Uploaded to YouTube, the image had traveled around the globe within hours by morning all the major networks had picked it up.” Weeks later, there are no major networks, no YouTube - but Kittridge is still standing. The creature, or vampire, or whatever it was - the official term was ‘Infected Person’ - had looked straight into the lens just before Kittridge put one through the sweet spot. It was the last one that made him famous. When the vampire apocalypse begins, Kittridge proves he is savvy, brave and lucky: “On the first night, windless and lit by a waning quarter moon, Kittridge had shot seven: five on the avenue, one on the opposite roof, and one more through the window of a bank at street level. Along the way he picks up a group of likable survivors: a boy and his 17-year-old sister, a feisty elderly woman, a snotty twentysomething, a soothing older man and a self-appointed sniper, Kittridge. In one community, a developmentally disabled school bus driver, not entirely comprehending the outside threat, takes his bus on the road. Instead, we return to the early days of the infection, as the virals attack and death spreads across the land. Readers bringing that expectation to this book will be disappointed. The book’s title implies that the 12 original vampires - all human test subjects plucked from Death Row (clearly a bad idea) - will be hunted down. The narrative suffers from his absence, as well as from the lack of mission. In fact, about 200 pages of “The Twelve” pass before Peter reappears. The end of “The Passage” suggests that the sequel might continue that quest it’s here, but it’s a long time coming. A group of young people - led by the book’s central protagonist, Peter, a good guy who grows into the role of classically conflicted leader - undertakes a dangerous quest to fight the virals. Their descendants have only a rough sense of the world that came before. Much of “The Passage” takes place about 100 years later those left behind at a remote temporary refugee station managed to create a sustainable community. The armed forces - which had a hand in their development - are no match for them in a month, the virals wipe out civilization. The hordes are absolutely terrifying: They move impossibly fast, are hard to kill, rip human prey into pieces and then feast on the gore with double rows of metal-sharp teeth.
They were born of a scientific experiment using a jungle virus to try to create eternal life - a variation on the hubris-of-man theme that goes back to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”Īfter the dozen infected monsters break free, they begin chomping away, creating a massive army of virals able to generate more of their own kind.
In Cronin’s futuristic dystopia, America has been decimated by voracious vampires known as virals.
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