The Twelve

by Justin Cronin

  The driver frowned; it wasn’t the kind of question he expected from a woman on the way to her execution.

  “Go on, tell her,” the other man said. Then, shifting his weight to angle his face to the opening: “He’s Ween.”

  “Ween?” Amy repeated.

  “Yeah, everyone calls him that on account of he’s got a short one.”

  “Ha, ha,” the driver said. “Ha, ha, ha, ha.”

  The conversation seemed over. Then the driver flicked his eyes to the mirror again.

  “That thing you told Guilder,” he said. Amy could read the uncertainty in his voice. “About what was going to happen. I mean, you were bullshitting, right?”

  Amy hooked a foot under the bench and shot her thoughts deep into his eyes. At once the driver stomped on the brake, slamming the second man face-first into the windshield. A crash sent him jerking backward again as the vehicle behind them clipped the van’s bumper with a sound of breaking glass and crunching metal.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” The second man was pressing a hand to his face. Blood dripped through his fingers. “You broke my nose, you asshole!”

  The convoy had come to a halt. Amy heard a rapping on the driver’s window.

  “What’s going on? Why did you stop?”

  The driver replied sluggishly: “I don’t know. My foot fell asleep or something.”

  “Jesus, look at this,” the second guard said. He was holding out his bloodied hands for the man at the window to see. “Look what this idiot did.”

  “Do you need another driver?”

  Amy watched the driver’s face through the mirror. He gave his head a dislodging shake. “I’m okay. I just … I don’t know. It was weird. I’m fine.”

  The man at the window paused. “Well, be careful, all right? We’re almost there. Keep it together.”

  He moved away; the van began to creep forward again.

  “You are an unbelievable dick, you know that?”

  The driver didn’t answer. He darted his eyes to Amy’s, their gazes ricocheting in the mirror. A split second, but she saw the fear in them. Then he looked away.

  2140 hours. Hollis and Michael were crouched in the alley behind the apothecary. Using binoculars, they’d watched Amy being loaded into the van, followed by the departure of the convoy for the stadium. The assault team that would take the Dome, a dozen men and women armed with firearms and pipe bombs, was still concealed in the storm pipe, fifteen feet below.

  “How long do we wait?” Michael said.

  The question was rhetorical; Hollis merely shrugged. Though the city had an empty feel, the entrance to the Dome was still defended by a contingent of at least twenty men they could see from the alleyway. The thing they weren’t saying was that they had no way of knowing if Sara and Kate were even in the building or how to find them if they were, assuming they could actually get past the guards—a chain of contingencies that in the abstract had seemed surmountable but that now rose before them with stark definition.

  “Don’t worry about Lore,” Hollis said. “That girl can take care of herself, believe me.”

  “Did I say I was worried?” But of course Michael was. He was worried about all of them.

  “I like her,” said Hollis. He was still scanning the scene with the binoculars. “She’d be good for you. Better than Lish.”

  Michael was taken aback. “What are you talking about?”

  Hollis pulled the lenses away and looked him in the eye. “Please, Circuit. You’ve never been a very good liar. You remember when we were kids, the way you two went at it? It couldn’t have been more obvious even then.”

  “It was?”

  “To me, anyway. All of it. You, her.” He shrugged his broad shoulders and looked through the binoculars again. “Mostly you. Lish I could never read.”

  Michael tried to assemble a denial, but the attempt collapsed. For as long as he could remember, there had been a place in his mind where Lish stood. He’d done his best to suppress his feelings, since nothing good could come of them, but he’d never quite managed to tamp them down completely. In fact, he’d never managed it at all. “Do you think Peter knows?”

  “Lore’s the one to worry about. The girl doesn’t miss much. But you’d have to ask him. I’d say so, but there’s a way of knowing something without knowing it.” Hollis tensed. “Hold up.”

  A vehicle was approaching. They pressed themselves into the doorway. Headlights blazed down the alley. Michael held his breath. Five seconds, then ten; the truck moved away.

