The City of Mirrors: A Novel (Book Three of The Passage Trilogy)

by Justin Cronin

  “You see, Amy? It is simply not possible. This man belongs to me now.”

  Like the viral in the hall, Peter had bowed his head in abject surrender. Fanning placed a hand on his shoulder. It was as if he were patting an especially obedient dog. “Do me a favor, won’t you?” Fanning asked him.

  Peter raised his head.

  “Would you please kill her?”

  —

  Michael pushed backward from the window on his palms, leaving a wide trail of blood on the floor. There was more than one viral out there, he could sense it; they were like wraiths, there and not there, shadowy figures gliding and shifting in the dust.

  Searching. Hunting.

  Once they found him, he wouldn’t make it two steps. He scooted to the rear of the room, where there was a long counter and, behind it, a doorway half-hidden by a curtain. As he slipped behind the counter, the floor began to shake again. The feeling gathered in intensity like a revving engine. Clothes racks toppled. Mirrors shattered and burst outward. Chunks of plaster severed from the ceiling and detonated on the floor. Curled into a ball, arms wrapped around his head, Michael thought, God, whoever you are, I am sick of your shit. I am not your plaything. If you’re going to kill me, please stop screwing around and get it over with.

  The shaking subsided. From all up and down the street, Michael heard the crack of windows popping free of their frames and crashing on the pavement. The virals still lurked out there, but maybe the commotion had put them off his trail. Maybe they were cowering in some dark corner, as he was. Maybe they were dead.

  He peeked around the counter. The place looked like a wrecking ball had hit it, nothing left intact except for a free-standing, full-length mirror, which stood anomalously on the right side of the room like a bewildered survivor surveying the wreckage of some terrible catastrophe. Angled slightly toward the front of the store, the mirror’s face gave him a partial view of the street.

  A pod of three emerged in the murk. They seemed to be drifting aimlessly, looking around as if lost. Michael willed his body into absolute stillness. If they couldn’t hear him, maybe they’d pass him by. For several seconds they continued their confused wandering, until one of them stopped abruptly. Standing in profile, the viral rotated its face from side to side, as if attempting to triangulate the source of a sound. Michael held his breath. The creature paused and angled its chin upward, holding this position for another several seconds before swiveling toward the storefront. Its nose was twitching like a rat’s.

  —

  Peter stepped toward her. There was no point in trying to get away; the outcome would be the same. Time had given up its customary course. Everything seemed to happen in a manner both rushed and strangely sluggish; her vision had narrowed, the city around her fading to a collection of shadows.

  She was crying, though not for herself. She couldn’t have said what she was crying for; her tears possessed an abstract quality of sadness, though something else as well. Her trials were ended. In a way, she was glad. How strange, to put down life like a heavy load she had been too long forced to carry. She hoped she would go to the farmstead. How happy she had been there. She remembered the piano, the music flowing forth, Peter’s hands resting on her shoulders, the joy of his touch. How happy they had been, together.

  “It’s all right,” she murmured. Her voice felt distant, not quite her own. It spilled from her lips on shallow, rapid breaths. “It’s all right, it’s all right.”

  Peter positioned the sword so that the tip was pointed at the base of her throat. The gap narrowed, then stopped, flesh mere inches from steel. His head cocked to the side; in another second he would strike.

  “Well?” Fanning said.

  Their gazes met and held. To know and be known: that was the final desire, the heart of love. It was the one thing she could give him. A huge force was bursting open inside her. It was a kind of light. She would have beamed it straight into his heart if she could.

  “You’re Peter,” Amy whispered, and went on whispering, so that he would be hearing these words. “You’re Peter, you’re Peter, you’re Peter…”

  —

  The blood, thought Michael.

  They can smell my blood.

