The City of Mirrors (7 page)

—You know, you were always so damn smart. Do you remember … now, when was this? I don’t know, we were just a couple of kids. I think Peter might have been there, Sara, too. We all snuck up to the Wall one night, and you gave this speech, an actual speech, I swear to God, about how the lights worked, the turbines and the batteries and all the rest of it. You know, up until then, I thought that they just came on by themselves? Seriously. God, I felt so dumb.

He shrugged, embarrassed.

—I was kind of a showoff, I guess.

—Oh, don’t apologize. I thought it right then: That kid’s really got something. Someday, when we need him, he’s going to save our sorry asses.

Michael hadn’t known what to say. Never had he seen anyone who looked so lost, so weighed down by life.

—What did you want to ask me, Lish?

—Ask you?

—You said you needed a favor.

She frowned, as if the question didn’t quite make sense to her.

—I guess I did, didn’t I?

—Lish, are you okay?

She rose from her chair. Michael was about to say something else, he wasn’t sure what, when she leaned forward, brushed his hair aside, and, amazing him utterly, kissed him on the forehead.

—Take care of yourself, Michael. Will you do that for me? They’re going to need you around this place.

—Why? Are you going somewhere?

—Just promise me.

And there it was: the moment when he’d failed her. Three years later and still he was reliving it over and over, like a hiccup in time. The moment when she told him she was leaving for good, and the one thing he could have said to keep her there.
Somebody loves you, Lish.
I
love you. Me, Michael. I love you and I’ve never stopped and never ever will.
But the words got tangled up somewhere between his mouth and his brain, and the moment slipped away.

—Okay.

—Okay, she said. And then was gone.

But the storm, on the morning of his forty-second day at sea: lost in these thoughts, Michael had let his attention drift—had noted, but failed to fully process, the sea’s growing hostility, the absolute blackness of the sky, the accumulating fury of the wind. Too quickly it arrived with an earsplitting blast of thunder and a massive, rain-saturated gust that slapped the boat like a giant hand, heeling it hard.
Whoa,
thought Michael, scrambling up the transom.
What the holy fuck.
The moment had passed to reef the sail; the only thing to do was take the squall head-on. He tightened the mainsheet and steered his boat close to the wind. Water was pouring in—foaming over the bow, dumping from the heavens in sheets. The air was lit with voltage. He locked the main in his teeth, pulled it as tight as it could go, and snapped it down in the block.

All right,
he thought.
At least you let me take a piss first.
Let’s see what you’ve got, you bastard.

Into the storm he went.

Six hours later he emerged, his heart soaring with victory. The squall had blown through, carving a pocket of blue air behind it. He had no idea where he was; he had been thrown far off course. The only thing to do was head due west and see where he made landfall.

Two hours later, a long gray line of sand appeared. He approached it on a rising tide. Galveston Island: he could tell from the wreckage of the old seawall. The sun was high, the winds fair. Should he turn south for Freeport—home, dinner, a real bed, and all the rest—or something else? But the events of the morning made this prospect seem depressingly tame, a too-meager conclusion to the day.

He decided to scout the Houston Ship Channel. He could anchor the night there, then proceed to Freeport in the morning. He examined his chart. A narrow wedge of water separated the north end of the island from the Bolivar Peninsula; on the far side lay Galveston Bay, a roughly circular basin, twenty miles wide, leading at its northeastern edge to a deep estuary, lined with the wreckage of shipyards and chemical plants.

Running before the wind, he made his way into the bay. Unlike the brown-tinged surf of the coastline, the water was clear, almost translucent, with a greenish cast. Michael could even see fish, dark shapes running below the surface. In places the shoreline was clotted with huge masses of debris, but elsewhere it seemed scrubbed clean.

The afternoon had begun to fade as he approached the estuary’s mouth. A large, dark shape stood in the channel. As he neared, the image came into focus: a massive ship, hundreds of feet long. It had come to rest midway between two stanchions of a suspension bridge that traversed the channel. He guided his craft closer. The ship was listing slightly to port, bow-down, the tops of its massive propellers just visible above the waterline. Was it aground? How had it gotten there? Probably the same way he had, pulled by the tides through Bolivar Pass. Across the stern, dripping with rust, was written the vessel’s name and registry:

BERGENSFJORD

OSLO,
NORWAY

He drew the
Nautilus
alongside the closest stanchion. Yes, a ladder. He tied off, dropped his sails, then went below to fetch a pry bar, a lantern, an assortment of tools, and two one-hundred-yard lengths of heavy rope. He put his supplies in a backpack, returned to the deck, took a steadying breath, and began to climb.

Michael didn’t care for heights. Not much else got to him, except for that. At the refinery, circumstances often placed him somewhere far above the ground—swinging from a harness on the towers, chipping off the rust—and over time he’d become more brave about it, insofar as his crew could tell. But exposure went only so far in its curative effects. The ladder, steel rungs set into the concrete of the stanchion, was not, on close inspection, anywhere near as sturdy as it had appeared from below. Some of the rungs seemed barely attached. By the time he reached the top, his heart felt like it was stuffed against the back of his throat. He lay on his back on the suspension bridge’s roadway, just breathing, then peered over the edge. He guessed it was hundred and fifty feet down to the ship’s deck, maybe more. Jesus.

He tied the rope to the railing and watched it fall. The trick would be using his feet to control his descent. Taking the rope in his hands, he leaned backward over the edge, swallowed hard, and stepped off.

For half a second he believed he had made the biggest mistake of his life. What a stupid idea! He was going to plummet like a rock to the deck. But then his feet found the rope, wrapping it in a death grip. Hand over hand, he made his way down.

