The City of Mirrors

by Justin Cronin

  Peter dashed toward it, Chase and Amy close behind. Fuel was gushing everywhere; black smoke billowed from the undercarriage. The virals were funneling onto the isthmus; they would arrive within seconds. Patch was dead, his head crushed from behind; what was left of him was spread-eagled over the dashboard. Greer was lying on top of him, soaked in blood. Was it Patch’s or his own? He was staring upward.

  “Lucius, cover your eyes.”

  Peter and Chase began to kick the windshield. Three hard blows and the glass caved inward. Amy climbed inside and took the man by the shoulders while Peter took his legs. “I’m okay,” Greer muttered, as if to apologize. As they hauled him out, the first fingers of flame appeared.

  Chase and Peter each took a side. They ran.

  Passengers had massed at the narrow gangway, attempting to shove their way through the bottleneck. Cries of panic stabbed the air. Men were scrambling over the deck of the ship to free the chains that held it in place. Many of the children seemed dazed and uncertain, drifting on the dock like a herd of sheep in the rain.

  Pim and the girls were already on the ship. At the top of the gangway, Sara was lifting the smallest children aboard, pulling others by the hand to hasten them; Hollis and Caleb were shepherding the children from the rear. A man charged from behind, nearly knocking Hollis over. Caleb grabbed him, threw him to the pavement, and shoved a finger into his face.

  “You wait your goddamn turn!”

  They weren’t going to make it, Caleb thought. People had resorted to using the chains, attempting to drag themselves hand over hand to the ship. A woman lost her grip; with a cry, she plunged into the water. She came up, her face visible for only a moment, arms waving over her head: she didn’t know how to swim. She sank back down.

  Where were his father and the others? Why hadn’t they come?

  From the causeway, an explosion; all faces turned. A ball of fire was rising in the sky.

  Wedged under the charger, Michael was trying to trace the faint hiss of leaking gas. Keep cool, he told himself. Do this by the numbers, joint by joint.

  “Anything?” Rand was standing at the base of the charger.

  “You’re not helping.”

  It was no use. The leak was too small; it must have bled for hours.

  “Get me some soapy water,” he called. “I need a paintbrush, too.”

  “Where the hell am I going to get that?”

  “I don’t care! Figure it out!”

  Rand darted away.

  The blast hit them like a slap, hurling them forward, off their feet. Debris whizzed past: tires, engine parts, shards of metal sharp as knives. As a wall of heat soared over him, Peter heard a scream and a great crunch of metal and splintering glass.

  He was lying facedown in the mud. His thoughts were disordered; none seemed related to any of the others. A raglike bundle lay to his left. It was Chase. The man’s clothes and hair were smoking. Peter crawled to him; his friend’s eyes stared sightlessly. Cradling the back of the man’s head, he felt something soft and damp. He turned Chase onto his side.

  The back of the man’s skull was gone.

  The Humvee was totaled, crushed and burning. Greasy smoke clotted the air. It coated the insides of Peter’s mouth and nose with its rancid taste. With every breath it drilled into his lungs, deeper and deeper.

  “Amy, where are you?” He staggered toward the Humvee. “Amy, answer me!”

  “I’m here!”

  She was pulling Greer clear of the water. The two of them emerged covered in gooey mud and collapsed to the ground.

  “Where’s Chase?” She had pink burns on her face and hands.

  “Dead.” Crouched, he asked Greer, “Can you walk?”

  The man was holding his head in his hands. Then, glancing up: “Where’s Patch?”

  The burning truck would hold the virals at bay, but once the fires died, the horde would come streaming down the isthmus. The three of them had nothing to fight with except Amy’s sword, which still lay in its scabbard over her back.

  A harsh white light raked their faces; a pickup was racing down the roadway toward them. Peter hooded his eyes against the glare. The driver skidded to a stop.

  “Get in,” Caleb said.

  Alicia saw only the sky. The sky and the back of a man’s head. She sensed the presence of a crowd. Her stretcher jostled beneath her, there were voices, people crying, everything rushing around her.

  Don’t take me. Her body was broken; she lay loose as a doll. I’m one of them. I don’t belong.

