The Twelve tpt-2

by Justin Cronin

  She broached the subject the next day while she was washing Lila’s hair. A few hours off, was how she put it. An outing to the market. It would be good to see a few new faces, and while she was there she could look for some special oils or soaps. The request aroused in Lila a palpable anxiety; she’d become more clingy recently, barely letting Sara out of her sight. But in the end she yielded to the gentle force of Sara’s argument. Just don’t be too long, said Lila. I never know what to do without you, Dani.

  Vale had paved the way; at the front desk, the col handed her the pass with a perfunctory warning that it was only for two hours. Sara stepped into the wind and headed toward the market. Only cols and redeyes were allowed to barter there; currency took the form of small plastic chips in three colors, red, blue, and white. In the pocket of Sara’s robe were five of each, part of the compensation that Lila doled out to her every seven days, furthering the fiction that Sara was a paid employee. The snow had been pushed from the sidewalks in what had once been the town’s small commercial area, three blocks of brick buildings adjacent to the college. Most of the city went unused and abandoned, fading into soft decay; nearly all of the redeyes, except for senior staff, lived in a mid-rise apartment complex at the south end of downtown. The market was the heart of the city, with checkpoints at either end. Some of the buildings still bore signs indicating their original function: Iowa State Bank, Fort Powell Army-Navy, Wimpy’s Café, Prairie Books and Music. There was even a small movie theater with a marquee; Sara had heard that cols were sometimes permitted to go, to watch the handful of movies that were shown over and over again.

  She displayed her pass at the checkpoint. The streets were vacant save for the patrols and a handful of redeyes, strolling in their luxuriously heavy coats and sunglasses. Shielded by her veil, Sara moved in a bubble of anonymity, though this sense of security was, she knew, a dangerous illusion. She walked at a pace that was neither fast nor slow, her head down against the cold gusts that whipped up from the streets and around the corners of the buildings.

  She came to the apothecary. Bells tinkled as she stepped inside. The room was warm and fragrant with wood smoke and herbs. Behind the counter, a woman with a scrim of gray hair and a puckered, toothless mouth was bent over a scale, measuring out minute quantities of a pale yellow powder and funneling them into tiny glass vials. She lifted her eyes as Sara entered, then darted them to the col lingering by a display of scented oils. Be careful. I know who you are. Don’t approach until I get rid of him. Then, speaking in an elevated, helpful voice: “Sir, perhaps you were looking for something special.”

  The col was sniffing a bar of soap. Mid-thirties, not unhandsome, broadcasting an air of vanity. He returned the soap to its place on the display. “Something for a headache.”

  “Ah.” A smile of assurance; the solution was in hand. “Just a moment.”

  The old woman selected a jar from the wall of herbals behind her, spooned the dry leaves into a paper package, and handed it to him over the counter. “Dissolve this in warm water. Just a pinch should do it.”

  He surveyed the package uneasily. “What’s in it? You’re not trying to poison me, old woman?”

  “Nothing more than common dillonweed. I use it myself. If you want me to sample it first, I’d be glad to.”

  “Forget it.”

  He paid her with a single blue chip; the woman followed him with her eyes as he departed to a chime of bells.

  “Come with me,” she said to Sara.

  She led her to a storage room in the back with a table and chairs and a door to the alleyway. The woman told Sara to wait and returned to the front of the store. Several minutes passed; then the door opened: Nina, dressed in a flatlander’s tunic and dark jacket and a long scarf that wrapped the lower half of her face.

  “This is incredibly dumb, Sara. Do you know how dangerous this is?”

  Sara stared into the woman’s steely eyes. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how angry she was.

  “You knew my daughter was alive, didn’t you?”

  Nina was unwinding the scarf. “Of course we knew. That’s what we do, Sara: we know things, then we put the information to use. I’d think you’d be happy about it.”

  “How long?”

  “Does that matter?”

  “Yes, damnit, it matters.”

