"What a mess."

Michael reached down into the sludge and opened the asphalt drain; the three of them began to sweep the residuum toward it. The temperature inside the tower was at least a hundred degrees; the sweat was raining off them, the trapped moisture of their breath fogging their faceplates. Once they'd cleared the worst of it, they dumped the solvent, hooked up their wands, and commenced spraying down the walls and floor.

Inside their suits, with the roar of the compressor, conversation was just about impossible. The only thing to think about was finishing the job and getting out. They'd been at it for only a couple of minutes when Michael felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see Ceps pointing at Ed. The man was just standing there, facing the wall like a statue, his wand held loosely at his side. While Michael watched, it slipped from his hand, though Ed seemed not to notice.

"Something's wrong with him!" Ceps yelled over the racket.

Michael stepped forward and turned Ed by the shoulders. All he got was a blank stare.

"Ed, you okay?"

The man's face startled to life. "Oh, hey, Michael," he said, too brightly. "Hey-hey, hey-hey. Woo-woo."

"What's he saying?" Ceps called out.

Michael drew a finger over his throat to tell Ceps to cut the compressor. He looked at Ed squarely. "Talk to me, buddy."

A girlish giggle escaped the man's lips. He was heaving for breath, one hand lifting toward his faceplate. "Ashblass. Minfuth. Minfuth!"

Michael saw what was about to happen. As Ed reached for his mask, Michael seized him by the arms. The man was no kid, but he was no weakling either. He wriggled fiercely in Michael's grasp, trying to break free, his face blue with panic. Not panic, Michael realized: hypoxia. His body convulsed with a massive twitch, his knees melting under him, his full weight crashing into Michael's arms.

"Ceps, help me get him out of here!"

Ceps grabbed the man by his feet. His body had gone limp. Together they carried him to the port.

"Somebody take him!" Michael yelled.

Hands appeared to pull from the far side; Michael and Ceps shoved his body through. Michael scrambled into the port, tearing off his faceplate and gloves the moment he hit fresh air. Ed was lying face-up on the hardpan; someone had stripped off his mask and backpack. Michael dropped to his knees beside the body. An ominous stillness: the man wasn't breathing. Michael placed the heel of his right hand at the center of Ed's chest, positioned the left on top, laced his fingers together, and pushed. Nothing. Again and again he pushed, counting to thirty, as he had learned to do, then slipped one hand behind Ed's neck to tip his airway open, pinched his nose, and pressed his mouth over the man's blue lips. One breath, two breaths, three. Michael's mind was clear as ice, his thoughts held in the grip of a singular purpose. Just as all seemed lost, he felt a sharp contraction of the diaphragm; Ed's chest inflated, taking in a voluminous breath of air. He turned his face to the side, gasping and coughing.

Michael rocked back on his heels, landing ass-down in the dust, his pulse pounding with adrenaline. Somebody handed him a canteen: Ceps.

"You okay, pal?"

The question didn't even make sense to him. He took a long drink, swishing the water inside his mouth, and spat it away. "Yeah."

Eventually somebody helped Ed to his feet. Michael and Ceps escorted him into the hut and sat him down on one of the benches.

"How you feeling?" Michael asked.

A bit of color had flowed back into Ed's cheeks, though his skin was damp and clammy-looking. He shook his head miserably. "I don't know what happened. I could have sworn I checked my oxygen."

Michael had already looked; the bottles were empty. "Maybe it's time, Ed."

"Jesus, Michael. Are you firing me?"

"No. It's your choice. I'm just saying there's no disgrace in calling it a day." When Ed made no reply, Michael rose to his feet. "Give it some thought. I'll back you, whatever you want to do. You want a ride to the barracks?"

Ed was staring disconsolately into space. Michael could read the truth in his face: the man had nothing else.

"I think I'll sit here a while. Get my strength back."

Michael stepped from the hut to find the rest of the crew hovering by the door. "What the hell are you all standing around for?"

"The shift's over, Chief."

Michael checked his watch: so it was.