  “You ever shot anybody?” Hollis asked quietly.

  “Just virals.”

  “Trust me. Once things get going, it’s not as hard as you think.”

  Despite the cold, Michael had begun to perspire. His heart was hammering against his ribs.

  “Whatever happens, just get her, all right?” he said. “Get them both.”

  Hollis nodded.

  “I mean it. I’ll cover you. Just get through that door.”

  “We’ll both go.”

  “Not from the looks of things. You need to be the one, Hollis. Understand? Don’t stop.”

  Hollis looked at him.

  “Just so that’s clear,” said Michael.

  Like the others, Lore and Greer had successfully faded into the crowd. Where the lines of flatlanders separated, they nudged their way into the stream being directed to the second tier, then the third, and finally the top of the stands. They met beneath the stairs that led to the control rooms.

  “Nicely done,” Greer whispered.

  They retrieved their weapons: a pair of old revolvers, which they would use only as a last resort, and two blades, six inches long with curved steel pommels. The last of the crowd was being ushered into place. Greer marveled at the flatlanders’ orderliness, the numb submission with which they allowed themselves to be led. They were slaves but didn’t know it—or perhaps they did but had long since accepted the fact. All of them? Maybe not all. The ones who hadn’t would be the deciding factor.

  “Would you like to pray with me?” he said.

  Lore looked at him skeptically. “It’s been a while. I’m not sure I’d know how.”

  They were facing each other on their knees. “Take my hands,” Greer said. “Close your eyes.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Try not to think. Imagine an empty room. Not even a room. Nothing.”

  She accepted his hands, her face faintly embarrassed. Her palms were moist with anxious sweat.

  “I was kind of thinking you were going to say something, the way the sisters do. Holy this and God bless that.”

  He shook his head. “Not this time.”

  Greer watched her close her eyes, then did so himself. The moment of immersion: he felt a spreading warmth. In another moment his mind dispersed into a measureless energy beyond thought. O my God, he prayed, be with us. Be with Amy.

  But something was wrong. Greer felt pain. Terrible pain. Then the pain was gone, subsumed by a darkness. It rolled over his consciousness like a shadow crossing a field. An eclipse of death, terror, black evil.

  I am Morrison-Chávez-Baffes-Turrell-Winston-Sosa-Echols-Lambright-Martínez-Reinhardt …

  He jolted away. The spell was broken; he was back in the world. What had he seen? The Twelve, yes, but what was the other? Whose pain had he felt? Lore, still kneeling, her empty hands outstretched, had experienced it, too: Greer could see it in her shocked face.

  “Who’s Wolgast?” she said.

  Lila’s feet seemed barely to touch the ground as she walked down the corridor toward the atrium. There was a feeling of invincibility to her actions; once made, certain decisions could not be undone. The stairs she sought were situated at the end of a long hallway on the opposite side of the building. As she turned the corner she broke into a run, headed for the door as if pursued. The heavyset guard rose from his chair to bar her way.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Please,” she gas
ped, “I’m starving. Everybody’s gone.”

  “You need to get out of here.”

  Lila lifted her veil. “Do you know who I am?”

  The guard startled. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he stammered. “Of course.”

  He pulled the key from a cord affixed to his belt and fit it into the lock.

  “Thank you,” Lila said, making her best show of relief. “You’re a godsend.”

  She descended the stairs. At the bottom she faced the second guard, who was standing before the steel door that led to the blood-processing facility. She hadn’t been down here in many years, but she remembered it clearly in all its mercenary horror: the bodies on tables, the vast refrigerators, the bags of blood, the sweet smell of the gas that kept the subjects in everlasting twilight. The guard was watching her with his hand resting on the butt of his pistol. Lila had never fired a gun in her life. She hoped it wasn’t hard.

  She stepped toward him with a confident gait, lifting her face at the last instant to look him deeply in the eyes.

  “You’re tired.”

