The Passage

SEVENTY-ONE

They came down the mountain as the river was thawing, riding on top of the snow. They came down as one, wearing their packs, brandishing blades. They came down to the valley, Michael at the wheel of the Sno-Cat with Greer beside him, the others up top, the wind and sun in their faces. They came down at last, into the wild country they had reclaimed.

They were going home.

They had been on the mountain one hundred and twelve days. In all that time they had seen not a single viral. For days after they had crossed the ridge, the snow had poured down, sealing them inside the lodge of the old hotel. A great stone building, its doors and windows covered by sheets of plywood, set into the frame with heavy screws. They had expected to find bodies inside but the place was empty, the furniture around the hearth of its cavernous front room draped in ghostly white sheets, the larder of its vast kitchen stocked with every kind of can, many still with their labels. Upstairs, a warren of bedrooms, and in the basement, a huge, silent furnace and long racks lining the walls, holding skis. The place was as cold as the grave. They didn’t know if the chimney was blocked; at the very least it would be full of leaves and birds’ nests. The only thing to do was light a fire and hope for the best. In the office, they found boxes of paper packed away in a closet; they rolled it up for kindling and, with Peter’s axe, chopped up a pair of dining room chairs. After a few smoky minutes, the room blazed with light and warmth. They dragged mattresses down from the second floor and slept by the fire, while the snow piled up outside.

They had found the Sno-Cats the following morning: three of them, resting on their treads in a garage behind the lodge. You think you can get one of these things running? Peter asked Michael.

It had taken most of the winter. By then, everyone was half stir-crazy, anxious to be leaving. The days were longer, and the sun seemed to hold a distant, remembered warmth; but still the snow was deep, rising in great drifts against the walls of the lodge. They had burned most of the furniture and the railings of the porch. From the three Sno-Cats, Michael had harvested enough parts to make one go, or so he believed; it was fuel that was the problem. The large tank behind the shed was empty, fissured with rot. All he had was what was in the Cats themselves, just a few gallons, badly contaminated by rust. He siphoned this off into plastic pails and poured it through a funnel lined with rags. He let it settle overnight, then repeated the process, each time stripping more debris away but also depleting his supply. By the time he was satisfied, he had just five gallons left, which he poured back into the Cat.

“No promises,” he warned everyone. He’d done his best to flush the fuel tank, running gallon after gallon of melted snow through it, but it wouldn’t take much to gum up a fuel line. “The damn thing could kick a hundred meters from here,” he said. Though he knew they wouldn’t take this warning seriously.

It was a sunny morning when they rolled the Cat from the shed and loaded up their gear. Gigantic icicles, like long, jeweled teeth, hung from the eaves of the lodge. Greer, who had helped Michael with the repairs-it turned out he’d been an oiler once and knew a thing or two about engines-took a place in the cab beside him. The others would ride on top, on a wide metal platform with a rail. They had removed the plow to cut the weight, hoping to squeeze a few more miles from what little fuel they had.

Michael opened the window and directed his voice to the rear of the vehicle. “Is everyone on board?”

Peter was lashing the last of the gear to the back of the Sno-Cat. Amy had taken her position at the rail; Hollis and Sara stood below him, passing up the skis. “Hold on a minute,” he said. He rose and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Lish, let’s get a move on!”

She emerged from the lodge. Like all of them, she was wearing a red nylon jacket with the words SKI PATROL printed on the back, and small leather boots that fit the skis, her leggings covered to the knees by a pair of canvas gaiters. Her hair had grown back, an even more vivid shade of red, mostly hidden now beneath the band of her long-brimmed cap. Over her eyes she wore dark glasses with leather pieces attached to the lenses, hugging the sides of her face like a pair of goggles.

“Seems like we’re always leaving somewhere,” she answered. “I just wanted to say goodbye to the place.”

She was standing on the edge of the porch, ten meters away, roughly level with the platform on the Sno-Cat. Peter detected, in the sudden, curving grin on her face and the way she tipped her head, first this way and then the other, what she was about to attempt-that she was gauging the distance and angle. She removed her hat, releasing her red hair into the sunshine, and tucked it inside her Velcroed jacket; she took three steps back, bending at the knees. Her hands, at her sides, gave a watery shake, then stilled. She rose on her toes.

“Lish-”

Too late; two quick bounds and she was up. The porch where she had stood was empty; Alicia was lifting through the air. It was, Peter thought, a sight to see. Alicia Blades, Youngest Captain Since The Day; Alicia Donadio, the Last Expeditionary, airborne. She swept across the sun, arms outstretched, feet together; at the apex of her ascent, she tucked her chin against her chest and rolled head over heels, aiming the soles of her boots at the Sno-Cat, arms rising, her body descending toward them like an arrow. She hit the platform with a shuddering clang, melting to a crouch to absorb the force of the impact.

“Fuck!” Michael swiveled at the wheel. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” Peter said. He could still feel the metallic hum of her landing, chiming through his bones. “Just Lish.”

Alicia rose and tapped the glass of the cab. “Relax, Michael.”

“Flyers, I thought we’d blown the engine.”

Hollis and Sara climbed aboard; Alicia took her place at the rail and turned to Peter. Even through the smoky opaqueness of her glasses, Peter could detect the orange thrum of her eyes.

“Sorry,” she said with a guilty grin. “I thought I could nail it.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to you doing that,” he said.

The blade had never fallen. Or rather, it had fallen, when suddenly it stopped.

Everything had stopped.

It was Alicia who had done it, seizing Peter by the wrists. Freezing the blade in its downward arc, inches from her chest. The restraints had ripped away, like paper. Peter felt the power in her arms, a titanic force, more than human, and knew he was too late.

But when she opened her eyes, it was Alicia he saw.

