The Twelve

That was the most important thing. The open ground at the base of the watchtower was safe, within those boundaries they could go wherever they liked, but they were not to venture into the corn under any circumstances; the stand of trees at the south end was also off-limits.

Now, do you see those flags? Cruk asked, gesturing over the field. The orange ones, hanging down like that? Who can tell me what those are?

Half a dozen hands went up; Cruk’s eyes roamed the group before landing on Dash Martinez. Seven years old, all knees and elbows, with a mop of dark hair; under the beam of Cruk’s attention, he froze. He was seated between Merry Dodd and Reese Cuomo, who were covering their mouths, trying not to laugh. The hardboxes? the boy ventured. That’s right, Cruk replied, nodding. Those are the hardboxes. Now tell me, he continued, addressing all of them, if the siren goes off, what should you do?

Run! someone said, then another and another. Run!

“Run where?” Cruk asked.

A chorus of voices this time: Run to the hardboxes!

He relaxed into a smile. “Good. Now go have fun.”

They darted away, all except the teenagers, who lingered an extra moment by the awning, seeking to separate themselves from the younger children. But even they, Vorhees knew, would find their way into the sunshine. The playing cards came out, and skeins of yarn for knitting; before long, the women were all occupying themselves, watching the children from the shade, fanning their faces in the heat. Vorhees called the men around to hand out salt tablets; even drinking constantly, a man working in this heat could become dangerously dehydrated. They filled their bottles at the pump. There was no need to explain the task before them; detassling was a grueling if simple job they had all done many times. For every three rows of corn, a fourth row had been planted of a second strain. That row would be stripped of its tassles to prevent self-pollination; come harvesttime, it would produce a new, crossbred strain, more vigorous, to be used as seed corn for the following year. When Vorhees’s father had first explained this process to him, years ago, it had seemed exciting, even vaguely erotic. What they were doing was, after all, part of the reproductive process, even if it was only corn. But the physical discomforts of the job—the hours in the grueling sun, the ceaseless rain of pollen on his hands and face, the insects that buzzed around his head, seeking any opportunity to bore into his ears and nose and mouth—had quickly disabused him of this notion. His first week in the field, one man had collapsed from heat stroke. Vorhees couldn’t recall who that was or what had become of him; they’d put him on the next transport and gotten back to work. It was entirely possible the man had died.

Heavy canvas gloves and wide-brimmed hats and long-sleeved shirts buttoned to the wrists: by the time the men were ready to go, they were sweating profusely. Vorhees cast his gaze to the top of the watchtower, where Tifty had taken his position, scanning the tree line with his scope. Cruk was right; Tifty was the man to have up there. Whatever else was true about Tifty Lamont, his skills as a marksman were inarguable. Yet even to hear the man’s name spoken, so many years later, aroused in Vorhees a fresh turning of anger. If anything, the passage of time had only magnified this feeling; each year that slipped past was one more year of Boz’s unlived life. Why should Tifty grow to be a man when Boz had not? In more circumspect moments, Vorhees understood his emotions to be irrational; Tifty might have been the instigator on that fateful night, but any one of them could have said no, and Boz would be alive. Yet no matter what Dee said, or Cruk, or Tifty himself—who even now, sweeping the tree line with his rifle, was offering a silent promise to protect Vorhees’s children—nothing could dissuade Vorhees from the belief that Tifty bore a singular blame. In the end, he was forced to accept his feelings as a failure of his own character and keep them to himself.

He divided the workers into three teams, each responsible for four rows. Then they made their way to the shelter to say their goodbyes. A game of kickball was under way in the field; from the far side of the watchtower came the ring of horseshoes in the pit. Dee was resting in the shade with Sally and Lucy Martinez, playing a round of hearts. Their games were epic, sometimes lasting for days.

“Looks like we’re ready to go.”

She lay down her cards, lifting her face toward him. “Come here.”

He removed his hat and bent at the waist to receive her kiss.

“God, you stink already,” she laughed, wrinkling her nose. “That’s your last one for the day, I’m afraid.” Then: “So, should I tell you to be careful?”

It was what they always said. “If you want.”

“Well, then. Be careful.”

Nit and Siri had wandered into the tent. Bits of grass were caught in their hair and the weave of their jumpers. Like puppies who’d been rolling around in the dirt.

“Hug your father, girls.”

Vorhees knelt and took them into his arms as a warm bundle. “Be good for Mommy, all right? I’ll be back for lunch.”

“We’re each other’s buddies,” Siri proclaimed.

He brushed the grass from their sweat-dampened hair. Sometimes just the sight of them moved him to a rush of love that actually brought tears to his eyes. “Of course you are. Just remember what your uncle Cruk told you. Stay where Mommy can see you.”

“Carson says there are monsters in the field,” Siri said. “Monsters who drink blood.”

Vorhees darted his eyes to Dee, who shrugged. It wasn’t the first time the subject had come up.

“Well, he’s wrong,” he told them. “He’s trying to scare you, playing a joke.”

“Then why do we have to stay out of the field?”

“Because those are the rules.”

“Do you promise?”

He did his best to smile. Vorhees and Dee had agreed to keep this matter vague as long as they could; and yet they both understood that they could not keep the girls in the dark forever.

“I promise.”

He hugged them again, each in turn and then together, and went to join his crew at the edge of the field. A wall of green six feet tall: the corn rows, a series of long hallways, receded to the windbreak. The sun had crossed an invisible border toward midday; nobody was talking. Vorhees checked his watch one last time. Watch the clock. Know the location of the nearest hardbox. When in doubt, run.

“All right, everybody,” he said, drawing on his gloves. “Let’s get this done.”

And with these words, together, they stepped into the field.

In a sense, they had all become who they were because of a single night—the last night of their childhood. Cruk, Vorhees, Boz, Dee: they ran together in a pack, their daily orbits circumscribed only by the walls of the city and the watchful eyes of the sisters, who ran the school, and the DS, who ran everything else. A time of gossip, of rumor, of stories traded in the dust. Dirty faces, dirty hands, the four of them lingering in the alley behind their quarters on the way home from school. What was the world? Where was the world, and when would they see it? Where did their fathers go, and sometimes their mothers as well, returning to them smelling of work and duty and mysterious concerns? The outside, yes, but how was it different from the city? What did it feel like, taste like, sound like? Why, from time to time, did someone, a mother or a father, leave, never to return, as if the unseen realm beyond the walls had the power to swallow them whole? Dopeys, dracs, vampires, jumps: they knew the names but did not feel the full weight of their meanings. There were dracs, which were the meanest, which were the same thing as jumps or vampires (a word only old people used); and there were dopeys, which were similar but not the same. Dangerous, yes, but not as much, more like a nuisance on the order of scorpions or snakes. Some said that dopeys were dracs that had lived too long, others that they were a different sort of creature altogether. That they had never been human at all.

Which was another thing. If the virals had once been people like them, how had they become what they were?

But the greatest story of all was the great Niles Coffee: Colonel Coffee, founder of the Expeditionary, fearless men who crossed the world to fight and die. Coffee’s origins, like everything about him, were cloaked in myth. He was a thirdling, raised by the sisters; he was an orphan of the Easter Incursion of 38 who had watched his parents die; he was a straggler who had appeared at the gate one day, a boy warrior dressed in skins, carrying a severed