The Twelve

Copyright

The Twelve is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Justin Cronin

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.:

“In the Afterlife” from Almost Invisible by Mark Strand, copyright © 2012 by Mark Strand. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cronin, Justin.

The twelve : a novel / Justin Cronin.

p. cm.—(Passage trilogy 2)

eISBN: 978-0-345-53489-7

1. Virus diseases—Fiction. 2. Survival—Fiction. 3. End of the world—Fiction. 4. Human experimentation in medicine—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3553.R542T94 2012

813’.54—dc23 2012028427

www.ballantinebooks.com

Jacket design: Belina Huey

Jacket illustration: Tom Hallman

_{v3.1_r1}