The Passage

SIXTY-TWO

By half-day they had found the river again. They rode in silence under the snow, which was falling steadily now, filling the woods with a muffling light. The river had begun to freeze at its edges, dark water flowing freely in its narrowed channel, oblivious. Amy, leaning against Peter’s back, her pale wrists slack in his lap, had fallen asleep. He felt the warmth of her body, the slow rise and fall of her chest against him. Plumes of warm vapor flowed back from the horse’s nostrils, smelling of grass and earth. There were birds in the trees, black birds; they called to one another from the branches, their voices dimmed by the smothering snow.

As he rode, memories came to him, a disordered assemblage of images that drifted across his consciousness like smoke: his mother, on a day not long before the end, as he stood in the door to her room to watch her sleep, and saw her glasses sitting on the table, and knew that she would die; Theo at the station, when he’d sat on the cot to take Peter’s foot in his hand, and again, standing on the porch of the farmstead, Mausami at his side, watching them leave; Auntie in her overheated kitchen, and the taste of her terrible tea; the last night at the bunker, everyone drinking whiskey and laughing at something funny Caleb had done or said, the great unknown unfolding before them; Sara on the morning after the first snowfall, sitting against the log, her book in her lap, her face bathed in sunlight and her voice saying, “How beautiful it is here;” Alicia.

Alicia.

They turned east. They were in a new place now, the landscape rising ruggedly around them, wrapping them in the forested embrace of the mountains, mantled in white. The snow eased, then stopped, then started up once more. They had begun to climb. Peter’s attention had narrowed to the smallest things. The slow, rhythmic progress of the horse, the feel of worn leather in his fist where he held the animal’s reins, the gentle brush of Amy’s hair on his neck. All somehow inevitable, like details from a dream he’d had once, years ago.

When darkness came on, Peter used the shovel to clear a spot and pitched their tarp at the edge of the river. Most of the wood on the ground was too wet to burn, but beneath the heavy canopy of trees they found enough dry kindling to get a fire going. Peter had no blade, but in his pack was a small pocketknife that he could use to open the cans. They ate their dinner and slept, huddled together for warmth.

They awoke to bone-numbing cold. The storm had passed, leaving, in its wake, a sky of fierce cold blueness. While Amy built a fire, Peter went to look for the horse, which had broken loose and wandered away in the night-a situation that under different circumstances would have brought him to outright panic and yet somehow, on this morning, did not alarm him. He tracked the animal a hundred meters downstream, where he found him nibbling on some grassy shoots at the river’s edge, his great black muzzle bearded with snow. It did not seem like the kind of thing Peter ought to disturb, so he stood awhile, watching the horse eat its breakfast, before leading him back to camp, where Amy’s efforts had produced a small, smoky fire of damp needles and crackling twigs. They ate from more cans and drank cold water from the river, then warmed themselves together by the fire, taking their time. It would be their last morning, he knew. To the west, behind them, the garrison would be empty and silent now, all the soldiers moving south.

“I think this is it,” he told Amy as he was tying the bags onto the horse. “I don’t think we have more than ten kilometers to go.”

The girl said nothing, merely nodded. Peter led the horse to a fallen log, a great sodden thing at least a meter high, and used this to step up. He got himself situated, pulling the packs tight against him, and reached out to pull her aboard.

“Do you miss them?” Amy asked. “Your friends.”

He lifted his face toward the snowy trees. The morning air was calm and sunlit.

“Yes. But it’s all right.”

They came, sometime later, to a fork. For a period of some hours they had been following a road, or what had once been a road. Beneath the snow, the ground was firm and even, the route marked here and there by a rusted sign or a weather-beaten guardrail. They were moving deeper into a narrowing valley, walled cliffs rising on either side, showing their rocky faces. That was when they came to the place where the road split in two directions: straight, along the river, or across it on a bridge, an arched span of exposed girders, covered with snow. On the opposite side, the roadway rose again and angled into the trees, away.

“Which direction?” he asked her.

A silent moment passed. “Across,” she said.

They dismounted. The snow was deep, a loose powder that rose nearly to the tops of Peter’s boots. As they approached the riverbank, Peter saw that the connecting roadway was gone; the bridge’s decking, which had probably once been wood, was all rotted away. Fifty meters: they could probably manage it, balancing on the exposed beams, but the horse would never make it.

“You’re sure?” She was standing beside him, squinting intently in the light. Her hands, like his own, were drawn up protectively into the sleeves of her coat.

She nodded.

He returned to the horse to unhitch their packs. There was no question of leaving Greer’s horse tied up to wait for them. It had brought them this far; Peter couldn’t leave it defenseless. He finished unloading their gear, unhitched the bridle, and stepped to the animal’s hindquarters. “Ha!” he yelled, giving the animal a firm slap on its haunches. Nothing. He tried again, louder this time. “Ha!” He slapped and yelled and waved his arms. “Go on! Git!” Still the animal refused to budge, gazing at them impassively with his huge, gleaming eyes.

“He’s a stubborn son of a bitch. I guess he doesn’t want to leave.”

“Just tell him what you want him to do.”

“He’s a horse, Amy.”

And yet what happened next, strange as it was, did not feel wholly unexpected. Amy took the animal’s face in her hands, placing her palms against the side of his long head. The horse, which had begun to fidget, quieted under her touch; his wide nostrils flared with a heavy sigh. For a long, hushed moment, girl and horse stood there, locked in some deep and mutual regard. Then the animal broke away, turned in a wide circle, and began to walk in the direction they had come. His pace quickened to a trot as he vanished in the trees.

Amy lifted her pack off the snow and hoisted it to her shoulders. “We can go now.”

Peter didn’t know what to say; there was no reason to say anything.

They clambered down the embankment to the river’s edge. The reflected sunlight dancing on the surface of the water was almost explosively brilliant, as if, on the edge of freezing solid, its reflective powers had been magnified. Peter sent Amy up first, giving her a knee to send her through a hatchlike opening in the exposed beams. Once she was situated he passed her the packs, then chinned himself up.

The safest route would be along the edge of the bridge, where they could hold onto the guardrail as they stepped from beam to beam. The feel of the cold metal on his hands was like fire, an exquisite sharpness. They couldn’t get this done fast enough. Amy went first, skipping with confident grace over the gaps. As he made to follow her, it became instantly clear that the problem wasn’t the beams themselves, which seemed solid, but what encased them, under the snow: a hidden skin of ice. Twice Peter felt himself losing traction, his feet slipping out from under him, his hand biting into the frigid rail, barely holding on. But to come this far, only to drown in an icy river-he couldn’t imagine it. Slowly, beam by beam, he made his way across. By the time he reached the far side, Peter’s hands felt utterly numb; he had begun to shiver. He wished they could stop to build a fire, but there was no delaying their progress now. Already the shadows had begun to lengthen; the brief winter day would soon be over.

They ascended the bank of the river and began to climb. Wherever they were going, he hoped there would be shelter. He didn’t see how they would last the night without it. Never mind the virals; cold like this could kill them just as easily. The important thing was to keep moving. Amy had taken the lead, her strides carrying her up the mountain. It was all Peter could do to keep up. The air felt thin in his lungs; around him the trees were moaning in the wind. After a period of time had passed he looked back and beheld the valley far below them, the river curling through it. They were in shadow now, a zone of twilight, but on the far side of the valley, the faces of the mountains, receding to the north and east, thrummed with golden light. The top of the world, Peter thought, that’s where Amy is taking me. The very top of the world.

The day drained away. In the descending gloom, the landscape appeared as a confusing jumble; what Peter had thought would be the apex of their climb revealed itself to be a crest in a series of ascents, each more exposed and wind-blasted than the last. To the west the mountain fell away sharply, an almost sheer drop. The cold seemed to have reached some deeper place inside him, dulling his senses. It had been a mistake, he realized, to send the horse away. If push came to shove, they could at least have hiked back down and used his body for warmth and shelter. It was a grave thing, to kill such an animal, nothing he could have imagined doing before; but now, as darkness was falling on the mountain, he knew he could have done it.

He realized Amy had come to a stop. He struggled forward and halted at her side, breathing great gulps of air. The snow was thinner here, pushed away by the wind. She was scanning the sky, her eyes narrowed, as if she were listening to some distant sound. Beads of ice clung to her pack, her hair.

“What is it?”

Her gaze settled on the line of trees to their left, away from the open valley.

“There,” she said.

But there was nothing, only the wall of trees. The trees and the snow and the indifferent wind.

Then he saw it: a gap in the undergrowth. Amy was already moving toward it. As they neared, he realized what he was seeing: the gate of a half-fallen fence. It ran the length of the woods on either side of them, entwined with a dense mass of camouflaging vines, now denuded of leaves and covered in snow, making the fence all but invisible, a part of the landscape. Who knew how long they had been walking along it without his noticing. Beyond the opening stood a small hut, more suggestion than actual structure. The building, not more than five meters square, seemed tipped, one part of its foundation having collapsed beneath it; the door stood half open, angled on its hinges. He peered inside. Nothing, only snow and leaves, rivers of rot running down the walls.

He turned. “Amy, where-”

He saw her darting through the trees, away, and lumbered after her. Amy was moving more quickly now, practically running. Through the fog of his exhaustion and the trudge of his frozen feet, Peter had become aware that they had reached the end of their journey, or nearly. Something was leaving him; his strength, stripped away by the cold, was leaving him at last.

“Amy,” he called. “Stop.”

She seemed not to hear him.

“Amy, please.”

She turned to face him.

“What’s here?” he pleaded. “There’s nothing here.”

“There is, Peter.” Her face was lit with joy. “There is.”

“Then where is it?” he said, and heard the anger in his voice. His hands were on his knees; he was panting for breath. “Tell me where it is.”

She lifted her face to the darkening sky, letting her eyes fall shut. “It’s… everywhere,” she said. “Listen.”

He did his best; with every ounce of his remaining strength he sent his mind outward. But all he heard was the wind.

“There’s nothing,” he said again, and felt his hopes collapsing. “Amy, there’s nothing here.”

But then he heard it.

A voice. A human voice.

Somebody, somewhere, was singing.

• • •

They saw the beacon first, rising in the trees.

They had come into a clearing, the forest parting. All around them Peter could discern evidence of human habitation, the suggestive shapes of ruined buildings and abandoned vehicles under the snow. The antenna stood at the edge of a wide depression in the earth, full of debris-a foundation of some kind, for a building long since gone. The antenna was positioned to the side of it, a four-legged metal tower rising high above them, anchored in place by steel cables sunk in concrete. Affixed to its apex was a gray orb studded with spikes. Beneath the orb, encircling the tower and jutting from the sides like the petals of a flower, was a series of paddle-like objects. Perhaps these were solar panels; Peter didn’t know. He placed a hand on the cold metal. Something appeared to be written on one of the struts. He brushed the snow aside, revealing the words UNITED STATES ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS.

“Amy-”

But the place beside him was empty. He detected movement at the edge of the clearing and quickly followed her, into the underbrush. The sound of singing was stronger now. Not words but a wash of notes in phrased patterns, rising and falling. It seemed to be drifting toward them from all directions on the wind. They were close now, very close. He sensed the presence of something up ahead, an openness. The trees separating, the sky exposed. He reached the place where Amy stood, and then stopped.

It was a woman. She was facing away, standing in the dooryard of a small log house. The windows of the house were lighted, and curls of smoke coiled from the chimney. She was shaking out a blanket; more blankets sagged on a line that stretched between a pair of trees. The incredible thought reached him that this woman, whoever she was, was taking in her laundry. Taking in her laundry and singing. The woman was wearing a heavy woolen cloak; her hair, dense and dark with streaks of snowy white, flowed over her shoulders in a cloudlike mass. The lines of her bare legs descended from the edge of the cloak to her feet, on which she appeared to be wearing nothing more than a pair of rope sandals, her toes in the snow.

Peter and Amy moved toward her, the words of her song resolving as they approached. Her voice had a rich, full-throated sound to it, full of a mysterious contentment. She sang and went about her work, placing the blankets in a basket at her feet, apparently oblivious to their presence. The two of them were standing just a few meters behind her now. Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee, the woman sang,

All through the night.

Guardian angels God will send thee,

All through the night.

Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,

Hill and dale in slumber sleeping,

I my loved ones’ watch am keeping,

All through the night.

She halted, her hands poised over the line.

“Amy.”

The woman turned. She had a broad, handsome face and dark skin, like Auntie’s. But it was not an old woman he saw. Her skin was firm, her eyes clear and bright. Her face bloomed with a radiant smile.

“Oh, it is good to see you.” Her voice was like music, as if she were singing the words. She advanced toward them on her sandaled feet and took Amy by the hands, holding them with a maternal tenderness. “My little Amy, all grown up.” She let her eyes drift past Amy toward Peter, appearing to notice him for the first time. “And here he is, your Peter.” She gave her head a little shake of wonder. “Just as I knew he would be. Do you remember, Amy, when I said to you, Who is Peter? It was when I first met you. You were very small.”

Tears had begun to fall from Amy’s eyes. “I left him.”

“Hush now. It is as it had to be.”

“He told me to run!” she cried out. “I left him! I left him!”

The woman jostled Amy’s hands. “And you will find him again, Amy. That’s what you have come to find out, isn’t it? I was not the only one to watch over you, through all the years and years. That sadness you feel is not your own. It’s his sadness you feel in your heart, Amy, for missing you.”

