Justin Cronin - The Twelve

“Eustace?”

“Major Greer.” Eustace shifted his broken face toward Alicia. “And Donadio, too.” He shook his head. “Why am I surprised?” He turned to the others and gestured for them to lower their guns. “It’s all right, everyone.”

“You know them?” Nina asked.

Eustace looked them over again, noticing Amy. “Now, you I don’t think I’ve seen before.”

“Actually,” said Amy, “that’s not precisely true.”

They had arrived on the eve of Eustace’s people making their move. Years of painstaking infiltration had reached the moment of culmination. First, the decapitation of the leadership, followed by simultaneous attacks on a range of major targets: HR stations, industrial infrastructure, the power station, the detention center, the apartment complex on the edge of downtown where most of the redeyes lived. Weapons and explosives had been cached throughout the city. Their forces were small, but once the attack was under way, they believed, their numbers would grow. The slumbering giant of seventy thousand flatlanders would awaken and rise. Once that happened, the insurrection would become an avalanche, unstoppable. The city would be theirs.

But something had gone wrong. Their operative in the Dome had been found out. They knew she’d been taken alive, but not where—in all likelihood, the basement.

“I’m afraid there’s something I must tell you,” Eustace said, and explained who this operative was.

Sara was here. It strained belief. No, it went hurtling past it. And her daughter, too. Sara’s. Hollis’s. In some deep way, the child belonged to all of them. Their purpose had magnified, but so had the situation’s complexity. They would have to get the two of them out.

Amy repeated the story she had told Nina. There could be no doubt that the virals were present somewhere in the city, or what this meant. Here was where they would begin rebuilding their legions. Eustace regarded their tale with skepticism, but then something clicked.

“Guilder will want to protect them,” Amy said. “Is there someplace in the city that’s unusually fortified? It would have to be large.”

Eustace sent a man to retrieve the blueprints of the Project. Three people died to get these, Eustace said, and he unrolled the paper over the table.

“We never knew what this place was for. Lots of stories, but never anything that really added up. The place is a fortress. The redeyes have been building it for years.”

Amy examined the blueprints, her eyes making swift calculations. “This is where we’ll find them.”

“I don’t know how you can be so certain.”

“Count the chambers.”

Eustace bent over the paper. With his index finger, he traced each corridor to its destination. Then he looked up.

Thus their cause was joined to another. The building known as the Project was now the focus. Its design played in their favor: like the cave in New Mexico, the Project’s tight quarters could amplify the explosive force of a single bomb detonated at the heart of the structure. But could they get inside? Doubtful—and even if they could, it would be like walking into a lion’s den. Their losses would be heavy, and too many men would have to be diverted from other targets.

“So we don’t go in to get them,” Amy said. “We make them come to us.”

“What do you have in mind?”

Amy thought a moment. “Tell me what kind of man Guilder is.”

Eustace shrugged. Throughout the proceedings he had taken no umbrage at their presence. It was good, he said, to be among Expeditionaries again.

“He’s a monster. Cruel, obsessive, monomaniacal in the extreme. He’s absolutely fixated on Sergio.”

“What would he do if he captured him?”

“Have the time of his life, probably. But Sergio doesn’t exist. It’s just a name.”

“But what if he did?”

Eustace rubbed a hand over his chin. “Well, the man likes a show. Probably he’d stage a public execution, make a big display.”

“Public. Meaning everybody.”

“I suppose.” Eustace’s expression shifted. “Oh. I see.”

“Where would he do that?”

“The stadium’s the only place large enough. It can hold seventy thousand easily. Which would—”

“Leave the rest of the Homeland undefended. Resources spread thin, major targets exposed.”

Eustace was nodding now. “And if he’s really interested in making a demonstration of power—”

“Exactly.”

Bewildered glances were exchanged around the table. “Somebody, please enlighten me,” said Nina.

Amy leaned forward in her chair. “Here’s what we do.”

It took another twenty-four hours to make ready. Nina returned to the city to contact the leaders of the various cells with new instructions. The insurgency’s hideout would be forfeit, of course. They rigged it with tripwire explosives—barrels of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and diesel fuel connected to sulfur igniters. Nothing would remain but an ashy hole; with luck, Guilder would presume that all inside had been killed, a mass suicide, the insurgency’s final blaze of glory.

They prepared the vehicles for departure. Alicia would drive Amy to the pipe, then rendezvous with the rest of Eustace’s men to continue to their fallback location. Now all they were waiting on was the weather—they needed snow to cover their tire tracks. It might be tomorrow; it might be a week; it might be never. An hour before sunset on the third day, a tantalizing dust of flurries began to fall. It stopped, then started up again, slowly gathering force, as if the weather had cleared its throat and spoken. Go now .

They drove out, a convoy of nine trucks carrying forty-seven men and women. Alicia peeled away and aimed her vehicle north. The snow formed a dense, whirling mass in the truck’s headlights. Beside her, Amy, wearing an attendant’s robe, was silent. Alicia had warned her what she would be facing; there was no reason to discuss it further, especially now.

Thirty minutes later they arrived at the pipe. Despite her better judgment, Alicia said, “You know what they’ll do to you.”

Amy nodded. A brief silence; then: “There’s a purpose to everything. A shape. Do you believe that?”

“I don’t know.”

Amy pulled Alicia’s hand off the wheel and took it in her own, twining their fingers together. “We’re sisters, you know. Blood sisters. I know what’s happening to you, Lish.”

Amy’s words felt like something falling inside her. And yet: of course she would know. How could Amy not know?

“Can you control it?”

Alicia swallowed with difficulty. Over the last two days, the desire had become intense. It was reaching its dark hand inside her, taking her over. Her mind was fogged with it. Soon it would overwhelm her will to resist.

“It’s getting… harder.”

“When the time comes—”

“I’m not going to let it.”

All around, the snow was falling. Alicia knew that if she didn’t leave soon, she might get stuck. One last thing needed to be said. It took all her courage to form the words.

“Take care of Peter. You can’t let him know what happened to me. Promise me that.”

“Lish—”

“You can tell him anything else. Make up a story. I don’t care. But I need your word.”

A deep quiet ensued, encasing the two of them. Alicia had been alone with this knowledge for too long; now it was shared. She searched her emotions. Loss, relief, the feeling of crossing a border into a dark country. She was giving him up.

“In a way, I’ve always known this would happen. Even before I met you. There was always somebody else.”

Amy made no reply. Her silence told Alicia all she needed to know.

“You should go,” Alicia said.