The Twelve

55

Lila’s dressing table detonated with a splintering crash. Guilder hauled her to her feet again and slapped her across the face with the back of his hand, sending her flying back, toward the sofa.

“How could you let this happen?” His face boiled with rage. “Why didn’t you call the virals back? Tell me!”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!”

From the collar of her bathrobe this time: with terrifying effortlessness, Guilder hurled her, face-first, into the bookshelf. A thud of impact, things falling, Lila screaming. Sara was huddled on the floor, her body curled around Kate, the little girl wilted with fear.

“Every last viral! Nine of my men, dead! Do you know how this makes me look?”

“It wasn’t my fault! I don’t remember! David, please!”

“There is no David!”

Sara clenched her eyes tight. Kate was whimpering softly in her arms. What would happen if Guilder killed Lila? What would become of the two of them then?

“Stop it! David, I’m begging you!”

Lila was lying face-up on the floor, Guilder straddling her, one hand holding her by her collar. The other was balled into a fist, pulled back, ready to strike. Lila’s arms lay across her eyes like a shield, though this effort would come to nothing; Guilder’s fist would crush her face like a battering ram.

“You… disgust me.”

He loosened his hold and stepped away, wiping his hands on his shirt. Lila was sobbing uncontrollably. Blood bulged from a cut along her cheekbone. More was in her hair. Guilder flicked his eyes toward Sara, dismissing her with a glance. You’re nothing, his eyes said. You’re a character in a game of pretend that’s gone on far too long.

Then he stormed from the room.

Sara went to where Lila was whimpering on the floor. She knelt beside her, reaching for her face to examine the cut. In an unexpected burst of energy, Lila shoved Sara’s hand away and scampered backward.

“Don’t touch it!”

“But you’re hurt—”

The woman’s eyes were wild with panic. As Sara moved toward her, she waved her hands in front of her face.

“Get away! Don’t touch my blood!”

She leapt to her feet and ran to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

6:02 A.M.

The vehicles made their way into the flatland in the predawn darkness, gates flying open as they passed. At the head of the line, like the point of an arrow, was the sleek black SUV of the Director, followed by a pair of open trucks, full of uniformed men. Into the maze of lodges they roared, hurling clots of dirty snow from their mudchoked tires, their passage observed by the workers filing from the buildings to assemble for morning roll—weary faces, weary eyes, dully noting the vehicles sailing past. But their glances were brief; they knew better than to look. Something official; it has nothing to do with me. At least, it better not.

Guilder watched the flatlanders from the passenger window, full of contempt. How he loathed them. Not just the insurgents, the ones who defied him—all of them. They plodded through their lives like brute animals, never seeing beyond the next square of earth to be plowed. Another day in the dairy barns, the fields, the biodiesel plant. Another day in the kitchen, the laundry, the pigsties.

But today wasn’t just another day.

The vehicles halted before Lodge 16. The eastern sky had softened to a yellowish gray, like old plastic.

“This is the one?” Guilder asked Wilkes.

Beside him, the man gave a tight-lipped nod.

The cols disembarked and took up positions. Guilder and Wilkes stepped clear of the car. Before them, in fifteen evenly spaced lines, three hundred flatlanders stood shivering in the cold. Two more trucks pulled in and parked at the head of the square. Their cargo bays were draped by heavy canvas.

“What are those for?” Wilkes asked.

“A little extra… persuasion.”

Guilder strode up to the senior HR officer and snatched the megaphone from his hand. A howl of feedback; then his voice boomed over the square.

“Who can tell me about Sergio?”

No reply.

“This is your only warning. Who can tell me about Sergio?”

Again, nothing.

Guilder gave his attention to a woman in the first row. Neither young nor old, she had a face so plain it could have been made of paste. She was clutching a filthy scarf around her head with hands covered by fingerless gloves black with soot.

“You. What’s your name?”

