5. The Passage, by Justin Cronin, pp. 164-208

I. The Worst Dream in the World, 5-1 B.V., Eleven-Fourteen

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Realizing the futility of trying to outrun the state troopers, Wolgast decides to surrender. Doyle agrees, so they turn back to the small town of Randall, Oklahoma, where they find a deputy sheriff eating breakfast at a diner. He takes them to the sheriff's office, where they're locked up while the sheriff calls the state troopers. But before the troopers can get there, Richards arrives, shoots everyone else in the sheriff's office, takes Wolgast, Doyle and Amy to the waiting helicopter, and, when the troopers arrive, uses a rocket to blast the remaining piece of evidence, the Tahoe, to bits.

Thirty-four days later, Wolgast is alone in a closely guarded room at the compound, having been there, separated from Amy and Doyle, since they arrived. Sykes appears, looking disheveled and worn, to ask Wolgast's help. They think Amy is dying and that Wolgast may be able to communicate with her. He is taken down to the subterranean observation room where he sees Amy on a hospital bed, connected to tubes. He's introduced to Fortes, who also looks exhausted. Fortes tells him that Amy is in a coma and they want Wolgast to try to talk to her. He refuses to wear the hazmat suit into the airlocked chamber: "It's not going to help if she wakes up and sees me in a space suit." Sykes authorizes the breach of protocol.

Grey has continued his routine as a sweeper, but like everyone else he is showing signs of stress. He notices Paulson in the commissary, looking "like shit, his skin stretched so tight over his face you could see the edges of his bones." Davis, too, on the security level, looks bad. Grey asks himself, "What is everyone so afraid of?"

Carter has become Number Twelve. He has lain there feeling sick as the virus takes effect: "something was happening to him, but it wasn't happening fast enough for the men in the suits." He also begins hearing voices, and realizes that there are twelve others like him. Finally, he breaks the restraints that hold him and attacks the tech, Pujol. "Anthony fell on him swiftly, from above. A scream and then the man was silent in wet pieces on the floor. The beautiful warmth of blood! He drank and drank."

Richards watches the video of the attack on Pujol, and observes that Carter had been taking the same form of the virus that they had been giving Amy. They had brought Carter under control by shining lights on him. Richards decides that Project NOAH is ready to become Operation Jumpstart: they will move the "sticks" to White Sands where the military will prepare for their use as weapons: "Just imagine what one of these things could do, say, in the mountain caves of northern Pakistan, or the eastern deserts of Iran, or the shot-up buildings of the Chechen Free Zone." Richards thinks it's "the stupidest idea he'd ever heard of in his life," and Sykes agrees, but he's following the orders from Special Weapons. Lear, Sykes says, doesn't know about it: "He still thinks he's trying to save the world."

Richards had killed the nuns, except for Lacey, who was still at large, and is preparing himself for liquidating the sweeps, techs and the soldiers. He spends his time watching the monitors, looking at Wolgast, who has sat by Amy day after day, and subject Number One, Giles Babcock, who stares at the camera as if waiting for the day when he can kill Richards. Then a call comes from the front gate that a black woman with an accent is there, looking for Wolgast.

Wolgast has been talking to Amy, and he tells her the story of the death of his daughter, Eva, who died of a heart defect three weeks short of her first birthday. When he tells Amy that when he found her "It was like she'd come back to me" and asks her to come back, she opens her eyes.

Lacey, who has made her way to the compound, sometimes riding, sometimes walking, and unerringly finding places to stay, is now running through the woods with the guards firing at her. She manages to escape and clamber on board a truck carrying a cargo of explosives.

Richards goes to the room where Doyle is being kept and orders him out. As they're walking across the parking lot, Doyle asks if Lacey is here yet. Astonished, Richards asks how he knows. Doyle says, "I could hear her coming."

Grey, on L4, hears Zero telling him "It's time." He enters the chamber, "and as Zero's bite found the soft place on his neck where the blood moved, he knew at last what the tenth rabbit was. The tenth rabbit was him."

