The Twelve tpt-2

by Justin Cronin

  Which was another thing. The phone didn’t seem to be working, on top of which there was no mail. Or newspaper. But David had told her not to go outside under any circumstances, so Lila hadn’t checked. Maybe the newspaper was sitting in the driveway.

  She fetched a glass from the cabinet and turned on the faucet. A groan from below, a burp of air, and… nothing. The water, too! Then she remembered; the water had been out a while. Now she’d have to call a plumber on top of everything else. Or would have, if the phones were working. Wasn’t it just like David to be away when everything went to hell in a handbasket. That had been one of Lila’s father’s favorite expressions, hell in a handbasket. A curious turn of phrase, now that Lila thought about it. What exactly was a handbasket, and how was it different from a regular basket? There were lots of phrases like that, even just simple words that could suddenly look strange, as if you’d never seen them before. Diaper. Misled. Plumber. Married.

  Had that really been her idea, to marry David? Because she didn’t remember thinking, I will marry David. Which a person should think, probably, before they went ahead and did it. Strange how one minute life was a certain way and then it was another, and you couldn’t remember what you’d done to make it all happen. She wouldn’t have said that she loved David, exactly. She liked him. She admired him. (And who could fail to admire David Centre? Chief of cardiology at Denver General, founder of the Colorado Institute of Electrophysiology, a man who ran marathons, sat on boards, held season tickets to both the Nuggets and the opera, who daily hauled his patients from the very brink of death?) But did these feelings add up to love? And if not, should you actually marry such a man because you were carrying his child—nothing planned, it had simply happened—and because, in a moment of characteristically David nobility, he had announced that he intended to “do the right thing”? What was the right thing? And why did David sometimes seem not like David but someone resembling David, based on David, a man-sized, David-like object? When Lila had told her father the news of their engagement, she’d seen it in his face: he knew. He was sitting at his desk in his study, surrounded by the books he loved, stroking glue onto the bowsprit of a model ship. In just the tiniest lift of his generous eyebrows, the truth was written. “Well,” he said, and cleared his throat, pausing to screw the top onto the little jar of glue. “I can see how, under the circumstances, you might want to. He’s a good man. You can do it here if you like.”

  Which he was, and which they had, flying off to Boston on the front edge of a spring blizzard, everything rushed and jammed into place, just a handful of relatives and friends able to make it at the last second to stand awkwardly in the living room while vows were exchanged (it had taken all of about two minutes) before making their excuses. Even the caterer had left early. It wasn’t the fact that Lila was pregnant that made it all so awkward. It was, she knew, that someone was missing.

  Someone would always be missing.

  But never mind. Never mind David, and their awful wedding (really, it had felt more like a wake), with its piles of leftover salmon and the snow and all the rest. The important thing was the baby, and taking care of herself. The world could go to hell in a handbasket if it wanted to. The baby was what mattered. She would be a girl; Lila had seen her on the ultrasound. A baby girl. Tiny hands and tiny feet and a tiny heart and lungs, floating in the warm broth of her body. The baby liked to hiccup. Hiccup! went the tiny baby. Hiccup! Hiccup! Which was a funny word as well. The baby breathed the amniotic fluid in and out, contracting the diaphragm, causing the epiglottis to close. A synchronous diaphragmatic flutter, or singultus, from the Latin singult, “the act of catching one’s breath while sobbing.” When Lila had learned this in medical school, she’d thought: Wow. Just, wow. And of course she had immediately started to hiccup herself; half the students had. There was a man in Australia, Lila knew, who had been hiccupping continuously for seventeen years. She’d seen him on Today.

