His friend. He supposed they were. Had been.
Darkness came on. Guilder’s gaze traveled down the hill to the Project. It would need a new name now. Hoppel would have been the guy for that; no doubt about it, he’d had a way with words. In his former life he’d been an ad guy with a big Chicago agency, experience he’d put to plentiful use concocting the catchphrases and jingles that kept the troops in rhetorical line, right down to the words of the anthem. Homeland, our Homeland, we pledge our lives to thee. Our labors do we offer, without recompense or fee. Homeland, our Homeland, a nation rises here. Safety, hope, security, from sea to shining sea. Corny as hell, and Guilder hadn’t been so keen on the word “recompense”—it seemed a little bookish—but the thing scanned nicely and was, by the standards of its genre, not too hard on the ears.
So, what should they call it there? “Bunker” was too martial. “Palace” had the right general ring, but there was nothing palatial about the place. It looked like a big concrete box. Something religious? A shrine? Who would not go willingly into a shrine?
Just how many of the flatlanders would have to go, and at what frequency, remained to be seen; Guilder had yet to receive specific instructions from Zero on this point, the general sense being that things would come out in the wash. The Twelve—or rather, Eleven—might be different from your garden-variety viral, but they were what they were—eating machines, basically. No matter what directives came down from on high, a century of gobbling up everything with a pulse would be a hard habit to shake. But in the main, their diet would consist of a combination of donated human blood and domestic livestock. The right ratios needed to be scrupulously maintained; the human population had to grow. Generation by generation, human and viral, working together—which was, come to think of it, not a bad way to sell the thing. It was positively Hoppelesque. What was the term? Rebranding? That’s what Guilder needed. A fresh point of view, a new lexicon, a new vision. A rebranding of the viral experience.
He might have really hit on something with this shrine business. The establishment of something rather like an official religion, with all the mumbo jumbo and ritualistic trappings, might be just the lubricant the gears of human psychology required. State worship was all stick and no carrot; it produced only an arid obedience to authority. But hope was the greatest social organizer of all. Give people hope, and you could make them do just about anything. And not just your average, everyday kind of hope—for food or clothes or the absence of pain or good suburban schools or low down payments with easy financing. What people needed was a hope beyond the visible world, the world of the body and its trials, of life’s endless dull parade of things. A hope that all was not as it appeared.
And there it was, the name. How simple it was, how elegant. Not a shrine; a temple. The Temple of Life Everlasting. And he, Horace Guilder, would be its priest.
So, not such a worthless day after all. Funny how things could just come like that, he thought with a smile—his first in weeks. Screw Hoppel and his ditties. And while he was at it, screw Wilkes, that ingrate. Guilder had everything in hand.
First the injection, and the wooziness, and Sara, lying on a wheeled gurney, observed the ceiling flowing past.
“Alley … oop.”
Now she was somewhere else. The room was dim. Hands were lifting her onto a table, tightening straps around her arms and legs and forehead. The metal was chilly beneath her. At some point her robe had been removed and replaced by a cotton gown. Her mind moved with animal heaviness through these facts, noting them without emotion. It was hard to care about anything. Here was Dr. Verlyn, peering down at her through his tiny glasses in his grandfatherly way. His eyebrows struck her as extraordinary. He was holding a silver forceps; a wad of cotton soaked in brown fluid was clinched between the tines. She supposed that since he was a doctor, he was doing something medical to her.
“This may feel a little cold.”
It did. Dr. Verlyn was swabbing down her arms and legs; at the same time, somebody else was positioning a plastic tube beneath her nose.
“Catheter.”
Now, that was not so nice. That wasn’t nice at all. A moan rose from her throat. Other things began to happen, various pokings and intrusions, the alien sensation of foreign objects sliding under her skin—her forearms, the insides of her thighs. There was a beeping sound, and a hiss of gas, and a peculiar odor under her nose, strikingly sweet. Diethyl ether. It was manufactured at the biodiesel plant, though Sara had never seen how this was done. All she remembered were tanks with the word FLAMMABLE stenciled in red on the sides, and their clattering bulk as they were rolled on dollies to a waiting truck.
“Just breathe, please.”
What a strange request! How could she not breathe?
“That’s it.”
She was borne aloft on the softest cloud.
61
Two days had passed since they’d made contact with the insurgency. At first, Nina had failed to believe them, as anyone would. The story was too fantastic, the history too complex. It was Alicia who had finally come up with a way to prove their case. She retrieved the RDF from her pack and led the woman up the ridge and pointed it toward the Dome. Greer was watching the valley below. At this distance, Alicia worried that she wouldn’t get a signal. What would they do then to convince the woman? But there it was, fat and clear, a continuous pulsation. Alicia was relieved but also perplexed: if anything, the signal was stronger. Amy was silent a moment, then said, We’ll have to hurry now. That sound you’re hearing: it means the remaining Twelve are already here. She drew the knife from her belt and passed it to Nina and told Alicia and Greer to disarm as well. We’re surrendering to you, said Amy. The rest is up to you.