  Concealed behind the dugout on the north side of the stadium, Alicia dropped the magazine from her semi, examined it to no purpose, blew imaginary dust from the top, and slid it back into the handle, shoving it into place with the base of her palm. She had now removed and reinserted the magazine ten times. The gun was a .45ACP with a cross-hatched wooden handle, twelve rounds in each clip. Twelve, thought Alicia, and noted the irony. Strange, and not unpleasing, how the universe sometimes worked.

  A murmur broke through the crowd. Alicia rose on her knees to peer out at the field. Had it begun? A curious object was being towed into the field—a Y-shaped steel armature, twenty feet high, affixed to a broad platform. Chains swung from the booms at the top. The truck halted in the middle of the field; two cols appeared and jogged back to the trailer. They slid blocks under the tires, winched up the nose, unhooked the trailer from the truck, and drove away.

  She made her final preparation. The bayonet was tied with rough twine to her thigh. She freed it and slid it into her belt.

  Amy, she thought, Amy, my sister in blood. All I ask is this.

  Let me be the one to kill Martínez.

  As the line of vehicles came to a halt outside the main ramp to the stadium, Guilder’s nerves were still jangling from the collision with the van. They were lucky it hadn’t been worse.

  But if he’d thought their safe arrival would bring relief, the sight of the stadium, blazing with light in the winter dark, quickly disabused him of this notion. He exited the car to an immense sound of humanity. Not cheering—these people were much too cowed for that—but a crowd of seventy thousand in one place made a noise of its own, intrinsic to its mass. Seventy thousand pairs of lungs opening and closing; seventy thousand pairs of idle feet bobbing; seventy thousand backsides shifting on cement bleachers, trying to get comfortable. There were voices in the mix as well, and coughing, babies crying, but mostly what Guilder heard was a sort of subterranean rumble, like the aftershock of an earthquake.

  “Get her in place,” he said.

  The guards yanked her from the van. Guilder didn’t feel the need to look at her as they dragged her away. He signaled to Suresh to have the semi moved into position. The truck pulled forward and glided up the ramp toward the end zone.

  Guilder had given extensive thought to the matter of presentation. Some pageantry was called for. He’d struggled with what to do until he’d come upon an appropriately crowd-whipping analogue: the orchestrated arrival on the field of play of a major sports franchise. Suresh would function as stage manager, coordinating the various visual and auditory elements that would lift the evening’s demonstration to the level of spectacle. Together they’d gone through the items on the checklist: sound, lighting, display. They’d done a dry run that afternoon. A few problems had emerged, but nothing that couldn’t be dealt with, and Suresh had assured him that everything would come off without a hitch.

  They made their way up the ramp; Suresh, limping, did his best to keep up. HR personnel lined both sides of the idling semi; the staff had already been seated in the lower boxes. The noise of the crowd seemed to flow toward Guilder like a wave, immersing him in its energy. The plows had swept the field of snow, leaving behind a muddy landscape; in the center, the platform and armature awaited. A nifty device: it was Suresh who’d come up with the idea. The insurgency had nearly blown him up; who wouldn’t be a little mad? As a physician he also seemed to know better than anyone interesting ways to kill people. Suspending her high in the air would give everyone a chance to see her insides unraveling; she’d feel more that way, too, and feel it longer.

  While Guilder reviewed his notes, Suresh fitted him with his microphone, running the cable down his back to the transmitter, which he clipped to Guilder’s improvised belt of neckties. “Flick this here,” Suresh said, drawing his attention to the toggle switch, “and you’re on.”

  Suresh backed away. He drew down his earphones, adjusted his microphone, and began the countdown:

  “Sound booth.”

  (Check.)

  “Lights.”

  (Check.)

  “Fire teams.”

  (Check.)

  And so on. Guilder, listening vaguely, shook out his robed arms like a boxer preparing to step into the ring. He had always wondered about this gesture, which seemed like empty showmanship. Now he understood the sense of it.

  “Good to go when you are,” Suresh said.

  So: the moment at last. What a shock the crowd was in for. Guilder slid his glasses onto his face and took a last, long breath.

