The City of Mirrors

by Justin Cronin

  Kate gripped the leather near the horse’s mouth. “He looks sick. Should he be breathing like that?”

  Caleb was crouched at the rear of the animal. “You’re the doctor—you tell me.”

  He lifted the horse’s foot. With his other hand, he angled the pliers to the wound. There wasn’t much to grab hold of. As the tips made contact, the animal shoved his weight backward, whinnying and tossing his head.

  “Keep him still, damn it!”

  “I’m trying!”

  “He’s a horse, Kate. Show him who’s boss.”

  “What do you want me to do, slug him?”

  Jeb was having none of it. Caleb left the shelter and returned with a length of three-quarter-inch chain, which he ran through the halter, up and over the horse’s nose. He tightened the chain against Jeb’s jaw and gave the ends to Kate.

  “Hold this,” he said. “And don’t be nice.”

  Jeb didn’t like it, but the chain worked. Caught in the tips of the pliers, the offending article slowly emerged. Caleb held it up in the light. About two inches long, it was made of a rigid, nearly translucent material, like the bone of a bird.

  “Some kind of thorn, I guess,” he said.

  The horse had relaxed somewhat but was still breathing rapidly. Flecks of spittle hung from the corners of his mouth; his neck and flanks were glossed with sweat. Caleb washed the hoof with water from a bucket and poured iodine into the wound. Handsome was lingering near the shelter, watching them cautiously. While Kate held the halter, Caleb sheathed the hoof in a leather sock and secured it with twine. There wasn’t much else he could do at this point. He’d leave the animal tied up for the night and see how he was in the morning.

  “Thanks for your help.”

  The two of them were standing at the door of the shed; the light was just about gone.

  “Look,” Kate said finally, “I know I haven’t been especially good company these days.”

  “It’s fine, forget it. Everybody understands.”

  “You don’t need to be nice about it, Caleb. We’ve known each other too long.”

  Caleb said nothing.

  “Bill was an asshole. Okay, I get that.”

  “Kate, we don’t have to do this.”

  She didn’t seem angry, merely resigned. “I’m just saying I know what everybody thinks. And they’re not wrong. People don’t even know the half of it, actually.”

  “So why did you marry him?” Caleb was surprised at himself; the question had just popped out. “Sorry, that was a little direct.”

  “No, it’s a fair question. Believe me, I’ve asked it myself.” A moment passed; then she brightened a little. “Did you know that when Pim and I were kids we used to have fights over who would get to marry you? I’m talking physical fights—slapping, hair pulling, the whole thing.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Don’t look so happy, I’m surprised one of us didn’t end up in the hospital. One time, I stole her diary? I think I was thirteen. God, I was such a little shit. There was all this stuff in there about you. How good-looking you were, how smart you were. Both your names with a big fat heart drawn around them. It was just disgusting.”

  Caleb found the thought hilarious. “What happened?”

  “What do you think? She was older, the fights weren’t exactly fair.” Kate shook her head and laughed. “Look at you. You love this.”

  It was true, he did. “It’s a funny story. I never knew about any of it.”

  “And don’t flatter yourself, bub—I’m not about to throw myself at your feet.”

  He smiled. “That’s a relief.”

  “Plus, it would seem a little incestuous.” She shuddered. “Seriously, gross.”

  Night had fallen over the fields. Caleb realized what he’d been missing: the feeling of Kate’s friendship. As kids, they’d been as close as any two siblings. But then life had happened—the Army, Kate’s medical training, Bill and Pim, Theo and the girls and all their plans—and they’d mislaid each other in the shuffle. Years had passed since they’d really spoken, the way they were doing now.

  “But I didn’t answer your question, did I? Why I married Bill. The answer is pretty simple. I married him because I loved him. I can’t think of a single good reason why I did, but a person doesn’t get to pick. He was a sweet, happy, worthless man, and he was mine.” She stopped, then said, “I didn’t come out here to help you with the horses, you know.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “I came to ask you what’s making you so nervous. I don’t think Pim has noticed, but she’s going to.”

