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1-Page Summary of The Passage
Overall Summary
A vampire-like virus has infected a good deal of people around the world. In this apocalyptic scenario, most countries have been destroyed and numbers of survivors remaining are limited. The book was published in 2010 by an American author called Justin Cronin. The
The book begins in the near future, where a top secret project is underway to create super soldiers. The United States of America has been working on this initiative for years and it’s called “Project Noah.” This program involves injecting Bolivian bat virus into death row inmates who have life sentences. In addition to Patient Zero (Tim Fanning), twelve other inmates are part of this experiment.
Despite all their research, the scientists had trouble preventing violent outbursts in subjects. Dr. Lear hypothesized that this could be solved by injecting the virus into a child whose immune system is still developing. The FBI agent was tasked with retrieving Amy Bellafonte from a convent to test out a new version of the serum that wouldn’t cause any violent behavior. This hypothesis turned out to be correct as Amy didn’t suffer any negative effects from having been injected with the virus.
Meanwhile, the other twelve infected test subjects along with Manning are growing more powerful. One inmate, a particularly vicious killer named Babcock has developed psychic abilities. He uses those powers to allow all of the inmates to escape from the research facility and kill many people in the process. Wolgast manages to protect Amy during this chaos and retreats into a haven in mountains where they survive on their own for several years. As time passes by, they receive reports about a contagion spreading across the world that kills off most of humanity. One day while watching some miles away nuclear explosions, Wolgast concludes that governments are using them as an attempt to wipe out any irredeemably infected areas before they spread further
The second part of the book takes place ninety-three years after the first part. After all this time, Amy has only aged a few years and looks like a young teenager. Amy arrives at a walled-off colony set up for survivors by FEMA in the wake of the initial outbreak. But they’re running low on supplies and electricity, which is needed to power their big lights that repel virals—vampiric infected creatures that attack regularly. The group hopes to find another colony in Colorado with better resources through radio signals from them; but when people start behaving erratically as Babcock’s presence there causes psychic interventions, some colonists go out with Amy to see where those signals are coming from.
While traveling, the group ends up in Las Vegas. They find out that it’s not a city but actually an underground prison where humans are kept as cattle for vampires to feed on. Amy manages to escape with her friends and they end up at the Colorado outpost where she was previously held captive by Sister Lacey, who is still alive because of the same serum that made Amy a vampire.
Amy and Sister Lacey come up with a plan to lure Babcock into the facility so they can kill him. They believe that if he is killed, then all of the vampires will die because he turned them. Amy uses her psychic abilities to lead Babcock where Sister Lacey detonates a nuclear device, killing herself and Babcock. It turns out that Amy was right: when Babcock dies, all of the vampires dissolve into dust.
The book ends on a note that is slightly ambiguous, as the survivors make their way to Roswell, New Mexico. It also mentions that there’s a document from 1000 years in the future that vaguely makes reference to “The Roswell Massacre.”