“If it’s okay with you, Peter,” she’d said, “would you mind closing those shades? Because it’s really, really bright in here.”

The New Thing. That’s what they were calling her. Neither one nor the other, but somehow both. She couldn’t feel the virals, as Amy could; couldn’t hear the question, the great sadness of the world. In every respect she seemed herself, the same Alicia she had always been, save one:

When she chose to, she could do the most astounding things.

But then, Peter thought, when had that not been true of her?

• • •

The Sno-Cat died within sight of the valley floor. A chuffing and wheezing, followed by a final sneeze of smoke from the exhaust pipe; they coasted a few more meters on the treads and came to rest.

“That’s it,” Michael called from the cab. “We hoof it from here.”

Everyone climbed down. Peter could detect, rising from the trees below, the sound of the river, swollen with runoff. Their destination was the garrison, at least two days of travel in the sticky spring snow. They unloaded their gear and strapped themselves into their skis. They had learned the basics from a book they’d found in the lodge, a slender, yellowed volume called Principles of Nordic Skiing, though the words and pictures it contained made the thing itself look easier than it actually was. Greer, of all people, could barely stay upright and, even when he managed it, was always flying off helplessly into the trees. Amy did her best to help him-she had taken to it immediately, gliding and pushing off with a nimble grace-and showed him what to do. “Like this,” she’d say. “You just kind of fly along the snow. It’s easy.” It wasn’t easy, not by a long shot, and the rest of them had suffered more than their share of tumbles but, with practice, had all become at least passably proficient.

“Ready, everyone?” Peter asked, as he snapped his bindings closed. A murmured assent from the group. It was just shy of half-day, the sun high in the sky. “Amy?”

The girl nodded. “I think we’re all right.”

“Okay, everyone. All eyes.”

They crossed the river at the old iron bridge, turned west, spent one night in the open, and reached the garrison by the end of the second day. Spring was in the valley. At this lower altitude, most of the snow had melted away, and the exposed ground was thick with mud. They traded their skis for the Humvee the battalion had left behind, supplied themselves with food and fuel and weapons from the underground cache, and set out once again.

They could carry enough diesel to take them as far as the Utah line. Maybe a little farther. After that, unless they found more, they’d be on foot again. They cut south, skirting the hills, into a dry country of blood-red rocks rising around them in fantastic formations. At night they took refuge where they could-a grain elevator, the back of an empty semi-truck, a gas station shaped like a tepee.

They knew they were not safe. The ones of Babcock were dead, but there were others. The ones of Sosa. The ones of Lambright. The ones of Baffes and Morrison and Carter and all the rest. That was what they had learned. That was what Lacey had showed them when she’d exploded the bomb, and Amy, when she had stood among the Many as they lay down in the snow and died. What the Twelve were, but even more: how to set the others free.

“I think the closest analogue would be bees,” Michael had said. During their long days on the mountain, Peter had given everyone Lacey’s files to read; the group had spent many hours in debate. But ultimately it was Michael who had advanced the hypothesis that pulled all the facts together.

“These Twelve original subjects,” he went on, gesturing over the files, “they’re like the queens, each with a different variant of the virus. Carriers of that variant are part of a collective mind, linked to the original host.”

“How do you figure that?” Hollis asked. Of all of them, he was the most skeptical, pressing on every point.

“The way they move, for starters. Haven’t you ever wondered about that? Everything they do looks coordinated because it is, just like Olson said. The more I think about it, the more this makes sense. The fact that they always travel in pods-bees do the same thing, traveling in swarms. I’ll bet they send out scouts the same way, to establish new hives, like the one in the mine. And it explains why they take up one person out of ten. Think of it as a kind of reproduction, a way of continuing a particular viral strain.”

“Like a family?” Sara said.

“Well, that’s putting it nicely. We’re talking about virals here, don’t forget. But yes, I suppose you could look at it that way.”

Peter remembered something Vorhees had said to him, that the virals were-what was the word? Clustering. He related this to the group.

“It follows,” Michael agreed, nodding along. “There’s very little large game left, and almost no people. They’re running out of food, and running out of new hosts to infect. They’re a species like any other, programmed to survive. So pulling together like that could be a kind of adaptation, to conserve their energy.”

“Meaning… they’re weaker now?” Hollis tendered.

Michael considered this, rubbing his patchy beard. “‘Weaker’ is a relative term,” he replied guardedly, “but yes, I’d say so. And I’ll go back to the bee analogy. Everything a hive does, it does to protect its queen. If Vorhees was right, then what you’re seeing is a consolidation around each of these original Twelve. I think that’s what we found at the Haven. They need us, and they need us alive. I’ll bet there are eleven more big hives like it somewhere.”

“And what if we could find them?” Peter said.

Michael frowned. “I’d say it was nice knowing you.”

Peter leaned forward in his chair. “But what if we could? What if we could find the rest of the Twelve and kill them?”

“When the queen dies, the hive dies with it.”

“Like Babcock. Like the Many.”

Michael glanced cautiously at the others. “Look, it’s just a theory. We saw what we saw, but I could be wrong. And that doesn’t solve the first problem, which is finding them. It’s a big continent. They could be anyplace.”

Peter was suddenly aware that everyone was looking at him.

“Peter?” This was Sara, seated beside him. “What is it?”

They always go home, he thought.

“I think I know where they are,” said Peter.

They drove on. It was on their fifth night out-they were in Arizona, near the Utah border-that Greer turned to Peter, saying, “You know, the funny thing is, I always thought it was all made up.”

They were sitting by a fire of crackling mesquite, a concession to the cold. Alicia and Hollis were on watch, patrolling the perimeter; the others were asleep. They were in a broad, empty valley, and had taken shelter for the night beneath a bridge over a dry arroyo.

“What was?”