  Today. What was today? She had made her way to the front hall, becoming gradually aware, as if her mind were lifting on tiptoes to peer above a ledge, that she had drawn the curtain aside to take a look outside. Nope, no newspaper. No Denver Post or New York Times or that trashy little neighborhood thing that went straight into the bin. Through the glass she could hear the high, tree-borne buzz of summer insects. Usually you’d see a car or two gliding by, the postman whistling his way down the block, a nanny pushing a stroller, but not today. I’ll be back when I know more. Stay inside, lock the doors. Don’t go out under any circumstances. Lila remembered David saying these things to her; she remembered standing at the window to watch his car, one of those new hydrogen-powered Toyotas, zip silently down the drive. Good God, even his car was virtuous. The pope probably drove one just like it.

  But wasn’t that a dog? Lila pressed her face closer to the glass. The Johnsons’ dog was toddling down the middle of the street. The Johnsons lived two doors away, a pair of empty nesters, the daughter off married somewhere, the son away at college. MIT? Caltech? One of those. Mrs. Johnson (“Call me Sandy!”) had been the first neighbor to show up at their door the day they’d moved in, all bundt cake and big hellos, and Lila saw her nearly every evening when she wasn’t on call, sometimes in the company of her husband, Geoff, out walking Roscoe, a big grinning golden retriever so submissive he’d hurl himself tummy-up on the pavement when anyone approached. (“Excuse my fucking fairy of a dog,” Geoff said.) That was Roscoe out there, but something wasn’t right. He didn’t look the same. His ribs were sticking out like the keys on a xylophone (Lila was touched, fleetingly, by a memory of playing the glockenspiel in grammar school, and the tinkling melody of “Frère Jacques”), and he was walking in a disconcertingly aimless manner, gripping something in his mouth. Some sort of a… floppy thing. Did the Johnsons know he’d gotten loose? Should she telephone them? But the phones weren’t working, and she’d promised David she’d stay indoors. Surely someone else would notice him and say, Why, that’s Roscoe; he must have gotten out.

  Goddamn David, she thought. He could be so stuck on himself, so inconsiderate, out doing God knows what when here she was, no water and no phone and no electricity and the color in the nursery all wrong. It wasn’t even close! She was only twenty-four weeks along, but she knew how the time raced by. One minute you were months away and the next thing you knew you were hustling out the door in the dead of night with your little suitcase, driving pell-mell to the hospital, and then you were on your back beneath the lights, huffing and puffing, the contractions roaring down upon you, taking you over, and nothing else would happen until you had the baby. And through the fog of pain you would feel a hand in your own and open your eyes to see Brad beside you, wearing a look on his face you had no name for, a beautiful terrified helpless look, and hear his voice saying, Push, Lila, you’re almost there, one more push and you’ll be done, and so you would: you would reach inside yourself and find the strength to do this one last thing and push the baby out. And in the stillness that came after, as Brad handed you the magical swaddled present of your baby, rivers of happiness running down his cheeks, you would feel the deep and permanent rightness of your life, knowing that you had chosen this man above all others because you were simply meant to, and that your baby, Eva, this warm new creature you had made together, was just that: the two of you, made one.

  Brad? Why was she thinking about Brad? David. David was her husband, not Brad. Pope David and his popemobile. Had there been a Pope David? Probably. Lila herself was a Methodist. She wasn’t the person to ask.

  Well, she thought, Roscoe having wandered out of sight, enough was enough. She’d had it with being trapped in a filthy house. David could do as David liked; she saw no reason to sit out this perfectly beautiful June day, not with so much to do. Her trusty old Volvo awaited her in the driveway. Where was her purse? Her wallet? Her keys? But here they were, sitting on the little table by the front door. Just where she had left them some period of time ago.

  Upstairs, she went to the
bathroom—my God, the toilet was in such a state, she didn’t even want to think about that—and examined her face in the mirror. Well, that was not so good. You’d think she’d been in a shipwreck—her hair a rat’s nest, her eyes sunken and bleary-looking. Her skin was all washed out, like it hadn’t seen the sun in weeks. She wasn’t one of those women who needed an hour to primp before leaving the house, but even so. She would have liked a shower, but of course that was impossible; she settled for washing her face with water from one of the jugs on the sink, using a washcloth to scrub her skin pink. She ran a brush through her hair, applied blush to her cheeks, stroked mascara onto her lashes, and put on a bit of lipstick. She was wearing only a T-shirt and panties in the heat; she retreated to the bedroom, with its guttered candles and heaps of dirty laundry and the musty smell of unwashed sheets, and pulled one of David’s long-tailed shirts from the closet. What to wear below this was a problem—nothing really fit anymore. She settled on a pair of loose jeans she could wriggle into if she didn’t do the top button, and a pair of sandals.