"Not for us it isn't. Show's over, everybody. Get your lazy asses back to work."

It was past midnight when Lore said to him, "Lucky thing, about Ed."

The two of them were curled in Michael's berth. Despite Lore's best efforts, his mind had been unable to move on from the day's events. All he kept seeing when he closed his eyes was the look on Ed's face in the hut, like someone being marched to the gallows.

"What do you mean, lucky?"

"That you were there, I mean. That thing you did."

"It wasn't anything."

"Yes, it was. The man could have died. How did you know how to do that?"

The past loomed up inside him, a wave of pain.

"My sister taught me," said Michael. "She was a nurse."

Chapter 30

THE CITY

Kerrville, Texas

They arrived behind the rain. First the fields, sodden with moisture, the air rich with the smell of dirt, then, as they ascended out of the valley, the walls of the city, looming eight stories tall against the brown Texas hills. At the gate they found themselves in a line of traffic-transports, heavy mechanicals, DS pickups crowded with men in their thick pads. Peter climbed out, asked the driver to deposit his locker at the barracks, and showed his orders to the guard at the pedestrian tunnel, who waved him through.

"Welcome home, sir."

After sixteen months in the territories, Peter's senses were instantly assaulted by the vast, overwhelming humanness of the place. He'd spent little time in the city, not enough to adjust to its claustrophobic density of sounds and smells and overflowing faces. The Colony had never numbered more than a hundred souls; here there were over forty thousand.

Peter made his way to the quartermaster to collect his pay. He'd never really gotten used to the idea of money, either. "Equal share," the governing economic unit of the Colony, had made sense to him. You had your share, and you used it how you liked, but it was the same as everybody else's, never less or more. How could these slips of inked paper-Austins they were called, after the man whose image, with its high, domed forehead and beaked nose and perplexing arrangement of clothing, adorned each bill-actually correspond to the value of a person's labor?

The clerk, a civilian, doled out the scrip from the lockbox, snapping the bills onto the counter, and shoved a clipboard toward him through the grate, all without once meeting his eye.

"Sign here."

The money, a fat wad, felt odd in Peter's pocket. As he stepped back into the brightening afternoon, he was already scheming how to be rid of it. Six hours remained until curfew-barely enough time to visit both the orphanage and the stockade before reporting to the barracks. The afternoon was all he had; the transport to the refinery was leaving at 0600.

Greer would come first; that way Peter wouldn't have to disappoint Caleb by leaving before the horn. The stockade was located in the old jailhouse on the west edge of downtown. He signed in at the desk-in Kerrville you were always signing things, another oddity-and stripped off his blade and sidearm. He was about to proceed when the guard stopped him.

"Have to pat you down, Lieutenant."

As a member of the Expeditionary, Peter was accustomed to a certain automatic deference-certainly from a junior domestic, not a day over twenty. "Is that really necessary?"

"I don't make the rules, sir."

Irritating, but Peter didn't have time for an argument. "Just be quick about it."

The guard ran his hands up and down Peter's arms and legs, then produced a heavy ring of keys and led him back into the holding area, a long hall of heavy steel doors. The air was dense and smelled of men. They came to the cell marked with the number 62.

"Funny," the guard remarked, "Greer doesn't see anyone in close to three years, and now he's had two visitors in just a month."

"Who else was here?"

"I wasn't on duty. You'd have to ask him."

The guard located the correct key, inserted it into the tumbler, and swung the door open to a sound of groaning hinges. Greer, shoeless, clothed only in a pair of rough canvas trousers cinched at his waist, was seated on the edge of his bunk. His broad chest gleamed with perspiration; his hands were serenely folded in his lap. His hair, what remained of it, a silvering white, fanned to his massive shoulders, while a great tangle of beard-the beard of a prophet, a wanderer in the wilderness-straggled halfway up his cheeks. A deep stillness radiated off him; the impression he communicated was one of composure, as if he had reduced his mind and body to their essences. For an unsettling moment, he gave no indication that he was aware of the two figures standing in the doorway, causing Peter to wonder if the isolation had done something to his mind. But then he lifted his eyes, his face brightening.