“The movie. Dracula.” Greer had grown leaner over the weeks. His hair had grown back in a tonsure of gray, and he had a full beard now. It was hard to recall a time when he wasn’t one of them. “You didn’t see the end, did you?”

That night in the mess: to Peter, it seemed like long ago. He thought back, trying to remember the order of events.

“You’re right,” he said finally. “They were going to kill the girl when Blue Squad came back. Harker and the other one. Van Helsing.” He shrugged. “I was sort of glad I didn’t have to watch that part.”

“See, that’s the thing. They don’t kill the girl. They kill the vampire. Stake the son of a bitch right in the sweet spot. And just like that, Mina wakes up, good as new.” Greer shrugged. “I never really bought that part, to tell you the truth. Now I’m not so sure. Not after what I saw on that mountain.” He paused. “Do you really think they remembered who they were? That they couldn’t die until they did?”

“That’s what Amy says.”

“And you believe her.”

“Yes.”

Greer nodded, allowing a moment to pass. “It’s funny. I’ve spent my whole life trying to kill them. I’ve never really thought about the people they used to be. For some reason, it never seemed important. Now I find myself feeling sorry for them.”

Peter knew what he meant; he had thought the same thing.

“I’m just a soldier, Peter. Or at least I was. Technically, I’m about as AWOL as you get. But everything that’s happened, it means something. Even my being here, with you. It feels like more than chance.”

Peter remembered the story Lacey had told him, about Noah and the ship, realizing something he hadn’t thought of before. Noah wasn’t alone. There were the animals, of course, but that wasn’t all. He had taken his family with him.

“What do you think we’re supposed to do?” he asked.

Greer shook his head. “I don’t think it’s up to me. You’re the one with those vials in your pack. That woman gave them to you and no one else. As far as I’m concerned, my friend, that decision is yours.” He rose, taking up his rifle. “But speaking as a soldier, ten more Donadios would make a hell of a weapon.”

They spoke no more that night. Moab was two days away.

They approached the farmstead from the south, Sara at the wheel of the Humvee, Peter up top with the binoculars.

“Anything?” Sara called.

It was late afternoon. Sara had brought the vehicle to a halt on the wide plain of the valley. A hard, dusty wind had arisen, obscuring Peter’s vision. After four warm days the temperature had fallen again, cold as winter.

Peter climbed down, blowing onto his hands. The others were crowded onto the benches with their gear. “I can see the buildings. No movement. The dust is too heavy.”

Everyone was silent, fearful of what they’d find. At least they had fuel; south of the town of Blanding, they had stumbled across-actually driven straight into-a vast fuel depot, two dozen rust-streaked tanks poking from the soil like a field of giant mushrooms. They realized that if they planned their route correctly, seeking out airfields and the larger towns, especially those with railheads, they should be able to find enough usable fuel along the way to get them home, as long as the Humvee itself held out.

“Pull ahead,” Peter said.

She drew forward slowly, onto the street of little houses. Peter thought, with a sinking feeling, that it all seemed just like it had when they’d found it, empty and abandoned. Surely Theo and Mausami should have heard the sound of their motor and come out by now. Sara drew up to the porch of the main house and silenced the engine; everyone got out. Still no sounds or movement from inside.

Alicia spoke first, touching Peter on the shoulder. “Let me go.”

But he shook his head; the job was his. “No. I’ll do it.”

He ascended the porch and opened the door. He saw at once that everything had changed. The furniture had been moved around, made more comfortable, even homey. An arrangement of old photographs stood on the mantel above the ashy hearth. He stepped forward and felt for heat, but the fire had gone cold, long ago.

“Theo?”

No reply. He moved into the kitchen, everything tidy and scrubbed and put away. He remembered, with an icy chill, the story Vorhees had told about the disappearing town-what was its name? Homer. Homer, Oklahoma. Dishes on the table, everything neat as a pin, all the people simply vanished into thin air.

The top of the stairs met a narrow hallway with two doors, one for each bedroom. Peter gingerly opened the first one. The room was empty, undisturbed.

His hope all but gone, Peter opened the second door.

Theo and Maus were lying on the big bed, fast asleep. Maus was facing away, a blanket drawn around her shoulders, black hair spilling over the pillow; Theo was lying stiffly on his back, his left leg splinted from ankle to hip. Between the two of them, peeking from the porthole of its heavy swaddling, was a baby’s tiny face.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Theo, opening his eyes and smiling to reveal a line of broken teeth. “Will you look what the wind blew in.”

SEVENTY-TWO

The first thing Maus did was ask them to bury Conroy. She would have done it herself, she said, but she was simply not able. With Theo and the baby to take care of, she’d had to leave him where he was for the three days since the attack. Peter carried what was left of the poor animal to the yard of graves, where Hollis and Michael had dug a hole beside the others, moving stones to mark the perimeter in the same manner. If not for the freshly turned earth, Conroy’s grave would have looked no different at all.

How they had survived the attack in the barn was nothing Theo or Mausami could wholly explain. Huddled in the backseat of the car with baby Caleb, her face pressed to the floor, Mausami had heard the shotgun go off; when she lifted her face to see the viral lying on the floor of the barn, dead, she assumed that Theo had shot him. But Theo maintained that he had no memory of this, and the gun itself was lying several meters away, near the door-far beyond his reach. At the moment when he heard the shot, his eyes were closed; the next thing he knew, Mausami’s face was hovering over him in the dark, saying his name. He’d assumed the only thing that made sense: that she had been the one. She had somehow gotten ahold of the shotgun and fired the shot that had saved them.

This left as the only possibility a third, unseen party-the owner of the footprints Theo had found in the barn. But how such a person would arrive at just the right moment and then escape without being detected-and, most curiously of all, why he or she would want to do such a thing-was unaccountable. They had found no more prints in the dust, no additional evidence that anyone else had been there. It was as if they’d been saved by a ghost.

