Why don’t I see you more often? she would ask him after. Are you happy with the things I do? There isn’t anybody else, is there? I want to be your only one, Guilder. Very happy, he would say, stroking her velvety hair. I couldn’t be happier than I am with you.
He knew nothing about her at all—at least, nothing real. Yet in the weeks that followed his diagnosis, the only refuge his mind could take was in the absurd idea that he was in love with her. The memory embarrassed him now, and the psychological subtext was obvious—he didn’t want to die alone—but at the time, he’d been utterly convinced. He was madly, hopelessly in love, and wasn’t it possible, likely even, that Shawna shared his feelings? Was that what she meant when she said she wanted to be his only one? Because what they did and said to each other couldn’t be false; those things occurred on a plane that only two people who were truly connected could share.
On and on like this, until he had worked himself into such a state that Shawna was all he thought about. He decided he would give her something—a symbol of his love. Something expensive and worthy of his feelings. Jewelry. It had to be jewelry. And not something new from a store, but something more personal: his mother’s diamond bracelet. Energized by this decision, he wrapped the Tiffany box in silver paper and drove to Shawna’s apartment. It wasn’t Tuesday, but that didn’t matter. What he felt wasn’t anything a person could schedule. He rang the bell and waited. Minutes passed, which was strange; Shawna was always very prompt about the bell. He rang again. This time the speaker made a little burst of static and he heard her voice. “Hello?”
“It’s Horace.”
A pause. “I don’t have you in the book. Do I? Maybe this is my fault. Did you call?”
“I have something for you.”
The speaker seemed to go dead. Then: “Hang on a second.”
A few minutes passed. Guilder heard footsteps descending the stairs. Perhaps the buzzer wasn’t working; Shawna was coming down to open the door. But the figure that turned the corner wasn’t Shawna. It was a man. He looked about sixty, bald and heavyset, with the piggish face of a Russian gangster, wearing a rumpled pin-striped suit, his necktie loosened. The implications were obvious, yet in its agitated state, Guilder’s mind refused them. The man stepped through the door, giving Guilder a cursory glance as he passed.
“Lucky you,” he said, and winked.
Guilder hurried up the stairs. He knocked three times, waiting with buoyant anxiety; at last the door swung open. Shawna wasn’t wearing the dress, just a silk robe cinched at the waist. Her hair was disheveled, her makeup smeary. Perhaps he’d caught her taking a nap.
“Horace, what are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, suddenly breathless. “I know I should have called.”
“To tell you the truth, it’s not really the best time.”
“I’ll only be a minute. Please, can I come in?”
She eyed him skeptically, then seemed to soften. “Well, all right. It’ll have to be quick, though.”
She stood aside to let him enter. Something felt different about the apartment, though Guilder couldn’t say exactly what. It seemed dirty, the air unpleasantly dense.
“Now, what’s this I see?” She was eyeing the silver-papered box. “Horace, you shouldn’t have.”
Guilder held it out to her. “This is for you.”
With a warm light dancing in her eyes, she undid the wrapping and removed the bracelet.
“Isn’t that thoughtful. What a pretty thing.”
“It’s an heirloom. It belonged to my mother.”
“That makes it even more special.” She kissed him quickly on the cheek. “You give me a minute to clean up and I’ll be right with you, baby.”
A titanic wave of love broke over him. It was all he could do not to throw his arms around her and press his mouth to hers. “I want to make love to you. Real love.”
She glanced at her watch. “Well, sure. If that’s what you want. I don’t have the full hour, though.”
Guilder had begun to undress, madly unbuckling his belt, yanking off his wingtips. But something was wrong. He sensed her hesitation.
“Isn’t there something you’re forgetting?” she asked.
The money. That’s what she was asking for. How could she think about money at a time like this? He wanted to tell her that what they shared couldn’t be counted in dollars and cents, words along those lines, but all he managed to say was “I don’t have it with me.”
She frowned. “Honey, that’s not how this works. You know that.”
But by this time Guilder was so frantic he was barely processing any of it. He was also standing in front of her wearing only his boxers and undershirt, his pants bunched around his ankles.
“Are you all right? You don’t look so good.”
“I love you,” he said.
She gave an airy smile. “That’s sweet.”
“I said, I love you.”
“Okay, I can do that. That’s no problem. Put the money on the dresser and I’ll say anything you want.”
“I don’t have any money. I gave you the bracelet.”
Suddenly there was no sign of warmth or even friendship in her eyes. “Horace, this is a cash business, you know that. I don’t like the way you’re talking.”
“Please, let me make love to you.” Guilder’s pulse was throbbing in his ears. “You can sell the bracelet if you want. It’s worth a lot of money.”
“Baby, I don’t think so.” She held it out to him with unconcealed contempt. “I hate to break it to you, but this is glass. I don’t know who sold it to you, but you should get your money back. Now go on, be sweet. You know the drill.”
He had to make her understand how he felt. In desperation he reached for her, but his feet were still tangled up in his trouser legs. Shawna released a yelp; the next thing Guilder knew, he was sprawled on the floor. He raised his face to discover a pistol aimed at his head.
