The Twelve (Book Two of The Passage Trilogy): A Novel

by Justin Cronin

  She lay still a moment. The tapping was coming from the window. She pushed the blanket aside and crossed the room, and drew the drapes aside. The grounds of the Dome were kept lit at night, an island of luminescence in a sea of darkness, and through the beams of these lights an icy snow was pouring down, tossed on gusting winds. It seemed more ice than snow, but as she lingered, something changed. The particles slowed and fattened, becoming snowflakes. They descended upon every surface, building a mantle of white. In the other two rooms of the apartment Lila slept, and Sara’s daughter, snug in her little bed. How Sara longed to go to her, to lift her child into her arms and carry her back to the couch and hold her as she slept. To touch her hair, her skin, to feel the warm brush of her breath. But this thought was an empty dream, nothing she dared allow herself to imagine was actually possible. Aching with longing, Sara watched the falling snow, welcoming its slow erasure of the world, though down in the flatland, she knew, it meant something else. Frozen fingers, frozen toes, bodies racked with cold. The months of dark and misery. Well, Sara thought with a shiver. The winter. So it begins. At least I’ll be inside.

  But when she awoke in the morning, something changed again.

  “Dani, look! Snow!”

  A glittering light blasted into the room. The little girl, dressed in her nightshirt, had perched on a chair to draw back the drapes and was pressing her nose to the frosted window. Sara rose quickly from the couch and yanked them shut.

  “But I want to see!”

  From the inner room: “Dani! Where are you? I need you!”

  “Just a minute!” Sara looked into the girl’s pleading eyes. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. You know the rule.”

  “But she can stay in bed!”

  “Dani!”

  Sara heaved a sigh. Lila’s mornings were difficult, beset by focusless anxiety and nameless dread. The effect was magnified with each day that passed since her last feeding. Under the blood’s restorative spell, she became cheerful and affectionate to both of them, even a little giddy, though her interest in Kate felt more abstract than personal; she seemed not to comprehend fully the child’s age, often speaking to her as if she were an infant. On these good days, Lila appeared fully persuaded that she was living in some place called Cherry Creek, married to a man named David—though she also spoke of someone named Brad, the two seeming interchangeable—and that Sara was a housekeeper sent by “the service,” whatever that was. But as the effect of the blood waned, over a period of four or five days, she became abrupt and panicky, as if this elaborate fantasy was increasingly difficult to maintain.

  “Let me get her in the bath. Then I’ll see if I can take you outside to play. Do we have a deal?”

  The little girl nodded vigorously.

  “Now get dressed.”

  Sara found Lila sitting up in bed, clutching the folds of her thin nightgown over her chest. If Sara had to guess her age, she would have said the woman looked about fifty; tomorrow it would be more, the lines of her face deepening, her muscles sagging, her hair graying and growing thin. Sometimes the change was so precipitous Sara could actually watch it happening. Then Guilder would bring the blood, Sara would be banished from the room with Kate, and by the time they returned, Lila would be a lush-haired, smooth-skinned twenty-five-year-old once more, the cycle starting over.

  “Why didn’t you answer me? I was worried.”

  “I’m sorry, I overslept.”

  “Where’s Eva?”

  Sara explained that the girl was getting dressed and excused herself to prepare Lila’s bath. Like the woman’s dressing table, the bath was a place of totemic importance. In its deep, lion-clawed cocoon, the woman could soak for hours. Sara opened the tap and laid out Lila’s soaps and oils and little jars of cream with two fat, freshly laundered towels. Lila liked to bathe by candlelight; Sara took a box of wooden matches from the vanity and lit the candelabra. By the time Lila appeared in the doorway, the air was opaque with steam. Sara, in her heavy attendant’s robe, had begun to sweat. Lila closed the door and turned away to remove her dressing gown. Her upper body was thin, though not as thin as it would become, its mass redistributing downward over the days, into her hips and thighs. She turned to face Sara again and regarded the tub with a look of caution.

  “Dani, I’m not really feeling myself today. Could you help me in?”

