The Twelve (The Passage 2)

It wasn't over.

With a deep animal howl, Amy threw back her head. Now Peter understood what he was seeing. Something that should have taken hours was happening in seconds. The facial features melting into fetal vagueness. The spine elongating, fingers and toes stretching into clawed prehensility. Teeth ejected in advance of the picketlike rows, and the skin hardening into its thick, crystalline carapace. The space around her had begun to glow, as if the air itself were lit by the accelerated force of her transformation. With a violent jerk Amy pulled the chains across her chest, snapping them clean from their blocks, and by the time she reached the ground, crouching with liquid grace to absorb the impact of her fall, there were not eleven virals on the field but twelve.

There were Twelve.

She rose. She roared.

Which was when, in the basement of the Dome, Lila Kyle and Lawrence Grey, their fates never to be known, joined hands, counted to three, brushed the match across the striker, and all the lights went out.

Chapter 65

The explosion in the basement, fueled by the fiery ignition of thirty-two hundred pounds of highly compressed diethyl ether inhalant, produced a release of energy roughly equivalent to the crash of a small passenger jet. With nowhere else to go, its explosive force rocketed upward, seeking any alley of travel to accommodate its rapidly oxygenating expansion-stairwells, hallways, ductwork-before folding back on itself and blasting through the floor. Once it was unleashed into the larger spaces of the building, the rest was up for grabs. Windows blew. Furniture went airborne. Walls were suddenly there no longer. It rose and as it rose it expelled a gyring wake of pure destruction like a tornado in reverse, everything flung up and out from its white-hot heart, until it found the bones of the structure itself, the steel girders and meticulously chiseled limestone blocks that had suspended its roof above the Iowa prairie since the days of the pioneers, and blew them all to pieces.

The Dome began to fall.

Three miles away, the spectators in the stadium experienced the destruction of the Dome as a chain of discrete sensory occurrences: first a flash, then a boom, followed by a deep seismic rattle and a clamping down of blackness as the city's power grid collapsed. Everybody froze, but in the next instant something changed. A new force roused to life inside them. Who could say who started it? Insurgents planted in the stands had already begun their assault on the guards, but now they weren't alone. The crowd rose up in violence, a wild mob. So ferocious was their undammed fury that as they fell upon their captors it was as if their individuality had dissolved into a single animal collective. A swarm. A stampede. A pod. They became their enemy, as all must do; they ceased to be slaves, and so became alive.

On the field, Guilder was ... dissolving.

He felt this first in the backs of his hands-an abrupt constriction of the skin, as if he were being shrink-wrapped. He held them up to his face. In numb incomprehension-the pain had yet to arrive-he watched as the flesh of his hands puckered and began to split open in long, bloodless seams. The sensation spread, dancing over the surface of his body. His fingertips found his face. It felt like touching a skull. His hair was falling out, his teeth. His back bent inward, drawing him into an old man's stoop. He fell to his knees in the mud. He felt his bones collapsing, crumbling to dust.

"Grey, what did you do?"

A shadow fell.

Guilder lifted his face. The virals filled his darkening vision with a final image of their magnificence. My brothers, he thought, what is happening to me? Help me, my brothers, I am dying. But he saw no kinship in their eyes.

Betrayer.

Betrayer.

Betrayer betrayer betrayer ...

Other things were occurring-gunshots, voices yelling, figures running in the dark. But Guilder's consciousness of these events was instantly subsumed into the larger awareness, cold and final, of what was about to happen to him.

Shawna, he thought, Shawna, all I wanted was a little company. All I wanted was not to die alone.

And then they were upon him.

