The Twelve

13


Sunrise of the second day: they were deep into Nebraska now. Danny, hunched over the wheel, his eyes stinging with sleeplessness, had driven through the night. Everyone except for Kittridge had fallen asleep, even the obnoxious one, Jamal.

It felt good to have people on his bus again. To be useful, a useful engine.

They’d found more diesel at a small airport in McCook. The few towns they’d passed through were empty and abandoned, like something from a movie about the Old West. Okay, so maybe they were lost, kind of. But Kittridge and the other man, Pastor Don, said it didn’t matter, as long as they kept heading east. That’s all you got to do, Danny, Kittridge said. Just keep us headed east.

He thought of what he’d seen on the highway. That was really something. He’d seen a lot of bodies in the last couple of days, but nothing as bad as that. He liked Kittridge, who sort of reminded him of Mr. Purvis. Not that he looked like Mr. Purvis, because he didn’t at all. It was the way the man spoke to Danny—as if he mattered.

While he drove, he thought about Momma, and Mr. Purvis, and Thomas and Percy and James and how useful he was being. How proud of him Momma and Mr. Purvis would be now.

The sun was peeking over the horizon, making Danny squint into its brightness. Before long, everyone would be awake. Kittridge leaned over his shoulder.

“How we doing on gas?”

Danny checked. They were down to a quarter tank.

“Let’s pull over and refill from the cans,” Kittridge said. “Let folks stretch their legs a bit.”

They pulled off the road, into a state park. Kittridge and Pastor Don checked the bathrooms and gave the all clear.

“Thirty minutes, everyone,” Kittridge said.

They had more supplies now, boxes of crackers and peanut butter and apples and energy bars and bottles of pop and juice and diapers and formula for Boy Jr. Kittridge had even gotten Danny a box of Lucky Charms, though all the milk in the grocery store’s cooler had spoiled; he’d have to eat it dry. Danny, Kittridge, and Pastor Don unloaded the jugs of diesel from the back of the bus and began to pour it into the tank. Danny had told them that the bus had a fifty-gallon capacity, precisely; each full tank would get them about three hundred miles.

“You’re a very precise guy,” Kittridge had said.

When they’d finished refueling, Danny took the box of Lucky Charms and a can of lukewarm Dr Pepper and sat under a tree. The rest were seated around a picnic table, including Jamal. He wasn’t saying much, but Danny had the feeling that everyone had decided to let bygones be bygones. Linda Robinson was diapering Boy Jr., cooing to him, making him wiggle his arms and legs. Danny had never been around babies much. He’d been led to understand that they cried a lot, but so far Boy Jr. had kept quiet as a mouse. There were good babies and there were bad babies, Momma had said, so Boy Jr. must be one of the good ones. Danny tried to remember being a baby himself, just to see if he could do it, but his mind wouldn’t go back that far, not in any orderly way. It was strange how there was this whole part of your life you couldn’t recall, except in little pictures: sunshine flaring on a windowpane, or a dead frog squashed in the driveway by a tire tread, or a slice of apple on a plate. He wondered if he’d been a good baby, like Boy Jr.

Danny was watching the group, feeding fistfuls of Lucky Charms into his mouth and swilling them down with the Dr Pepper, when Tim rose from the table and walked over to him.

“Hey, Timbo. How you doing?”

The boy’s hair was standing all whichaway from his sleeping on the bus. “Okay, I guess.” He gave a loose-boned shrug. “Mind if I sit with you?”

Danny scooched over to make room.

“I’m sorry the other kids tease you sometimes,” Tim said after a minute.

“That’s okay,” said Danny. “I don’t mind.”

“Billy Nice is a real dickhead.”

“He picks on you, too?”

“Sometimes.” The boy frowned vaguely. “He picks on everybody.”

“Just ignore him,” Danny said. “That’s what I do.”

After a minute, Tim said, “You really like Thomas, huh?”

“Sure.”

“I used to watch him. I had, like, this huge layout of Thomas trains in my basement. The coal loader, the engine wash, I had all that stuff.”

“I’d like to see that,” said Danny. “I bet that was great.”

A brief silence followed. The sun was warm on Danny’s face.

