The Passage

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A 2010 horror/post-apocalyptic novel by Justin Cronin, the first of a planned trilogy. The Twelve is set to come out in (appropriately) October 2012 and The City of Mirrors in 2014.

The novel concerns a secret government experiment with a virus that makes vampires. So far, there have been thirteen subjects: the Twelve, inmates on death row convinced to join the program in exchange for not dying, and Zero, one of the scientists that discovered the virus.

Brad Wolgast is an FBI agent assigned to finding and convincing the death row inmates to join the program - until the last subject he needed to find was Amy Harper Bellafontaine, a six year old girl.

Wolgast has no choice. He has to turn her over, but as soon as he does something catastrophic happens. The Twelve escape. The virus gets loose.

The world ends quickly, but what comes next?

A film adaptation of the novel will be directed by Matt Reeves, who previously directed Let Me In and Cloverfield.

Tropes used in The Passage include:
  • Abusive Parents: A few characters have them. Of particular note is Babcock's mother.
  • Achilles' Heel: The virals' only weak spot is right above their breastbone. A knife or bullet anywhere else will just inconvenience them.
  • Action Girl: Alicia Donadio.
  • After the End: Most of the novel. The first part ("The Worst Dream of the World") takes place Just Before the End.
  • Apocalyptic Log: A few, in the form of Auntie's books, newspaper clipping, and Dr Jonas Lear's e-mail correspondence. For some parts of the book After the End, the POV switches to a diary Sara Fisher is keeping.
  • Apocalypse How: Either a Class 0 or a Class 1. Class 0 if the quarantine was successful, Class 1 if the virus escaped the North American continent. Largely left ambiguous.
  • Anyone Can Die
  • Arc Words: Several, such as 'I am Babcock', 'I was called Fanning' and 'They always go home'.
  • Armies Are Evil: Played both ways. The army personnel at the Colorado Compound are a mix of sociopathic monsters and jaded suicidal types, but the Army of the Republic of Texas are mostly reasonable nice guys.
  • Classical Movie Vampire: The characters sort of poke fun at this when they join in when the Army soldiers have a viewing of the Bela Lugosi Dracula.
  • Dead Guy, Junior: Mausami's baby is named after Caleb.
  • Divided States of America: During the initial cataclysm, both California and Texas break off from the Union, causing minor civil wars. The latter survives so well that 100 years later it is beginning to perform sweep-and-clear operations.
  • Doomed Hometown
  • Driven to Suicide / Psychic-Assisted Suicide
  • Dying as Yourself: Many characters adopt this attitude in the event they're infected, such as Corporal Muncey.
  • Fighting From the Inside: When Theo is imprisoned at Haven he does his best to resist Babcock's dream.
  • Five-Man Band:
  • The Epic
  • Expecting Someone Taller: When Lacey first meets Peter, she thought he'd be taller.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Sister Lacey sets off a small nuclear bomb to kill Babcock and herself.
  • Hive Mind: Each of the Twelve controls all the vampires he created or that those vampires created.
  • How We Got Here: Chapter 19 starts with Peter on the wall and then jumps back in time for several chapters.
  • It Got Worse: The US of 2018 is already a World Half Empty due to a terrorist massacre in the Mall of America and the reaction to it, showing definite fascist tendencies. Then the virus hits.
  • Loads and Loads of Characters
  • Long Lived: In the beginning of the book, Amy is six years old. Almost a hundred years later, they characters say that she looks fourteen. The first lines of the book call her "The Girl who Lived A Thousand Years."
  • More Than Mind Control: Fanning and Babcock's long and subtle process of influencing the minds of humans, involving showing the victims their own memories.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: It's mentioned that Jenna Bush is Governor of Texas.
  • Not Quite Dead: Jude
  • Not Using the Z Word: Played with. In the beginning, "vampire" is used to deride the project with the virus. After the virus is let loose, people come up with various names for them - virals, smokes, jumpers - but they all admit that they are vampires.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: They have a mental link with each other and with the Twelve. Each of the Twelve may control a large portion of the vampires they created - Babcock controlled the Many and when he died, Amy helped them to die too.
  • Posthumous Character: Cole, who only appears in email correspondence and flashbacks.
  • Spider Sense: The Twelve can sense each other. Babcock also seems a little concerned when he begins to sense Amy coming.
  • Stepford Smiler: There's certainly something 'off' about the residents of Haven.
  • Super Human Trafficking: The U.S. government experiments on human test subjects and plans to use the result as a weapon against its enemies.
  • Survival Horror
  • The War on Terror: A terrorist attack on the Mall of America results in the United States adopting a number of fascist tendencies, including military checkpoints at state borders and an expanded form of the Patriot Act.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Many characters have to.
  • Town with a Dark Secret: The Haven. Later, Voorhees recalls a similar settlement.
  • Traintop Battle: Most of it takes place in the train, but there are still some segments on top.
  • True Companions
  • Twenty Minutes Into the Future: The book begins in 2018.
  • Vampire Apocalypse: We see part of it during "The Year of Zero" and during Auntie's journals.
  • Vegetarian Vampire: Amy and later Lacey and Alicia are infected with the "final" stage of the virus, which means they have no bloodlust.
  • The Virus: A literal virus, too.
  • Weakened by the Light: Most vampires can't stand sunlight, though some can tolerate it (both Amy and Alicia later can travel during the day).
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_Passage?oldid=1511640"