’m not… your friend,” he gasped.

“Oh, maybe not. Maybe not just at the moment. But you will be. Sooner or later, you will be.”

Then, just like that, the pressure on Theo’s hand released-an absence of torment so abrupt it was like pleasure. Theo yanked his arm through the slot and slumped against the wall, breathing hard, cradling his wrist on his lap.

“Because, believe it or not, there are things even worse than me,” the voice said. “Sleep well, Theo.” And then the slot slammed closed.

VIII. THE HAVEN

The isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,

That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again.

– SHAKESPEARE,

The Tempest

FORTY-SEVEN

They had been on the road for hours. With nothing to lie on but the hard metal floor, sleep was all but impossible. It seemed that every time Michael closed his eyes, the truck would hit a bump or swerve one way or the other, sending some part of his body slamming down.

He lifted his head to see a glow of daylight gathering beyond the compartment’s only window, a small porthole of reinforced glass set in the door. His mouth was bone dry; every part of him felt bruised, as if someone had been hitting him with a hammer all night long. He rose to a sitting position, pushing his back against the jostling wall of the compartment, and rubbed the gunk from his eyes. The rest of the group were propped on their packs in various postures of discomfort. Though they were all banged up to some degree, Alicia seemed the worst off. She was facing him, her back resting against the wall of the compartment; her face was pale and damp, her eyes open but drained of energy. Mausami had done her best to clean and bandage Alicia’s injured leg the night before, but Michael could tell the wound was serious. Only Amy seemed to be actually sleeping. She was curled on the floor beside him, her knees pulled to her chest. A fan of dark hair lay over her cheek, pushed to and fro by the bouncing of the truck.

The memory hit him like a slap.

Sara, his sister, was gone.

He remembered ru

Now it was morning. Michael felt himself pushed forward as the vehicle decelerated. Beside him, Amy’s eyes shot open; she rolled into a sitting position and drew her knees to her chest once more, her gaze fixed on the door.

The truck drew to a halt. Caleb scrambled to the window and peered outside.

“What do you see?” Peter had risen to a crouch; his hair was matted with dried blood.

“There’s some kind of structure, but it’s too far away.”

Footsteps on the roof, the sound of the driver’s door, opening and closing again.

Hollis was reaching for his rifle.

Peter put a hand out to stop him. “Wait.”

Caleb: “Here they come-”

The door swung open, blazing their eyes with daylight. Two backlit figures stood before them, clutching shotguns. The woman was young, with dark hair shorn close to her scalp; the man, much older, had a soft, wide face and a nose that looked punched and a few days’ growth of beard. Both were still encased in their bulky body armor, making their heads seem strangely undersized.

“Hand over your weapons.”

“Who the hell are you people?” Peter demanded.

The woman cocked her shotgun. “Everything. Knives, too.”

They disarmed, sliding their guns and blades along the floor in the direction of the door. Michael didn’t have much more than a screwdriver left-he’d lost his rifle in the dash from the hotel, never having fired the damn thing once-but he handed it over anyway. He certainly didn’t want to get shot over a screwdriver. While the woman collected their weapons, the second figure, who had yet to utter a word, kept his gun trained on all of them. In the distance, Michael could make out the shape of a long, low building set against a bulge of barren hills.

“Where are you taking us?” Peter asked.

The woman lifted a metal pail from the ground and placed it on the floor of the truck. “If you have to piss, use this.” Then she slammed the door.

Peter slapped the wall of the truck. “Fuck.”

They drove on. The temperature was rising steadily. The truck decelerated again, turning west. For a long time the vehicle bounced violently; then they began to climb. By now the air in the cabin had become intolerably hot. They drank the last of their water; no one had used the pail.

Peter pounded on the wall that separated them from the truck’s cab. “Hey, we’re roasting back here!”

Time passed, and passed some more. No one spoke; just breathing was an effort. It seemed that some terrible joke had been played on them. They had been rescued from the virals only to be cooked to death in the back of a truck. Michael had begun to drift in and out of a state that felt like sleep but not exactly. He was hot, so hot. At some point he realized they were descending, though this detail seemed trivial, as if it pertained to some other person.

Gradually the fact seeped into Michael’s awareness that the vehicle had stopped. He had been lost in a vision of water, cool water. It was pouring over and through him, and his sister was there, and Elton too, smiling that off-kilter smile of his. Everyone was there, Peter and Mausami and Alicia and even his parents, they all were swimming in it together, its healing blueness, and for a moment Michael willed his mind to return to it, this beautiful dream of water.

“My God,” a voice said.

Michael opened his eyes to a harsh white light and smell, unmistakable, of animal dung. He rolled his face toward the door and saw a pair of figures-he knew he had seen them before but could not say when-and standing between them, brilliantly backlit so that he seemed almost to hover, a tall man with steel-gray hair, wearing what appeared to be an orange jumpsuit. “My God, my God,” the man was saying. “Seven of them. It’s beyond belief.” He turned to the others. “Don’t just stand there. We need stretchers. Hurry.”