The Twelve (The Passage, #2)

by Justin Cronin

The story was never the

story, and it surprised you, how much another person could carry.

What had truly imprisoned them was one another. Husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and companions: what they believed had given them strength in their lives had actually done the opposite. Guilder recalled the couple who lived across the street from his townhouse, trading off their sleeping daughter on the way to the car. How heavy that burden must have felt in their arms. And when the end swept down upon them all, they would exit the world on a wave of suffering, their

agonies magnified a million times over by the loss of her. Would they have to watch her die? Would they perish first, knowing what would become of her in their absence? Which was preferable? But the answer was neither. Love had sealed their doom. Which was what love did.

their passage protected by an unseen hand.

Dee sets her mind to something, you might as well just hang up your balls and call it a day.”

Its features had a blurry appearance, as if its human characteristics had been dissolved by strong acid.

balanced on its prehensile toes and massive splayed hands.

Then the virals emerged, popping from the truck’s interior like man-sized insects, landing on all fours in the snow. Their lean figures, striated with muscle, throbbed with glowing vividness.

They towered. They occupied space with a glorious immensity of height and breadth. They had fed on the blood of generations, inflating their persons to colossi. Even Carter, with his modest dimensions, seemed, in the company of his brethren, to partake of their magnificence.

Their backs were erect, their powerful claws articulating like immense devices of pain. They had the aspect of giants. They were legend made flesh, the great bestriders of the earth. The guards raced for the sidelines, to live another day, though Guilder paid this no notice. His mind was full of glory.

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