The Twelve (Book Two of The Passage Trilogy): A Novel (24 page)

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.

“Jesus, it’s roasting in here,” Joe Robinson said. He’d barely been off his cot all day.

“Sit in a hand,” Kittridge suggested. “It’ll take your mind off the heat.”

“Christ,” the man moaned. The sweat was pouring off him. “I can barely move.”

Kittridge, with only a pair of sixes, folded his cards. April, wearing a perfect poker face, raked in another pot.

“I’m bored,” Tim announced.

April was sorting the slips of paper they used for chips into piles. “You can play with me. I’ll show you how to bet.”

“I want to play crazy eights.”

“Trust me,” she told her brother, “this is a lot better.”

Pastor Don was dealing a fresh hand when Vera appeared at the flap of the tent. She quickly met Kittridge’s eye. “Can we talk outside?”

He rose from the cot and stepped into the late-day heat.

“Something’s going on,” Vera said. “FEMA just got word that all civilian transportation east of the Mississippi has been suspended.”

“Are you certain?”

“I overheard them talking about it in the site director’s office. Half the FEMA staff has bugged out already.”

“Who else knows about this?”

“Are you kidding? I’m not even telling you.”

So there it was; they were being abandoned. “Who’s the officer in charge?”

“Major something. I think her name is Porcheki.”

A stroke of luck. “Where is she now?”

“She should be in the shed. There was some colonel, but he’s gone. A
lot
of them are gone.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

Vera frowned doubtfully. “What can you do?”

“Maybe nothing. But at least it’s worth a try.”

She hurried away; Kittridge returned to the tent. “Where’s Delores?”

Wood lifted his eyes from his cards. “I think she’s working in one of the medical tents. The Red Cross put out a call for volunteers.”

“Somebody go get her.”

When everyone was present, Kittridge explained the situation. Assuming Porcheki would provide fuel for the bus—a big if—they would have to wait to leave until morning, at the earliest.

“Do you really think she’ll help us?” Pastor Don asked.

“I admit it’s a long shot.”

“I say we just steal it and get the hell out of here,” Jamal said. “Let’s not wait.”

“It may come to that, and I’d agree, except for two things. One, we’re talking about the Army. Stealing it sounds like a good way to get shot. And two, we’ve got at most a couple of hours of light left. It’s a long way to Chicago, and I don’t want to try this in the dark. Make sense?”

Jamal nodded.

“The important thing is to keep this quiet and stick together. Once this thing gets out, all hell’s going to break loose. Everybody stay close to the tent. You, too, Tim. No wandering off.”

Kittridge had stepped from the tent when Delores caught up with him. “I’m concerned about this fever,” she said quickly. “The med tents are being completely overrun. All the supplies are used up, no antibiotics, nothing. This thing is getting out of hand.”

“What do you think it is?”

“The obvious culprit would be typhus. The same thing happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Vanessa. This many people crammed in, it was just a matter of time. If you ask me, we can’t leave fast enough.”

Another worry, Kittridge thought. Quickening his stride, he made his way to the shed, past overflowing dumpsters where crows were picking at the garbage. The birds had showed up the prior evening, attracted, no doubt, by the reek of accumulating trash. Now the place seemed full of them, so brazen they would practically snatch food from your hand. Never a good sign, he thought, when the crows showed up.

At the command tent, Kittridge chose the most direct approach, doing nothing to announce his presence before stepping inside. Porcheki was seated at a long table, speaking into a satellite phone. Three noncoms occupied the room, a densely packed jumble of electronic equipment. One of the soldiers yanked off his headset and shot to his feet.

“What are you doing in here? This area is restricted, no civilians.”

But as the soldier stepped toward Kittridge, Porcheki stopped him.

“It’s all right, Corporal.” Her face a mask of weariness, she put down the phone. “Sergeant Kittridge. What can I do for you?”

“You’re pulling out, aren’t you?” The idea had formed in his mind even as he’d spoken the words.

Porcheki weighed him with her eyes. Then, to the soldiers: “Would you excuse us, please?”

“Major—”

“That’s all, Corporal.”

With visible reluctance, the three exited the tent.

“Yes,” Porcheki said. “We’ve been ordered back to the Illinois line. The entire state goes under quarantine at eighteen hundred hours tomorrow.”

“You can’t just leave these people. They’re totally defenseless.”

“I know that, too.” She was looking at him closely. She seemed on the verge of some announcement. Then: “You were at Bagram, weren’t you?”

“Ma’am?”

“I thought I recognized you. I was there, with the Seventy-second Medical Expeditionary Group. You wouldn’t remember me, I don’t think.” Her eyes darted downward. “How’s the leg?”

Kittridge was almost too stunned to reply. “I get around okay.”

A faint nod and, on her troubled face, what might have passed for a smile. “I’m glad to see you made it, Sergeant. I heard about what happened. That was a terrible thing, with the boy.” Her officious manner returned. “As for the other, I’ve got two dozen coaches en route from the arsenal at Rock Island and a pair of refuelers. Plus your bus, that makes twenty-five. Not enough, obviously, but it’s what I could put together. This is not for general consumption, mind you. We don’t want to start a
panic. I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say I’m going way off the reservation here. Are we clear?”

Kittridge nodded.

“When those buses pull in, you’ll want to be ready. You know what these things are like. You keep control as long as you can, but sooner or later it gets ragged around the edges. People will do the math, and you can bet nobody’s going to want to be left behind. We should have time to make four trips before the border closes. That should do it, but we’ll have very little margin. You have a driver for your bus?”

Kittridge nodded again. “Danny.”

“The one with the hat? Forgive me, Sergeant, I mean no disrespect to the man. But I need to be sure he can handle this.”

“You won’t do better than him. You have my word.”

A quick hesitation, then she agreed. “Have him report here at oh-three-hundred. The first load departs at oh-four-thirty. Just remember what I said. You want to get your people out of here, get them on those buses.”

The next thing surprised Kittridge most of all. Porcheki leaned down, opened the bottom drawer of her desk, and removed a pair of pistols. Kittridge’s own Glocks, still in their holsters. She handed him a blue windbreaker with
FEMA
stenciled on the back.

“Just keep them under wraps. Report to Corporal Danes outside and he’ll escort you to the armory. Take all the rounds you need.”