  Caleb felt caught. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “I know you, Caleb. It’s not nothing. And I have my girls to think about. Are we in trouble?”

  He didn’t want to answer, but Kate had him dead to rights.

  “I’m not sure. We might be.”

  A loud whinny in the paddock broke his thoughts. They heard a crash, then a series of hard, rhythmic bangs.

  “What the hell is that?” Kate said.

  Caleb grabbed a lantern from the shed and raced across the paddock. Jeb lay on his side, his head tossing violently. His hind hooves were knocking against the wall of the shelter in spasmodic jerks.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Kate said.

  The animal was dying. His bowels released, then his bladder. A trio of convulsions barreled through his body, followed by a final, violent tremor, every part of him stiffening. He held this position for several seconds, as if stretched on wires. Then the air went out of him and he was still.

  Caleb crouched beside the carcass, lifting the lantern over the animal’s face. A bubbly froth, tinged with blood, was running from his mouth. One dark eye stared upward, shining with reflected light.

  “Caleb, why are you holding a gun?”

  He looked down; so he was. It was George’s revolver, the big .357, which he’d hidden in the shed. He must have grabbed it when he’d retrieved the lantern—an action so automatic as to escape his conscious awareness.

  “You need to tell me what’s going on,” Kate said.

  Caleb released the hammer and swiveled on his heels toward the house. The windows shimmered with candlelight. Pim would be making supper, the girls playing on the floor or looking at books, Baby Theo fussing in his high chair. Maybe not; maybe the boy was already asleep. He sometimes did that, passing out cold at dinnertime only to awaken hours later, howling with hunger.

  “Answer me, Caleb.”

  He rose, slipped the pistol into the waistband of his trousers, and drew his shirt over the butt to conceal it. Handsome was standing at the edge of the light, his head bent low like a mourner’s. The poor guy, Caleb thought. It was as if he knew that the job would fall to him to drag the carcass of his only friend across the field to a patch of useless ground where, come morning, Caleb would use the rest of his fuel to burn it.

  45

  By late afternoon, Eustace and Fry had canvassed most of the outermost farms. Overturned furniture, beds disturbed, pistols and rifles lying where they’d fallen, a round or two fired, if that.

  And not a living soul.

  It was after six o’clock when they finished checking the last one, a dump of a place four miles downriver, near the old ADM ethanol plant. The house was tiny, just one room, the structure hammered together from scrap lumber and decaying asphalt shingles. Eustace didn’t know who’d lived out here. He guessed he never would.

  Eustace’s bad leg was aching hard; they’d have just enough time to make it back to town before dark. They mounted their horses and turned north, but a hundred yards later Eustace held up.

  “Let’s have a peek at that factory.”

  Fry was leaning over the pommel. “We ain’t got but two hands of light, Gordo.”

  “You want to go back without something to show for it? You heard those folks.”

  Fry thought for a moment. “Let’s be quick on it.”

  They rode into the compound. The plant
comprised three long, two-story buildings arranged in a U, with a fourth, much larger than the others, closing the square—a windowless concrete bulk connected to the grain bins by a maze of pipes and chutes. The skeletal husks of rusted vehicles and other machinery filled the spaces between the weeds. The air had stilled and cooled; birds were flitting through the glassless windows of the buildings. The three small structures were just shells, their roofs long collapsed, but the fourth was mostly tight. This was the one Eustace was interested in. If you were going to hide a couple hundred people, that would be a place to do it.

  “You got a windup in your saddle bag, don’tcha?” Eustace asked.

  Fry retrieved the lantern. Eustace turned the crank until the bulb began to glow.

  “Thing won’t last more than about three minutes,” Fry warned. “You think they’re in there?”

  Eustace was checking his gun. He closed the cylinder and reholstered the weapon but left the strap off. Fry did the same.