“Get the fuck out.”
“Please,” he moaned. His voice was thick with tears. “You said you wanted to be my only one.”
“I say a lot of things. Now get out of here with your crappy goddamned bracelet.”
He rose heavily to his feet. Never had he experienced such humiliation. And yet what he mostly felt was love. A helpless, melancholy love that would devour him whole.
“I’m dying.”
“We’re all dying, baby.” She waved the pistol at the door. “Do like I say before I shoot your balls off.”
He knew he could never face her again. How could he have been so stupid? He drove to his townhouse, pulled into the garage, shut off the engine, and sealed the door with the remote. He sat in his car for a full thirty minutes, unable to muster the energy to move. He was dying. He had made a fool of himself. He would never see Shawna again, because he meant nothing to her.
Which was when he realized why he was still sitting in the Camry. All he had to do was turn the engine back on. It would be like falling asleep. He’d never have to think about Shawna again, or Project NOAH, or live in the prison of his own failing body, or visit his father at the convalescent center—none of it. All his cares lifted, just like that. Following an impulse he could not explain, he removed his watch and took his wallet from his back pocket, placing them on the dashboard—as if he were getting ready for bed. Probably it was customary to write a note, but what would he say? Who would the note be for?
Three times he tried to make himself turn the key. Three times his resolve failed him. By then he had begun to feel silly, sitting in his car—one more humiliation. There was nothing left to do but put his watch back on and return his wallet to his pocket and go into the house.
As Guilder was driving home from McLean, his handheld buzzed. Nelson.
“They’re on the move.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere. Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska. A large group massing in western Kansas.” He paused. “That’s not why I called.”
Guilder drov
e straight to the office. Nelson met him in the hallway. “We picked up the signal a little before sunset. Grabbed it off a tower west of Denver, a town called Silver Plume. It took some doing, but I was able to call in some favors at Homeland and reroute one of the drones to see if we could get a picture.”
At his terminal he showed Guilder the photograph, a grainy black and white. Not the girl; it was a man. He was standing beside a pickup truck parked on the side of the highway. It looked like he was taking a leak.
“Who the hell is this? One of the docs?”
“It’s one of Richards’s guys.”
Guilder was perplexed. “What are you talking about?”
For a moment, Nelson appeared faintly embarrassed. “Sorry, I thought you were in the loop on this. They’re paroled sex offenders. One of Richards’s little projects. For security reasons, all sixth-tier civilian personnel were harvested from the national registry.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I shit you not.” Nelson tapped the image on the screen. “This guy? Our lone survivor of Project NOAH? He’s a fucking pedophile.”
9
The pickup gave out late on the morning of Grey’s second day on the road.
The hour was just shy of noon, the sun high in the sky. After a restless night in a Motel 6 near Leadville, Grey had picked up I-70 near Vail, then made his descent toward Denver. As far east as the town of Golden, the interstate corridor had been mostly clear, but as he moved into the city’s outer suburban ring, with its huge shopping centers and sprawling subdivisions, things began to change. Portions of the highway were choked with abandoned cars, forcing him onto the access road; the vast parking lots lining the highway were scenes of frozen disorder, store windows smashed, merchandise strewn over the pavement. The stillness was different here, too—not a simple absence of sound but something deeper, more ominous. A lot of the bodies he saw were headless, like the suspendered man at the Red Roof. Grey guessed maybe Zero and the others liked to take the heads.
He did his best to keep his eyes on the road, forcing the carnage to the fringes of his vision. The weird, buzzing energy he’d felt at the Red Roof had not abated; his brain was humming like a plucked string. He hadn’t slept in a day and a half, but he wasn’t tired. Or hungry, which wasn’t like him at all. Grey used to slam it down, but for some reason the thought of food wasn’t remotely appealing. In Leadville he’d gotten a Baby Ruth from a vending machine in the lobby of the Motel 6, thinking he should try to put something in his stomach, but he couldn’t get the damn thing past his nose. Just the odor of it made his insides clench. He could practically smell the preservatives in the thing, a nasty chemical stink, like industrial floor cleaner.
By the time the city’s core rose into view, Grey knew he would have to abandon the interstate. There was simply no way around the cars, and the situation was only going to get worse the closer he got. He drew the truck into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven and checked his map. The best route would be circling downtown to the south, he decided, though this was just a guess; he didn’t know Denver at all.
He veered south, then east again, picking his way through the suburbs. Everywhere was the same, not a living soul about. He wished he could at least have had the radio for company, but when he scanned up and down the dial, all he could get was the same empty wash of static he’d heard for a day and a half. For a while he honked the truck’s horn, thinking this might alert anyone left alive to his presence, but eventually he gave up. There was no one left to hear it. Denver was a crypt.
By the time the engine died, Grey had entered a state of such complete despair that for several seconds he actually failed to notice. So disturbing was the silence that it had begun to seem possible that he would never see a living soul again—that the whole world, not just Denver, had been swept clean of humanity. But then he realized what was happening, that the engine had lost power. For a few seconds the truck coasted on its own momentum, but the steering had locked up, too; all Grey could do was sit and wait for it to glide to a halt.
