Justin Cronin - The Twelve

Two people had already been billeted in their tent, an older couple, Fred and Lucy Wilkes. They were from California but had family in Iowa and had been visiting for a wedding when the epidemic hit. They’d been in the camp six days.

“Any word on the buses?” Kittridge asked. Joe Robinson had gone off to find out about rations, Wood and Delores to see about water. April had let her brother run off with some children from the adjacent tent, warning him not to wander far. Danny had accompanied him. “What are people saying?”

“Always it’s tomorrow.” Fred Wilkes was a trim man of at least seventy, with bright blue eyes; in the heat he’d removed his shirt, displaying a fan of downy white chest hair. He and his wife, as generously proportioned as he was undersized—Jack Sprat and the missus—were playing gin rummy, sitting across from each other on a pair of cots and using a cardboard box as a table. “If it doesn’t happen soon, people are going to lose patience. And what then?”

Kittridge stepped back outside. They were surrounded by soldiers, safe for the time being. Yet the whole thing felt stopped, everyone waiting for something to happen. Infantrymen were stationed along the fence line at one hundred meter intervals. All of them were wearing surgical masks. The only way in or out seemed to be the front gate. Abutting the camp to the north he saw a low-slung, windowless building without visible markings or signage, its entrance flanked by concrete barricades. While Kittridge watched, a pair of sleek black heliocpters approached from the east, turned in a wide circle, and touched down on the rooftop. Four figures emerged from the first helicopter, men in dark glasses and baseball caps and Kevlar vests, carrying automatic rifles. Not military, Kittridge thought. Blackbird, maybe, or Riverstone. One of those outfits. The four men proceeded to take up positions at the corners of the roof.

The doors of the second helicopter opened. Kittridge placed a hand to his brow to get a better look. For a moment, nothing happened; then a figure emerged, wearing an orange biosuit. Five more followed. The rotors of the helicopters were still turning. A brief negotiation ensued, then the biosuited figures removed a pair of long steel boxes from the helicopter’s cargo section, each the approximate dimensions of a coffin, with wheeled frames that dropped from their undercarriages. They guided the two boxes to a small, hutlike structure on the roof—a service elevator, Kittridge guessed. A few minutes passed; the six reappeared and boarded the second helicopter. First one and then the other lifted off, thudding away.

April came up behind him. “I noticed that, too,” she said. “Any idea what it is?”

“Maybe nothing.” Kittridge dropped his hand. “Where’s Tim?”

“Already making friends. He’s off playing soccer with some kids.”

They watched the helicopters fade from sight. Whatever it was, Kittridge thought, it wasn’t nothing.

“You think we’ll be okay here?” April asked.

“Why wouldn’t we be?”

“I don’t know.” Though her face said she did; she was thinking the same thing he was. “Last night, in the lab… What I mean is, I can be like that sometimes. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“I wouldn’t have told you if I didn’t want to.”

She was somehow looking both toward him and away. At such moments she had a way of seeming older than she was. Not seeming, Kittridge thought: being.

“Are you really eighteen?”

She seemed amused. “Why? Don’t I look it?”

Kittridge shrugged to hide his embarrassment; the question had just popped out. “No. I mean yes, you do. I was just… I don’t know.”

April was plainly enjoying herself. “A girl’s not supposed to tell. But to put your mind at ease, yes, I’m eighteen. Eighteen years, two months, and seventeen days. Not that I’m, you know, counting.”

Their eyes met and held in the way they seemed to want to. What was it about this girl, Kittridge wondered, this April?

“I still owe you for the gun,” she said, “even if they took it. I think it might be the nicest present anybody ever gave me, actually.”

“I liked the poem. Call it even. What was that guy’s name again?”

“T. S. Eliot.”

“He got any other stuff?”

“Not much that makes sense. You ask me, he was kind of a one-hit wonder.”

They had no weapons, no way to get a message to the outside world. Not for the first time, Kittridge wondered if they shouldn’t have just kept driving.

“Well, when we get out of here, I’ll have to check him out.”

Grey .

Whiteness, and the sensation of floating. Grey became aware that he was in a car. This was strange, because the car was also a motel room, with beds and dressers and a television; when had they started making cars like this? He was sitting on the foot of one of the beds, driving the room—the steering column came up at an angle from the floor; the television was the windshield—and seated on the adjacent bed was Lila, clutching a pink bundle to her chest. “Are we there yet, Lawrence?” Lila asked him. “The baby needs changing.” The baby? thought Grey. When had that happened? Wasn’t she months away? “She’s so beautiful,” said Lila, softly cooing. “We have such a beautiful baby. It’s too bad we have to shoot her.” “Why do we have to shoot her?” Grey asked. “Don’t be silly,” said Lila. “We shoot all the babies now. That way they won’t be eaten.”

Lawrence Grey .

The dream changed—one part of him knew he was dreaming, while another part did not—and Grey was in the tank now. Something was coming to get him, but he couldn’t make himself move. He was on his hands and knees, slurping the blood. His job was to drink it, drink it all, which was impossible: the blood had begun to gush through the hatch, filling the compartment. An ocean of blood. The blood was rising above his chin, his mouth and nose were filling, he was choking, drowning—

Lawrence Grey. Wake up .

He opened his eyes to a harsh light. Something felt caught in his throat; he began to cough. Something about drowning? But the dream was already breaking apart, its images atomizing, leaving only a residue of fear.

Where was he?

Some kind of hospital. He was wearing a gown, but that was all; he felt the chill of nakedness beneath it. Thick straps bound his wrists and ankles to the rails of the bed, holding him in place like a mummy in a sarcophagus. Wires snaked from beneath his gown to a cart of medical equipment; an IV was threaded into his right arm.

Somebody was in the room.

Two somebodies in fact, the pair hovering at the foot of the bed in their bulky biosuits, their faces shielded by plastic masks. Behind them was a heavy steel door and, positioned high on the wall in the corner, watching the scene with its unblinking gaze, a security camera.

“Mr. Grey, I’m Horace Guilder,” the one on the left said. His tone of voice struck Grey as oddly cheerful. “This is my colleague Dr. Nelson. How are you feeling?”

Grey did his best to focus on their faces. The one who’d spoken looked anonymously middle-aged, with a heavy, square-jawed head and pasty skin; the second man was considerably younger, with tight dark eyes and a scraggly little Vandyke. He didn’t look like any doctor Grey had ever met.

He licked his lips and swallowed. “What is this place? Why am I tied up?”

Guilder answered with a calming tone. “That’s for your own protection, Mr. Grey. Until we figure out what’s wrong with you. As for where you are,” he said, “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that just yet. Suffice it to say that you’re among friends here.”