The Twelve

17


Grey.

Whiteness, and the sensation of floating. Grey became aware that he was in a car. This was strange, because the car was also a motel room, with beds and dressers and a television; when had they started making cars like this? He was sitting on the foot of one of the beds, driving the room—the steering column came up at an angle from the floor; the television was the windshield—and seated on the adjacent bed was Lila, clutching a pink bundle to her chest. “Are we there yet, Lawrence?” Lila asked him. “The baby needs changing.” The baby? thought Grey. When had that happened? Wasn’t she months away? “She’s so beautiful,” said Lila, softly cooing. “We have such a beautiful baby. It’s too bad we have to shoot her.” “Why do we have to shoot her?” Grey asked. “Don’t be silly,” said Lila. “We shoot all the babies now. That way they won’t be eaten.”

Lawrence Grey.

The dream changed—one part of him knew he was dreaming, while another part did not—and Grey was in the tank now. Something was coming to get him, but he couldn’t make himself move. He was on his hands and knees, slurping the blood. His job was to drink it, drink it all, which was impossible: the blood had begun to gush through the hatch, filling the compartment. An ocean of blood. The blood was rising above his chin, his mouth and nose were filling, he was choking, drowning—

Lawrence Grey. Wake up.

He opened his eyes to a harsh light. Something felt caught in his throat; he began to cough. Something about drowning? But the dream was already breaking apart, its images atomizing, leaving only a residue of fear.

Where was he?

Some kind of hospital. He was wearing a gown, but that was all; he felt the chill of nakedness beneath it. Thick straps bound his wrists and ankles to the rails of the bed, holding him in place like a mummy in a sarcophagus. Wires snaked from beneath his gown to a cart of medical equipment; an IV was threaded into his right arm.

Somebody was in the room.

Two somebodies in fact, the pair hovering at the foot of the bed in their bulky biosuits, their faces shielded by plastic masks. Behind them was a heavy steel door and, positioned high on the wall in the corner, watching the scene with its unblinking gaze, a security camera.

“Mr. Grey, I’m Horace Guilder,” the one on the left said. His tone of voice struck Grey as oddly cheerful. “This is my colleague Dr. Nelson. How are you feeling?”

Grey did his best to focus on their faces. The one who’d spoken looked anonymously middle-aged, with a heavy, square-jawed head and pasty skin; the second man was considerably younger, with tight dark eyes and a scraggly little Vandyke. He didn’t look like any doctor Grey had ever met.

He licked his lips and swallowed. “What is this place? Why am I tied up?”

Guilder answered with a calming tone. “That’s for your own protection, Mr. Grey. Until we figure out what’s wrong with you. As for where you are,” he said, “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that just yet. Suffice it to say that you’re among friends here.”

Grey realized they must have sedated him; he could barely move a muscle, and it wasn’t just the straps. His limbs felt like iron, his thoughts moving through his brain with a lazy aimlessness, like guppies in a tank. Guilder was holding a cup of water to his lips.

“Go on, drink.”

Grey’s stomach turned—just the smell of it was revolting, like some hideously overchlorinated pool. Thoughts came back to him, dark thoughts: the blood in the tank, and Grey’s face buried greedily in it. Had that actually happened? Had he dreamed it? But no sooner had these questions formed in his mind than a kind of roaring seemed to fill his head, a vast hunger lurching to life inside him, so overwhelming that his entire body clenched against the straps.

“Whoa now,” Guilder said, backing away suddenly. “Steady there.”

More images were coming back to him, rising through the fog. The tank in the road, the dead soldiers, and explosions all around; the feel of his hand crashing through the Volvo’s window, and the fields detonating with fire, and the car sailing through the corn, and the bright lights of the helicopter, and the space-suited men, dragging Lila away.

“Where is she? What have you done with her?”

Guilder glanced toward Nelson, who frowned. Interesting, his face seemed to say.

