The City of Mirrors

by Justin Cronin

  As she knelt beside him, a great sob shook her, the pain of her too-long life, forestalled for a century, unleashed. The glimpse of life she’d been given: how fleeting it was. Better, perhaps, never to have had it. Peter had begun to moan. The virus churned inside him; it bore him away.

  She made her choice: a three-foot length of steel with a triangulated tip. What function had it served? Part of a signpost? The frame of a window that had once gazed out upon the busy world? The underpinnings of a mighty tower soaring to the sky? She knelt again by Peter’s body. The man inside was leaving. She bent and touched his cheek. His skin was damp and feverish. The blinking had commenced. Blink. Blink, blink.

  A voice from behind: “Goddamn you!”

  She went hurling through the air.

  Michael sprinted down Fourth Avenue, the debris cloud roaring behind him. There would be no outrunning it. He turned right onto Eighth Street. At the ends of the block, both in front and behind, the cloud roared past with a tornadic whoosh, then, as if suddenly recalling his presence—Oh, Michael, sorry I forgot you—turned the corners, barreling toward him from two directions.

  He dove through the nearest door and slammed it behind him. Some kind of clothing shop, coats and dresses and shirts hanging disembodied on the racks. A wide window with mannequins propped upon an elevated platform faced the street.

  The cloud arrived.

  The window burst inward; Michael’s hands shot up to protect his eyes. Dust engulfed the room, blasting him backward. Pricks of pain announced themselves all over his body—his arms and hands, the base of his throat, the parts of his face that had been exposed—as if he’d been attacked by a swarm of bees. He tried to rise; only then did he discover the long shard of glass embedded in his right thigh. It seemed strange that it didn’t hurt more—it should have hurt like hell—but then the pain arrived, annihilating his thoughts. He was coughing, choking, drowning in the dust. He scrambled back from the window and crashed into a clothing rack. He yanked a shirt from its hanger. It was made of some kind of gauzy material. He wadded it in his fist and pressed it to his mouth and nose. Breath by hungry breath, oxygen flowed back into his lungs.

  He tied the shirt around the lower half of his face. With stinging eyes, he looked out upon the dark street. He was inside the cloud. Everything was silent except for a faint pattering: the sound of airborne particles falling upon the pavement and the roofs of abandoned cars. His hands and arms were slick with blood; his leg, where the long piece of glass was buried, screamed with the slightest motion. He drew his blade and cut, then tore, the leg of his trousers away. The glass, a long, narrow splinter, irregularly edged and slightly curved, had entered at an angle; the wound was roughly halfway between his groin and his knee on the inside flank of his leg. Good Christ, he thought. Another few inches higher and that thing would have sliced my nuts off.

  He reached over his head to yank another shirt from the rack and used it to wrap the exposed end of the shard. He supposed it was possible that removing the glass would open the wound wider, but the pain was unendurable. Unless he removed it, he wouldn’t be going anywhere. To do it quickly: that was the best way.

  He took the wrapped shard in his fist. He counted to three. He pulled.

  All up and down the block, man-sized figures, moving in the dust, halted in their tracks and swiveled their faces toward the sound of Michael’s scream.

  “This was a temple!”

  Fanning’s hand caught her across the cheek. The blow sent her careening backward.

  “You do this to me? To my city?”

  She raised her hands to protect her face. Instead Fanning yanked her by the collar, hauled her up until her feet left the pavement, and tossed her away.

  “I am going to take my time with you. You’re going to want me to kill you. You are going to beg.”

  He came at her again, and again. Tosses, slaps, kicks. She discovered herself lying facedown. She felt detached from everything. Her thoughts possessed a lazy, unmoored quality. They seemed on the verge of some permanent and final severing, as if with the next blow they would sail up and away from her body, swallowed into the sky like a balloon cut from its string.