Eyes cast down, she muttered something into the folds of her scarf.

“I can’t hear you. Speak up.”

She cleared her throat, stifling a cough. Her voice was a phlegmy rasp. “Priscilla.”

“Where do you work?”

“The looms, sir.”

“Do you have a family? Children?”

She nodded weakly.

“So? What do you have?”

Her knees were trembling. “A daughter and two sons.”

“A husband?”

“Dead, sir. Last winter.”

“My condolences. Come forward.”

“I sang the hymn yesterday. It was the others, I swear.”

“And I believe you, Priscilla. Nevertheless. Gentlemen, can you assist her, please?”

A pair of cols trotted forward and grabbed the woman by her arms. Her body went slack, as if she were on the verge of fainting. They half-carried, half-dragged her to the front, where they shoved her onto her knees. She made no sound; her submission was total.

“Who are your children? Point them out.”

“Please.” She was weeping pitifully. “Don’t make me.”

One of the cols lifted his baton over her head. “This man is going to bash your brains out,” Guilder said.

She shook her bowed head.

“Very well,” Guilder said.

Down went the baton; the woman toppled forward into the mud. From the left came a sharp cry.

“Get her.”

A young teenager, with her mother’s face. Onto her knees she went. She was crying, trembling; snot was running from her nose. Guilder raised the megaphone.

“Does anybody have anything to say?”

Silence. Guilder drew a pistol from beneath his coat and racked the slide. “Minister Wilkes,” he said, holding out the gun, “will you please do the honors?”

“Jesus, Horace.” His face was aghast. “What are you trying to prove?”

“Is this going to be a problem?”

“We have people for this kind of thing. That wasn’t part of the deal.”

“What deal? There is no deal. The deal is what I say it is.” Wilkes stiffened. “I won’t do it.”

“You won’t or you can’t?”

“What difference does it make?”

Guilder frowned. “Not very much, now that I think about it.” And with these words, he stepped behind the girl, pushed the muzzle of the gun to the back of her head, and fired.

“Good Christ!”

“You know what the biggest problem with never growing old is?” Guilder asked his chief of staff. He was wiping down the blood-tinged barrel with a handkerchief. “I’ve given this a lot of thought.”

“Fuck you, Horace.”

Guilder pointed the pistol at Wilkes’s colorless face, leveling its sights at the spot between his eyes. “You forget that you can die.”

And Guilder shot him, too.

A change came over the crowd, their fear turning to something else. Murmurs moved up and down the lines, whispered calculations, the building energy of people who knew they had nothing to lose. Things had moved rather more briskly than Guilder would have liked—he’d hoped to get something useful before the hammer came down—but now the die was cast.

“Open the trucks.”

The canvas was pulled away. An eruption of volcanic screaming: no mystery now. Guilder walked briskly to his car, got in, and told the driver to go. They pulled away in a plume of mud and dirty snow as, behind them, the orchestra unleashed its mortal symphony: a melody of shouts and screams, high and wild and full of fear, punctuated by the syncopated rhythm of automatic weapon fire, fading to the final pops as the cols moved through the fallen bodies, silencing the last.

56

Iowa. The ashy bones.

They’d exhausted their fuel near the town of Millersburg, sheltered the night in a roofless church, and set out the next morning on foot. Another seventy miles, said Tifty, perhaps a little more. They’d encountered two more bone fields like the first, the number of dead virals unimaginable. Thousands, millions even. What did it mean? What impulse had led them to lie down on the open earth, waiting for the sun to take them away? Or had they perished first, their corpses reclaimed by the morning light? Even Michael, the man of theories, had no answer.