While Richards is distracted by the sound of the alarm, Doyle escapes. Richards runs to the monitors and discovers that all of the chambers holding subjects were empty. They had all been released by the sweeps. On the monitors he sees Davis, dead, and watches as Paulson blows his brains out on camera. He tries to seal off the level, but there is an explosion in the elevator shaft and the lights go out.

Wolgast hears the commotion and the explosion, and when the emergency lights go on he makes his way to Amy's bed and disconnects her IVs. He is trying to decide what to do when the airlock opens and a long-haired, bearded, disheveled man appears. He talks about what has happened -- "the way they swooped down from the trees. Like the bats." But Wolgast doesn't understand what he's talking about. He introduces himself as Jonas Lear, but Wolgast has never heard the name. As Lear leads them, Wolgast sees Fortes's body and then others. Finally they encounter Grey, covered in blood, who collapses after saying, "I said to myself, Grey, you are having the worst dream in the world." Lear urges Wolgast to leave Grey behind, and leads Wolgast, carrying Amy, to a ventilation shaft with a ladder that goes to the surface. But when they enter, Lear closes the door, staying behind.

Richards makes his way through the turmoil to Sykes's office, where he finds the colonel wounded and vomiting blood. At Sykes's request, Richards shoots him.

Lacey has jumped from the truck and hidden in the woods, where she watches one of the "sticks" jump from an upper window and land in the trees a hundred yards away. Then others appear, and "one by one the demons fell upon the soldiers and they died." She leaves the woods, and when a soldier orders her to halt, a "demon" lands on him. She runs toward the building.

Wolgast is daunted by the task of carrying Amy up the ladder, holding her in one arm as he uses the other to climb, but he starts the attempt.

Richards exits the building and sees the truck carrying the explosives.

Doyle has been hiding in a first-floor office when Lacey appears. She tells him she knows where Wolgast and Amy are. He tells her that he heard her, "All these weeks." She tells him, "It wasn't me you heard, Agent Doyle."

Wolgast reaches the top of the ladder, but now faces the problem of getting Amy and himself into the duct next to the ladder. He manages to wake her enough to help him swing her into the opening, but he loses his balance and begins to fall, managing to save himself by grabbing the ridge of metal at the opening with his fingertips. He hoists himself into the opening and they scoot along the duct until they reach a grate. It is bolted from the outside, and Wolgast is about to lose hope when he hears Doyle say, "Chief?"

Richards makes it to the truck and finds a grenade launcher, which he loads and carries outside, calling, "Here kitty, kitty!"

Doyle finds a penknife and opens the grate. Wolgast is surprised to see Lacey there. Doyle tells him, "Trust me, I don't get it either." At the front entrance, they see more dead soldiers. Doyle goes outside where he finds a silver Lexus with the keys in it, as well as a gun. He gives the keys to Wolgast, who realizes that Doyle and Lacey will stay behind, if necessary, to let him and Amy escape. They leave the building, with Doyle leading, running toward the car.

Richards, carrying the RPG, encounters Carter, but misses because Carter is already leaping into the air. The grenade explodes into the building as Richards "experienced the sensation, utterly new to him, of being torn in half."

The exploding grenade knocks Wolgast down and deafens him in one ear. He also loses his grip on Amy, but when he finds her she is unhurt. He puts Amy in the back seat of the Lexus and starts the car just as Carter lands on the hood. He backs up quickly and dislodges Carter, who leaps into the air and disappears. The passenger door opens and Lacey gets in, holding a gun, which she drops on the floor. Doyle is running toward the car, yelling, "Just go!" There is a thump on the roof of the car that Wolgast knows is Carter, so he hits the brakes, sending Carter onto the hood. Doyle fires at Carter, but the bullets have no effect except that Carter notices Doyle and sails through the air. "Wolgast turned in time to see the creature that had once been Anthony Carter fall upon his partner, taking him in like a giant mouth."

They speed away, but Lacey tells him to stop: She is bleeding and "They will follow the blood." She tells him to take care of Amy and gets out of the car. He watches in the mirror as she waves her arms to attract the "demons" and they descend on her.

