The Twelve (Book Two of The Passage Trilogy): A Novel (81 page)

His eyes were closed. He nodded slightly, making a murmur of assent.

“Good. Count to sixty, and when you get there, throw yourself off the balcony.”

She unlocked the door and stepped inside. There was something deceptively benign about the room. Two wingback chairs faced an enormous desk, its polished surface gleaming faintly. The floor was covered in thick carpet, muffling everything but the sound of Amy’s breathing. One whole wall was books; another displayed a large painting, lit by a tiny spotlight, of three figures sitting at a long counter and a fourth man in a white hat, all seen through a window on a darkened street. Amy paused to read the small plaque at the base of its frame: Edward Hopper,
Nighthawks
, 1942.

To her right was a pair of parlor doors with windows of leaded glass. Amy turned the knob and eased through.

Guilder was lying on top of the blankets in his underwear. A pile of cardboard folders floated in the sea of bedding beside him. Soft, windy snores were issuing from his nose. Where should she stand? She chose the foot of the bed.

“Director Guilder.”

He jerked violently awake, darting a hand beneath his pillow. He pushed himself up the headboard, scrambling away from her; with both hands he leveled the pistol at her and cocked the hammer. He was trembling so profoundly Amy thought he might shoot her by accident.

“How did you get in here?”

She sensed his uncertainty. The robe of an attendant, but the face was none he knew. “The guard was very accommodating. Why don’t you put that down?”

“Goddamnit,
who are you
?”

She heard voices from the hall, fists pounding on the outer door.

“I am Sergio,” she said. “I’ve come here to surrender.”

63

Events had followed just as Amy had foreseen. The time and place of her execution were set; only the method had yet to be revealed—the final detail on which their plan depended. Would Guilder simply shoot her? Hang her? But if such a meager display was all he intended, why had he ordered the entire population, all seventy thousand souls in the Homeland, to observe? Amy had baited the hook; would Guilder take it?

Peter passed the next four days lurching between emotional poles—alternating states of worry and astonishment, both overlain with a powerful feeling of déjà vu. Everything possessed a striking familiarity, as if no time had passed since they’d faced Babcock on the mountaintop in Colorado. Here they all were, together once more, their fates drawn together as if by a powerful gravitational force. Peter, Alicia, Michael, Hollis, Greer: they had converged upon this place by different routes, for different reasons. Yet it was Amy, once again, who had led them.

Greer had related the story of her transformation: Houston, Carter, the
Chevron Mariner
; Amy’s journey into the bowels of the ship and then her return. The full measure of what had passed between Amy and Carter, Greer couldn’t tell them; all he knew was that Carter had directed them here. Beyond that, Amy either wouldn’t or couldn’t say.

That night at the orphanage, the two of them standing at the door, the tips of their fingers colliding in space: had she known what was happening to her? And had he? Peter had felt in Amy’s touch the pressure of something unstated.
I am going away. The girl you know will not be here when next we meet
. Which she had; the girl who Amy was had gone away. In her place was now a woman.

The group clothed their anxieties in unnecessary repetitions of their various preparations. The cleaning of weapons. The examination of blueprints and maps. The going over of checklists and the assorted mental inventories they would carry into war. Hollis and Michael became, in the last days, a kind of closed loop; their purpose had narrowed to Sara and Kate. Alicia dealt with the anxiety the way she dealt with everything—by pretending it wasn’t important. The bullet from Peter’s pistol had missed the bone and exited cleanly, a lucky thing, but even so. She would be healed in a day or two, but in the meantime the sling on her arm was a constant reminder to Peter of how close he’d come to killing her. When
she wasn’t barking orders, she retreated into unreachable silence, letting Peter know, without saying so, that she had entered the zone of battle. Greer intimated that something had happened to her in the cell, that she’d been beaten badly, but any attempt to ask her more about this, to offer comfort, was sternly rebuffed. “I’m all right,” Alicia said with a peremptory tone that could only mean she wasn’t. “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.” She seemed, in fact, to be actively avoiding him, disappearing for long stretches; if he didn’t know better, he would have said she was angry with him. She would return hours later smelling of horse sweat, but when Peter asked her where she’d gone, all she would say was that she’d been scouting the perimeter. He had no reason to doubt this, yet the explanation felt thin, a cover for something unstated.

Tifty, too, had undergone a subtle but significant change. His reunion with Greer had meant more than Peter had expected. They had served in the Expeditionary together, an inarguable bond, but Peter had not anticipated the depth of their friendship. A genuine warmth flowed between them. Peter puzzled over this at first, but the reason was obvious: Greer and Tifty had been here before, with Crukshank, all those years ago. The story of the field, and Dee, and the two little girls: of any man living, Greer best knew the heart of Tifty Lamont.

In this manner the hours, and then the days, moved by. Over everything two questions hovered: Would the plan work? And if it did, could they get to Amy in time?