  Clanging footsteps: they were crossing the gangway. “Put her over there,” someone said. The stretcher-bearers lowered her to the deck and hurried away. A woman was sitting beside her, her body curled around a blanketed bundle. She was murmuring into the bundle, some kind of repeated phrase that Alicia could not make out, though it possessed the rote rhythm of prayer.

  “You,” Alicia said.

  One syllable; it felt like lifting a piano. The woman failed to notice her.

  “You,” she repeated.

  The woman looked up. The bundle was a baby. The woman’s grip on it was almost ruthless, as if she feared someone might snatch it away at any moment.

  “I need you … to help me.”

  The woman’s face crumpled. “Why aren’t we moving?” She bent her face to the baby again, burying it in the cloth. “Oh, God, why are we still here?”

  “Please … listen.”

  “Why are you talking to me? I don’t even know you. I don’t know who you are.”

  “I’m … Alicia.”

  “Have you seen my husband? He was here a second ago. Has anybody seen my husband?”

  Alicia was losing her. In another moment, she’d be gone. “Tell me … her name.”

  “What?”

  “Your baby. Her … name.”

  It was as if nobody had ever asked her such a question.

  “Say it,” Alicia said. “Say … her name.”

  She shook with a sob. “He’s a boy,” she moaned. “His name is Carlos.”

  A moment passed, the woman weeping, Alicia waiting. There was chaos all around, and yet it felt as if they were alone, she and this woman she did not know, who could have been anyone. Rose, my Rose, Alicia thought, how I have failed you. I could not give you life.

  “Will you … help me?”

  The woman wiped her nose with the back of a wrist. “What can I do?” Her voice was utterly hopeless. “I can’t do anything.”

  Alicia licked her lips; her tongue was heavy and dry. There would be pain, a lot of it; she would need every ounce of strength.

  “I need you … to untie … my straps.”

  Soaring leap after soaring leap, Carter made his way down the channel toward the isthmus. The mushroom shapes of chemical tanks. The rooftops of buildings. The great, forgotten debris fields of industrial America. He moved swiftly, his power inexhaustible, like a huge heaving engine.

  A great backlit shape rose before him: the channel bridge. He unleashed his body skyward; up he flew, seizing a handhold just below the bridge’s shattered surface. A moment of calibration and he hurled himself upward again, grabbed a guy wire with one hand, and somersaulted to the deck.

  Below, the unfolding battle was laid out before him like a model. The ship and the mob of people funneling aboard; the truck roaring down the causeway; the barricade of flames and the virals horde amassed behind it. Carter cocked his head to calculate his arc; he needed more height.

  Using one of the support wires, he climbed to the top of the tower. The water shone below him still as glass, like a great smooth mirror to the moon. He felt some uncertainty, even a bit of fear; he pushed it aside. The tiniest fleck of doubt and he would fail, he would plummet into the abyss. To traverse such a distance—to master its breadth—one needed to enter an abstract realm. To become not the jumper but the jump, not an object in space but space itself.

  He compressed to a crouch. Energy expanded outward from his core and gushed into h
is limbs.

  Amy, I am coming.

  From the pilothouse, Lore was watching the viral horde through binoculars. Blockaded by the flaming wreckage, it appeared as a column of thrumming light that stretched far back onto the mainland and beyond, widening to encompass virtually all of the far shore.

  She raised the radio to her mouth. “I don’t want to rush you, Michael, but whatever’s wrong, you have got to fix it right the fuck now.”

  “I’m trying here!”

  Something was happening to the horde, a kind of … rippling. A rippling but also a compacting, like the gathering action of a spring. Beginning at the rear, the motion slithered forward, gathering speed as it proceeded down the causeway toward the flames. The truck was lying lengthwise across the roadway. What was she seeing?

  The head of the column crashed into the burning tanker like a battering ram. Gouts of smoke and fire shot into the sky. The tanker began to creep forward, scraping along the roadway. Burning virals peeled off into the water as more were propelled from behind into the destruction.

