The City of Mirrors

by Justin Cronin

  “Okay, get out of here.”

  She dashed away. Michael looked at the others. “We go in in two groups. Rand with me; the rest of you hover in the outer room until everybody’s ready.”

  Eyes flicked up from the tables as they entered, but that was all. They were comrades, no doubt stopping by the hut for the same reasons everyone did: a drink, some cards, a few minutes of bliss in the stalls. The second group spread out across the room while Michael and the others faded to the hallway and took their positions outside the doors. The signal was passed, the doors were flung open.

  Dunk was on his back, naked, a woman busily rocking astride his hips. “Michael, what the fuck?” But when he saw Rand and the others, his expression changed. “Oh, give me a break.”

  Michael looked at the whore. “Why don’t you take a walk?”

  She snatched her dress from the floor and ran out the door. From elsewhere in the building came an assortment of screams and shouts, the sound of glass breaking, a single gunshot.

  “It was going to happen sooner or later,” Michael said to Dunk. “Might as well make the best of it.”

  “You think you’re so fucking smart? You’ll be dead the minute you walk out of here.”

  “We’ve pretty much cleaned house, Dunk. I was saving you for last.”

  Dunk’s face lit with a phony smile; beneath the bluster, the man knew he was looking into an abyss. “I get it. You want a bigger share. Well, you’ve certainly earned it. I can make that happen for you.”

  “Rand?”

  The man moved forward, gripping the wire in his fists. Three others grabbed Dunk as he attempted to rise and shoved him hard onto the mattress.

  “For fucksake, Michael!” He was squirming like a fish. “I treated you like a son!”

  “You have no idea how funny that is.”

  As the wire slipped around Dunk’s neck, Michael stepped from the room. The last of Dunk’s lieutenants was putting up a bit of a struggle in the second stall, but then Michael heard a final grunt and the thump of something heavy striking the floor. Greer met him in the front room, where bodies lay strewn amid overturned card tables. One of them was Fastau; he’d been shot through the eye.

  “Are we done?” Michael asked.

  “McLean and Dybek got away in one of the trucks.”

  “They’ll stop them at the causeway. They aren’t going anywhere.” Michael looked at Fastau, lying dead on the floor. “We lose anyone else?”

  “Not that I’ve heard.”

  They loaded the bodies into the five-ton that waited outside. Thirty-six corpses in all, Dunk’s inner circle of murderers, pimps, thieves: they’d be carted to the dock, loaded onto a launch, and dumped in the channel.

  “What about the women?” Greer asked.

  Michael was thinking of Fastau—the man had been one of his best welders. Any loss at this point was a concern.

  “Have Patch put them under guard in one of the machine sheds. Once we’re ready to move, get them on a transport out of here.”

  “They’ll talk.”

  “Well, consider the source.”

  “I see your point.”

  The truck with the bodies drove away.

  “I don’t mean to press,” Greer said, “but have you decided about Lore?”

  The question had preoccupied Michael for weeks. Always he came back to the same answer. “I think she’s the only one I trust enough to do this.”

  “I agree.”

  Michael turned toward Greer. “Are you sure you don’t want to be the one to run things around here? I think you’d be good at it.”

  “That’s not my role. The Bergensfjord is yours. Don’t worry, I’ll keep the troops in line.”

  They were quiet for a time. The only lights burning were the big spots on the dock. Michael’s men would be working through the night.

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to bring up,” Michael said.

  Greer cocked his head.

  “In your vision, I know you couldn’t see who else was on the ship—”

  “Just the island, the five stars.”

  “I understand that.” He hesitated. “I’m not sure how to put this. Did it … feel like I was there?”

  Greer seemed perplexed by the question. “I really couldn’t say. That wasn’t part of it.”

  “You can be honest with me.”

  “I know I can.”

  The sound of gunfire from the causeway: five shots, a pause, then two more, deliberate, final. Dybek and McLean.

  “I guess that’s that,” said Greer.