“You needn’t worry, Mr. Grey, we’re taking good care of her. She’s right across the hall, in fact.”

“Don’t you hurt her.” His fists were clenched; he was straining against the straps. “You touch her and I’ll—”

“And you’ll what, Mr. Grey?”

But there was nothing; the straps held firm. Whatever they had given him, it had taken his strength away.

“Try not to excite yourself, Mr. Grey. Your friend is perfectly fine. The baby, too. What we’re a little unclear on is just how the two of you came to be together. I was hoping you might help us with that.”

“Why do you want to know?”

One eyebrow lifted incredulously behind the faceplate. “For starters, it seems that the two of you are the last people to come out of Colorado alive. Believe me when I tell you, this is a matter of some interest to us. Was she at the Chalet? Is that where you met her?”

Just the word made Grey’s mind clench with panic. “The Chalet?”

“Yes, Mr. Grey. The Chalet.”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Then where?”

He swallowed. “At the Home Depot.”

For just a moment, Guilder said nothing. “Where was this?”

Grey tried to put his thoughts together, but his brain had gone all fuzzy again. “Denver someplace. I don’t know exactly. She wanted me to paint the nursery.”

Guilder quickly turned toward the second man, who shrugged. “Could be the fentanyl,” Nelson said. “It may take him a little while to sort things out.”

But Guilder was undeterred. There was something more forceful about the man’s gaze now. It seemed to bore right into him. “We need to know what happened at the Chalet. How did you get away?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Was there a girl there? Did you see her?”

There was a girl? What were they talking about?

“I didn’t see anyone. I just … I don’t know. It was all so confusing. I woke up at the Red Roof.”

“The Red Roof? What’s that?”

“A motel, on the highway.”

A puzzled frown. “When was this?”

Grey tried to count. “Three days ago? No, four.” He nodded his head against the pillow. “Four days.”

The two men looked at each other. “It doesn’t make sense,” Nelson said. “The Chalet was destroyed twenty-two days ago. He’s not Rip Van Winkle.”

“Where were you for those three weeks?” Guilder pressed.

The question made no sense. Three weeks?

“I don’t know,” Grey said.

“I’ll ask you again, Mr. Grey. Was Lila at the Chalet? Is that where you met her?”

“I told you,” he said. He was pleading now, his resistance gone. “She was at the Home Depot.”

His thoughts were swirling like water going down a drain. Whatever they’d given him, it had screwed him up good. With a thump in his gut, Grey realized what the straps were all about. They were going to study him. Like the sticks. Like Zero. And when they were done with him, Richards, or somebody like him, would put the red light on Grey, and that would be the end of him.

“Please, it’s me you want. I’m sorry I ran away. Just don’t hurt Lila.”

For a moment the two men said nothing, just stared at him from behind their faceplates. Then Guilder turned toward Nelson, nodding.

“Put him back under.”

Nelson took a syringe and a vial of clear liquid from the cart. While Grey looked on helplessly, he inserted the needle into the IV tube and pushed the plunger.

“I just clean,” Grey said feebly. “I’m just a janitor.”

“Oh, I think you’re much more than that, Mr. Grey.”

And with these words in his ears, Grey slipped away again.


Guilder and Nelson stepped through the air lock into the decontamination chamber. First a shower in their biosuits; then they stripped and scrubbed themselves head to foot with a harsh, chemical-smelling soap. They cleared their throats and spat into the sink, gargling for a minute with a strong disinfectant. A cumbersome ritual but, until they knew more about Grey’s condition, one they were wise to observe.

Just a skeletal staff was present in the building: three lab technicians—Guilder thought of them as Wynken, Blynken, and Nod—plus an MD and a four-man Blackbird security team. The building had been constructed in the late eighties to treat soldiers exposed to nuclear, biological, or chemical agents, and the systems were buggy as hell—the aboveground HVAC was on the fritz, as was video surveillance for the entire facility—and the place had a disconcertingly deserted feel to it. But it was the last place anybody would look for them.