[It's clear that Cronin knows the conventions (not to say the clichés) of the thriller: The scene in which Richards walks into the sheriff's office and methodically shoots everyone appears in dozens of movies and TV dramas. So do the self-sacrificing good guys (Doyle, Lacey, possibly Lear). The various explosions -- the torpedoed Tahoe, the blasted elevator shaft, the RPG destroying the building and knocking Wolgast off course -- seem like instructions to the screenwriters for the inevitable movie. (Ridley Scott has the rights.) Even Wolgast hanging by his fingertips in the ventilation shaft -- and for that matter, the escape by ventilation shaft -- evokes a sense of déjà vu. (Has anyone in that predicament ever really been able to hoist themselves up to safety?) This is not to denigrate Cronin's skill in using them, however. Just a wish to see something new.]

4. The Passage, by Justin Cronin, pp. 92-163

I. The Worst Dream in the World, 5-1 B.V., Six-Ten

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[I'm going to try to keep these summaries shorter -- to stick to the plot and not get too involved in the details that give the story texture.] 

Lacey, who has overslept, decides to skip Mass and take Amy to the zoo. Sister Claire, a novitiate who joined the order after a bad marriage, agrees to cover for her. At the zoo, Amy asks to see the polar bears, but she seems to have a strange rapport with the creatures, all four of whom gather in front of her at the window that separates them from the crowd, causing water to splash over the barrier and threatening to break the glass. To Lacey, a sorrowful Amy says that the polar bears know "What I am."

At the convent, Sister Arnette has returned to find Lacey and Amy gone, and Sister Claire confesses that they went to the zoo. Arnette is concerned because she knows the real story about Lacey, whose family had been killed in the civil war. Lacey had been found by UN workers after being assaulted and left for dead. In Arnette's view Lacey "might just as well have been dead, if God hadn't protected her by washing her mind of these events." As Arnette is about to call the police, Wolgast and Doyle arrive, claiming "that Amy is a federal witness" and that they are there to "place her under protection." But while they are talking, the police call to tell Arnette that there is a disturbance at the zoo and it seems to center on a black nun with a little girl.

At the zoo all the animals seem to have gone mad, terrifying the crowds. Lacey feels the presence of a "dark man" who was coming for Amy, and the thought links in her mind with her ordeal in Sierra Leone. She picks up Amy and runs for the exit, but in the parking lot she freezes when she hears a gunshot. Claire and Arnette arrive in the van the nuns drive, followed by Wolgast and Doyle in a black sedan. Arnette grabs Amy and hands her to the FBI men, who drive away with her as Lacey collapses, filled with visions of her night in the field in Sierra Leone as well as an apocalyptic vision of the future.

Carter is on his way to the facility in Colorado, riding in a van with two soldiers, Paulson and Davis. After what seems like initial kindness, Paulson begins to mock Carter as "retarded," although Davis tries to make him stop. Paulson also says that Carter must have raped Rachel Wood, which makes Carter feel sick.

Wolgast and Doyle are making their way out of Memphis with Amy. Wolgast is increasingly upset with what they're doing, now that he's seen Amy. Realizing that there were witnesses to Amy's abduction, he checks in with Sykes and trades their sedan for a Chevy Tahoe. 

Richards meets Carter, still in the custody of Paulson and Davis, at the compound. Sensing what has gone on between Carter and the soldiers, and eager to gain Carter's trust, he draws his gun and threatens to shoot Paulson, making Carter feel better even after Richards admits he wouldn't really have shot the soldier.

Wolgast and Doyle are in Oklahoma after making a stop to pick up cash that Sykes had delivered to them. Wolgast declined the new car that was provided as well, choosing to keep the Tahoe. He also declined the bag of weapons and bulletproof vests that were in the trunk of the car. Amy has remained quiet, but Wolgast senses that she's only pretending to sleep. When Amy declares that she needs to go to the bathroom, she insists that Wolgast, not Doyle, accompany her. Now that she's beginning to open up a little, Wolgast tries to reassure her that she shouldn't be afraid. She says she isn't: "You are."