  Rand walked up to them. “Everybody’s assembled at the dock.”

  Suddenly Michael felt the weight of it. Not ordering the deaths of so many; that had been easier than expected. He was in charge now—the isthmus was his. He checked the magazine on his sidearm, decocked the hammer, and slid the pistol back into its holster. From now on, he would never be apart from it.

  “All right, that oil ships in thirty-six days. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  30

  Iowa Freestate

  (Formerly the Homeland)

  Pop. 12,139

  Sheriff Gordon Eustace began the morning of March 24—as he did every March 24—by hanging his holstered revolver on the bedpost.

  Because a carrying a weapon wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be respectful. For the next few hours, he’d be just a man, like any man, standing in the cold on aching joints to think about the way things might have been.

  He kept a room at the back the jail. For ten years, since the night he couldn’t make himself return to the house, that was where he’d slept. He’d always considered himself the sort of man who could pick himself up and get on with things, and it wasn’t as if he was the first person whose luck had turned bad. But something had gone out of him and never come back, and so this was where he lived, in a cinder-block box with nothing but a bed and a sink and a chair to sit in and a toilet down the hall, nobody but drunks sleeping it off for company.

  Outside the sun was rising in a halfhearted, March-in-Iowa way. He heated a kettle on the stove and carried it to the basin with his straight razor and soap. His face looked back in the old cracked mirror. Well, wasn’t that a pretty sight. Half his front teeth gone, left ear shot off to a pink nub, one eye clouded and useless: he looked like something in a children’s story, the mean old ogre under the bridge. He shaved, splashed water on his face and under his arms, and dried himself off. All he had on hand for breakfast were some leftover biscuits, hard as rocks. Sitting at the table, he worked them over with his back teeth and washed them down with a shot of corn liquor from the jug beneath the sink. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but he liked one in the morning, especially this morning of all mornings, the morning of March 24.

  He put on his hat and coat and stepped outside. The last of the snow had melted, turning the earth to mud. The jailhouse was one of the few buildings in the old downtown that anybody still used; most had been empty for years. Blowing on his hands, he made his way past the ruins of the Dome—nothing left of it now but a pile of rocks and a few charred timbers—and down the hill into the area that everybody still called the Flatland, though the old workers’ lodges had long since been dismantled and used as firewood. Some folks still lived down here, but not many; the memories were too bad. The ones who did were generally younger, born after the days of the redeyes, or else very old and unable to break the psychological chains of the old regime. It was a squalid dump of shacks without running water, miasmatic rivers of sewage running in the streets, and a roughly equivalent number of dirty children and skinny dogs picking through the trash. Eustace’s heart broke every time he saw it.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. He’d had plans, hopes. Sure, a lot people had accepted the offer to evacuate to Texas in those first years; Eustace had expected that. Fine, he’d thought, let them go. The ones who remained would be the hearty souls, the true believers who viewed the end of the redeyes not merely as a libe
ration from bondage but something more: the chance to right a wrong, start over, build a new life from the bottom up.

  But as he’d watched the population drain away, he’d begun to worry. The people who stayed behind weren’t the builders, the dreamers. Many were simply too weak to travel; some were too afraid; others so accustomed to having everything decided for them that they were incapable of doing much of anything at all. Eustace had made a run at it, but nobody had the slightest idea how to make a city work. They had no engineers, no plumbers, no electricians, no doctors. They could operate the machines the redeyes left behind, but nobody knew how to fix them when they broke. The power plant had failed within three years, water and sanitation within five; a decade later, almost nothing functioned. Schooling the children proved impossible. Few of the adults could read, and most didn’t see the sense of it. The winters were brutal—people froze to death in their own houses—and the summers were almost as bad, drought one year and drenching rains the next. The river was foul, but people filled their buckets anyway; the disease that everyone called “river fever” killed scores. Half the cattle had died, most of the horses and sheep, and all of the pigs.

  The redeyes had left behind all the tools to build a functioning society but one: the will to actually do it.

