“Kate?”
Hollis looked at Caleb. The younger man shook his head. Hollis stiffened, wavering on his feet, the blood draining from his face. For a moment Caleb thought his father-in-law might collapse.
“Sara, come here,” Hollis said.
“Kate?” Her voice was frantic. “Kate, come out!”
Hollis grabbed her around the waist.
“Kate! You answer me!”
“She’s not in the hardbox, Sara.”
Sara thrashed in his arms, trying to break free. “Hollis, let me go. Kate!”
“She’s gone, Sara. Our Kate is gone.”
“Don’t say that! Kate, I’m your mother, you come out here right now!”
Her strength left her; she dropped to her knees, Hollis still holding her around the waist. “Oh, God,” she moaned.
Hollis’s eyes were closed in anguish. “She’s gone. She’s gone.”
“Please, no. Not her.”
“Our little girl is gone.”
Sara lifted her face to the heavens. Then she began to howl.
The light was soft and featureless; low, wet clouds blotted the sun. Peter lifted Amy into the vehicle’s cargo bay and put a blanket over her. A bit of color had flowed back into her face; her eyes were closed, though it seemed she was not asleep but, rather, in a kind of twilight, as if her mind were floating in a current, the banks of the world flowing past.
Greer’s voice was tight: “We better get moving.”
Peter rode in the back with Amy. The going was slow, the dirt track crowded by brush. In the dark, Peter had absorbed almost nothing of the landscape. Now he saw it for what it was: an inhospitable swamp of lagoons, ruined structures clawed by vines, the earth vague, like something melted. Sometimes standing water obscured the roadway, its depth unknown; Greer plowed through.
The foliage began to thin; a cyclonic tangle of highway overpasses appeared. Greer threaded through the detritus beneath the freeway, located a ramp, and ascended.
For a time they followed the highway; then Greer veered away. Despite the violent jostling of the Humvee, Amy had yet to stir. They skirted a second region of collapsed overpasses, then climbed up the bank, back onto the highway.
Michael turned in his seat. “Easier going from here.”
Rain began to fall, pattering the windshield; then the clouds broke, revealing a strong Texas sun. Amy gave a sigh of wakefulness; Peter looked to find that her eyes had opened. She blinked at him, then, squinting fiercely, covered her eyes with her arms.
“It’s bright,” she said.
“What was that?” Greer said from the front.
“She says it’s bright.”
“She’s been in the dark for twenty years—the light may bother her awhile.” Greer bent forward to reach under his seat. “Give her these.”
Over his shoulder, he passed Peter a pair of dark glasses. The lenses were scratched and pitted, the frames made from soldered wire. He slipped the glasses over her face, wrapping the wires gently behind her ears.
“Better?”
She nodded. Her eyes closed once more. “I’m so tired,” she murmured.
Peter leaned forward. “How much farther?”
“We should make it before sundown, but it will be close. We’re going to need fuel, too. There should be some in the hardbox west of Sealy.”
They continued in silence. Despite the tension, Peter felt himself drifting off. He slept for two hours, awakening to find that the truck had stopped. Greer and Michael were toting two heavy plastic jugs of fuel from the hardbox. His thoughts were fuzzy; his limbs, heavy and slow, moved like pooled liquid. Everywhere in his body, he felt his age.
Michael glanced his way as he stepped out. “How’s she doing?”
“Still asleep.”
Greer was pouring gas through a funnel into the truck’s tank. “She’ll be okay. Sleep is what she needs.”
“Let me take the wheel for a while,” Peter offered. “I know the way from here.”
Greer bent to cap the can and wiped his hands on his shirt. “Better if Michael does for now. There’s a few tricky spots ahead.”
They found Kate at the edge of the woods. The gun was still in her hand, her finger curled inside the trigger guard. One shot, through the sweet spot: Kate, thorough to the last, had wanted to be sure.
