Justin Cronin - The Twelve

“Thank you, Colonel.”

“Don’t mention it. And I do mean that literally.” He looked at Peter again. “Just be careful with him, Jaxon. Lamont is nobody you want to cross.”

They rode through the night and into another. They were east of Luling now. They had no map but didn’t need one; Interstate 10 would lead them straight to Houston, into its jungled heart. Greer had been there once before—just the outskirts, but they’d told him enough. The city was an impenetrable swamp, a miasma of tree-tangled muck and sodden ruins, crawling with dopeys. If they didn’t get you, the alligators would. They cruised the befouled waters like half-submerged boats, many having grown to gargantuan dimensions, their powerful jaws endlessly searching. Huge clouds of mosquitoes blanketed the air. Your nose, your mouth, your eyes: always they were looking for the body’s door, seeking out the soft spots. Houston, what remained, was not a place for humankind; Greer wondered why anyone had ever thought it habitable to begin with.

They would face that soon enough. Now they found themselves in a prairie land of tall grasses and thickets, reclining mile by mile toward the sea. This far to the east, the highway hadn’t been cleared. It seemed more suggestion than structure, its surface cracked and subsumed under washes of heavy clay soil. Graveyards of ancient cars frequently blocked the way. Few words had passed between the two of them since their departure: conversation was simply not necessary. Across the days, Greer had sensed a change in Amy, an aura of physical distraction. She was perspiring heavily; at times he caught her wincing, as if in pain. But when he expressed his concern, the girl peremptorily dismissed it. I’m fine , she insisted. It’s nothing . Her tone was almost angry; she was telling him not to press.

As darkness fell, they made their camp in a clearing within sight of a ruined motel. The sky was clear, the temperature falling, calling forth dew from the air. Greer knew they were safe for the night; in Amy’s presence he was in a zone of protection. They unrolled their bedrolls and slept.

He awakened later with a start; something was wrong. He rolled to the side and saw that Amy’s bedroll was empty.

He did not allow himself to panic. A gibbous moon had risen as they’d slept, slicing the darkness into spaces of light and shadow, a landscape of menacingly elongated forms and pockets of blackness. The horses were obliviously chewing on a stand of weeds. Greer removed the Browning from his pack and moved cautiously into the gloom. He willed his eyes to parse shape from shape. Where had she gone? Should he call out to her? But the silence of the scene and its hidden dangers forbade it.

Then he saw her. She was standing just a few yards from their encampment, facing away. The rhythms of conversation touched his ears. Was she speaking to someone? It seemed so, and yet there was no one.

He approached her from behind. “Amy?”

No reply. She had given up her murmuring; her body was absolutely still.

“Amy, what is it?”

She turned then to face him with a look of mild surprise. “Oh. I see.”

“Who were you talking to?”

She gave no answer. She seemed to be only partially present. Was she sleepwalking?

Then: “I suppose we should go back.”

“Don’t scare me like that.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” She flicked her eyes downward at the gun. “What are you doing with that?”

“I didn’t know where you’d gone. I was worried.”

“I thought I made myself clear, Major. Put it away now.”

She walked past him, headed back to camp.

Time interminable; time without end. His existence was a nightmare from which he couldn’t awaken. Thoughts floating past like glinting dust motes, darting from wherever he looked. Every day they came. The men with their glowing, blood-red eyes. They unhooked the bloated bags and bore them away on their rattling cart and hung fresh ones on their stands. Always the bags, endlessly needful, constantly filling with their drip-drip-drip of Grey.

They were men who enjoyed their work. They told little jokes, they kept themselves amused. They enjoyed themselves at his expense, like children taunting an animal at the zoo. Here now, they cooed, extending the fragrant dropper toward his mouth, does baby need his bottle? Is baby hungry?

He tried to resist them. He clenched his muscles against the chains, he turned his face away. He mustered every ounce of will to deny them, yet always he succumbed. The hunger soared inside him like a great black bird.

—Say it for Mama. Say, I’m a baby who needs his bottle, I promise to be good. Be a good baby, Grey.

The tip of the dropper wafted enticingly under his nose, the scent of blood like a bomb exploding in his brain, a million neurons firing in an electrical storm of pure desire.

—You’ll like this one. An excellent vintage. You like the young ones, don’t you, Grey?

Tears squeezed from his eyes. Tears of longing and revulsion. The tears of his too-long life, a century of lying naked in chains. The tears of being Grey.

—Please.

—Say it. I like the young ones.

—I’m begging you. Don’t make me.

—The words, Grey. A wave of sour breath close to his ear. Let me … hear … the … words.

—Yes! Yes, I like the young ones! Please! Just a taste! Anything!

And then at last the dropper, its delicious earth-rich squirt on his tongue. He smacked his lips. He rolled the thick muscle of his tongue around the walls of his mouth. He suckled like the baby they said he was, wishing he could make the feeling last, though he never could: an involuntary bob of his throat and it was gone.

—More, more.

—Now, Grey. You know there can’t be any more. A dropper a day keeps the doctor away. Just enough to make you keep churning out the viral goodness.

—Just one taste, that’s all. I promise I won’t tell.

A dark chuckle: And supposing I did? Supposing I gave you just one more dropper? What would you do then?

—I won’t, I swear, I just want …

—I’ll tell you what you want. What you want, my friend, is to rip those chains right out of the floor. Which, I have to say, is pretty much what I’d want in your situation. That’s what I’d be thinking about. I’d want to kill the men who put me here. A pause, then the voice coming closer: Is that what you want, Grey? To kill all of us?

He did. He wanted to rip them limb from limb. He wanted their blood to flow like water; he ached to hear their final cries. He wanted this even more than death itself, though just a little. Lila, he thought, Lila, I can feel you, I know that you are near. Lila, I would save you if I could.

—See you tomorrow, Grey.

And on and on. The bags came empty and went away full, the dropper did its work. It was his blood that sustained them, the men with their glowing eyes. They fed on Grey’s blood and lived forever, as he lived forever. Grey eternal, in chains.

Sometimes he wondered where the blood they fed him came from. But not very often. It wasn’t the kind of thing he wanted to think about.

Occasionally he still heard Zero, though it wasn’t like Zero was talking to him anymore. That part of the deal seemed to have expired, long ago. The voice was muffled and far away, as if Grey were eavesdropping on a conversation taking place on the other side of a wall, and all things considered, he counted it a small mercy to be left alone with only his own thoughts for company, no Zero and his talk-talk-talk filling up his head.