The sun was down. Cold darkness crowded around them, standing in the snow outside the woman’s house. And yet Peter could make himself neither move nor speak. That he was a part of what had just unfolded he did not doubt, and yet he did not know what part.

He found his voice at last. “Tell me,” he said. “Please. Tell me who you are.”

The woman’s eyes sparkled with sudden mischief. “Shall we tell him, Amy? Shall we tell your Peter who I am?”

Amy nodded; the woman raised her face, wearing a shining smile.

“I am the one who’s been waiting for you,” she said. “My name is Sister Lacey Antoinette Kudoto.”

SIXTY-THREE

Private Sancho was dying.

Sara was riding at the back of the convoy, in one of the big trucks. Bunks had been slung from the sides of the rear compartment to carry the injured men. The space was crowded with crates of supplies; it was all Sara could do to wedge herself between them, to offer what comfort she could.

The other one, Withers, wasn’t as bad off; most of the burns were on his arms and hands. Probably he would survive, if sepsis didn’t set in. But not Sancho.

Something had happened when they’d winched down the bomb. A cable had jammed. The fuse wouldn’t light. Something. The story had come to Sara in bits and pieces from a dozen different sources, all with a slightly different version of events. It was Sancho who had entered the mine shaft, shimmying down the cable on a harness, to fix whatever had gone wrong; he had either still been down the hole or was just emerging, Withers running toward him, reaching for him, pulling him free, when the drums of fuel exploded.

The flames had engulfed him utterly. She could see the path the fire had taken, moving up his body, fusing his uniform to his flesh. That he had survived was a miracle, though not, Sara thought, a happy one; she could still hear the screams that had torn from his lips as, with the help of two soldiers, she had peeled the blackened remains of his uniform from his body, taking most of the skin of his legs and chest with it, and again, as she had done her best to scrub away the debris, revealing a raw, red flesh beneath it. Already the burns on his legs and feet had begun to suppurate, mixing the sick-sweet odor of charred skin with the stink of infection. His chest and arms and hands and shoulders: the fire had consumed them all. His face was a smooth pink nub, like the eraser on a pencil. After she’d finished the abrasion-a horrible ordeal-he’d made scarcely any sound at all, lapsing into a fitful sleep from which he awoke only to beg for water. She was surprised when, in the morning, he was still alive, and then the next day also. The night before their departure, she had offered, in a moment of bravery that surprised her, to stay behind with him. But Greer would have none of it. We’ve left enough men in these woods, he said. Do your best to make him comfortable.

For a while the convoy had traveled east, but now they were moving south again, on what felt to Sara like a road; the worst of the bouncing, the lurching from side to side and the sound of spinning mud and snow, spattering against the wheel wells beneath her, had stopped. She felt nauseated and cold, chilled to the core, her limbs achy from the hours of banging in the back of the truck. The convoy of vehicles and horses and men proceeded in fits and starts, as Alicia’s scouting party gave the all clear. The goal for their first day of travel was Durango, where a fortified shelter in an old grain elevator, one of nine such refuges along the supply road to Roswell, offered safety for the night.

She had decided she wasn’t angry that Peter had left without telling her. She had been at first, when Hollis came to the mess to give her the news; but with Sancho and Withers to take care of, she hadn’t dwelt on these feelings for long. And the truth was, she’d sensed it coming-if not Peter’s and Amy’s departure exactly, then something like it. Something final. When she and Hollis had discussed leaving with the convoy, always in the background, unstated, was the feeling that Peter and Amy wouldn’t be going with them.

But Michael had been angry. More than angry-furious. Hollis had practically had to restrain him from heading off after the two of them, into the snow. Strange how Michael had become so brave, almost recklessly so, over the months. She had always felt herself to be a kind of stand-in parent, responsible for him in some deep, incontrovertible way. Somewhere along the way, she had let these feelings go. So maybe it wasn’t Michael who had changed; perhaps it was she herself.

She wanted to see Kerrville. The name hung in her mind with a shimmering weightlessness. To think: thirty thousand souls. It gave her a hope she hadn’t felt since the day Teacher had taken her out the door of the Sanctuary, into the broken world. Because it wasn’t broken, after all; the little girl Sara had been, the one who slept in the Big Room and played with her friends and felt the sun on her face as she swung on the tire in the courtyard, believing the world to be a fine place that she could be a part of-that little girl had been right all along. Such a simple thing to want. To be a person; to live a human life. That was what she would have in Kerrville, with Hollis. Hollis, who loved her, and told her so, again and again. It was as if he’d opened something up inside her, something long clenched; for the feeling had filled her at once, that first night on watch, somewhere in Utah, when he’d put his rifle down and kissed her; and again each time he said the words in his quiet, almost embarrassed way, their faces so close she could feel the tangles of his beard on her cheeks, as if he were confessing the deepest truth of himself. He told her he loved her and she loved him in return, at once and infinitely. She did not believe in fate; the world seemed far chancier than that, a series of mishaps and narrow escapes you somehow managed to survive until, one day, you didn’t. Yet that’s what loving Hollis felt like: like fate. As if the words were already written down someplace, and all she had to do was live out the story. She wondered if her parents had felt that way about each other. Though she did not like to think about them and avoided this whenever she could, she found herself, riding in the back of the cold truck, wishing they were still alive, so she could ask this question.

It wasn’t fair, what they had done. It was Michael, poor Michael, who had found the two of them in the shed that terrible morning. He was eleven; Sara had just turned fifteen. Part of her believed that their parents waited until she was old enough to look after her brother, that her age was part of the rationale for what they’d done. By the time Michael’s yells had pulled her out of bed and down the stairs and across the yard to the shed behind their house, he had flung his arms around their legs, trying to hold them up; she’d stood in the door, speechless and immobile, Michael crying and begging her to help him, and known that they were dead. What she had felt at that moment was not horror or grief but something like wonder-a mute amazement at the factually declarative nature of the scene, its merciless mechanics. They had used ropes and a pair of wooden stools. They had tied the ropes around their necks, slipping the knots tight, and kicked the stools aside, employing the weight of their bodies to strangle themselves. She wondered: Did they do it together? Had they counted to three? Did first one go and then the other? Michael was pleading, Please Sara, help me, help me save them, and yet that was all she saw. The night before, her mother had made johnnycake; the pan was still sitting on the kitchen table. Sara had searched her mind for some evidence that her mother had gone about this task in any way that seemed different, knowing, as she must have, that she was preparing a breakfast she would not eat, for children she would never see again. And yet Sara could remember nothing.

As if obeying some final, tacit command, she and Michael had eaten it all, every bite. And by the time they were done, Sara knew, as Michael surely did as well, that she would take care of her brother from that day forward, and that part of this care was the unspoken agreement that they would never speak of their parents again.

The convoy had slowed. Sara heard a shout from up ahead, calling them to halt, and then the sound of a single horse, galloping past them through the snow. She climbed to her feet and saw that Withers’s eyes were open and looking about. His bandaged arms lay over his chest, on top of the blankets. His face was flushed, damp with sweat.

“Are we there?”

Sara felt his forehead with the base of her wrist. He didn’t seem to have a fever; if anything, his skin was too cold. She retrieved a canteen from the floor and dribbled a bit into his waiting mouth. No fever, and yet he looked much worse; he couldn’t seem to lift his head at all.

“I don’t think so.”

“This itching is driving me crazy. Like my arms are crawling with ants.”

Sara capped the canteen and put it aside. Fever or no fever, his color had her worried.

“That’s a good sign. It means you’re healing under there.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.” Withers took a long breath and let the air out slowly. “Fuck.”

Sancho was in the berth beneath him, swaddled in bandages; only the small pink circle of his face was showing. Sara knelt and took a stethoscope from her med kit to listen to his chest. She heard a wet rattle, like water sloshing in a can. It was dehydration, as much as anything, that was killing him; and yet he was drowning in his own lungs. His cheeks were blazing to the touch; the air around him was sharp with the smell of infection. She tucked the blanket around him and moistened a rag and held it to his lips.

“How’s he doing?” Withers asked from above.

Sara rose.

“He’s close, isn’t he? I can see it in your face.”

She nodded. “I don’t think it will be long now.”

Withers closed his eyes once more.

She pulled on her parka and climbed from the back of the truck, into the snow and sunlight. The orderly lines of soldiers had dissolved into clusters of three or four men, standing around with scowls of bored impatience on their faces, hoods drawn up over their heads, their noses runny from the cold. Up ahead, she saw where the problem lay. One of the trucks sat with its hood open, exhaling a plume of steam into the air. It was ringed by a group of soldiers, who were looking at it with bewilderment, as if it were a giant carcass they’d happened upon in the road.

Michael was standing on the bumper, his arms buried to the elbows in the engine. Greer, from atop his horse, said, “Can you fix it?”

Michael’s head emerged from under the hood. “I think it’s just a hose. I can replace it if the housing isn’t cracked. We’ll need more coolant, too.”

“How long?”

“Not more than half a hand.”

Greer lifted his head and shouted to the men, “Let’s tighten that perimeter! Blue up front, and mind that line of trees! Donadio! Where the hell’s Donadio?”

Alicia came riding from the front, her rifle slung, wreaths of steam swirling around her face. Despite the cold she had shucked her parka and was wearing only a compartmented vest over her jersey.

Greer said, “Looks like we’re stuck here for a while. Might as well have a look at what’s down the road. We’re going to have to make up some time.”

Alicia heeled her horse and galloped away, riding without a glance past Hollis, who was advancing toward them from the front of the line. Greer had assigned him to one of the supply trucks, handing out food and water to the men.

“What’s going on?” he asked Sara.

“Hang on a minute. Major Greer,” she called.

Greer was already moving down the line. He turned his horse to face her.

“It’s Sancho, sir. I think he’s dying.”

Greer nodded. “I see. Thank you for telling me.”

“You’re his CO, sir. I thought he might appreciate a visit from you.”

His face showed no emotion. “Nurse Fisher. We’ve got four hours of light to cover six hours of open ground. That’s what I’m thinking about right now. Just do the best you can. Is that all?”

“Did he have anyone he was close to? Somebody who could be with him?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t spare the men right now. I’m sure he’d understand. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He rode away.

Standing in the snow, Sara realized she was suddenly fighting back tears.

“Come on,” Hollis said, and took her by the arm. “I’ll help you.”

They made their way back to the truck. Withers had fallen asleep again. They pulled a couple of crates beside Sancho’s berth. His breathing had gotten more ragged; a bit of foam had collected on his lips, which were blue with hypoxia. Sara didn’t need to check his pulse to know his heart was racing, running out the clock.

“What can we do for him?” asked Hollis.

“Just be with him, I guess.” Sancho was going to die, she’d known that since the start, but now that it was actually happening, all her efforts seemed too meager. “I don’t think it will be long now.”

It wasn’t. While they watched, his breathing began to slow. His eyelids fluttered. Sara had heard it said that, in the last moments, a person’s life would pass before his eyes. If that was true, what was Sancho seeing? What would she be seeing, if she were the one lying there? Sara took his bandaged hand and tried to think of what to say, what words of kindness she could offer. But nothing came to her. She didn’t know anything about him, only his name.

When it was over, Hollis drew the blanket over the dead soldier’s face. Above them they heard Withers rousing. Sara stood to find his eyes open and blinking, his gray face shining with sweat.

“Did he-?”

Sara nodded. “I’m sorry. I know he was your friend.”

But he did nothing to acknowledge her; his mind was somewhere else.

“Goddamn,” he groaned. “What a fucking dream. Like I was really there.”

Hollis was standing beside Sara now. “What did he say?”

“Sergeant,” Sara pressed, “what dream?”

He shuddered, as if trying to loosen its hold from his memory. “Just horrible. Her voice. And that stink.”

“Whose voice, Sergeant?”

“Some fat woman,” Withers answered. “Some big ugly fat woman, breathing smoke.”

At the head of the line, lifting his head from the engine of the disabled five-ton, Michael saw Alicia-racing down the ridge, galloping through the snow. She tore past him toward the back of the line, calling for Greer.

What the hell?

Wilco was standing beside Michael, mouth open, eyes following the path of Alicia’s horse. The rest of Alicia’s squad was coming down the ridge now, riding toward them.

“Finish this,” Michael said, and when Wilco said nothing, he pressed the wrench into his hand. “Just do it and be quick. I think we’re moving out.”

Michael took off after her, following the tracks she had made in the snow. With every step the feeling grew: Alicia had seen something, something bad, over the ridge. Hollis and Sara climbed from the back of the truck, all of them converging on Greer and Alicia, who had both dismounted; Alicia was pointing over the ridge, her arm swinging in a broad swath, then kneeling, drawing frantically in the snow. As Michael came upon them, he heard Greer saying, “How many?”

“They must have moved through last night. The tracks are still fresh.”

“Major Greer-” This was Sara.

Greer held up a hand, cutting her off. “How many, goddamnit?”

Alicia rose. “Not many,” she said. “The Many. And they’re headed straight for that mountain.”

SIXTY-FOUR

Theo awoke not with a start but with a feeling of tumbling; he was rolling and falling, into the living world. His eyes were open. They had been open, he realized, for some time. The baby, he thought. He reached for Mausami and found her beside him. She shifted under his touch, drawing her knees upward. That’s what it was. He’d been dreaming of the baby.

He was chilled to the bone, and yet his skin was slick with sweat. He wondered if he had a fever. You had to sweat to break a fever; that’s what Teacher had always said, and his mother, too, her fingers stroking his face as he lay in bed, burning up. But that was long ago, a memory of a memory. He hadn’t had a fever in so many years he’d forgotten what it felt like.

