The Twelve (The Passage 2)

"How will they manage?"

"I suppose how people always manage. Elections, the rough business of building a life." He sipped his tea. "It'll be messy. It might not work at all. But at least it will be theirs."

Nina came in from the cold, stamping waffles of snow from her boots. "Jesus, it's freezing out there," she said.

Eustace offered her his cup. "Here, warm yourself up."

She took it in her hands and sipped, then bent to kiss him quickly on the mouth. "Thank you, husband. You really need to shave."

Eustace laughed. "With a face like mine? Who cares?"

That the two of them were a couple was, as Peter had learned, the worst-kept secret of the insurgency. One of the first things Eustace had done was issue an executive order permitting flatlanders to marry. In many instances this was a technicality; people had been paired up for years or even decades. But marriage had never possessed official sanction. The list of couples waiting to be married now ran to the hundreds, and Eustace had two justices of the peace operating night and day out of a storefront down the block. He and Nina had been among the first, as had Hollis and Sara.

"Good news," Nina said. "I just came from the hospital."

"And?"

"Two more babies were born this morning, both healthy. Mothers doing fine."

"Well, how about that." Eustace grinned at Peter. "See what I'm telling you? Even on the darkest night, my friend, life will have its way."

Peter made his way down the hill, hunched against the wind. As a member of the executive staff he was permitted the use of a vehicle, but he preferred to walk. At the hospital he headed for Michael's room. Power had been only partially restored, but the hospital had been one of the first buildings relit. He found Michael awake and sitting up. His right leg, encased in plaster from ankle to hip, was suspended from a sling at a forty-five-degree angle above the bed. It had been touch and go for a while, and Sara had thought he might lose the leg; but Michael was a fighter, and now, three weeks later, he was officially on the mend.

Lore was sitting by the bed, manipulating a pair of knitting needles. Eustace had put her to work as a foreman at the biodiesel plant, but any free moment found her back at the hospital, at Michael's bedside.

"What are you making?" Peter asked her.

"Hell if I can say. It was supposed to be a sweater, but it's coming out more like socks."

"You should really stick to what you know," Michael advised.

"Just you wait till you're out of that cast, my friend. I'll show you what I know. It's nothing you'll forget." She looked at Peter, slyly smiling to make sure he got the joke. "Oh, I'm sorry, Peter. Got a little carried away. I guess I forgot you were there."

He laughed. "It's okay."

She gave one of her needles a wave. "I just want to mention, in case our boy here takes a turn for the worse, I've always thought you had a very nice look to you. Plus, you're a war hero. I'd be interested in anything you had to say, Lieutenant."

"I'll give it some thought."

"Of that I have no doubt." She dropped the yarn to her lap. "As it happens, my shift begins in thirty minutes, so I'll leave you two to talk about me." She rose, bagged her knitting, patted Michael on the arm, then thought better of it and kissed him on the top of his head. "Need anything before I go?"

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine, Michael. You're far from fine. You scared the living hell out of me is what you did."

"I said I was sorry."

"Keep saying it, bub. One day I'll believe you." She kissed him again. "Gentlemen."

When Lore was gone, Peter took her seat. "Sorry about that," Michael said.

"I don't know why you keep apologizing for her, Michael. You're the luckiest guy on planet Earth, as far as I'm concerned." He tipped his head toward the bed. "So how's the leg really?"

"It hurts like hell. Nice of you to finally visit."

"Sorry about that. Eustace is keeping me busy."

"So how many have you found?"

Peter understood that Michael was asking about the other First Colonists. "The number we're hearing is fifty-six. We're still trying to track everyone down. So far we've found Jimmy's daughters, Alice and Avery. Constance Chou, Russ Curtis, Penny Darrell. The Littles are going to take some time to sort out. Everybody's spread all over the place."

"Good news, I guess." Michael stopped, leaving the rest unstated. So many others, gone.

"Hollis told me what you did," Peter said.

Michael shrugged. He looked a little embarrassed, but proud, too. "It seemed like the thing to do at the time."

"You ever want a job in the Exped, you let me know. Assuming they'll have me back. The next time we talk, I might be in the stockade."

"Peter, be serious. They'll probably make you a general for this. That or ask you to run for president."

"Then you don't know the Army like I do." And yet, for just a moment, he thought: what if? "We'll be leaving in a few days, you know."

"So I figured. Don't forget to bundle up. Say hello to Kerrville for me."

"We'll get you in the next trip, I promise."

"I don't know, hombre, the service here is pretty good. The place kind of agrees with me. Who's going with you?"

"Sara and Hollis and Kate, but that's obvious. Greer's staying to help with the evacuation. Eustace is putting a team together."

"What about Lish?"

"I'd ask her if I could find her. I've barely seen her at all. She's been riding out on this horse of hers. She calls him Soldier. What she's doing I have no idea."

"I'm sorry you missed her. She came by this morning."

"Lish was here?"

"Said she wanted to say hello." Michael looked at him. "Why? Is that so strange?"

Peter frowned. "I guess not. How did she seem?"

"How do you think? Like Lish."

"So there wasn't anything different about her."

"Not that I noticed. She wasn't here very long. She said she was going to help Sara with the donations."

As interim director of public health, Sara had discovered that the building that served as the hospital was, as she'd long suspected, a hospital in name only. There was almost no medical equipment, and no blood at all. With so many people injured in the siege, and babies being born and all the rest, she'd had a freezer brought over from the food-processing facility and had instituted a program of blood donation.

"Lish as a nurse," Peter said, and shook his head at the irony. "I'd like to see that."