The truck arrived, carrying two armed men. Alicia and the others met them with arms raised. Their wrists were bound, black hoods drawn over their heads. An interval of time passed, the three of them freezing in the bouncing cargo bed; then they heard the sound of a garage door opening. They were escorted from the truck and told to wait. A few minutes passed; footsteps approached.
“Take them off,” a man’s voice said.
The hoods were removed, revealing half a dozen men and women standing before them with raised weapons—all but one.
“Eustace?”
“Major Greer.” Eustace shifted his broken face toward Alicia. “And Donadio, too.” He shook his head. “Why am I surprised?” He turned to the others and gestured for them to lower their guns. “It’s all right, everyone.”
“You know them?” Nina asked.
Eustace looked them over again, noticing Amy. “Now, you I don’t think I’ve seen before.”
“Actually,” said Amy, “that’s not precisely true.”
They had arrived on the eve of Eustace’s people making their move. Years of painstaking infiltration had reached the moment of culmination. First, the decapitation of the leadership, followed by simultaneous attacks on a range of major targets: HR stations, industrial infrastructure, the power station, the detention center, the apartment complex on the edge of downtown where most of the redeyes lived. Weapons and explosives had been cached throughout the city. Their forces were small, but once the attack was under way, they believed, their numbers would grow. The slumbering giant of seventy thousand flatlanders would awaken and rise. Once that happened, the insurrection would become an avalanche, unstoppable. The city would be theirs.
But something had gone wrong. Their operative in the Dome had been found out. They knew she’d been taken alive, but not where—in all likelihood, the basement.
“I’m afraid there’s something I must tell you,” Eustace said, and explained who this operative was.
Sara was here. It strained belief. No, it went hurtling past it. And her daughter, too. Sara’s. Hollis’s. In some deep way, the child belonged to all of them. Their purpose had magnified, but so had the situation’s complexity. They would have to get the two of them out.
Amy repeated the story she had told Nina. T
here could be no doubt that the virals were present somewhere in the city, or what this meant. Here was where they would begin rebuilding their legions. Eustace regarded their tale with skepticism, but then something clicked.
“Guilder will want to protect them,” Amy said. “Is there someplace in the city that’s unusually fortified? It would have to be large.”
Eustace sent a man to retrieve the blueprints of the Project. Three people died to get these, Eustace said, and he unrolled the paper over the table.
“We never knew what this place was for. Lots of stories, but never anything that really added up. The place is a fortress. The redeyes have been building it for years.”
Amy examined the blueprints, her eyes making swift calculations. “This is where we’ll find them.”
“I don’t know how you can be so certain.”
“Count the chambers.”
Eustace bent over the paper. With his index finger, he traced each corridor to its destination. Then he looked up.
Thus their cause was joined to another. The building known as the Project was now the focus. Its design played in their favor: like the cave in New Mexico, the Project’s tight quarters could amplify the explosive force of a single bomb detonated at the heart of the structure. But could they get inside? Doubtful—and even if they could, it would be like walking into a lion’s den. Their losses would be heavy, and too many men would have to be diverted from other targets.
“So we don’t go in to get them,” Amy said. “We make them come to us.”
“What do you have in mind?”
Amy thought a moment. “Tell me what kind of man Guilder is.”
Eustace shrugged. Throughout the proceedings he had taken no umbrage at their presence. It was good, he said, to be among Expeditionaries again.
“He’s a monster. Cruel, obsessive, monomaniacal in the extreme. He’s absolutely fixated on Sergio.”
“What would he do if he captured him?”
“Have the time of his life, probably. But Sergio doesn’t exist. It’s just a name.”
“But what if he did?”
Eustace rubbed a hand over his chin. “Well, the man likes a show. Probably he’d stage a public execution, make a big display.”
“Public. Meaning everybody.”
“I suppose.” Eustace’s expression shifted. “Oh. I see.”
“Where would he do that?”
“The stadium’s the only place large enough. It can hold seventy thousand easily. Which would—”
“Leave the rest of the Homeland undefended. Resources spread thin, major targets exposed.”
Eustace was nodding now. “And if he’s really interested in making a demonstration of power—”
“Exactly.”
Bewildered glances were exchanged around the table. “Somebody, please enlighten me,” said Nina.
Amy leaned forward in her chair. “Here’s what we do.”
It took another twenty-four hours to make ready. Nina returned to the city to contact the leaders of the various cells with new instructions. The insurgency’s hideout would be forfeit, of course. They rigged it with tripwire explosives—barrels of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and diesel fuel connected to sulfur igniters. Nothing would remain but an ashy hole; with luck, Guilder would presume that all inside had been killed, a mass suicide, the insurgency’s final blaze of glory.
They prepared the vehicles for departure. Alicia would drive Amy to the pipe, then rendezvous with the rest of Eustace’s men to continue to their fallback location. Now all they were waiting on was the weather—they needed snow to cover their tire tracks. It might be tomorrow; it might be a week; it might be never. An hour before sunset on the third day, a tantalizing dust of flurries began to fall. It stopped, then started up again, slowly gathering force, as if the weather had cleared its throat and spoken. Go now.