He pushed the blankets aside and rose to his feet, shivering in the cold, the moisture on his body sucking the last heat from him; he was wearing the same thin shirt he’d worn all day, stacking wood in the yard. They were ready at last for winter, everything battened down and put up and locked away. He drew off his sweat-soaked shirt and took another from the bureau. In one of the outbuildings he had found lockers full of clothes, some still in their packaging from the store: shirts and pants and socks and thermal underwear and sweaters made of a material that felt like cotton but wasn’t. The mice and moths had gotten into some of it but not all. Whoever had stocked this place had stocked it for the long haul.

He retrieved his boots and the shotgun from their place by the door and descended the stairs. The fire in the living room had burned down to glowing ash. He didn’t know what time it was but sensed it was close to dawn; over the weeks, as he and Maus had settled into a rhythm, sleeping the night away to awaken with the first rays of sun in the window, he had begun to apprehend the hour in a way that seemed both natural and completely new to him. It was as if he had tapped into some deep reservoir of instinct, a long-buried memory of his kind. It wasn’t just the absence of the lights, as he had come to believe; it was the place itself. Maus had sensed it too, that first day, when they had walked to the river together to fish, and later, in the kitchen, when she had told him they were safe.

He sat to draw the boots on over his feet, took a heavy sweater from the hooks, checked the load on the shotgun, and stepped onto the porch. To the east, beyond the line of hills that hemmed the valley, a soft glow was creeping up the sky. During the first week, while Maus slept, Theo had sat on the porch all night; with each new dawn, he’d felt a surprising pang of sadness. All his life he had feared the darkness and what it could bring; no one, not even his father, had told him how beautiful the night sky was, how it made you feel both small and large at the same time, while also a part of something vast and eternal. He stood a moment in the cold, watching the stars and letting the night air flow in and out of his lungs, bringing his mind and body to wakefulness. As long as he was up he would set a fire, so Mausami wouldn’t have to wake in an ice-cold house.

He moved off the porch, into the yard. For days he’d done little else but haul and split wood. The woods by the river were full of deadfalls, dry and good for burning. The saw he’d found was no good, the teeth hopelessly dulled with corrosion, but the axe had done just fine. Now the fruits of his labors lay stacked in rows in the barn, with more under the eaves, draped by a plastic tarp.

Those people, he thought as he moved toward the barn door, which stood ajar. The ones in the pictures he had found. He wondered if they had been happy here. He’d found no more photographs in the house, and hadn’t thought to search the car until two days ago. He didn’t know quite what he was looking for, but after a few minutes in the driver’s seat, idly pushing buttons and flipping switches and hoping something would happen, he found the right one. A little door popped open on the dashboard, revealing a wad of maps and, hidden beneath them, a leather wallet. Tucked in the folds was a card with the words UTAH TAX COMMISSION, DIVISION OF MOTOR VEHICLES and, beneath that, a name, David Conroy. David Conroy, 1634 Mansard Place, Provo, UT. That’s who they were, he told Mausami, showing her. The Conroys.

But the barn door, Theo thought; something about the barn door. Why was it ajar like that? Could he have actually forgotten to close it? But he had closed it; he remembered this distinctly. And no sooner had he thought this than a new sound reached his ears: a quiet rustling from within.

He froze, willing himself into an absolute stillness. For a long moment he heard nothing. Maybe he’d just imagined it.

Then it came again.

At least whatever was inside hadn’t noticed him yet. If it was a viral, one shot was all he’d have. He could return to the house and warn Mausami, but where would they go? His best chance was to use whatever element of surprise he still possessed. Carefully, holding his breath, he pulled the pump on the shotgun, listening for the click as the first round slid into the chamber. From deep inside the barn he heard a soft thump, followed by an almost human-sounding sigh. He eased the barrel forward until it met the wood of the door and gently nudged it open as, behind him, a whispering voice lit up the gloom.

“Theo? What are you doing?”

Mausami in her long nightshirt, her hair spilling over her shoulders; she seemed to hover like an apparition in the predawn darkness. Theo opened his mouth to speak, to tell her to get back, when the door flew open, knocking the barrel of the shotgun with a force that sent him spinning. Before he knew what had happened the gun had fired, blasting him backward. A vaulting shadow leapt past him into the yard.

“Don’t shoot!” Mausami yelled.

It was a dog.

The animal skidded to a halt a few meters in front of Mausami, tail tucked between his legs. His fur was thick, a silvering gray with spots of black. He was facing Maus in a kind of bow, standing on his skinny legs, his neck bent submissively, ears folded back against the woolly ruff of his shoulders. He seemed uncertain about which way to look, whether to run away or launch an attack. A low growl rose from the back of his throat.

“Maus, be careful,” Theo warned.

“I don’t think he’s going to hurt me. Are you, boy?” Dropping to a crouch, she held out a hand for the dog to sniff. “You’re just hungry, aren’t you? Looking in the barn for something to eat.”

The dog was directly between Theo and Mausami; if the animal made an aggressive move, the shotgun would be useless. Theo flipped it around in his hands to use as a club, and took a cautious step forward.

“Put the gun down,” Mausami said.

“Maus-”

“I mean it, Theo.” She gave the dog a smile, her hand still extended. “Let’s show this nice man what a good dog you are. Come here, boy. You want to give Mama’s hand a sniff?”

The animal inched toward her, backed away, then moved forward again, following the black button of his nose toward Mausami’s outstretched hand. As Theo watched, dumbfounded, the dog placed his face against her hand and began to lick it. Soon Maus was on the ground, sitting in the dirt, cooing to the animal, rubbing his face and ruff.

“See?” she laughed, as the dog, shaking his head with pleasure, gave a big wet sneeze into her ear. “He’s just a big old sweetie is what he is. What’s your name, fella? Hmm? Do you have a name?”

Theo realized he was still holding the shotgun over his head, ready to swing. He relaxed his posture, feeling embarrassed.

Mausami gave him a forgiving frown. “I’m sure he won’t hold it against you. Are you my good boy?” she said to the animal, vigorously rubbing his mane. “What do you say? You skinny thing. How about some breakfast? How does that sound?”

The sun had lifted over the hill; the night was over, Theo realized, bringing with it a dog.

“Conroy,” he said.

Mausami looked at him. The dog was licking her ear, rubbing his muzzle against her in a way that seemed almost indecent.

“That’s what we’ll call him,” Theo explained. “Conroy.”

Mausami took the dog’s face in her hands, smushing his cheeks. “Is that you? Are you Conroy?” She made him nod, and gave a happy laugh. “Conroy it is.”

Theo didn’t want to let him in the house, but Maus was determined. The moment the door was open he bounded up the stairs, moving through every room like he owned the place, his long nails tapping excitedly on the floor. Maus cooked him a breakfast of fish and potatoes fried in lard and set it in a bowl beneath the kitchen table. Conroy had already taken his place on the sofa, but at the sound of crockery hitting the floor he leapt into the kitchen and buried his face in the bowl, pushing it across the room with his long nose as he ate. Maus filled a second bowl with water and put that down as well. When Conroy was finished with his breakfast and had taken a long, slurping drink of water, he loped from the room and returned to the sofa, where he settled back down with a windy sigh of satisfaction.

Conroy the dog. Where had he come from? It was obvious he’d been around people before; somebody had taken care of him. He was thin, but not what Theo would have called malnourished. His hair was thick with mats and burrs, but he seemed otherwise healthy.

“Fill the tub,” Maus ordered him. “If he’s going to sit on the sofa like that, I want to give him a bath.”

Outside, Theo set a fire to boil water; by the time the tub was ready, the morning sun stood high over the yard. Winter waited at their doorstep, but the middle of the day could be mild like this, warm enough for shirtsleeves. Theo sat on a log and watched while Maus bathed the dog, rubbing handfuls of their precious soap through his silvery fur, using her fingers to smooth out the mats as best she could and picking out the burrs. The dog’s face was a portrait of abject humiliation; he seemed to be saying, A bath? Whose idea was this? When she had finished, Theo lifted him from the tub, a great soggy thing, and Maus eased down to her knees once more-it was getting harder each day for her to perform even these simple movements-to wrap him with a blanket.

“Don’t look so jealous.”

“Was I?” But she had him, dead to rights; that was exactly how he was feeling. Conroy had thrown the blanket off to give himself a hard shake, sending drops of water arcing everywhere.

“Better get used to it,” Maus said.

It was true; the baby wouldn’t be long now. Every part of her seemed enlarged, swollen with some benign inhabitation; even her hair looked bigger. Theo expected her to complain about this, but she never did. Watching her with Conroy, who had finally submitted to her belated and unnecessary attempts to dry him with the blanket, he found himself suddenly and deeply glad, glad for everything. Back in the cell, he’d wanted only to die. Before that, even. Part of him had always struggled with it. The ones who let it go: Theo knew that pull, a longing as sharp as any hunger. To hand himself over; to step into the wild darkness. It had become a kind of game he played, watching himself go about his days as if he weren’t already half dead, fooling everyone, even Peter. The worse the feeling was, the easier this deception became, until, in the end, it was the deception itself that sustained him. When Michael had told him about the batteries that afternoon on the porch, part of him had thought: thank God it’s over.

And now look at him. His life had been restored. More than that; it was as if he’d been given an entirely new one.

They finished the day and retired with the sun. Conroy took up residence at the foot of the bed; as they did every night, Theo and Maus made love, feeling the baby kick between them. A persistent, attention-seeking tapping, like a code. Theo had found this disquieting at first but did no longer. It was all of a piece, the kicks and jabs of the baby in its pocket of warm flesh, and the soft cries Mausami made, and the rhythm of their movements, even, now, the sounds of Conroy on the floor, watchfully shifting his bones. A blessing, Theo thought. That was the word that came to his mind as sleep eased toward him. That’s what this place was. A blessing.

Then he remembered the barn door.

He knew he’d dropped the latch. The memory was clear and specific in his mind: pulling the door closed on its squeaking hinges and dropping the latch into its cradle before walking back to the house.

But if that was true, how could Conroy have gotten inside?

In another instant he was shoving his legs into a pair of gaps, wedging on his boots with one hand and pulling on a sweater with the other. All day long, moving in and out of the house, he hadn’t once done it.

He’d never looked inside the barn.

“What is it?” Mausami was saying. “Theo, what’s wrong?”

She was sitting up now, the blanket pulled over her chest. Conroy, sensing the excitement, had sprung to his feet and was prancing around the room on his long, tapping nails.

He grabbed the shotgun from its place by the door. “Stay here.”

He would have left Conroy with her, but the dog would have none of it; the moment Theo opened the front door of the house, Conroy flew into the yard. For the second time in a day Theo crept toward the barn, the stock of the shotgun pressed to his shoulder. The door was still open, just as they’d left it. Conroy dashed ahead of him, disappearing into the darkness.

He crept through the door, the shotgun raised, poised to fire. He could hear the dog moving in the dark, snuffling the ground.

“Conroy?” he whispered. “What is it?”

As his eyes adjusted, he saw the dog circling the ground just beyond the parked Volvo. Resting on the floor by the woodpile was a lantern Theo had left there, days before. Bracing the shotgun against his leg, he quickly knelt and lit the wick. He could hear that Conroy had found something, in the dirt.

It was a can. Theo picked it up, holding it by its crinkled edges, where someone had used a blade to open it. The interior walls of the can were damp, smelling of meat. Theo lifted the lantern higher, spreading its cone of light over the floor. Footprints. Human footprints, in the dust.

Someone had been here.

SIXTY-FIVE

It was the doctor who had done it. It was the doctor who had saved her and to whom, in the end, Lacey hoped she had brought some small measure of comfort.

Strange, what the years did to Lacey’s memory of the things of that night so long ago, back at the beginning. The screams and smoke. The calls of the dying and the dead. A great black tide of endless night sweeping over the world. Sometimes it all came back to her as clearly as if it were not decades but days that had passed; at other times, the pictures she saw and the feelings she felt seemed small and doubtful and distant, like chips of straw adrift on a broad sweeping current of time in which she floated also, through all the years and years.

She remembered the one, Carter. Carter, who had come to her as she had run from Wolgast’s car, shouting and waving; Carter, who had answered her call and swooped down toward her, alighting before her like a great, sorrowful bird. I… am… Carter. He was not like the others. She could see, behind the monstrous vision he’d become, that he took no pleasure in his doing, that his heart was broken inside him. Chaos all around them, the screams and the gunfire and the smoke: men were running past her, yelling and shooting and dying, their fates already written when the world began, but Lacey was in that place no more; for as Carter placed his mouth upon her neck, calling the soft beat of her heart to his own, she felt it. All his pain and puzzlement, and the long sad story of who he was. The bed of rags and bundles under the roadway, and the sweat and soil of his skin and of his long journey; the great gleaming car stopping beside him with its grille of jeweled teeth, and the voice of the woman, calling out to him over the dirty roar of the world; the sweetness of mown grass and the sweating coolness of a glass of tea; the pull of the water, and the arms of the woman, Rachel Wood, holding fast, pulling him down and down. It was his life that Lacey felt inside her, his little, human life, which he had never loved as much as he loved the woman whose spirit he now carried inside him-for Lacey felt that also-and as his teeth cut into the soft curve of her neck, filling Lacey’s senses with the heat of his breath, she heard her own voice rising, bubbling past. God bless you. God bless and keep you, Mr. Carter.