  Sara took Lila by the hand as she stepped gingerly over the railing and lowered herself into the steaming water. Once she was immersed, the woman’s expression softened, tension departing her face. Sinking down to her chin, she took a long, happy breath, moving her hands like paddles to shift the water to and fro across her body. She leaned back to wet her hair, then shimmied up, bracing her back against the side of the tub. Freed of gravity, the woman’s breasts floated over her chest in a pantomime of restored youth.

  “I do love the bath,” she murmured.

  Sara took her place on the stool beside the tub. “Hair first?”

  “Mmmmmm.” Lila’s eyes were closed. “Please.”

  Sara began. As with everything, there was a certain way Lila liked it done. First the crown of her head, Sara’s hands vigorously massaging, then moving downward to smooth the long strands of hair between her fingers. The soap, then a rinse, then the same order of events repeated with the scented oil. Sometimes she had Sara do this more than once.

  “It snowed last night,” Sara ventured.

  “Hmmmm.” Lila’s face was relaxed, her eyes still closed. “Well, that’s Denver for you. If you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute, it will change. That’s something my father always said.”

  Lila’s father’s sayings, duly noted as such, were a prominent feature of their conversations. Sara used a pitcher dipped in bathwater to pour the soap away from Lila’s forehead and began to work in the oil.

  “So I suppose everything will be closed,” Lila continued. “I really wanted to get to the market. We’re practically out of everything.” Never mind that, as far as Sara was aware, Lila never set foot from the apartment. “You know what I’d like, Dani? A long, lovely lunch. Someplace special. With good linens and china and flowers on the table.”

  Sara had learned to go along. “That sounds nice.”

  Lila gave a protracted sigh of memory, sinking deeper into the bath. “I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I had a long, lovely lunch.”

  A few minutes passed, Sara working the oil into the woman’s scalp. “I think Eva would enjoy some time outside.” It felt like a monstrous lie to say this name, but sometimes it was unavoidable.

  “Yes, I suppose she would,” Lila said noncommittally.

  “I was wondering, are there any other children she can play with?”

  “Other children?”

  “Yes, someone her own age. I thought it would be good for her to have some friends.”

  Lila frowned uncomfortably. Sara wondered if she’d pressed too far. “Well,” she said, with a tone of concession, “there’s that neighbor girl, little what’s-her-name. With the dark hair. But I hardly ever see her. Most of the families around here keep to themselves. Bunch of sticks-in-the-mud, if you ask me.” Then: “But you’re a good friend to her, aren’t you, Dani?”

  A friend. What stinging irony. “I try to be.”

  “No, it’s more than that.” Lila smiled drowsily. “There’s something different about you, I can tell. I think it’s wonderful for Eva, having a friend like you.”

  “So I can take her outside,” Sara said.

  “In a minute.” Lila closed her eyes again. “I was hoping you could read to me. I do so love to be read to in the bath.”

  By the time they escaped, it was nearly noon. Sara bundled Eva in a coat and mittens and rubber galoshes and a woolen cap, pulling it down over the little girl’s ears. For herself she had only the robe, and nothing for her feet but her ratty sneakers and wool socks, but she hardly cared. Cold feet, so what? They took the stairs to the courtyard and emerged into a world so remade it felt lik
e an entirely new place. The air had a sharp, fresh smell, and the sun was rebounding off the snow with eye-searing intensity. After so many days in the enforced gloom of the apartment, Sara had to pause at the threshold to give her vision a moment to adjust. But Kate had no such difficulty. With a snap of energy she released Sara’s hand and bolted from the doorway, propelling herself across the courtyard. By the time Sara had slogged toward her—she might have erred about the sneakers; they were going to be a problem—the child was scooping handfuls of downy snow into her mouth.

  “It tastes … cold.” Her face beamed with happiness. “Try some.”

  Sara did as instructed. “Yum,” she said.