Michael guessed the boat had been some kind of freight vessel. He headed for the stern, where an open metal staircase led to the pilot house. At the top of the stairs he came to a heavy door with a handle that refused to move. He popped the handle loose with the pry bar and inserted the tip of a screwdriver into the mechanism. A bit of jiggling, tumblers clacking, and with a second pop of the pry bar the door swung free.

An eye-watering ammoniac funk filled the air—air that nobody had breathed for a century. Beneath the broad windshield, with its view of the channel, was the ship’s control panel: rows of switches and dials, flat-panel displays, computer keyboards. In one of the three high-backed chairs that faced the panel was a body. Time had turned it into little more than a shrunken brown stain encased by the moldy tatters of its clothing. Military-style epaulets with three stripes decorated the shoulders of its shirt. An officer, Michael thought, perhaps the captain himself. The cause of death was apparent: a hole in his skull, no bigger than the tip of Michael’s pinkie, marked the spot of the bullet’s entry. On the floor, beneath the man’s outstretched right hand, lay a revolver.

Michael found other bodies below decks. Nearly all were in their beds. He didn’t linger, merely added them to the count, forty-two corpses in all. Had they killed themselves? The orderliness of the bodies said so, yet the method was not apparent. Michael had seen this sort of thing before, but never so many, all in one place.

Traveling downward into the ship, he came to a room that was different from the others, with not one or two beds but many—narrow bunks attached two high on the bulkheads, the space bisected by a slim corridor. The crew’s quarters? Many of the cots were empty; he counted only eight bodies, including two that were naked, their limbs wound together in the cramped space of a lower bunk.

This space was more cluttered than the others. Rotted articles of clothing and miscellaneous objects covered much of the floor. Many of the walls beside the bunks were decorated: faded photographs, religious images, postcards. He gently freed one of the photographs and held it up to his lantern. A dark-haired woman, smiling for the camera, cradling an infant in her lap.

Something caught his eye.

A large sheet of paper, thin as tissue, taped to the bulkhead: at the top, in ornate lettering, were the words
INTERNATIONAL
HERALD
TRIBUNE
. Michael loosened the tape and laid the paper across the bunk.

HUMANITY IN PERIL

Crisis Deepens as Death Toll Soars Worldwide

Virus extends its deadly reach to all continents

Ports and borders overrun as millions flee the spread of infection

Major cities in chaos as massive blackouts darken Europe

ROME (AP), May 13—The world stood on the edge of chaos Tuesday night as the disease known as the Easter Virus continued its deadly march across the globe.

Although the disease’s rapid spread makes estimates of the dead difficult, U.N. health officials say the toll numbers in the hundreds of millions.

The virus, an airborne variant of the one that decimated North America two years ago, emerged in the Caucasus region of central Asia just fifty-nine days ago. Health officials have been at pains to identity either a source of the virus or an effective treatment.

“What we can say at this point is that this pathogen is unusually vigorous and highly lethal,” said Madeline Duplessis, Chairman of the World Health Organization’s Executive Board, speaking from its headquarters in Geneva. “Morbidity rates are running very close to 100 percent.”

Unlike the North American strain, the Easter Virus does not require close physical contact to pass from person to person and can travel great distances attached to dust motes or respiratory droplets, causing many health officials to liken it to the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918, which killed as many as 50 million people worldwide. Travel bans have done little to slow its spread, as have attempts by officials in many cities to prevent people from congregating in public places.

“I fear we are on the verge of losing control of the situation,” said Italian Health Minister Vincenzo Monti in an extended press briefing, during which coughing could be heard throughout the room. “I cannot stress enough the importance that people stay indoors. Children, adults, the elderly—none has been spared the effects of this cruel epidemic. The only way to survive this disease is not to catch it.”

Absorbed through the lungs, the Easter Virus acts swiftly to overwhelm the body’s defenses, attacking the respiratory system and digestive tracts. Early symptoms include disorientation, fever, headache, coughing, and vomiting with little or no warning. As the pathogen takes hold, victims experience massive internal hemorrhaging, typically leading to death within 36 hours, though some cases have been reported in which healthy adults have succumbed within as little as two hours. In rare instances, victims of the illness have exhibited the transformative effects of the North American strain, including a marked increase in aggressiveness, but whether any of these individuals have survived past the 36-hour threshold is not known.

“This appears to be happening in a small percentage of cases,” Duplessis told reporters. “Why these individuals are different, we simply don’t know at this time.”

WHO officials have speculated that the disease may have traveled from North America via ship or aircraft, despite the international quarantine imposed by the United Nations in June two years ago. Other theories of the pathogen’s origins include an avian source, connected to the massive die-off of several species of migrating songbirds in the southern Ural Mountains just prior to the disease’s appearance.

“We’re looking at everything,” Duplessis said. “We’re leaving no stone unturned.”

A third theory is that the epidemic is the work of terrorists. Responding to continued speculation in the press, Interpol Secretary-General Javier Cabrera, the former United States Secretary of Homeland Security and a member of the U.S. government in exile in London, told reporters, “At this time, no group or individual has claimed responsibility that we are aware of, though our investigation continues.” Cabrera went on to state that the international law enforcement organization, with 190 member states, possesses no evidence that any terrorist group or sponsoring country has the capability to create such a virus.

“Despite the many challenges, we continue to coordinate our efforts with law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world,” Cabrera said. “This is a global crisis warranting a global response. Should any credible evidence arise that the epidemic is man-made, rest assured that we will bring the perpetrators to justice.”

With most of the globe now under some form of martial law, riots have engulfed hundreds of cities, with fierce fighting reported in Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, Athens, Copenhagen, Prague, Johannesburg, and Bangkok, among many others. Responding to the rising tide of violence, the United Nations, meeting in an emergency session at its headquarters in The Hague, urged the nations of the world to exercise restraint in the use of deadly force.