Nelson and Guilder stepped into the lab, a wide room of desks and equipment, including the powerful microscopes and blood spinners they’d need to isolate and culture the virus. While Grey and Lila were still unconscious, they’d each had a CT scan and blood drawn; their blood tests had been inconclusive, but Grey’s scan had revealed a radically enlarged thymus, typical of those infected. And yet as far as Nelson and Guilder could discern, he’d experienced no other symptoms. In every other way he appeared to be in the pink of health. Better than that: the man looked like he could run a marathon.

“Let me show you something,” Nelson said.

He escorted Guilder to the terminal in an adjacent office where he’d set up shop. Nelson opened a file and clicked on a JPEG. A photo appeared on the screen of Lawrence Grey. Or, rather, a man who resembled Grey; the face in the photograph looked considerably older. Sagging skin, hair a thin flap over his scalp, sunken eyes that gazed into the camera with a dull, almost bovine look.

“When was this taken?” Guilder asked.

“Seventeen months ago. These are Richards’s files.”

God damn, Guilder thought. It was just like Lear had said.

“If he’s got the virus,” Nelson said, “the question is why it’s acting differently in his body. It could be a variant we haven’t seen, one that activates the thymus like the others and then goes dormant somehow. Or it could be something else, particular to him.”

Guilder frowned. “Such as?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Some sort of natural immunity seems the likely culprit, but there’s no way of really knowing. It might have something to do with the anti-androgens he was taking. All the sweeps were taking pretty big doses. Depo-Provera, spironolactone, prednisone.”

“You think the steroids did this?”

Nelson shrugged halfheartedly. “It could be a factor. We know the virus interacts with the endocrine system, same as the anti-androgens.” He closed the file and turned in his chair. “But here’s something else. I did a little digging on the woman. Not much to find, but what there is is mighty interesting. I printed it up for you.”

Nelson presented him with a fat file of papers. Guilder opened to the first page.

“She’s an MD?”

“Orthopedic surgeon. Keep going.”

Guilder read. Lila Beatrice Kyle, born September 29, 1974, Boston, Massachusetts. Parents both academics, the father an English professor at BU, the mother a historian at Simmons. Andover then Wellesley, followed by four years at Dartmouth-Hitchcock for her medical degree. Residency and then a fellowship in orthopedics at Denver General. All impressive, but telling him nothing. Guilder turned to the next page. What was he looking at? The first page of an IRS form 1040, dated four years ago.

Lila Kyle was married to Brad Wolgast.

“You’re kidding me.”

Nelson was wearing one of his victorious grins. “I told you that you were going to like it. The Agent Wolgast. They had one child, a daughter, deceased. Some kind of congenital heart defect. Divorced three years later. She got remarried four months ago to a doctor who works at the same hospital, some big cardiologist. There’s a few pages on him, too, though it doesn’t really add anything.”

“Okay, so she’s an MD. Is there any record of her at the Chalet? Was it possible she was on the staff?”

Nelson shook his head. “Nothing. And I seriously doubt Richards would have missed this. As far as I can see, there’s no reason not to think Grey found her just like he said.”

“She could have been in the truck in that first aerial we got. We wouldn’t have seen her.”

“True. But I don’t think Grey’s lying about where he met her. The story’s just too weird to make up. And I checked: her Denver address puts her within just a couple of miles of a Home Depot. The way Grey was headed, he would have gone right through there. You’ve talked to her. She seems to think Grey is some kind of handyman. I don’t think she has a clue what’s going on. The woman’s crazy as a bedbug.”

“Is that your official diagnosis?”

Nelson shrugged. “There’s no history of psychiatric illness in the paperwork, but consider her situation. She’s pregnant, hiding, on the run. People are getting ripped to shreds. Somehow she manages to stay alive, but she gets left behind. How would you feel? The brain’s a pretty nimble organ. Right now it’s rewriting reality for her, and doing a hell of a good job. Based on Grey’s file, I’d say she’s got plenty in common with the guy, actually.”

