The Twelve

by Justin Cronin

  “Amy? Are you all right?”

  The image of Sister Catherine—pale, long-faced, irises as blue as cornflowers—came into Amy’s focus. The sweat was pouring off her; her hands and feet had turned to cold jelly. Everything below her waist seemed to have lost some essential density; in another moment Amy would, literally, melt to the ground. Part of her wanted to vomit while another part refused, creating an internal stalemate that rendered her unable to speak.

  “Maybe you better sit down. You’re white as a ghost.”

  Sister Catherine steered her to a bench against the wall of the orphanage—a distance of twenty feet that could have been a mile. By the time they reached it, Amy couldn’t have taken another step without collapsing. With a bustle of concern, Sister Catherine left her, then returned with a cup of water, which she pressed into Amy’s hand. Activity on the playground seemed to have proceeded without interruption, but Amy could sense that some of the children were watching her. The pain had dissipated into a more general nausea but not the feeling of weakness. She felt both hot and cold. More sisters had crowded around, all speaking in hushed, earnest voices, questioning Sister Catherine. Amy didn’t want the water but everyone was insistent. She took a small sip.

  “I’m sorry,” she managed to say. “One minute I was perfectly fine …”

  “Over here, Sister,” Catherine said, waving toward the doors to the orphanage. “Come quickly.”

  The small crowd parted as Sister Peg strode forward. The old woman studied Amy with a pinched expression that managed to seem both worried and irritated at the same time.

  “Well? Will somebody tell me what happened here or will I have to guess?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sister Catherine. “She just … collapsed.”

  The playground had been brought to a standstill. All the children were staring at her now. Amy looked for Caleb, but her view was blocked by Sister Peg. She couldn’t recall a time when she’d ever felt ill; she understood the principle but had never experienced the reality. Almost worse than the pain was the embarrassment. It made her want to say something, say anything, to get everyone to stop looking at her.

  “Amy? Is that what happened?”

  “I just felt dizzy. My stomach hurt. I don’t know what it was.”

  The old woman pressed her palm to Amy’s forehead. “Well, I don’t think you have a fever.”

  “It was probably something I ate. I’m sure if I sit here another minute I’ll be okay.”

  “She doesn’t look good,” Sister Catherine chimed in, and the others nodded. “Honestly, Amy, I thought you were going to pass out.”

  A general murmuring ensued. No, she didn’t look good, not good at all. Could it be the flu? Something worse? If it was something the girl had eaten, would they all become sick, too?

  Sister Peg allowed the group its moment of conjecture, then brought them to silence with a raised hand. “I don’t see a reason to take chances. Off to bed with you, Amy.”

  “But I’m really feeling much better. I’m sure I’ll be all right.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that, thank you. Sister Catherine, will you assist her to the dormitory?”

  Catherine helped her to her feet. She felt a little unsteady, and her stomach wasn’t quite what it should be. But the worst of it had passed. Catherine led her into the building and up the stairs to the room where all the sisters slept, except for Sister Peg, who, being in charge, had quarters of her own. Amy undressed and got into bed.

  “Can I do anything else?” Sister Catherine was drawing the shades.

  “I’m fine.” Amy did her best to smile. “I think I just need to rest a bit.”

  Standing at the foot of the cot, Catherine regarded her for a moment. “You know what this could be, don’t you? A girl your age.”

  Your age. If Sister Catherine only knew, thought Amy. Yet Amy also understood what the woman was suggesting. The idea took her by surprise.

  Sister Catherine smiled with sympathy. “Well, if it is, you’ll know soon enough. Believe me, we’ve all been through it.”

  Making Amy promise to call her if she needed anything, Catherine made her departure. Amy leaned back on her cot and closed her eyes. The afternoon bell had rung; downstairs, the children would be filing in for their lessons, smelling of sun and sweat and fresh afternoon air, some of them, perhaps, wondering what all the fuss on the playground had been about. Surely Caleb would be worried about her; Amy should have told Sister Catherine to say something to the boy. She’s just tired. She was feeling out of sorts. She’ll be right as rain in a jiff, you’ll see.

