Justin Cronin - The Twelve

She was with Caleb now, among the sisters, having taken up the gray frock of the Order. Peter didn’t think Amy shared their beliefs—the sisters were a dour lot, professing a philosophical and physical chastity to reflect their conviction that these were the last days of humanity—but it was a more than adequate disguise, one Amy could easily pass off. Based on what had happened at the Colony, they’d all agreed that Amy’s true identity, and the power she carried, was nothing anybody outside the leadership should know.

Peter walked to the mess, where he passed an empty hour. His platoon, twenty-four men, had just returned from a reconnaissance sweep to Lubbock to scout up salvageables; luck had been on their side, and they’d completed their mission without incident. The biggest prize had been a junkyard of old tires. In a day or two they’d return with a truck to take as many as they could carry for transport back to the vulcanizing plant in Kerrville.

The senior officers had been in the tent for hours. What could they be talking about?

His mind drifted back to the Colony. Odd that he wouldn’t think about it for weeks or even months at a time, and then, without warning, the memories would sail into his mind. The events that had precipitated his departure now seemed as if they had happened to somebody else—not Lieutenant Peter Jaxon of the Expeditionary or even Peter Jaxon, Full Watch, but a kind of boy-man, his imagination circumscribed by the tiny patch of ground that defined his entire life. How much energy had he devoted to nurturing his own feelings of inadequacy, manifested in his petty rivalry with his brother, Theo? He thought with wistful pride of what his father, the great Demitrius Jaxon, Head of the Household, Captain of the Long Rides, would have said to him now. You’ve done well. You’ve taken the fight to them. I’m proud to call you son . Yet Peter would have given it all back for just one more hour in Theo’s company.

And whenever he looked at Caleb, it was his brother he saw.

He was joined at the table by Satch Dodd. A junior officer like Peter, Satch had been a toddler when his family had been killed in the Massacre of the Field. As far as Peter was aware, Satch never said anything about this, though the story was well known.

“Any idea what it’s all about?” Satch asked. He had a round, boyish face that made him appear completely earnest at all times.

Peter shook his head.

“Good haul up in Lubbock.”

“Just tires.”

Both their minds were elsewhere; they were simply filling time. “Tires are tires. We can’t do much without them.”

Satch’s squad would be departing in the morning to do a hundred-mile sweep toward Midland. It was bad duty: the area was a cesspool of oil, bubbling up from old wells that had never been capped.

“I’ll tell you something I heard,” Satch said. “The Civilian Authority is looking into whether or not some of those old wells can still be operated, for when the tanks go dry. We may find ourselves garrisoning down there before too long.”

Peter was startled; he’d never considered this possibility. “I thought there was enough oil in Freeport to last forever.”

“There’s forever and forever. In theory, yeah, there’s plenty of slick down there. But sooner or later everything runs out.” Satch squinted at him. “Don’t you have a friend who’s an oiler? One of your crew from California, wasn’t it?”

“Michael.”

Satch shook his head. “Walking all the way from California. That’s still the craziest story I ever heard.” He placed his palms on the table and rose. “If you hear anything from upstairs, let me know. If I had to bet, they’ll be sending all of us down to Midland to wade in the slick before too long.”

He left Peter alone. Satch’s words had done nothing to cheer him; far from it. A half dozen enlisted clomped into the mess, talking among themselves with the rough-edged, profanity-laced familiarity of men looking for chow. Peter wouldn’t have minded a little company to take his mind off his worries, but as they moved from the line in search of a table, none glanced in his direction; the tarnished silver bar on his collar and the poor spirits he was radiating were evidently enough to ward them away.

What could the senior officers be talking about?

To abandon the hunt: Peter couldn’t imagine it. For five years he had thought of little else. He’d signed on with the Expeditionary right after Roswell; a lot of men had. For every person who’d perished that night, there was a friend, or brother, or son who had taken his place. The ones motivated solely by a need for revenge tended to wash out early or get themselves killed—you had to have a better reason—and Peter had no illusions about himself. Payback was a factor. But the roots of his desire went deeper. All his life, since the days of the Long Rides, he’d longed to be part of something, a cause larger than himself. He’d felt it the moment he’d taken the oath that bound him to his fellows; his purpose, his fate, his person—all were now wedded to theirs. He’d wondered if he’d be somehow less himself, his identity subsumed into the collective, but the opposite had proved true. It was nothing he could speak of, not with Theo and the others gone, but joining the Expeditionary had made him feel alive in a way he never had before. Watching the soldiers eat—laughing and joking and shoveling beans into their mouths as if it were the last meal of their lives—he recalled those early days with envy.

Because somewhere along the way, the feeling had left him. As campaigns were waged and men died and territory was taken and lost, none of it seeming to amount to anything, it had slowly slipped away. His bond to his men remained, a force as abiding as gravity, and he would have sacrificed himself for any one of them without a flicker of hesitation, as, he believed, they would have done for him. But something was missing; he didn’t quite know what it was. He knew what Alicia would have told him. You’re just tired. This is a long slog. It happens to everyone, be patient . Not wrong, but not the whole story, either.

Finally Peter could stand it no longer. He exited the tent and marched across the compound. All he needed was some pretext for knocking; with any luck, they’d let him inside, and he could glean some sense of what they were up to.

He needn’t have bothered. As he made his approach, the door swung open: Major Henneman, the colonel’s adjutant. Trim, a bristle of blond hair, slightly crooked teeth he showed only when he smiled, which was never.

“Jaxon. I was just going to look for you. Come inside.”

Peter stepped into the shade of the tent, pausing in the doorway to let his eyes adjust. Seated around the broad table were all the senior staff—Majors Lewis and Hooper, Captains Rich, Perez, and Childs, and Colonel Apgar, the officer in charge of the task force—plus one more.

“Hi, Peter.”

Alicia.

“There are two entrances I could find, here and here.”

Alicia was directing everyone’s attention to a map spread over the table: U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, SOUTHERN NEW MEXICO. Beside it was displayed a second map, smaller and faded with age: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, CARLSBAD CAVERNS.

“The main opening to the cave is about three hundred yards wide. There’s no way we can seal it even with our largest ED, and the terrain is too rugged to haul a flusher up there anyway.”

“So what are you proposing?” Apgar asked.

“We box him in.” She pointed to the map again. “I scouted another entrance, about a quarter mile away. It’s an old elevator shaft. Martínez has to be somewhere between these two entrances. We set off a package of H2 at the base of the main entrance, inside the tunnel that leads toward the shaft. This should drive him toward the bottom of the elevator, where we position a single man to meet him on the way out.”