  She showed the girl how to build a snowman. Her mind was full of sweet nostalgia; it was as if she were a Little again, playing in the courtyard of the Sanctuary. But this was different; Sara was the mother now. Time had turned its inexorable circle. How wonderful to feel her daughter’s infectious happiness, to experience the sense of wonder that passed between them. For the time being, all pain was banished from Sara’s mind. They could have been anywhere. The two of them.

  Sara thought of Amy, too, the first time in years she had done this. Amy, who had never been a little girl, or so it seemed, but somehow always was; Amy, the Girl from Nowhere, in whose person time was not a circle but a thing stopped and held, a century cupped in the hand. Sara felt a sudden, unexpected sadness for her. She had always wondered why Amy had destroyed the vials of virus that night at the Farmstead, casting them into the flames. Sara had hated them, not just what they represented but the very fact of their existence, but she had also known what they were: a hope of salvation, the one weapon powerful enough to use against the Twelve. (The Twelve, she thought; how long had it been since that name had crossed her mind as well?) Sara had never known quite what to think of Amy’s decision; now she had her answer. Amy had known that the life those vials had denied her was the only true human reality. In Sara’s daughter, this triumphantly alive little person that Sara’s body had made, lay the answer to the greatest mystery of all—the mystery of death, and what came after. How obvious it was. Death was nothing, because there was no death. By the simple fact of Kate’s existence, Sara was joined to something eternal. To have a child was to receive the gift of true immortality—not time stopped, as it had stopped in Amy, but time continuing and everlasting.

  “Let’s make snow angels,” she said.

  Kate had never done this. They lay down side by side, their bodies enveloped in whiteness and the tips of their fingers just touching. Above them the sun and sky looked down in witness. They moved their limbs back and forth and rose to inspect the imprints. Sara explained what angels were: they’re us.

  “That’s funny,” said Kate, smiling.

  The serving girl, Jenny, would be bringing lunch; their time in the snow was at an end. Sara imagined the rest of the day: Lila lost in fantasy, leaving the two of them alone; wet clothing drying on racks by the fire, Sara and her daughter snuggled on the sofa and the sweet exchange of heat where their bodies touched and the hours of stories she would read—Peter Rabbit and Squirrel Nutkin and James and the Giant Peach—before the two of them drifted together into a sleep of intertwining dreams. Never had she been so happy.

  They were walking back to the entrance when Sara glanced up to the window and saw that the drapes were pulled aside. Lila was watching them, her eyes concealed behind dark glasses. How long had she stood there?

  “What’s she doing?” Kate asked.

  Sara summoned a smile to her face. “I think she was just enjoying watching us.” But inside she felt a spark of fear.

  “Why do I have to call her Mummy?”

  Sara stopped in her tracks. “What did you say?”

  For a moment the girl was silent. Melted snow was dripping off the branches.

  “I’m tired, Dani,” Kate said. “Can you pick me up?”

  Unbearable joy. The girl’s weight was nothing in her arms. It was the missing part of her, come home. Lila was still watching from the window, but Sara didn’t care. Kate wrapped her arms and legs tightly around her, and in this manner, Sara carried her daughter out of the snow and back to the apartment.

  Sara had received no messages; every day she looked for the inverted spoon, the note tucked under the plate, finding none. Jenny came and went, depositing her trays of bread and cornmeal and soup and wordlessly scurrying away. Having virtually never left the apartment except to take Kate to the courtyard, Sara had glimpsed Vale only once, when Lila had sent her to look for a maintenance worker to unplug the tub’s drain. He was walking down the corridor in the company of two other cols, including the jowly one who had met them at the elevator on Sara’s first day. Vale had passed right by her. As ever, his disguise—which was really just a way of carrying himself, the confident saunter of his rank—was absolutely seamless. No recognition occurred between them; if Vale knew who she was, he gave no sign.

  She wasn’t supposed to send a message on her own except for an emergency, but the lack of contact left her anxious. Finally she decided to risk it. There was no loose paper in the apartment, but of course there were the books. One night after Lila had gone to bed, Sara tore a small piece from the back of Winnie-the-Pooh. The larger problem was finding something to write with; there were no pens or pencils in the apartment. But in the bottom drawer of Lila’s dressing table she found a sewing kit with a cushion of needles. Sara selected the one that looked the sharpest, jabbed it into the tip of her index finger, and squeezed, summoning a bead of blood. Using the needle as a makeshift pen, she scrawled her message onto the paper.

