The Twelve (Book Two of The Passage Trilogy): A Novel (12 page)

“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 N
OAH
, 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 drove 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 N
OAH
? 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 place 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.”

“Um, I don’t know how.”

“Of course you do.” She gestured toward the counter. “Just put it in the whatchamacallit.”

“Lady, I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“Well, just for starters, the power’s out.”

This remark seemed to have some beneficial effect. The woman tilted her face toward the ceiling.

“Now, I think I did notice that,” she said airily. “It does seem a little dim in here.”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say so?” she huffed. “So, no Garden Gate. No color at all, from what you’re saying. I have to tell you this comes as a disappointment. I was really hoping to get the nursery done today.”

“Lady, I don’t think—”

“The truth is, David should really be the one doing this, but oh no, he has to go off and save the world and leave me stuck in the house like a prisoner. And where the hell is Yolanda? Pardon my French. You know, after everything I’ve done for her, I’d expect a little consideration. Even just a call.”

David. Yolanda. Who were these people? It was all completely baffling, and not a little weird, but one thing was obvious: this poor woman was completely alone. Unless Grey found a way to get her out of here, she wouldn’t last long.

“Maybe you could just paint it white,” he offered. “I’m sure they got lots of that.”

She looked at him skeptically. “Why would I want to paint it white?”

“They say white goes with anything, right?” For the love of God, listen to him; he sounded like one of those fags on TV. “You can do anything with white. Maybe add something else with color in the room. The curtains and stuff.”

She hesitated. “I don’t know. White does seem a little plain. On the other hand, I did want to get the painting done today.”