  And yet: A girl your age. Was it possible? All the sisters complained about the “ordeal,” as they called it; it was a common joke of the orphanage that living in such tight quarters, everybody menstruated at the same time, making one week of every four a nightmare of bloody rags and quick tempers. For a hundred years Amy had lived in complete innocence of these basic facts; even now she could not have said she understood the phenomenon completely, but she grasped the gist. You bled, not a lot but some, and this would be uncomfortable, extending over a period of days. For a while Amy had regarded the prospect with horror, but over time this feeling had yielded to a fierce, almost biological yearning, and the fear that none of this would ever happen to her, that this door of human belonging would always stay closed and she would live in a child’s body forever.

  She checked: no, she wasn’t bleeding. If Sister Catherine was correct, how long before it started? She wished she’d taken the opportunity to ask Catherine more. How much blood would there be, how much pain, how would she feel different? Though in her case, Amy reasoned, nothing would quite be the same. Maybe it would be worse; maybe it would be better; maybe it would never happen at all.

  She would have liked to be a woman. To see it reflected in another’s eyes. For her body to know what her heart already did.

  A scratchy mewing interrupted her train of thought. Of course Mouser would come to check on her. The old gray cat ambled to her bedside. A pitiful sight he was—eyes fogged with cataracts, fur matted and tacky, his tail dragging with age. “Did you come to look in on me? Did you, boy? Well, come here.” Amy lifted him from the floor, leaned back on her cot, and balanced him on her chest. She ran her hands through his coat; he replied in kind, butting his head against her neck. The sun is out, why are you in bed? He circled three times before settling down on her chest, loudly purring. It’s fine. You sleep. I’ll be right here.

  Amy closed her eyes.

  Then it was night, and Amy was outside.

  How had she gotten outside?

  She was still wearing her nightgown; her feet were bare and damp with dew. The hour was impossible to know but felt late. Was she dreaming? But if she was still asleep, why did everything feel so real? She took measure of her surroundings. She was near the dam on the upstream side. The air was cool and moist. She felt a lingering urgency, as if she’d awoken from a dream of being chased. Why was she here? Had she been sleepwalking?

  Something brushed her leg, making her startle. She looked down to see Mouser, staring at her with his clouded eyes. He began, loudly, to meow, then trotted toward the dam, stopping a few feet away to look at her again.

  His meaning was clear; Amy followed. The old cat led her toward a small concrete structure at the base of the dam. Something mechanical? Mouser was standing at the door, meowing.

  She opened the door and stepped inside. The darkness was total; how would she find her way? She felt along the wall, searching for a switch. There. A bank of lights flickered to life. At the center of the small room was a metal rail guarding a circular staircase. Mouser was standing on the top step. He turned to look at her, issued one more insistent meow, and descended.

  The stairs spiraled down. At the bottom she found herself once again in blackness. Another fumbling search for a light switch; then she saw where she was. A wide tube, leading in only one direction, forward. Mouser was well ahead of her, dragging elongated shadows
over the walls. His urgency was contagious, drawing her deeper into this underground world. They came to a second hatch, sealed with a ring. A length of pipe lay on the floor beside it. Amy threaded it between the spokes and turned; the door swung open, revealing a ladder. She turned to consult Mouser, who met her gaze with a skeptical look.

  Not for me, I’m afraid. You’re on your own now.

  She descended. Something awaited her at the bottom; she felt its presence, deep in her bones. Something terrible and sad and full of longing. Her feet touched down. Another shaft, wider than the first. Water trickled along the floor. At the far end, she saw a circle of light. Now she knew where she was: one of the spillway tubes. It was moonlight she was seeing. She moved toward its penumbral glow just as a shadow moved across it. Not a shadow: a figure.