  Nina gave her a hard look. “All right, suppose we’ve known all along. Supposing we’d told you. What would you have done? Don’t bother to answer. You would have gone off half-cocked and done something stupid. You wouldn’t have made it ten steps into the Dome without blowing your cover. If it’s any consolation, there was a good deal of discussion about this. Jackie thought you should know. But the prevailing opinion was that the success of the operation came first.”

  “Prevailing opinion. Meaning yours.”

  “Mine and Eustace’s.” For a moment, Nina’s expression seemed to soften. But only for a moment. “Don’t take it so hard. You got what you wanted. Be happy.”

  “What I want is to get her out of there.”

  “Which is what we’re counting on, Sara. And we’ll get her out, in time.”

  “When?”

  “I think that should be obvious. When all of this is over.”

  “Are you blackmailing me?”

  Nina shrugged off the accusation. “Don’t misunderstand me—it’s not something I’m particularly averse to. But in this case, I don’t have to.” She looked at Sara carefully. “What do you think happens to those girls?”

  “What do you mean, ‘girls’? My daughter’s the only one.”

  “She is now. But she’s not the first. There’s always another Eva. Giving Lila a child is the only way Guilder can keep her calm. Once they reach a certain age, though, the woman loses interest, or else the child rejects her. Then they get her a new one.”

  A wave of dizziness filled Sara’s head; she had to sit down. “How old?”

  “Five or six. It varies. But it always happens, Sara. That’s what I’m telling you. The clock is ticking. Maybe not today, or even tomorrow, but soon. Then off to the basement she goes.”

  Sara forced herself to the next question: “What’s in the basement?”

  “It’s where they make the blood for the redeyes. We don’t know all the details. The process starts with human blood, but then something happens to it. They change it somehow. There’s a man down there, a kind of viral, or so it’s said. They call him the Source. He drinks a distillate of human blood, it changes in his body, something different comes out. You’ve seen what happens to the woman?”

  Sara nodded.

  “It happens to all of them, but it’s slower in the men. The blood of the Source rejuvenates them. It’s what keeps them alive. But once your daughter goes down there, she’ll never come out.”

  A storm of emotions roiled inside Sara. Anger, helplessness, a fierce desire to protect her daughter. It was so intense she thought she might be ill.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “When the time comes, we’ll tell you. We’ll get her out. You have my word.”

  Sara understood what Nina was asking. Not asking: telling. They had maneuvered her perfectly. Kate was the hostage, and the ransom would be paid in blood.

  “Hate her for it, Sara. Think about what she does. The moment will come for all of us, myself included, just like it came for Jackie. I’ll go willingly when I’m asked. And unless this thing comes off, your daughter is on her own. We’ll never be able to reach her.”

  “Where is it?” Sara asked. She didn’t have to be clearer than that; her meaning was obvious.

  “It’s better if you don’t know yet. You’ll receive a message the usual way. You’re the linchpin, and the timing matters.”

  “What if I can’t do it?”

  “Then you die anyway. And so does your daughter. It’s just a matter of when. I’ve told you about the how.” Her eyes were looking deep into Sara’s. There was no compassion anywhere inside them, only an icy cla
rity. “If this goes according to plan, it will be the end of the redeyes. Guilder, Lila, all of them. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  Sara’s mind had gone utterly numb. She felt herself nodding, then saying, in a faint voice, “Yes.”

  “Then do your duty. Do it for your daughter. Kate, is that her name?”

  Sara was dumbstruck. “How did you—?”

  “Because you told me. Don’t you remember? You told me her name the day she was born.”

  Of course, she thought. So much made sense now. Nina was the woman from the birthing ward who’d given her the lock of Kate’s hair.

  “You may not believe me, Sara, but I’m trying to right a wrong here.”

  Sara wanted to laugh. She would have, if such a thing were still possible. “You have a funny way of showing it.”