Then he was gone. She was lying on the ground, bleeding, time passing, the sickness starting; that which was to pass between them had found its way, she knew. Lacey closed her eyes and prayed for a sign, but no sign came. As it had been in the field after the men had left her, when she was just a girl. It seemed, in that dark hour, that God had forgotten about her, but then as dawn opened the sky above her face, from out of the stillness came the figure of a man. She could hear the soft tread of his steps upon the earth, could smell the smoke of his skin and hair. She tried to speak but couldn’t; neither did the man address her, nor tell her his name. In silence he lifted her into her arms, cradling her like a child, and Lacey thought that it was God Himself, come to take her to His home in heaven. His eyes were hooded in shadow; his hair was a dark corona, wild and beautiful, like his beard, a dense mass of gray upon his face. He carried her through the smoking ruins, and she saw that he was weeping. Those are God’s own tears, Lacey thought, yearning to reach out and touch them. It had never occurred to her that God would cry, but of course that was wrong. God would be crying all the time. He would cry and cry and never stop. An exhausted peacefulness swept through her; for a time she slept. She did not recall what happened next, but when it was over and the sickness had passed, she opened her eyes and knew that he had done it; he had saved her. She had found the way to Amy, she had found the way at last.

Lacey, she heard. Listen.

She did. She listened. The voices moved over her like a breeze on water, like a current in the blood. Everywhere and all around.

Hear them, Lacey. Hear them all.

And so it was that through the years she’d waited. She, Sister Lacey Antoinette Kudoto, and the man who had carried her through the forest, who was not God after all but human, a human being. The good doctor-for that was how she thought of him; that was the name she used in her mind, though his given name, his Christian name, was Jonas. Jonas Lear. The saddest man in all the world. Together they had built the house in the glen where Lacey lived still-not much larger than the shacks she recalled from the dusty roads and red-clay fields of her youth-but sturdier, and made to last. The doctor once told her that he had built a house before, a cabin on a lake in the woods of Maine. That he had built this cabin with Elizabeth, his wife who had died, he did not say, but he did not have to. The abandoned compound was a bounty, waiting to be harvested. They had taken the lumber from the burnt remains of the Chalet; in the storage buildings they found hammers and saws and planes and sacks of nails, as well as sacks of concrete and a mixer, to pour the posts that would serve as the cabin’s foundation and to mortar the fieldstones that the two of them lifted into place to build the hearth. For one whole summer they stripped roofing shingles off the old barracks, only to find that they leaked, the asphalt torn in too many places; in the end they piled sod on top, making a roof of dirt and grass. There were guns, too, guns by the hundreds, guns of every sort and nature; it was not easy, getting rid of so many guns. For a period of time that was how they occupied themselves, dismantling the soldiers’ guns until all that remained was a vast mound of nuts and bolts and glossy metal pieces, not even worth burying.

He left her only one time, their third summer on the mountain, to go in search of seeds. He took the one gun he had kept, a rifle, with the food and fuel and other supplies he would need, all packed in the pickup that he had prepared for his journey. Three days, he said, but two whole weeks had come and gone before Lacey heard the sound of the pickup’s engine, driving up the mountain. He emerged from the cab wearing a look of such despair she knew it was only his pledge to return that had brought him back to her. He’d driven as far as Grand Junction, he confessed, before deciding to turn around. In the truck were the promised packs of seeds. That night he lit the hearth and sat by it in a terrible, desolated silence, staring into the flames. Never had she seen such pain in a man’s eyes, and although she knew she could not lift this grief from him, it was that same night she went to him and said she believed that they should live together from that day forward as man and wife, in every respect. It seemed a small thing, to offer him this love, this taste of forgiveness; and when this came about, as it did in due course, she understood that the love she had tendered was also love sought. An end to the journey she had begun in the fields of her childhood, all those years ago.

He never left again.

Through the years she loved him with her body, which did not age, as his did. She loved him and he loved her, each in their way, the two of them alone together on their mountain. Death came to him slowly over the years, first one thing and then another, nibbling away at the edges, then moving deeper. His eyes and hair. His teeth and skin. His legs and heart and lungs. There were many days when Lacey wished she could die also, so that he would not have to make this final voyage alone.

One morning she was working in the garden when she felt his absence; she went into the house, then into the woods, calling his name. It was high summer, the air fresh and bright, falling over the leaves like drizzled sunlight. He had chosen a place where the trees were thin and the sky was all above; from here he could see the valley and, beyond it, like a great becalmed sea, the wavelike mountains receding to a blue horizon. He was leaning on a shovel, panting for breath. He was an old man now, gray and frail, and yet here he was, digging a hole in the earth. What is that hole, she asked him, and he told her, It’s for me. So that when I’m gone you won’t have to dig it yourself. It wouldn’t do in summer to have to wait to dig a hole. All that day and into the evening he dug, moving small shovels of earth, pausing after each for breath. She watched from the edge of the clearing, for he would have no help from her. And when he was done, the hole having reached a satisfactory dimension, he returned to the house where they had lived so many years together, to the bed he had built with his own hands from heavy joined timbers and lengths of fibrous rope that sagged with the shape of the two of them, and in the morning was dead.

How long ago? Lacey paused in her telling, Amy’s and the young man’s eyes-Peter’s eyes-watching her from across the room. How strange, after so much time, to tell these stories: of Jonas, and that terrible night, and all that had happened in this place. She had stoked the fire and set a pot in the cradle to warm. The air of the house, two low-ceilinged rooms separated by a curtain, was warm and fragrant, lit by the glow of the fire.

“Fifty-four years,” she said, answering the question she herself had posed. She said it again, to herself. Fifty-four years since Jonas had left her alone. She stirred the pot, which contained a stew of this and that, the meat of a fat possum from her trapline and hearty vegetables, the durable tubers, which she had put away for winter. Sitting in jars upon the shelves were the seeds she used each year, the descendents of the ones Jonas had brought in the packets. Zucchini and tomatoes, potatoes and squash, onions and turnips and lettuce. Her needs were small, the cold did not affect her, and she sometimes barely ate for days or even weeks; but Peter would be hungry. He was just as she’d imagined, young and strong, with a determined face, though she’d thought, somehow, that he would be taller.

She became aware that he was frowning at her.

“You’ve been by yourself… for fifty years?”

She shrugged. “It was really not so long.”

“And you set the beacon.”

The beacon; she had almost forgotten. But of course he would ask about this. “Oh, it was the doctor who did that.” It made Lacey miss him keenly, to speak this way. She broke her gaze away and turned from her stirring, wiping her hands on a cloth and taking up bowls from the table. “Such things. He was always tinkering. But there will be time for more talk. Now, we eat.”

She served them the stew. She was glad to see Peter eating heartily, though Amy, she could tell, was just pretending. Lacey herself possessed no appetite at all. Whenever it was time for her to eat, Lacey felt not hunger but a mild curiosity, her mind remarking to her in an offhand way, as if to comment on nothing more important than the weather or the time of day, It would be good to eat now.

She sat and watched him with a feeling of gratitude. Outside, the dark night pressed down upon the mountain. She did not know if she would ever see another; soon she would be free.

When they were done, she rose from the table and went to the bedroom. The small space was sparsely furnished, just the bed the doctor had made and a dresser where she kept the few things she needed. The boxes were under the bed. Peter stood in the curtained doorway, observing silently, as she knelt and drew them out onto the floor. A pair of army lockers; at one time they had contained guns. Amy was behind him now, watching with curious eyes.

“Help me carry these to the kitchen,” she said.

How many years she had imagined this moment! They placed them on the floor by the table. Lacey knelt once more and undid the hasps of the first locker, the one she’d kept for Amy. Inside was Amy’s knapsack, which she’d worn to the convent. The Powerpuff Girls.

“This is yours,” she said, and placed it on the table.

For a moment, the girl simply stared at it. Then, with deliberate care, she drew back the zipper and withdrew the contents. A toothbrush. A tiny shirt, limp with age, with the word SASSY written on it in glittering flakes. A pair of threadbare jeans. And, at the bottom, a stuffed rabbit of tan velveteen, wearing a pale blue jacket. The fabric was crumbling away; one of his ears was gone, exposing a curl of wire.

“It was Sister Claire who bought the shirt for you,” Lacey said. “I do not think Sister Arnette approved of it.”

Amy had put the other objects aside on the table and was holding the rabbit in her hands, peering into its face.

“Your sisters,” Amy said. “But not… actual sisters.”

Lacey took a chair before her. “That is right, Amy. That is what I said to you.”

“We are sisters in the eyes of God.”

Amy dropped her gaze again. With her thumb, she stroked the fabric of the rabbit.

“He brought him to me. In the sick room. I remember his voice, telling me to wake up. But I couldn’t answer him.”

Lacey was aware of Peter’s eyes, intently watching.

“Who did, Amy?” she asked.

“Wolgast.” Her voice was distant, lost in the past. “He told me about Eva.”

“Eva?”

“She died. He would have given her his heart.” The girl met Lacey’s gaze again, squinting intently. “You were there, too. I remember now.”

“Yes. I was.”

“And another man.”

Lacey nodded. “Agent Doyle.”

Amy frowned sharply. “I didn’t like him. He thought I did, but I didn’t.” She closed her eyes, remembering. “We were in the car. We were in the car, but then we stopped.” She opened her eyes. “You were bleeding. Why were you bleeding?”

Lacey had almost forgotten; after everything else, it had come to seem so small, this part of the story. “To tell you the truth, I did not know myself! But I think that one of the soldiers must have shot me.”

“You got out of the car. Why did you do that?”

“To be here for you, Amy,” she answered. “So someone would be here when you came back.”

Another silence passed, the girl worrying the rabbit with her fingers like a talisman.

“They’re so sad. They have such terrible dreams. I hear them all the time.”

“What do you hear, Amy?”

“Who am I, who am I, who am I? They ask and ask, but I can’t tell them.”

Lacey cupped the girl’s chin. Her eyes were glistening with tears. “You will. When the time is right.”

“They’re dying, Lacey. They’re dying and can’t stop. Why can’t they stop, Lacey?”

“I think that they are waiting for you, to show them the way.”

They stayed that way a long moment. In the place where Lacey’s mind met Amy’s, she felt her sorrow and her loneliness, but even more: she felt her courage.

She turned to Peter then. He did not love Amy, as Wolgast had. She could see that there was another, someone he had left behind. But he was the one who had answered the beacon. Whoever heard it and brought Amy back-he would be the one to stand with her.

She bent to the second locker on the floor. Stacked inside were manila folders of yellowed paper-still, after so many years, exuding a faint odor of smoke. It was the doctor who had retrieved them, along with Amy’s backpack, as the fires had moved down through the underground levels of the Chalet. Someone should know, he had said.

She withdrew the first file and placed it on the table before him. The label read:

EX ORD 13292 TS1 EYES ONLY

VIA WOLGAST, BRADFORD J .

INTAKE PROFILE CT3

SUBJ 1 BABCOCK, GILES J .

“It is time for you to learn how this world was made,” said Sister Lacey. And then she opened it.

SIXTY-SIX

They rode through the fading day, a party of five, Alicia on point. The trail of the Many was a broad swath of destruction-the snow trampled, branches broken, the ground littered with debris. It seemed to grow denser and wider with every kilometer, as if more of the creatures were joining the pod, called out of the wilderness to take their place among their kind. Here and there they saw a stain of blood on the snow where a hapless animal, a deer or rabbit or squirrel, had met its swift demise. The tracks were less than twelve hours old; somewhere up ahead, in the shade of the trees and under the rocky ledges and perhaps, even, beneath the snow itself, they waited, dozing the day away, a great pod of virals, thousands strong.

By late afternoon, they were forced to make a decision: to follow the creatures’ trail, the shortest route up the mountain, but one that would take them right into the heart of the pod; or to turn north, find the river again, and make their approach from the west. Michael watched from atop his horse as Alicia and Greer conferred. Hollis and Sara were beside him, their rifles resting across their laps, their parkas zipped to their chins. The air was bitterly cold; in the immense stillness, every sound seemed magnified, the wind like a rush of static over the frozen land.

“We go north,” Alicia announced. “All eyes.”

There had been no discussion about who would come; the only surprise was Greer. As the four of them had been mounting up to leave, he had come forward on his horse and joined their number without a word of explanation, passing his command to Eustace. Michael wondered if this meant Greer would be in charge, but as soon as they were clear of the ridge, the major turned to Alicia from atop his horse and said, simply, “This is your show, Lieutenant. Are we clear, everyone?” They all said they were, and that was that.

They rode on. As night was falling, Michael heard, from up ahead, the bright notes of the river. They emerged from the woods onto its southern bank and turned east, using it to guide them through the thickening dark. They had closed up to a single line now, Alicia up front, Greer taking the rear. From time to time one of the horses would stumble or Alicia would pull up, signaling for them to hold and listening intently, scanning the dark shape of the trees. Then they’d press on again. No one had spoken for hours. There was no moon at all.

Then, as a sliver of light lifted from the hills, the valley opened around them. To the east they could discern the shape of the mountain, pressed against a starry sky, and up ahead, some kind of structure, a brooding black shape that, as they approached, revealed itself as a bridge, standing astride the ice-choked river on concrete piers. Alicia dismounted and knelt to the ground.

“Two sets of footprints,” she said, gesturing with her rifle. “Over the bridge, from the far side.”

They began to climb.