What became of the redeyes themselves was never fully understood. Those that hadn't been killed in the stadium had essentially ceased to exist. The only conclusion to be drawn, supported by Sara's story about Lila, was that the destruction of the Dome, and the death of the man known as the Source, had caused a chain reaction similar to the one they'd seen in Babcock's descendants on the mountain in Colorado. Those who'd witnessed it described it as a rapid aging, as if a hundred years of borrowed life were surrendered in just a few seconds-flesh shriveling, hair falling out in clumps, faces withering to the skull. The corpses they'd found, still dressed in their suits and ties, were nothing but piles of brown bones. They looked like they'd been dead for decades.

As the day of departure approached, Sara found herself working virtually around the clock. As word had spread in the flatland that actual medical care could now be had, more and more people had come in. The complaints varied from the common cold to malnutrition to the broad bodily failures of old age. A few seemed simply curious about what seeing a doctor would be like. Sara treated the ones she could, comforted those she could not. In the end, the two felt not so very different.

She left the hospital only to sleep, and sometimes eat, or else Hollis would bring meals to her, always with Kate in tow. They had been quartered in an apartment in the complex at the edge of downtown-a curious place, with wide, tinted windows that created a permanent evening light within. It felt a little eerie, knowing that the former occupants had been redeyes, but it was comfortable, with large beds made with soft linens and hot water and a working gas stove, on which Hollis concocted soups and stews of ingredients she didn't want to know about but which were nonetheless delicious. They would eat together in the candlelit dark and then fall into bed, making love with quiet tenderness so as not to wake their daughter.

Tonight Sara decided to take a break; she was dead on her feet, and starving besides, and missed her family keenly. Her family: after all that had happened, how remarkable these two words were. They seemed the most miraculous in the history of human speech. When she had seen Hollis charging through the entrance of the Dome, her heart had instantly known what her eyes could not believe. Of course he had come for her; Hollis had moved heaven and earth, and here he was. How could it have been otherwise?

She made her way up the hill, past the toppled wreckage of the Dome-its charred timbers had smoldered for days-and through the old downtown. To move freely, without fear, still seemed a little unreal to her. Sara thought about stopping into the apothecary, to say hello to Eustace and whoever else was around, but her feet refused this impulse, which quickly passed. With anticipation lightening her step, she ascended the six flights to the apartment.

"Mummy!"

Hollis and Kate were sitting together on the floor, playing beans and cups. Before Sara could uncoil the scarf from her neck, the girl leapt to her feet and flew into her arms, a soft collision; Sara hoisted Kate to her waist to look her in the eye. She had never told Kate to address her by this name, not wanting to confuse her more than necessary, but this had turned out not to matter; the girl had simply done it. Having never had a father before, Kate had taken a little more time to adapt to Hollis's role in her life, but then one day, about a week after the liberation, she had started to call him Daddy.

"Well, there you are," Sara said happily. "How was your day? Did you do fun things with Daddy?"

The little girl reached toward Sara's face, wrapped her nose with her fist, and made a show of snatching it from Sara's face, popping it into her mouth, and pushing her tongue against the inside of her cheek. "I haf yur nose," she said thickly.

"Now, give that back."

Kate, beaming wildly, blond hair bouncing around her face, waggled her head with playful defiance. "Nuh-uh. It's mine."

Thus, the tickling, and laughter from all sides, and the theft of more bodily parts, and the eventual return of Sara's nose to her face. By the time the struggle was over, Hollis had joined in. Cupping the back of Kate's head, he kissed Sara quickly, his beard-warm, familiar, full of his scent-pressing like wool against her cheeks.

"Hungry?"

She smiled. "I could eat."

Hollis dished her out a bowl; he and Kate had already had their dinner. He sat with her at the little table while she dug in. The meat, he confessed, could have been just about anything, but the carrots and potatoes were passable. Sara hardly cared; never had food tasted so good as it had the last few weeks. They talked about her patients, about Peter and Michael and the others, about Kerrville and what awaited there, about the trip south, now just a few days off. Hollis had initially suggested that they wait until spring, when the travel would be less arduous, but Sara would have none of it. Too much has happened here, she'd told him. I don't know where home is, but let's let it be Texas.

They washed the dishes, set them in the rack, and readied Kate for bed. Even as Sara drew the nightshirt over the little girl's head, she was already half-asleep. They tucked her in and retreated to the living room.

"Do you really have to go back to the hospital?" Hollis asked.

Sara took her coat from the hook and wriggled her arms into the sleeves. "It'll just be a few hours. Don't wait up." Though that was exactly what he'd do; Sara would have done the same. "Come here."

She kissed him, lingering there. "I mean it. Go to bed."

But as she put her hand on the knob, he stopped her.

"How did you know, Sara?"

She almost, but not quite, understood what he was asking. "How did I know what?"

"That it was her. That it was Kate."

It was odd; Sara had never thought to ask herself this question. Nina had confirmed Kate's identity in their clandestine meeting in the back room of the apothecary, but she needn't have; there had never been a trace of doubt in Sara's mind. It was more than the child's physical resemblance that told her so; the knowledge had come from someplace deeper. Sara had looked at Kate and instantly understood that of all the children in the world, this one was hers.

"Call it a mother's instincts. It was like ... like knowing myself." She shrugged. "I can't explain it any better than that."

"Still, we were lucky."

Sara had never told him about the foil packet; nor would she ever. "I'm not sure if you can even call something like this luck," she said. "All I know is we're here."

It was after midnight by the time she was finishing her rounds. Yawning into her fist, her mind already halfway home, Sara stepped into the last examining room, where a young woman was sitting on the table.

"Jenny?"

"Hi, Dani."

Sara had to laugh-not only at the name, which seemed like something from a distant dream, but the girl's presence itself. It wasn't until she'd seen her that Sara had realized that she'd assumed Jenny was dead.