“You want to know what I saw in the stadium?” Tim asked.

“If you want.”

“Like, a thousand million dead people.”

Danny wasn’t sure what to say. He guessed Tim had needed to tell someone; it wasn’t the kind of thing you should keep bottled up inside.

“It was pretty gross.”

“Did you tell April?”

Tim shook his head.

“You want to keep it a secret?”

“Would that be okay?”

“Sure,” said Danny. “I can keep a secret.”

Tim had scooped up a little bit of dirt from the base of the tree and was watching it sift through his fingers. “You don’t get scared much, do you, Danny?”

“Sometimes I do.”

“But not now,” the boy stated.

Danny had to think about that. He supposed he should be, but he just wasn’t. What he felt was more like interested. What would happen next? Where would they go? It surprised him, how adaptable he was being. Dr. Francis would be proud of him.

“No, I guess I’m not.”

In the shade of the picnic area, everyone was packing up. Danny wished he could find the words to make the boy feel better, to wipe the memory of what he’d seen in the stadium from his mind. They were walking back to the bus when the idea came to him.

“Hey, I’ve got something for you.” He reached into his pack and removed his lucky penny and showed the boy. “You hold on to that, I promise, nothing bad can happen to you.”

Tim took the coin in his palm. “What happened to it? It’s all squished.”

“It got run over by a train. That’s what makes it lucky.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“I don’t know, I’ve just always had it.” Danny dipped his head toward the boy’s open hand. “Go ahead, you can keep it.”

A moment’s hesitation, then Tim slipped the flattened penny into the pocket of his shorts. It wasn’t much, Danny knew, but it was something, and there were times like these when just a little thing could help. As a for-instance: Momma’s Popov, which she visited when her nerves got bad, and the visits from Mr. Purvis on the nights when Danny could hear them laughing. The roar of the Redbird’s big caterpillar diesel coming to life when he turned the key each morning. Driving over the bump on Lindler Avenue, and all the kids hooting as they shot from the benches. Little things like that. Danny felt pleased with himself for thinking of this, like he’d passed along something he knew that maybe not everybody did, and as the two of them stood together in the morning sunshine, he detected, from the corner of his eye, a change in the boy’s face, a kind of lightening; he might have even smiled.

“Thanks, Danny,” he said.


Omaha was burning.

They saw it first as a throbbing glow over the horizon. It was the hour when the light had flattened. They were approaching the city from the southwest, on Interstate 80. Not a single car was on the highway; all the buildings were dark. A deeper, more profound abandonment than anything they’d seen so far—this was, or should have been, a city of nearly half a million. A strong odor of smoke began to flow through the bus’s ventilation. Kittridge told Danny to stop.

“We have to get over the river somehow,” Pastor Don said. “Go south or north, look for a way across.”

Kittridge looked up from the map. “Danny, how are we doing for gas?”

They were down to an eighth of a tank; the jugs were empty. Fifty more miles at the most. They’d hoped to find more fuel in Omaha.

“One thing’s for sure,” said Kittridge, “we can’t stay here.”

They turned north. The next crossing was at the town of Adair. But the bridge was gone, blasted away, no part left standing. Only the river, wide and dark, ceaselessly flowing. The next opportunity would be Decatur, another thirty miles to the north.

“We passed an elementary school a mile back,” said Pastor Don. “It’s better than nothing. We can look for fuel in the morning.”

A silence descended over the bus, everyone waiting for Kittridge’s answer.

“Okay, let’s do it.”

They backtracked into the heart of the little town. All the lights were out, the streets empty. They came to the school, a modern-looking structure set back from the road at the edge of the fields. A marquee-style sign at the edge of the parking area read, in bold letters: GO LIONS! HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!

“Everybody wait here,” Kittridge said.

He moved inside. A few minutes passed; then he emerged. He exchanged a quick look with Pastor Don, the two men nodding.

“We’re going to shelter here for the night,” Kittridge announced. “Stay together, no wandering off. The power’s out, but there’s running water, and food in the cafeteria. If you need to use the facilities, go in pairs.”