It was not much later that they found the horse. With a tight nod, Greer confirmed that it was his, the gelding Peter and Amy had taken. They all dismounted and stood around the dead animal. Its throat was ripped open in a bright splash, its body stiff and shriveled where it lay on its side in the snow. Somehow it had gotten across the river, probably fording it at a shallow spot; they could see the prints of its last, terrified gallop, coming from the west.

Sara knelt and touched the animal’s side.

“He’s still warm,” she said.

No one said anything. Dawn would come soon. To the east, the sky had begun to pale.

SIXTY-SEVEN

They were criminals.

By the time Peter put down the last file, rubbing his bleary eyes, the night was nearly done. Amy had long since fallen asleep, curled on the bed beneath a blanket; Lacey had moved a chair from the kitchen to sit beside her. From time to time, as he’d turned the pages, rising to put one file back in the box and remove the next, piecing the story together as best he could, he’d heard Amy muttering softly in her sleep behind the curtain.

For a while, after Amy had gone to bed, Lacey had sat with him at the table, explaining the things he couldn’t make sense of on his own. The files were thick, full of information that referred to a world he didn’t know, had never seen or lived in. But still, over the hours, with Lacey’s help, the story had emerged in his mind. There were photographs, too: grown men with puffy, lived-in faces, their eyes glazed and unfocused. Some were holding a board of writing to their chests, or wearing it like a necklace. Texas Department of Criminal Justice, one board read. Louisiana State Department of Corrections, said another. Kentucky and Florida and Wyoming and Delaware. Some of the boards had no words on them, only numbers; some of the men had no boards at all. They were black and white and brown, heavy or slight; somehow, in the looks of numb surrender on their faces, they were all the same. He read:

SUBJECT 12. Carter, Anthony L. Born September 12, 1985, Baytown, TX. Sentenced to death for capital murder, Harris County, TX, 2013.

SUBJECT 11. Reinhardt, William J. Born April 9, 1987, Jefferson City, MO. Sentenced to death for three counts of capital murder and aggravated sexual assault, Miami-Dade County, FL, 2012.

SUBJECT 10. Martínez, Julio A. Born May 3, 1991, El Paso, TX. Sentenced to death for the capital murder of a peace officer, Laramie County, WY, 2011.

SUBJECT 9. Lambright, Horace D. Born October 19, 1992, Oglala, SD. Sentenced to death for two counts of capital murder and aggravated sexual assault, Maricopa County, AZ, 2014.

SUBJECT 8. Echols, Martin S. Born June 15, 1984, Everett, WA. Sentenced to death for capital murder and armed robbery, Cameron Parish, LA, 2012.

SUBJECT 7. Sosa, Rupert I. Born August 22, 1989, Tulsa, OK. Sentenced to death for one count of vehicular homicide with depraved indifference, Lake County, IN, 2009.

SUBJECT 6. Winston, David D. Born April 1, 1994, Bloomington, MN. Sentenced to death for one count of capital murder and three counts of aggravated sexual assault, New Castle County, DE, 2014.

SUBJECT 5. Turrell, Thaddeus R. Born December 26, 1990, New Orleans, LA. Sentenced to death for the capital murder of a Homeland Security officer, New Orleans Federal Housing District, 2014.

SUBJECT 4. Baffes, John T. Born February 12, 1992, Orlando, FL. Sentenced to death for one count of capital murder and one count of second-degree murder with depraved indifference, Pasco County, FL, 2010.

SUBJECT 3. Chávez, Victor Y. Born July 5, 1995, Niagara Falls, NY. Sentenced to death for one count of capital murder and two counts of aggravated sexual assault with a minor, Elko County, NV, 2012.

SUBJECT 2. Morrison, Joseph P. Born January 9, 1992, Black Creek, Ky. Sentenced to death for one count of capital murder, Lewis County, Ky, 2013.

And, finally:

SUBJECT 1. Babcock, Giles J. Born October 29, 1994. Desert Wells, NV. Sentenced to death for one count of capital murder, Nye County, NV, 2013.

Babcock, he thought. Desert Wells.

They always go home.

Amy’s file was thinner than the others. “SUBJECT 13, AMY NLN,” the label read, “Convent of the Sisters of Mercy, Memphis, TN.” Height and weight and hair color and a string of numbers that Peter surmised were medical data of the kind Michael had found on the chip in her neck. Affixed to this page was a photograph of a little girl, no more than six years old, just as Michael had predicted. All knees and elbows, sitting on a wooden chair, dark hair falling around her face. Peter had never before seen a photograph of someone he’d actually known, and for a moment his mind struggled to comprehend the notion that this image was the same person who was sleeping in the next room. But there was no question; her eyes were Amy’s eyes. See? her eyes seemed to say. Who did you think I was?

He came to the file for Wolgast, Bradford J. There was no photograph; a rusty stain on the top page showed where one had once been clipped. But even without it, Peter was able to form a picture in his mind of this man who, if what Lacey said was true, had brought each of the Twelve to the compound, and Amy as well. A tall, sturdy man with deep-set eyes and graying hair, with large hands good for work. A mild face but troubled, something moving under the surface, barely contained. According to the file, Wolgast had been married and had had a child; the girl, whose name was Eva, was listed as deceased. Peter wondered if that was the reason he had decided, in the end, to help Amy. His instincts told him it was.

It was the contents of the last file, though, that told him the most. A report by someone named Cole to a Colonel Sykes, U.S. Army Division of Special Weapons, concerning the work of a Dr. Jonas Lear and something called “Project NOAH”; and a second document, dated five years later, ordering the transfer of twelve human test subjects from Telluride, Colorado, to White Sands, New Mexico, for “operational combat testing.” It took Peter a while to put the pieces together, or mostly. But he knew what combat was.

All those years, he thought, waiting for the Army to return, and it was the Army that had done it.

As he put down the final file, he heard Lacey rising. She passed through the curtain and stopped in the doorway.

“So. You have read.”

At the sound of her voice, a sudden exhaustion washed over him. Lacey restoked the fire and sat at the table across from him. He gestured over the piles of paper on the table.

“He really did this? The doctor.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “There were others, but yes.”

“Did he ever say why?”

Behind her, the fresh logs caught with a soft whump, blazing the room with light. “I think because he could. That is the reason for most things people do. He was not a bad man, Peter. It was not entirely his fault, though he believed it was. Many times I asked him, Do you think the world could be unmade by men alone? Of course it could not. But he never quite believed me.” She tipped her head toward the files on the table. “He left these for you, you know.”

“Me? How could he have left them for me?”

“For whoever came back. So they would know what happened here.”

He sat quietly, uncertain what to say. Alicia had been right about one thing: all his life, since the day he had come out of the Sanctuary, he had wondered why the world was what it was. But learning the truth had solved nothing.

Amy’s stuffed rabbit was still on the table; he took it in his hand. “Do you think she remembers it?”

“What they did to her? I do not know. Perhaps she does.”

“No, I meant before. Being a girl.” He searched for the words. “Being human.”

“I think that she has always been human.”

He waited for Lacey to say more, and when she didn’t, he put the rabbit aside.

“What’s it like, living forever?”

She gave a sudden laugh. “I do not think that I will live forever.”

“But he gave you the virus. You’re like her. Like Amy.”

“There is no one like Amy, Peter.” She shrugged. “But if you are asking what it has been like for me all these years, since Jonas died, I will say that it has been very lonely. It surprises me how much.”

“You miss him, don’t you?”

He instantly regretted saying this; a look of sadness swept over her face, like the shadow of a bird crossing a field.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

But she shook her head. “No, it is perfectly all right that you should ask. It is difficult to talk about him like this, after so long. But the answer is yes. I do miss him. I should think it a wonderful thing to be missed, the way that I miss him.”

For a while they sat in silence, bathed in the glow of the fire. Peter wondered if Alicia was thinking about him, where she was now. He had no idea if he would see her, or any of them, again.

“I don’t know… what I’m doing, Lacey,” he said finally. “I don’t know what to do with any of this.”

“You found your way here. That is something. That is a beginning.”

“What about Amy?”

“What about her, Peter?”

But he wasn’t sure what he was asking. The question was what it was: What of Amy?

“I thought… ” He sighed and drew his gaze away, toward the room where Amy slept. “Listen to me. I don’t know what I thought.”

“That you could defeat them? That you would find the answer here?”

“Yes.” He returned his eyes to Lacey. “I didn’t even know I was thinking it, until just now. But yes.”

Lacey appeared to be studying him, though what she was looking for, Peter couldn’t say. He wondered if he was as crazy as he sounded. Probably he was.

“Tell me, Peter. Do you know the story of Noah? Not Project NOAH. Noah the man.”

The name was nothing he knew. “I don’t think so.”

“It is an old story. A true story. I think it will be some help to you.” Lacey rose a little in her chair, her face suddenly animated. “So. A man named Noah was asked by God to build a ship, a great ship. This was long ago. Why would I build a ship, Noah asked. It is a sunny day, I have other things to do. Because this world has grown wicked, God said to him, and it is my intention to send a flood of water to destroy it, and drown every living thing. But you, Noah, are a man righteous in your generation, and I will save you and your family if you do as I command, building this ship to carry yourselves and every species of animal, two of every kind. And do you know what Noah did, Peter?”

“He built the ship?”

Her eyes widened. “Of course he did! But not right away. That, you see, is the interesting part of the story. If Noah had simply done as he was told, the story wouldn’t mean anything at all. No. He was afraid that people would make fun of him. He was afraid he would build the ship and the flood wouldn’t come and he would look like a fool. God was testing him, you see, to find out if there was anyone who made the world worth saving. He wanted to see if Noah was up to the job. And in the end, he was. He built the ship, and the heavens opened, and the world was washed away. For a long time, Noah and his family floated on the waters. It seemed they had been forgotten, that a terrible joke had been played on them. But after many days, God remembered Noah, and sent him a dove to lead them to dry land, and the world was reborn.” She gave her hands a quiet clap of satisfaction. “There. You see?”

He didn’t, not at all. It reminded him of the fables Teacher had read to them in circle, stories of talking animals that always ended in a lesson. Pleasant to listen to, and maybe not wrong, but in the end too easy, something for children.

“You do not believe me? That is all right. One day you will.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” Peter managed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that… it’s only a story.”

“Perhaps.” She shrugged. “And perhaps someday someone will say those very words about you, Peter. What do you say to that?”

He didn’t know. It was late, or early; the night was almost gone. Despite all he had learned, he felt more puzzled than when it had begun.

“So, for the sake of argument,” he said, “if I’m supposed to be Noah, then who’s Amy?”

Lacey’s face was incredulous. She seemed about to laugh. “Peter, I am surprised at you. Perhaps I did not tell it right.”

“No, you told it fine,” he assured her. “I just don’t know.”

She leaned forward in her chair and smiled again-one of her strange, sad smiles, full of belief.

“The ship, Peter,” said Lacey. “Amy is the ship.”

Peter was still trying to make sense of this mysterious answer when Lacey seemed to startle. Frowning sharply, she darted her eyes around the room.

“Lacey? What’s wrong?”

But she seemed not to have heard him. She briskly pushed away from the table.

“I have gone on too long, I’m afraid. It will be light soon. Go and wake her now, and gather your things.”

He was taken aback, his mind still drifting in the night’s strange currents. “We’re leaving?”

He rose to discover Amy standing in the doorway to the bedroom, her dark hair wild and askew, the curtain shifting behind her. Whatever had affected Lacey had affected her also; her face was lit with a sudden urgency.

“Lacey-” Amy began.

“I know. He will try to be here before daybreak.” Drawing on her cloak, Lacey gave her insistent gaze to Peter once more. “Hurry now.”

The peace of the night was suddenly banished, replaced by a sense of emergency his mind could not seem to grasp. “Lacey, who are you talking about? Who’s coming?”

But then he looked at Amy, and he knew.

Babcock.

Babcock was coming. “Quickly, Peter.”

“Lacey, you don’t understand.” He felt weightless, benumbed. He had nothing to fight with, not even a blade. “We’re totally unarmed. I’ve seen what he can do.”

“There are weapons more powerful than guns and knives,” the woman replied. Her face held no fear, only a sense of purpose. “It is time for you to see it.”

“See what?”

“What you came to find,” said Lacey. “The passage.”

SIXTY-EIGHT

Peter in darkness: Lacey was leading them away from the house, into the woods. A frigid wind was blowing through the trees, a ghostly moaning. A rind of moon had ascended, bathing the scene in a trembling light, making the shadows lurch and sway around him. They ascended a ridge and descended another. The snow was deep here, blown into drifts with a hard carapace of crust. They were on the south side of the mountain now; Peter heard, below him, the sound of the river.

He felt it before he saw it: a vastness of space opening before him, the mountain falling away. He reached out reflexively to find Amy, but she was gone. The edge could be anywhere; one wrong step and the darkness would swallow him.

“This way,” Lacey called from ahead. “Hurry, hurry.”

He followed the sound of her voice. What he thought was a sheer drop was actually a rocky decline, steep but passable. Amy was already moving down the twisting path. He took a breath of icy air, willing his fear away, and followed.

The path grew narrower, running horizontally to the mountain’s face as it descended, clinging to it like a catwalk. To his left, sheer rock, glinting with moonlit ice; to his right, an abyss of blackness, a plunge into nothing. Even to look at it was to be swept away; he kept his eyes forward. The women were moving quickly, shadowy presences leaping at the far edge of his vision. Where was Lacey taking them? What was the weapon she had spoken of? He could hear the voice of the river again, far below. The stars shone hard and pure above his face, like chips of ice.