  Once more to the mirror. Not bad, Lila concluded. A definite improvement. It wasn’t like she was going anyplace special, after all. Although it might be nice to stop for lunch, once her errands were done. She certainly had earned it after all this time indoors. Someplace nice, where she could eat outside. Few things were nicer than a glass of tea and a salad, sitting outdoors on a spring afternoon. Café des Amis—that was just the ticket. They had a marvelous patio draped with vines of fragrant flowers, and the most wonderful chef—he had visited their table once—who had trained at Cordon Bleu. Pierre? François? The man could do the most amazing thing with sauces, teasing the deepest flavors from even the simplest dishes; his coq au vin was to die for. But the desserts were what Des Amis was known for, especially the chocolate mousse. Lila had never tasted anything so heavenly in her life. She and Brad always shared one after dinner, spooning it into each other’s mouths like a couple of teenagers so besotted that the world barely existed beyond the two of them. Such blissful days—courtship days, all the promises of life opening before them like the pages of a book. How they’d laughed when she’d damn near swallowed the engagement ring he’d tucked within its airy cocoa folds, and again on the night when Lila had sent Brad out into the pouring rain—anything would do, she told him, a Kit Kat or Almond Joy or a plain old Hershey’s—and awakened an hour later to see him standing in the doorway of the bedroom, soaked to the bone, wearing the most hilarious smile on his face and bearing a giant Tupperware container of François’s—Pierre’s?—famous chocolate mousse, enough to feed an army. Which was just the kind of man Brad was. He’d gone around to the back, where a light was still burning, and pounded on the door until somebody came to receive his rain-drenched fifty-dollar bill. Which was the sweetest thing of all. My God, Lila, Brad said as she spooned a mouthful to her lips, the way you’re going, this baby is going to be born half chocolate.

  But there she went again. David. David Centre was her husband now. Lila really had to get a handle on that. Not that she and David had ever shared a chocolate mousse or been to Café des Amis or done anything remotely of the kind. The man didn’t have one romantic bone in his body. How had she let a man like that talk her into marriage? As if she were merely one more item on a glorified to-do list? Become a famous doctor, check. Get Lila Kyle pregnant, check. Do the honorable thing, check. He hardly seemed to know who she was.

  Down the stairs she went. Outside the sun was pouring down, filling the hall like a golden gas. By the time she reached the door, a pure excitement was coursing through her. What sweet release! After so much time cooped up, to venture out at last! She could only imagine what David would say when he found out. For God’s sake, Lila, I told you it’s not safe. You have to think of the baby. But it was the baby she was thinking of; the baby was the reason. That’s what David didn’t understand. David, who was too busy off saving the world to help with the nursery, who drove a car powered by asparagus, or pixie dust, or wholesome thoughts, or whatever it was, and who had left her here alone. Alone! And what was worse, really the worst thing of all, was that he didn’t even like Peter Rabbit. How was it possible she was going to have a baby with a man who didn’t like Peter Rabbit? What did that say about him? What kind of father would he be? No, it was none of David’s business what she did, Lila concluded, lifting her purse and keys from the hallway table and unbolting the door. It was none of his business if she went outside, or if she painted the nursery chartreuse, or vermilion, or puce. David could go screw himself. That’s what David could do.

  Lila Kyle would buy the paint herself.

  8

  It was not a good day in the office of the deputy director. Today, May 31—Memorial Day, not that it mattered—was an end-of-the-world kind of day.

