The City of Mirrors (72 page)

Then: Carter.

He landed on the foredeck with a
clang,
absorbing the impact through his legs and simultaneously compressing his body to a squat: hips wide, head erect, one splayed hand touching the deck for balance, like an offensive tackle preparing for the snap. His nostrils flared to taste the air, which was imbued with the freshness of freedom. A breeze licked at his body with a tickling sensation. Sights and sounds bombarded his senses from all directions. He regarded the moon. His vision was such that he could detect the smallest features of its face—the cracks and crevices, craters and canyons—with an almost lurid quality of three dimensions. He felt the moon’s roundness, its great rocky weight, as if he were holding it in his arms.

Time to be on his way.

He made his way to the top of One Allen Center. High above the drowned city, Carter took measure of the buildings: their heights and handholds, the fjordlike gulfs between them. A route materialized in his mind; it had the force, the clarity of a premonition, or something absolutely known. A hundred yards to the first rooftop, perhaps another fifty to the second, a long two hundred to the third but with a drop of fifty feet that would expand his reach … 

He backed to the far edge of the platform. The key was, first, to create an accumulation of velocity, then to spring at precisely the right moment. He lowered to a runner’s crouch.

Ten long strides and he was up. He soared through the moonlit heavens like a comet, a star unlocked. He made the first rooftop with room to spare. He landed, tucked, rolled; he came up running and launched again.

He’d been saving up.

In the cargo bay of the third vehicle in the convoy, among the other injured, Alicia lay immobilized. Thick rubber cords strapped her to her stretcher at the shoulders, waist, and knees; a fourth lay across her forehead. Her right leg was splinted from ankle to hip; one arm, her right, was pinned across her chest. Various other parts of her were bandaged, stitched, bound.

Inside her body, the rapid cellular repair of her kind was underway. But this was an imperfect process, and complicated by the vastness and complexity of her wounds. This was especially true of the winglike flange of her right hip, which had been pulverized. The viral part of her could accomplish many things, but it could not reassemble a jigsaw puzzle. It might have been said that the only thing keeping Alicia Donadio alive was habit—her predisposition to see things through, just as she had always done. But she no longer had the heart for any of it. As the bone-banging hours passed, that she had failed to die seemed more and more like a punishment, and proof enough of Peter’s words.
You traitor. You knew.
You killed them. You killed them all.

Sara was sitting on the bench above her. Alicia undestood that the woman hated her; she could see it in her eyes, in the way she looked at her—or, rather, didn’t—as she went about attending to Alicia’s injuries: checking the bandages, measuring her temperature and pulse, dribbling the horrible-tasting elixir into her mouth that kept her in a pain-numbed twilight. Alicia wished she could say something to the woman, whose hatred she deserved.
I’m sorry about Kate.
Or
It’s all right, I hate myself enough as it.
But this would only make things worse. Better Alicia should accept what was offered and say nothing.

Besides, none of this mattered now; Alicia was asleep, and dreaming. In this dream, she was in a boat, and all around was water. The seas were calm, covered in mist, without a visible horizon. She was rowing. The creak of the oars in their locks, the swish of water moving under their blades: these were the only sounds. The water was dense, with a slightly viscous texture. Where was she going? Why had the water ceased to terrify her? Because it didn’t; Alicia felt perfectly at home. Her back and arms were strong, her strokes compact, nothing wasted. Rowing a boat was something she did not recall ever doing, yet it felt completely natural, as if the knowledge had been inscribed into her muscles for later use.

On she rowed, her blades elegantly slicing through the inky murk. She became aware that something was moving in the water—a shadowy bulk gliding just beneath the surface. It appeared to be following her, maintaining a watchful distance. Her mind did not register its presence as menacing; rather, it merely seemed to be a natural feature of the environment, one she might have anticipated if she’d thought about it in advance.

“Your boat is very small,” said Amy.

She was sitting in the stern. Water was running from her face and hair.

“You know we can’t go,” Amy stated.

The remark was puzzling. Alicia continued to row. “Go where?”

“The virus is in us.” Amy’s voice was dispassionate, without any perceptible tone. “We can’t ever leave.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

The shape had begun to circle them. Great bulges of water began to rock the boat from side to side.

“Oh, I think you do. We’re sisters, aren’t we? Sisters in blood.”

The motion increased in intensity. Alicia drew the oars into the boat and clutched the gunwales for balance. Her heart turned to lead; bile bubbled in her throat. Why had she failed to foresee the danger? So much water all around them, and her little boat, so small as to be nothing. The hull began to rise; suddenly they were no longer in contact with the water. A great blue bulk emerged under them, water streaming from its encrusted flanks.

