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Chapter 16 — Recap We pick up 2 months down the line and the days are longer and dryer now. Wolgast has not been down the mountain since the trip for supplies we witnessed in the last chapter.

Wolgast originally let Amy win whichever board game they chose, but realises that Amy is a shrewd player. Additionally, Amy has now taken the job of reading aloud from Wolgast — it is now her who reads for them. When he asks her about it, she says she just remembers the words as she has heard them before. Wolgast thinks about how his life off the mountain now seems nothing but a distant memory — just like the old world.

Upon realising this, however, he smells burning and sees smoke coming from beyond the trees. He decides they are going to have to leave and get somewhere safe. Wolgast puts Amy into the car and they leave, heading away from the flames. Their only choice is to turn back, but the fire was heading up the mountain in the other direction too. Wolgast knows there is an old canoe in one of the old outbuildings and he manages to get it to the lake with Amy.

They get into it and head to the centre of the lake. Eventually the fires pass, the wind pushing them in the other direction — astonishingly this was before they quite managed to reach the lodge. Wolgast cannot believe their luck. He is relieved to see the store still there, but upon approaching realises there is no sign of life. Indeed, Carl is curled up in bed with Martha — his arm around her. They are both dead — seemingly it was suicide through medication.

Wolgast spots a newspaper on the bedside table. He takes it to read later. The moment he leaves the room he begins to weep. Once Wolgast has pulled himself together, he and Amy begin salvaging what they can.

They take plenty of food, batteries and propane. The army and National Guard are being overwhelmed and the once great city of Chicago has been lost. The reporter writes that the assault was clearly organised, which is a disturbing development. A new perimeter has been set up from Toledo to Cincinnati. There have been reports, however, that troops are abandoning their posts.

A spokesman for the military calls this nonsense, saying that the remaining soldiers in military service are amongst the bravest men and women he has ever had the honour to serve with. At the time of the article, 30,, are dead and another 3,, are infected — at least.

There are rumours that the various fires appearing are being set by the military, which are attempting to recklessly kill as many infected as possible. The military denies this. Those who have survived are fleeing the spread and, as a result, the transport corridors are blocked.

Food and medical supplies are running low, as people have to live as refuges — miles away from their homes. Being unable to travel, no one knows where to go. Canada and Mexico are bracing themselves for outbreaks and Europe have closed their borders.

The UN has said a plane or ship is not to go within miles of America. The number of people attending church and synagogues has hit record levels. The heads of the churches say they are preparing for ascension — not as monsters, but as men.

The US President refuses to acknowledge the split and says that any military personnel siding with the Californian governor will be treated as enemy combatants. Upon US forces withdrawing from Pakistan, the Indian PM believes that now is the perfect time to drop a nuclear bomb on the country to rid the world of its extremists.

Wolgast is overcome by events and thinks about Lacey and Doyle who sacrificed their lives to save him. He throws the paper into the woodstove and watches it burn — his life is on the mountain now. Chapter 16 — Commentary The fires that begin heading up the mountain seem a blatant attempt by the military to burn the forests where the vampires reside whether they acknowledge it or not. The story of Carl is both tragic and beautiful. Carl could have headed up to the mountains with Wolgast, but Carl had everything he wanted from life — he retired to a store with his wife note: Wolgast always thought about doing this, but never went through with it.

Yes, his wife was ill, but he had her. Carl decides to abandon this world with everything he loves within reaching distance the store and his wife rather than begin another lifestyle or risk watching it fall. The article reveals what could happen to the great United States of America. For so long, America has seemed the strongest nation in the world — it is really shocking to hear about it being abandoned, not only from other nations, but also by its own states.

There is also the note that other countries have been enabled to engage in wars India versus Pakistan and no one knows that is going on in Europe. Wolgast burning the article is him symbolically saying that what is going on in the world is no longer his concern or responsibility. However, it is interesting to note that Wolgast does not feel content.

His time with Amy at the lodge was typical of this. He regressed into the father he wanted to be … at a location that he knew and had had some happy memories. As in life generally, he knew that he should move on but treasured familiarity over change.

Wolgast calls up to Amy and asks if she has ever seen snow. He says she needs to hurry up before she misses it and she runs upstairs to get ready to go outside. By the time she has put on her glasses, cap and sun cream the snow is falling heavily.

She says she likes it and this makes Wolgast happy. Wolgast shows Amy how to make a snow angel, all the time thinking about the cocoa he has put away for her as a surprise. She asks Wolgast what an Angel is and Wolgast tells her that they are a kind of ghost, but not scary ones; they are good and watch over people. Amy asks whether Wolgast believes in them and he is taken back by her casual directness — as he often is. His mum believed in them, but his father did not.