They walked. Trudged, through snow that now rose in places to their knees. Their rations were scarce; they saw no game. They had been reduced to eating their final stores—strips of dried meat and suet that left a coating of grease on the roofs of their mouths. The earth felt crystallized, the air held in suspension, like bated breath. For hours, no wind at all, and then it came howling. Daylight came and left in the blink of an eye. Heavy parkas with fur-lined hoods, woolen hats pulled down to their brows, gloves with the tips of the fingers cut away in case they needed to use their weapons, though Peter wondered if they could actually manage this. He’d never felt so cold. He hadn’t known cold like this existed. How Tifty maintained his bearings in this desolate place, he had no idea.

They passed their eighteenth night in an auto-repair shop that contained, miraculously, a potbellied woodstove of cast iron with a soap-stone top. Now, what to burn? As darkness came on, Michael and Hollis returned from the house next door, carrying a pair of wooden chairs and armfuls of books. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998. A shame to burn it, it went against the grain, but they needed the heat. Two more trips and they were supplied for the night.

They awoke to brilliant sunlight, the first in days, although the temperature had, if anything, dropped. A hard north wind rattled the branches of the trees. They allowed themselves the luxury of setting one last fire and huddled around it, savoring every bit of heat.

“Like… molting.”

It was Michael who had spoken. Peter turned toward his friend. “What did you say?”

Michael’s eyes were focused on the door of the stove. “How many do you think we’ve seen?”

“I don’t know.” Peter shrugged. “A lot.”

“And they all died at the same time. So let’s suppose what’s happening is supposed to happen, that it’s part of the viral life cycle. Birds do this, insects, reptiles. When part of the body is worn out, they cast it off and grow a new one.”

“But we’re talking about whole virals,” Lore said.

“That’s how it looks. But everything we know about them says they function as a group. Each one connected to its pod, each pod connected to its member of the Twelve. Never mind the mumbo jumbo about souls and all the rest. I’m not saying it isn’t true, but that’s Amy’s turf. From my point of view, the virals are a species like any other. When Lacey killed Babcock, all of his virals died. Like bees, remember?”

“I do,” said Hollis, nodding along. “Kill the queen and you kill the hive. That’s what you said.”

“And what we saw on that mountain bore it out. But suppose each one of the viral families is actually a single organism. Each of the Twelve is like a major organ—the heart, the brain. The rest are like the feathers on a bird, or the carapace of an insect. When it wears out, the organism sheds it, in order to grow a new one.”

“They don’t feel like feathers,” Lore said acidly.

“Okay, not feathers, but you get the idea. Something peripheral, expendable. I’ve always wondered what was keeping so many alive. What’s left to eat? We know they can go a long time without feeding—Tifty, you proved that—but nothing can survive indefinitely without food. From the standpoint of species longevity, it makes no sense to devour your entire food supply. As predators, they’re actually too successful. The idea has always bothered me, because everything else about them is so organized.”

“I’m not sure I’m following,” Tifty said. “Are you saying they’re dying out?”

“Obviously something’s happening. The fact that it’s occurring all at once implies that it’s a natural process, built into the system. Here’s another analogy. When the human body goes into shock, it draws blood away from the periphery and redirects it to the major organs. It’s a defense mechanism. Protect what’s important, forget the rest. Now imagine that each of the viral tribes is one animal, and that it’s going into shock from starvation. The logical thing would be to radically reduce the numbers and let the food supply come back.”

“And then what?” Peter asked.

“Then you start the cycle over.”

For a moment, nobody spoke.

“Anyway,” Michael continued, “it’s just an idea I had. I could be full of shit.”

Peter knew different. “So why is it happening here?”

“That,” said Michael, “is what worries me.”

The time for leaving was at hand; they’d stayed too long as it was. They gathered their gear and zipped up their parkas, bracing themselves for the blast of frigid air that would assail them the second they stepped through the door.

“Six days if the weather holds,” said Tifty, hitching up his pack. “Seven at the most.”

“Why do I wish it were more?” said Lore.

Grey. Grey.

His eyes popped open.

Can you feel them, Grey?

“Who’s there? Guilder, is that you?”

I’m sorry I have been away. You are still my favorite, Grey. Since the very first day we met. Do you remember?