He turned a corner and stopped; Lacey and Amy were standing before a wide, pipelike opening in the mountain’s face. The hole was as tall as he was, its depthless interior a maw of blackness.

“This way,” said Lacey.

Two steps, three steps, four; the darkness enveloped him. Lacey was taking them inside the mountain. He remembered the tin of matches in his coat. He stopped and struck one, his insensate fingers fumbling in the cold, but as soon as it sparked, the swirling currents of air puffed the flame away.

Lacey’s voice, from up ahead: “Hurry, Peter.”

He inched his way forward, each step an act of faith. Then he felt a hand on his arm, a firm pressure. Amy.

“Stop.”

He couldn’t see anything at all. Despite the cold he had begun to sweat under his parka. Where was Lacey? He had spun around, searching for the opening to orient himself, when from behind him came a squeal of metal, and the sound of an opening door.

Everything blazed with light.

They were in a long hallway, carved from the mountain. The walls were lined with pipes and metal conduits. Lacey was standing at a breaker panel on the wall adjacent to the entrance. The room was illuminated by a bank of buzzing fluorescent lights, high above.

“There’s power?”

“Batteries. The doctor showed me how.”

“No batteries could last this long.”

“These are… different.”

Lacey swung the heavy door closed behind them.

“He called it Level Five. I will show you. Please come.”

The hallway led to a wider space, sunk in darkness. Lacey moved along the wall to find the switch. Through the soles of his wet boots he could feel a kind of humming, distinctly mechanical.

The lights buzzed and flickered to life.

The room appeared to be some kind of infirmary. An air of abandonment hung over all-the gurney and the long, tall counter covered with dusty equipment, burners and beakers and chrome basins, tarnished with age; a tray of syringes, still sealed in plastic, and resting on a long, rust-stained shawl of fabric, a line of metal probes and scalpels. At the back of the room, in a nest of conduits, was what appeared to be a battery stack.

If you found her, bring her here.

Here, Peter thought. Not just the mountain, but here. This room.

What was here?

Lacey had stepped to a steel case, like a wardrobe, bolted to the wall. On its face was a handle and, beside this, a keypad. He watched as the woman punched in a long series of numbers, then turned the handle with a thunk.

He thought at first the case was empty. Then he saw, resting on the bottom shelf, a metal box. Lacey removed it and passed it to him.

The box, small enough to fit in one hand, was surprisingly light. It appeared to have no seams at all, but there was a latch, with a tiny button beside it that perfectly fit his thumb. Peter pressed it; at once the box separated into two perfectly formed halves. Inside, cradled in foam, lay two rows of tiny glass vials, containing a shimmering green liquid. He counted eleven; a twelfth compartment was empty.

“It is the last virus,” said Lacey. “The one he gave to Amy. He made it from her blood.”

He searched her face to see the truth registered there. But he already knew the truth; more than that, he felt the truth.

“The empty one. That’s you, isn’t it? The one Lear gave you.”

Lacey nodded. “I believe that it is.”

He closed the lid, which sealed with a solid click. He slid off his backpack and pulled out a blanket, which he used to wrap the box, then placed it all inside. From the counter he retrieved a handful of the sealed syringes and put these in the pack as well. Their best chance was to make it through till dawn, then get down the mountain. After that, he didn’t know. He turned to Amy.

“How long do we have?”

She shook her head: not long. “He’s close.”

“Can he get through that door, Lacey?”

The woman said nothing.

“Lacey?”

“It is my hope that he will,” she said.

They were in the field now, high above the river. Peter’s and Amy’s trail had disappeared, covered by the blowing snow. Alicia had ridden ahead. It should have been dawn by now, thought Michael. But all he saw was the same gray softening they’d been riding toward for what seemed like hours.

“So where the hell are they?” said Hollis.

Michael didn’t know if he meant Peter and Amy or the virals. The thought occurred to him, with a vague acceptance, that they were all going to die up here, that none of them would ever leave this frozen, barren place. Sara and Greer were silent-thinking the same thing, Michael thought, or maybe they were just too cold to speak. His hands were so stiff he doubted he could fire, much less reload, his rifle. He tried to take a drink from his canteen to steady himself, but it was frozen solid.

From out of the darkness they heard the sound of Alicia’s horse, riding back at a trot. She pulled up beside them.

“Tracks,” she said, gesturing with a quick tip of her head. “There’s an opening in the fence.”

She heeled her mount, not waiting for them, and barreled back they way she’d come. Without a word Greer followed, the others bringing up the rear. They were in the trees again. Alicia was riding faster now, galloping through the snow. Michael heeled his mount, urging the animal forward. Beside him, Sara bent her neck low over her mount as the branches skimmed past.

Something was moving above them, in the trees.

Michael lifted his face in time to hear a gun go off behind him. No sooner had this happened than a violent force slapped him from the rear, shoving the air from his lungs and catapulting him headfirst over the horse’s neck, his rifle swinging out from his hand like a whip. For a single instant he felt himself suspended painlessly over the earth-part of his mind paused to register this surprising fact-but the sensation didn’t last; he hit the ground with a jolt, landing on his back in the snow, and now there were other things to think about. He had, he saw, come to rest directly in the path of his own horse. He rolled over on his side, covering the back of his head with his hands as if this might actually help; he felt the wild torrent of air as the panicked animal bounded over him, followed by the concussion of its hooves, one impacting just inches from his ear.

Then it was gone. Everyone was gone.

Michael saw the viral-the same one, he surmised, that had knocked him from his horse-as soon as he drew up to his knees. It was crouched just a few meters from him, poised on its folded haunches like a frog. Its forearms were buried in the snow, which glowed with the organic light of its bioluminescence, as if the creature were partially immersed in a pool of blue-green water. More snow clung to its chest and arms, a glistening dust; rivulets of moisture were running down its face. Michael realized that he was hearing gunshots, an echoing spatter over the ridge and, mixed with this, like the words of a song, voices calling his name. But these sounds might have been signals from a distant star. Like the vast expanse of darkness around him-for that, too, had faded from his mind, dispersing like the molecules of an expanding gas-they might have pertained to some other person entirely. The viral was clicking now, rocking the muscles of its jaw. With a cock of its head it gave a lazy-seeming snap of teeth, as if it were in no hurry-as if the two of them had all the time in the world. And in that moment Michael realized that the place where he kept his fear was empty. He, Michael the Circuit, wasn’t afraid. What he felt was more like anger-a huge, weary irritation, such as he might have felt for a fly that had been buzzing around his face too long. Goddamnit, he thought, guiding his hand to the sheath on his belt. I am so tired of these fucking things. Maybe there are forty million of you and maybe there aren’t. In the next two seconds, there’s going to be one less.

As Michael rose the viral shot forward, its arms and legs extending like the fingers of an open hand; he barely had enough time to shove the blade out in front of him, his eyes closing reflexively. He felt the bite of metal as the viral slammed into him, folding over Michael’s body as he tumbled backward.

He rolled to see the viral lying face-up on the snow. His blade was buried in its chest. Its arms and legs were making a kind of paddling motion, clawing at the air. A pair of figures were standing above the body. Peter and, beside him, Amy. Where had they come from? Amy was holding a rifle-Michael’s rifle, covered in snow. At their feet, the creature made a sound that could have been a sigh or a groan. Amy drew the stock of the gun to her shoulder, lowered the barrel, and pushed it into the viral’s open mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and pulled the trigger.

Michael rose to his feet. The viral was motionless now, its agonal twitchings ceased. A broad spray of blood lay on the snow. Amy passed the gun to Peter.

“Take this.”

“Are you okay?” Peter asked Michael.

Only then did Michael realize he was shaking. He nodded.

“Come on.”

They heard more gunfire over the ridge. They ran.

It wasn’t fair, Lacey knew, what she had done. Allowing Peter and Amy to think that she would be going with them. Setting the bomb’s timer and leading them to the door to the tunnel, then directing them to stand on the far side. Pulling the door closed as they watched, then dropping the bolts in place.

She could hear them banging on the other side. Could hear Amy’s voice, a final time, ringing in her mind.

Lacey, Lacey, don’t go!

Run now. He will be here any minute.

Lacey, please!

You must help them. They’ll be afraid. They won’t know what is happening. Help them, Amy.

All that had happened here, in this place, needed to be wiped away. As God had wiped the earth away in the days of Noah, so that the great ship could sail and make the world again.

She would be His waters.

Such a terrible thing, the bomb. It was small, Jonas had explained, just half a kiloton-large enough to destroy the Chalet itself, all its underground floors, to hide the evidence of what they had done-but not so large as to register on any satellites. A fail-safe, in case the virals had ever broken out. But then the power had failed on the upper levels, and Sykes was gone, or dead; and though Jonas could have detonated it himself, he could not bring himself to do this, not with Amy there.

With Peter and Amy watching, Lacey had knelt before it: a small, suitcase-shaped object, with the dull finish of all military things. Jonas had shown her the steps. She pressed a small indent on the side, and a panel dropped down, revealing a keyboard with a small screen, large enough for a single line of text. She typed:

ELIZABETH

The screen flickered to life.

ARM? Y N

She pressed Y.

TIME?

For a moment she paused. Then she typed 5.

5:00 CONFIRM? Y N

She pressed Y once more. On the screen, a clock began to run.

4:59

4:58

4:57

She sealed the panel and rose.

“Quickly,” she had said to the two of them, leading them briskly down the hall. “We must get out of here now.”

Then she’d locked them out.

Lacey, please! I don’t know what to do! Tell me what to do!

You will, Amy, when the moment comes. You will know what is inside you then. You will know how to set them free, to make their final passage.

Now she was alone. Her work was nearly done. When she was certain Peter and Amy were gone, she freed the bolts and opened the door wide.

Come to me, she thought. Standing in the doorway, she breathed deeply, composing herself, sending out her mind. Come to the place where you were made.

Lacey waited. Five minutes: after so many years, it seemed like nothing, because it really was.

Dawn was breaking over the mountain.

The three of them were racing toward the shots. They crested a ridge; below them, Michael saw a house, the horses outside. Sara and Alicia were waving to them from the door.

The creatures were behind them now, in the trees. They tore down the embankment and dashed inside. Greer and Hollis appeared from behind a curtain, carrying a tall chest of drawers.

“They’re right behind us,” Michael said.

They wedged the bureau against the door. A hopeless gesture, thought Michael, but it might buy them a second or two.

“What about these windows?” Alicia was saying. “Anything we can use?”

They tried to move the cupboard, but it was too heavy. “Forget it,” Alicia said. She drew a pistol from her waistband and pressed it into Michael’s hands. “Greer, you and Hollis take the window in the bedroom. Everyone else stays here. Two on the door, one on each window, front and back. Circuit, you watch the chimney. They’ll go for the horses first.”

Everyone took their positions.

From the bedroom, Hollis shouted, “Here they come!”

Something was wrong, Lacey thought. They should have been here by now. She could feel them, everywhere around her, filling her mind with their hunger, their hunger and the question.

Who am I?

Who am I?

Who am I?

She stepped into the tunnel.

Come to me, she answered. Come to me. Come to me.

She moved quickly down its length; she could make out the opening, a circle of softening gray, the elongated dawn of the mountain. The first true light of sunrise would hit them from the west, reflecting off the far side of the valley, its fields of snow and ice.

She reached the tunnel’s mouth and stepped out. She could see, below her, the tracks and debris of the virals’ ascent up the icy slope. A thousand thousand strong, and more.

They had gone right past.

Despair gripped her. Where are you, she thought, and then she said it, hearing the fury in her voice as it echoed over the valley: “Where are you?” But there was silence from heaven.

Then, from the stillness, she heard it.

I am here.

The virals hit the doors and windows at once, a furious crash of breaking glass and splintering wood. Peter, bracing the bureau with his shoulder, was blown backward, into Amy. He could hear Hollis and Greer shooting from the bedroom, Alicia and Michael and Sara and Amy, too, everyone firing.

“Fall back!” Alicia was yelling. “The door’s collapsing!”

Peter grabbed Amy by the arm and pulled her into the bedroom. Hollis was at the window. Greer was on the ground beside the bed, bleeding from a deep gash in his head.

“It’s glass!” he yelled over the report of Hollis’s weapon. “It’s just glass!”

Alicia: “Hollis, stay on that window!” She dropped her empty clip and slammed a new one into place and pulled the bolt. Here they would make their stand. “Everyone, get ready!”

They heard the front door give way. Alicia, closest to the bedroom curtain, spun around and began to fire.

The one that got her wasn’t the first, or the second, or even the third. It was the fourth. By then her gun was drained. Later, Peter would recall the scene as a sequence of discrete details. The sound of her last shell casings ricocheting on the floor. The swirl of gunpowder smoke in the air and the descent of Alicia’s empty clip as she reached to pull a new one from her vest; the viral hurling itself toward her through the tattered curtain, the pitiless smoothness of its face and the flash of its eyes and open jaws; the barrel of her useless gun lifting, and the dart of her hand to draw her blade, too late; the moment of impact, cruel and unstoppable, Alicia falling backward to the floor, the viral’s burrowing jaws finding the curve of her neck.

It was Hollis who took the shot, stepping forward as the viral lifted its face and spearing the barrel of his rifle into its mouth and firing, spraying the back of its head against the wall of the bedroom. Peter scrabbled forward and grabbed Alicia under the arms, dragging her away from the door. The blood was running freely from her neck, a deep crimson, soaking her vest. Someone was yelling, saying her name over and over, but maybe that was him. Braced against the wall, he hugged Alicia to his chest, holding her upright between his legs, reflexively putting his hands over the wound to try to stop the bleeding. Amy and Sara were on the floor now, too, huddled against the wall. Another creature came through the curtain and Peter lifted his pistol and fired, his last two rounds. The first one missed but not the second. In his arms, Alicia was breathing strangely, all hiccups and gasps. There was blood, so much blood.

