The City of Mirrors (5 page)

“Any word from Michael?” Peter asked her.

“Not a peep.”

“Are you worried?”

She frowned sharply, then shrugged. “Michael’s Michael. I don’t get this thing with the boat, but he’s going to do what he wants to do. I sort of thought Lore might settle him down, but I guess that’s done.”

Peter felt a stab of guilt; twelve hours ago he’d been in bed with the woman. “How are things at the hospital?” he asked, hoping to change the subject.

“It’s a madhouse. They’ve got me delivering babies. Lots and lots of babies. Jenny’s my assistant.”

Sara was speaking of Gunnar Apgar’s sister, whom they’d found at the Homeland. Pregnant, Jenny had returned to Kerrville with the first batch of evacuees and arrived just in time to deliver. She’d gotten married a year ago to another Iowan, though Peter didn’t know if the man was actually the father. A lot of the time, these things were improvised.

“She’s sorry she couldn’t make it,” Sara continued. “You’re sort of a big deal to her.”

“I am?”

“To lots of people, actually. I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me if I know you.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m sorry, didn’t you read that poster?”

He shrugged, embarrassed, though part of him was pleased. “I’m just a carpenter. Not too good at it, either, if you want to know the truth.”

Sara laughed. “Whatever you say.”

The hour was long past curfew, but Peter knew how to avoid the patrols. Caleb’s eyes barely opened as he hoisted him onto his back and headed home. He had just tucked the boy into bed when he heard a knock on the door.

“Peter Jaxon?”

The man in the doorway was a military officer, with the epaulets of the Expeditionary on his shoulders.

“It’s late. My boy’s asleep. What can I do for you, Captain?”

He offered Peter a sealed piece of paper. “Have a good night, Mr. Jaxon.”

Peter quietly closed the door, cut the wax with his new pocketknife, and opened the message.

Mr. Jaxon:

Might I ask you to pay me a call in my office on Wednesday at 0800? Arrangements have been made with your work supervisor to excuse your late arrival at the jobsite.

Sincerely,

Victoria Sanchez

President, Texas Republic

“Dad, why was there a soldier at the door?”

Caleb had wandered into the room, rubbing his eyes with his fists. Peter read the message again. What could Sanchez want with him?

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“Are you in the Army again?”

He looked at the boy. Ten years old. He was growing so fast.

“Of course not,” he said, and put the note aside. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

3

Red Zone

Ten Miles West of Kerrville, Texas

July 101
A.V.

Lucius Greer, the Man of Faith, took his position on the platform in the hour before dawn. His weapon: a bolt-action .308, meticulously restored, with a polished wooden stock and an optical site, its glass clouded by time but still usable. He was down to four rounds; he’d have to return to Kerrville soon, to trade for more. But on this morning of the fifty-eighth day, this was no concern. A single shot was all he’d need.

A gentle mist had settled overnight in the glade. His trap—a bucket of crushed apples—was a hundred yards upwind, nestled in the tall grass. Sitting motionless, his legs folded under him and his rifle resting on his lap, Lucius lay in wait. He had no doubt that his quarry would make an appearance; the smell of fresh apples was irresistible.

To pass the time, he offered a simple prayer:
My God, Lord of the Universe, be my guide and solace, give me the strength and wisdom to do Your will in the days ahead, to know what is required of me, to be worthy of the charge You have placed in my care. Amen.

Because something was coming; Lucius could feel it. He knew it the same as he knew his own heartbeat, the wind of breath in his chest, the carriage of his bones. The long arc of human history was headed toward the hour of its final test. When this hour would come there was no knowing, but come it surely would, and it would be a time for warriors. For men like Lucius Greer.