His stomach clenched: the voice of Zero.

“Stop it.” His wrists yanked reflexively at the chains. He was lying in his own filth, his body stank, his mouth tasted permanently of blood. “Go away. Leave me alone.”

You told me everything about yourself. You didn’t even know you were doing it. Did you feel me in your mind even then?

—Get out, he thought. Get out get out get out. Wake up, Grey.

Oh, you’re not sleeping. I’ve always been here. Even as you have lain in chains a hundred years, I have lain with you. Like the story of Job, who lay in the ashes, cursing his fate. God tested him, as I have tested you.

—I don’t know you. I don’t know what you are.

You don’t, Grey? How can you not know? I am the God who abides with you. The one true God of Grey. Can you not feel my love? Can you not feel my wings of love spreading over you, forever and ever?

He had begun to weep.

—Let me die. Please. All I want to do is die.

You love her, don’t you, Grey?

He swallowed, tasting the foulness of his mouth. His body was a cave of filth and rottenness.

—Yes.

The woman. Lila. She means everything to you.

—Yes.

Yours is the blood that flows in her veins, as mine flows in yours. Do you see? Do you understand? We are all of a piece, Grey. You lie in chains, but you are not alone. The God of Grey abides with you. The God of all that is, and all that is to come. The God of the next new world. There will be a special place for you in that world, Grey.

—The next new world.

They are coming, Grey.

—Who? Who is coming?

But even as he asked the question, he knew.

Our brothers.

57

And suddenly, she was free. Alicia Donadio, Last of the First, the New Thing and captain of the Expeditionary, was bounding over the wires, into the night, away.

She ran. She ran and kept on running.

She’d killed a few men along the way. Some women, too. Alicia had never killed a human woman before; it seemed not so very different, on the whole. Because in the end, everybody left their life in the same manner. The same surprise upon their faces, their fingers touching the wound with exploratory tenderness, the identical ethereal gaze, aimed into eternity. There was a certain grace to it.

Maybe that’s why Alicia liked it as much as she did.

She found her gear where she’d left it hidden in the brush. A pike and cross. The RDF. Her bandoliers of blades. A change of clothes, a blanket, shoes. A hundred rounds of ammo but no gun to fire it. She’d left Sod’s knife behind, embedded in the left kidney of a man who had commanded her to stop, as if she might actually do this. Racing from the detention center, she hadn’t even known if it would be day or night. Time had been annihilated. The world she found was a changed place. No, that wasn’t right. The world was the same; it was she who had changed. She felt apart from everything, spectral, almost bodiless. Above her the winter stars shone hard and pure, like chips of ice. She needed shelter. She needed sleep. She needed to forget.

She took refuge in a shed that at one time might have contained chickens. Half the roof was gone; only the barest form remained: a single wall left standing, the little cages encrusted with fossilized droppings, a floor of hard-packed earth. She wrapped herself in the blanket, her broken body shaking with the cold. Louise, she thought, was it like this? Her mind tossed with memories, bright flashes of torment that split her thoughts like lightning. When would it stop, when would it stop.

It was still dark when she awoke, her mind climbing slowly to awareness. Something warm was brushing the back of her neck. She rolled and opened her eyes to discover an immense dark form looming above her.

My good boy, she thought, and then she said it: “My good, good boy.” Soldier dipped his face to hers, his great nostrils flaring, bathing her face with his breath. He licked her eyes and cheeks with his long tongue. It was a miracle. There was no other word. Someone had come. Someone had come, after all. Alicia had longed for this without knowing it, one soul to comfort her in this comfortless world.

Then, stepping improbably from the gloom, a figure, and a woman’s voice, strange and familiar at once:

“Alicia. Hello.”

The woman crouched before her, drawing down the hood of her long, wool coat. Her long black tresses tumbled free.

“It’s all right,” she said softly. “I’m here now.”