He closed his eyes and pulled her tightly against him.

• • •

Lacey turned; Babcock was perched above her, at the top of the tunnel’s mouth. As great and terrible a thing as God had ever made. Lacey felt no fear, only wonder at the magnificent workings of God. That He should make a being so perfect in his design, fit to devour a world. And as she gazed upon him glowing with his great and terrible radiance-a hallowed light, like the light of angels-Lacey’s heart swelled with the knowledge that she had not been wrong, that the long night of her vigil would end as she’d forseen. A vigil begun so many years ago on a damp spring morning when she had opened the door of the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy in Memphis, Tennessee, and beheld a little girl.

Jonas, she thought, do you see that I was right? All is forgiven; all that has been lost can be found again. Jonas, I am coming to tell you. I am practically with you now.

She darted back into the tunnel.

Come to me. Come to me come to me come to me.

She ran. She was in that place but also another; she was running down the tunnel, drawing Babcock inside; but she was also a little girl again, in the field. She could smell the sweetness of the earth, feel the cool night air on her cheeks; she could hear her sisters and her mother’s voice, calling from the doorway: Run, children, run as fast as you can.

She hit the door and kept on going, down the hall with its buzzing lights, into the room with its gurney and beakers and batteries, all the little things of the old world and its terrible dreams of blood.

She stopped, pivoting to face the doorway. And there he was.

I am Babcock. One of Twelve.

As am I, thought Sister Lacey, as, behind her, the bomb’s timer reached 0:00, the atoms of its core collapsed into themselves, and her mind filled up forever with the pure white light of heaven.

SIXTY-NINE

She was Amy, and she was forever. She was one of Twelve and also the other, the one above and behind, the Zero. She was the Girl from Nowhere, the One Who Walked In, who lived a thousand years; Amy of Multitudes, the Girl with the Souls Inside Her.

She was Amy. She was Amy. She was Amy.

She was the first to rise. After the thunder and the shaking, the trembling and the roaring. Lacey’s little house bucking and rocking like a horse, like a tiny boat at sea. Everyone yelling and screaming, huddled against the wall and holding on.

But then it was over. The earth below them came to rest. The air was full of dust. Everyone coughing and choking, amazed to be alive.

They were alive.

She led Peter and the others out, past the bodies of the dead ones, into the light of dawn where the Many waited. The Many of Babcock no more.

They were everywhere and all around. A sea of faces, eyes. They moved toward her in the vastness of their number, into the dawning sunlight. She could feel the empty space inside them where the dream had been, the dream of Babcock, and in its place the question, fierce and burning:

Who am I who am I who am I?

And she knew. Amy knew. She knew them all, each to a one; she knew them all at last. She was the ship, just as Lacey had said; she carried their souls inside her. She had kept these all along, waiting for this day, when she would return what was rightfully theirs-the stories of who they were. The day when they would make their passage.

Come to me, she thought. Come to me come to me come to me.

They came. From out of the trees, from across the snowy fields, from all the hidden places. She moved among them, touching and caressing, and told them what they longed to know.

You are… Smith.

You are… Tate.

You are… Duprey.

You are Erie you are Ramos you are Ward you are Cho you are Singh Atkinson Johnson Montefusco Cohen Murrey Nguyen Elberson Lazaro Torres Wright Winborne Pratt Scalamonti Mendoza Ford Chung Frost Vandyne Carlin Park Diego Murphy Parsons Richini O’Neil Myers Zapata Young Scheer Tanaka Lee White Gupta Solnik Jessup Rile Nichols Maharana Rayburn Kennedy Mueller Doerr Goldman Pooley Price Kahn Cordell Ivanov Simpson Wong Palumbo Kim Rao Montgomery Busse Mitchell Walsh McEvoy Bodine Olson Jaworksi Ferguson Zachos Spenser Ruscher…

The sun was lifting over the mountain, a blinding brightness. Come, thought Amy. Come into the light and remember.

You are Cross you are Flores you are Haskell Vasquez Andrews McCall Barbash Sullivan Shapiro Jablonski Choi Zeidner Clark Huston Rossi Culhane Baxter Nunez Athanasian King Higbee Jensen Lombardo Anderson James Sasso Lindquist Masters Hakeemzedah Levander Tsujimoto Michie Osther Doody Bell Morales Lenzi Andriyakhova Watkins Bonilla Fitzgerald Tinti Asmundson Aiello Daley Harper Brewer Klein Weatherall Griffin Petrova Kates Hadad Riley MacLeod Wood Patterson…

Amy felt their sorrow, but it was different now. It was a holy soaring. A thousand recollected lives were passing through her, a thousand thousand stories-of love and work, of parents and children, of duty and joy and grief. Beds slept in and meals eaten, and the bliss and pain of the body, and a view of summer leaves from a window on a morning it had rained; the nights of loneliness and the nights of love, the soul in its body’s keeping always longing to be known. She moved among them where they lay in the snow, the Many no more, each in the place of their choosing.

The snow angels.

Remember, she told them. Remember.

I am Flynn I am Gonzalez I am Young Wentzell Armstrong O’Brien Reeves Farajian Watanabe Mulroney Chernesky Logan Braverman Livingston Martin Campana Cox Torrey Swartz Tobin Hecht Stuart Lewis Redwine Pho Markovich Todd Mascucci Kostin Laseter Salib Hennesey Kasteley Merriweather Leone Barkley Kiernan Campbell Lamos Marion Quang Kagan Glazner Dubois Egan Chandler Sharpe Browning Ellenzweig Nakamura Giacomo Jones I am I am I am…

The sun would do its work. Soon they would be dead, then ashes, then nothing. Their bodies would scatter to the winds. They were leaving her at last. She felt their spirits rising, sailing away.

“Amy.”

Peter was beside her now. She had no words for the look upon his face. She would tell him soon, she thought. She would tell him all she knew, all she believed. What lay ahead, the long journey they would take together. But now was not a time for talk.

“Go inside,” she said, and took his empty pistol from him, dropping it into the snow. “Go inside and save her.”

“Can I save her?”

And Amy nodded.

“You have to,” she said.

Sara and Michael had lifted Alicia onto the bed and stripped off her blood-soaked vest. Her eyes were closed, fluttering.

“I need bandages!” Sara yelled. More blood was on her hands, her hair. “Someone get me something to stanch this bleeding!”

Hollis used his blade to cut a length of cloth from the sheets. They weren’t clean, nothing was, but they would have to do.

“We have to tie her down,” Peter said.

“Peter, the wound is too deep,” Sara said. She shook her head hopelessly. “It’s not going to matter.”

“Hollis, give me your blade.”

He told the others what to do, cutting Lacey’s bed linens into long strips, then twisting them together. They bound Alicia’s hands and feet to the posts of the bed. Sara said the bleeding seemed to be slowing-an ominous sign. Her pulse was high and thready.

“If she survives,” Greer warned from the foot of the bed, “these sheets will never hold her.”

But Peter wasn’t listening. He moved to the main room, where among the wreckage he found his pack. The metal box was still inside, with the syringes. He removed one of the vials and returned to the bedroom, where he passed it to Sara.

“Give her this.”

She took it in her hand, examining it. “Peter, I don’t know what this is.”

“It’s Amy,” he said.

She gave Alicia half the vial. Through the day and into the night they waited. Alicia had lapsed into a kind of twilight. Her skin was dry and hot. The wound at her neck had sealed, taking on a bruised appearance, purple and inflamed. From time to time she would seem to awaken, emerging into a kind of twilight, moaning. Then she closed her eyes again.

They had dragged the corpses of the dead virals outside, with the others. Their bodies had fallen quickly into a gray ash that was still swirling in the air, coating every surface like a layer of dirty snow. By morning, Peter thought, they would all be gone. Michael and Hollis had boarded up the windows and set the door back on its hinges; as darkness fell, they burned what was left of the bureau in the fireplace. Sara stitched up Greer’s head, wrapped it in another bandage made from bed linens. They slept in shifts, two to watch Alicia. Peter said he would stay up all night with her, but in the end his exhaustion got the better of him and he slept as well, curled on the cold floor by her bed.

By morning, Alicia had begun to strain at the straps. All color had drained from her skin; her eyes, behind her lids, were rosy with burst capillaries.

“Give her more.”

“Peter, I don’t know what I’m doing,” Sara said. She was worn down, threadbare; they all were. “It could kill her.”

“Do it.”

They gave her the rest of the vial. Outside it had begun to snow again. Greer and Hollis left to scout the woods and returned an hour later, half frozen. It was really coming down, they said.

Hollis pulled Peter aside. “Food’s going to be a problem,” he said quietly. They had taken an inventory of Lacey’s cupboard; most of the jars were smashed.

“I know.”

“There’s another thing. I know the bomb was underground, but there could be radiation. Michael says that at the very least it’s in the water table. He doesn’t think we should stay here much longer. There’s some kind of structure on the other side of the valley. It looks like there’s a ridge we can use to cut to the east.”

“What about Lish? We can’t move her.”

Hollis paused. “I’m just saying we could get stuck here. Then we’re in real trouble. We don’t want to try it half-starving in a blizzard.”

Hollis was right, and Peter knew it. “You want to scout it out?”

“When the snow lets up.”

Peter offered a concessionary nod. “Take Michael with you.”

“I was thinking of Greer.”

“He should stay here,” said Peter.

Hollis was silent a moment, taking Peter’s meaning. “All right,” he said.

The squall blew through with the night; by morning, the sky was crisp and bright. Hollis and Michael gathered their gear to go. If all went well, Hollis said, they’d be back before nightfall. But it could be as long as a day. In the snowy yard, Sara hugged Hollis, then Michael. Greer and Amy were inside with Alicia. In the last twenty-four hours, since they’d given her the second dose of the virus, her condition seemed to have reached a kind of stasis. But her fever was still high, and her eyes had gotten worse.

“Just don’t… let it go too long,” Hollis told Peter. “She wouldn’t want you to.”

They waited. Amy was staying close to Alicia now, never leaving her bedside. It was clear to all what was occurring. The merest light in the room made her flinch, and she had begun to strain at the straps again.

“She’s fighting it,” Amy said. “But I’m afraid that she is losing.”

Darkness fell, with no sign of Michael and Hollis. Peter had never felt so helpless. Why wasn’t it working, as it had with Lacey? But he wasn’t a doctor; they were only guessing about what to do. The second dose could be killing her, for all he knew. Peter was aware of Greer watching him, waiting for him to act. And yet he could do nothing.

It was just past dawn when Sara shook him awake. Peter had fallen asleep in a chair, his head rocked forward onto his chest.

“I think… it’s happening,” she said.

Alicia was breathing very rapidly. Her whole body was taut, the muscles of her jaw twitching, a fluttering beneath the surface of her skin. A low, effortful moan issued from the back of her throat. For a moment she relaxed. Then it happened again.

“Peter.”

He turned to see Greer, standing in the doorway. He was holding a blade.

“It’s time.”

Peter rose, positioning his body between Greer and the bed where Alicia lay. “No.”

“I know it’s hard, but she’s a soldier. A soldier of the Expeditionary. It’s time for her to take the trip.”

“I meant no, it’s not your job.” He held out his hand. “Give me the blade, Major.”

Greer hesitated, searching Peter’s face with his eyes. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do.” He felt no fear, only resignation. “I gave her my word, you see. I’m the only one who can.”

Reluctantly, Greer surrendered the knife. A familiar heft and balance: Peter saw that it was his own, the one he’d left at the gate with Eustace.

“I’d like to be alone with her, if that’s all right.”

They said their goodbyes. Peter heard the door to the house open and close again. He went to the window and yanked one of the boards free, dousing the room with the soft gray light of morning. Alicia moaned and turned her head away. Greer was right. Peter didn’t think he had more than a couple of minutes. He remembered what Muncey had said at the end, how quickly it comes on. How he wanted to feel it coming out of him.

Peter sat on the edge of the bed, the blade in his hand. He wanted to say something to her, but words seemed too small a thing for what he felt. He sat for a quiet moment, letting his mind fill with thoughts of her. Things they’d done and said, and what still lay unspoken between them. It was all he could think to do.

He could have stayed that way a day, a year, a hundred years. But he could wait no longer, he knew. He rose and positioned himself above her on the bed, straddling her waist. Holding the blade with both hands, he placed its tip at the base of her breastbone. The sweet spot. He felt his life dividing into halves: that which had come before and all that would come after. He felt her rise against him, her body clenching against the restraints. His hands were trembling, his vision blurry with tears.

“I’m sorry, Lish,” he said, and closed his eyes as he lifted the blade, gathering all his strength inside himself before finding the will to bring it down.

SEVENTY

It was spring and the baby was coming.

Maus had been having contractions for days. She would be cleaning in the kitchen, or lying in bed, or watching Theo work in the yard, when suddenly she felt it: a quick tightening across her midriff that made her breath catch in her chest. Is this it? Theo would ask her. Is he coming? Is the baby coming now? For a moment she would look away, her head cocked to the side, as if listening for some distant sound. Then she would return her attention to him, offering a reassuring smile. There. You see? It was nothing. Just the one. It’s all right. Go back to what you were doing, Theo.