  The road through the Flatland joined the river and took him east to the stadium. Just beyond it was the cemetery. Eustace made his way through the rows of headstones. A number were decorated—guttered candles, children’s toys, the long-desiccated sprigs of wildflowers exposed by the retreating snow. The arrangement was orderly; the one thing people were good at was digging graves. He came to the one he was looking for and crouched beside it.

  NINA VORHEES EUSTACE

  SIMON TIFTY EUSTACE

  BELOVED WIFE, BELOVED SON.

  They had perished within a few hours of each other. Eustace was not told of this until two days later; he was roiling with fever, his mind adrift in psychotic dreams he was glad to have no memory of. The epidemic had cut through the city like a scythe. Who lived and who died seemed random; a healthy adult was as likely to succumb as an infant or someone in their seventies. The illness came on quickly: fever, chills, a cough from deep in the lungs. Often it would seem to run its course only to come roaring back, overwhelming the victim within minutes. Simon had been three years old—a watchful boy with intelligent eyes and a joyful laugh. Never had Eustace felt a love so deep for anyone, not even for Nina. The two of them joked about it—how, by comparison, their affection for each other seemed minor, though of course that wasn’t quite true. Loving their boy was just another way of loving each other.

  He spent a few minutes by the grave. He liked to focus on little things. Meals they’d shared, snippets of conversation, quick touches traded for no reason, just to do it. He hardly ever thought about the insurgency; it seemed to have no bearing anymore, and Nina’s ferocity as a fighter made up but one small part of the woman she was. Her true self was something she had shown only to him.

  A feeling of fullness told him it was time to go. So, another year. He touched the stone, letting his hand linger there as he said goodbye, and made way back through the maze of headstones.

  “Hey, mister!”

  Eustace spun around as a chunk of ice the size of a fist sailed past his head. Three boys, teenagers, stood fifty feet away among the headstones, guffawing like idiots. But when they got a look at him, the laughter abruptly ceased.

  “Shit! It’s the sheriff!”

  They dashed away before Eustace could say a word. It was too bad, really; there was something he wanted to tell them. It’s okay, he would have said. I don’t mind. He would have been about your age.

  When he returned to the jail, Fry Robinson, his deputy, was sitting at the desk with his boots up, snoring into his collar. He was just a kid, really, not even twenty-five, with a wide, optimistic face and a soft round jaw he barely had to shave. Not the smartest but not the dumbest either; he’d stayed on with Eustace longer than most men did, which counted for something. Eustace let the door bang behind himself, sending Fry jolting upright.

  “Jesus, Gordo. What the hell did you do that for?”

  Eustace strapped on his gun. It was mostly for show; he kept it loaded, but the ammunition the redeyes had left behind was nearly gone, and what remained was unreliable. On more than one occasion, the hammer had fallen on a dud.

  “Did you feed Rudy yet?”

  “I was just about to before you woke me up. Where’d you go? I thought you were still back there.”

  “Went to visit Nina and Simon.”

  Fry gave him a blank stare; then he understood. “Shit, it’s the twenty-fourth, isn’t it?”

  Eustace shrugged. What was there to say?

  “I can look after things here if you want,” Fry offered. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

  “And do what?”

  “Sleep or something. Get drunk.”

  “Believe me, I’ve thought about it.”

  Eustace carried Rudy’s breakfast back to his cell: a couple of stale biscuits and a raw potato cut into slices.

  “Rise and shine, partner.”

  Rudy lifted his emaciated frame off his bunk. Thieving, fighting, being a general, all-around pain in the ass: the man was in jail so often he actually had a favorite cell. This time the charge was drunk and disorderly. With a lurid snort he excavated a wad of phlegm, hawked it into the bucket that served as a toilet, and shuffled to the bars, beltless pants hoisted in his fist. Maybe I should let him keep his belt next time, Eustace thought. The man might do us all a favor and hang himself. Eustace slid the plate through the slot.

  “That’s it? Biscuits and a potato?”