  “Guess we’re going to find out.”

  One of the loading dock doors stood partially open; they dropped and rolled through. The smell hit them like a slap.

  “I guess that answers that,” Eustace said.

  “Fuck me, that’s nasty.” Fry was pinching his nose. “Do we really need to look?”

  “Get ahold of yourself.”

  “Seriously, I think I’m gonna puke.”

  Eustace gave the lantern a few more cranks. A hallway lined with lockers ran to the main work space of the building. The smell grew more intense with every step. Eustace had seen some bad things in his day, but he was pretty sure this was going to be the worst. They came to the end of the hallway, and a pair of swinging doors.

  “I’m thinking this might be the time to ask about a raise,” Fry whispered.

  Eustace drew his pistol. “Ready?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  They pushed through. Several things hit Eustace’s senses in close order. The first thing was the stench—a miasma of rot so gaggingly awful that Eustace would have lost his lunch on the spot if he’d actually bothered to eat. To this was added a sound, a dense vibrato that stroked the air like the humming of an engine. In the center of the room was a large, dark mass. Its edges appeared to be moving. As Eustace stepped forward, flies exploded from the corpses.

  They were dogs.

  As he raised his pistol he heard Fry yell, but that was as far as he got before a heavy weight crashed into him from above and knocked him to the floor. All those people gone; he should have seen this coming. He tried to crawl away, but something awful was occurring inside him. A kind of … swirling. So this was how it was going to be. He reached for his gun to shoot himself but his holster was empty of course, and then his hands went numb and watery, followed by the rest of him. Eustace was plunging. The swirling was a whirlpool in his head and he was being sucked down into it, down and down and down. Nina, Simon. My beloveds, I promise I will never forget you.

  But that was exactly what happened.

  V

  The Manifest

  We must take the current when it serves,

  Or lose our ventures.

  —SHAKESPEARE, JULIUS CAESAR

  46

  It was nearly nine o’clock when Sister Peg walked Sara out.

  “Thank you for coming,” the old woman said. “It always means so much.”

  A hundred and sixteen children, from the tiniest babies to young adolescents; it had taken Sara two full days to examine them all. The orphanage was a duty she could have let go of long ago. Certainly Sister Peg would have understood. Yet Sara had never been able to bring herself to do this. When a child got sick in the night, or was down with a fever, or had leapt from a swing and landed wrong, it was Sara who answered the call. Sister Peg always greeted her with a smile that said she hadn’t doubted for a second who would be gracing her door. How would the world get on without us?

  Sara figured that Sister Peg had to be eighty by now. How the old woman continued to manage the place, its barely contained chaos, was a miracle. She had softened somewhat with the years. She spoke sentimentally of the children, both those in her care and the ones who had moved on; she kept track of their lives, how they made their ways in the world, and whom they married and their children if they had them, the way any mother would do. Though Sara knew the woman would never say as much, they were her family, no less than Hollis and Kate and Pim were Sara’s; they belonged to Sister Peg, and she to them.

  “It’s no trouble, Sister. I’m glad to do it.”

  “What do you hear from Kate?”

  Sister Peg was one of the few people who knew the story.

  “Nothing so far, but I didn’t expect to. The mail is so slow.”

  “That was a hard thing, with Bill. But Kate will know what to do.”

  “She always seems to.”

  “Would it be all right if I worried about you?”

  “I’ll be fine, really.”

  “I know you will. But I’m going to worry anyway.”

  They said their goodbyes. Sara made her way home through darkened streets; no lights burned anywhere. It had something to do with the supply of fuel for the generators—a minor hiccup at the refinery, that was the official word.

  She found Hollis dozing in his reading chair, a kerosene lantern burning on the table and a book of intimidating thickness resting on his belly. The house, where they had lived for the past ten years, had been abandoned in the first wave of settlement—a small wooden bungalow, practically falling down. Hollis had spent two years restoring it, in his off hours from the library, which he was now in charge of. Who would have thought it, this bear of a man passing his days pushing a cart through the dusty shelves and reading to children? Yet that was what he loved.