The other question was why the viral hadn’t simply killed them when it had the chance. Neither Theo nor Mausami had returned to the barn since the attack; the body, sheltered from the sun, still lay inside. But once Alicia and Peter went to look, the mystery was solved. Neither of them had ever seen a viral corpse that was more than a few hours old, and, in fact, the passing days in the dark barn had brought about a wholly unexpected effect, the skin drawing more tightly over the bones to restore a semblance of recognizable humanness to its face. The viral’s eyes were open, clouded over like marbles. The fingers of one hand lay spread upon its chest, splayed over the cratered wound from the shotgun-a gesture of surprise or even shock. Peter was touched by a feeling of familiarity, as if he were viewing a person he knew at a great distance, or through some incidentally reflective surface. But it wasn’t until Alicia said the name that he knew, and once she did, all uncertainty vanished from his mind. The curve of the viral’s brow and the look of puzzlement on his face, accentuated by the cold blankness of his gaze; the searching gesture of his hand upon his wound, as if, in the last instant, he had sought to verify what was happening to him. There was no doubt that the man on the floor of the barn was Galen Strauss.

How had he come to be here? Had he set out in search of them and been taken up along the way, or was it the reverse? Was it Mausami or the baby he had wanted? Had he come to seek revenge? To say goodbye?

What was home to Galen Strauss?

Alicia and Peter rolled the corpse onto a tarp and dragged it away from the house. They had intended to burn it, but Mausami objected. He might have been a viral, she said, but he was my husband once. He didn’t deserve what happened to him. He should be buried with the others. At least let’s give him that.

So that was what they did.

It was late afternoon on their second day at the farmstead when they laid Galen to rest. All had gathered in the yard except for Theo, who was still confined to bed and would, in fact, remain there for many more days. Sara suggested that they each tell a story of something they remembered about Galen-a struggle at the start, since he was not someone any of them except for Maus had known all that well or even much liked. But eventually they managed it, relating some incident in which Galen had done or said something funny or loyal or kind, while Greer and Amy looked on, witnesses to the ritual. By the time they were done Peter realized that something significant had occurred, an acknowledgment that, once made, could not be unmade. The body they had buried might have been a viral, but the person they had buried was a man.

The last to speak was Mausami. She was holding baby Caleb, who had fallen asleep. She cleared her throat, and Peter saw that her eyes were damp with tears.

“I just want to say that he was a lot braver than people thought he was. The truth was, he could barely see at all. He didn’t want anybody to know how bad it was, but I could tell. He was just too proud to admit it. I’m sorry I deceived him like I did. I know he wanted to be a father, and maybe that’s why he came here. I guess it’s strange to say, but I think he would have been a good one. I wish he’d had that chance.”

She fell silent, shifting the baby to her shoulder and using her free hand to wipe her eyes. “That’s all,” she said. “Thanks for doing this, everyone. If it’s okay, I’d like a minute by myself.”

The group dispersed, leaving Maus alone. Peter ascended the stairs to the bedroom and found his brother awake and sitting up, his splinted leg stretched before him. In addition to the broken leg, Sara thought he had at least three cracked ribs. All things considered, he was lucky to be alive.

Peter moved to the window with its view of the yard below. Maus was still standing by the grave, facing away. The baby had awakened and begun to fuss; Maus was rotating back and forth on her hips, one hand cupping the back of Caleb’s head where it lay over her shoulder, trying to settle him.

“Is she still out there?” Theo asked.

Peter turned to his brother, whose face was pointed at the ceiling now.

“It’s okay if she is,” Theo said. “I was just… wondering.”

“Yes, she’s still out there.”

Theo said nothing more, his expression unreadable.

“How’s the leg?” Peter ventured.

“Like shit.” Theo ran his tongue along his fractured teeth. “It’s these teeth that bug me the most, though. Like there’s nothing where something should be. I can’t get used to it.”

Peter let his eyes drift out the window again; the space where Maus had stood was empty. From below he heard the sound of the kitchen door closing, then opening again, and Greer stepped out, carrying a rifle. He stood a moment, then crossed the yard to the woodpile by the barn, balanced the rifle against the wall, took up the axe, and began to split logs.

“Look,” Theo said. “I know I let you down, staying behind.”

Peter turned to face his brother once more. From elsewhere in the house now, he could hear the voices of the others, gathering in the kitchen.

“It’s okay,” he said. With all that had happened, Peter had put this disappointment aside, long ago. “Maus needed you. I would have done the same thing.”

But his brother shook his head. “Just let me talk a minute. I know it took a lot of courage, what you did. I wouldn’t want you to think I didn’t notice. But that’s not what I’m talking about, not really. Courage is easy, when the alternative is getting killed. It’s hope that’s hard. You saw something out there that no one else could, and you followed it. That’s something I could never do. I tried, believe me, if only because Dad seemed to want me to so badly. But it just wasn’t in me. And you know what’s funny? It actually made me glad when I figured that out.”

He sounded almost angry, Peter thought. And yet a lightness had come into his brother’s face as he’d spoken.

“When?” Peter asked.

“When what?”

“When did you figure it out?”

Theo’s eyes flicked upward. “The truth? I think I always knew, at least about myself. But it was that first night at the power station when I saw, really saw, what you had in you. Not just going outside the way you did, because I’m sure that was Lish’s idea. It was the look on your face, like you’d seen your whole life out there. I chewed you out, sure. It was stupid and it could have gotten us all killed. But mostly I felt relieved. I knew I didn’t have to pretend anymore.” He sighed and shook his head. “I never wanted to be Dad, Peter. I always thought the Long Rides were crazy, even before he rode away and never came back. I couldn’t see the sense in any of it. But now I look at you, and Amy, and I know that making sense isn’t the point. Nothing about any of this makes sense. What you did, you did on faith. I don’t envy you, and I know I’m going to worry about you every day of my life. But I am proud of you.” He paused. “Want to know something else?”