In a small town called Homer, they find a carnival taking place. Wolgast suggests that they take a break there and take Amy on some rides. Doyle reluctantly agrees, but points out that two men in suits with a little girl would attract suspicion, so they change into jeans and sport shirts and go separate ways, Amy staying with Wolgast. She wants to go on the Octopus, and when the ride ends wants to go again.

Wolgast looked down at Amy's face; still that neutral, appraising gaze, yet he detected, behind the darkness of her eyes, a warm light of happiness. A new feeling opened inside him; no one had ever given her such a present.

After riding the Octopus three more times and eating a hot dog, funnel cake and milk, Amy wants to go on the carousel. Wolgast is so taken with playing Amy's father that he thinks, "Lila, this was what I wanted. Did you know? It's all I ever wanted." He sees Doyle flirting with a woman and suddenly makes a plan to escape from everything, to run away with Amy. He tries it, but Doyle catches up with them. Wolgast realizes that Doyle has anticipated this attempt, and when Wolgast starts to plead with his partner, Doyle says, "not menacing, merely stating the facts. 'Don't even say the words. We're partners, Brad. It's time to go.'" But neither of them see that they're being watched by an off-duty state trooper who has seen a report about two men kidnapping a girl at the Memphis zoo.

Grey is hearing a voice that keeps saying: "I was called Fanning." He has slept through his morning shift and is not due to work again until 10 p.m. He has dinner at the commissary and is finishing his meal when Paulson comes up to his table and starts to bully him, wanting Grey to tell him about Level Four. Grey insists that he's just a janitor, but Paulson persists. He asks if Grey dreams, and says, "Well, I sure as hell dream. All goddamn night long. One after the other. I am dreaming some crazy shit.... I dream about you." Then he tells Grey that Jack and Sam are dead. "We're all dead."

Carter has been sedated and had something put in the back of his neck, and now remembers someone pushing the button L4 in the elevator. He is afraid that he is being executed after all. He remembers Wolgast telling him, "I can give you all the time in the world, Anthony. An ocean of time." And he recalls how Rachel Wood had stopped at the traffic light where he was begging with his sign, rolled down the window and fumbled with her purse trying to find some money to give him. The light changed and people began to honk while she continued to look through her purse. A man got out of one of the backed-up cars, carrying a gun, accusing Carter of carjacking. Panicked, Rachel opened the passenger door and let Carter in. In the car, she told him that what attracted her about his sign was the words "God bless you," because she didn't feel blessed.

He went to work for her and for her friends, but after an initial period of feeling that she had done something good for someone else, her depression worsened. One December day, Carter found her daughter Haley, a kindergartner, locked outside on the patio. "Daddy's in Mexico, the girl stated, and shivered in the cold. With his girlfriend. Her mama wouldn't get out of bed." He tried the doors and gave the girl his sweater, then found  a tiny toad in the garden and brought it to show the girl just as Rachel came out of the house and screamed at him to get away from Haley, then shoved him. He tripped over the pool skimmer and, instinctively reaching out for something to grab onto, pulled her into the pool with him. He was unable to swim, and she kept pulling him down until she drowned and released him. He decided, "It was a secret she had given him, the final secret of who she was, and he was meant to keep it."

He becomes aware that there is a figure in the doorway and decides, "All right. I'm ready. Let them come."

Richards meets with Sykes to discuss the "situation":  Amy's mother is a suspect in the shooting of the son of a federal circuit court judge after the gun she left at the scene led police to the motel whose manager ID'd Amy from the photographs taken of her at the convent. Wolgast and Doyle had been identified from the surveillance video at the Mississippi checkpoint, and an Amber Alert had been issued. "Just like that, the whole world was looking for two federal agents and a little girl named Amy Bellafonte." Sykes has ordered a helicopter to intercept Wolgast and Doyle, and as Richards boards it, Sykes warns him, "'She's a kid! ... Do this right!' Whatever that meant, Richards thought."

