Read The Twelve for Free Online

Kittridge counted to ten. Nothing, no movement at all.
    Three flares later he reached the bottom; a heavy steel door with a push bar and a small square of reinforced glass led to the garage. The floor was littered with trash: pop cans, candy bar wrappers, tins of food.A rumpled bedroll and a pile of musty clothing showed where someone had been sleeping—hiding, as he had.
    Kittridge had scouted out the parking garage the day of his arrival. The Ferrari was parked near the southwest corner, a distance of approximately two hundred feet. He probably should have moved it closer to the door, but it had taken him three days to locate Warren’s keys—who kept his car keys in a bathroom drawer?—by which time he’d already barricaded himself inside the penthouse.
    The fob had four buttons: two for the doors, one for the alarm, and one that, he hoped, was a remote starter. He pressed this one first.
    From deep within the garage came a tart, single-noted bleep, followed by the throaty roar of the Ferrari’s engine. Another mistake: the Ferrari was parked nose to the wall. He should have thought of that. Not only would this slow his escape; if the car had been facing the opposite way, its headlights would have given him a better look at the garage’s interior. All he could make out through the stairwell door’s tiny window was a distant, glowing region where the car awaited, a cat purring in the dark. The rest of the garage was veiled in blackness. The infected liked to hang from things: ceiling struts, pipes, anything with a tactile surface. The tiniest fissure would suffice. When they came, they came from above.
    The moment of decision was upon him. Toss more flares and see what happens? Move stealthily through the darkness, seeking cover? Throw open the door and run like hell?
    Then, from high overhead, Kittridge heard the creak of an opening stairwell door. He held his breath and listened. There were two of them. He stepped back from the door and craned his neck upward. Ten stories above, a pair of red dots were dancing off the walls.
    He shoved the door open and ran like hell.
    He had made it halfway to the Ferrari when the first viral dropped behind him. There was no time to turn and fire; Kittridge kept on going. The pain in his knee felt like a wick of flame, an ice pick buried to the bone. From the periphery of his senses came a tingling awareness of beings awakening, the garage coming to life. He threw open the door of the Ferrari, tossed the AK and rucksack onto the passenger seat, got in, and slammed the door. The vehicle was so low-slung he felt like he was sitting on the ground. The dashboard, full of mysterious gauges and switches, glowed like a spacecraft’s. Something was missing. Where was the gearshift?
    A
wang
of metal, and Kittridge’s vision filled with the sight of it. The viral had bounded onto the hood, folding its body into a reptilian crouch. For a frozen moment it regarded him coolly, a predator contemplatingits prey. It was naked except for a wristwatch, a gleaming Rolex thick as an ice cube.
Warren?
Kittridge thought, for the man had been wearing one like it the day Kittridge had walked him to the car.
Warren, old buddy, is that you? Because if it is, I wouldn’t mind a word of advice on how to get this thing in gear
.
    He discovered, then, with the tips of his fingers, a pair of levers positioned on the undersides of the steering wheel. Paddle shifters. He should have thought of that, too. Up on the right, down on the left, like a motorcycle. Reverse would be a button somewhere on the dash.
    The one with the R, genius. That one
.
    He pushed the button and hit the gas. Too fast: with a squeal of smoking rubber, the Ferrari jolted backward and slammed into a concrete post. Kittridge was hurled back into his seat, then tossed forward again, his head smacking the heavy glass of the side window with an audible thud. His brain chimed like a tuning fork; particles of silver light danced in his eyes.