Three years had passed since the liberation of the Homeland. The events of that night were still with him, indelible memories flashed upon his consciousness. The bedlam of the stadium, and the virals making their entrance; the insurgency’s unleashing of their firepower upon the redeyes and Alicia and Peter advancing on the stage, guns drawn, firing again and again; Amy in chains, a meager figure, and then the roar that rose from her throat as she’d released the power within herself; her body transforming, shedding its human shape, and then the snap of the chains as she freed herself and her bold leap, quick as lightning, upon the monstrous enemies; the chaos and confusion of battle, and Amy trapped beneath Martínez, Tenth of Twelve; the bright flash of destruction, and the absolute quiet of aftermath, the whole world arrested into stillness.

By the time Lucius had returned to Kerrville, the following spring, he knew he could no longer dwell among people. The meaning of that night was clear; he had been called to a solitary existence. Alone, he had constructed his modest hut along the river only to feel the pull of something deeper, summoning him into the wilderness.
Lucius, lay yourself bare. Put down your lendings; cast aside all worldly comforts that you may know me.
With nothing but a blade and the clothes on his back, he had ventured into the dry hills and beyond, no destination but the deepest solitude he could find so that his life might find its true shape. Days without food, his feet torn and bloody, tongue thick in his mouth from thirst: as the weeks went by, with only the rattlesnakes and cacti and scorching sun for company, he had begun to hallucinate. A stand of saguaros became rows of soldiers at attention; lakes of water appeared where there were none; a line of mountains took the form of a walled city in the distance. He experienced these apparitions uncritically, with no awareness of their falsehood; they were real because he believed them to be so. Likewise did the past and present blend in his mind. At times he was Lucius Greer, major of the Expeditionary; at others, a prisoner of the stockade; at still others, a young recruit, or even his boyhood self.

For weeks he wandered in this condition, a being of multiple worlds. Then one day he awoke to discover himself lying in a gulley beneath an obliterating midday sun. His body was grotesquely emaciated, covered with scratches and sores; his fingers were bloody, some of the nails torn away. What had happened? Had he done this to himself? He possessed no recollection, only a sudden, overwhelming awareness of the image that had come to him during the night.

Lucius had received a vision.

He had no sense of where he was, only that he needed to walk north. Six hours later, he found himself on the Kerrville Road. Mad with thirst and hunger, he continued to walk until just before nightfall, when he saw the sign with the red X. The hardbox was amply stocked: food, water, clothes, gas, weapons and ammo, even a generator. Most welcome of all to his eyes was the Humvee. He washed and cleaned his wounds and spent the night on a soft cot, and in the morning he fueled up the vehicle, charged the battery and filled the tires, and headed east, reaching Kerrville on the morning of the second day.

At the edge of the Orange Zone he abandoned the Humvee and made his way into the city on foot. There, in a dark room in H-town, among men he did not know and whose names were never offered, he sold three of the carbines from the hardbox to buy a horse and other supplies. By the time he arrived at his hut, night was falling. It stood modestly among the cottonwoods and swamp oaks at the edge of the river, just one room with a packed-dirt floor, yet the sight of it filled his heart with the warmth of return. How long had he been away? It seemed like years, whole decades of life, and yet it was just a matter of months. Time had come full circle; Lucius was home.

He unsaddled, tied up his horse, and entered the hut. A nest of fluff and twigs on the bed indicated where something had made its home in his absence, but the sparse interior was otherwise unaltered. He lit the lantern and sat at the table. At his feet was the duffel bag of supplies: the Remington, a box of cartridges, fresh socks, soap, a straight razor, matches, a hand mirror, a half dozen quill pens, three bottles of dewberry ink, and sheets of thick, fibrous paper. At the river he filled his washbasin, then returned to the house. The image in the mirror was neither more nor less shocking than he expected: cheeks cratered, eyes sunk way back in his skull, skin scorched and blistered, a tangle of madman’s hair. The lower half of his face was buried beneath a beard that a family of mice would gladly live in. He had just turned fifty-two; the man in the mirror was an easy sixty-five.

Well, he said to himself, if he was going to be a soldier again, even an old, broken-down one, he damn well ought to look the part. Lucius hacked away at the worst of his hair and beard, then used the straight razor and soap to shave himself clean. He tossed the soapy water out the door and returned to the table, where he’d laid out his paper and pens.