They drove out, a convoy of nine trucks carrying forty-seven men and women. Alicia peeled away and aimed her vehicle north. The snow formed a dense, whirling mass in the truck’s headlights. Beside her, Amy, wearing an attendant’s robe, was silent. Alicia had warned her what she would be facing; there was no reason to discuss it further, especially now.
Thirty minutes later they arrived at the pipe. Despite her better judgment, Alicia said, “You know what they’ll do to you.”
Amy nodded. A brief silence; then: “There’s a purpose to everything. A shape. Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know.”
Amy pulled Alicia’s hand off the wheel and took it in her own, twining their fingers together. “We’re sisters, you know. Blood sisters. I know what’s happening to you, Lish.”
Amy’s words felt like something falling inside her. And yet: of course she would know. How could Amy not know?
“Can you control it?”
Alicia swallowed with difficulty. Over the last two days, the desire had become intense. It was reaching its dark hand inside her, taking her over. Her mind was fogged with it. Soon it would overwhelm her will to resist.
“It’s getting … harder.”
“When the time comes—”
“I’m not going to let it.”
All around, the snow was falling. Alicia knew that if she didn’t leave soon, she might get stuck. One last thing needed to be said. It took all her courage to form the words.
“Take care of Peter. You can’t let him know what happened to me. Promise me that.”
“Lish—”
“You can tell him anything else. Make up a story. I don’t care. But I need your word.”
A deep quiet ensued, encasing the two of them. Alicia had been alone with this knowledge for too long; now it was shared. She searched her emotions. Loss, relief, the feeling of crossing a border into a dark country. She was giving him up.
“In a way, I’ve always known this would happen. Even before I met you. There was always somebody else.”
Amy made no reply. Her silence told Alicia all she needed to know.
“You should go,” Alicia said.
Still Amy said nothing. Her face was uncertain. Then:
“There’s something I haven’t told you, Lish.”
Gray day into gray day. The continent’s vast inland empire of weather. Would it snow? Would the sun ever come out again? Would the wind blow at their backs or into their frozen faces? They walked and walked, hunched forward against the weight of their packs. There were no signs, no landmarks. The roads and towns were gone, subsumed like sunken ships beneath the waves of snowy prairie. Tifty confessed that he didn’t know exactly where they were. Central Iowa, northeast of Des Moines, but anything more specific … He made no apologies; the situation was what it was. Why couldn’t you have decided to do this in summer? he said.
They were almost out of food. They’d cut their rations in half, but half of nothing would be nothing. As they huddled inside a ruined farmhouse, Lore doled out the meager slices on the blade of her knife. Peter placed his beneath his tongue to make it last, the hardened fat dissolving slowly in the warmth of his mouth.
They went on.
Then, late on the afternoon of the twenty-eighth day, a vision appeared: materializing slowly from a colorless sky, a tall sign, rocking in the wind. They made their way toward it; a cluster of buildings emerged. What town was this? It didn’t matter; the need for shelter trumped every other concern. They passed through the outer commercial ring, with its husks of supermarkets and chain stores, flat roofs long collapsed under the weight of winter snow, and continued into the old town. The usual remnants and rubble, but at the heart they came to two blocks of brick buildings that appeared sound.
“Don’t suppose we’ll find anything to eat in there,” Michael said.
They were standing before a storefront, the front windows of which were amazingly unbroken. Faded lettering on the glass read, FANCY’S CAFÉ.
Hollis said, “Looks like they’ve been out of business for a while.”
They forced the door and entered. A narrow space, w
ith booths of cracked vinyl opposite a counter with stools; except for the dust, which caked every surface, it was remarkably undisturbed. From time to time one found such a place, a museum of the past where the passage of decades had somehow failed to register, more eerie than ruins.
Michael lifted a menu from a stack on the counter and opened it. “What’s meatloaf? I get the meat part, but a loaf of it?”
“Jesus, Michael,” Lore said. She was shivering, her lips blue. “Don’t make it worse.”
Hollis and Peter scouted the back. The rear door and windows had been sealed with plywood; a hammer and nails lay on the floor.
“We’re not going to get much farther without food,” Hollis said gravely.
“You don’t have to remind me.”
They returned to the front of the café, where the others were bundling themselves in blankets on the floor. Darkness was falling. The room was freezing, but at least they were out of the wind.
“I’m going to look around,” Peter said. “Maybe I can figure out where we are.”
He slogged his way across the street, then moved down the block, peering in the storefronts. He tried some of the doors, but all were locked. Well, they could come back in the morning and open a few to see what was there.
At the end of the second block he tried a handle without looking—he was just going through the motions now—and was startled when the door swung open. Stepping inside, he holstered his pistol and removed a match from the box in the breast pocket of his parka and struck the tip, cupping the flame against the breeze coming from the open door.
Well, son of a bitch.
Peter knew a supply cache when he saw one. Burlap bags were stacked against the walls of the otherwise bare room. He knelt and opened the nearest bag with a flick of his blade: dried beans. In another he found potatoes, in a third apples. He lit another match and raised it over the floor; there were footprints all around in the dust. Who had left this here? What did it mean?
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