They had no time to bury her. They decided to take her into the house and lay her in the bed Caleb and Pim had shared, since they would never be coming back here. Hollis and Caleb carried her inside. It did not seem right to leave her in her blood-stained clothes; Pim and Sara undressed her, washed her body, and put her in one of Pim’s nightgowns, made of soft blue cotton. They placed a pillow beneath her head and tucked a blanket tightly around her; Pim, weeping silently, brushed her sister’s hair. A final question: Should they let the girls see her? Yes, Sara said. Kate was their mother. They needed to say goodbye.
Caleb waited outside. It was midmorning, cruelly bright. Nature mocked him with its disregard. The birds sang, the breeze blew, the clouds scudded overhead, the sun moved in its lazy, fateful arc. Handsome lay dead in the field; a crowd of buzzards jabbed at the banquet of his flesh, flapping their enormous wings. All was a ruin, yet the world did not seem to know or care. In the bedroom, Caleb had told Kate he loved her and kissed her on the forehead. Her skin was shockingly cold, but that was not the most disturbing thing. He realized he was expecting her to say something. It didn’t hurt too much. Or It’s okay, Caleb, I don’t blame you. You did the best you could. Maybe she would say something sarcastic, such as Seriously? You’re going to tuck me into bed? I’m not a child, you know. I bet this is a lot of fun for you, Caleb. Yet there was nothing. Her body existed, but all that had made her distinct as a person was absent. Her voice was gone; never would it be heard again.
Pim came out first, with the girls. Elle was crying softly; Bug looked merely confused. A few minutes passed before Sara and Hollis emerged.
“If you’re ready, we should get moving,” Caleb said.
Hollis nodded. Sara, standing apart, was gazing toward the trees. Her eyes were glassy, her face unnaturally still, as if some essential element of life had left it. She cleared her throat and spoke:
“Husband, will you do something for me?”
“All right.”
She looked him in the eye. “Kill every last fucking one of them.”
The going was slow. Soon all three children were being carried—Bug on Caleb’s shoulders, Elle on her grandfather’s back, Theo in his sling, Pim and Sara taking turns. They were deep into the afternoon by the time they reached town. The streets were devoid of life. In Elacqua’s yard, they found the truck, still parked where Caleb had seen it. Caleb got in the driver’s seat. He’d hoped the key would be in the ignition, but it wasn’t. He searched the cab to no avail and climbed back out.
“Do you know how to hot-wire a truck?” he asked Hollis.
“Not really.”
Caleb looked toward the house. A window on the top floor was broken, smashed from its frame. Glass and splintered wood littered the ground beneath it.
“Somebody’s going to have to go inside to look.”
“I’ll do it,” said Hollis.
“This is my responsibility. Stay here.”
Caleb left the rifle with Hollis and took the revolver. The air in the house was so still it felt unbreathed. He crept from room to room, opening drawers and cabinets. Finding no keys, he climbed the stairs. There were two rooms with closed doors on either side of a narrow hall. He opened the first door. Here was where Elacqua and his wife had slept. The bed was unmade; beside it, lace curtains shifted slightly in the breeze coming through the broken window. He searched all the drawers, then stepped to the window and waved down. Hollis gazed up with a questioning look. Caleb shook his head.
One room to go. What if they couldn’t find the keys? He’d seen no other vehicles in town. That didn’t mean there weren’t any, but they were running out of time.
Caleb took a b
reath and pushed the door with his foot.
Elacqua was lying on the bed fully clothed. The room reeked of piss and rancid breath. At first Caleb thought the man was dead, but then he gave a wet snort and rolled onto his side. An empty whiskey bottle stood on the floor beside the bed. The man wasn’t dead, just dead drunk.
Caleb shook him roughly by the shoulders. “Wake up.”
Elacqua, eyes still closed, batted clumsily at Caleb’s hand. “Leave me alone,” he mumbled.
“Dr. Elacqua, it’s Caleb Jaxon. Pull yourself together.”
His tongue moved heavily in his mouth. “You … bitch.”
Caleb had a sense of what had occurred. Cast out from his marital bed, the man had anesthetized himself into oblivion and missed the whole thing. Perhaps he’d been drunk to begin with and that was why his wife had sent him packing. In either case, Caleb practically envied him; the disaster had passed him by. How had the virals missed him? Maybe he just smelled too bad; maybe that was the solution. Maybe they should all get drunk and stay that way.
He shook Elacqua again. The man’s eyes fluttered open. They roamed blearily, finally landing on Caleb’s face.
“Who the hell are you?”
There was no point in attempting to explain the situation; the man was too far gone. “Dr. Elacqua, look at me. I need the keys to your truck.”
Caleb might have been asking him the most incomprehensible question in the world. “Keys?”
“Yes, the keys. Where are they?”
His eyes lost focus; he closed them again, his head, with its wild mane of hair, relaxing into the pillow. Caleb realized there was one place he hadn’t looked. The man’s trousers were soaked with urine, but there was nothing to be done about that. Caleb patted him down. At the base of the man’s left front pocket, Caleb felt something sharp. He slid his hand in and pulled it out: a single key, tarnished with age, on a small metal ring.
“Gotcha.”
His thoughts were broken by the roar of engines coming down the street. Caleb went to the window. Sara and the others were waving frantically toward the source of the sound, yelling, “Hey! Over here!”
Caleb stepped onto the porch as the trucks, three Army five-tons, halted in front of the house. A broad-chested man in uniform stepped from the cab of the first truck: Gunnar Apgar.
“Caleb. Thank God.”
They shook. Hollis and Sara had joined them. Apgar looked the group over. “Is this all of you?”
“There’s one more in the house, but we’ll need some help getting him out. He’s pretty drunk.”
“You’re kidding.” When Caleb said nothing, Apgar addressed a pair of soldiers who had disembarked from the second vehicle: “Haul him out here, on the double.”
They trotted up the steps.
“We’ve been working our way west, looking for folks,” Apgar said.
“How many survivors have you found?”
“You’re it. We’re not even finding any bodies. The virals either dragged them off or they’ve been turned.”
Hollis asked, “What about Kerrville?”
“No sign of them yet. Whatever’s going on, it’s happening out here first.” He paused, his expression suddenly uncertain. “There’s something else you ought to know, Caleb. It’s about your father.”
Peter took the wheel east of Seguin. Amy had awakened briefly in midafternoon, asking for water. Her fever was down, and her eyes seemed to be bothering her less, though she complained of a headache and was still very weak. Squinting out a side window, she asked how much farther they had to go. She was wearing the blanket like a shawl over her head and shoulders. Three hours, Greer said, maybe four. Amy considered this answer, then said, very softly, “We should hurry.”
They crossed the Guadalupe and turned north. The first township they’d come to was just east of the old city of Boerne. It wasn’t much, but there was a telegraph station. Only two hands of daylight remained when they pulled into the small central square.
“Awfully quiet around here,” Michael said.
The streets were empty. Odd for this hour, Peter thought. They disembarked into ghostly silence. The town comprised just a few buildings: a general store, a township office, a chapel, and a handful of shoddily erected houses, some half-constructed, as if their builders had lost interest.
“Anybody here?” Michael yelled. “Hello?”
“Feels strange,” Greer said.
Michael reached into the Humvee and released the shotgun from the holder. Peter and Greer checked their pistols.
“I’ll stay with Amy,” Greer said. “You two go find the telegraph station.”
Peter and Michael crossed the square to the township office. The door stood open, another oddity. Everything appeared normal inside, but still there were no signs of life.
“So where the hell did everybody go?” Peter said.
The telegraph was in a small room in the rear of the building. Michael sat at the operator’s desk and examined the log, a large, leather-bound ledger.
“The last message from here was sent Friday, five-twenty P.M., to Bandera station. The intended recipient was Mrs. Nills Grath.”
“What was the message?”
“ ‘Happy birthday, Aunt Lottie.’ ” Michael looked up. “Nothing after that, at least that anybody bothered to record.”
Today was Sunday. Whatever had happened here, Peter thought, it had happened sometime in the last forty-eight hours.