  Colorado was gone, basically. Colorado was kaput. Denver, Greeley, Fort Collins, Boulder, Grand Junction, Durango, the thousand little towns in between. The latest aerial intel looked like a war zone: cars crashed on the highways, buildings burning, bodies everywhere. During daylight hours, nothing seemed to be moving except the birds, huge spiraling swarms of them, like the word had gone out from Vulture Central Command.

  Would somebody please tell him whose idea it had been to kill the entire state of Colorado?

  And the virus was moving. Spreading in every direction, a twelve-fingered hand. By the time Homeland had sealed off the major interstate corridors—those dithering assholes couldn’t get themselves out of a burning house—the horse was already galloping from the barn. As of this morning, the CDC had confirmed cases in Kearney, Nebraska; Farmington, New Mexico; Sturgis, South Dakota; and Laramie, Wyoming. And those were just the ones they knew about. Nothing yet in Utah or Kansas, though that was a matter of time, maybe just hours. It was five-thirty in northern Virginia, three hours till sundown, five in the west.

  They always moved at night.

  The briefing with the Joint Chiefs had not gone well, though Guilder hadn’t expected it to. To begin with, there was the whole “problem” of Special Weapons. The military brass had never been particularly comfortable with, or especially clear on, what DSW did, or why it existed outside any military chain of command, drawing its budget from, of all things, the Department of Agriculture. (Answer: Because nobody gave a shit about agriculture.) The military was all about hierarchies, who urinated highest on the hydrant, and as far as the brass could see, Special Weapons answered to no one, its pieces cobbled together from a dozen other agencies and private contractors. It resembled nothing so much as a game of sidewalk three-card monte, the queen always moving, not quite where you thought it would be. As for what DSW actually did, well, Guilder had heard the nicknames. “Distraction from Serious Warfare.” “Department of Silly Wingnuts.” “Deep-Shit Weirdness.” And his personal favorite: “Discount Shoe Warehouse.” (Even he had started calling it the Warehouse.)

  So it was that Deputy Director Horace Guilder (were there any actual directors anymore?) had found himself sitting before the Joint Chiefs (enough stars and bars around the table to start a Girl Scout troop) to offer his official assessment of the situation in Colorado. (Sorry, we made vampires; it seemed like a good idea at the time.) A full thirty seconds of dumbfounded silence ensued, everyone waiting to see who would speak next.

  Let me see if I have you right, the chairman intoned. He leaned his folded hands over the table. Guilder felt a bead of sweat drop from his armpit to slither the length of his torso. You decided to reengineer an ancient virus that would transform a dozen death row inmates into indestructible monsters who live on blood, and you didn’t think to tell anybody about this?

  Well, not exactly “decided.” Guilder hadn’t been with DSW at the outset. He’d come in at the change of administration, so much money and so many man-hours already down the rat hole that he couldn’t have put the brakes on if he tried. Project NOAH was under a chain of command so obscure, even Guilder didn’t know where it had originated—probably NSA, though he’d
gotten the sense it might have gone even higher than that, even to the White House itself. But sitting before the Joint Chiefs, he understood that this distinction was pointless. Guilder had spent three decades working in agencies where so much was a secret that nobody was actually responsible for anything. Ideas seemed to flower of their own accord. We did what? No, we didn’t. And so, off into the shredder it went. Which was exactly what was about to happen to Special Weapons; probably even to Guilder himself.

  But in the meantime, there was blame to be doled out. The meeting had quickly devolved into a shouting match, Guilder taking verbal punch after verbal punch. He felt relieved when he was banished from the room, knowing that the situation was out of his hands. Henceforth, the military would deal with this the way they dealt with all problems: by shooting everything in sight.

  In hindsight, Guilder might have put the situation more diplomatically. But the CDC’s projections spoke for themselves. Three weeks, four at the outside, and the virus would take out Chicago, St. Louis, Salt Lake. Six weeks and they were looking at the coasts.

  Vampires, for Christ’s sake. What had he been thinking?