  “What do you want? It’s March.”

  “The service isn’t what it used to be around this place.”

  “So stay out of trouble for once.”

  Rudy sat on the bunk and took a bite of one of the biscuits. The man’s teeth were disgusting, brown and wobbly-looking, though Eustace was hardly one to talk. Crumbs spurted from his mouth as he spoke. “When’s Harold coming?”

  Harold was the judge. “How should I know?”

  “I need a clean bucket, too.”

  Eustace was halfway down the hall.

  “I’m serious!” Rudy yelled. “It stinks in here!”

  Eustace returned to the front and sat behind his desk. Fry was wiping down his revolver, something he did about ten times a day. The thing was like his pet. “What’s his problem?”

  “Didn’t care much for the cuisine.”

  Fry frowned with contempt. “He should be grateful. I didn’t get much more than that myself.” He stopped and sniffed the air. “Jesus, what’s that smell?”

  “Hey, assholes,” Rudy yelled from the back, “got a present for you!”

  Rudy was standing in his cell holding the now-empty bucket with a triumphant look on his face. Shit and piss were running down the hallway in a brown river.

  “This is what I think of your fucking potato.”

  “Goddamnit,” Fry yelled, “you’re cleaning this up!”

  Eustace turned to his deputy. “Hand me the key.”

  Fry unhooked the ring from his belt and passed it to Eustace. “I mean it, Rudy.” He jabbed a finger in the air. “You’re in a heap of trouble, my friend.”

  Eustace unlocked the door, stepped into the cell, closed the door behind himself, reached with the keys back through the bars, and locked the door again. Then he deposited the ring deep in his pocket.

  “What the hell is this?” Rudy asked.

  “Gordon?” Fry looked at him cautiously. “What are you doing?”

  “Just give me a sec.”

  Eustace drew his revolver, spun it around in his hand, and slapped the butt across Rudy’s face. The man stumbled backward and toppled to the floor.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Rudy scrabbled backward until he was against the wall of the cell. He worked his tongue around and spat a bloo
died tooth into his palm. He held it up by its long, rotten root. “Look at this! How am I supposed to eat now?”

  “I doubt you’ll miss it much.”

  “You had that coming, you piece of shit,” Fry said. “Come on, Gordo, let’s get this asshole a mop. I think he’s learned his lesson.”

  Eustace didn’t think so. Teach the man a lesson—what did that actually mean? He wasn’t sure what he was feeling, but it was coming to him. Rudy was holding out his tooth with a look of righteous indignation on his face. The sight of it was thoroughly disgusting; it seemed to encapsulate everything wrong with Eustace’s life. He reholstered his gun, letting Rudy think the worst was over, then hauled him to his feet and slammed his face against the wall. A damp crunch, like a fat cockroach popping underfoot: Rudy released a howl of pain.

  “Gordon, seriously,” Fry said. “Time to open that door.”

  Eustace wasn’t angry. Anger had left him, years ago. What he felt was relief. He hurled the man across the cell and got to work: his fists, the butt of the revolver, the points of his boots. Fry’s pleas for him to stop barely registered in his consciousness. Something had come uncorked inside him, and it was elating, like riding a horse at full gallop. Rudy was lying on the floor, his face protectively buried in his arms. You pathetic excuse for a human being. You worthless waste of skin. You are everything that’s wrong with this place, and I am going to make you know it.

  He was in the process of lifting Rudy by his collar to slam his head against the edge of the bunk—what a satisfying crack that was going to make—when a key turned in the lock and Fry grabbed him from behind. Eustace connected with an elbow to Fry’s midriff, knocking him away, and wrapped Rudy’s neck in the crook of his arm. The man was like a big rag doll, a fleshy sack of loosely organized parts. He tightened his biceps against Rudy’s windpipe and shoved his knee into his back for leverage. One hard yank and that would be the end of him.

  Then: snowflakes. Fry was standing over him, heaving for breath, holding the fire poker he’d just used on Eustace’s head.