The City of Mirrors (The Passage 3)

“Can you show me the other entrances?” the sergeant asked.

Sara led him around to the back and side doors. Soldiers arrived with sheets of plywood and began hammering them into the molding.

“Those won’t keep a drac out,” Sara said. They were standing at the front of the building, where more sheets of plywood were being used to cover the windows.

“They’re not for the dracs.”

Sweet Jesus, she thought.

“Do you have a weapon, ma’am?”

“This is a hospital, Sergeant. We don’t just leave guns lying around.”

He walked to the first truck and returned with a rifle and pistol. He held them out. “Take your pick.”

Everything about his offer went against the grain; a hospital still meant something. Then she thought of Kate.

“All right, the pistol.” She tucked it into her waistband.

“You’ve used one before?” the sergeant said. “I can give you the basics if you want.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

—

In the stockade, Alicia was gauging the strength of the chains.

The bolt on the wall was negligible—one hard yank should do it—but the shackles were a problem. They were constructed of a hardened alloy of some sort. Probably they had come from Tifty’s bunker; the man had made a science of viral containment. So even if she freed herself from the wall, she’d still be as trussed up as a hog for slaughter.

The thought of sleep enticed her. Not merely to obliterate time but to carry her thoughts away. But her dreams, always the same, were nothing she cared to revisit: the brilliantly lit city dissolving to darkness; the happy cries of life within waning, then gone; the pitiless, disappearing door.

And then there was the other issue: Alicia wasn’t alone.

The feeling was subtle, but she could tell Fanning was still there: a sort of low-grade hum in her brain, more tactile than aural, like a breeze pushing over the surface of her mind. It made her feel angry and sick and tired of everything, ready to be done with it all.

Get out of my head, goddamnit. Haven’t I done what you asked? Leave me the hell alone.

The promised food did not appear. Peter had forgotten, or else he’d decided that a hungry Alicia was safer than a full one. It could be a tactic to make her pliable: Food is on the way; wait, no, it isn’t. In either event, she was perversely glad; part of her still hated it. The moment her jaws sank into flesh, hot blood squirting upon her palate, a chorus of revulsion erupted in her head: What the hell are you doing? Yet always she drank her fill until, thoroughly disgusted with herself, she sank back on her heels and let the lassitude engulf her.

The hours moved sluggishly. At last the door opened.

“Surprise.”

Michael stepped into the room. A small metal cage was pressed against his chest.

“Five minutes, Fisher,” the guard said, and slammed the door behind him.

Michael put the cage on the floor and took a seat on the cot, facing her squarely. In the cage was a brown rabbit.

“How’d you get in?” Alicia asked.

“Oh, they know me pretty well around here.”

“You bribed them.”

Michael seemed pleased. “As it happens, a little money changed hands, yes. Even in these troubled times, a man has to think about his family. That, plus nobody else had the stomach to bring you breakfast.” He nodded toward the cage. “Apparently, the little bundle of fur is somebody’s pet. Goes by Otis.”

Alicia allowed herself a good, long look at Michael. The boy she’d known was gone, replaced by a middle-aged man of sinewy hardness, compact and capable. His face had a chiseled look, nothing wasted. Though his eyes still possessed their twinkling, busy alertness, a darker aspect lay within them, more knowing: the eyes of experience, of a man who had seen things in his life.

“You’ve changed, Michael.”

He shrugged carelessly. “This is something I hear a lot.”

“How’ve you been keeping yourself?”

“Oh, you know me.” A cockeyed smile. “Just keeping the lights burning.”

“And Lore?”

“Can’t say that worked out.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“You know how it goes. I got the potted plants, she took the house. For the best, really.” He angled his head at the floor again, where the caged rabbit was anxiously working its cheeks. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

She wanted to, very badly. The intoxicating scent of warm meat, warm life; the swish and throb of the animal’s blood surging through its veins, as if she’d cupped a seashell to her ear: her anticipation was intense.