  She hung her jacket in the closet and went to the kitchen to warm some water for tea. The stove was still hot—Hollis always left it that way for her. She waited for the kettle to boil, then poured the water through the strainer filled with herbs she’d taken from the canisters that stood in a neat line on the shelf above the sink, each one marked in Hollis’s hand: “lemon balm,” “spearmint,” “rosehips,” and so on. It was a librarian’s habit, Hollis said, to fetishize the smallest details. Left to herself, Sara would have had to spend thirty minutes looking for everything.

  Hollis stirred as she entered the living room. He rubbed his eyes and smiled groggily. “What time is it?”

  Sara was sitting at the table. “I don’t know. Ten?”

  “Guess I fell asleep there.”

  “The water’s hot. I can make you some tea.” They always drank tea together at the end of the day.

  “No, I’ll get it.”

  He lumbered into the kitchen and returned with a steaming mug, which he placed on the table. Rather then sit, he moved behind her, took her shoulders in his hands, and began, with gathering pressure, to work his thumbs into the muscles. Sara let her head slump forward.

  “Oh, that’s good,” she moaned.

  He kneaded her neck for another minute, then cupped her shoulders and moved them in a circular motion, unleashing a series of pops and cracks.

  “Ouch.”

  “Just relax,” Hollis said. “God, you’re tight.”

  “You would be too, if you just gave physicals to a hundred kids.”

  “So tell me. How is the old witch?”

  “Hollis, don’t be nasty. The woman’s a saint. I hope I’ve got half her energy at her age. Oh, right there.”

  He continued his pleasurable business; bit by bit, the tensions of the day drained away.

  “I can do you next if you want,” Sara said.

  “Now you’re talking.”

  She felt suddenly guilty. She tipped her face backward to look at him. “I have been ignoring you a little, haven’t I?”

  “Comes with the territory.”

  “Getting old, you mean.”

  “You look pretty good to me.”

  “Hollis, we’re
grandparents. My hair’s practically white; my hands looks like beef jerky. I won’t lie—it depresses me.”

  “You talk too much. Lean forward again.”

  She dropped her head to the table and nestled it into her arms. “Sara and Hollis,” she sighed, “that old married couple. Who knew we’d be those people someday?”

  They drank their tea, undressed, and got into bed. Usually there were noises at night—people talking in the street, a barking dog, the various small sounds of life—but with the power out, everything was very quiet. It was true: it had been a while. A month, or was it two? But the old rhythm, the muscle memory of marriage, was still there, waiting.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Sara said after.

  Hollis was nestled behind her, wrapping her in his arms. Two spoons in a drawer, they called it. “I thought you might be.”

  “I miss them. I’m sorry. It’s just not the same. I thought I’d be okay with it, but I’m just not.”

  “I miss them, too.”

  She rolled to face him. “Would you really mind so much? Be honest.”

  “That depends. Do you think they need a librarian in the townships?”

  “We can find out. But they need doctors, and I need you.”

  “What about the hospital?”

  “Let Jenny run it. She’s ready.”

  “Sara, you do nothing but complain about Jenny.”

  Sara was taken aback. “I do?”

  “Nonstop.”

  She wondered if this was true. “Well, somebody can take over. We can just go for a visit to start, to see how it feels. Get the lay of the land.”

  “They may not actually want us out there, you know,” Hollis said.

  “Maybe not. But if it seems right, and everyone’s agreed, we can put in for a homestead. Or build something in town. I could open an office there. Hell, you’ve got enough books right here to start a library of your own.”

  Hollis frowned dubiously. “All of us crammed into that tiny house.”

  “So we’ll sleep outside. I don’t care. They’re our kids.”

  He took a long breath. Sara knew what Hollis was going to say; it was just a matter of hearing him say it.