Guilder thought a moment and returned the file to the desk. “Well, I’m not buying it. What are the chances that these two would simply bump into each other? It’s too big a coincidence.”

“Maybe,” Nelson said. “Either way, it doesn’t tell us much. And the woman might be infected, but we’re just not seeing it. Maybe her pregnancy masks it somehow.”

“How far along is she?”

“I’m no expert, but from fetal size, I’d say about thirty weeks. You can check with Suresh.”

Suresh was the MD Guilder had brought in from USAMRIID. An infectious diseases doc, he’d been tasked to Special Weapons only six months ago. Guilder had told him little, only that Grey and the woman were “persons of interest.”

“How long before we can get a decent culture from him?”

“That depends. Assuming we can isolate the virus at all, somewhere between forty-eight and seventy-two hours. If you’re really asking my opinion, the wisest course would be to pack him off to Atlanta. They’re the ones who are best equipped to handle something like this. And if Grey’s immune, I can’t see why they wouldn’t just let bygones be bygones. Not with so much at stake.”

Guilder shook his head. “Let’s wait until we have something solid.”

“I wouldn’t wait long. Not with the way things are going.”

“We won’t. But you heard the guy. He thinks he’s been sleeping in a motel. I doubt anybody’s going to take us seriously if that’s all we’ve got. They’ll lock us both up and throw away the key if we’re lucky.”

Nelson frowned, touching his beard with a thoughtful gesture. “I see your point.”

“I’m not saying we won’t tell them,” Guilder offered. “But let’s move cautiously. Seventy-two hours, then I’ll make the call, all right?”

A frozen moment followed. Had Nelson bought it? Then the man nodded.

“Just keep digging.” Guilder clapped a hand on Nelson’s shoulder. “And tell Suresh to keep the two of them sedated for the time being. If either of them flips, I don’t want to take any chances.”

“You think those straps will hold?”

The question was rhetorical; both men knew the answer.


Guilder left Nelson in the lab and rode the elevator to the roof. His left leg was dragging again, a hitch in his step like a hiccup. Outside, the Blackbird officer in charge, named Masterson, nodded a terse greeting but otherwise left him alone. Vintage Blackbird, this guy: built like a dump truck with arms as thick as hydrants and a face petrified into the self-satisfied sneer of an overgrown frat boy. In his wraparound sunglasses and baseball cap and body armor, Masterson seemed less a person than an action figure. Where did they get these characters? Were they grown on some kind of farm? Cultured in a petri dish? They were thugs, pure and simple, and Guilder had never liked dealing with them—Richards being Exhibit A—though it was also true that their almost robotic obedience made them ideally suited for certain jobs; if they didn’t exist, you’d have to invent them.

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.”

Kittridge slid his arms through the straps and put on the jacket. The woman’s meaning was plain. They were behind the lines; the front had passed them by.

“How close are they?” Kittridge asked.

The major’s expression darkened. “They’re already here.”


Lawrence Grey had never known such hunger.

How long had he been here? Three days? Four? Time had lost all meaning, the passage of hours broken only by the visits of the space-suited men. They came without warning, apparitions emerging from a narcotic haze. The hiss of the air lock and there they were; then the prick of the needle and the slow filling of the plastic bag with its crimson prize. Something was in his blood, something they wanted. Yet they never seemed satisfied; they would drain him like a slaughtered steer. What do you want? he pleaded. Why are you doing this to me? Where’s Lila?

He was famished. He was a being of pure need, a man-sized hole in space needing only to be filled. A person could go mad with it. Assuming he was a person, still, which hardly seemed likely. Zero had changed him, altered the very essence of his existence. He was being brought into the fold. In his mind were voices, murmurings, like the buzz of a distant crowd. Hour by hour the sound grew stronger; the crowd was closing in. Against the straps he wriggled like a fish in a net. With every stolen bag of blood his strength drained away. He felt himself aging from within, a precipitous decline, deep in the cells. The universe had abandoned him to his fate. Soon he would vanish; he would be dispersed into the void.