In the front foyer they were met by the telltale scents of an elementary school, of sweat and dirty socks, art supplies and waxed linoleum. A trophy case stood by a door that led, presumably, to the main office; a display of collages was hung on the painted cinder-block walls, images of people and animals fashioned from newspaper and magazine clippings. Beside each of them was a printed label bearing the age and grade of its creator. Wendy Mueller, Grade 2. Gavin Jackson, Grade 5. Florence Ratcliffe, Pre-K 4.

“April, go with Wood and Don to find some mats to sleep on. The kindergarten rooms should have some.”

In the pantry behind the cafeteria they found cans of beans and fruit cocktail, as well as bread and jam to make sandwiches. There was no gas to cook with, so they served the beans cold, dishing everything out on metal cafeteria trays. By now it was dark outside; Kittridge distributed flashlights. They spoke only in whispers, the consensus being that the virals might hear them.

By nine o’clock, everyone was bedded down. Kittridge left Don to keep watch on the first floor and climbed the stairs, carrying a lantern. Many of the doors were locked but not all; he selected the science lab, a large, open space with counters and glass cabinets full of beakers and other supplies. The air smelled faintly of butane. On the whiteboard at the front of the room were written the words “Final review, chaps. 8–12. Labs due Wednesday.”

Kittridge stripped off his shirt and wiped himself down at the washbasin in the corner, then took a chair and removed his boots. The prosthesis, which began just below his left knee, was constructed of a titanium alloy frame covered in silicone; a microprocessor-controlled hydraulic cylinder, powered by a tiny hydrogen cell, adjusted fifty times per second to calculate the correct angular velocity of the ankle joint, imitating a natural gait. It was the very latest in prosthetic limb replacements; Kittridge didn’t doubt it had cost the Army a bundle. He rolled up his trousers, peeled off the mounting sock, and washed his stump with soap from the dispenser by the basin. Though heavily callused, the skin at the contact point felt raw and tender after two days without care. He dried the stump thoroughly, allowed it a few minutes of fresh air, then fixed the prosthesis back in place and drew down his pant leg.

He was startled by a sound of movement behind him. He turned to find April standing in the open doorway.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

He quickly drew on his shirt and rose to his feet. How much had she seen? But the light was dim, and he’d been partially concealed by one of the counters.

“It’s no problem. I was just getting cleaned up a little.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “You can come in if you want.”

She advanced uncertainly into the room. Kittridge moved to the window with the AK. He took a moment to quickly scan the street below.

“How’s everything outside?” She was standing beside him.

“Quiet so far. How’s Tim doing?”

“Out like a light. He’s tougher than he looks. Tougher than I am, anyway.”

“I doubt that. You seem pretty cool to me, considering.”

April frowned. “You shouldn’t. This calm exterior is what you’d call an act. To tell you the truth, I’m so scared I don’t really feel anything anymore.”

A wide shelf ran the length of the room beneath the windows. April hoisted herself onto it, bracing her back against the frame and pulling her knees to her chest. Kittridge did the same. They were face-to-face now. A stillness, expectant but not uncomfortable, hovered between them. She was young, yet he sensed a core of resilience in her. It was the kind of thing you either had or you didn’t.

“So, do you have a boyfriend?”

“Are you auditioning?”

Kittridge laughed, felt his face grow warm. “Just making talk, I guess. Are you like this with everybody?”

“Only the people I like.”

Another moment passed.

“So how’d you get the name April?” It was all he could think to say. “Is that your birthday?”

“It’s from ‘The Waste Land.’ ” When Kittridge said nothing, she raised her eyebrows dubiously. “It’s a poem? T. S. Eliot?”

Kittridge had heard the name, but that was all. “Can’t say I got to that one. How’s it go?”

She let her gaze flow past him. When she began to speak, her voice was full of a rich feeling Kittridge couldn’t identify, happy and sad and full of memory. “ ‘April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain …

“Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain …”



“Wow,” said Kittridge. She was looking at him again. Her eyes, he noted, were the color of moss, with what looked like flecks of shaved gold floating atop the surface of her irises. “That’s really something.”