The conclusive unfolding of events, which accounted for just thirty-seven seconds in the lives of the participants, occurred in overlapping frames of simultaneous movement collapsing toward the center. Illuminated only by firelight-the barrels at the periphery continued to burn-and the virals' phosphorescent glow, the scene possessed a whiff of hell. The virals, finished with Guilder, his body scattered in desiccated pieces that were more dust than corpse, had assembled in a loose line. They appeared to be regarding Amy with a look of caution. Perhaps they did not know yet what she portended; perhaps they were afraid of her. Peter, his weapon reloaded, was firing in bursts into their massive figures, though without visible effect; the bullets skimmed pointlessly off their armored bodies in bright sparks; they didn't so much as glance in his direction. From the other side of the field, Alicia was moving forward with her pistol raised, just as Nina and Tifty were racing downfield to flank them. The plan was now moot; they had only their instincts. Standing erect on the platform, Amy raised her arms. From each wrist hung a long length of chain. She jerked them into the air and began to rotate them at her wrists, swinging them in wide, accelerating arcs. Spinners, Peter realized. Amy was making spinners, to disorient the virals. Faster and faster the chains whirred in the air above her head, a hypnotic blur of movement. The creatures froze, entranced. With an avian dart, Amy's head tipped to the side; her gaze compacted, calculating the angle of attack. Peter knew what was about to happen.

Amy Harper Bellafonte, fully weaponized. Amy, the Girl from Nowhere, airborne.

As she shot forward, she let the chains fly, snapping them from her body like a pair of whips. Simultaneously she tucked her head to her chest, aligning her posture in midflight so that she would meet the closest among them feetfirst, chest-high, her physical person transformed at the moment of impact into a battering ram with twenty-foot iron wings. She was a fraction of their size, but momentum was on her side; she sailed through the first one, blasting him backward; by the time she landed, the chains had found their targets, wrapping two others around their necks. With a hard yank she drew the left one toward her, buried her face beneath his jaw, and shook him like a dog with a rag in its mouth.

He howled.

And, with a jet of blood and a bony cracking sound, died.

She unfurled him from the chain with a snap of her wrist, rotating the body away like a top. Her attention turned to the second viral, but the balance had shifted: the element of surprise was gone; the hypnotic effect of the spinners had worn away. The creature launched toward her, their bodies meeting in an uncontrolled collision that sent them both tumbling end over end away from the platform. Amy wrenched the chain free but seemed disoriented; she crouched on her hands and knees in the dirt. A kind of whole-body rippling moved through the remaining virals, their shared consciousness reassembling, achieving focus. One more wink of time and they would fall on her like a pack of animals.

Which they might have, if not for the small one.

Peter's mind had yet to parse them as anything more than a collective; he was forced to do so now. One of the virals was different. In bulk and stature he appeared no larger than a man. In the instant before the others leapt upon Amy, he beat them to the punch; with a compact aerial bound he alighted between her and her attackers, turning to face them, claws raised, his body in a posture of challenge. His chest expanded in a massive intake of breath; his lips pulled back, exposing his teeth.

The blast of sound that followed was completely out of proportion with the size of the body that produced it. It was a howl of purest rage. It was a roar that could have felled a forest, flattened a mountain, knocked a planet off its axis. Peter literally felt himself pushed back by it; his eardrums popped with pain. The small viral had bought Amy only a second, but it was enough. As she rose to her feet, the others shot forward.

Chaos.

Suddenly it was impossible to tell what was happening or where to shoot, the images of battle too quick for human eyes to compute. Peter realized he had expended the last of his rounds, but the gun was useless anyway. He glimpsed Alicia advancing from the far side of the field, still firing her pistol.

Where were Tifty and Nina?

He looked downfield. Nina was racing toward the platform, the bomb clutched to her chest. Tifty was behind her. She waved her free arm over her head, yelling at the top of her lungs: "You bastards! Look over here! Hey!"

The one that took note-did it grasp her intentions? Did it know the meaning of what she held? It did not so much launch as lob itself toward her, dropping in a four-limbed spread like a spider on silk. Tifty saw it first. As he raised his weapon he tried to push Nina aside, but the effort came too late; as with all things falling, the leisureliness of the viral's plunge was an illusion. It crashed into the two of them, Tifty taking the brunt. Peter expected the bomb to go off, but that didn't happen. The viral seized Nina by the arm and flung her away, casting her spiraling over the dirt; then it turned toward Tifty. As Tifty raised his weapon, the creature engulfed him.

A scream. A gunshot.

It wasn't a decision. There were no pros and cons. Peter dropped his gun and made for the bomb where it lay in the dirt, running for all he was worth.

The only two people who saw it all were Lore and Greer. And even then, it was Greer alone, the man of faith, whose prayers had afforded him a deeper comprehension of the scene, who was able to make sense of it.