  “All right, everyone,” he said. “Let’s look alive. It’s game time.”

  He stepped forward, into the light.

  64

  “Dani, wake up.”

  The voice was familiar. The voice belonged to someone she knew. It drifted toward her from high above, saying this curious, half-remembered name.

  “Dani, you have to open your eyes. I need you to try.”

  Sara sensed her mind emerging, her body taking shape around her. She felt suddenly cold. Her throat was tight and dry, sweet-tasting. She was supposed to open her eyes—that’s what the voice was telling her—but her lids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds apiece.

  “I’m going to give you something.”

  Was the voice Lila’s? Sara felt a prick in her arm. Nothing. Then:

  Oh!

  She bolted upright, violently curling forward at the waist, her heart thudding against her rib cage. Air rushed to her lungs, expelled by a dry cough that screeched across the parched lining of her throat.

  Lila pressed a cup to her lips, bracing the back of Sara’s head with her palm. “Drink.”

  Sara tasted water, cold water. The images around her began to coalesce. Her heart was still racing like a bird’s. Bits of pain, real and remembered, jabbed at her extremities. Her head felt like it was only vaguely related to the rest of her.

  “You’re all right,” said Lila. “Don’t worry. I’m a doctor.”

  Lila was a doctor?

  “We need to be quick. I know it won’t be easy, but can you stand?”

  Sara didn’t think she could, but Lila made her try. She swung her legs to the side of the gurney, Lila helping her by the elbow. Below the hem of Sara’s gown, white bandages encircled her upper thighs. More bandages dressed her lower arms. All of this had happened without her being aware of it.

  “What did they do to me?”

  “It’s the marrow they take. They start with the hips. That’s the pain you feel.”

  Sara eased her feet to the floor. Only then did it occur to her that Lila’s presence was an aberration—that she was freeing her.

  “Why do you have a gun, Lila?”

  Gone was the frail, uncertain woman Sara had come to know. Her face radiated urgency. “Come.”

  Sara saw the first body when they stepped into the hall: a man in a lab coat lying face-down on the floor, his arm
s and legs splayed in the random arrangement of swift death. The top of his skull had been blasted off, its contents splashed over the wall. Two more lay nearby, one shot in the chest, the other through the throat—though the second man wasn’t dead. He was sitting upright against the wall, his hands encircling his neck, his chest moving in shallow jerks. It was Dr. Verlyn. Through the hole in his neck, his rapid breathing made a clicking sound. His lips wordlessly working, he looked at Sara with pleading eyes.

  Lila was tugging her by the arm. “We need to hurry.”

  She didn’t have to say it again. More bodies—the splashes of blood and startled postures and expressions of surprise in unseeing eyes—flowed past. It was a massacre. Was it possible that Lila had done this? They came to the end of the hall, where the heavy steel door stood open. A col lay beside it, shot in the head.

  “Get her out of the building,” Lila commanded. “It’s the last thing I’ll ask of you. Do whatever you have to.”

  Sara understood that she was speaking of Kate. “Lila, what are you doing?”

  “What should have been done long ago.” A look of peace had come into her face; her eyes glowed with warmth. “It will all be over soon, Dani.”

  Sara hesitated. “My name’s not Dani.”

  “I thought perhaps it wasn’t. Tell me.”

  “It’s Sara.”

  Lila nodded slowly, as if agreeing that this was the right name for her to have. She took Sara’s hand.

  “You will be a good mother to her, Sara,” she said, and squeezed. “I know it. Now run.”

  A hush fell over the crowd as Guilder stepped onto the field, all seventy thousand faces swiveling to look at him. He stood still a moment, drinking in the stillness as his eyes traveled the grandstands. He would make a humble entrance, like a priest’s. Time seemed to stretch as he walked to the platform. Who knew it could take so long to cross fifty yards? The silence around him seemed to deepen with every step.

  He arrived at the platform. He gazed out upon the crowd, first one side of the field, then the other. His hand slipped to his waist and located the toggle.

  “All rise for the singing of the anthem.”