April shrugged. “It goes on from there. Basically, the guy was totally depressed.” She was tugging a frayed spot on one knee of her jeans. “The name was my mother’s idea. She was an English professor before she met my stepdad and we got all, like, rich and everything.”

“Your parents are divorced?”

“My father died when I was six.”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

But she didn’t let him finish. “Don’t be. He wasn’t what you would call an admirable sort. A leftover from my mother’s bad-boy period. He was totally loaded, drove his car into a bridge abutment. And that, said Pooh, was that.”

She stated these facts without inflection; she might have been telling him what the weather was. Outside, the summer night was veiled in blackness. Kittridge had obviously misjudged her, but he had learned that was the way with most people. The story was never the story, and it surprised you, how much another person could carry.

“I saw you, you know,” April said. “Your leg. The scars on your back. You were in the war, weren’t you?”

“What makes you think that?”

She made a face of disbelief. “Gosh, I don’t know, just everything? Because you’re the only one who seems to know what to do? Because you’re all, like, super-competent with guns and shit?”

“I told you. I’m a salesman. Camping gear.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.”

Her directness was so disarming that for a moment Kitteridge said nothing. But she had him dead to rights. “You’re sure you want to hear it? It isn’t very nice.”

“If you want to tell me.”

He instinctively turned his face to the window. “Well, you’re right, I was. Enlisted straight out of high school. Not Army, Marines. I ended up as a staff sergeant in the MPs. You know what that is?”

“You were a cop?”

“Sort of. Mostly we provided security at American installations, air-bases, sensitive infrastructure, that kind of thing. They moved us around a lot. Iran, Iraq, Saudi. Chechnya for a little while. My last duty was at Bagram Airfield, in Afghanistan. Usually it was pretty routine, verifying equipment manifests and checking foreign workers in and out. But once in a while something would happen. The coup hadn’t happened yet, so it was still American-controlled territory, but there were Taliban all over the place, plus Al Qaeda and about twenty different local warlords duking it out.”

He paused, collecting himself. The next part was always the hardest. “So one day we see this car, the usual beat-up piece of junk, coming down the road. The checkpoints are all well marked, everybody knows to stop, but the guy doesn’t. He’s barreling straight for us. Two people in the car that we can see, a man and a woman. Everybody opens fire. The car swerves away, rolls a couple of times, comes to rest on its wheels. We’re thinking it’s going to blow for sure, but it doesn’t. I’m the senior NCO, so I’m the one who goes to look. The woman’s dead, but the man is still alive. He’s slumped over the steering wheel, blood all over. In the backseat is a kid, a boy. He couldn’t have been older than four. They’ve got him strapped into a seat packed with explosives. I see the wires running to the front of the vehicle, where the dad is holding the detonator. He’s muttering to himself. Anta al-mas’ul, he’s saying. Anta al-mas’ul. The kid’s wailing, reaching out for me. This little hand. I’ll never forget it. He’s only four, but it’s like he knows what’s about to happen.”

“Jesus.” April’s face was horrified. “What did you do?”

“The only thing I could think of. I got the hell out of there. I don’t really remember the blast. I woke up in the hospital in Saudi. Two men in my unit were killed, another took a piece of shrapnel in the spine.” April was staring at him. “I told you it wasn’t very nice.”

“He blew up his own kid?”

“That’s about the size of it, yeah.”

“But what kind of people would do that?”

“You’ve got me there. I never could figure that out.”

April said nothing more; Kittridge wondered, as he always did, if he’d told too much. But it felt good to unburden himself, and if April had gotten more than she’d bargained for, she had a way of hiding it. In the abstract, Kittridge knew, the story was inconsequential, one of hundreds, even thousands like it. Such pointless cruelty was simply the way of the world. But understanding this fact was a far cry from accepting it, when you’d lived it yourself.

“So what happened then?” April asked.

Kittridge shrugged. “Nothing. End of story. Off to dance with the virgins in eternity.”

“I was talking about you.” Her eyes did not move from his face. “I think I’d be pretty screwed up by something like that.”

Here was something new, he thought—the part of the tale that no one ever asked about. Typically, once the basic facts were laid bare, the listener couldn’t get away fast enough. But not this girl, this April.