  Lore looked down from the rail. The chains connecting the hull to the dock had been released; dozens of people were splashing helplessly in the water. At least a hundred, including some children, remained on the dock. Panicked cries knifed the air. “Get out of my way!” “Take my daughter!” “Please, I’m begging you!”

  “Hollis!” she cried.

  The man looked up. Lore pointed toward the isthmus. She realized her mistake: others on the dock had seen her. The mob surged forward, everyone attempting to wedge themselves onto the narrow gangway simultaneously. Blows were thrown, bodies hurled; people were trampled in the crush. From the center of the melee came the crack of a gunshot. Hollis rushed forward, arms swinging like a swimmer’s, carving a path through the chaos. More shots; the crowd scattered, revealing a lone man with a pistol and two bodies on the ground. For a second the man just stood there, as if amazed by what he’d done, before he turned and charged up the gangway. Too late for him: he made it all of five steps before Hollis grabbed him by the collar, pulled him backward, placed his other hand under the man’s buttocks, hoisted him over his head—the man flailing his arms and legs like an overturned turtle—and hurled him over the rail.

  Lore grabbed the radio: “Michael, it’s getting ugly up here!”

  A froth of bobbles appeared. Rand passed Michael a three-foot length of pipe and a tub of grease. Michael wrenched the old pipe free, greased the threads of its replacement, and fitted it into place. Rand had returned to the panel.

  “Switch it over!” Michael yelled.

  The lights flickered; the mixers began to spin. Pressure flowed into the lines.

  “Here we go!” Rand cried.

  Michael wriggled free. Rand tossed him the radio.

  “Lore—”

  Everything died again.

  She had failed; her army was gone, scattered to dust. With all her heart Amy wanted to be on that ship, to depart this place and never come back. But she could never leave, not on this boat or any other. She would stand on the dock as it sailed away.

  How I wanted to have that life with you, Peter, she thought. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  The truck was racing east, Caleb at the wheel, Peter, Amy, and Greer in the cargo bed. Ahead the lights of the dock loomed; behind them, across the widening distance, Amy saw the burning tanker pivoting. The first virals appeared through the breach. Their bodies were burning. They staggered forward, man-sized wicks of flame. The gap continued to widen, opening like a door.

  Amy turned to the window of the cab. “Caleb—”

  He was looking through the mirror. “I see them!”

  Caleb floored it; the truck shot forward, sending Amy tumbling. Her head impacted the metal floor with a clang and a burst of disorienting pain. Lying on her back, her face to the sky, Amy saw the stars. Stars by the hundreds, the thousands, and one of them was falling. It grew and grew, and she knew what this star was.

  “Anthony.”

  Carter’s aim was true; as the truck zoomed past, he landed behind it on the causeway, rolled, and came up on his feet. The virals were careening toward him. He drew himself erect.

  Brothers, sisters.

  He sensed their confusion. Who was this strange being who had dropped into their path?

  I am Carter, Twelfth of Twelve. Kill me if you can.

  “What the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know!”

  The radio squawked: Lore. “Michael, we have got to go right now.”

  Rand was madly checking gauges. “It’s not the charger—it has to be electrical.”

  Michael stood before the panel in utter desolation. It was hopeless; he was beaten. His ship, his Bergensfjord, had denied him. His paralysis became anger; his anger turned to rage. He slammed a fist against the metal. “You bitch!” He reared back, struck again. “You heartless bitch! You do this to me?” With tears of frustration brimming, he grabbed a wrench from the deck and began to slam it against the metal, again and again. “I’ve … given … you … everything!”

  A sudden rumble, like the roar of a great caged beast. Lights came on; all the gauges leapt.

  “Michael,” said Rand, “what the hell did you do?”

  “That’s got it!” Lore cried.

  The sound increased in intensity, humming through the ship’s plating. Rand yelled over the din: “Pressure’s holding! Eight thousand rpm! Twelve! Twenty! Thirty-five!”

  Michael snatched the radio from the floor. “Engage the screws!”

  A groan. A shudder, deep in the bones.

  The Bergensfjord began to move.

  They skidded into the loading area. Amy leapt from the back of the truck before it stopped moving.

  “Amy, stop!”

  But the woman was already gone, racing toward the causeway. “Caleb, take Lucius and get on that boat.”

  Standing by the cargo bed, his son seemed stunned.

  “Do it!” Peter ordered. “Don’t wait!”

  He took off after her. With every step he willed himself to go faster. His breath was heaving in his chest, the ground flying beneath him. The gap between them began to narrow. Twenty feet, fifteen, ten. A final burst of speed and he grabbed her around the waist, sending both of them rolling on the ground.

  “Let me go!” Amy was on her knees, fighting to break free.

  “We have to leave right now.”

  There were tears in her voice. “They’ll kill him!”

  Carter coiled. He flexed his fingers, claws glinting. He flexed his toes, feeling the taut wires of ligaments. Blueing moonlight doused him like a benediction.

  Reaching one hand forward, Amy released a wail of pain. “Anthony!”

  He charged.

  They had to clear eight hundred feet.

  At the rear of the vessel, a wall of foam churned up. Shouts rose from the dock: “They’re leaving without us!” The last of the passengers rushed forward, shoving themselves onto the ramp, which had begun to scrape along the pier as the Bergensfjord pulled away.

  Standing at the rail, Pim watched the scene unfold in silence. The bottom lip of the gangway was inching toward the edge; soon it would fall. Where was her husband? Then she saw him. Supporting Lucius, he was racing at a quickstep down the pier. She began to sign emphatically to any who might see: That’s my husband! And: Stop this ship! But, of course, no one could make sense of her.

  The gangway was clotted with people. Crammed between the guardrails, they squeezed forward onto the deck of the ship only one or two at a time, ejected from the squirming mass. Pim began to moan. She was not aware that she was doing this at first. The sound had emerged of its own volition, an expression of violent feeling that could not be contained—just as, twenty-one years ago, in Sara’s arms, she had wailed with such ferocity that she might have been mistaken for a dying animal. As the volume increased, the sound began to form a distinctive shape altogether new in the life of Pim Jaxon: she was about to ma
ke words.

  “Caaay … leb! Ruuuuunnnn!”

  The lip of the gangway halted. It had lodged against a cleat at the edge of the pier. Under the pressure of the ship’s accelerating mass, it began to twist on its axis. Rivets were popping, metal buckling. Caleb and Greer were steps away. Pim was waving, shouting words she couldn’t hear but felt—felt with every atom of her body.

  The gangway began to fall.

  Still chained to the ship, it cantilevered into the side of the hull. Bodies plunged into the water, some wordlessly, their fate accepted, others with pitiful cries. At the bottom of the ramp, Caleb had hooked an elbow through the rail while simultaneously holding on to Greer, whose feet were balanced on the lowest rung. The Bergensfjord was gathering speed, dragging a roiling whirlpool. As the stern passed by, the ones in the water were dragged under, into the propeller’s froth. Perhaps a cry, a hand reaching up in vain, and they were gone.

  In the bowels of the Bergensfjord, Michael was running. Deck by deck he ascended, legs flying, arms swinging, heart pumping in his mouth. With a burst he flung himself into open air. The point of the bow was passing the end of the seawall door.

  They weren’t going to clear it. No goddamn way.

  He took the stairs to the pilothouse three at a time and charged through the door. “Lore—”

  She was staring out the windscreen. “I know!”

  “Give it more rudder!”

  “You don’t think I did that?”

  The gap between the door and the ship’s right flank was narrowing. Twenty yards. Ten. Five.

  “Oh, shit,” Lore breathed.

  Peter and Amy were racing down the dock.

  The ship was departing; she was gliding away. Gunfire spattered from the fantail, bullets whizzing over the heads; the virals had broken through.

  A crash.

  The side of the hull had collided with the end of the seawall door. A long scraping sound followed, the irresistible force of the ship’s momentum meeting the immovable object of the door’s weight. The hull trembled even as it failed to decelerate, thrusting forward.

  The great wall of steel slid heartlessly by. In another few seconds, the Bergensfjord would be gone. There was no way to board. Peter saw something hanging off the side of the ship: the fallen gangway, still attached at the top. Two people were clinging to it.