  Yet, to yield, to accept death: the mind forbade it. The mind demanded, against all sense, to go on. Fanning was somewhere behind her. Amy’s awareness of him was less as a physical presence than an abstract force, like gravity, a well of darkness into which she was being relentlessly sucked. She began to crawl. Why wouldn’t Fanning just kill her? But he’d said so himself: he wanted her to feel it. To feel life leaking out of her, drip by drip.

  “Look at me!”

  A crack to her midriff lifted her off the ground; Fanning had kicked her. The wind sailed from her chest.

  “I said, look at me!”

  He kicked her again, burying his foot below her sternum and flipping her onto her back.

  He was holding the sword over his head.

  “We were supposed to meet at the kiosk!”

  We?

  “You said you would be there! You said we would be together!”

  What was he seeing? Who was she to him? The transformation: it had done something to his mind.

  “I never should have loved you!”

  She rolled away as the sword came down. It struck the pavement with a single-noted clang. Fanning howled like wounded animal.

  “I wanted to die with you!”

  She was on her back again. Fanning had raised the sword above his head, ready to swing. She raised her arms in forbearance. One chance was all she had.

  “Tim, don’t.”

  Fanning froze.

  “I wanted to be there. To be with you. That was all I ever wanted.”

  His arms tensed. At any second, the blade would fall. “I waited all night! How could you do that to me? Why didn’t you come, why?”

  “Because … I died, Tim.”

  For a moment nothing happened. Please, she thought.

  “You … died.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  His voice was numb. “On the train.”

  Amy spoke cautiously, keeping her voice even. “Yes. I was coming to see you. They carried me off. I couldn’t stop them.”

  Fanning’s eyes floated away from her face. He glanced around uncertainly.

  “But I’m here now, Tim. That’s what matters. I’m sorry it took me so long.”

  How long could she sustain the lie? The sword was everything. If she could convince Fanning to give it to her …

  “We can still do it,” she said. “There’s a way we can always be together, just like we planned.”

  He looked back at her.

  “Come with me, Tim. There’s a place we can go. I’ve seen it.”

  Fanning said nothing. She sensed her words gaining traction in his mind.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “It’s the place where we can start over. We can do it right this time. All you have to do is give me the sword.” She extended her hand. “Come with me, Tim.”

  Fanning’s eyes were locked on hers. Everything was inside them, the whole history of the man he’d been. The pain. The loneliness. The interminable hours of his life. Then:

  “You.”

  She was losing him. “Give me the sword, Tim. That’s all you have to do.”

  “You’re not her.”

  She felt it all collapsing. “Tim, it’s me. It’s Liz.”

  “You’re … Amy.”

  Fifty yards away, lying faceup on the ground, the man known as Peter Jaxon had begun to disappear.

  His mind straddled two worlds. In the first, one of darkness and commotion, Fanning was hurling Amy through the air. Peter sensed this rather dimly; he could not recall why it should be so. Nor could he intervene, his powers to act, even to move at all, having abandoned him.

  In the other was a window.

  A shade, drawn over it, glowed with summer light. The image felt familiar, like déjà vu. The window, Peter thought.
It means I must be dying. As he fought to focus his eyes, to bring himself back to reality, the light began to change. It was becoming something else: not a window in his mind but something physical. Through the dust-filled darkness was an opening, like a corridor ascending to a higher world, and through this tunnel a shining shape appeared. It teased at his memory; he knew what it was, if only he could summon the image forth. The picture sharpened. It resembled a crown, multilayered, each layer arched as it narrowed to a spiked peak. Sunlight flared upon its mirrored face, shooting a bright beam down the corridor, which was a hole in the clouds, into his eyes.

  The Chrysler Building.

