Justin Cronin - The Twelve

“And what would Coffee want with a bunch of traders? You tell me that.”

“How should I know? Maybe he buys lick for his men.” A new idea came into Tifty’s face. He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Or guns.”

Cruk gave a sarcastic laugh. “Listen to this kid.”

“Joke all you want, I’ve seen them. I’m talking real Army weapons, from before. M16s, automatic pistols, even grenade launchers.”

“Whoa,” Boz said.

“Where would Cousin get guns like that?” Vorhees asked.

Tifty eased up on his knees to look around, as if making sure no one could hear them. “I’m not sure I should be telling you this,” he continued. “There’s a bunker, an old Army base near San Antone. Cousin runs patrols up there.”

“I can’t listen to this another second,” said Cruk. “You didn’t see Coffee or anybody else.”

“You saying you don’t believe he exists?”

The idea was sacrilege. “I’m not saying that. You just didn’t see him is all.”

“What about you, Vor?”

Vorhees felt caught. Half of what Tifty said was pure bullshit—maybe more than half. On the other hand, the urge to believe was strong.

“I don’t know,” he managed. “I guess… I don’t know.”

“Well I believe him,” Dee proclaimed.

Tifty’s eyes widened. “See?”

Cruk waved this away. “She’s a girl. She’ll believe anything.”

“Hey!”

“Well, it’s true.”

Tifty leveled his eyes at the older boy. “What if I said you could see Coffee for yourself?”

“Just how would I do that?”

“Easy. We can go through one of the spillway tubes. I’ve been down there lots of times. This time of year, they don’t release until dawn. The vents go right to the base of the dam—we should be able to see the camp from there.”

The challenge had been laid down; there was no way to say no.

“There’s no goddamn camp, Tifty.”

It took them three days to work up the nerve, and even then Cruk forbade his sister from coming. The plan was to sneak out after their parents were asleep and rendezvous at the shelter; Tifty had plotted a route to the dam that would keep them out of site of the DS patrols.

It was after midnight by the time Tifty arrived. The others were already waiting. He appeared at the end of the alleyway and made his way toward them quickly, the hood of his jacket drawn up over his head, hands stuffed in his pockets. As he ducked into the shelter, he withdrew a plastic bottle.

“Liquid courage.” He unscrewed the cap and passed it to Vorhees.

It was lick. Vorhees and Boz’s parents, prayerful people who went to church at the sisters’ every Sunday, wouldn’t have it in the house. Vorhees held the open bottle under his nose. A clear liquid with a harsh chemical odor, like lye soap.

“Give it here,” Cruk commanded. He snatched the bottle and sipped, then handed it back to Vorhees.

“You ain’t never drunk lick before?” Tifty asked Vorhees.

Vorhees did his best to look offended. “Sure I have. Lots of times.”

“When did you ever drink lick?” Boz scoffed.

“There’s plenty you don’t know, brother.” Wishing he could hold his nose, Vorhees took a cautious sip, swallowing fast to avoid the taste. A blast of stinging heat filled his sinuses; a river of fire tumbled down his throat. God, it was awful! He finished with a wheezing cough, tears swarming his eyes, everybody laughing.

Boz drank next. To Vorhees’s embarrassment, his little brother managed to take a respectable sip without much more than a wince. Three more times the bottle traveled around the circle. By the fourth pass, even Vorhees had gotten the hang of it and managed a solid swallow without coughing. He wondered why he wasn’t feeling anything, but the moment he stood he realized he was; the ground lurched beneath his feet, and he had to put out a hand to steady himself.

“Let’s go,” Tifty said.

By the time they reached the dam, they were all giggling like maniacs. The passage of minutes had altered somehow; it seemed as if they had spent a long time getting there, and no time at all. Vorhees had a fragmented memory of hiding from a DS patrol under a truck but couldn’t remember the exact circumstances, nor how they had avoided capture. He knew he was drunk, but this fact was nothing his mind could focus on. They paused in the shadows while somebody—Boz, Vorhees realized, who was the drunkest of them all—vomited into a stand of weeds. And Dee, what was she doing here? Had she followed them? Cruk was barking at her to go home, but Dee was Dee: once she’d fixed her mind to something, you might just as well try to pull a bone from a dog’s mouth. The fact was, Vorhees loved Dee. He always had. It was suddenly overwhelming, this love, like an expanding balloon of emotion inside his chest, and he was working up the nerve to confess his feelings when Tifty stepped toward them from wherever he’d gone and told them to follow.

He led them to a small concrete building with a flight of metal stairs descending belowground. At the bottom was a maintenance shaft, dank and gloomy, the walls dripping with moisture. They were inside the dam, somewhere above the spillway vents. Bulbs in metal cages cast elongated shadows on the walls. A building rush of adrenaline had started to bring Vorhees’s senses back into focus. They came to a hatch in the wall, sealed with a rusted metal ring. Cruk and Tifty positioned themselves on opposite sides and heaved with all their might, but the wheel wouldn’t budge.

“We need a lever,” said Tifty.

He disappeared down the tunnel and returned with a length of pipe. He threaded it through the spokes of the ring and leaned in. With a squeal, the wheel began to turn; the door swung open.

Inside was a vertical shaft and a ladder leading down. Tifty produced a cap flare, scraped the striker, and dropped it into the hole. Tifty descended first, then Vor, Dee, and Boz, with Cruk bringing up the rear.

They found themselves in a wide tube. A spillway vent, one of six. Through these vents, water was released from the impoundment once a day and funneled down the spillway to the fields. Behind them lay a million gallons of water held in place by the dam. The air was cold and smelled of stone. A trickle of water ran the length of the floor toward the outlet, a pale disk of moonlit sky. They crept toward it, away from the light of Tifty’s flare. Vorhees’s heart was thudding in his chest. The world of night, outside the walls: it was beyond imagining. Ten feet from the outlet, Tifty dropped to a crouch; the others followed suit. Bars of heavy steel guarded the opening.

“I’ll go first,” Tifty whispered.

He moved on his hands and knees toward the end of the tunnel. Everyone else held absolutely still. In Vorhees’s drunken mind, seeing Coffee’s camp had become an ancillary purpose; the evening was a pure test of courage, its object irrelevant. The bars were sturdy enough to keep out a viral, but that wasn’t the danger; Vorhees half-expected a clawed hand to reach through and grab their friend and tear him to pieces. Through the lingering haze of the lick, the thought came to him that Dee must be afraid too, and that he might offer her some reassurance, but he couldn’t think of what to say, and the idea died in his mind.

At the tunnel’s mouth, Tifty eased up onto his knees, gripping the bars, and peered out.

“What do you see?” Cruk whispered.

A pause. Then, from their friend, two words: “Holy… shit.”

The tone hit Vorhees as wrong. Not an exclamation of discovery but of sudden fear.

“What is it?” Cruk whispered, more harshly. “Is Coffee there?”

“I want to look!” Boz cried out.