Justin Cronin
THE TWELVE
She stood beside me for years, or was it a moment? I cannot remember. Maybe I loved her, maybe I didn’t. There was a house, and then no house. There were trees, but none remain. When no one remembers, what is there? You, whose moments are gone, who drift like smoke in the afterlife, tell me something, tell me anything.
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by Justin Cronin
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.:
“In the Afterlife” from
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cronin, Justin.
The twelve : a novel / Justin Cronin.
p. cm.—(Passage trilogy 2)
eISBN: 978-0-345-53489-7
1. Virus diseases—Fiction. 2. Survival—Fiction. 3. End of the world—Fiction. 4. Human experimentation in medicine—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.R542T94 2012
813’.54—dc23 2012028427
Jacket design: Belina Huey
Jacket illustration: Tom Hallman
v3.1_r1
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
I THE GHOST
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
II THE FAMILIAR
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
III THE FIELD
Chapter 23
IV THE CAVE
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
V THE OIL ROAD
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