“Well, I wasn’t. At least I didn’t think I was. I spent about half a year in the VA, learning to walk and dress and feed myself, and then they kicked me loose. War’s over, my friend, at least for you. I wasn’t all bitter, like a lot of guys get. I didn’t dive under the bed when a car backfired or anything like that. What’s done is done, I figured. Then about six months after I got settled, I took a trip back home to Wyoming. My parents were gone, my sister had moved up to British Columbia with her husband and basically dropped off the map, but I still knew some people, kids I’d gone to school with, though nobody was a kid anymore. One of them wants to throw a party for me, the big welcome-home thing. They all had families of their own by now, kids and wives and jobs, but this was a pretty hard-drinking crowd back in the day. The whole thing was just an excuse to get lit, but I didn’t see the harm. Sure, I said, knock yourself out, and he actually did. There were at least a hundred people there, a big banner with my name on it hung over the porch, even a band. The whole thing knocked me flat. I’m in the backyard listening to the music and the friend says to me, Come on, there are some women who want to meet you. Don’t be standing there like a big idiot. So he takes me inside and there are three of them, all nice enough. I knew one of them a little from way back when. They’re talking away, some show on TV, gossip, the usual things. Normal, everyday things. I’m nursing a beer and listening to them when all of a sudden I realize I have no idea what they’re saying. Not the words themselves. What any of it meant. None of it seemed connected to anything else, like there were two worlds, an inside world and an outside world, and neither had anything to do with the other. I’m sure a shrink would have a name for it. All I know is, I woke up on the floor, everybody standing over me. After that, it took me about four months in the woods just to be around people again.” He paused, a little surprised at himself. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never told anybody that part. You would be the first.”

“Sounds like a day in high school.”

Kittridge had to laugh. “Touché.”

Their gazes met and held. How strange it was, he thought. One minute you were all alone with your thoughts, the next somebody came along who seemed to know the deepest part of you, who could open you like a book. He couldn’t have said how long they’d been looking at each other. It seemed to go on and on and on, neither possessing the will, or the courage, or even the desire, to look away. How old was she? Seventeen? And yet she didn’t seem seventeen. She didn’t seem like any age at all. An old soul: Kittridge had heard the term but never quite understood what it meant. That’s what April had. An old soul.

To seal the deal between them, Kittridge removed one of the Glocks from his shoulder holster and held it out to her. “Know how to use one of these?”

April looked at it uncertainly. “Let me guess. It’s not like it is on TV.”

Kittridge dropped the magazine and racked the slide to eject the cartridge from the pipe. He placed the gun it in her hand, wrapping her fingers with his own.

“Don’t pull the trigger with your knuckle, the shot will go low. Just use the pad of your fingertip and squeeze, like so.” He released her hand and tapped his breastbone. “One shot, through here. That’s all it takes, but you can’t miss. Don’t rush—aim and fire.” He reloaded the gun and handed it back. “Go on, you can have it. Keep a round chambered, like I showed you.”

She smiled wryly. “Gee, thanks. And here I don’t have anything for you.”

Kitteridge returned the smile. “Maybe next time.”

A moment passed. April was turning the weapon around in her hand, examining it as if it were some unaccountable artifact. “What the father said. Anta-something.”

“Anta al-mas’ul.”

“Did you ever figure out what it meant?”

Kittridge nodded. “ ‘You did this.’ ”

Another silence fell, though different from the others. Not a barrier between them but a shared awareness of their lives, like the walls of a room in which only the two of them existed. How strange, thought Kittridge, to say those words. Anta al-mas’ul. Anta al-mas’ul.

“It was the right thing, you know,” April said. “You would have been killed, too.”

“There’s always a choice,” Kittridge said.

“What else could you have done?”

The question was rhetorical, he understood; she expected no reply. What else could you have done? But Kittridge knew his answer. He’d always known.

“I could have held his hand.”

* * *

He kept his vigil at the window through the night. Sleeplessness was not a problem for him; he had learned to get by on just a few winks. April lay curled on the floor beneath the window. Kittridge had removed his jacket and placed it over her. There were no lights anywhere. The view from the window was of a world at peace, the sky pinpricked with stars. As the first glow of daylight gathered on the horizon, he let himself close his eyes.