  The corridor collapsed; darkness folded over him again. But now he knew: the night in which he dwelled was false. The sun was still up there. Above the cloud of dust it shone, bright as day. If he could get to the sun, if he could somehow lead Fanning into its light …

  But this thought was lost as a great force gripped him, like a vortex. Its power was colossal. He felt himself being pulled, down and down and down. What lay at the bottom he did not know, only that when he reached it, he would be forever lost. Somewhere distant, his body was changing. Racked with convulsions, it hammered on the pavement of the broken city. Bones elongated. Teeth showered from his gums. He was sinking into a sea of everlasting darkness in which no trace of himself would remain. No! Not yet! He searched for something, anything, to hold on to. In his mind’s eye, Amy’s face appeared. The picture was not imagined but taken from life. They were sitting on his bed. Their faces were close, their hands entwined. Teardrops hung upon her eyelashes like beads of light. You get to keep one thing, she told him. What I wanted to keep was you.

  Was you, thought Peter.

  You.

  He fell.

  The pain in Michael’s leg exploded. Removing the glass had peeled the skin back like the rind of an orange, exposing the fibrous, subtly pulsating muscle beneath. Another backward reach above his head produced a long, silk scarf. He twirled it into a thick rope and tied it tightly around the wound. The fabric was instantly saturated. Was he doing this right? He wished Sara were here. Sara would know what to do. The things that came into your mind at a time like this: the brain was not kind, it had no sense of fairness, it taunted you with thoughts of the things you did not have or couldn’t do.

  The noise outside had subsided as the destruction marched north. The air had an unnatural chemical smell, bitter and burnt. For the first time since he’d awakened on the street, his mind went to Alicia, the look on her face as the water crashed into her and swept her away. She was gone. Alicia was gone.

  From the street, a crunch of glass.

  Michael froze. The noise came again.

  Footsteps.

  Pushing with her heels, Amy scrambled backward. “Tim, don’t! It’s me!”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  She had lost him; the spell was broken. In his eyes, the look of white-hot fury had returned. Suddenly Fanning raised his head. A new emotion came into his face, one of unanticipated pleasure.

  “And what have we here?”

  It was Peter. The transformation was complete; his body, sleek, powerful, had joined the anonymous horde.

  “There’s a good fellow.” Fanning lips pulled back into a smile, showing his fangs. “Why don’t you join us?”

  Peter moved toward them through the rubble, legs bent, arms held away from his body. His steps seemed uncertain; his back and shoulders rippled with an undulating motion, like a man stretching after a long night of sleep or adjusting himself inside a new suit of clothes.

  “Allow me, Amy, to make a point.”

  With a flick of his wrist Fanning tossed the sword, handle first, to Peter, who snatched it robotically from the air.

  “Let’s see who’s in there, shall we?” Fanning strode toward him, straightened his back and tapped the center of his chest. “Right about here, I should think.”

  Peter was staring at the sword, as if puzzling over its function. What was this alien object in his hand?

  “Come on, now. I promise I won’t move a muscle.”

  Peter took another step forward. His movements were jerky, as if the parts of his body could not completely coordinate. The muscles of his arms and shoulders tightened as he attempted to lift the blade.

  “Getting heavier, I see.”

  Another step and Peter stopped. He was within striking distance now. Fanning made no effort to defend himself; his batlike face radiated confidence, almost amusement. The sword, at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground, refused to rise.

  “Here, let me help you.”

  With the long-nailed tip of his index finger, Fanning guided the blade to a horizontal position. He moved slightly forward until the point made contact with his chest, just below the sternum.

  “One good thrust should do it.”

  A growl of effort rose from deep in Peter’s throat. The seconds stretched, every part of his body drawn taut. A pop of air expelled from his lungs; he melted to his knees, the sword clanging on the pavement.

  “You see, Amy? It is simply not possible. This man belongs to me now.”

  Like the viral in the hall, Peter had bowed his head in abject surrender. Fanning placed a hand on his shoulder. It was as if he were patting an especially obedient dog. “Do me a favor, won’t you?” Fanning asked him.

  Peter raised his head.

  “Would you please kill her?”