  Need meeting. D.

  The following day, when Jenny came to collect her lunch tray, Sara was waiting. Rather than allow the girl to simply whisk it away as usual, Sara lifted the tray from the table and held it out to her, making eye contact and then darting her glance downward, lest the point be missed.

  “Thank you, Jenny.”

  Two days later came the reply. Sara secreted the note into the folds of her robe, waiting for a private moment. This didn’t happen until later in the day, when Lila napped. She was close to the end of her cycle now, parched and infirm and out of sorts; soon Guilder would be coming with the blood. In the bathroom Sara unfolded the slip of paper, on which was written a time and place and a single sentence of instruction. Sara’s heart sank; she hadn’t realized she’d have to leave the Dome. She would need to secure Lila’s permission under some credible pretext; if she didn’t get it, she had no idea what she’d do. With Lila in her impaired state, Sara wondered if the woman would even comprehend the request.

  She broached the subject the next day while she was washing Lila’s hair. A few hours off, was how she put it. An outing to the market. It would be good to see a few new faces, and while she was there she could look for some special oils or soaps. The request aroused in Lila a palpable anxiety; she’d become more clingy recently, barely letting Sara out of her sight. But in the end she yielded to the gentle force of Sara’s argument. Just don’t be too long, said Lila. I never know what to do without you, Dani.

  Vale had paved the way; at the front desk, the col handed her the pass with a perfunctory warning that it was only for two hours. Sara stepped into the wind and headed toward the market. Only cols and redeyes were allowed to barter there; currency took the form of small plastic chips in three colors, red, blue, and white. In the pocket of Sara’s robe were five of each, part of the compensation that Lila doled out to her every seven days, furthering the fiction that Sara was a paid employee. The snow had been pushed from the sidewalks in what had once been the town’s small commercial area, three blocks of brick buildings adjacent to the college. Most of the city went unused and abandoned, fading into soft decay; nearly all of the redeyes, except for senior staff, lived in a mid-rise apartment complex at the south end of downtown. The market was the heart of the city, with checkpoints at either end. Some of the buildings still bore signs indicating their original function: Iowa St
ate Bank, Fort Powell Army-Navy, Wimpy’s Café, Prairie Books and Music. There was even a small movie theater with a marquee; Sara had heard that cols were sometimes permitted to go, to watch the handful of movies that were shown over and over again.

  She displayed her pass at the checkpoint. The streets were vacant save for the patrols and a handful of redeyes, strolling in their luxuriously heavy coats and sunglasses. Shielded by her veil, Sara moved in a bubble of anonymity, though this sense of security was, she knew, a dangerous illusion. She walked at a pace that was neither fast nor slow, her head down against the cold gusts that whipped up from the streets and around the corners of the buildings.

  She came to the apothecary. Bells tinkled as she stepped inside. The room was warm and fragrant with wood smoke and herbs. Behind the counter, a woman with a scrim of gray hair and a puckered, toothless mouth was bent over a scale, measuring out minute quantities of a pale yellow powder and funneling them into tiny glass vials. She lifted her eyes as Sara entered, then darted them to the col lingering by a display of scented oils. Be careful. I know who you are. Don’t approach until I get rid of him. Then, speaking in an elevated, helpful voice: “Sir, perhaps you were looking for something special.”

  The col was sniffing a bar of soap. Mid-thirties, not unhandsome, broadcasting an air of vanity. He returned the soap to its place on the display. “Something for a headache.”

  “Ah.” A smile of assurance; the solution was in hand. “Just a moment.”

  The old woman selected a jar from the wall of herbals behind her, spooned the dry leaves into a paper package, and handed it to him over the counter. “Dissolve this in warm water. Just a pinch should do it.”

  He surveyed the package uneasily. “What’s in it? You’re not trying to poison me, old woman?”