  “Maybe so. But those are the times we live in.” Another searching pause. “You have this inside you. I know it when I see it.”

  Did she? The question was meaningless. Somehow she would have to find the strength.

  “Do it for your daughter, Sara. Do it for Kate. Otherwise she has no chance.”

  50

  The things they were doing were endurable. Not without pain, and pain’s cousin, which was the anticipation of it. But able to be borne. For a long time they asked her nothing. They made no demands of any sort. This was simply the sort of thing they liked to do, and they would go on doing it, taking their dark pleasure, which Alicia did not surrender easily. She silenced her cries, she bore it all stoically, she laughed whenever she could, saying: Do your damnedest, my friends. I’m the one who must be kept in chains. Do you think this fact, in and of itself, is not a kind of victory?

  The water was the worst of it. Strange, because Alicia had always liked the water. She’d been a fearless swimmer as a child, diving deep into the grotto at the Colony, holding her breath as long as she could, touching the bottom as her ears thudded and watching the bubbles of her exhaled breath ascending from darkness into sunlight far above. Sometimes they funneled the water into her mouth. Sometimes they pulled her down from the chains, strapped her to a board, and dunked her headfirst into an icy tub. Each time she thought, Here goes, and counted the seconds until it was over.

  Her strength had ebbed discernibly as the days passed. A slight downward adjustment on the whole, but enough. They offered her food, pasty gruel of soy or corn and oversmoked strips of meat hardened to the consistency of leather, their unstated intention being to keep her alive so that they could enjoy themselves for as long as possible, but without the others… well. She made a silent vow: when at last she tasted human blood, the unambiguous final act of her transformation, the blood would be theirs. To surrender her membership in the human race was a heavy thing, but there was some consolation in this thought. She would drink the bastards dry.

  There was no way to gauge the march of days. Left to herself, she adopted the mental practice of retracing events of her past, moving through her memory as if it were a hallway of pictures: standing the watch at First Colony; her journey with Peter and Amy and the others across the Darklands to Colorado; her strange, arid childhood with the Colonel. She had always called him “sir,” never “Daddy” or even “Niles”; from the start he had been her superior officer, not a father or friend. Strange to think of that now. Her memories of her life carried a range of emotions, grief and happiness and exhilaration and loneliness and to some degree love, but the feeling they shared was of belonging. She was her memories, and her memories were her. She hoped she’d get to keep them when all was said and done.

  She had begun to wonder if all they had in mind for her was an endless repetition of their painful ministrations when the rhythm of her captivity was disrupted by the arrival of a man who bore the appearance of being in charge. He did not introduce himself, and for at least a minute he didn’t say anything at all, just stood before her where she was suspended from the ceiling, examining her with the expression of someone reading a puzzling book. He was dressed in a dark suit and tie and stiff white shirt; he didn’t look a day over thirty. His skin was pale and tender, as if it never saw the sun. But it was his eyes that told the real story. Why should she be surprised?

  “You’re… different.” Stepping closer, he breathed sharply through his nose, darting it at the air around her like a dog.

  “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

  “I can smell it on you.”

  “Can’t say I’ve had much of a chance to clean up.” She offered her boldest grin. “And you might be …?”

  “I’ll ask the questions.”

  “You know, you shouldn’t read in the dark like that. It’s hell on your eyes.”

  He reared back and struck her, open-palmed, across the face.

  “Wow,” Alicia said, waggling her jaw. “Ouch. That kind of stings.”

  He moved forward again and violently twisted her upraised arm. “Why don’t you have a tag?”

  “That’s a nifty outfit you’re wearing. Makes a girl feel a little under-dressed.”

  Another blow to the face, like the crack of a whip. Alicia blinked her watering eyes and ran her tongue over her teeth, tasting blood. “You know, you guys have been doing that a lot. It’s not very welcoming. I don’t think I like you very much.”