On the third night, when Peter couldn’t stand the waiting for one more second, he left the basement of the police station where everyone was sleeping, ascended the stairs, and stepped outside. The front of the building was protected by a broad overhang that kept the area clear of snow. Alicia was sitting with her back against the wall and her knees pulled to her chest. The sling had come off. In one hand she held a long, gleaming bayonet, serrated near the base; in the other was a sharpening stone. With calm, even strokes she was running the blade of the knife along the stone, first one side and then the other, pausing at the conclusion of each pass to examine her work. She seemed not to notice Peter at first, so intent was her focus; then, sensing his presence, she lifted her eyes toward him. It seemed her moment to speak, but she didn’t say anything; her face bore no expression at all, beyond a kind of vague distraction.

“Mind some company?” he asked.

“Sit if you want.”

He took a place beside her on the ground. Now he could feel it. The air around her seemed to prickle with barely contained rage. It flowed off her like an electric current.

“That’s some knife.”

She had resumed her patient sharpening. “Eustace gave it to me.”

“You think it’s sharp enough?”

“Just keeping my hands busy.”

He groped for the next thing to say but couldn’t find it. Where have you gone, Lish?

“I should be angry with you,” he said. “You could have told me what your orders were.”

“And then what would you have done? Follow me?”

“I’m AWOL as it is. A few more days wouldn’t have made any difference.”

She blew on the tip of the knife. “They weren’t your orders, Peter. Don’t get me wrong—I’m glad to see you. I’m not even that surprised. In a weird way, it makes sense you’d be here. You’re a good officer, and we’ll need you. But we all have our jobs to do.”

He was taken aback. A good officer? Was that all he was to her? “That doesn’t sound like you.”

“It doesn’t matter how it sounds. That’s just how it is. Maybe it’s time somebody said it.”

He didn’t know how to respond. This wasn’t the Alicia he knew. Whatever had happened to her in that cell, it had driven her so far inside herself it was as if she wasn’t there at all.

“I’m worried about you.”

“Well, don’t be.”

“I mean it, Lish. There’s something wrong. You can tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell, Peter.” She looked him in the eye. “Maybe I’m just … waking up. Facing reality. You should, too. This isn’t going to be easy.”

He felt stung. He searched her face, hunting for any scrap of warmth, finding none. Peter was the first to turn away.

“What do you think’s happening to her?” he asked.

He didn’t have to be any more specific; Alicia knew whom he was referring to.

“I’m trying not to think about it.”

“Why did you let her go?”

“I didn’t
let
her do anything, Peter. It wasn’t up to me.”

A chilly silence fell.

“I could really use a drink,” Peter said.

She gave a quiet laugh. “Now, that’s new. Those aren’t words I believe I’ve ever heard you say before.”

“There’s a first time for everything.” Then: “Do you remember that night in the bunker in Twentynine Palms when we found the whiskey?”

The bottle had been in a desk drawer. To celebrate the repair of the Humvees and their impending departure from the bunker, they’d passed it around, toasting the great adventure that awaited them on their journey east to Colorado.

Alicia said, “God, we all got so drunk. Michael was the worst. He never could hold his lick.”

“No, I think it was Hightop. Remember how he broke open one of the light sticks and smeared that goo all over his face? ‘Look at me, look at me, I’m a viral!’ That kid was hilarious.”

His mistake was instantly evident. Five years later, the boy’s death was still a raw wound; in all that time, Peter had never heard Alicia so much as speak his name.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

A bright light flashed over the horizon. Lightning? In winter? Moments later they heard the boom, muted but unmistakable.

Eustace appeared at the foot of the steps. “I heard it too. Which direction?”

It had come from the south. It was hard to gauge the distance, but they guessed five miles.

“Well,” Eustace said, nodding to himself, “I guess we’ll know more in the morning.”

Shortly after dawn, a messenger arrived, sent by Nina. The explosives at their hideout had done their work; their ruse had been successful. Minister Suresh, whom Guilder had sent to personally oversee their capture, was rumored to be among the dead. A taste, everyone hoped, of things to come.

But it was the second part of the message that offered the most promise. A semitruck had been parked outside the Project since the prior evening. It was guarded by a large security detachment, twenty men at least. The last piece had fallen into place; the virals were on the move. Guilder had tipped his hand.

Everybody knew the implications of what they were attempting. The plan seemed sound, but the odds were long. Guilder’s orders to move the
population to the stadium implied that the rest of the city would be only lightly protected, and if everything proceeded according to design, the insurgency would accomplish in one stroke a beheading of virtually every aspect of the regime. But timing would be critical; with so many elements of the resistance acting independently, and lacking the ability to communicate with one another once the siege was under way, it wouldn’t take much for things to fall apart. Any variable could throw the operation into chaos.