Justin Cronin - The Twelve

Grey realized they must have sedated him; he could barely move a muscle, and it wasn’t just the straps. His limbs felt like iron, his thoughts moving through his brain with a lazy aimlessness, like guppies in a tank. Guilder was holding a cup of water to his lips.

“Go on, drink.”

Grey’s stomach turned—just the smell of it was revolting, like some hideously overchlorinated pool. Thoughts came back to him, dark thoughts: the blood in the tank, and Grey’s face buried greedily in it. Had that actually happened? Had he dreamed it? But no sooner had these questions formed in his mind than a kind of roaring seemed to fill his head, a vast hunger lurching to life inside him, so overwhelming that his entire body clenched against the straps.

“Whoa now,” Guilder said, backing away suddenly. “Steady there.”

More images were coming back to him, rising through the fog. The tank in the road, the dead soldiers, and explosions all around; the feel of his hand crashing through the Volvo’s window, and the fields detonating with fire, and the car sailing through the corn, and the bright lights of the helicopter, and the space-suited men, dragging Lila away.

“Where is she? What have you done with her?”

Guilder glanced toward Nelson, who frowned. Interesting , his face seemed to say.

“You needn’t worry, Mr. Grey, we’re taking good care of her. She’s right across the hall, in fact.”

“Don’t you hurt her.” His fists were clenched; he was straining against the straps. “You touch her and I’ll—”

“And you’ll what, Mr. Grey?”

But there was nothing; the straps held firm. Whatever they had given him, it had taken his strength away.

“Try not to excite yourself, Mr. Grey. Your friend is perfectly fine. The baby, too. What we’re a little unclear on is just how the two of you came to be together. I was hoping you might help us with that.”

“Why do you want to know?”

One eyebrow lifted incredulously behind the faceplate. “For starters, it seems that the two of you are the last people to come out of Colorado alive. Believe me when I tell you, this is a matter of some interest to us. Was she at the Chalet? Is that where you met her?”

Just the word made Grey’s mind clench with panic. “The Chalet?”

“Yes, Mr. Grey. The Chalet.”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Then where?”

He swallowed. “At the Home Depot.”

For just a moment, Guilder said nothing. “Where was this?”

Grey tried to put his thoughts together, but his brain had gone all fuzzy again. “Denver someplace. I don’t know exactly. She wanted me to paint the nursery.”

Guilder quickly turned toward the second man, who shrugged. “Could be the fentanyl,” Nelson said. “It may take him a little while to sort things out.”

But Guilder was undeterred. There was something more forceful about the man’s gaze now. It seemed to bore right into him. “We need to know what happened at the Chalet. How did you get away?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Was there a girl there? Did you see her?”

There was a girl? What were they talking about?

“I didn’t see anyone. I just… I don’t know. It was all so confusing. I woke up at the Red Roof.”

“The Red Roof? What’s that?”

“A motel, on the highway.”

A puzzled frown. “When was this?”

Grey tried to count. “Three days ago? No, four.” He nodded his head against the pillow. “Four days.”

The two men looked at each other. “It doesn’t make sense,” Nelson said. “The Chalet was destroyed twenty-two days ago. He’s not Rip Van Winkle.”

“Where were you for those three weeks?” Guilder pressed.

The question made no sense. Three weeks?

“I don’t know,” Grey said.

“I’ll ask you again, Mr. Grey. Was Lila at the Chalet? Is that where you met her?”

“I told you,” he said. He was pleading now, his resistance gone. “She was at the Home Depot.”

His thoughts were swirling like water going down a drain. Whatever they’d given him, it had screwed him up good. With a thump in his gut, Grey realized what the straps were all about. They were going to study him. Like the sticks. Like Zero. And when they were done with him, Richards, or somebody like him, would put the red light on Grey, and that would be the end of him.

“Please, it’s me you want. I’m sorry I ran away. Just don’t hurt Lila.”

For a moment the two men said nothing, just stared at him from behind their faceplates. Then Guilder turned toward Nelson, nodding.

“Put him back under.”

Nelson took a syringe and a vial of clear liquid from the cart. While Grey looked on helplessly, he inserted the needle into the IV tube and pushed the plunger.

“I just clean,” Grey said feebly. “I’m just a janitor.”

“Oh, I think you’re much more than that, Mr. Grey.”

And with these words in his ears, Grey slipped away again.

Guilder and Nelson stepped through the air lock into the decontamination chamber. First a shower in their biosuits; then they stripped and scrubbed themselves head to foot with a harsh, chemical-smelling soap. They cleared their throats and spat into the sink, gargling for a minute with a strong disinfectant. A cumbersome ritual but, until they knew more about Grey’s condition, one they were wise to observe.

Just a skeletal staff was present in the building: three lab technicians—Guilder thought of them as Wynken, Blynken, and Nod—plus an MD and a four-man Blackbird security team. The building had been constructed in the late eighties to treat soldiers exposed to nuclear, biological, or chemical agents, and the systems were buggy as hell—the aboveground HVAC was on the fritz, as was video surveillance for the entire facility—and the place had a disconcertingly deserted feel to it. But it was the last place anybody would look for them.

Nelson and Guilder stepped into the lab, a wide room of desks and equipment, including the powerful microscopes and blood spinners they’d need to isolate and culture the virus. While Grey and Lila were still unconscious, they’d each had a CT scan and blood drawn; their blood tests had been inconclusive, but Grey’s scan had revealed a radically enlarged thymus, typical of those infected. And yet as far as Nelson and Guilder could discern, he’d experienced no other symptoms. In every other way he appeared to be in the pink of health. Better than that: the man looked like he could run a marathon.

“Let me show you something,” Nelson said.

He escorted Guilder to the terminal in an adjacent office where he’d set up shop. Nelson opened a file and clicked on a JPEG. A photo appeared on the screen of Lawrence Grey. Or, rather, a man who resembled Grey; the face in the photograph looked considerably older. Sagging skin, hair a thin flap over his scalp, sunken eyes that gazed into the camera with a dull, almost bovine look.

“When was this taken?” Guilder asked.

“Seventeen months ago. These are Richards’s files.”

God damn, Guilder thought. It was just like Lear had said.

“If he’s got the virus,” Nelson said, “the question is why it’s acting differently in his body. It could be a variant we haven’t seen, one that activates the thymus like the others and then goes dormant somehow. Or it could be something else, particular to him.”

Guilder frowned. “Such as?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Some sort of natural immunity seems the likely culprit, but there’s no way of really knowing. It might have something to do with the anti-androgens he was taking. All the sweeps were taking pretty big doses. Depo-Provera, spironolactone, prednisone.”

“You think the steroids did this?”