  He wasn’t sure he could stand, let alone run. He had painted a road of red on the floor, leading them straight to him. He pressed his back against the counter and drew his knees to his chest. The virals had entered the store. He heard a kind of wet snuffling, like the noise of hogs rooting in mud; they were sucking the blood off the floor. Michael felt a weird surge of protectiveness. Hey, leave my blood alone! On and on went their lascivious slurping. So intense was their focus that Michael began to think about the curtained door. What lay beyond it? Was it a dead end or was there, perhaps, a hallway that led deeper into the building—to the street, even? The doorway was only partially concealed by the counter. For some interval of time, depending on how fast he was able to go, he would be exposed.

  He peeked around the corner, using the angled mirror to survey the room. The virals, on their hands and knees, were busily pressing their mouths to the floor, their tongues swirling like mopheads. Michael scooted down the length of the counter so he was as close as possible to the door, which was positioned ten feet behind him and to his right. If he could move the virals to the opposite corner of the room, the counter would obscure him completely.

  Michael unwound the scarf from his leg. The fabric was bloated with blood. He formed it into a ball, tied off the ends to hold the shape, and rose on his knees, keeping the top of his head just below the lip of the counter. Pulling back his arm, he counted to three. Then he lobbed the scarf across the room.

  It impacted the far wall with a splat. Michael dropped to his stomach and began to crawl. From behind him, he heard scurrying, then a series of clicks and snarls. It was better than he’d hoped; the virals were fighting over the rag. He slipped beneath the curtain and kept going. Now he couldn’t see a goddamn thing. He crawled another few feet, until he was away from the door, and attempted to rise. The instant the foot of his injured leg touched the ground was one he was pretty sure he would always remember. The pain was simply spectacular. He reached into his shirt pocket for a box of matches. Fumbling in the dark, he managed to remove one without dumping out the rest, and scraped it on the striker.

  He was in a narrow hallway of high brick walls that led deeper into the building. Metal racks of empty hangers lined the walls. The air was clearer here, less dust-choked. He pulled the kerchief down from his face. An opening to his left dead-ended in a small room of curtained booths. He looked down; drops of blood had followed him like a trail of crumbs. More blood sloshed in his boot. The match burned down; he flicked it away, lit another, and went on.

  Eight matches later, Michael concluded that there was no way out. Branching hallways always led him back to the central corridor. Who designed a building like this? How long before the virals’ interest in the rag exhausted itself and they followed the blood?

  He came to a final room. It appeared to be a kitchen, with a stove and sink and cabinets lining two of the four walls; in the center was a small square table covered with open cans and plastic bottles. Two brown-boned skeletons lay on a cratered mattress, curled together. In all of New York, these were the first human remains Michael had encountered. He crouched beside them. One of them was much smaller than the other, who appeared to be a grown woman, with a desiccated tangle of long hair. A mother and her child? Probably they had holed up together during the crisis. For a century they had lain here, their last loving moment captured for all time. It made him feel like an interloper, as if he had violated the sanctity of a tomb.

  A window.

  It was covered by a cage, hinged shutters of crisscrossing wire, held in place by metal bars bolted to the wall. The two halves were joined with a padlock. The match burned down, scorching his fingertips; he flung it away. As his eyes adjusted he realized a faint glow was coming through the window, just enough to see by. He l
ooked around the room for something to use as a lever. Think, Michael. On the table was a butter knife. The floor lurched again with a single, horizontal bang. Plaster dust rained down. He wedged the knife into the curved arm of the lock. His hands felt cold and slightly numb, at the edge of his ability to command them; the loss of blood was catching up to him. He tightened his arms and shoulders and twisted the blade, hard.

  It snapped in two.

  That was it; enough already. Michael was done. He sank to the floor and braced his back against the wall so that he could see them coming.

  —

  Peter was standing in a field of knee-high grass. The color of everything was peculiar, possessing an unnatural, off-kilter vividness that accentuated the smallest movements in the landscape. A breeze was blowing. The land was perfectly flat, though in the far distance mountains jostled the horizon. It was neither day nor night but something in between, the light soft and shadowless. What was this curious place? How had he come to be here? He searched his memory; only then did he realize that he did not, in fact, know who he was. He felt vaguely alarmed. He was alive, he existed, yet he seemed to have no history he could recall.

  He heard the sound of running water and walked toward it. The action was automatic, as if an invisible intelligence were piloting his body. After some time had passed, he came upon a river. The water moved lazily, murmuring around scattered rocks. Leaves spiraled in its current like upturned hands. He followed the river downstream to a bend where it gathered in a pool. The surface of the water was still, almost solid-looking. He felt a peculiar agitation. It seemed that within the pool’s depths lay an answer, though the question eluded him. It was on the tip of his tongue, yet when he tried to focus on it, it darted up and away from his thoughts like a bird. He knelt at the edge of the pool and looked down. An image appeared: a man’s face. It was disturbing to look at. The face was his, yet it might as well have been a stranger’s. He reached out and with his index finger broke the surface. Concentric rings bloomed outward from the point of contact; then the image reassembled. With this came the sense, distant at first, but growing stronger, of recognition. He knew who he was, if only he could manage to recall. You’re…It was as if he were attempting to lift a boulder with his mind. You’re…you’re…

  Peter.

  He lurched backward. A dam was bursting in his mind. Images, faces, days, names—they poured forth in a torrent, almost painful. The scene around him—the field and the river and the flat light of the sky—began to disperse. It was washing away. Behind it lay a wholly different reality, of objects and people and events and ordered time. I am Peter Jaxon, he thought, and then he said it:

  “I am Peter Jaxon.”

  —

  Peter stumbled backward; the sword fell from his hand.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Fanning barked. “I said, kill her.”

  Peter’s head swiveled; his eyes narrowed on Fanning’s face. It was happening, thought Amy. He was remembering. The muscles of his legs compressed.

  He sprang.

  He rammed Fanning headlong. Surprise was on his side: Fanning went sailing. He crashed back down and rolled end over end, coming to rest against a concrete pylon. He rose onto all fours but his movements were sluggish. He gave his head a horsey shake and spat on the ground.

  “Well, this is unexpected.”

  Then Amy was being lifted; Peter had gathered her into his arms. Together they raced down Forty-third Street on soaring strides. Where was he taking her? Then she understood: the partially constructed office tower. She tipped her face skyward, but the dust was too thick to see if the building’s upper floors rose above the cloud deck. Peter halted at the base of the elevator shaft. He swung her onto his back, scrambled ten feet up the shaft’s outer structure, guided Amy back around his waist, lowered her through the bars to the elevator’s roof, and followed her down. His purpose in all this was unknown to her. He hoisted her onto his back again, using his elbows to compress her legs around his waist to tell her to hold on to him as tightly as possible. All of this had transpired in just a matter of seconds. The elevator’s cables, three of them, were set into a steel plate affixed to a crossbar on the elevator’s roof. Peter gathered the cables into his fists and set his feet wide. Amy, her arms hooked around his shoulders and her legs squeezing his waist like a vise, felt a gathering pressure in his body. Peter began to groan through his teeth. Only then did she grasp his intentions. She closed her eyes.

  The plate tore free; Amy and Peter launched skyward, Peter gripping the cables, Amy riding his back like the shell of a turtle. Five stories, ten, fifteen. The elevator’s counterweight plunged past. What would happen when they reached the top? Would they shoot through the roof into space?

  Suddenly the whole cage shuddered; the counterweight had reached the bottom. The tension on the cable was instantly gone. Hurled upward, Amy found herself looking down at the base of the shaft. She was alone in the air, unattached to anything. Her body slowed as she approached the apogee of her ascent and for a second seemed to hover. I am going to fall, she thought. How far away the ground was. She would hit it going a hundred miles an hour, maybe more. I am falling.

  A jolt: Peter, still gripping the cable, had seized her by the wrist. He pumped his legs, shifting his center of gravity to swing Amy in progressively wider arcs. Amy saw his target, an opening in the wall of the shaft not far below them.

  He flung her away.