Peter was too astounded to answer. All he could manage was a nod.

“I think it really was a ghost that saved us. Ask Maus, she’ll tell you. I don’t know what it is, but something’s different here. I thought I was dead. I thought we were all dead. I didn’t just think it, I knew it. The same way I know this. It’s like the place itself is watching over us, taking care of us. Telling us that as long as we’re here, we’ll be safe.” His eyes met Peter’s with a haunted look. “You don’t have to believe me.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t.”

Theo laughed, grimacing through the pain of his bandaged ribs. “That’s good,” he said, flopping his head back down to the pillow. “Because I believe in you, brother.”

For the time being, they were going nowhere. Sara said that Theo’s leg would need at least sixty days before he could even think of walking, and Mausami was still very weak, enervated by her long and painful labor. Of all of them, baby Caleb was the only one who seemed completely well. Just a few days old, and yet his eyes were bright and open, looking about. He had sweet smiles for everyone, but for Amy most of all. Whenever he heard her voice, or even so much as felt her presence as she entered a room, he would utter a sharp and happy cry, flailing his arms and legs.

“I think he likes you,” Maus said one day in the kitchen, as she struggled to nurse. “You can hold him if you want.”

While Peter and Sara watched, Amy sat at the table and Mausami gently placed Caleb in her arms. One of his hands had come free from the swaddling. Amy bent her face toward him, allowing him to grab her nose with his tiny fingers. “A baby,” she said, smiling.

Maus gave a wry laugh. “That’s what he is, all right.” She pressed a palm against her chest, her aching breasts, and groaned. “Boy, is he ever.”

“I’ve never seen one.” Amy gazed into his face. Every bit of him was so new it was as if he were drenched in some miraculous, life-giving liquid. “Hello, baby.”

The house was too small to accommodate everyone, and Caleb needed quiet; they carried the extra mattresses out and moved into one of the empty houses across the trace. How long since there had been such activity here? Since more than one house had seen people living in it? By the river, great brambles of bitter raspberries appeared, sweetening in the sun; the water jumped with fish. Each day Alicia returned from the hunt, dust-dressed and smiling, game swinging from a lanyard slung across her back: long-eared jacks, fat partridges, something that looked like a cross between a squirrel and a groundhog and tasted like venison. She carried neither gun nor bow; all she used was a blade. “No one’s ever going to go hungry as long as I’m around,” she said.

It was, in its way, a happy time, an easy time-food plentiful, the days mild and lengthening, the nights quiet and apparently safe, under a blanket of stars. And yet, for Peter, a cloud of anxiety hung over all. In part he knew this was just his awareness of how temporary everything was, and the problems presented by their imminent departure-the logistics of food and fuel and weapons and the space to carry it all. They had only one Humvee, hardly large enough to accommodate everyone, especially a woman with a baby. There was also the question of what they would find at the Colony when they returned. Would the lights still be on? Would Sanjay have them arrested? A concern that might have seemed distant even a few weeks ago, nothing worth worrying over, but seemed so no longer.

Ultimately, however, it was not these questions that oppressed him. It was the virus. Ten remaining vials in their shiny metal container, resting in his pack where he had stored it in the closet of the house where he slept with Greer and Michael. The major was right; there could be no other reason why Lacey had given it to him. Already it had saved Alicia-more than saved her. This was the weapon Lacey had spoken of, more powerful than guns or blades or crossbows, more powerful even than the bomb she had used to kill Babcock. But stored in its metal box, it was doing nothing.

Greer was wrong about one thing, though. The decision wasn’t Peter’s to make alone; he needed everyone else to agree. The farmstead would be as good a place as any for what he intended. They would have to tie him up, of course; they could use a room in one of the empty houses. Greer could take care of him, if things went badly. Peter had seen that well enough.

He called them together one night. They gathered in the evening around a fire in the yard, all except Mausami, who was resting upstairs, and Amy, who was looking after baby Caleb. He had planned it this way; he didn’t want Amy to know. Not because she would object; he doubted that she would. But still he wanted to protect her from this decision and what it might mean. Theo had managed to hobble out on a pair of crutches that Hollis had fashioned from scrap wood; in another few days, the splints would be coming off. Peter had brought his pack with him, the vials inside. If everyone agreed, he saw no reason to delay. They sat on the ring of stones around the fire pit, and Peter explained what he wanted to do.

Michael was the first to speak. “I agree,” he said. “I think we should try it.”

“Well, I think it’s crazy,” Sara cut in. She raised her face to the others. “Don’t you see what this is? No one will say it, but I will. It’s evil. How many millions died because of what’s in that box? I can’t believe we’re even talking about this. I say put it in the fire.”

“You may be right, Sara,” Peter said. “But I don’t think we can afford to do nothing. Babcock and the Many may be dead, but the rest of the Twelve are still out there. We’ve seen what Lish can do, what Amy can do. The virus came to us for a reason, the same way Amy came to us. We can’t turn our backs on that now.”

“It could kill you, Peter. Or worse.”

“I’m willing to take that risk. And it didn’t kill Lish.”

Sara turned to Hollis. “Tell him. Please, tell him how completely insane this is.”

But Hollis shook his head. “I’m sorry. I think I’m with Peter on this.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“He’s right. There has to be a reason.”

“Why can’t the fact that we’re all alive be the reason?”

He reached for her hand. “It’s not enough, Sara. So we’re alive. What then? I want to have a life with you. A real life. No lights or walls, no standing the Watch. Maybe that’s for someone else, someday. Probably it is. But I can’t say no to what Peter’s asking, not while there’s a chance. And deep down, I don’t think you can either.”

