The Twelve (The Passage, #2)

by Justin Cronin

the people became frightened, for they knew nothing of the world,

the most beloved of their number;

all of a sudden I realize I have no idea what they’re saying. Not the words themselves. What any of it meant. None of it seemed connected to anything else, like there were two worlds, an inside world and an outside world, and neither had anything to do with the other.

The door would slam on the North American continent. The world might despise us, Guilder thought; what will it do when we’re gone?

cheap theatrics to crown a dutiful hour.

a face petrified into the self-satisfied sneer of an overgrown frat boy.

a sports franchise masquerading as a college where criminals drifted through phony courses and filled the coffers of the alumni fund by pounding their opposite numbers to pieces on autumn afternoons.

an energy that desired nothing, that took nothing; it wanted only to give itself away.

men with dangerous eyes and greasy smiles of blackened teeth and pistols tucked into their belts,

five hundred push-ups and sit-ups, followed by an equivalent number of squats and thrusts. Suspended from the pipe that ran along the ceiling of his cell, he did a hundred chin-ups in sets of twenty, front and back, as God ordained.

Does anybody out there care? Are we worth saving? What would God want from me, if there is a God? The greatest faith is the willingness to ask in the first place, all evidence to the contrary.

The whole coast? If you include Mexico and Canada, that’s almost two hundred and fifty thousand miles.