“Send a message to Kerrville,” Peter instructed. “Let Apgar know we’re coming.”
“My Morse is a little rusty. I’ll probably tell him to make me a sandwich.”
Michael threw a switch on the panel and began tapping the key. A few seconds later, he stopped.
“What’s wrong?”
Michael pointed to the panel. “See this meter? The needle should move when the plates touch.”
“So?”
“So I’m talking to myself here. The circuit won’t close.”
Peter knew nothing about it. “Is that something you can fix?”
“Not a chance. There’s a break in the line, could be anywhere between here and Kerrville. The storm might have knocked down a pole. A lightning strike could do it, too. It doesn’t take much.”
They exited through the back door. An old gas generator was crouched like a monster in the weeds, beside a rusted pickup and a buckboard with a broken axle and tall grass poking through the floorboards. Trash of all kinds—construction debris, busted packing crates, barrels with their seams split open—littered the yard. The wreckage of the frontier, flung out the door the moment it had outlived its usefulness.
“Let’s check some of the other buildings,” Peter said.
They entered the nearest house. It was one story, with two rooms. Dirty dishes were stacked on a table; flies twisted above them in the air. In the back room was a washbasin on a stand, a wardrobe, and large feather bed covered by a quilt. The bed was sturdy and carefully made, with a tableau of interlocking flowers, quite detailed, carved into the headboard; somebody had taken their time with it. A marriage bed, thought Peter.
But where were the people? What had happened that the inhabitants should vanish before they had a chance to clear the dirty dishes from the table? Peter and Michael returned to the main room as Greer came through the door.
“What’s the holdup?”
“The telegraph’s not working,” Michael said.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Break in the line someplace.”
Greer leveled his eyes at Peter. “We really have to get moving.”
What weren’t they seeing? What was this haunted place trying to tell him? Peter’s eyes fell upon something on the floor.
“Peter, did you hear me?” Greer pressed. “If we’re going to make it back before dark, we need to leave right now.”
Peter crouched to get a closer look, simultaneously gesturing toward the table. “Hand me that dishrag.”
Using a corner of the
cloth, he took hold of the object. The virals’ teeth had a way of catching the light, almost prismatic, with a pearlescent, milky luster. The tip was so sharp it seemed to fade into invisibility, too small for the naked eye to discern.
“I don’t think Zero’s sending an army,” Peter said.
“Then what’s he doing?” Michael asked.
Peter looked at Greer; the older man’s expression said he thought the same.
“I think he’s growing one.”
57
By the time the convoy reached Kerrville, it was nearly seven o’clock. The group disembarked into a state of siege. Along the top of the wall, soldiers were scurrying back and forth, handing out magazines and other gear. Fifty-caliber machine guns were positioned on either side of the gate. Apgar had exited the cab and was standing with Ford Chase, pointing at the one of the spotlights. As Chase moved away, Caleb stepped up.
“General, I’d like my commission back.”
Apgar frowned. “I have to say, that’s a first. Nobody ever asks to get back in the Army.”
“You can bust me to private—I don’t care.”
The general looked past Caleb’s shoulder toward Pim, who was standing with Sara and the children.
“You clear this with your CO?”
“I’d be lying if I said she was happy about it. But she gets it. She lost her sister last night.”
Apgar beckoned to a noncom manning the gates. “Sergeant, take this man to the armory and get him suited up. One brass bar.”
“Thank you, General,” said Caleb.
“You may rethink that later. And your old man’s going to have my ass for this.”
“Have we heard anything?”
Apgar shook his head. “Try not to worry, son. He’s been through worse than this. Report to Colonel Henneman on the platform. He’ll tell you where to go.”
Caleb went to Pim and hugged her. He placed his palm against the curve of her belly, then kissed Theo on the forehead.
Be careful, she signed.
“We’re going to the hospital,” Sara said. “There’s a hardbox in the basement. We’re moving the patients down there.”
The sergeant shifted impatiently on his feet. “Sir, we’d better go.”
The City of Mirrors Page 43
