Justin Cronin - The Twelve

“Nobody seems to know anything,” Wilkes said with a toss of his hand. He’d taken a seat on the far side of the desk while Guilder read. “Apart from the sister, it’s like they barely knew her. We can take it up a notch, but I don’t think it’s going to produce much in the way of useful intelligence. These people would have caved already.”

Guilder placed the file aside, among the many others. The burps, which continued unabated, had painted the walls of his mouth with a foul taste of animal decay, not unlike the stench of the decomposing Mrs. Wilkes. A fact that, if the barely concealed look of olfactory distaste on his chief of staff’s smoothly youthful face gave any indication, had not failed to escape the man’s attention.

“No need,” Guilder said.

Wilkes frowned doubtfully. “You want us to release them? I don’t think that’s wise. At least let’s make them cool their heels a couple more days. Rattle a few chains, see where it takes us.”

“You said yourself that if they knew anything, they would have already talked.”

Guilder paused, aware that he was about to cross a line. The thirteen flatlanders sitting in the detention center were, after all, people, human beings, probably not guilty of anything. More to the point, they were tangible physical assets in an economy of scarcity. But given the frustrating intractability of the Sergio situation, and the debacle in Texas, and the time-sensitive nature of Guilder’s grand designs, which were at long last coming to complex fruition; and in the grip of his own rapidly burgeoning physical need, a titanic biological imperative that, as he regarded Wilkes from across the burnished prairie of his oversized desk, was blossoming inside him like a flower in a time-lapse video, he didn’t think for too long. He came to the line, gave it one quick look, and stepped over.

“It seems to me,” said Director Horace Guilder, “the time has come to sell this thing.”

Guilder waited a few minutes after Wilkes was gone to stage his departure. As he had reminded himself many times, a great deal of his authority boiled down to a sense of dignity in his public movements, and it was better for people not to witness him in such an agitated state. He took the ring of keys from his desk and stepped out. Strange, how the hunger had come on so quickly. Usually it crept up on him over a period of days, not minutes. From the base of the cupola, a winding flight of stairs descended to the ground floor, its downward passage flanked by oil portraits of various dukes and generals and barons and princes of the realm, a parade of disapproving, heavy-jawed faces in period costume. (At least he hadn’t resorted to having his picture painted—though, come to think of it, why not?) He peered over the rail. Fifty feet below were the tiny figures of the uniformed security detail; members of the leadership, in their dark suits and ties, scuttling briskly to and fro with their officious briefcases and clipboards; even a couple of attendants, flowing diaphanously across the polished stone floor in their nunnish costumes, like a pair of paper boats. It was Wilkes he was looking for, and there he was: by the massive front door with its inlaid carvings of assorted prairie kitsch (a fist gripping wheat, a plow merrily tilling the bountiful Iowa topsoil), his loyal chief of staff had paused to confer with two of the leadership, Ministers Hoppel and Chee. Guilder supposed that Wilkes was already setting the day’s orders in motion, bringing them up to speed, but this assumption was belied when Hoppel reared back his head, clapped his hands together, and barked a laugh that ricocheted through the marbled space like a bullet in a submarine. Guilder wondered what the fuck was so funny.

He turned from the rail and made his way to the second, more conventional, and highly unobservable stairway that was his alone to use. By now his insides were roaring. It was all he could do not to take the stairs three at a time, which in his present condition would have probably resulted in some bone-breaking pratfall that would heal within hours but still hurt like hell. Bearing himself like a crystal chalice that might at any moment spill its contents to the floor, Guilder descended one cautious step at a time. The salivation had started, a veritable waterfall he had to suck back between his teeth. Vampire bibs, he thought wryly; now, that would be a moneymaker.

The basement at last, with its heavy, vaultlike door. Guilder withdrew the keys from the pocket of his suit coat. Hands trembling with anticipation, he keyed the door, turned the heavy wheel, and shouldered it aside.

By the time he was halfway down the hall he’d stripped to the waist and was kicking off his shoes. He was riding this thing full-bore now, a surfer skimming down a wave. Door after door sailed past. Guilder could hear the muffled cries of the damned coming from within, a sound that had long since ceased to arouse even a grain of pity within him, if it ever had. He blasted past the warning signs—ETHER PRESENT, NO OPEN FLAME—hit the freezer room at a dead sprint, turned the final corner, and narrowly avoided collision with a lab-coated technician. “Director Guilder!” he gasped. “We didn’t know …!” But these words were cut short as Guilder, with more violence than was called for, applied the full swinging weight of his left forearm to the side of the man’s head, sending him crashing into the wall.

It was blood he wanted, and not just any blood. There was blood and there was blood .

He came to the final door, skidding to a halt. With fumbling hands he undid his trousers and tossed them away, then keyed the door and opened it.

“Hello, Lawrence.”

In the morning, Jackie was gone.

Sara awoke to find the woman’s cot empty. Lit with panic, she tore through the lodge, cursing herself for sleeping so deeply. The old woman who bunked in the second row? Had anyone seen her? But no one had, or so they said. At morning roll, Sara detected only the smallest hitch of silence in the space where Jackie’s number should have been. Everyone was looking down. Just like that, the waters had closed over her friend. It was as if she’d never existed at all.

She moved through the day in a fog, her mind teetering on the razor-thin edge between desperate hope and outright despair. Probably there was nothing to be done. People disappeared; that was the way of things. And yet Sara could not talk herself out of the idea that if the woman was still in the hospital, if she hadn’t been taken to the feedlot yet, there might be a chance. But how could Jackie have been taken right from under Sara’s nose like that? Wouldn’t she have heard something? Wouldn’t the woman have protested? It simply didn’t add up.

That was when Sara figured it out. She hadn’t heard anything, because there had been nothing to hear. Not like this. Not for me . Jackie had left the lodge of her own accord.

She’d done it to protect Sara.

By midafternoon she knew she had to do something. Her guilt was excruciating. She never should have tried to get Jackie out of the plant, never confronted Sod the way she had. She’d all but painted a target on the woman’s back. The minutes were ticking away. The virals in the feedlot ate just after dusk; Sara had seen the trucks. Livestock carriers crammed with lowing cows, but also the windowless vans that were used to move prisoners from the detention center. One was always parked at the rear of the hospital, its meaning plain to anyone who cared to consider it.

The cols supervising the grinding teams were Vale and Whistler. Vale she thought she could have worked with, but with Whistler watching, Sara didn’t see how. There was only one solution she could think of. She topped off her bushel basket, lifted it from the ground, took three steps toward the grinder, and stopped.