Amy? But it was not the Amy she knew.

This Amy was a woman.

A strong, beautiful woman with thick, dark hair and eyes like windowpanes lit from behind with golden light. The same face but different, deeper; the impression was one of completeness, a coming into the self. A face, thought Alicia, of wisdom. Her beauty was more than appearance, more than a collection of physical details; it came from the whole.

“I don’t… understand.”

“Shhhh.” She took Alicia’s hand. Her touch was firm but tender, like a mother’s, comforting her child. “Your friend. He showed us where you were. Such a handsome horse. What do you call him?”

Her mind felt heavy, benumbed. “Soldier.”

Amy cupped Alicia’s chin and lifted it slightly. “You’re hurt.”

How was this possible? How was anything possible? Beyond the shed Alicia saw a second figure, holding a pair of horses by the reins. A windblown swirl of white hair and a great pale beard masked his features. But it was the way he held himself, with a soldier’s bearing, that told Alicia who he was; that this man in the snow was Lucius Greer.

“What did they do to you?” Amy whispered. “Tell me.”

That was all it took. Her will collapsed, a wave of sorrow came undammed inside her. She did not speak so much as shudder the word: “Everything.”

And at long last, a great sob shook her—a howl of purest pain and grief cast skyward to the winter stars—and in Amy’s arms, Alicia began to weep.

Guilder. It’s time.

Guilder, rise.

But Guilder did not hear these words. Director Horace Guilder was asleep and dreaming—a terrible, oft-repeated dream in which he was in the convalescent center, smothering his father with a pillow. Contrary to history, this did not proceed without a struggle. His father thrashed and flailed, his hands clawing at the air, fighting to break free as he issued muffled cries for mercy. Only when his resistance ceased, and Guilder removed the pillow from his face, did Guilder see his error. It wasn’t his father he had killed, but Shawna. Oh, God, no! Then Shawna’s eyes popped open; she began to laugh. She laughed so hard that tears came to her eyes. Stop laughing! he yelled. Stop laughing at me! Guilder, she said, you’re so funny. You should see the look on your face. You and your crappy bracelet. Your mother was a whore. A whore a whore a whore …

Prepare the way, Guilder. Rise to meet them. The moment is at hand.

He jolted awake.

Our moment, Guilder. The birth of the next new world.

The information hit his brain like voltage. He bolted upright in his vast bed, its preposterous acreage of pillows and blankets and sheets, realizing, with faint embarrassment, that he’d fallen asleep with his clothes on. And why, he thought absurdly, did he need, of all things, a canopy bed? A bed so huge it made him feel like a doll? But he shook the question away. They were coming! They were here! He swiveled his feet to the floor and jammed them into the leather lace-ups that he had, apparently, possessed the energy to remove before passing out with exhaustion. Ramming his shirttail into his pants, he dashed to the door and down the hall.

“Suresh!”

The sound of his pounding caromed down the empty hallway.

“Suresh, wake up!”

The door to Suresh’s quarters opened to reveal his new chief of staff’s sleepy, bronze-colored face. He was wearing a puffy white bathrobe and slippers, blinking like a bear exiting its cave.

“Cripes, Horace, you don’t have to yell.” He yawned into his fist. “What time is it?”

“Who cares what time it is? They’re here.”

Suresh startled. “Right now, you mean?”

Rise up and meet them, Guilder. Bring them home.

“Don’t just stand there, get dressed.”

“Right, okay. I’m on it.”

“Move, goddamnit!”

Guilder returned to his apartment and stepped into the bathroom. Should he shave? Wash his face at least? Why was he thinking like this, like a boy on prom night? He ran a damp hand through his hair and brushed his teeth, trying to calm himself. Was this what passed for toothpaste around this place? This awful-tasting gritty goo? For the love of God, why, in ninety-seven years, had they never managed to come up with a decent toothpaste?

