The Twelve tpt-2

by Justin Cronin

  A flick of the col’s eyes, and Peter darted into the crawl space underneath the stairs. No shouts rose behind him. Either he had gone unnoticed or the crowd didn’t care, locked into their habit of obedience. The entrance to the men’s room was ten feet away, at the base of the bleachers. There was no door, only a cement-block wall angled for privacy. Peter peeked around the stairs. An obscuring barrier of shuffling flatlanders marched past. Now.

  The room was surprisingly large. On the right was a long line of urinals and stalls. He moved briskly to the last and pushed open the door to see a fierce-looking woman with short, dark hair perched on the rim of the toilet, aiming a heavy-handled revolver at his face.

  “Sergio lives.”

  She lowered the gun. “Peter?”

  He nodded.

  “Nina,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  She led him to a tiny room behind the lavatory: a desk and chair, wheeled buckets with mops, and a line of metal lockers. From one of the lockers Nina withdrew a pair of guns of a type Peter had never seen before, something between a rifle and a large pistol, with an extra-long magazine and a second handle jutting from the underside of the barrel.

  “Know how to use one of these?” she said.

  Peter drew back the bolt to show that he did.

  “Short bursts only and fire from the waist. You’ll get twelve rounds per second. If you hold the trigger down, the clip will empty fast.”

  She handed him three extra magazines, then pulled open a drawer-like panel in the wall.

  “What’s that?” Peter asked.

  “The garbage chute.”

  Peter stood on the chair, wedged himself inside, and dropped down feetfirst. The corridor was tipped like a slide, cushioning his descent, but not enough. He landed hard, his feet skidding out from under him.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  There were two of them, dressed in suits. Redeyes. Lying helplessly on his back, Peter could do nothing. He was clutching the gun over his chest, but shots would be heard. As he scrabbled away, simultaneously attempting to rise to his feet, both men drew pistols from belt holsters.

  Then, Tifty. He appeared behind the one on the left and swung the butt of his rifle upward into the man’s head. As the second turned, Tifty kicked his feet out from under him, dropped to his knees to straddle his back, yanked him by the hair to angle his head upward, wrapped his neck with his free arm and twisted. A crunching pop, then silence.

  “Okay?” Tifty glanced up at Peter. The dead man’s head, still locked by Tifty’s forearm, sagged at an unnatural angle. Peter looked at the other redeye. Dark blood was seeping from his head onto the floor.

  “Yeah,” Peter managed.

  A rattling from behind them and Nina dropped down. She landed catlike, fluidly raising her weapon to sweep it over the room.

  “I see I’m late.” She angled the gun to the ceiling. “You’re Tifty?”

  For a moment the man said nothing. He was staring at her intently.

  “You can let go of him, you know,” she said. “He’s not going to get any more dead.”

  Tifty broke his gaze away. He released the dead man’s head and rose to his feet. He seemed a little shaken; Peter wondered what had thrown the man off.

  “We better hide these bodies,” Tifty said. “Did Eustace make it in?”

  “We’d have heard it if he didn’t.”

  They were in some kind of loading area. A tunnel, wide enough to fit a good-sized truck, led to the left, presumably to the outside; to the right was a smaller hallway. An arrow painted on the wall bore the words VISITORS’ LOCKER ROOM.

  They dragged the corpses behind a pile of crates and moved down the hall. They were under the field now, on the south side. The hallway ended at a flight of stairs going up. The light was barely enough to see by. Overhead Peter heard the rumble of the crowd.

  “We wait here till it starts,” Nina said.

  In the back of the van, Amy could see nothing. A small window separated the cargo area from the cab, but the driver had left it closed. Her body felt like she’d been dragged from a runaway horse, but her mind was clear and focused on the moment. The van descended the hill and leveled out, the tires spitting up mud and snow into the wheel wells.

  “Hey, you back there.”

  The window had opened. The driver glanced at Amy through the mirror with a smile of wicked delight.

  “How’s it feel?”

  The man in the passenger seat laughed. Amy said nothing.

  “You fucking people,” the driver said. His eyes narrowed in the mirror. “You know how many of my friends you killed?”

  “Is that what you call them?”

  “Seriously,” he said with a dark laugh, “you should see these things. They are going to rip you apart.”

  The van was bouncing through deep potholes, jostling the chains. “What’s your name?” Amy asked.

  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, be
lieve 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 gasped, “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: