The Twelve (The Passage, #2)

by Justin Cronin

’Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world. —SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet

It was not a good day in the office of the deputy director. Today, May 31—Memorial Day, not that it mattered—was an end-of-the-world kind of day.

You decided to reengineer an ancient virus that would transform a dozen death row inmates into indestructible monsters who live on blood, and you didn’t think to tell anybody about this?

We’re all on the same team here, April.” “What team’s that?” He shrugged. “The human one, I’d say.”

She would have liked to be a woman. To see it reflected in another’s eyes. For her body to know what her heart already did.

This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.

On the day of victory, no man is tired.

Her family: after all that had happened, how remarkable these two words were. They seemed the most miraculous in the history of human speech.