  She knew.

  Amy, Amy, daughter of my heart.

  He reached toward her through the bars: a long, crooked claw, the digits distended, tipped with curving talons. As their palms touched, his fingers curled first through and then around her own. She felt no fear, only a spreading lightness. Her vision blurred with tears.

  Amy, I remember. I remember everything.

  Their hands held fast. The feel of his touch had dispersed to every part of her, bathing her in its warmth—a warmth of love, of home. It said: Always I will be here. I will be the one to keep you safe.

  My brave girl. My brave Amy. Don’t cry now.

  A great sob shook her, a flood of pure emotion. She was happy, she was sad, she felt the weight of her life.

  —What’s happening to me? Why do I feel like I do? Please, tell me.

  His face made no expression, for there could be none; all that he was, was in his eyes.

  All your questions will be answered. He is waiting for you, in the ship. I will show you the way when the time comes.

  —When? When will it come?

  But Amy knew the answer even as she spoke the words.

  Soon, said Wolgast. Very, very soon.

  29

  REFINERY COMPLEX

  Freeport, Texas

  Michael Fisher, oiler first class—Michael the Clever, Bridger of Worlds—aroused from a deep and dreamless sleep to the sensation, unmistakable, that somebody was fucking him.

  He opened his eyes. Lore was straddling him, her spine bowed forward, her brow glazed with a glinting, sex-fired sweat. Flyers, he thought, hadn’t they just done this? Most of the night, in fact? Hugely, hilariously, in every position allowable to human physiology in a sleeping berth the approximate dimensions of a coffin?

  “Good morning,” she announced with a grin. “I hope you don’t mind I got started without you.”

  Well, so be it, Michael thought. There were certainly worse ways to face the day. From the flush of her cheeks, he could tell that Lore was well on the way, and, come to think of it, he wasn’t far behind. She had begun to rock her hips, the weight of her sex lapping against him like waves on a beach. In and out went the waves.

  “Not so fast, mister.”

  “For Christ’s sake, keep it down!” a voice barked from above.

  “Shut up, Ceps,” Lore replied, “I’m working in here.”

  “You’re making me hard! It’s disgusting!”

  This conversation seemed to Michael to be occurring in some distant orbit. With everyone bunked together, nothing but thin curtains for privacy, you learned to tune things out. But the feeling was more than that. Even as his senses sailed away into pure physicality, something about sex, its hypnotic rhythms, prompted in him a kind of disassociation. It was as if his mind were lagging three steps behind his body, sightseeing its way through a landscape of various concerns and sadnesses and emotionally neutral images that rose before him like bubbles of expanding gas in the boiler. A decaying gasket that needed replacing. The delivery schedule of fresh crude down from the depot. Memories of the Colony, which he never otherwise thought about. Above him, Lore continued on her journey, while Michael drifted in this current of mental disloyalty, trying to will his attentions into alignment with hers. It seemed the least he could do.

  And in the end, he did. Lore’s accelerating passion won the day. By the time they pulled the curtain back, Ceps was gone. The clock above the hatch read 0630.

  “Shit.”

  Michael swung his feet to the floor and yanked on his jumpsuit. Lore, behind him, wrapped her arms around his chest.

  “Stay. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “I’m first shift. If I’m late again, Karlovic will chew my ass for breakfast.” He stuffed his feet into his boots and swiveled his face to kiss her: a taste of salt, and sex, and something all her own. Michael wouldn’t have said it was love between them, exactly. Sex was a way to pass the time, but over the months their relationship had evolved, little by little, into something more than habit.

  “You were thinking again, weren’t you?”

  “Who, me?”

  “Don’t lie.” Her tone wasn’t bitter, merely correcting. “You know, someday I’m going to fuck all the worries out of you.” She sighed and relaxed her grip. “It’s all right. Go.”

  He rose from the berth and took his hard hat and gloves from the post. “I’ll see you later?”