“So we’ll fight them anyway. We’ll find the rest of the Twelve and fight them. As ourselves, as people.”

“And we will. I promise you. That will never change.”

Sara fell silent; Peter felt an understanding pass between them. By the time Hollis broke his gaze away, Peter knew what his friend was going to say.

“If this works, I’ll go next.”

Peter glanced at Sara. But he saw no more arguments there; she had accepted this.

“You don’t have to do that, Hollis.”

The big man shook his head. “I’m not doing it for you. If you want me to agree, that’s how it has to be. Take it or leave it.”

Peter turned to Greer, who nodded. Then he directed his eyes to his brother. Theo was sitting on a log on the far side of the circle, his splinted leg stretched out before him.

“Flyers, Peter. What do I know? I told you, this is your show.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s everyone’s.”

Theo paused. “Just so I understand you. You want to deliberately infect yourself with the virus, and you want me to say, Sure, go right ahead. And Hollis here wants to do the same thing, assuming you don’t die or kill all of us in the process.”

Peter felt the starkness of these terms; for the first time he wondered if he had the nerve. Theo’s question was, Peter realized, a test.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m asking you.”

Theo nodded. “Then okay.”

“That’s it? Just okay?”

“I love you, brother. If I thought I could talk you out of this, I would. But I know I can’t. I told you I was going to worry about you. I might as well start now.”

Peter turned at last to Alicia. She had removed her glasses, revealing the thrumming orange glow of her eyes, magnified to a sparkling intensity by the light of the fire. It was her consent he needed most of all; without it, he had nothing.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “I’m sorry to say it, but yes.”

There was no reason to wait. Too much time to consider the ramifications, Peter knew, and his courage could dissolve. He led them to the empty house he had prepared-the last one, at the far end of the trace. It was little more than a shell; nearly all of the interior walls had been removed, leaving the joists exposed. The windows were already boarded up, another reason Peter had selected it-that and the fact that it was farthest away. Hollis took up the ropes Peter had moved from the barn; Michael and Greer carried a mattress from one of the adjacent houses. Somebody had brought the lantern. While Hollis tied the ropes to the joists, Peter stripped to the waist and lay down on his back. He was suddenly very nervous, his awareness of everything around him almost painfully vivid, his heart beating very quickly in his chest. He raised his eyes to Greer. A silent bargain, struck between them: if it comes to that, don’t hesitate.

Hollis finished tying the ropes to his arms and legs, leaving Peter spread-eagled on the floor. The mattress smelled like mice. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself.

“Sara, do it now.”

She was cradling the box with the virus; in her other hand was one of the syringes, still sealed in plastic. Peter could see that her hands were trembling.

“You can do this.”

She passed the box to Michael. “Please,” she begged.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” He held the box away from his body, trying to give it back. “You’re the nurse.”

Peter felt a blast of exasperation. Any longer, and his resolve would fail him. “Will somebody, please, just get this done.”

“I’ll do it,” Alicia said.

She took the box from Michael, and opened it.

“Peter… ”

“What is it now? Flyers, Lish.”

She turned it in her hands to show them. “This box is empty.”

Amy, he thought. Amy, what have you done?

They found her kneeling by the fire pit as she was dropping the last vial into the flames. Baby Caleb lay against her shoulder, wrapped in a blanket. A sizzling pop flew up as the liquid inside the last vial expanded to a boil, shattering the glass.

Peter crouched on the ground beside her. He was too stunned even to feel angry. He didn’t know what he felt at all. “Why, Amy?”

She did not look at him but kept her eyes focused on the fire, as if to verify that the virus was really gone. With the fingers of her free hand she was gently stroking the baby’s cap of dark hair.

“Sara was right,” she said finally. “It was the only way to make sure.”

She lifted her eyes from the flames. And when Peter saw what lay inside them, he understood what she had done-that she had chosen to take this burden from him, from them all, and that this was a mercy.

“I’m sorry, Peter,” Amy said. “But it would have made you like me. And I couldn’t let that happen.”

They did not speak of that night again-of the virus, or the flames, or what Amy had done. Sometimes, in odd moments when he recalled these events, Peter felt, strangely, as if it had been a dream; or if not a dream, then something like a dream, with a dream’s texture of inevitability. And he came to believe that the destruction of the virus was not, in the end, the catastrophe he had feared but, rather, one more step on the road they would travel together, and that what lay ahead was something he could not know, nor needed to know. Like Amy herself, it was something he would take on faith.

The morning of their departure, Peter stood on the porch with Michael and Theo, watching the sun come up. His brother’s splints had come off at last; he could walk, but with a pronounced limp, and he tired quickly. Below them, Hollis and Sara were loading up the Humvee with the last of the gear. Amy was still inside with Maus, who was nursing Caleb one last time before they set out.

“You know,” Theo said, “I have the feeling that if we ever came back here, it would be just as it is now. Like it’s apart from everything. Like no time ever really passes here.”

“Maybe you will,” Peter said.

Theo fell silent, letting his gaze travel over the dusty street.

“Oh, hell, brother,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know. It’s nice to think it, though.”

Amy and Mausami emerged from the house. Everyone gathered around the Humvee. Another departure, another goodbye. There were hugs, good wishes, tears. Sara climbed behind the wheel, Hollis beside her, Theo and Mausami in the back with their gear. Also in the cargo compartment of the Humvee were the documents Lacey had given to Peter. Just deliver them, Peter had said, to whoever’s in charge.

Amy reached inside to give baby Caleb one last embrace. As Sara turned the engine over, Greer stepped to the open driver’s window.

