The Passage (The Passage, #1)

by Justin Cronin

Over the PA system a man’s voice, flat as the Oklahoma plain, was calling out numbers for bingo. B … seven. G … thirty. Q … sixteen.

Q? Huh?

When all time ended, and the world had lost its memory, and the man that he was had receded from view like a ship sailing away, rounding the blade of the earth with his old life locked in its hold; and when the gyring stars gazed down upon nothing, and the moon in its arc no longer remembered his name, and all that remained was the great sea of hunger on which he floated forever—still, inside him, in the deepest place, was this: one year. The mountain and the turning seasons, and Amy. Amy and the Year of Zero.

This is tonal whiplash compared to the rest of the book so far. Suddenly I'm reading Yeats.

Michael couldn’t ask for permission without explaining the reason, which meant telling the Household about the batteries; and to tell them about the batteries was simply out of the question, because then everyone would know, and once that happened, the rest wouldn’t matter. It wasn’t just the batteries that Michael was in charge of; it was the glue of hope that held the place together. You couldn’t just tell people they had no chance. The only thing to do was find somebody still alive out there—find them with a radio, which would mean they had power and therefore light—before he said another word to anyone. And if he found nothing, if the world really was empty, then what would happen would happen anyway; it was better if nobody knew.

This reasoning is flimsy and contrived.

Ever since Amy had come into his life, he had felt himself caught in a strong current, and that this current was pulling him toward something, something he had to find.

Fate. God. Vague authorial contrivance. Call it what you want.