He startled awake to the sound of approaching engines. An Army convoy was coming down the street, twenty vehicles long. He unsnapped his second pistol and passed it to April, who was sitting up now as well, rubbing her eyes.

“Hold this.”

Kittridge quickly made his way down the stairs. By the time he burst through the door, the convoy was less than a hundred feet away. He jogged into the street, waving his arms.

“Stop!”

The lead Humvee jerked to a halt just a few yards in front of him, the soldier on the roof tracking his movements with the fifty-cal. The lower half of his face was hidden by a white surgical mask. “Hold it right there.”

Kittridge’s arms were raised. “I’m unarmed.”

The soldier pulled the bolt on his weapon. “I said, keep your distance.”

A tense five seconds followed; it seemed possible that he was about to be shot. Then the passenger door of the Humvee swung open. A sturdy-looking woman emerged and walked toward him. Up close her face appeared worn and lined, crackled with dust. An officer, but not one who rode a desk.

“Major Porcheki, Ninth Combat Support Battalion, Iowa National Guard. Who the hell are you?”

He had only one card to play. “Staff Sergeant Bernard Kittridge. Charlie Company, First MP Battalion, USMC.”

Her eyes narrowed on his face. “You’re a Marine?”

“Medically discharged, ma’am.”

The major glanced past him, toward the schoolhouse. Kittridge knew without looking that the others were watching from the windows.

“How many civilians do you have inside?”

“Eleven. The bus is almost out of gas.”

“Any sick or wounded?”

“Everybody’s worn out and scared, but that’s it.”

She considered this with a neutral expression. Then: “Caldwell! Valdez!”

A pair of E-4s trotted forward. They, too, were wearing surgical masks. Everyone was except Porcheki.

“Let’s get the refueler to see about filling up that bus.”

“We’re taking civilians? Can we do that now?”

“Did I ask your opinion, Specialist? And get a corpsman up here.”

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”

They jogged away.

“Thank you, Major. It was going to be a long walk out of here.”

Porcheki had removed a canteen from her belt and paused to drink. “You’re just lucky you found us when you did. Fuel’s getting pretty scarce. We’re headed back to the guard armory at Fort Powell, so that’s as far as we can take you. FEMA’s set up a refugee-processing center there. From there you’ll probably be evaced to Chicago or St. Louis.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, do you have any news?”

“I don’t mind, but I’m not sure what to tell you. One minute these goddamned things are everywhere, the next nobody can find them. They like the trees, but any sort of cover will do. The word from CENTCOM is that a large pod’s massing along the Kansas-Nebraska border.”

“What’s a pod?”

She took another gulp from the canteen. “That’s what they’re calling groups of them, pods.”

The corpsman appeared; everyone was filing out of the school. Kittridge told them what was happening while the soldiers established a perimeter. The corpsman examined the civilians, taking their temperatures, peering inside their mouths. When everyone was ready to go, Porcheki met Kittridge at the steps of the bus.

“Just one thing. You might want to keep the fact that you’re from Denver under your hat. Say you’re from Iowa, if anyone asks.”

He thought of the highway, the lines of torn-up cars. “I’ll pass that along.”

Kittridge climbed aboard. Balancing his rifle between his knees, he took a place directly behind Danny.

“God damn,” Jamal said, grinning ear to ear. “An Army convoy. I take back everything I said about you, Kittridge.” He poked a thumb toward Mrs. Bellamy, who was dabbing her brow with a tissue taken from her sleeve. “Hell, I don’t even mind that old broad taking a shot at me.”

“Sticks and stones, young man,” she responded. “Sticks and stones.”

He turned to face her across the aisle. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. What is it with old ladies and the snot-rag-in-the-sleeve thing? Doesn’t that strike you as just a little unsanitary?”

“This from a young man with enough ink in his arms to fill a ditto machine.”

“A ditto machine. What century are you from?”

“When I look at you, I think of one word. The word is ‘hepatitis.’ ”

“Christ, the two of you,” Wood moaned. “You really need to get a room.”

The convoy began to move.