But now it wasn’t nothing. It was the middle of the night. Theo was dreaming, a simple, happy dream of sunlight falling on a golden field, when he heard Maus’s voice, calling his name. She was in the dream, too, but he couldn’t see her; she was hiding from him, she was playing some kind of game. She was ahead of him, then behind, he didn’t know where she was. Theo. Conroy was yipping and barking, bounding through the grass, racing away from him and tearing back again, urging him to follow. Where are you, Theo called, where are you? I’m wet, Mausami’s voice was saying. I’m wet all over. Wake up, Theo. I think my water’s broken.

Then he was awake and standing up, fumbling in the dark, trying to put his boots on. Conroy was up too, wagging his tail, shoving his damp nose in Theo’s face as he knelt to light the lantern. Is it morning? Are we going out?

Mausami drew a sharp breath through her teeth. “Ooo.” She arched her back off the sagging mattress. “Ooo.”

She had told him what to do, the things she’d need. Sheets and towels to put under her, for the blood and all the rest. A knife and fishing line for the cord. Water, to clean the baby, and a blanket to wrap him in.

“Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back.”

“Flyers,” she moaned, “where would I go?” Another contraction surged through her. She reached for his hand and squeezed it tight, digging her nails into his palm, gritting her teeth in pain. “Oh, fuck.” Then she turned and wretched onto the floor.

The room filled with the tang of vomit. Conroy thought it was for him, a wonderful present. Theo shoved the dog away, then helped Mausami ease back onto the pillows.

“Something’s wrong.” Her face was pale with fear. “It shouldn’t hurt like this.”

“What should I do, Maus?”

“I don’t know!”

Theo raced down stairs, Conroy following at his heels. The baby, the baby was coming. He’d meant to put all the supplies together in one place, but of course he never had. The house was freezing, the fire had burned down; the baby would need to be kept warm. He put an armful of logs into the cradle, then knelt before it, blowing on the embers so it would catch. He got rags and a pail from the kitchen. He’d intended to boil water, to sterilize it, but it didn’t seem like there was time for that now.

“Theo, where are you!”

He filled the pail and got a sharp knife and carried it all up to the bedroom. Maus was sitting up now, her long hair spilling over her face, looking afraid.

“I’m sorry about the floor,” she said.

“Any more contractions?”

She shook her head.

Conroy was back at the mess on the floor. Theo shooed him out and got down on his hands and knees to clean it up, holding his breath. How ridiculous. She was about to have a baby, and here he was, flinching at the smell of vomit.

“Uh-oh,” Maus said.

By the time he’d risen, the contraction was upon her. She’d pulled her legs upward, drawing her heels toward her buttocks. Tears were squeezing from the corners of her eyes.

“It hurts! It hurts!” She rolled suddenly onto her side. “Press my back, Theo!”

She had never said anything about this. “Where? How should I press it?”

She was shouting into the pillow. “Anywhere!”

He gave an uncertain push.

“Lower! For godsakes!”

He curled his hand into a ball and pressed his knuckles into her; he felt her pushing back. He counted the seconds: Ten, twenty, thirty.

“Back labor.” She was panting for breath. “The baby’s head is shoving against my spine. It’ll make me want to push. I can’t push yet, Theo. Don’t let me push.”

She drew up onto her hands and knees. She was wearing only a T-shirt. The sheets beneath her were soaked with fluid, giving off a warm, sweet smell, like mown hay. He remembered his dream of the field, the waves of golden sunlight.

Another contraction; Mausami groaned and dropped her face into the mattress.

“Don’t just stand there!”

Theo got on the bed beside her, positioning his fist on the ridge of her spine, and leaned in, pushing with all his might.

Hours and hours. The contractions continued, hard and deep, through the length of the day. Theo stayed with her on the bed, pressing her spine until his hands were numb, his arms rubbery with fatigue. But compared to what was happening to Mausami, this small discomfort was nothing. He left her side only twice, to call Conroy in from the yard and then, as the day was ending and he heard him whining at the door, to let him out again. Always by the time he returned up the stairs Mausami was shouting his name.

He wondered if it was always like this. He didn’t really know. It was horrible, endless, like nothing he’d ever experienced. He wondered if Mausami would have the energy, when the time came, to push the baby out. Between contractions she seemed to float in a kind of half sleep; she was focusing her mind, he knew, readying herself for the next wave of pain to move through her. All he could do was press her back, but this seemed to be helping very little. It didn’t seem to be helping at all.

He was lighting the lantern-a second night, he thought with despair, how could this go on a second night?-when Maus gave a sharp cry. He turned to see watery blood pour from her, running in ribbons down her thighs.

“Maus, you’re bleeding.”

She had rolled onto her back, pulling her thighs upward. She was breathing very quickly, her face drenched with sweat. “Hold. My legs,” she gasped.

“Hold them how?”

“I’m going. To push. Theo.”

He positioned himself at the foot of the bed and placed his hands against her knees. As the next contraction came, she bent at the waist, driving her weight toward him.

“Oh, God. I can see him.”

She had opened like a flower, revealing a disk of pink skin covered in wet black hair. Then, in the next instant, this vision was gone, the flower’s petals folding over it, drawing the baby back inside her.

Three, four, five more times she bore down; each time the baby appeared and, just as quickly, vanished. For the first time he thought it: this baby doesn’t want to be born. This baby wants to stay just where it is.

“Help me, Theo,” she begged. All her strength was gone. “Pull him out, pull him out, please, just pull him out.”

“You have to push one more time, Maus.” She seemed completely helpless, insensate, on the verge of final collapse. “Are you listening? You have to push!”

“I can’t, I can’t!”

The next contraction took her; she lifted her head and released an animal cry of pain.

“Push, Maus, push!”

She did; she pushed. As the top of the baby’s head appeared, Theo reached down and slipped his index finger inside her, into her heat and dampness. He felt the orbital curve of an eye socket, the delicate bulge of a nose. He couldn’t pull the baby, there was nothing to hold on to, the baby would have to come to him. He drew back and positioned a hand beneath her, leaning his shoulder against her legs to brace the force of her effort.

“We’re almost there! Don’t stop!”

Then, as if the touch of his hand had given it the will to be born, the baby’s face appeared, sliding from her. A vision of magnificent strangeness, with ears and a nose and a mouth and bulging, froglike eyes. Theo cupped his hand below the smooth, wet curve of its skull. The cord, a translucent, blood-filled tube, was looped around its neck. Though no one had told him to do this, Theo placed a finger under it, gently lifting it away. Then he reached inside Mausami and tucked a finger under the baby’s arm, and pulled.

The body wriggled free, filling Theo’s hands with his slippery, blue-skinned warmth. A boy. The baby was a boy. Still he had not breathed, or made the slightest sound. His arrival in the world was incomplete, but Maus had explained the next part well enough. Theo rolled the baby in his hands, bracing his skinny body lengthwise with his forearm and supporting his downturned face with his palm; he began to rub the baby’s back, moving the fingers of his free hand in a circular motion. His heart was hammering in his chest, but he felt no panic; his mind was clear and focused, his entire being brought to bear on this one task. Come on, he was saying, come on and breathe. After everything you just went through, how can that be so hard? The baby had only just been born, but already Theo felt his hold upon him-how, simply by existing, this small, gray thing in his arms had obliterated all other ways in which Theo might live. Come on, baby. Do it. Open your lungs and breathe.

And then he did. Theo felt his tiny chest inflate, a discernible click, then something warm and sticky, spraying into his hand like a sneeze. The baby took a second breath, filling his lungs, and Theo felt a force of life flowing into him. Theo turned him over, reaching for a rag. The baby had begun to cry, not the robust complaints he had expected but a kind of mewing. He wiped his nose and lips and cheeks and scooped the last mucus from his mouth with a finger, and placed him, the cord still attached, on Mausami’s chest.

Her face was exhausted, heavy-lidded and worn. At the corners of her eyes he saw a fan of wrinkles that hadn’t been there just a day ago. She managed a weak but grateful smile. It was over. The baby had been born, the baby was here at last.

He placed a blanket over the baby, over the two of them, and sat beside them on the bed, and let it all go: he wept.

It was deep night when Theo awoke, thinking: Where was Conroy?

Maus and the baby were asleep. They had decided-or, rather, Maus had decided, and Theo had quickly agreed-to name him Caleb. They had swaddled him tightly in a blanket and placed him on the mattress beside her. The air of the room was still heavy with a rich, earthy smell, of blood and sweat and birth. She had fed the baby, or tried to-her milk wouldn’t be coming in for a day or so-and taken a bit of food herself, a mush of boiled potatoes from the basement and a few bites of a mealy apple from their winter stores. She would need protein soon, Theo knew; but there was plenty of small game around, now that the weather had warmed. As soon as they were settled, he would have to leave to hunt.

It seemed obvious, suddenly, that they would never be departing this place. They had everything they needed to make a life here. The house had stood the years, waiting for someone to make it a home again. He wondered why it had taken him so long to see this. When Peter came back, that was what Theo would say to him. Maybe there was something on that mountain and maybe there wasn’t. It didn’t matter. This was home; they would never be leaving.

He sat awhile, mulling over these things, full of a quiet amazement that seemed to lodge in the deepest part of him. But eventually exhaustion overcame him. He crawled in beside them and soon was fast asleep.

Now, awake, he realized he’d forgotten all about Conroy. He searched his memory for the last time he’d been aware of the dog’s presence. Sometime late, close to sunset, Conroy had started to whine, asking to be let out. Theo had done this quickly, not wanting to leave Maus’s side for even an instant. Conroy never wandered far, and as soon as he was done with his business, he’d be scratching at the door. Theo had been so preoccupied that he had simply slammed the door and raced back up the stairs and forgotten all about him.

Until now. It was odd, he thought, that he hadn’t heard so much as a peep. No scratching at the door or barking from outside. For a period of days after he had found the footprints in the barn, Theo had kept a watchful eye, never venturing far from the house, keeping the shotgun handy. He had told Mausami nothing, not wanting to worry her. But as time passed, with no other signs, he had let his mind turn toward the more pressing matter of the baby. He’d found himself wondering if he had misread what he’d seen. The footprints could have been his own, after all, the can something Conroy had fished out of the trash.

He rose quietly, taking the lantern and his boots and the shotgun from its place beside the door, and descended to the living room. He sat on the stairs to put on his boots, not bothering with the laces; he lit a piece of kindling off the coals of the fire, setting it to the wick of the lantern, and opened the door.

He had expected to find Conroy sleeping on the porch, but it was empty. Raising the lantern to spread its light, Theo stepped down into the yard. No moon or even stars; a damp spring wind was blowing, bearing rain. He lifted his face into the gathering mist, a light spattering on his brow and cheeks. The dog, wherever he’d run off to, would be glad to see him. He’d want to get inside, out of the rain.

“Conroy!” he called. “Conroy, where are you?”

The other houses stood silent. Conroy had never shown more than passing interest in these structures, as if, through some dog sense, he knew them to be of no value. There were things inside, the man and the woman made use of them, what did it matter to him?

Theo advanced slowly down the trace, the shotgun clenched under one arm while, with the other, he swept the area with the light of his lantern. If it started to rain in earnest, he didn’t think he’d be able to keep the thing lit. That goddamn dog, he thought. Now was not the time for him to run off like this.

“Conroy, damnit, where did you go?”

Theo found him lying at the base of the last house. He knew at once the dog was dead. His slender body was still, his silvery mane drenched in blood.

Then, coming from the house-the sound traveling with an arrow’s swift assurance to pierce his mind with terror-he heard Mausami scream.

Thirty steps, fifty, a hundred: the lantern was gone, dropped on the ground by Conroy’s body, he was racing through the dark in his unlaced boots, first one and then the other launching off his feet. He hit the porch at a leap, ripped open the door, and dashed up the stairs.

The bedroom was empty.

He tore through the house, calling her name. No sign of a struggle; Maus and the baby had simply vanished. He raced through the kitchen and out the back, just in time to hear her scream again, the sound strangely muted, as if rising toward him through a mile of water.

She was in the barn.

He entered at a dead sprint, bursting through the door, spinning his body to sweep the dark interior with the shotgun. Maus was in the backseat of the old Volvo, clutching the baby to her chest. She was waving frantically, her words muffled by the thickness of the glass.

“Theo, behind you!”

He turned and as he turned the shotgun was knocked away, slapped like a twig from his hands. Then something grabbed him, not any single part but the whole of him, Theo entire; he felt himself lifted up. The car with Mausami and the baby in it was somewhere below him and he was flying through the dark. He hit the hood of the car with a crunch of buckling metal, rolling, tumbling; he landed face-up on the ground and came to a stop but then something, the same something, grabbed him, and he was flying again. The wall, this time, with its shelves of tools and stores and cans of fuel. He hit it face-first, glass exploding, wood splintering, everything falling in a clattering rain; as the ground rose to meet him, slowly and then quickly and finally all at once, he felt a crunch of bone.

Agony. Stars filled his vision, actual stars. The thought reached him, like a message from some distant place, that he was about to die. He should be dead already. The viral should have killed him. But this would happen soon enough. He could taste blood in his mouth, feel it stinging his eyes. He was lying face-down on the floor of the barn, one leg, the broken one, twisted under him; the creature was above him now, a looming shadow, preparing to strike. It was better this way, Theo thought. Better that the viral should take him first. He didn’t want to watch what would happen to Mausami and the baby. Through the murk of his battered brain, he heard her calling out to him.

Look away, Maus, he thought. I love you. Look away.