The Twelve tpt-2

by Justin Cronin

  “Where is she? What have you done with her?”

  Guilder glanced toward Nelson, who frowned. Interesting, his face seemed to say.

  “You needn’t worry, Mr. Grey, we’re taking good care of her. She’s right across the hall, in fact.”

  “Don’t you hurt her.” His fists were clenched; he was straining against the straps. “You touch her and I’ll—”

  “And you’ll what, Mr. Grey?”

  But there was nothing; the straps held firm. Whatever they had given him, it had taken his strength away.

  “Try not to excite yourself, Mr. Grey. Your friend is perfectly fine. The baby, too. What we’re a little unclear on is just how the two of you came to be together. I was hoping you might help us with that.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  One eyebrow lifted incredulously behind the faceplate. “For starters, it seems that the two of you are the last people to come out of Colorado alive. Believe me when I tell you, this is a matter of some interest to us. Was she at the Chalet? Is that where you met her?”

  Just the word made Grey’s mind clench with panic. “The Chalet?”

  “Yes, Mr. Grey. The Chalet.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Then where?”

  He swallowed. “At the Home Depot.”

  For just a moment, Guilder said nothing. “Where was this?”

  Grey tried to put his thoughts together, but his brain had gone all fuzzy again. “Denver someplace. I don’t know exactly. She wanted me to paint the nursery.”

  Guilder quickly turned toward the second man, who shrugged. “Could be the fentanyl,” Nelson said. “It may take him a little while to sort things out.”

  But Guilder was undeterred. There was something more forceful about the man’s gaze now. It seemed to bore right into him. “We need to know what happened at the Chalet. How did you get away?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Was there a girl there? Did you see her?”

  There was a girl? What were they talking about?

  “I didn’t see anyone. I just… I don’t know. It was all so confusing. I woke up at the Red Roof.”

  “The Red Roof? What’s that?”

  “A motel, on the highway.”

  A puzzled frown. “When was this?”

  Grey tried to count. “Three days ago? No, four.” He nodded his head against the pillow. “Four days.”

  The two men looked at each other. “It doesn’t make sense,” Nelson said. “The Chalet was destroyed twenty-two days ago. He’s not Rip Van Winkle.”

  “Where were you for those three weeks?” Guilder pressed.

  The question made no sense. Three weeks?

  “I don’t know,” Grey said.

  “I’ll ask you again, Mr. Grey. Was Lila at the Chalet? Is that where you met her?”

  “I told you,” he said. He was pleading now, his resistance gone. “She was at the Home Depot.”

  His thoughts were swirling like water going down a drain. Whatever they’d given him, it had screwed him up good. With a thump in his gut, Grey realized what the straps were all about. They were going to study him. Like the sticks. Like Zero. And when they were done with him, Richards, or somebody like him, would put the red light on Grey, and that would be the end of him.

  “Please, it’s me you want. I’m sorry I ran away. Just don’t hurt Lila.”

  For a moment the two men said nothing, just stared at him from behind their faceplates. Then Guilder turned toward Nelson, nodding.

  “Put him back under.”

  Nelson took a syringe and a vial of clear liquid from the cart. While Grey looked on helplessly, he inserted the needle into the IV tube and pushed the plunger.

  “I just clean,” Grey said feebly. “I’m just a janitor.”

  “Oh, I think you’re much more than that, Mr. Grey.”

  And with these words in his ears, Grey slipped away again.

  Guilder and Nelson stepped through the air lock into the decontamination chamber. First a shower in their biosuits; then they stripped and scrubbed themselves head to foot with a harsh, chemical-smelling soap. They cleared their throats and spat into the sink, gargling for a minute with a strong disinfectant. A cumbersome ritual but, until they knew more about Grey’s condition, one they were wise to observe.

  Just a skeletal staff was present in the building: three lab technicians—Guilder thought of them as Wynken, Blynken, and Nod—plus an MD and a four-man Blackbird security team. The building had been constructed in the late eighties to treat soldiers exposed to nuclear, biological, or chemical agents, and the systems were buggy as hell—the aboveground HVAC was on the fritz, as was video surveillance for the entire facility—and the place had a disconcertingly deserted feel to it. But it was the last place anybody would look for them.