“Remember what I said. From the fuel depot, straight south on Highway 191. You should be able to pick up Route 60 in Eagar. That’s the Roswell Road, takes you straight to the garrison. There’s fortified bunkers about every hundred kilometers. I marked them on Hollis’s map, but look for the red crosses, you can’t miss them. Nothing fancy, but it should get you through. Gas, ammo, whatever you need.”

Sara nodded. “Got it.”

“And whatever you do, stay away from Albuquerque-the place is crawling. Hollis? All eyes.”

In the passenger seat, the big man nodded. “All eyes, Major.”

Greer stepped back, making space for Peter to approach.

“Well,” Sara said, “I guess this is it.”

“I guess so.”

“Take care of Michael, all right?” She snuffled and wiped her eyes. “He needs… looking after.”

“You can count on it.” He reached in to shake Hollis’s hand, wished him good luck, then lifted his voice to the rear of the Humvee. “Theo? Maus? All set back there?”

“Ready as we’ll ever be, brother. We’ll see you in Kerrville.”

Peter backed away. Sara put the Humvee in gear, swung the vehicle in a wide circle, and pulled slowly down the street. The five of them-Peter, Alicia, Michael, Greer, and Amy-stood in silence, watching it go. A boiling plume of dust, the sound of its motor fading, then gone.

“Well,” Peter said finally, “the day’s not getting any younger.”

“Is that a joke?” Michael said.

Peter shrugged. “I guess it was.”

They retrieved their packs and hoisted them onto their backs. As Peter took his rifle from the floor, he spied Amy still standing at the edge of the porch, her eyes tracing the drifting cloud of the Humvee’s departure.

“Amy? What is it?”

She turned to face him. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I think they’ll be all right.” She smiled. “Sara is a good driver.”

There were no more words to say; the moment of departure was at hand. The morning sun had lifted over the valley. If everything went well, they would reach California by midsummer.

They began to walk.

SEVENTY-THREE

At a shimmering distance, they saw them: a vast field of turning blades, spinning in the wind.

The turbines.

They had kept to the deserts, the hot, dry places, sheltering where they could, and where they could not, building a fire and waiting out the nights. Once, and only once, did they see any virals alive. A pod of three. This was in Arizona, a place the map called “ Painted Desert.” The creatures were dozing in the shade beneath a bridge, hanging from the girders. Amy had felt them as they approached. Let me, Alicia said.

Alicia had taken them all. Three of them, on the blade. They found her in the culvert, pulling her knife from the chest of the last one; they had already begun to smoke. Easy, she said. They didn’t even seem to know what she was. Perhaps they simply thought she was another viral.

There were others. Bodies, the barest remains. The form of a blackened rib cage, the crumbling, ashlike bones of a hand or skull; the suggestive imprint on a square of asphalt, like something burned in a pan. Usually they came upon these remnants in the few towns they passed through. Most were lying not far from the buildings where they had slept and then departed, when they had laid themselves down in the sun to die.

Peter and the others had skirted Las Vegas, choosing a route far to the south; they believed the city would be empty, but better to be safe than sorry. By then it was the height of summer, the shadeless days long and brutal. They decided to bypass the bunker, taking the shortest possible route, and make straight for home.

Now they were here. They fanned out as they moved toward the power station. The fence, they saw, stood open. At the hatch, Michael got to work, unbolting the plate that covered the mechanism and manually turning the tumblers with the end of his blade.

Peter entered first. A bright metallic tinkling underfoot: he bent to look. Rifle cartridges.

The walls of the stairwell were shot to pieces. Chunks of concrete cluttered the stairs. The light had been blasted away. Alicia stepped forward, into the cool and gloom, pulling off her glasses; the darkness was no problem for her. Peter and the others waited as she descended to the control room, following the point of her rifle. They heard her whistle the all clear.

By the time they reached the bottom, Lish had found a lantern and lit the wick. The room was a mess. The long central table had been overturned, evidently to serve as a defense. The floor was littered with more cartridges and spent magazines. But the control panel itself looked all right, its meters glowing with current. They moved through the rear to the storage rooms and barracks.

No one. No bodies.

“Amy,” Peter said, “do you know what happened here?”

Like all of them, she was looking in mute astonishment at the extent of the destruction.

“Nothing? You don’t feel anything?”

She shook her head. “I think… people did this.”

The shelf that had hidden the guns had been pulled away; the guns on the roof were gone as well. What were they seeing? A battle, but who had been fighting whom? Hundreds of rounds had been fired in the hallway and the control room, more in the barracks, an overturned mess. Where were the bodies? Where was the blood?

“Well, there’s power,” Michael declared, sitting at the control panel. His hair flowed to his shoulders now. His skin was bronzed by the sun, wind-bit and peeling at his cheekbones. He was typing into the keypad, reading the numbers that flew down the screen. “Diagnostics are good. There should be plenty of juice going up the mountain. Unless… ” He paused, patting his lips with a finger; he began to type furiously again, rose briskly to check the meters above his head, and sat down once more. He tapped the screen with the back of a long fingernail. “Here.”

“Michael, just tell us,” Peter said.

“It’s the system backup log. Every night when the batteries get down below forty percent, they send a signal to the station, asking for more current. It’s all completely automated, nothing you’d ever see happening. The first time it happened was six years ago, then just about every night ever since. Until now. Until, let’s see, three hundred and twenty-three cycles ago.”

“Cycles.”

“Days, Peter.”

“Michael, I don’t know what that means.”

“It means either somebody figured out how to fix those batteries, which I seriously doubt, or they’re not drawing any current.”

Alicia frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t they?”

Michael hesitated; Peter could see the truth in his face.

“Because somebody turned the lights off,” he said.

They spent a restless night in the bunker and set out in the morning. By half-day they had made their way through Banning and begun to ascend. When they stopped to rest beneath the shade of a tall pine, Alicia turned to Peter.

