The Twelve (The Passage 2)

"Um ..."

"Si? A little choc-o-LAH-tay? Check the cabinet over the sink."

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're asking for."

Now, this was annoying. The woman was pretending not to know what chocolate was!

"I fail to see what the problem is, Yolanda. I have to say, your attitude has begun to trouble me. A great deal, in fact."

"Please don't be angry. If I knew what it was, I'd be glad to get it for you. Maybe Jenny knows."

"That's my point, you see. That is precisely what I'm saying." Lila sighed heavily. A pity, but there was really nothing left to be done. Better to rip the band-aid off than drag things out.

"I'm afraid, Yolanda, I'm going to have to let you go."

"Go?"

"Go, yes. No mas. We no longer require your services, I'm afraid."

The woman's eyes seemed practically to pop from her head. "You can't!"

"I'm truly sorry. I wish things had worked out. But under the circumstances, you really leave me with no alternative."

The woman hurled herself at Lila's knees. "Please! I'll do anything!"

"Yolanda, get ahold of yourself."

"I'm begging you," the woman blubbered into her skirt. "You know what they'll do. I'll work harder, I swear!"

Lila had expected her to take it badly, but this undignified display was wholly unexpected. It was positively embarrassing. The urge to offer some consoling touch was strong, but Lila resisted it, lest this draw things out, leaving her hands hovering awkwardly in the air. Maybe she should have waited until David got home. He was always better at this sort of thing.

"We'll provide you with a reference, of course. And two weeks' pay. You really shouldn't take it so hard."

"It's a death sentence!" She hugged Lila's knees as if she were clinging to a life raft. "They'll send me to the basement!"

"I hardly think this qualifies as a death sentence. You're completely overreacting."

But the woman was beyond appeals to reason. Unable to form words through the storm of her uncontrollable sobs, she had given up her pleading, soaking Lila's skirt with mucusy tears. The only thing on Lila's mind was extricating herself from the situation as quickly as possible. She hated things like this, she hated them.

"What's going on in here?"

Lila lifted her gaze toward the figure standing in the door, at once breathing a sigh of relief. "David. Thank God. We seem to have a bit of a situation here. Yolanda, well, she's a little bit upset. I've decided to let her go."

"Christ, another one? What's the matter with you?"

Now, wasn't this typical. Wasn't this typical David. "That's fine for you to say, gone all day, leaving me stuck in the house. I'd think you'd back me up."

"Please, don't do this!" Yolanda wailed.

Lila made a get-this-woman-off-me gesture with her hands. "A little help here?"

Which did not prove quite as easy as it might have. As David (not David) bent to extricate the sobbing Yolanda (not Yolanda) from Lila's knees, the woman redoubled her hold and commenced, unbelievably, to scream. What a scene she was making! For goodness sake, you'd think being fired from a housekeeping job really was a death sentence from the way she was acting. With a hard yank at the waist, David pulled her free and hoisted her bodily into the air. She kicked and screamed in his arms, flailing like a crazy person. It was only through his superior strength that he managed to contain her. One thing about David: he'd kept himself in shape.

"I'm sorry, Yolanda!" Lila called as he whisked her away. "I'll mail you a check!"

The door slammed behind them. Lila released a breath she realized she'd been holding in her chest. Well, wasn't that something. Wasn't that just about the most uncomfortable business she'd ever had to endure. She felt completely rattled, and not a little guilty besides. Yolanda had been with them for years, and for everything to end so badly. It left a sour taste in Lila's mouth. Though admittedly, Yolanda had never been the best housekeeper, and recently she'd really let things go. Probably some personal difficulties. Lila had never even been to the woman's house, though; she knew nothing of her life. How curious was that? All these years, Yolanda coming and going, and it was as if Lila didn't know the woman at all.

"Well, she's gone. Congratulations."

Lila, who had resumed brushing her hair, examined David coolly through the mirror as he paused in the doorway to straighten his tie.

"And how is this my fault, exactly? You saw her. She was completely out of control."

"That's the third one this year. Good attendants don't grow on trees."

She took another long, luxurious stroke with the brush. "So call the service. It's really not such a big deal, you know."

David said nothing more, evidently content to let the matter drop. He moved to the divan, drawing up the knees of his suit pants to sit down.

"We have to talk."

"Can't you see I'm busy? Don't they need you back at the hospital or something?"

"I don't work at a hospital. We've been over this a million times."

Had they? Sometimes her thoughts were autumn leaves, sometimes they were bees in a jar, little buzzing things going round and round.

"What happened in Texas, Lila?"

"Texas?"

He sighed grumpily. "The convoy. The Oil Road. I thought my instructions were clear."

"I haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about. I've never been to Texas in my life." She paused her brushing, meeting David's eyes through the mirror. "Brad always hated Texas. Probably you don't want to hear anything about that, though."

Her words, she saw, had hit their mark. Bringing up Brad was her secret weapon. Though she knew she shouldn't, she took a perverse delight in the expression on David's face whenever she spoke the name-the deflated blankness of a man who knew he could never measure up.

"I don't ask much of you. What I'm beginning to wonder is if you can control these things anymore."

"Yes, well." Buzz, buzz.

"Are you listening to me? We can't have any more disasters like this. Not when we're this close."

"I don't see what you're so upset about. And to be perfectly honest, I don't care for the way you're speaking to me."

"Goddamnit, put that f**king brush down!"

But before she could do this, he snatched it from her hand and sent it pinwheeling across the room. He seized her by the hair, yanking her head back, and jammed his face so close to hers it wasn't even a face but a thing, a monstrous distorted sluglike thing, bathing her with its rotten bacterial breath.