Lucius closed his eyes. The mental picture that had come to him that night in the gully wasn’t like the hallucinations that had dogged him during his sojourn in the desert. It was more like a memory of something lived. He brought its details into focus, his mind’s eye roaming its visual expanse. How could he ever hope to capture something so magnificent with his amateur’s hand? But he would have to try.

Lucius began to draw.

A rustling in the brush: Lucius drew the riflescope to his eye. There were four of them, rooting through the dirt, snuffling and grunting: three sows and a boar, reddish brown, with large, razor-sharp tusks. A hundred and fifty pounds of wild pig for the taking.

He fired.

While the sows scattered, the boar staggered forward, shuddered with a deep twitch, and went down on its front legs. Lucius held the image in his scope. Another twitch, deeper than the first, and the animal flopped on its side.

Lucius scrambled down the ladder and went to where the animal lay in the grass. He rolled the boar onto the tarp, dragged it to the tree line, looped the animal’s hind legs together, set the hook, and began to hoist him up. When the boar’s head reached the height of Lucius’s chest, he tied off the rope, positioned the basin beneath the hog, drew his knife, and slashed the animal’s throat.

A gush of hot blood splattered into the basin. The boar would produce as much as a gallon. When the boar had emptied out, Lucius funneled the blood into a plastic jug. With more time on his hands, he would have gutted and butchered the animal and smoked the meat for trade. But it was day fifty-eight, and Lucius needed to be on his way.

He lowered the corpse to the ground—at least the coyotes would get the benefit—and returned to the hut. He had to admit it: the place looked like a madman lived there. A little over two years since Lucius had first put pen to paper, and now the walls were covered with the fruits of his labor. He’d branched out from ink to charcoal, graphite pencil, even paint, which cost a bundle. Some were better than others—viewing them in chronological order, one could trace his slow, at times frustratingly inept self-education as an artist. But the best ones satisfyingly captured the image Lucius carted around in his head all day like the notes of a song he couldn’t shake except by singing.

Michael was the only person who’d seen the pictures. Lucius had kept his distance from everyone, but Michael had tracked him down through somebody on the trade, a friend of Lore’s. One evening over a year ago Lucius had returned from setting his traps to find an old pickup parked in his yard and Michael sitting on the open tailgate. Over the years Greer had known him, he had grown from a rather meek-looking boy to a well-made specimen of manhood in its prime: hard and sleek, with strong features and a certain severity around the eyes. The sort of companion you could count on in a bar fight that began with a punch to the nose and ending with running like hell.

“Holy damn, Greer,” he said, “you look like shit on a biscuit. What does a man have to do to get a little hospitality around this place?”

Lucius got the bottle. At first it wasn’t quite clear what Michael wanted. He seemed changed to Lucius, a little at loose ends, a bit sunk down into himself. One thing Michael had never been was quiet. Ideas and theories and various campaigns, however cockeyed and half-baked, shot from the man like bullets. The intensity was still there—you could practically warm your hands on the man’s skull—but it had a darker quality, the feel of something caged, as if Michael were chewing on something he didn’t have words for.

Lucius had heard that Michael had quit the refinery, split from Lore, built some kind of boat and spent most of his time on it, sailing out alone into the Gulf. What the man was looking for in all that empty ocean, he never got around to saying, and Lucius didn’t press; how would he have explained his own hermitic existence? But over the course of the evening they passed together, getting drunker and drunker on a bottle of Dunk’s Special Recipe No. 3—Lucius wasn’t much of a drinker these days, though the stuff came in handy as a solvent—he came to think that Michael didn’t really
have
a reason for appearing at his doorstep beyond the basic human urge to be around another person. Both of them were doing their time in the wilderness, after all, and maybe what Michael really wanted, when you boiled away the bullshit, was a few hours in the company of someone who understood what he was going through—this profound impulse to be alone just when all of them should have all been dancing for joy and having babies and generally celebrating a world where death didn’t reach down from the trees and snatch you just for the hell of it.