He removed a fresh suit from the wardrobe. The blue tie, the red, the green and yellow stripes: he didn’t know. He was suddenly so nervous his fingers could barely manage the knot. And hungry. A stone of cold emptiness sat in his gut. A visit with his old friend Grey would have been just the ticket to settle his nerves, but he should have thought of that earlier.

Standing before the mirror, he took a steadying breath. Easy, Guilder, easy. You know what to do. It’s just another day at the office. It can’t be any worse than a meeting with the Joint Chiefs, can it?

In point of fact, it could. But there was no use in dwelling on the prospect.

By the time he reached the lobby, Suresh was waiting with Guilder’s driver. “The trucks are on their way,” Suresh said as Guilder drew on his gloves. “You want a full detail to escort you?”

Guilder declined; he would go on his own. Best to keep things simple. The two men shook hands.

“Good luck,” said Suresh.

As the car glided down the hill, Guilder’s anxiety began to lessen. He was moving into the moment now. At the river they turned north and headed toward the Project. Its dark shape heaved from the earth like a headstone, a square of deeper blackness against the night sky. The portal was open, waiting.

They didn’t stop but turned east on the service road. At one time it had been used to move equipment to the site: the quarried blocks of stone, the twirling cement mixers from the concrete plant, the flatbeds with their stacked girders of harvested steel. Now it would carry an altogether different delivery. They passed through the auxiliary gate. Five more minutes and they drew up to where the two semis were waiting in a field of frozen corn stubble.

Guilder told the driver to go. The semis’ cabs were empty; their drivers, too, had departed. Guilder pressed his ear to the side of one of the trucks. He heard muffled murmurings inside, interspersed with a female sound of frightened weeping.

The voice in his head was silent. A profound stillness encased him like the anticipatory stillness before a storm. They would be coming from the west. He waited.

Then:

The first one appeared, then another and another, eleven points of glowing phosphorescence spaced at equal intervals on the horizon. The gaps between them narrowed as they neared, like the lights of a giant aircraft approaching.

Come to me, Guilder thought. Come to me.

Details began to emerge. Not so much to emerge as to enlarge. One was smaller than the rest—that would be Carter, of course, he thought; the unknowable, anomalous Anthony Carter—but the others took his breath away. In their powerful forms and graceful movements and absolute mastery of themselves they seemed to shrink the space around them, to bend dimensions, to rewrite the course of time. They flowed toward him like a glowing river, bathing him in the light of their majestic horror.

Come to me, he thought. Come to me. Come to me.

The moment of their arrival possessed a feeling of absolute completeness. A baptism. The closing covers of a book. A long dive into blue water and the instant of entry, the world wiped away. They stood before him, great and terrible. He drank the majestic, terrifying images of their memories as if dipped into a pool of purest madness. A weeping girl on a dirty mattress. A shopkeeper, hands raised, and the bony press of a gun’s muzzle at the vertical crease between his eyebrows. A sensation of utter drunkenness, and a boy on his bicycle glimpsed through a windshield, and the thud of contact followed by a sharp jolt as his little body passed beneath the vehicle’s wheels. A delicious feeling of sex, and a woman’s eyes expanded to impossible wideness as the cord tightened around her neck. A chorus of terror, depravity, black evil.

I am Morrison-Chávez-Baffes-Turrell-Winston-Sosa-Echols-Lambright-Martínez-Reinhardt-Carter.

Guilder unlatched the cargo door of the first truck. The prisoners tried to run, of course. Guilder had ordered no shackles; he wanted nothing to constrict them. Most made it only a few steps. The few that got farther experienced, perhaps, a fleeting hope of salvation. Their pointless flight was part of the rapture. The moment unfolded in great splashes of blood and abruptly severed screams and living tissue torn asunder, and in the silence that followed Guilder stepped to the rear of the second truck and opened its door in welcome.

“Welcome, my friends. You are home at last. We will see to your every need.”