  She had already lain back down on the cot. “That you will.”

  As Michael exited the barracks, the sun was just lifting over the Gulf, making its surface shimmer like a sheet of hammered metal. It might have been the first week of October, but the heat was already building, the ocean air tart as ever with salt and the sulfurous stench of burning butane. With his stomach growling—food would have to wait—he strode at a brisk clip across the compound, past the commissary and weight cages and DS barracks to the Quonset hut, where the workers on the morning shift had gathered. Karlovic, the chief engineer, was calling out assignments from the roster. He shot Michael a cold glance.

  “Are we interrupting your beauty sleep, Fisher? Our mistake.”

  “Right.” Michael was zipping his jumpsuit. “Sorry.”

  “You’ll be even sorrier. You’ll be firing up the Bomb. Ceps will be your second. Try not to blow up your crew.”

  Distillation Tower No. 1, known as the Bomb, was the oldest of the lot, its rusty bulk held together by a combination of patch welds, baling wire, and prayer. Everybody said it was a matter of time before she was either decommissioned or launched a cooking crew halfway to Mars.

  “Thanks, boss. That’s swell of you.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Karlovic swept his gaze over the group. “All right, everyone. Seven days until we ship. I want those tankers full, people. And Fisher, hang back a minute. I want a word with you.”

  The crews dispersed to their towers. Michael followed Karlovic into the hut. Christ, what now? He hadn’t been late by more than a couple of minutes, hardly worth a dressing down.

  “Listen, Dan, I’m sorry about this morning—”

  Karlovic didn’t let him finish. “Forget it, that’s not what I want to talk to you about.” Hitching up his pants, he lowered his bulk into the chair behind his desk. Karlovic was heavy in the true sense, not fat but large in every aspect, a man of weight and heft. Tacked on the wall over his head were dozens of sheets of paper—duty rosters, work flows, delivery schedules. “I had you on the Bomb anyway. You and Ceps are the best I’ve got for hotwork. Take it as a compliment I’m putting the pair of you on that cranky old bitch. If I had my druthers, that thing would be in the scrap pile.”

  Michael didn’t doubt that this was so; on the other hand, he knew strategically timed praise when he heard it. “So?”

  “So this.”

  Karlovic slid a sheet of paper across his desk. Michael’s eyes fell quickly to the signature at the bottom: Victoria Sanchez, President, Texas Republic. He quickly scanned the letter’s three short paragraphs. Well, I’ll be, he thought.

  “Any idea what this is about?”

  “What makes you think I would?”

  “You were the last crew chief on the o
ffload. Maybe you caught wind of something while you were up there. Talk around the depot, extra military hanging around.”

  “Nothing that rings a bell.” Michael shrugged. “Have you spoken to Stark? Maybe he knows.”

  Stark was the refinery’s chief security officer. He was something of a loudmouth and liked the lick too much, but he generally commanded respect among both the oilers and DS, if for no other reason than his prowess at the poker table. His caginess with the cards had cost Michael a bundle, not that the scrip was any big loss—within the fences of the refinery, there was nothing to spend it on.

  “Not yet. This won’t sit well with him, though.” Karlovic studied Michael. “Aren’t you guys friends? That whole California thing.”

  “I know him, yeah.”

  “So maybe you can grease the gears a bit. Act as a sort of, I don’t know, unofficial liaison between DS and the military.”

  Michael allowed himself a few seconds to probe his feelings. He’d be glad to see someone from the old days, but at the same time he was aware of an inner disturbance, a sense of exposure. The self-contained life of an oiler had, in many ways, rescued him from the grief of losing his sister, occupying the mental space she had left behind. Part of him knew he was hiding, but the rest of him didn’t care.

  “It should be no problem.”

  “I’ll count it as a favor. Handle it how you like.” Karlovic angled his head toward the door. “Now get out of here, you’ve got oil to cook. And I meant what I said. Watch your ass with that thing.”