“Just in case Michael’s wrong and we’re arrested, I want you to know I’m going to say I was the one who killed those men. I’ll take whatever’s coming to me, but I’m not going to let them have you. And they’re not touching Amy or the Circuit.”

This was more or less as he had expected. “Lish, you don’t have to do that. And I doubt Sanjay will do anything at this point.”

“Maybe not. But just so we’re clear. I’m not asking, either. Be ready. Greer? Understood?”

The major nodded.

But this warning was for naught. They knew it by the time they reached the final switchback in the road, above Upper Field. They could see the Wall now, rising through the trees, the catwalks unoccupied, no sign of the Watch. An eerie stillness hung over all. The gates stood open and unmanned.

The Colony was empty.

• • •

They found two bodies.

The first was Gloria Patal. She had hanged herself in the Big Room of the Sanctuary, among the empty cribs and cots. She had used a tall stepladder, ascending to affix the rope to one of the rafters, near the door. The ladder now lay on its side beneath her pointed feet, freezing the moment when she had put the noose around her neck and pushed off, sending the ladder swooning to the floor.

The other body was Auntie’s. It was Peter who found her, sitting in a kitchen chair in the small clearing outside her house. She had been dead many months, he knew, and yet very little seemed to have altered in her appearance. But when he touched her hand where it lay in her lap, he felt only the cold stiffness of death. Her head was tipped backward; her face wore a peaceful expression, as if she had simply fallen asleep. She had gone outside, he knew, when darkness had come and the lights did not go on. She had carried a chair into the yard, to sit and watch the stars.

“Peter.” Alicia touched his arm as he crouched beside the body. “Peter, what do you want to do?”

He pulled his eyes away, realizing only then that they were full of tears. The others were standing behind her, a silent chorus of witness.

“We should bury her here. Near her house, her garden.”

“We will,” Alicia said gently. “I meant about the lights. It will be dark soon. Michael says we have a full charge if we want.”

He glanced past her to Michael, who nodded.

“All right,” he said.

They closed the gate and gathered in the Sunspot-all except Michael, who had returned to the Lighthouse. It was just twilight, the sky purpling overhead. Everything seemed held in suspension; not even the birds were singing. Then with an audible pop the lights came on, dousing them all with a fierce and final brilliance.

Michael appeared to stand beside them. “We should be good for tonight.”

Peter nodded. They were silent for a time in the presence of this unspoken truth: one more night, and the lights of First Colony would darken forever.

“So now what?” Alicia asked.

In the stillness, Peter felt the presence of his friends around him. Alicia, whose courage was a part of him. Michael, grown lean and hard, a man now. Greer, his wise and soldierly countenance. And Amy. He thought of all that he had seen, and those who had been lost-not just the ones he knew of, but those whom he did not-and he knew what his answer was.

He said, “Now we go to war.”

SEVENTY-FOUR

The last hour before dawn: Amy crept from the house, alone. The house of the woman called Auntie, who had died; they had buried her where she’d sat, wrapping her body in a quilt from her bed. On her chest Peter had placed a photograph he had taken from her bedroom. The ground was hard, it had taken them many hours of digging, and when they were done, they had decided to sleep the night there. The woman’s house, Peter had said, would be as good as anyplace. He had a house of his own, Amy knew. But he did not seem to want to go back there.

Peter had stayed up most of the night, sitting in the old woman’s kitchen, reading from her book. His eyes squinted in the light of the lantern as he turned the pages of her small, neat script. He had made a cup of tea but did not drink it; it sat beside him on the table, untouched, forgotten as he read.

At last Peter slept, and Michael, and Greer, who had traded the watch with Alicia after half-night; she was up on the catwalk now. Amy stepped onto the porch, holding the door so it wouldn’t bang behind her. The earth was cool with dew under her bare feet, soft with a pillow of needles atop the hardpan. She found the tunnel under the trunkline without difficulty, dropped through the hatch, and wriggled through.

She had felt him for days, weeks, months. She knew that now. She had felt him for years, since the beginning. Since Milagro and the day of the not-talking and the big boat and long before, through all the years of time that stretched inside her. The one who followed her, who was always nearby, whose sadness was the sadness she felt in her heart. The sadness of missing her.

They always went home, and home was wherever Amy was.

She emerged from the tunnel. Dawn was moments away; the sky had begun to pale, the darkness dissolving around her like a vapor. She moved away from the walls, into the cover of the trees, and sent her mind outward, closing her eyes.

– Come to me. Come to me.

Stillness.

– Come to me, come to me, come to me.

She felt it then: a rustling. Not heard but sensed, gliding atop every surface, every part of her, kissing it like a breeze. The skin of her hands and neck and face, the scalp under her hair, the tips of her eyelashes. A soft wind of longing, breathing her name.

Amy.

– I knew you were there, she said, and wept, as he was weeping in his heart, for his eyes could not make tears.-I knew you were there.

Amy, Amy, Amy.

She opened her eyes to see him crouched before her. She stepped toward him, touching his face where the tears would have been; she put her arms around him. And as she held him, she felt the presence of his spirit within her, different from all the others she carried, because it was also her own. The memories poured through her like water. Of a house in the snow and a lake and a carousel with lights and the feel of his big hand wrapping her own on a night when they soared together beneath the eaves of heaven.

– I knew, I knew. I always knew. You were the one who loved me.

Dawn was breaking above the mountain. The sun was sweeping toward them like a blade of light over the earth. And yet she held him as long as she dared; she held him in her heart. Above her on the catwalk, Alicia was watching, Amy knew. But this didn’t matter. What she was witnessing would be a secret between them, a thing to know and never speak of. Like Peter, what he was. For Amy believed Alicia knew that, too.

– Remember, she told him. Remember.

But he was gone; her arms held only space. Wolgast was rising, he was lifting away.

A shudder of light in the trees.