Justin Cronin - The Twelve

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:

“Sound booth.”

(Check.)

“Lights.”

(Check.)

“Fire teams.”

(Check.)

And so on. Guilder, listening vaguely, shook out his robed arms like a boxer preparing to step into the ring. He had always wondered about this gesture, which seemed like empty showmanship. Now he understood the sense of it.

“Good to go when you are,” Suresh said.

So: the moment at last. What a shock the crowd was in for. Guilder slid his glasses onto his face and took a last, long breath.

“All right, everyone,” he said. “Let’s look alive. It’s game time.”

He stepped forward, into the light.

“Dani, wake up.”

The voice was familiar. The voice belonged to someone she knew. It drifted toward her from high above, saying this curious, half-remembered name.

“Dani, you have to open your eyes. I need you to try.”

Sara sensed her mind emerging, her body taking shape around her. She felt suddenly cold. Her throat was tight and dry, sweet-tasting. She was supposed to open her eyes—that’s what the voice was telling her—but her lids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds apiece.

“I’m going to give you something.”

Was the voice Lila’s? Sara felt a prick in her arm. Nothing. Then:

Oh!

She bolted upright, violently curling forward at the waist, her heart thudding against her rib cage. Air rushed to her lungs, expelled by a dry cough that screeched across the parched lining of her throat.

Lila pressed a cup to her lips, bracing the back of Sara’s head with her palm. “Drink.”