Justin Cronin - The Twelve

“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 unbe liev able 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, believe 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 …