  She landed on the floor and rolled to a halt. They were still inside the dust cloud. The adrenaline of their ascent had sharpened her thoughts. Everything was coming into a fine, almost granular focus. She scrambled to the edge and looked down into a dizzying maw of space.

  Fanning was climbing up the side of the building.

  The air concussed with a titanic roar. The building on the opposite side of Forty-third Street began to melt straight down into itself like a man felled at the knees. The floor under Amy began to shake. The vibration deepened; sounds of buckling metal rippled through the structure as the floor tipped abruptly toward the street. Loose materials—rusted tools, sawhorses, moisture-swollen pieces of drywall, a bucket of nails—slid past her and sailed into the abyss. She was on her stomach, pressing herself to the floor. The angle was increasing. She was slipping, her hands and feet could gain no traction, gravity was taking hold…

  “Peter, help!”

  The sweet pressure of his hand on her arm halted her slide; he was lying on his stomach, the crowns of their heads just touching. The floor gave another downward lurch, yet he held on, his toes digging into the concrete. With gathering force, he drew her back from the edge.

  “Ah,” said Fanning. His face had appeared above the lip of the floor. “There you are.”

  —

  Michael heard a faint metallic ringing from the hallway—the sound of hangers jostling on racks. A short silence ensued; the trail of his blood, crisscrossing the various hallways and doubling back, had momentarily perplexed them. The delay was excruciating. If only he would just pass out. If anything, he felt more alert than ever.

  Maybe he should make a noise. Call out to them, to get the whole thing over with. Hey, I’m in here, idiots! Come and fucking get it!

  Such a stupid, arbitrary place to die. He’d never thought he’d die in bed; it wasn’t that sort of world, and he wasn’t that sort of person. But some damn kitchen?

  A kitchen.

  Standing up was out of the question. But the top of the stove lay within his reach. Vertigo sloshed through his brain as he rocked onto his knees; straining forward, he grabbed hold of the skillet. He spat on the underside and wiped the metal with the hem of his shirt. His reflection was vague and undetailed, more a general outline of a human face than any particular person, but it was what he had.

  The sounds were coming closer.

  —

  They raced up the stairs. Two flights brought them to the roof. The dust was as thick as ever, though in the western sky a paler region, weak
but discernible, showed the sun’s location.

  They had to get higher. They had to get above the cloud.

  Amy looked up. The boom of the crane was rocking like the neck of a pecking bird. A long, hooked cable swayed from its tip. A stairway inside the crane’s mast ascended to the top.

  They began to climb. Where was Fanning? Watching them, no doubt—enjoying himself, choosing his moment.

  They clanged the rest of the way to the top. The swaying was getting worse. The whole thing felt unstable, as if at any moment the crane might peel away from the side of the building. They were still inside the cloud. The skyline of midtown Manhattan was a smoldering wreckage, the destruction continuing to extend outward from its epicenter. A rumble, a cloud, and another building toppled. Broad gaps existed where whole blocks had once stood.

  “Hello up there!”

  Fanning was halfway up the mast. Gripping a bar with one hand, he leaned out and waved to them with merry confidence. “Not to worry, I’ll be there soon!”

  A narrow catwalk led to the end of the boom. Amy crawled along it, Peter following. The boom was slamming up and down. She kept her eyes aimed forward; she didn’t dare look down into the void. Even a glimpse would paralyze her.

  They reached the end; there was no place else to go.

  “Goddamn I like a view.”

  Fanning had reached the top of the mast and was now standing fifty feet behind them. Back arched, chest puffed out, he let his gaze travel over the ruined city.

  “You’ve really made a mess of things, haven’t you? Speaking as a New Yorker, I have to say, this brings back some very unpleasant memories.”

  A sudden warmth touched Amy’s cheek. She looked to her left, across Fifth Avenue. The glass facade of the building on the far side shone with a faint orange color. Which made no sense; the building faced east, away from the sun. The light, she realized, was a reflection.

  Fanning huffed a sigh. “Well. Looks to me like we’ve reached the end of the line. I’d ask you to stand aside, Peter, but you don’t seem to be a very good listener.”