"Peter. There you are."

"Major Greer. It's good to see you."

Greer laughed ironically, his voice thick with disuse. "Nobody's called me that in some time. It's just Lucius now. Or Sixty-two, if you prefer. Most people seem to." Greer addressed the guard. "Give us a few minutes, will you, Sanders?"

"I'm not supposed to leave anyone alone with a prisoner."

Peter shot him a cold glare. "I think I can take care of myself, son."

A moment's hesitancy; then the guard relented. "Well, seeing as it's you, sir, I guess ten minutes would be okay. After that my shift ends, though. I don't want to get in trouble."

Peter frowned. "Do we know each other?"

"I saw your signature. Everybody knows who you are. You're the guy from California. It's, like, a legend." All pretense of his authority was gone; suddenly he was just a starstruck kid, his face beaming with admiration. "What was it like? Coming all that way, I mean."

Peter wasn't quite sure how to respond. "It was a long walk."

"I don't know how you did it. I would have been scared shitless."

"Take my word for it," Peter assured him, "that was a big part of it."

Sanders left them alone. Peter took the room's only chair, straddling it backward across from Greer.

"Looks like you made quite an impression on our boy there. I told you it would be a hard story to keep quiet."

"It's still strange to hear it," Peter said. "How are you doing?"

Greer shrugged. "Oh, I get by. And you? You look well, Peter. The uniform suits you."

"Lish says hello. She just got bumped to captain."

Greer nodded equably. "A remarkable girl, our Lish. Destined for big things, I'd say. So how goes the fight? Or do I have to ask?"

"Not so good. We're oh-for-three. The whole Martinez thing was a catastrophe. Now it looks like Command is having second thoughts."

"That's always what they've been best at. Not to worry, the winds will turn. One thing you learn in here is patience."

"It's not the same without you. I can't help thinking it would be different if you were there."

"Oh, I very much doubt that. This has always been your show. I knew it the moment I met you. Caught upside down in a spinning net, wasn't it?"

Peter laughed at the memory. "Michael puked all over us."

"That's right, I remember now. How is he? I imagine he's not the same kid I knew back then. Always had an answer to everything."

"I doubt he's changed much. Either way, I'll find out tomorrow. They're posting me down to the refinery."

Greer frowned. "Why there?"

"Some new initiative to secure the Oil Road."

"DS will love that. I'd say you've got your hands full with that lot." He gave his knees a slap to change the subject. "And Hollis, what do you hear of him?"

"Nothing good. He took Sara's death hard. The story is he's on the trade."

Greer considered this news for a moment. "On the whole, I can't say I blame him. That may seem strange to say, knowing Hollis, but more than one man has gone that way under those circumstances. I imagine he'll come around sooner or later. He's got a good head on his shoulders."

"And what about you? You're getting out soon. If you want, I can put a word in with Command. Maybe they'd let you reenlist."

But Greer shook his head. "I'm afraid those days are over for me, Peter. Don't forget, I'm a deserter. Once you cross that line, there's no going back."

"What will you do?"

Greer smiled mysteriously. "I imagine something will come along. It always does."

For a while they talked of the others, bits of news, stories from the past. Being with Greer, Peter felt a warm contentment, but accompanying that, a sense of loss. The major had entered his life just when Peter needed him; it was Greer's steadfast presence that had given him the will to move forward in the days when his resolve had wavered. It was a debt that Peter could never fully repay: the debt of borrowed courage. Peter sensed that Greer's incarceration had changed him. He was still the same man, although something inside him ran deeper, a river of inner calm. He seemed to have drawn strength from his isolation.

As the end of the ten minutes approached, Peter told the major about the cave, and the strange man, Ignacio, and Alicia's theory about what he was. Even as he spoke the words, he realized how far-fetched the idea sounded; and yet he felt its rightness. If anything, his feeling that the information was important had grown over the days.

Tags: Justin Cronin The Passage Horror
Source: readsnovelonline.net