  Nelson and Guilder stepped into the lab, a wide room of desks and equipment, including the powerful microscopes and blood spinners they’d need to isolate and culture the virus. While Grey and Lila were still unconscious, they’d each had a CT scan and blood drawn; their blood tests had been inconclusive, but Grey’s scan had revealed a radically enlarged thymus, typical of those infected. And yet as far as Nelson and Guilder could discern, he’d experienced no other symptoms. In every other way he appeared to be in the pink of health. Better than that: the man looked like he could run a marathon.

  “Let me show you something,” Nelson said.

  He escorted Guilder to the terminal in an adjacent office where he’d set up shop. Nelson opened a file and clicked on a JPEG. A photo appeared on the screen of Lawrence Grey. Or, rather, a man who resembled Grey; the face in the photograph looked considerably older. Sagging skin, hair a thin flap over his scalp, sunken eyes that gazed into the camera with a dull, almost bovine look.

  “When was this taken?” Guilder asked.

  “Seventeen months ago. These are Richards’s files.”

  God damn, Guilder thought. It was just like Lear had said.

  “If he’s got the virus,” Nelson said, “the question is why it’s acting differently in his body. It could be a variant we haven’t seen, one that activates the thymus like the others and then goes dormant somehow. Or it could be something else, particular to him.”

  Guilder frowned. “Such as?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Some sort of natural immunity seems the likely culprit, but there’s no way of really knowing. It might have something to do with the anti-androgens he was taking. All the sweeps were taking pretty big doses. Depo-Provera, spironolactone, prednisone.”

  “You think the steroids did this?”

  Nelson shrugged halfheartedly. “It could be a factor. We know the virus interacts with the endocrine system, same as the anti-androgens.” He closed the file and turned in his chair. “But here’s something else. I did a little digging on the woman. Not much to find, but what there is is mighty interesting. I printed it up for you.”

  Nelson presented him with a fat file of papers. Guilder opened to the first page.

  “She’s an MD?”

  “Orthopedic surgeon. Keep going.”

  Guilder read. Lila Beatrice Kyle, born September 29, 1974, Boston, Massachusetts. Parents both academics, the father an English professor at BU, the mother a historian at Simmons. Andover then Wellesley, followed by four years at Dartmouth-Hitchcock for her medical degree. Residency and then a fellowship in orthopedics at Denver General. All impressive, but telling him nothing. Guilder turned to the next page. What was he looking at? The first page of an IRS form 1040, dated four years ago.

  Lila Kyle was married to Brad Wolgast.

  “You’re kidding me.”

  Nelson was wearing one of his victorious grins. “I told you that you were going to like it. The Agent Wolgast. They had one child, a daughter, deceased. Some kind of congenital heart defect. Divorced three years later. She got remarried four months ago to a doctor who works at the same hospital, some big cardiologist. There’s a f
ew pages on him, too, though it doesn’t really add anything.”

  “Okay, so she’s an MD. Is there any record of her at the Chalet? Was it possible she was on the staff?”

  Nelson shook his head. “Nothing. And I seriously doubt Richards would have missed this. As far as I can see, there’s no reason not to think Grey found her just like he said.”

  “She could have been in the truck in that first aerial we got. We wouldn’t have seen her.”

  “True. But I don’t think Grey’s lying about where he met her. The story’s just too weird to make up. And I checked: her Denver address puts her within just a couple of miles of a Home Depot. The way Grey was headed, he would have gone right through there. You’ve talked to her. She seems to think Grey is some kind of handyman. I don’t think she has a clue what’s going on. The woman’s crazy as a bedbug.”

  “Is that your official diagnosis?”

  Nelson shrugged. “There’s no history of psychiatric illness in the paperwork, but consider her situation. She’s pregnant, hiding, on the run. People are getting ripped to shreds. Somehow she manages to stay alive, but she gets left behind. How would you feel? The brain’s a pretty nimble organ. Right now it’s rewriting reality for her, and doing a hell of a good job. Based on Grey’s file, I’d say she’s got plenty in common with the guy, actually.”

