The Twelve

all. It felt final. The line of trucks cut a broad arc around the fences of the city and turned south. For a long time Alicia watched it, the image growing smaller, the sound of the engines dimming. She was still watching when it disappeared.

There was one thing left to do.

She’d taken the blood from the hospital, secreting the sloshing plastic pouch beneath her tunic when Sara’s back was turned. It had taken all her resolve not to clamp her jaws into it and bathe her face and mouth and tongue in its earthy richness. But when she’d thought of Peter, and Amy, and Michael, and all the others, she had found the strength to wait.

She had buried the pouch in the snow, marking the spot with a stone. Now she dug it free: a block of red ice, dense in her hand. Soldier was watching her from the edge of the culvert. Alicia would have told him to go, but of course he wouldn’t; they belonged to each other till the end. She built a fire of crackling scrub, melted snow in a pot, waited till the bubbles rose, and dipped the bag into the steaming water—as if, she thought, she were steeping tea. Gradually the contents softened to a slush. When the blood had thawed completely, Alicia removed the bag and lay in the snow, cradling its warmth against her chest. Within its plastic casing lay a destiny deferred. Since the day the viral had bitten her on the mountain, five years ago, the knowledge of her fate had lain inside her; now she would meet it. She would meet it, and die.

The morning sun was climbing into a cloudless winter sky. The sun. Alicia squinted her eyes against its brightness. The sun, she thought. My enemy, my friend, my last deliverance. It would sweep her away. It would scatter her ashes to the wind. Be quick now, Alicia said to the sun, but not too quick. I want to feel it coming out of me.

She raised the bag to her lips, pulled the tab, and drank.

* * *

By dusk the convoy had traveled sixty miles. The town was named Grinnell. They took shelter in an abandoned store at the edge of town that apparently had once sold shoes; boxes and boxes of them lined the racks. So, a place worth returning to, someday. They ate their rations, bedded down, and slept.

Or tried to. It wasn’t the cold—Peter was accustomed to that. He was simply too keyed up. The events in the stadium had been too enormous to process all at once; nearly a month later, he still found himself caught up in their emotions, his mind flashing restlessly with the images.

Peter pulled on his parka and boots and stepped outside. They’d posted a single guard, who was sitting in a metal folding chair they’d brought out from the store; Peter accepted the man’s rifle and sent him to bed. The moon was shining, the air like ice in his lungs. He stood in silence, drinking in the night’s stark clarity. For days after the uprising, Peter had tried to will himself into some emotion that would correspond to the magnitude of events— happiness or triumph or even just relief—but all he felt was lonely. He remembered Greer’s parting words: It’s a different world out there. It was, Peter knew that; yet it did not seem so. If anything, the world felt even more like itself. Here were the frozen fields, like a vast, becalmed sea; here was the immeasurable, starlit sky; here was the moon with its jaundiced, heavy-lidded gaze, like the answer to a question nobody had posed. Everything was just as it had been, and would go on being, long after all of them were gone, their names and memories and all they were ground like their bones into the dust of time and blown away.

A noise behind him: Sara stepped through the door, toting Kate on her hip. The girl’s eyes were open and looking about. Sara moved beside Peter, her boots crunching on the snow.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

She made a face of exasperation. “Believe me, I could. It’s my fault, I let her nap too long in the truck.”

“Hi, Peter,” the little girl said.

“Hi, sweetheart. Shouldn’t you be in bed? We’ve got another long day tomorrow, you know.”

She pressed her lips together. “Mm-mm.”

“See?” Sara said.

“Want me to take her for a while? I can, you know.”

“What, out here, you mean?”

Peter shrugged. “A little fresh air should fix her right up. And I could use the company.” When Sara didn’t answer, Peter said, “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye. What do you say, Kate?”

“You’re sure about this?” Sara pressed.

“Sure I’m sure. What else am I going to do? The minute she gets sleepy, I’ll bring her inside.” He propped his rifle against the building and held out his arms. “Come on now, hand her over. I’m not taking no for an answer.”

Sara acquiesced, shifting Kate from her waist to Peter’s. The little girl wrapped her legs around him, gripping the lapel of his parka to balance her weight.

Sara stood back a bit to regard the two of them. “I’ve got to say, this isn’t a version of you I’ve seen before.”

He felt himself smile. “Five years. A lot can change.”

“Well, it suits you.” A sudden yawn seized her. “Seriously, if she gets to be a bother …”

“She won’t. Now, will you go? Get some sleep.”

Sara left them alone. Peter lowered himself into the chair, shifted Kate to his lap, and turned her body toward the winter sky. “So what do you want to talk about?”

“I dunno.”

“Not tired at all?”

“Nope.”

“How about we count some stars?”

“That’s boring.” She shifted, making herself comfortable, then commanded: “Tell me a story.”

“A story. What kind?”

“A once-upon-a-time story.”

He wasn’t sure how, having never done this before. Yet as he considered the girl’s request, a rush of memories flowed through him: his days as a Little in the Sanctuary, sitting in circle with the other children, their legs folded under them; Teacher, her pale, moonlike face and the stories she told, of talking animals in waistcoats and skirts and kings in their castles and ships crossing the sea in search of treasure; the drowsy sensation of the words passing through him, carrying him away into distant worlds and times, as if he were leaving his own body. They were recollections of another life; they were so distant as to feel historical; yet sitting in the winter cold with Sara’s daughter on his lap, they did not seem apart from him. He felt a mantle pass and, with it, a twinge of regret: he’d never told Caleb a story.

“So.” He cleared his throat, stalling to assemble his thoughts. But the truth was, he had nothing; every story from his childhood had suddenly fled his mind. He’d simply have to wing it. “Let’s see—”

“It needs a girl in it,” Kate said, helpfully.

“So it does. I was just getting to that. So, once upon a time there was a little girl—”

“What did she look like?”

“Hmm. Well, she was very pretty. A lot like you, actually.”

“Was she a princess?”

“Are you going to let me tell this or not? But now that you mention it, she was. The most beautiful princess who ever lived. But the thing is, she didn’t know she was a princess. That’s the interesting part.”

Kate frowned bossily. “Why didn’t she know?”

Something clicked then; he felt the contours of a story emerging in his mind.

“That is a very excellent question. What happened was this. When she was very young, not much more than a baby, her parents, the king and queen, took her on a picnic in the royal forest. It was a sunny day, and the little girl, whose name was Princess …”

“Elizabeth.”

“Princess Elizabeth, saw a butterfly. An amazing butterfly. Her parents weren’t paying attention, and she followed the butterfly into the woods, trying to catch it. But the thing is, it wasn’t a butterfly. It was… a fairy queen.”

“Really?”