Later, Wolgast is relaxing. Wolgast wonders whether Amy will sleep walk again tonight. She would often do that — get out of bed, walk down the stairs and stare out of the window towards the lake. This leads Wolgast to thinking about how Amy rarely sleeps or eats and is naturally good at almost everything, as though she has done it all before in a former life. He wonders if Amy is perhaps one of the vampires and what the vampires actually are he has only seen Carter in early transformation it would seem.

Wolgast hears an engine outside and Amy runs down the stairs saying someone is outside. Wolgast tells her to go back to bed just as someone begins pounding on the door.

Wolgast raises his gun to the man and tells him to leave. He tells Wolgast he has nowhere to go… He had been living in a hunting camp after they blew up Seattle, but a female vampire dropped from the trees whilst he was out and bit him. Wolgast marches the man away from the lodge and he asks Wolgast to kill him. The man tells Wolgast he should tell Amy he turned and jumped at him. Wolgast tells the man to turn around.

Wolgast is confused about why Bob said he had no children. He buries the wallet and puts a small cross where he buried it. Months go by and the story picks up in the spring. Wolgast is asleep and being haunted by dreams of Lila, vampires and Bob. Wolgast wakes up with a start and Amy is stood looking out the window again. Suddenly she screams. There is a flash of light and the windows burst inwards. The two are sent flying across the room.

Amy is screaming and saying she cannot see. Glass covers her face, but there are no cuts on her that Wolgast can see. She says she cannot open her eyes though and Wolgast recognises her symptoms as flash burns on the retina from looking at the blast — Wolgast presumes it was a nuke and wonders who sent it. Wolgast moves them to the basement, but knows it is a matter of time before the radiation begins to affect them.

The gash in his leg has become badly infected and is seeping green pus. He realises he is going to die and wonders what will happen to Amy. At some point, Wolgast wakes up and Amy is gone. He summons every ounce of strength to go and look for her. He makes it to the forest, but realises he will die here — he is too weak and too sick to make it back. He hears rustling in the trees, but is too close to death to react. Chapter 17 — Commentary Hmm.

Keep an eye on that. They tested versions of the virus on convicted murders on death row, who seemingly had nothing to lose, but those inmates were all adults, and soon enough they realized they needed someone younger for it to synthesize the way they hoped. One notable change she made was to age Amy up slightly, though, which altered the way the characters dealt with each other.

And even though the look of the show may change drastically when it reaches that story point, the themes are still the same. Home TV Features. Jan 14, pm PT. By Danielle Turchiano Plus Icon. See All. More From Our Brands. Expand the sub menu Film. Expand the sub menu TV. Sure, there are isolated enclaves of holdouts, defending literature as they know it from the onslaught of supernatural beings, but most of the reading public seems to have developed an insatiable thirst for stories featuring the undead, from writers like Charlaine Harris and Stephenie Meyer.

A note to those who thought they were immune: I dare you to crack open The Passage and read page one. Spawned from a virus in a failed government effort to engineer a supersoldier, these undead share a hive-mind mentality, an aversion to sunlight and a hunger for human blood.

The virus is tested on 12 felons—and one abandoned 6-year-old girl, Amy Harper Bellafonte. She alone survives the testing with her humanity intact albeit with added strength, healing ability and longevity ; the others escape and alternately hunt and infect the rest of the world. The magic of my lifetime is science. The scientists who are seeking to engineer a virus that makes human beings so long-lived that they are essentially immortal have missed the true immortality that we possess, which is that the future we will not live to see is the future our children will live in.

This act of hubris, and its devastating consequences, are meticulously detailed. The Passage takes its time setting up the characters and story to create a solid foundation for the strange future readers enter when, 93 years later, Amy—who now looks about 16—stumbles into one of the last human settlements after a viral attack. Her arrival comes at a bad time. Some of the citizens are having violent nightmares and coming down with a strange illness that causes them to go insane.

A silent, mysterious girl makes a convenient scapegoat. The reception of The Passage , however, has been anything but quiet. He also wrote it for his daughter, Iris, now When she was about to turn 9, she asked if she could ride her bike along with her dad when he went on his evening runs. Maybe I was sort of introducing my kid to the family business. So for a period of weeks we went through the streets of my suburban Houston neighborhood tossing ideas back and forth, building a story, building characters.

It was really just for fun, and it was tremendous fun. But it soon became more than that. I wrote an outline and was amazed at how much was there. And it felt terrific.

Once I hammered that one into place, my fate was sealed: I was going to write it.