  Guilder thought a moment and returned the file to the desk. “Well, I’m not buying it. What are the chances that these two would simply bump into each other? It’s too big a coincidence.”

  “Maybe,” Nelson said. “Either way, it doesn’t tell us much. And the woman might be infected, but we’re just not seeing it. Maybe her pregnancy masks it somehow.”

  “How far along is she?”

  “I’m no expert, but from fetal size, I’d say about thirty weeks. You can check with Suresh.”

  Suresh was the MD Guilder had brought in from USAMRIID. An infectious diseases doc, he’d been tasked to Special Weapons only six months ago. Guilder had told him little, only that Grey and the woman were “persons of interest.”

  “How long before we can get a decent culture from him?”

  “That depends. Assuming we can isolate the virus at all, somewhere between forty-eight and seventy-two hours. If you’re really asking my opinion, the wisest course would be to pack him off to Atlanta. They’re the ones who are best equipped to handle something like this. And if Grey’s immune, I can’t see why they wouldn’t just let bygones be bygones. Not with so much at stake.”

  Guilder shook his head. “Let’s wait until we have something solid.”

  “I wouldn’t wait long. Not with the way things are going.”

  “We won’t. But you heard the guy. He thinks he’s been sleeping in a motel. I doubt anybody’s going to take us seriously if that’s all we’ve got. They’ll lock us both up and throw away the key if we’re lucky.”

  Nelson frowned, touching his beard with a thoughtful gesture. “I see your point.”

  “I’m not saying we won’t tell them,” Guilder offered. “But let’s move cautiously. Seventy-two hours, then I’ll make the call, all right?”

  A frozen moment followed. Had Nelson bought it? Then the man nodded.

  “Just keep digging.” Guilder clapped a hand on Nelson’s shoulder. “And tell Suresh to keep the two of them sedated for the time being. If either of them flips, I don’t want to take any chances.”

  “You think those straps will hold?”

  The question was rhetorical; both men knew the answer.

  Guilder left Nelson in the lab and rode the elevator to the roof. His left leg was dragging again, a hitch in his step like a hiccup. Outside, the Blackbird officer in charge, named Masterson, nodded a terse greeting but otherwise left him alone. Vintage Blackbird, this guy: built like a dump truck with arms as thick as hydrants and a face petrified into the self-satisfied sneer of an overgrown frat boy. In his wraparound sunglasses and baseball cap and body armor, Masterson seemed less a person than an action figure. Where did they get these characters? Were they grown on some kind of farm? Cultured in a petri dish? They were thugs, pure and simple, and Guilder had never liked dealing with them—Richards being Exhibit A—though it was also true that their almost robotic obedience made them ideally suited for certain jobs; if they didn’t exist, you’d have to invent them.

  He moved to the edge of the roof. It was just past noon, the air breathless under a shapeless white sun, the land as flat and featureless as a pool table. The only interruptions to the perfectly linear horizon were a gleaming domed building, probably something to do with the college, and, just to the south, the bowl-like shape of a football stadium. One of those kinds of schools, Guilder thought—a sports franchise masquerading as a college where criminals drifted through phony courses and filled the coffers of the alumni fund by pounding their opposite numbers to pieces on autumn afternoons.

  He let his eyes peruse the FEMA camp below. The presence of refugees was a wrinkle he hadn’t anticipated, and initially it had concerned him. But when he’d considered the situation more closely, he couldn’t see how this made any difference. The word from the Army was that in a day or two they’d all be gone anyway. A group of boys were playing near the wire, kicking a half-deflated ball around in the dirt. For a few minutes Guilder watched them. The world could be falling apart, and yet children were children; at a moment’s notice they could put all their cares aside and lose themselves in a game. Perhaps that was what Guilder had felt with Shawna: a few minutes in which he got to be the boy he never was. Maybe that was all he’d ever wanted—what anybody ever wanted.

