Justin Cronin - The Twelve

Still Amy said nothing. Her face was uncertain. Then:

“There’s something I haven’t told you, Lish.”

Gray day into gray day. The continent’s vast inland empire of weather. Would it snow? Would the sun ever come out again? Would the wind blow at their backs or into their frozen faces? They walked and walked, hunched forward against the weight of their packs. There were no signs, no landmarks. The roads and towns were gone, subsumed like sunken ships beneath the waves of snowy prairie. Tifty confessed that he didn’t know exactly where they were. Central Iowa, northeast of Des Moines, but anything more specific… He made no apologies; the situation was what it was. Why couldn’t you have decided to do this in summer? he said.

They were almost out of food. They’d cut their rations in half, but half of nothing would be nothing. As they huddled inside a ruined farmhouse, Lore doled out the meager slices on the blade of her knife. Peter placed his beneath his tongue to make it last, the hardened fat dissolving slowly in the warmth of his mouth.

They went on.

Then, late on the afternoon of the twenty-eighth day, a vision appeared: materializing slowly from a colorless sky, a tall sign, rocking in the wind. They made their way toward it; a cluster of buildings emerged. What town was this? It didn’t matter; the need for shelter trumped every other concern. They passed through the outer commercial ring, with its husks of supermarkets and chain stores, flat roofs long collapsed under the weight of winter snow, and continued into the old town. The usual remnants and rubble, but at the heart they came to two blocks of brick buildings that appeared sound.

“Don’t suppose we’ll find anything to eat in there,” Michael said.

They were standing before a storefront, the front windows of which were amazingly unbroken. Faded lettering on the glass read, FANCY’S CAFÉ.

Hollis said, “Looks like they’ve been out of business for a while.”

They forced the door and entered. A narrow space, with booths of cracked vinyl opposite a counter with stools; except for the dust, which caked every surface, it was remarkably undisturbed. From time to time one found such a place, a museum of the past where the passage of decades had somehow failed to register, more eerie than ruins.

Michael lifted a menu from a stack on the counter and opened it. “What’s meatloaf? I get the meat part, but a loaf of it?”

“Jesus, Michael,” Lore said. She was shivering, her lips blue. “Don’t make it worse.”

Hollis and Peter scouted the back. The rear door and windows had been sealed with plywood; a hammer and nails lay on the floor.

“We’re not going to get much farther without food,” Hollis said gravely.

“You don’t have to remind me.”

They returned to the front of the café, where the others were bundling themselves in blankets on the floor. Darkness was falling. The room was freezing, but at least they were out of the wind.

“I’m going to look around,” Peter said. “Maybe I can figure out where we are.”

He slogged his way across the street, then moved down the block, peering in the storefronts. He tried some of the doors, but all were locked. Well, they could come back in the morning and open a few to see what was there.

At the end of the second block he tried a handle without looking—he was just going through the motions now—and was startled when the door swung open. Stepping inside, he holstered his pistol and removed a match from the box in the breast pocket of his parka and struck the tip, cupping the flame against the breeze coming from the open door.

Well, son of a bitch .

Peter knew a supply cache when he saw one. Burlap bags were stacked against the walls of the otherwise bare room. He knelt and opened the nearest bag with a flick of his blade: dried beans. In another he found potatoes, in a third apples. He lit another match and raised it over the floor; there were footprints all around in the dust. Who had left this here? What did it mean?

Their situation was dire, but at least they wouldn’t starve. Better to think about what to do next on a full stomach. He sank his teeth into an apple. It was flavorless, hard as a chunk of ice. He polished it off in a frenzy, jammed more into his pockets, and scanned the room for something he could use to carry food back to the others. In the corner he found a bucket full of copper wire. He dumped the wire on the floor, filled the bucket with apples and potatoes, and returned to the street.

He was instantly aware of something odd. The night seemed brighter. The moon? But there was no moon. A prickle of alarm danced over his skin, then he heard the sound. He turned his face away from the wind, listening hard. A distant rumbling. The sound was coming closer, becoming more distinct by the second.

Engines.

He dropped the pail and raced up the block toward the café. A line of vehicles was roaring toward him. He heard voices yelling, then a series of pops. Jets of snow flew up around him.

Somebody was shooting at him.

He tore through the door of the café just as a phalanx of guns opened fire, exploding the windows. Get down! he yelled, Get down! , but everybody already had. He dove over the counter, landing on top of Lore, who was holding her hands over her head. The blaze of the vehicles’ headlights filled the room. Things were splintering, crashing, round after round being pumped into the tiny room.

“Michael! Where are you?”

His voice came from under one of the banquettes: “Who are they? What do they want?”

The question was rhetorical: whoever they were, they wanted to kill them.

“Tifty? Hollis?”

Michael again: “They’re with me! Tifty’s cut, but he’s okay!”

“I’ve got Lore!”

A pause in the shooting; then they opened fire again.

“Can anybody see anything?”

“Three vehicles straight outside,” Hollis called. “More down the street!”

“Maybe we should surrender!” Michael yelled.

“I don’t think these are the sort of people you surrender to!”

The room was being pummeled. Peter had only his pistol; he’d left his rifle by the door. They’d never make it to the back, and the doors and windows were boarded up, anyway. The café was a death trap.

“What do you want to do?” Hollis called.

“Can Tifty move on his own?”

“I’m okay!”

Flattened to the floor, Peter swiveled his face to Lore. “What do you have?”

She showed him her knife. “Just this.”

He aimed his voice over the counter: “We go on three! Somebody toss us a gun!”

It arrived from Michael’s direction, dropping on top of them. Lore took it and racked the slide. The guns outside had fallen silent again. Nobody out there was in any hurry.

“Shooting our way out of here isn’t much of a plan,” Lore said.

“I’d be happy to hear a better one.”

Peter was rising to his knees when Lore stopped him with a hand. “Listen,” she whispered.

He heard footsteps crunching snow, followed by a tinkle of glass underfoot. He raised a finger to his lips. How many were there? Two? A hostage, he thought suddenly. It was their only chance. There was no way to communicate with the others; he’d have to go on his own. He pointed to Lore, gesturing toward the far end of the counter, away from the door. He mouthed: Make a noise .

Lore slithered along the floor. Peter holstered his pistol and compressed his body to a crouch. When Lore was in position she looked at him, her face set, and nodded.

“Help me,” she moaned.

Peter leapt to the top of the bar. As the nearest man turned, Peter drew his pistol and fired at the backlit shape and sailed down upon the second man, sending the two of them crashing to the floor. Peter’s pistol clattered away. A moment of mad scrambling, arms and legs tangling; the man had a good thirty pounds on him, but surprise was on Peter’s side. A semi was strapped to the man’s thigh. Locking a forearm around his adversary’s neck, Peter pulled him into a backward embrace, yanked the gun free of its holster, and shoved the muzzle into the curve of his jaw beneath his flowing silver hair.