In the Tahoe, Doyle tells Wolgast, "Richards thought you might have problems with this." Wolgast warns Doyle to be careful of Richards: "Private security contractor. He's little more than a mercenary." When they stop for gas, Doyle reaches over and takes the keys and removes the clip from the gun Wolgast keeps in the glove box. Three state police cruisers race past on the highway, and Wolgast and Doyle realize that they're being looked for.

Sister Arnette is unable to sleep after all the events of the day, including Lacey's unwillingness to identify Wolgast, when shown his photograph, as Amy's abductor: "Do you see? He loves her." Arnette was forced to tell the detective and the other nuns about what had happened to Lacey in Sierra Leone, and Sister Claire called it post-traumatic stress disorder. Arnette dozes off and then wakes in a panic: "Some dark force had come loose in the world, and it was sweeping toward them, coming for them all." She runs to Lacey's room and finds it locked. Her pounding on the door wakes the other nuns, and when Claire pulls her away from the door they see that Arnette's palms are bleeding. Claire rationally points out that Arnette has dug her fingernails into her palms. When they get the door open, they find that Lacey has gone.

Grey is still unsettled by the encounter with Paulson when he reports for duty. And then Richards gets on the elevator with him and tells him he's been docked twelve hundred dollars -- the pay for two shifts -- for failing to show up that morning. Grey notices the signs warning that anyone with symptoms including vomiting, fever, disorientation and seizures should report them immediately. After checking in with Davis, who is working security, he goes to L4, where he meets two other sweeps, Jude and Ignacio, and sees that his duties are to mop, empty trash and watch Zero to see if he is eating. A tech named Pujol comes to see about Zero, and Grey tells him that he's still not eating. He asks Pujol why, when the subjects are given ten rabbits, they only eat nine of them. Pujol suggests they're saving it for later. Grey wants to ask why they are fed rabbits, and how Zero can stick to the ceiling, but doesn't.

Then, after Pujol has gone, Grey starts to doze off and is wakened by a voice "in his head, almost like something he was reading: the words were someone else's, but the voice was his own." It calls his name and says "Look at me." Grey looks at the image of Zero on the monitor. "I was called Fanning," it says, and then asks Grey to take him home. Grey's head is filled with visions of a city, then of a college campus and the young women on it. The voice also tantalizes him with images of the boy Grey molested and then of a girl alone and afraid on the college campus.

Grey vomits, then makes a panicked attempt to clean it up. He takes the elevator to L3, where Davis is reading a porno magazine. Davis panics when Grey tells him he isn't feeling well: The level would have to be quarantined and both of them would be stuck there. So Davis lets Grey take the elevator.

[Cronin takes a turn deeper into the paranormal -- as if swarms of man-eating bats and viruses that turn people into vampires weren't paranormal enough -- with Amy's effect on the zoo animals, the psychic connection with Wolgast, and the ability of Zero/Fanning to invade people's dreams. He handles it well, I think, because the groundwork he has laid for his novel in conventional psychology and physiology now enables him to skew off in another direction. And he has hinted at where he's going: Carter's reference on p. 48 to The X-Files, for example.  

One of the more impressive things about Cronin's narrative is his ability to juggle so many points of view and to individualize his characters. He empathizes with his characters, so that he's able to keep even the minutiae of their inner lives consistent. For example, when Paulson and Davis release Carter from his shackles, "Carter couldn't remember when he'd gone anywhere without somebody's hand on him someplace." This is consistent with an observation about Carter some eighty pages earlier, when he's in prison: "Part of you got used to people's hands being on you this way, and part of you didn't."

Cronin is also good at weaving connections between his characters. When Lacey is being raped in the field in Sierra Leone, "she had sent her mind away from her body, up and up through the branches to heaven, where God was, and the girl in the field was someone else." This echoes Jeanette's ability to see the prostitute, the Jeanette "who stood on the highway in her stretch top and skirt" as "a made-up person, like a woman in a story she wasn't sure she wanted to know the end of." And since the night in the field, Lacey has been hearing voices -- "Lacey Antoinette Kudoto. Listen. Look." -- that are eerily (and probably significantly) similar to the voice of Zero/Fanning in Grey's head.]