The City of Mirrors (The Passage 3)

The sound increased in intensity, humming through the ship’s plating. Rand yelled over the din: “Pressure’s holding! Two thousand rpm! Four! Five! Six thousand!”

Michael snatched the radio from the floor. “Engage the screws!”

A groan. A shudder, deep in the bones.

The Bergensfjord began to move.

—

They skidded into the loading area. Amy leapt from the back of the truck before it stopped moving.

“Amy, stop!”

But the woman was already gone, racing toward the causeway. “Caleb, take Lucius and get on that boat.”

Standing by the cargo bed, his son seemed stunned.

“Do it!” Peter ordered. “Don’t wait!”

He took off after her. With every step he willed himself to go faster. His breath was heaving in his chest, the ground flying beneath him. The gap between them began to narrow. Twenty feet, fifteen, ten. A final burst of speed and he grabbed her around the waist, sending both of them rolling on the ground.

“Let me go!” Amy was on her knees, fighting to break free.

“We have to leave right now.”

There were tears in her voice. “They’ll kill him!”

Carter coiled. He flexed his fingers, claws glinting. He flexed his toes, feeling the taut wires of ligaments. Blueing moonlight doused him like a benediction.

Reaching one hand forward, Amy released a wail of pain. “Anthony!”

He charged.

—

They had to clear eight hundred feet.

At the rear of the vessel, a wall of foam churned up. Shouts rose from the dock: “They’re leaving without us!” The last of the passengers rushed forward, shoving themselves onto the ramp, which had begun to scrape along the pier as the Bergensfjord pulled away.

Standing at the rail, Pim watched the scene unfold in silence. The bottom lip of the gangway was inching toward the edge; soon it would fall. Where was her husband? Then she saw him. Supporting Lucius, he was racing at a quickstep down the pier. She began to sign emphatically to any who might see: That’s my husband! And: Stop this ship! But, of course, no one could make sense of her.

The gangway was clotted with people. Crammed between the guardrails, they squeezed forward onto the deck of the ship only one or two at a time, ejected from the squirming mass. Pim began to moan. She was not aware that she was doing this at first. The sound had emerged of its own volition, an expression of violent feeling that could not be contained—just as, twenty-one years ago, in Sara’s arms, she had wailed with such ferocity that she might have been mistaken for a dying animal. As the volume increased, the sound began to form a distinctive shape altogether new in the life of Pim Jaxon: she was about to make words.

“Caaay…leb! Ruuuuunnnn!”

The lip of the gangway halted. It had lodged against a cleat at the edge of the pier. Under the pressure of the ship’s accelerating mass, it began to twist on its axis. Rivets were popping, metal buckling. Caleb and Greer were steps away. Pim was waving, shouting words she couldn’t hear but felt—felt with every atom of her body.

The gangway began to fall.

Still chained to the ship, it cantilevered into the side of the hull. Bodies plunged into the water, some wordlessly, their fate accepted, others with pitiful cries. At the bottom of the ramp, Caleb had hooked an elbow through the rail while simultaneously holding on to Greer, whose feet were balanced on the lowest rung. The Bergensfjord was gathering speed, dragging a roiling whirlpool. As the stern passed by, the ones in the water were dragged under, into the propeller’s froth. Perhaps a cry, a hand reaching up in vain, and they were gone.

In the bowels of the Bergensfjord, Michael was running. Deck by deck he ascended, legs flying, arms swinging, heart pumping in his mouth. With a burst he flung himself into open air. The point of the bow was passing the end of the drydock door.

They weren’t going to clear it. No goddamn way.

He took the stairs to the pilothouse three at a time and charged through the door. “Lore—”

She was staring out the windscreen. “I know!”

“Give it more rudder!”

“You don’t think I did that?”

The gap between the door and the ship’s right flank was narrowing. Twenty yards. Ten. Five.

“Oh, shit,” Lore breathed.

—

Peter and Amy were racing down the dock.

The ship was departing; she was gliding away. Gunfire spattered from the fantail, bullets whizzing over their heads; the virals had broken through.

A crash.

The side of the hull had collided with the end of the drydock door. A long scraping sound followed, the irresistible force of the ship’s momentum meeting the immovable object of the door’s weight. The hull trembled even as it failed to decelerate, thrusting forward.