Justin Cronin - The Twelve

Sara tasted water, cold water. The images around her began to coalesce. Her heart was still racing like a bird’s. Bits of pain, real and remembered, jabbed at her extremities. Her head felt like it was only vaguely related to the rest of her.

“You’re all right,” said Lila. “Don’t worry. I’m a doctor.”

Lila was a doctor?

“We need to be quick. I know it won’t be easy, but can you stand?”

Sara didn’t think she could, but Lila made her try. She swung her legs to the side of the gurney, Lila helping her by the elbow. Below the hem of Sara’s gown, white bandages encircled her upper thighs. More bandages dressed her lower arms. All of this had happened without her being aware of it.

“What did they do to me?”

“It’s the marrow they take. They start with the hips. That’s the pain you feel.”

Sara eased her feet to the floor. Only then did it occur to her that Lila’s presence was an aberration—that she was freeing her.

“Why do you have a gun, Lila?”

Gone was the frail, uncertain woman Sara had come to know. Her face radiated urgency. “Come.”

Sara saw the first body when they stepped into the hall: a man in a lab coat lying face-down on the floor, his arms and legs splayed in the random arrangement of swift death. The top of his skull had been blasted off, its contents splashed over the wall. Two more lay nearby, one shot in the chest, the other through the throat—though the second man wasn’t dead. He was sitting upright against the wall, his hands encircling his neck, his chest moving in shallow jerks. It was Dr. Verlyn. Through the hole in his neck, his rapid breathing made a clicking sound. His lips wordlessly working, he looked at Sara with pleading eyes.

Lila was tugging her by the arm. “We need to hurry.”

She didn’t have to say it again. More bodies—the splashes of blood and startled postures and expressions of surprise in unseeing eyes—flowed past. It was a massacre. Was it possible that Lila had done this? They came to the end of the hall, where the heavy steel door stood open. A col lay beside it, shot in the head.

“Get her out of the building,” Lila commanded. “It’s the last thing I’ll ask of you. Do whatever you have to.”

Sara understood that she was speaking of Kate. “Lila, what are you doing?”

“What should have been done long ago.” A look of peace had come into her face; her eyes glowed with warmth. “It will all be over soon, Dani.”

Sara hesitated. “My name’s not Dani.”

“I thought perhaps it wasn’t. Tell me.”

“It’s Sara.”

Lila nodded slowly, as if agreeing that this was the right name for her to have. She took Sara’s hand.

“You will be a good mother to her, Sara,” she said, and squeezed. “I know it. Now run.”

A hush fell over the crowd as Guilder stepped onto the field, all seventy thousand faces swiveling to look at him. He stood still a moment, drinking in the stillness as his eyes traveled the grandstands. He would make a humble entrance, like a priest’s. Time seemed to stretch as he walked to the platform. Who knew it could take so long to cross fifty yards? The silence around him seemed to deepen with every step.

He arrived at the platform. He gazed out upon the crowd, first one side of the field, then the other. His hand slipped to his waist and located the toggle.

“All rise for the singing of the anthem.”

Nothing happened. Had he hit the right button? He glanced toward Suresh, who was standing on the sidelines, making a frantic rolling motion with his hand.

“I said , please rise.”

Begrudgingly, the crowd took to its feet. “Homeland, our Homeland,” Guilder began to sing, “we pledge our lives to thee …”

Our labors do we offer, without recompense or fee. Homeland, our Homeland, a nation rises here. Safety, hope, security, from sea to shining sea …

With a sinking feeling, Guilder realized that almost nobody else was singing. He heard a few isolated voices here and there—HR personnel and, of course, the staff, manfully croaking the words from the fifty-yard line—but this only heightened the impression that the crowd, basically, was on strike.

Homeland, our Homeland, of peace and plenty fair. The light of heaven shines upon your beauty rich and rare. One mind! One soul! Your love is all we see. Let all combine with heart and hand: one Homeland, strong and free!

The song didn’t end so much as turn a corner and fall down. Not a good sign at all. The first of several beads of sweat shot from his armpit to slither unimpeded down the length of his torso. Maybe he should have found somebody who could actually sing to warm up the crowd. Still, Guilder had a few things planned to engage the people fully in the evening’s transformational festivities. He cleared his throat, glanced toward Suresh once more, received the man’s approving nod, and spoke.

“I stand before you today on the eve of a new era—”

“Murderer!”

A buzz of voices shivered through the crowd. The shout had come from behind him, somewhere in the upper decks. Guilder spun around, blindly searching the sea of faces.

“Killer!”

The voice was a woman’s. Guilder saw her standing at the railing. She waved a fist madly in the air.

“You butcher!”

“Somebody arrest that woman!” Guilder barked into his microphone, too loudly.

A general catcalling erupted. Objects went sailing through the air, lobbing onto the field. The crowd was throwing the only thing it had. The crowd was throwing its shoes.

“Monster! Assassin! Torturer!”

Guilder was frozen. None of this was what he’d expected at all.

“Demon! Tyrant! Swine!”

“Devil! Satan! Fiend!”

If he didn’t do something fast, he’d lose them completely. He gave Suresh the signal; the switch was thrown. To an orchestrated explosion of colored light and smoke, the pickup carrying the woman in its bed bounded onto the field, the semi lumbering behind it. Simultaneously, the fire teams went racing around the edges of the field, igniting barrels of ethanol-soaked wood, making a flickering perimeter of flame. As the pickup halted at the platform, the semi turned in a wide circle and began to back up. The guards dropped the gate of the pickup, yanked the woman from the bed, and flung her to the muddy ground at the base of the platform.

“Get up.”

The crowd was in an uproar—booing, whistling, hurling shoes like missiles.

“I said, get up.”

Guilder kicked her hard, in the ribs. When she made no cry he kicked her again, then hauled her to her feet and shoved his face so close to hers that the tips of their noses practically touched.

“You have no idea what you’re about to face.”

“Actually, I do. You could say we’re of a very long acquaintance.”

He didn’t know what to make of this curious claim, but he didn’t care. He signaled to the guards to take her away. The woman offered no resistance as they dragged her to the base of the armature and pressed her to her knees. There were streaks of mud on her cheeks, her tunic, in her hair. Under the blazing lights she seemed meager, almost doll-like, and yet Guilder could still discern the defiance in her eyes, an absolute refusal to be cowed. He hoped the virals would take their time, maybe bat her around a bit. The guards unlocked her shackles, then reattached her wrists to the chains that hung from the armature.

They began to winch her up.

With every foot of her ascent, the roars of the crowd intensified. In protest? Anticipation? The pure emotional thrill of watching a person ripped apart? They hated him, Guilder understood that, but they were part of this thing now; their dark energy had joined to the night’s transformative power.