  But Lawrence Grey: something about the man nagged at him, and it wasn’t just his incredible story or the improbable coincidence of the woman in question being Agent Wolgast’s wife. It was the way Grey had spoken of her. Please, it’s me you want. Just don’t hurt Lila. Guilder never would have guessed Grey was capable of caring about another person like that, let alone a woman. Everything in his file had led Guilder to expect a man who was at best a loner, at worst a sociopath. But Grey’s pleas on Lila’s behalf had obviously been heartfelt. Something had happened between them; a bond had been forged.

  His gaze widened, then taking in the entirety of the camp. All these people: they were trapped. And not merely by the wires that surrounded them. Physical barricades were nothing compared to the wires of the mind. What had truly imprisoned them was one another. Husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and companions: what they believed had given them strength in their lives had actually done the opposite. Guilder recalled the couple who lived across the street from his townhouse, trading off their sleeping daughter on the way to the car. How heavy that burden must have felt in their arms. And when the end swept down upon them all, they would exit the world on a wave of suffering, their agonies magnified a million times over by the loss of her. Would they have to watch her die? Would they perish first, knowing what would become of her in their absence? Which was preferable? But the answer was neither. Love had sealed their doom. Which was what love did. Guilder’s father had taught that lesson well enough.

  Guilder was dying. That was inarguable, a fact of nature. So, too, was the fact that Lawrence Grey—this disposable nobody, this goddamn janitor, a man who had in his pathetic life brought nothing but misery to the world—was not. Somewhere in the body of Lawrence Grey lay the secret to the ultimate freedom, and Horace Guilder would find it, and take it for his own.

  18

  The days crawled past. And still no word on the buses.

  Everyone was restless. Outside the wire, the Army came and went, its numbers thinning. Each morning, Kittridge went to the shed to inquire about the situation; each morning, he came away with the same answer: the buses are on the way, be patient.

  For a whole day it rained, turning the camp into a giant mud bath. Now the sun had returned, cooking every surface with a crust of dried earth. Each afternoon more MREs appeared, tossed from the back of an Army five-ton, but never any news
. The chemical toilets were foul, the waste cans overflowing with trash. Kittridge spent hours watching the front gate; no more refugees were coming in. With each passing day, the place had begun to feel like an island surrounded by a hostile sea.

  He’d made an ally of Vera, the Red Cross volunteer who had first approached them in the check-in line. She was younger than Kittridge had first thought, a nursing student at Midwest State. Like all the civilian workers, she seemed utterly drained, the days of strain weighing in her face. She understood his frustration, she said, everyone did. She had hoped to take the buses, too; she was stranded like the rest of them. One day they were coming from Chicago, then next from Kansas City, then from Joliet. Some FEMA screwup. They were supposed to get a bank of satellite phones, too, so people could call their relatives and let them know they were okay. What had happened to that, Vera didn’t know. Even the local cell network was down.

  Kittridge had begun to see the same faces: an elegantly dressed woman who kept a cat on a leash, a group of young black men all dressed in the white shirts and black neckties of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a girl in a cheer-leading outfit. A listlessness had settled over the camp; the deflected drama of nondeparture had left everyone in a passive state. There were rumors that the water supply had become contaminated, and now the medical tent was full of people complaining of stomach cramps, muscle aches, fever. A number of people had radios that were still operating, but all they heard was a ringing sound, followed by the now-familiar statement from the Emergency Broadcast System. Do not leave your homes. Shelter in place. Obey all orders of military and law enforcement personnel. Another minute of ringing, and the words would be repeated.

  Kittridge had begun to wonder if they were ever getting out of there. And all night long, he watched the fences.

  Late afternoon of the fourth day: Kittridge was playing yet another hand of cards with April, Pastor Don, and Mrs. Bellamy. They’d switched from bridge to five-card poker, betting ludicrous sums of money that were purely hypothetical. April, who claimed never to have played before, had already taken Kittridge for close to five thousand dollars. The Wilkeses had disappeared; nobody had seen them since Wednesday. Wherever they’d gone, they’d taken their luggage with them.