Justin Cronin - The Twelve

Michael announced that he had a surprise to show Peter. They walked to the armory, where Michael retrieved a shotgun, then to the motor pool for a pickup. Michael clipped the shotgun into a stand on the floor of the cab and told Peter to get in.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

They drove out of the compound, then turned south on a cracked blacktop that ran parallel with the water. A salty wind gusted through the truck’s open windows, taking the edge off the heat. Peter had seen the Gulf only a couple of times; its ancient span, too huge to hold in his mind, unfailingly took his breath away. Most entrancing were the waves, long tubes gathering size and momentum as they approached, falling in a curl of brown foam at the water’s edge. He couldn’t take his eyes off them. Peter knew he could sit on the sand for hours, just watching the waves.

Stretches of the beach were swept clean, while others still bore the evidence of catastrophe on a grand scale: mountains of rusting metal twisted into incomprehensible shapes; beached ships of every size, their hulls bleached and pitted or else stripped to the struts, tilted on the sand like exposed rib cages; ridges of undifferentiated debris, pushed inshore on the tide.

“You’d be surprised how much stuff still washes in,” Michael said, gesturing out the window. “A lot of it comes down the Mississippi, then curves along the coast. The heavy stuff’s mostly gone, but anything plastic seems to last.”

Michael had veered off the road and was now driving close to the water’s edge. Peter stared out the window. “Do you ever see anything bigger?”

“Once in a while. Last year, a barge still loaded with big containers washed in. The damn thing had been drifting for a century. We were all pretty excited.”

“What was in them?”

“Human skeletons.”

They came to an inlet and turned west, following the edge of a tranquil bay. Ahead was a small concrete structure perched on the water’s edge. As Michael brought the truck to a halt, Peter saw that the building was just a shell, although a sign in the window still read, in faded letters, “Art’s Crab Shack.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Peter said. “What’s the surprise?”

His friend smiled mischievously. “Leave that smoke poker here,” he said, gesturing to the Browning strapped to Peter’s thigh. “You’re not going to need it.”

Wondering what his friend had in mind, Peter deposited the gun in the glove compartment, then followed Michael to the rear of the building. A small dock on concrete piers, perhaps thirty feet long, jutted out over the water.

“What am I seeing?”

“A boat, obviously.”

A small sailboat was tied up at the end of the pier, gently bobbing in the swells.

“Where did you get it?”

Michael’s face shone with pride. “A lot of places, actually. The hull we found in a garage about ten miles inland. The rest we cobbled together or made ourselves.”

“We?”

“Lore and me.” He cleared his throat, his face suddenly flustered. “I guess it’s pretty obvious—”

“You don’t owe me an explanation, Michael.”

“I’m just saying it’s not quite what it looks like. Well, maybe it is. But I wouldn’t say we’re together, exactly. Lore’s just… well, she’s just like that.”

Peter found himself taking perverse pleasure in his friend’s embarrassment. “She seems nice enough. And she obviously likes you .”

“Yeah, well.” Michael shrugged. “ ‘Nice’ wouldn’t necessarily be the first word I’d choose, if you know what I mean. To tell you the truth, I can barely keep up with her.”

As Michael stepped aboard, Peter suddenly became aware how meager the boat looked.

“What’s the problem?” Michael asked.

“We’re actually going to sail that thing?”

Michael had started busily coiling lines and setting them in the bottom of the hull. “Why’d you think I brought you out here? Quit your worrying and get in.”

Peter cautiously lowered himself into the cockpit. The hull moved strangely under him, responding to his weight with a sluggish shift. He gripped the rail, willing the boat to stay still. “And you actually know how to do this.”

His friend laughed under his breath. “Don’t be such a baby. Help me raise the sail.”

Michael quickly ran through the basics: sail, rudder, tiller, mainsheet. He cast off the line, scrambled aft to the tiller, did something to make the sail abruptly fill with air, and suddenly they were off and running, streaming away from the dock with astonishing speed.

“So what do you think?”

Peter nervously eyed the receding shoreline. “I’m getting used to it.”

“Here’s a thought,” Michael offered. “For the first time in your life, you’re in a place where a viral can’t kill you.”

“I hadn’t considered that.”

“For the next couple of hours, you, my friend, are out of a job.”

They tacked across the bay. As they moved into deeper water, the color changed from a mossy green to a rich blue-black, the sunlight ricocheting off the irregularities of its surface. Under the tightness of the sail, the boat possessed a more solid feel, and Peter began to relax, though not completely. Michael seemed to know what he was doing, but the ocean was still the ocean.

“How far out have you taken this thing?”

Michael looked ahead, squinting into the light. “Hard to say. Five miles anyway.”

“What about the barrier?”

It was generally held that in the early days of the epidemic, the nations of the world had banded together to enforce a quarantine of the North American continent, laying mines all along the coastlines and bombing any vessels that attempted to leave shore.

“If it’s out there, I haven’t found it yet.” Michael shrugged. “Part of me thinks it’s all bullshit, you want to know the truth.”

Peter eyed his friend cautiously. “You’re not looking for it, are you?”

Michael didn’t answer, his face telling Peter that he had hit the mark.

“That’s insane.”

“So is doing what you do. And even if the barrier exists, how many mines could still be floating around out there? A hundred years in the ocean would eat just about anything. And all the debris would have set them off by now, anyway.”

“It’s still reckless. You could blow yourself to bits.”

“Maybe. And maybe tomorrow one of those cooking towers will launch me into outer space. The standards for personal safety around these parts are pretty low.” He shrugged. “But that’s beside the point. I don’t think the damn thing was ever there to begin with. The whole coast? If you include Mexico and Canada, that’s almost two hundred and fifty thousand miles. Impossible.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“Then someday I may, as you say, blow myself to bits.”

Peter let the matter drop. A lot had changed, but Michael was still Michael, a man of insatiable curiosity. They were moving through the inlet into open water; the breeze had picked up, casting jeweled waves over the bow. Something in his stomach dropped. It wasn’t just the lurching of the boat. So much water, everywhere.

“Maybe just this once you could keep us close to land.”

Michael adjusted the sail, stiffening his grip on the tiller. “I’m telling you, it’s a whole other deal out there, Peter. I can’t even explain it. It’s like all the bad stuff just drops away. You really should see it for yourself.”

“I should be getting back. Let’s save it for another time.”

Michael glanced at him and laughed. “Sure,” he said. “Another time.”