Free The Twelve by Justin Cronin

left.”
    Danny didn’t know who Consuela was. It was hard when people didn’t answer your question but instead answered some other question you hadn’t even thought of.
    “Okay,” said Danny.
    “She’s in the backyard.”
    “How can she be in the backyard if she left?”
    The boy’s eyes widened. “Because she’s
dead
.”
    For a couple of seconds, nobody said anything. Danny wondered why they hadn’t gotten on the bus yet, if maybe he’d have to ask them.
    “Everybody’s supposed to go to Mile High,” the girl said. “We heard it on the radio.”
    “What’s at Mile High?”
    “The Army. They said it’s safe there.”
    From what Danny had seen, the Army was pretty much dead, too. But Mile High would give them someplace to go. He hadn’t really thought of that before. Where was he going?
    “I’m April,” the girl said.
    She looked like an April. It was funny how some names were like that. They just seemed to fit.
    “I’m Danny,” he said.
    “I know,” said April. “Just please, Danny? Get us the hell out of here.”

7
    The color wasn’t right, Lila decided. No, it wasn’t right at all.
    The shade was called “buttercream.” On the sample from the store it was a soft, faded yellow, like old linen. But now, as Lila stood back to inspect her work, dripping roller in hand—honestly, she was making such a mess; why couldn’t David do these things?—it looked more like: well, what? A lemon. An
electrified
lemon. Maybe in a kitchen it would have been all right, a bright, sunny kitchen with windows looking out to a garden. But not in a nursery. My God, she thought, a color like that, the baby wouldn’t sleep a wink.
    How depressing. All her hard work wasted. Hauling the ladder up the stairs from the basement, laying the drop cloths, lowering herself onto her hands and knees to tape off the baseboards, only to find she’d have to go back to the store and start over. She’d planned to have the room done by lunch, leaving enough time for the paint to dry before she hung the wallpaper border, a repeating pattern of scenes from Beatrix Potter. David thought the border was silly—“sentimental” was the word he’d used—but Lila didn’t care. She’d loved the stories of Peter Rabbit when she was a girl, crawling onto her father’s lap or snuggling down in bed to hear, for the hundredth time, the tale of Peter’s escape from Mr. McGregor’s garden. The yard of their house in Wellesley had been bordered by a hedgerow, and for years—long after she should have stopped believing in such things—she’d patiently searched it for a rabbit in a little blue jacket.
    But now Peter Rabbit would have to wait. A wave of exhaustion enfolded her; she needed to get off her feet. The fumes were making her dizzy, too. Something seemed to be wrong with the AC, although with the baby, she always felt a little overheated. She hoped David would get home soon. Things were crazy at the hospital. He’d called her once to let her know he’d be late, but she hadn’t heard from him since.
    She made her way downstairs to the kitchen. The place was an awful mess. Dishes piled in the sink, counters stained, the floor beneath her bare feet tacky with grime. Lila stopped in the doorway, feeling puzzled. She hadn’t realized how badly she’d let things go, and what had happened to Yolanda? How long since she’d been here? Tuesdays and Fridays were the housekeeper’s regular days. What was today? To look atthis kitchen, thought Lila, you’d think Yolanda hadn’t been to the house in weeks. Okay, the woman’s English was not the best, and sometimes she did strange things, like confusing the teaspoons with the tablespoons—how David grumbled about that—or depositing the bills, unread, straight into the recycling bin. Annoying things like that. But Yolanda wasn’t one to miss even a day of work. One winter morning she’d shown up with a cough so bad that Lila could hear it from upstairs; she’d practically