“You know who that is,” Amy said impassively.

It was a whale. They were balanced like a pea atop its immense, horrible head. Higher and higher it lifted them into the air. One flick of its monstrous tail and it would send them soaring; it would crash down upon them and smash their boat to pieces. A hopeless terror, that of fate, took her in its grasp. From the stern, Amy issued a bored sigh.

“I’m so … tired of him,” she said.

Alicia tried to scream, but the sound stopped in her throat. They were rising, the sea was falling away, the whale was looming up … 

She awoke with a slam. She blinked her eyes and tried to focus. It was night. She was in the back of the truck, and the truck was bouncing hard. Sara’s face floated into view.

“Lish? What is it?”

Her lips moved slowly around the words: “They’re … coming.”

From the rear of the convoy, the sound of guns.

Shit. Shit shit shit.

Michael took the stairs from the pilothouse three at a time; he raced across the deck, his feet barely touching steel, and down the hatch. He was yelling into his radio, “Rand, get down here right now!”

He hit the engineering catwalk at a sprint, grabbed the poles of the ladder, and slid the rest of the way. The engines were quiet, everything stopped. Rand appeared above him.

“What happened?”

“Something tripped the main!”

Lore, on the radio: “Michael, we’re hearing shots up here.”

“Say again?”

“
Gunshots,
Michael. I’m looking down the isthmus now. We’ve got lights coming this way from the mainland.”

“Headlights or virals?”

“I’m not sure.”

He needed current to trace the problem. At the electrical panel, he switched diagnostics over to the auxiliary generator. The meters jumped to life.

“Rand!” Michael bellowed. “What are you seeing?”

Rand was positioned at the engine-control array on the far side of the room, checking dials. “Looks like its something in the water jacket pumps.”

“That wouldn’t trip the main! Look farther up the line!”

A brief silence; then Rand said, “Got it.” He tapped a dial. “Pressure’s flatlined on the starboard-side charger. Must have shut down the system.”

Lore again: “Michael, what’s going on down there?”

He was strapping on his tool belt. “Here,” he said, tossing Rand the radio, “you talk to her.”

Rand looked lost. “What should I say?”

“Tell her to get ready to engage the props straight from the pilothouse.”

“Shouldn’t she wait for the system to repressurize? We could blow a header.”

“Just get on the electrical panel. When I tell you, switch the system back over to the main bus.”

“Michael, talk to me,” Lore said. “Things are looking very fucking serious up here.”

“Go,”
Michael told Rand.

He raced aft, plugged in his lantern, dropped to his back, and wedged himself under the charger.

This goddamn leak, he thought. It’s going to be the death of me.

The convoy hit the isthmus doing sixty miles an hour. Buses were bounding; buses were going airborne. The tanker, last in the line, had failed to keep up. The virals were close behind and massing. The barrier of razor wire appeared in the headlights.

Peter yelled into the radio, “Everyone keep going! Don’t stop!”

They careened straight through the barrier. Chase stamped the brakes and pulled to the side as the convoy roared past with inches to spare, pushing a wall of wind that buffeted the vehicle like a howling gale. Peter, Chase and Amy leapt from the cab.

Where was the tanker?

It lumbered into view at the base of the causeway—lamps blazing, engine roaring, traveling toward them like a well-lit rocket in slow motion. Past the turn it began to accelerate. Two virals were crouched on the roof of the cab. Chase raised his rifle and squinted through the scope.

“Ford, don’t,” Peter warned. “You hit that tank, it could blow.”

“Quiet. I can do this.”

A bullet split the air. One of the virals tumbled away. Ford was taking aim at the second when it dropped to the hood: no shot.

“Shit!”

From the cab, a pair of shotgun blasts came in rapid succession; the windshield shattered outward into the moonlight. There was a hissing groan of brakes. The viral flopped backward into the conical glare of the truck’s headlights and disappeared beneath the front wheels with a wet burst.

Suddenly the cab was at a right angle to the causeway; the tanker was jackknifing. The whole thing began to swing crosswise. As its back wheels touched the water, the rear of the truck abruptly decelerated, swinging the cab in the opposite direction like a weight on a string. The truck was less than a hundred yards away now. Peter could see Greer fighting the wheel for control, but his efforts were now pointless; the vehicle’s angular momentum had assumed command.

It flopped onto its side. The cab separated from its cargo, which rammed it from behind in a second crunch of glass and metal. A long, screeching skid, and the whole thing came to rest, lying driver side up at a forty-five-degree angle to the roadway.

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.