  His bloodshot eyes narrowed with rage. Now she was getting somewhere. “Tell me about Sergio.”

  “Can’t say that rings a bell.”

  He struck her again. Little scraps of light twinkled in her vision. She could tell that he was saving the full measure of his strength. He would dole it out one drop at a time, a slow escalation.

  “Why don’t you cut me down from here and we can have us a real chat? Because this obviously isn’t working for you.”

  Wham went his hand, a fist this time. It was like being hit by a board. Alicia shook it off, spitting blood.

  “Tell me.”

  “Go piss yourself.”

  A hammering blow to her gut. Her breath froze in her chest as her diaphragm compressed like a vise. The airless seconds passed. The moment her lungs finally expanded, he hit her again.

  “Who… is… Sergio?”

  Alicia was having a little trouble focusing. Focusing and breathing and thinking. She braced herself for another blow, but none arrived; she became aware that the man had opened the door. Three figures stepped through. They were carrying a kind of bench, waist-high, with a broad frame at its base.

  “I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine. This is Sod. You’ve actually already met.”

  Alicia’s vision gradually sharpened. Something was wrong with the man’s face. Or, rather, one side of his face, which looked like a slab of inconsistently cooked meat, raw at the center and blackened at the edges. Half the man’s hair had burned away, as had most of his nose. His left eye looked melted, vulcanized to a runny jelly.

  “Yuck,” Alicia managed to reply.

  “Sod here was in the holding area when you decided to shoot a tank full of liquid propane. He’s not so happy about it.”

  “All in a day’s work. Nice to meet you, Sod. That’s quite a name, ‘Sod.’ ”

  “Sod is a man of special enthusiasms. You could say the name is well earned. He has a bit of a bone to pick with you.” The man in the suit addressed the other two: “Tie her down. On second thought, wait a second.”

  The blows fell and fell. The face. The body. By the time the man had exhausted himself, Alicia was barely feeling any of it. Pain had become something else—distant, vague. A rattle of chains and a release of pressure on her wrists. She was facing the floor, her waist straddling the bench and her feet bound to its frame, spread wide. Her trousers were yanked from her body.

  “A little privacy for our friend here,” the first man said, and Alicia heard the door closing, and then the sound, ominous and final, of tumblers turning in the lock.

  51

  Every night, as Amy and Greer journeyed northward, she dreamed of Wolgast. Sometimes they were on
the carousel. Sometimes they were driving in a car, the little towns and the green spring countryside flowing past, mountains looming in the distance, their faces shining with ice. Tonight they were in Oregon, at the camp. They were in the main room of the lodge, sitting across from each other on the floor, their legs folded Indian-style, and on the floor between them was the Monopoly board with its squares of faded color and money in ordered piles and Amy’s little hat and Wolgast’s little automobile and Wolgast tossing the dice from a cup and moving his piece forward to St. Charles Place, site of one of Amy’s six (six!) hotels. The room was warm from the stove, and outside the windows a dry snow was falling through the velvety darkness and the deep winter cold.

  “For Pete’s sake,” he groaned.

  He doled out the bills. His exasperation was false; he wanted to lose. He told her she was lucky, making it so with his words. You’re lucky, Amy.

  Round and round their pieces traveled. More money changed hands. Park Place, Illinois Avenue, Marvin Gardens, the hilariously named “B. & O.” Amy’s stack of money grew as Wolgast’s shrank toward zero. She bought railroads and utilities, she had built her houses and hotels everywhere, a gauntlet of ownership that enabled her to erect more, blanketing the board. Understanding this accelerating mathematics was the key to the game.

  “I think I need a loan,” Wolgast confessed.

  “Try the bank.” She was grinning with victory. Once he borrowed money, the end would fall swiftly; he would toss up his arms in surrender. Then they would assume their customary places on the sofa, a blanket drawn up to their chests, and take turns reading to each other. Tonight’s book: H. G. Wells, The Time Machine.