They were watching him, the one named Guilder and the one named Nelson; Grey sensed their presence lurking behind the lens of the security camera, the probing beams of their eyes. They needed him; they were afraid of him. He was like a present that, when opened, might burst forth as snakes. He had no answers for them; they’d given up asking. Silence was the last power he had.

He thought of Lila. Were the same things happening to her? Was the baby all right? He had wanted only to protect her, to do this one good thing in his wretched little life. It was a kind of love. Like Nora Chung, only a thousand times deeper, an energy that desired nothing, that took nothing; it wanted only to give itself away. It was true: Lila had come into his life for a purpose, to give him one last chance. And yet he had failed her.

He heard the hiss of the air lock; a figure stepped through. One of the suited men, lumbering toward him like a great orange snowman.

“Mr. Grey, I’m Dr. Suresh.”

Grey closed his eyes and waited for the prick of the needle. Go ahead, he thought, take it all. But that didn’t happen. Grey looked up to see the doctor withdrawing a needle from the IV port. With careful movements he capped the needle and deposited it in the waste can with a clang. At once Grey felt the fog lift from his mind.

“Now we can talk. How are you feeling?”

He wanted to say: How do you think I’m feeling? Or maybe just: F*ck you. “Where’s Lila?”

The doctor withdrew a small penlight from a pouch on his biosuit and leaned over Grey’s face. Through the faceplate of his helmet his features swam into view: a heavy brow, skin dark with a yellowish cast, small white teeth. He waved the beam over Grey’s eyes.

“Does it trouble you? The light.”

Grey shook his head. He was becoming aware of a new sound—a rhythmic throbbing. He was hearing the man’s heartbeat, the pulsing swish of blood through his veins. A blast of saliva washed the walls of his mouth.

“You have not had a bowel movement, yes?”

Grey swallowed and shook his head again. The doctor moved to the foot of the bed and withdrew a small silver probe. He scraped it quickly along the soles of Grey’s bare feet.

“Very good.”

The examination continued. Each bit of data was jotted onto a handheld. Suresh pulled Grey’s gown up over his legs and cupped his testicles in his hand.

“Cough, please.”

Grey managed a small one. The doctor’s face behind his faceplate revealed nothing. The throbbing sound filled Grey’s entire brain, annihilating any other thought.

“I am going to check your glands.”

The doctor reached his gloved hands toward Grey’s neck. As the tips of his fingers made contact, Grey darted his head forward. The action was automatic; Grey couldn’t have stopped it if he’d tried. His teeth bore into the soft flesh of Suresh’s palm, clamping like a vise. The chemical taste of latex, profoundly revolting, then a burst of sweetness filled his mouth. Suresh was shrieking, struggling to break free. His free hand pushed on Grey’s forehead, fighting for leverage; he reared back and struck Grey across the face with his fist. Not painful but startling; Grey broke his hold. Suresh stumbled backward, clutching his bloody hand at the wrist, thumb and forefinger wrapping it like a tourniquet. Grey expected something large to happen, the sound of an alarm, men rushing in, but nothing of the kind occurred; the moment felt frozen and, somehow, unobserved. Suresh backed away, staring at Grey with a look of wide-eyed panic. He stripped off his bloody glove and moved briskly to the sink. He turned on the tap and began to scrub his hand fiercely, muttering under his breath:

“Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

Then he was gone. Grey lay still. In the struggle, his IV had torn loose. There was blood on his face, his lips. With slow pleasure he licked them clean. The merest taste, but it was enough. Strength flowed into him like a tide upon the shore. He tensed against the straps, feeling the rivets start to give. The air lock was another matter, but sooner or later it would open, and when it did, Grey would be waiting. He would alight like an angel of death.

Lila, I am coming.