"I've had it with your bullshit." Spittle splashed her cheeks, her eyes; it launched revoltingly from his mouth into hers. The edges of his teeth were etched with a dark substance, giving them a terrifying vividness. Blood. His teeth were lined in blood. "This act of yours. This stupid game."

"Please," she gasped, "you're hurting me!"

"Am I?" He twisted her hair, hard. A thousand pinpoint agonies screamed from her scalp.

"David," she pleaded, tears drowning her vision, "I'm begging you. Think about what you're doing."

The slug face roared in anger: "I'm not David! I'm Horace! My name is Horace Guilder!" Another twisting yank. "Say it!"

"I don't know, I don't know! You're confusing me!"

"Say it! Say my name!"

It was the pain that did it. In a cyclonic rush, her consciousness collapsed upon itself.

"You're Horace! Please, just stop!"

"Again! All of it!"

"Horace Guilder! You're Horace Guilder, Director of the Homeland!"

Guilder released her, stepping away. She was lying backward over her dressing table, shaking with sobs. If only she could go back. Go back, she thought, clamping her eyes tight to hide this horror of a man, this Horace Guilder, from her sight. Lila, go back. Send yourself away again. She shook with a nausea that rose from a place so deep it had no name, a sickness not of the body but of the soul, the metaphysical core of her fractured self, and then she was on her knees, vomiting, gasping and choking and spewing the vile blood that she herself had drunk that very morning.

"Okay, then," said Guilder, wiping his hands on his suit coat. "Just so that's clear."

Lila said nothing. So powerful was her longing to will herself away, she couldn't have formed words if she'd tried.

"Big days ahead, Lila. I need to know that you're on board. No more of your nonsense. And please, try not to fire any more attendants. These girls don't grow on trees."

With the back of her wrist, she wiped the rancid spittle from her chin. "You said that already."

"I'm sorry?"

"I said, you said that already." Her voice didn't even sound like her own. "About attendants not growing on trees."

"Did I?" He gave a little laugh. "So I did. Funny when you think about it. Something along those lines would sure come in handy, given the exigencies of the food chain and all. I'm sure your pal Lawrence would agree. I tell you, that man can eat." He paused a moment, enjoying this thought, before his eyes hardened on her again. "Now clean yourself up. No offense, Lila, but you've got vomit in your hair."

Chapter 40

"Sara? Can you hear me?"

A voice was floating toward her. A voice and also a face, one she knew but couldn't place. A face in a dream, which was what she was certain she was having: an unsettling dream in which she was running and all around her were bodies and parts of bodies, and everything on fire.

"She's still completely out of it," the voice said. It seemed to reach her across an impossible distance. A continent. An ocean. It seemed to come from the stars. "How much did you use?"

"Three drops. Well, maybe four."

"Four? Were you trying to kill her?"

"It was rushed, okay? You told me you wanted her out. So, she's out."

A heavy sigh. "Get me a bucket."

A bucket, thought Sara, what did the voices want with a bucket? What did a bucket have to do with anything? But no sooner had she thought this than a force of cold wetness crashed into her face, blasting her into consciousness. She was choking, drowning, waving her arms in panic, her nose and throat filling with the icy water.

"Easy now, Sara."

She sat upright, too fast; her brain sloshed in its casing, swirling her vision.

"Ooo," she moaned. "Ooo."

"The headache's bad, but it won't last. Just breathe."

She blinked the water from her eyes. Eustace?

It was. His top front teeth were gone, shorn at the root; his right eye was clouded with blindness. With a gnarled hand, he was holding out a metal cup.

"It's good to see you again, Sara. You've already met Nina, here. Say hello, Nina."

Standing behind him was the woman from the pipe. A rifle was slung across her chest, her arms folded casually over it. "Hello, Sara."

"Don't worry," Eustace said. "I know you have a lot of questions, and we'll get to them. Just drink."

Sara took the cup and gulped the water down. It was astonishingly cold and tasted vaguely metallic, as if she were licking a bar of iron.

"I thought you were-"

"Dead?" Eustace grinned, showing his ruined mouth. "In point of fact, everybody here is dead. Nina, remind me, how exactly did you die?"

"I believe it was pneumonia, sir. That or something very heavy fell on me. I can never remember how we did the paperwork."

The explosion, the dash through the pipe; it was all coming back now. Sara drained the cup and took a moment to inspect her surroundings. She appeared to be in some kind of bunker, although there were no windows; she sensed they were someplace underground. The room's only illumination came from a stand of flickering torches.

"Where are we?"

"Someplace the redeyes can't find us." He had a way of looking at her, angling his face to aim his good eye, that somehow added to the penetrating seriousness of his gaze. "Beyond that, I can't tell you. The important thing is you're safe here."

"Are you ... Sergio?"

Another broken-toothed smile. "I'm flattered you would think so. But no. There is no Sergio. Not in the way you mean."

"But I thought-"

"And you're supposed to. The name is short for 'insurgency.' Nina, if I'm not mistaken, that was your idea, wasn't it?"

"I believe it was."

"People need a name. Something to focus on, a face to attach to the idea. That's our face. Sergio."

She looked at the woman, who was regarding her coolly, then back to Eustace.

"The explosion. That was you, wasn't it?"

Eustace nodded. "Our early reports indicate seventeen cols dead, including your friend Whistler, and two members of the staff who were visiting for an inspection. Not a bad day's work, I'd say. But that's not the real prize."

"It's not?"

"No. The real prize is you, Sara."

Eustace was looking at her intently now. Both of them were. Sara shivered in the cold. A shift had occurred, an inversion of the conversation's energies; he was trying to draw her out. Could they trust her? More to the point, could she trust them?

"This is the part where you ask me why."