Christ, he thought, this is all I need. Sliding Iggy’s gun into the pocket of his jumpsuit, he climbed out and lifted the hood. Grey had owned enough junky cars in his day to know a broken fan belt. The logical step would have been to abandon the truck and find another vehicle with the keys in it. He was on a wide boulevard of big-box retail outlets: Best Buy, Target, Home Depot. The sun was glaring down. Each lot had a scattering of cars in it. But he had no heart to look inside them, knowing what he would find. He’d swapped out a fan belt lots of times. All he needed was the belt and a few basic tools, a screwdriver and a couple of wrenches to adjust the tensioner. Maybe the Home Depot had auto parts. It couldn’t hurt to look.
He crossed the highway and headed for the door, which stood open. The cage of propane tanks by the entrance had been pried open, all the canisters taken, but otherwise the front of the store appeared undamaged. A phalanx of lawn mowers, chained together, rested undisturbed by the doorway, as did a display of patio furniture dusted with yellow pollen. The only other sign that anything was amiss was a large square of plywood propped against the wall, spray-painted with the words NO GENERATORS LEFT.
Grey drew the pistol from his pocket, wedged the door open, and stepped inside. The power was out, but a semblance of order had been maintained; a lot of the shelves had been stripped bare, though the floor was mostly clear of debris. Holding the gun out before him, he advanced cautiously along the front of the store, his eyes scanning the signs over the aisles for one that said AUTO PARTS.
He had made it halfway down the rows when Grey stopped in his tracks. From ahead and to his left he heard a quiet rustling, followed by a barely audible murmuring. Grey took two steps forward and peered around the corner.
It was a woman. She was standing in front of a display of paint samples. She was dressed in jeans and a man’s dress shirt; her hair, a soft brown, was swept behind her ears, fixed in place by a pair of sunglasses perched on top of her head. She was also pregnant—not have-the-baby-right-this-second pregnant, but pregnant enough. While Grey watched, she pulled a little square of color from one of the slots and angled it first this way and then the other, frowning pensively. Then she returned it to its slot.
So unexpected was this vision that Grey could only gaze at her in mute astonishment. What was she doing here? A full thirty seconds passed, the woman taking no notice of his presence, wholly engaged by her mysterious business. Not wanting to frighten her, Grey gently placed the gun on an open shelf and took a cautious step forward. What should he say? He’d never been good at icebreakers. Or even talking to people, really. He settled for clearing his throat.
The woman glanced at him over her shoulder. “Well, it’s about time,” she said. “I’ve been standing here for twenty minutes.”
“Lady, what are you doing?”
She turned from the display. “Is this or is this not the paint department?” She was holding out a group of sample chips, fanned like a deck of playing cards. “Now, I’m thinking maybe Garden Gate, but I’m worried it will be too dark.”
Grey was utterly dumbfounded. She wanted him to help her pick paint?
“Probably nobody ever asks your opinion, I know,” she continued briskly—a little too briskly, Grey thought. “Just put it in a can and take my money, I’m sure that’s what everybody says. But I value the judgment of someone who knows his business. So, what do you think? In your professional opinion.”
Grey was standing within just a few feet of her now. Her face was fine-boned and pale, with a subtle fan of crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes. “I think you’re confused. I don’t work here.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You don’t?”
“Lady, no one works here.”
Confusion swept over her face. But just as quickly it disappeared, her features reorganizing into a look of irritation. “Oh, you hardly need to tell me that,” she said, tossing his words away. “Trying to get a little help around this pla
ce is like pulling teeth. Now,” she went on, “as I was saying, I need to know which of these would go best in a nursery.” She gave a bashful smile. “I guess it’s no secret, but I’m expecting.”
Grey had known some crazy people in his days, but this woman took the cake. “Lady, I don’t think you should be here. It’s not safe.”
Another little hitch of time passed before she answered; it was as if she was processing his words and then, in the next instant, rewriting their meaning.
“Honestly, you sound just like David. To tell you the truth, I’ve had just about enough of this kind of talk.” She sighed heavily. “So, Garden Gate it is then. I’ll take two gallons in an eggshell finish, please. If you don’t mind, I’m in kind of a hurry.”
Grey felt completely flustered. “You want me to sell you paint?”
“Well, are you or aren’t you the manager?”
The manager? When had that happened? The fact was dawning on him that the woman wasn’t just pretending.
“Lady, don’t you know what’s going on around here?”
She pulled two cans from the shelves and held them out. “I’ll tell you what’s going on. I’m buying some paint, and you’re going to mix it for me, Mr.— Now, I don’t believe I got your name.”
Grey swallowed. Something about the woman seemed to make him absolutely powerless, as if he were being dragged by a runaway horse. “It’s Grey,” he said. “Lawrence Grey.”
She pushed the cans toward him, forcing him to take them. Christ, she practically had him filling out an employment application. If this went on much longer, he’d never get a fan belt. “Well, Mr. Grey. I’d like two gallons of Garden Gate, please.”
The Twelve Page 9
