The City of Mirrors (The Passage 3)

A shout came from Peter’s left: “It’s that woman from last night!”

“She’s a viral!”

“Shoot her!”

The first bullet speared Alicia’s right thigh, shattering her femur; the second caught her in the left lung. The horse’s front legs folded, sending her pitching forward over its neck. The first pops became a full-throated barrage. Dust kicked up around her as she crawled behind the fallen animal, which now lay riddled and dead. Shots were connecting. Bullets were finding their mark. Alicia experienced them like a fusillade of punches. Her left palm, speared like an apple. The ilium of her right pelvis, shrapnelized like an exploding grenade. Two more to the chest, the second of which ricocheted off her fourth rib, plunged diagonally through her thoracic cavity, and cracked her second lumbar vertebrae. She did her best to shove herself beneath the fallen horse. Blood splashed from its flesh as the bullets pounded.

Lost, she thought, as a curtain of darkness fell. Everything is lost.

—

The majority of virals emerged inside the city at four points: the central square, the southeast corner of the impoundment, a large sinkhole in H-town, and the staging area inside the main gate. Others had piloted their way through the pocketed earth to emerge in smaller pods throughout the city. The floors of houses; abandoned lots, weedy and untended, where children had once played; the streets of densely packed neighborhoods. They dug and crawled. They traced the sewage and water lines. They were clever; they sought the weakest points. For months they had moved through the geological and man-made fissures beneath the city like an infestation of ants.

Go now, their master ordered. Fulfill your purpose. Do that which I’ve commanded.

On the catwalk, Peter did not have long to consider Alicia’s words of warning. Amid the roar of guns—many of the soldiers, gripped by the frenzy of a mob, were firing upon the dopeys as well—the structure lurched under him. It was as if the metal grate beneath his feet were a carpet that had been lifted and shaken at one end. The sensation shot to his stomach, a swirl of nausea, like seasickness. He looked side to side, searching for the source of this motion, simultaneously becoming aware that he was hearing screams. A second lurch and the structure jolted downward. His balance failed; knocked backward, he fell to the floor of the catwalk. Guns were blasting, voices yelling. Bullets whizzed over his face. The gate, someone cried, they’re opening the gate! Shoot them! Shoot those fuckers! A groan of bending metal, and the catwalk began to tip away from the wall.

He was rolling toward the edge.

He had no way to stop himself; his hands found nothing to grab. Bodies tumbled past, launching into the dark. As he rolled over the lip, one hand seized slick metal: a support strut. His body swung around it like a pendulum. He would not be able to hold on; he had merely paused. Beneath him, the city spun, lit with screams and gunfire.

“Take my hand!”

It was Jock. He had lodged himself under the rail, one arm dangling over the edge. The catwalk had paused at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground.

“Grab on!”

A series of pops: the last bolts were yanking free of the wall. Jock’s fingertips, inches from Peter’s, could have been a mile away. Time was moving in two streams. There was one, of noise and haste and violent action, and a second, coincidental with the first, in which Peter and everything around him seemed caught in a lazy current. His grip was failing. His other hand flailed uselessly, trying to grasp Jock’s.

“Pull yourself up!”

Peter tore away.

“I’ve got you!”

Jock was gripping him by the wrist. A second face appeared under the rail: Apgar. As the man reached down, Jock heaved Peter upward; Apgar caught him by the belt. Together they hauled him the rest of the way.

The catwalk began to fall.

—

The slaughter had commenced.

Freed from hiding, the virals poured over the city. They swarmed the ramparts, flinging men into space. They launched from the ground and rooftops like a glowing fireworks display. They burst through the floors of hardboxes to butcher the occupants and exploded through the floors of buildings to haul the hiding inhabitants from closets and out from under their beds. They stormed the gate, which, although formidable, was not designed to repel an attack from within; all that was required to open the city to invasion was to tear the crossbars from their braces, free the brake, and push.

The pod that emerged near the impoundment was likewise charged with a specific mission. Throughout the day, their delicate sensorium had detected the footfalls of a great number of people, all headed in the same direction. They had heard the roar of vehicles and the barks of bullhorns. They had heard the word “dam.” They had heard the word “shelter.” They had heard the word “tubes.” Those that sought a direct entry to the dam were confounded. As Chase had predicted, there was no way in. Others, like an elite assault force, homed in on a compact building nearby. This was guarded by a small contingent of soldiers, who died swiftly and badly. Jaws snapping, fingers trilling, eyes restlessly roaming, the virals took measure of the interior. The room was full of pipes. Pipes meant water; water meant the dam. A flight of stairs descended.