Viewed from the control room, the battle on the field played out with a flattened quality, rendered more decipherable by distance. At one end lay Eustace, unconscious or dead, and between him and the platform, the body of Tifty Lamont; Nina was gone, hurled into the darkness; Alicia, on the opposite side, was the only one still firing. At the center stood the platform; Amy, having wrenched herself free from the melee, had vaulted to the top of the armature. Her tunic was in shreds, stained with the dark wetness of blood; one clawed hand clutched her side, as if to stanch a wound. Even at this distance, Greer could discern the harsh labor of her breathing. Her transformation was complete, yet one human vestige remained: her hair. Black and wild, it tumbled freely around her face. In another moment her attackers would strike in overwhelming force, yet her posture did not communicate retreat. There was something invincible about her, almost royal.

Then he saw Peter, racing downfield. Where was he going? The semi?

No.

Greer blasted from the room and down the stairs. He would part the crowd with his body, his fists, his blade if he had to. Amy, Amy, I am coming.

Alicia would not be denied. She had consecrated her existence to this holy fact. She had felt it since the cave: a singular longing drawing her forward, as if she were being pulled down the length of a tunnel. As she moved toward the virals, firing her weapon-her bullets, she knew, would do no actual damage; she only wanted to draw their attention-she was a being of only one thought, one vision, one desire.

Louise, I will avenge you. You have not been forgotten. Louise, you, too, are my sister in blood.

"Show yourself, you son of a bitch!"

Her bullets skimmed and flashed. She dropped her empty magazine, rammed another home, and resumed firing. Through gritted teeth she advanced, murmuring her dark prayer. He would know her, feel her; it could not be otherwise. It was a thing of destiny, that she should be the one to kill him, to wipe him from the face of the earth. He was Julio Martinez, Esq., Tenth of Twelve. He was Sod of the bench and the grunting exhalations. He was all the men in all the years of history who had violated a woman in this manner, and she would drive her blade deep into the dark heart of him and feel him die.

One of the virals swiveled toward her. Of course, Alicia thought; she would have recognized him anywhere. His physique was identical to the others', and yet there was something distinctive about him, an air of haughtiness that only she would be able to detect. He regarded her through soulless eyes lidded with bored languor; he appeared, almost, to smile. Alicia had never seen an expression on a viral's face before; now she did. I know you, his bland, arrogant face seemed to say. Don't I know you? Don't tell me, let me guess. I'm certain I know you from someplace.

You're damn right you know me, she thought, and drew the bayonet from her belt.

They launched toward each other simultaneously-Alicia with the blade raised above her head, Martinez with his great taloned hands reaching forward like a prow of knives. An unstoppable force meeting an immovable object: their trajectories intersected in a headlong, grappling collision, Martinez's vastly greater mass passing both through and under her, sending her pinwheeling over his head. In her moment of uncontrolled flight, Alicia acknowledged but did not yet feel the lacerations on her arms and face where his claws had torn into her flesh. She hit the dirt and rolled once, twice, three times, each rotation defusing her momentum, and sprang to her feet again. She was winded, stumbling, her head chiming with the impact. Somehow she had maintained her grip on the bayonet; to lose it was to accept defeat, unthinkable.

Martinez, twenty feet away, had dropped to a froglike squat, his hands splayed like paddles on the dirt. The smile had morphed into something else, more playful, full of rich enjoyment. He seemed about to laugh. Goddamn your laughing face, Alicia thought, raising her bayonet once more.

A shape was falling toward them.

The bomb, the bomb, where was the bomb?

Then Peter saw it, lying just a few yards from Tifty's body. He skidded in the dirt and scooped it to his chest. The plunger was intact, the wires still connected. How would it feel? Like nothing, he thought. It would feel like nothing.

Something blasted him from behind, hard as a wall. For a moment everything left him: breath, thought, gravity. The bomb went spiraling away. The ground unfurling beneath him and a flash of mental blackness; then Peter found himself face-up in the mud.

The viral loomed above him; their faces were mere inches apart. The sight seemed to cross the wires of Peter's senses, as if he were tasting nightfall, or listening to lightning. As the creature tipped its head, Peter did the one, last thing he could think of, believing it would be the final gesture of his life: he cocked his head in concert, willed his mind into absolute focus, and looked the viral dead in the eye.