  Michael pushed backward from the window on his palms, leaving a wide trail of blood on the floor. There was more than one viral out there, he could sense it; they were like wraiths, there and not there, shadowy figures gliding and shifting in the dust.

  Searching. Hunting.

  Once they found him, he wouldn’t make it two steps. He scooted to the rear of the room, where there was a long counter and, behind it, a doorway half-hidden by a curtain. As he slipped behind the counter, the floor began to shake again. The feeling gathered in intensity like a revving engine. Clothes racks toppled. Mirrors shattered and burst outward. Chunks of plaster severed from the ceiling and detonated on the floor. Curled into a ball, arms wrapped around his head, Michael thought, God, whoever you are, I am sick of your shit. I am not your plaything. If you’re going to kill me, please stop screwing around and get it over with.

  The shaking subsided. From all up and down the street, Michael heard the crack of windows popping free of their frames and crashing on the pavement. The virals still lurked out there, but maybe the commotion had put them off his trail. Maybe they were cowering in some dark corner, as he was. Maybe they were dead.

  He peeked around the counter. The place looked like a wrecking ball had hit it, nothing left intact except for a free-standing, full-length mirror, which stood anomalously on the right side of the room like a bewildered survivor surveying the wreckage of some terrible catastrophe. Angled slightly toward the front of the store, the mirror’s face gave him a partial view of the street.

  A pod of three emerged in the murk. They seemed to be drifting aimlessly, looking around as if lost. Michael willed his body into absolute stillness. If they couldn’t hear him, maybe they’d pass him by. For several seconds they continued their confused wandering, until one of them stopped abruptly. Standing in profile, the viral rotated its face from side to side, as if attempting to triangulate the source of a sound. Michael held his breath. The creature paused and angled its chin upward, holding this position for another several seconds before swiveling toward the storefront. Its nose was twitching like a rat’s.

  Peter stepped toward her. There was no point in trying to get away; the outcome would be the same. Time had given up its customary course. Everything seemed to happen in a manner both rushed and strangely sluggish; her vision had narrowed, the city around her fading to a collection of shadows.

  She was crying, though not for herself. She couldn’t have said what she was crying for; her tears possessed an abstract quality of sadness, though something else as well. Her trials were
ended. In a way, she was glad. How strange, to put down life like a heavy load she had been too long forced to carry. She hoped she would go to the farmhouse. How happy she had been there. She remembered the piano, the music flowing forth, Peter’s hands resting on her shoulders, the joy of his touch. How happy they had been, together.

  “It’s all right,” she murmured. Her voice felt distant, not quite her own. It spilled from her lips on shallow, rapid breaths. “It’s all right, it’s all right.”

  Peter positioned the sword so that the tip was pointed at the base of her throat. The gap narrowed, then stopped, flesh mere inches from steel. His head cocked to the side; in another second he would strike.

  “Well?” Fanning said.

  Their gazes met and held. To know and be known: that was the final desire, the heart of love. It was the one thing she could give him. A huge force was bursting open inside her. It was a kind of light. She would have beamed it straight into his heart if she could.

  “You’re Peter,” Amy whispered, and went on whispering, so that he would be hearing these words. “You’re Peter, you’re Peter, you’re Peter …”

  The blood, thought Michael.

  They can smell my blood.

  He wasn’t sure he could stand, let alone run. He had painted a road of red on the floor, leading them straight to him. He pressed his back against the counter and drew his knees to his chest. The virals had entered the store. He heard a kind of wet snuffling, like the noise of hogs rooting in mud; they were sucking the blood off the floor. Michael felt a weird surge of protectiveness. Hey, leave my blood alone! On and on went their lascivious slurping. So intense was their focus that Michael began to think about the curtained door. What lay beyond it? Was it a dead end or was there, perhaps, a hallway that led deeper into the building—to the street, even? The doorway was only partially concealed by the counter. For some interval of time, depending on how fast he was able to go, he would be exposed.